Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon (26 page)

He could not help but wish, though, that Robert had said something about him. It was foolish, he knew, but he saw that this book would be read by all of London, that the playwrights in it would be discussed for years to come. If, God forfend, he should die now of the plague, would any remember him in even ten years' time?

Nay, this was nonsense. Fame meant nothing; it was important only to live a modest, sober, industrious life. In ten years' time these men might be dead of their follies, dead or suffering some other punishment sent by God. Already God had seen fit to take away one of their number. But if he lived properly and safely, taking care to keep away from all their excesses, he would not share their fate.

Satisfied, he went back to his work, and wrote until the light faded.

16

Paul Hogg looked up from his stack of books. Arthur sat slumped against the wall like one of the boneless creatures; Hogg knew that he could stay there for hours, getting up only two or three times a day.

He had spent the last few days talking to the man, asking him questions in a gentle voice and waiting patiently for an answer. The red king had sent messengers to collect Arthur but Hogg had put them off. He thought that he would never get another chance like this one, and he was anxious to learn what Arthur knew.

He turned a page of the book in front of him. “The end of alchemy is in celebration, reconciliation, the marriage of the red man and the white lady …” he read.

What did that mean? He understood, of course, that writers on alchemy could not speak clearly about what they knew, that this knowledge had to be kept secret, hidden from the multitudes. Still, he wished that the books could be a little more forthcoming. Most alchemists thought the words referred to sulphur and quicksilver, but he had tried those substances in his last experiment and nothing had happened. The red man was blood, perhaps, and the white lady was then—what? Milk?

Nay, it was ridiculous. It had been nearly a year since he had performed the eleventh alchemical step, and he had stalled there, with no idea how to proceed. He had asked Arthur, but the other man hadn't seemed to know.

Perhaps Arthur was what George believed him to be, a lunatic, the half-mad son of Alice Wood in the churchyard. But the more he spoke to Arthur the more certain he became that the man's silence hid knowledge, perhaps a vast knowledge.

How could he take that knowledge away from him? Maybe he had asked the wrong questions; maybe he had been too elusive, like the books he read. What if Arthur only waited for an honest, forthright question—what if the secret of wisdom lay in openness, in revealing, not concealing?

Reveal, not conceal, he thought. It went against everything he knew. He decided to try it anyway: he had a few days, at best, before the king would force him to surrender Arthur.

He moved to the floor and sat next to the other man. “Do you know how to change lead into gold?” he asked in a low voice.

Arthur laughed but said nothing. The music seemed to play in his head again; he moved his hand in time to it, up and down.

A man who searched for the secrets of the alchemists learned patience, if nothing else. “Do you know how to make the Philosopher's Stone?” Hogg asked.

“Aye.”

“Aye?” His heart beat faster; he had been right. “How?”

Arthur looked directly at Hogg, his green eyes wide. “I can change lead into gold. Any king can.”

“Here,” Hogg said, trying not to sound too eager. He went to the table and brought back a piece of lead. “Change that to gold,” he said, giving it to Arthur.

Arthur took the lead and let it drop to the floor. He looked at Hogg again. “When will I see my family?”

“Soon, Your Majesty,” Hogg said. One of his guesses about Arthur was that the man was not a lunatic at all but a true son of Faerie, a child of either Oriana or the king. The guess made him happy; he might have knowledge few other people had. It was not the need for wealth that made him search for the Philosopher's Stone; he had more than enough. If he wanted, he could move from this mean house to one of the manors by the riverside. It was knowledge, the idea that Nature had yielded up one more of her secrets. He needed the Stone to live forever, and he needed to live forever to learn everything there was to learn.

“Who were your parents?” he asked, hoping to take advantage of Arthur's sudden willingness to answer questions.

“My father was a king. My mother was a queen.”

“King of what?”

Arthur said nothing. Hogg looked at the wall, thinking of his next question. When he turned back he saw that the lump of lead was now shining gold.

George woke, gasping. He had dreamed of something moving in his house, something stealthy and unwholesome. Now, as he lay still, he thought he could smell the odor of stagnant pools, of hot decaying marshland. He tried not to move.

A silver ewer clattered to the floor. George clenched his teeth, trying not to cry out. “George,” a voice said. George could hear the thing's difficulty in speaking though the pointed snout, the crooked teeth.

George said nothing. “George,” the creature said again. “You must see to it that Paul Hogg gives us Arthur. He must not be allowed to keep him.”

“Tell him yourself,” George said, and then cursed himself for replying. Now it would know where he was. But what could they do to him, after all? Hogg had called them the creatures of light; the night must limit their powers.

The thing did not answer. George realized that they could not reach Hogg, that the man's protective circles had served some purpose after all. They hoped to get to Hogg through him. “I'll tell him,” he said. “Leave me alone, please.” He was ashamed to hear his voice tremble.

“Ahhhh,” the creature said.

Something else laughed. There were two of them then, two or more. “Please,” he said again. Wild laughter came from the darkness. He heard things being thrown through the room, stools and candlesticks and pewter plates. His table fell over heavily. What more did they want from him? He had already agreed to help them.

Then there was silence. He lay in the darkness for a long time, too frightened to get up and look at the shambles the creatures had made of his room. Perhaps they were still there, waiting for him. He remembered what they had done to Anthony. The lubber-fiends, he thought, recalling the word from his childhood. They were not demons, not the children of Cain like Oriana's people, but creatures from old stories women would tell by the fire late at night. The lubber-fiends will come for you, his mother had said once, when he had disobeyed her.

He should leave Hogg's service, go back to the churchyard and ply his trade in peace. But would Hogg let him do that? He was in this business too deeply already. And he didn't know the extent of the other man's power: Hogg might call the lubberfiends down on him, or change all his gold into coal, and then where would he be?

The room began to lighten around him: dawn was coming. He rose and looked around. Books had been torn apart and pages flung across the floor, candles trampled underfoot, their wax ground into the rushes. One of his windows had been broken; he wondered how he had missed the sound of the crash.

He righted the table and began to clean up the room. An hour later a great weariness overtook him and he went back to bed. He sighed as he drifted off toward sleep, comforted by the daylight shining through the window; he would not be going to the churchyard until much later, maybe not at all.

It was evening by the time he awoke. His head felt filled with bombast, his mouth dry. He looked around in confusion. Where was he? Why hadn't he gone to the churchyard?

The setting sun reminded him. Through his window he could see the houses outside grow darker and he felt his terror return. A chance noise in the street set his heart to beating wildly. Shadows pooled in the corners of his room.

He could not stay here, he thought, rising and putting on fresh clothes. A glance in his looking-glass showed him that his eyes were shadowed and hollow-looking, his mouth drawn. He left the house quickly, seeking company.

He headed toward a tavern on Cheapside, a place frequented by some of the stationers. Alice would not be there; women generally did not enter the tavern alone. He hurried down the streets, looking forward to the glow of firelight and good company. But when he got there he saw that the tavern was almost deserted; fear of the plague had kept most people home. Only Edward Blount and a few other men sat at a table by the wall, talking in low voices.

He joined them, calling to the serving-woman for more beer for everyone. One or two of the men gave him an expression he had come to know well, gratitude and envy and a sort of stupefied puzzlement. He knew what they thought: Why did he thrive while they had to struggle? How had he come by his riches in the middle of a plague year?

As the serving-woman brought the drinks, though, he began to regret his generosity. He was still in debt, still struggling to find ways to pay his creditors. Though Hogg continued to give him gold it seemed as if he would never have enough; he could always think of new ways to spend his money.

“I don't think the plague's ending,” one of the men was saying, answering something Edward Blount had said. “I sold two books today. Let's close the churchyard completely—the longer we keep it open the more we risk infection.”

“Folks expect us to be there,” Edward said. “What else can they do during a plague season but read?”

“Aye, when even the whores are poxed,” one of the men said.

A few of the others laughed. George frowned. He did not like to hear women talked of so insolently.

“We should have revoked Mistress Wood's membership when we had the chance,” one of the men said, drinking deeply.

Edward looked at him in astonishment. “Do you hold Mistress Wood responsible for the plague?” he asked.

“I don't know,” the man said. “We can't know, can we? So it's best not to take any chances.”

“Why in God's name would she cause a plague?” Edward asked. “She stands to lose as much by it as anyone else.”

Aye, she did, George thought. Hungry and thick-headed from his fitful sleep, a little giddy from the beer, he wondered for the first time if Edward could be right after all. True, he had seen one of the fiends in her house, but they had come to his house as well; they answered to Paul Hogg and they seemed to plague Anthony. Could Hogg be wrong about them? Were they all the children of Cain, or were they something else, something outside Hogg's philosophy? He didn't know. He only knew that he didn't want to spend another night like the last one, that he wished he could be free of them.

A picture of Alice rose in his mind. For the first time in years he saw her without her demon, saw the clean, modestly dressed woman who had first attracted him.

“There's something strange about Mistress Wood, though,” the man said. “The queen thought so too, remember? She was called before the court and made to answer questions.”

“Aye, two years ago,” Edward said. “Whatever questions the queen had were taken care of long ago.”

“But what did they ask her? She never said, did she?”

“She never said because it was no one's business,” Edward said, angry now. “Because malicious gossips like yourself would be quick to make something evil of it.”

“Something about her son, wasn't it?” the other man went on, unperturbed. “Whatever happened to him? What kind of mother would misplace a son like that?”

“Oh, her son's back,” George said.

Everyone turned to look at him. What had he done? The words had left his mouth before he'd been aware of them. Had he wanted to clear Alice's name somehow?

All the men at the table began to talk at once. “Where?” “How do you—” “What—”

George thought quickly. He had allowed his doubts to get the better of him, had given in for a moment to sentimentality. He called for another round of beer to cover his confusion. “I—I saw him on the streets a few days ago.”

“Where?” Edward asked.

“Cheapside, I think.”

“Did you tell Mistress Wood?”

“Nay, I—I thought he was headed for the churchyard. I didn't want to interrupt their meeting.”

“I never saw him there. Are you certain you're telling us everything you know?”

George nodded. He had been foolish, very foolish. Hogg would be furious if he found out what George had done.

Edward looked unconvinced. The other men returned to their drinks, and to talk about the plague, but George could barely follow the conversation.

Why had he thought to question Hogg's knowledge, so much greater than his own? Why should he doubt now, just when they were about to discover the answers they sought? They were close, so close. In a few days they would exchange Arthur for the secrets of the Philosopher's Stone. Riches and eternal life—what could Alice, or anyone else, offer that would better that?

Alice opened her stall and set the books out in neat rows in front of her. Until she had married she had only known how to spell her own name. She had seen her brothers (farmers now, all but the youngest, who had died of smallpox) go off to the small village school, and she had never even thought to wonder what they did there, or what she was missing. Her mother needed help with the household, and she had to learn the arts that would get her a husband: sewing, cooking, cleaning.

When she married John, though, she had been amazed at how many books the man brought home. Her family had had the Geneva Bible and nothing else, and even that had disappeared during the reign of Queen Mary. They had thought books strange, almost foreign, like the tobacco brought from the New World. At first John read aloud to her each night, books of romance and voyages of discovery, plays in which he took each of the parts in turn. Then, over her reluctance, he began to teach her to read.

She had had no idea of the kinds of things to be found in books: recipes, and how to cure wounds, and histories, and old poems. All the knowledge of the world was there; she had only to turn back a cover and she would be transported to some other place and time. Now she found it almost amusing that the stationers had accused her of witchcraft: they themselves practiced a kind of magic no witch could ever equal.