The Elixir of Death (21 page)

'You're back, are you?' he exclaimed. 'Where the devil have you been for the past few days?

The Scotsman peered around the tall Frenchman's elbow and saw three men squatting cross-legged on the dried bracken in front of the fire-pit. Two were tall, wiry looking men of Moorish appearance with lean, dark faces and hooked noses over drooping black moustaches. They wore long shapeless habits of a thin white cloth unfamiliar to Alexander, belted with cords from which dangled the sheaths of vicious broad daggers. Around their heads were wound lengths of striped cloth, the loose ends hanging down their backs.

The other man was older, probably well over fifty, but powerfully built, with a thick neck and large hands. His features were also those of a Saracen, with leathery tanned skin, deep-set eyes and a rim of black beard around his chin. He wore a more elaborate green turban, but his dress was similar to the others', except that around his neck hung a gold crescent moon on a heavy gold chain. The three men stared up at the newcomers impassively, but made no reply.

Raymond walked over to them and beckoned the alchemist to follow him.

'This is Alexander, with whom you will work,' he said to the seated men in carefully precise French. 'I trust now that you have returned to the duties for which you are being so handsomely paid, you will start your work without more delay!'

He turned to the Scotsman and laid a hand on his shoulder. 'This man with the green headdress is Nizam alDin, a learned alchemist from the East, I'm not sure from where. He is the man that Prince John told you of when you were in Gloucester, being sent by the King of France. I hope you will work harmoniously together, for he speaks passable French.'

Nizam gave a perfunctory nod of greeting to his fellow wizard and curtly introduced the other two men.

'These are my servants, Abdul Latif and Malik Shah. They speak almost nothing of your language.' His own French was heavily accented and grammatically incorrect, but his meaning could be understood.

Alexander muttered some words of greeting, resolving never to trust these men and to be wary of ever turning his back on them. His main concern was to discover whether they had any new knowledge about the transmutation of metals, which had been his life's labour, along with the search for the related Elixir of Life.

Before he could take matters any further, the two peasants who acted as guards and labourers came in, followed by Jan the Fleming. Their names were Alfred and Ulf, two hulking Saxons of slow movement and even slower wits. Alfred had two large loaves of coarse bread under his arm and a pair of dead fowls swung from his other hand. His partner carried a small sack of grain and a gallon earthenware jar of cider.

'We stole these from a forester's dwelling,' muttered Ulf in English, his voice garbled to Alexander's ears by his thick local dialect.

'I hope that was far from here, as I ordered!' snapped de Blois. 'We don't want to be traced back to this place, especially if you robbed a forest officer.'

Alfred leered, showing two blackened teeth, the only ones in his mouth.

'Miles away, sir. We tramped near all the way to Modbury and back.'

'And right hungry we are from it,' whined Ulf, looking down at the fire-pit. Here a pair of hares had been roasted on spits, much of the meat having already gone down the Mussulmen's throats, accompanied by a mash of boiled wheat and vegetables which they ate with their fingers from small copper bowls set on the ground alongside each man.

Though he understood not a word of Ulf's speech, the meaning of the hungry glances was clear, and Nizam waved a hand at the remains. 'We shot these this morning on the way back. You are welcome to share it.' He did not elaborate on where they had been coming back from, and Raymond thought it pointless to pursue the matter. His main fear was that they would reveal themselves to the locals and ruin the efforts of Richard de Revelle and Prince John's officials in securing this remote place for their activities.

'These are awkward people to deal with,' he muttered to Alexander in his poor English. 'But we have no choice but to be civil to them if we want their assistance.'

A bench and stools were pulled up to the small trestle table and the knight and the alchemist sat to eat slabs of bread on which slices of hare were laid, cut by Jan, who took on the role of steward. Cheese was produced from an oaken chest, in which their victuals were stored away from rats, and ale was drawn from a small cask. Jan and the two Devon men sat on the other side of the hearth, and for a time everyone was occupied with their stomachs, the Mussulmen drinking only water from a nearby spring.

'Two chickens will not go very far between eight souls,' pointed out Alexander, between mouthfuls. 'How are we all going to eat while we stay here?'

Nizam's face cracked into a smile, which made him look more villainous than before. 'There is a dead sheep and a goat behind the hut,' he announced. 'Malik Shah is an expert with the bow.'

Again de Blois fervently hoped that this poaching had taken place at a considerable distance from Bigbury, as missing livestock would set any village buzzing like angry wasps. After they had eaten, Raymond beckoned Nizam and Alexander out into the approaching dusk and they walked over to the crypt of the old priory.

'It is time for you two to get together and discuss your work,' he said sternly, as they reached the bottom of the narrow stairway. 'The Count of Mortain and my king are very anxious for results. You came here because this county has abundant supplies of tin and some silver, so if you are successful in your endeavours, there will be no lack of the raw material.'

The few rush-lights that were lit hardly dispelled the gloom in the large underground chamber, and Nizam lit a taper from one and went around to generate a flame in each of the others.

'How long do you think this process will take?' de Blois asked the small Scot, who shrugged expressively.

'It has already been a thousand years since others began trying, so do not expect quick results. I feel that I am very near it myself, but I have to find out what this fellow knows - if anything!'

The Frenchman sighed, fearing himself marooned in this uncouth country for a long time. 'For God's sake do your best, man! These are difficult people to deal with and I would not trust any of them. If you have problems, let me know at once.'

He left the two wise men together, fervently hoping that their common interest in science would overcome the cultural gulf that existed between them. As soon as he had gone, Alexander bowed to Nizam and waved a hand at the apparatus already set up alongside the hearth.

'In the morning, I will unpack my equipment and arrange it alongside yours,' he said. 'Meanwhile, perhaps you will do me the honour of explaining your devices and how you intend to proceed.'

The impassive face of the Saracen again broke into a slight smile, and he led Alexander across to the bench and began explaining in a mixture of execrable French mixed with some Latin the function of his various flasks, retorts, crucibles and vessels set up there. Much of this was obvious and common knowledge to all alchemists, so that even with the language difficulty, Alexander could follow Nizam fairly easily. What was not obvious was the basic theory upon which the Mohammedan built his claim to successful transmutation of a baser metal into gold. But this was not surprising at a first meeting, as it was second nature for every practitioner of the art to jealously guard his secrets. However, the Scotsman was highly impressed when, after rather theatrical glances over both shoulders, Nizam fumbled into a hidden pocket inside his robe and pulled out a folded piece of soft leather. He unwrapped it carefully and held out something on the palm of his hand. It was an irregular lump of a blackish substance, about the size of a hazelnut. The Saracen prodded it with a forefinger and rolled it over. Embedded in the dark stone was a ragged area shining like silver - and at one edge of this was a tiny nodule that had the yellow gleam of gold.

CHAPTER SEVEN

In which Crowner John treads on dangerous ground

The coroner arrived back in Exeter with Gwyn and the two men-at-arms on Sunday afternoon. The long ride was without incident, though the weather had worsened and a light powdering of snow had settled on the tracks by the time they reached their night stop at Totnes Castle. On the second day, it had turned to rain and they were wet, cold and miserable by the time they entered the West Gate and walked their tired horses up the slope of Fore Street and into the centre of the city. At the castle, the soldiers vanished to their huts in the outer ward, seeking warmth, food and a welcome from their families, while John and his officer went into the keep to seek the first two commodities, though there was not much of a welcome. The sheriff was away visiting his manor outside the city, and there were only a few servants and clerks in the large, bare chamber.

They settled around a table near the fire-pit and were served with leftovers from dinner - boiled salt fish, a bowl of chicken legs, rye bread and some sliced boiled beef. There was plenty of the latter, as though most cattle were kept as draught oxen, some of the few dairy cows and young steers were butchered at this time of year, as there was insufficient fodder to feed them all through the winter. In fact, in the Welsh language that John learned from his mother, the word for November meant 'slaughter'. The two men ate in silence, but when they had had their fill, they pulled their stools nearer the burning logs to sit companionably with a quart of ale in their hands.

'So are we any the wiser after four days in the saddle?' grunted Gwyn. He looked across at de Wolfe, watching him in profile as he hunched over his pot, staring into the fire. The coroner's beak of a nose projected like a hook in front of cheeks darkened by almost a week's growth of stubble.

'None the wiser - but better informed!' growled John. 'There seems no reason at all to connect old de Revelle with the death of Peter le Calve.'

'What about this Second Crusade business?'

'What about it? God's teeth, how can that be connected with a death in Devonshire almost half a century later?' He spat into the fire and watched the spittle sizzle away on an ember.

The Cornishman drained his ale, leaving a wet rim on his luxuriant moustache. 'So what do we do now? There'll be rumblings in Winchester when they hear that one of our manor-lords has been crucified and beheaded. The next lot of Royal Justices to arrive in Exeter will give the sheriff a hard time if by then no one is chained in the gaol below.'

'As the King's Coroner, I'll not be too popular either,' agreed John morosely. 'But what can we do? Nothing, unless some new atrocity is committed.'

There seemed no answer to this, and their talk drifted on to other matters.

'What about the
Mary and Child Jesus
?' asked Gwyn. 'Are you sending a shipwright down there to size up the damage?'

'I'll talk to Hugh de Relaga tomorrow,' replied John. 'Though there's plenty of time now that winter's almost here, we still need to get an idea of the expense of refitting the vessel.'

He drained the last of his ale and stood up. 'And maybe they will want to get her around to a proper port. That creek on the Avon is not the best place to carry out repairs.'

Gwyn went off to settle his big mare in the castle stables, as there was nowhere near his modest home in St Sidwell to keep the beast. John slowly walked Odin in the gathering dusk down to High Street and a well-earned rest with Andrew the farrier. Then he gratefully entered his own house and sat with Mary for a while in her kitchen shed, telling her of the journey to Revelstoke, which was farther away than the cook-maid had ever been in her life. Though he had already eaten in Rougemont, Mary pressed him to one of her mutton pastries and a cup of cider while she listened to his tale.

'So when is the mistress likely to come back? And that nosy bitch Lucille?' she asked. Like John, she was savouring the house without the mistress. It was as if a dark cloud had been lifted from Martin's Lane while she was away.

'I don't know, but I doubt it will be more than a few days,' he said glumly. 'Since he lost the shrievalty, her hero-worship for her brother has vanished. Sooner rather than later, she will say something to offend him - and Matilda can't stand his wife, the icy Lady Eleanor, who thinks that she's only slightly less exalted than the Queen herself.'

The mention of King Richard's wife diverted their talk to Berengaria, a topic of endless speculation among both the aristocracy and peasantry of England. A Spanish princess, she had never set foot in the country of which she was queen and could not speak a word of its language. Mary was all the more intrigued by the matter, as John had actually been present at the marriage in Cyprus, on his way to the Crusade, and many a time she had made him describe the day, the story getting better with every telling.

As he was overdue for his weekly wash, shave and change of tunic, Mary heated water over her fire and he stripped to the waist in the doorway of her hut. With the water in a leather bucket, he laved himself with soap made from goose grease and wood ash, then scratched at his black stubble with a specially sharpened knife.

The handsome dark-haired Saxon woman looked longingly at his muscular body, but firmly decided against any weakening of her resolve not to share his bed again, even if her mistress and her prying maid were almost forty miles away. She had a comfortable job in the household and she was not going to jeopardise it again, even if the thought of John's enthusiastic embrace was very tempting. From the looks that he threw at her in return, she suspected that similar thoughts were going through his mind. His resistance came from a different source - a guilty conscience regarding Nesta in Idle Lane. An hour later, he was down at the Bush, resisting not more feminine advances but the offer of yet more food, as the landlady was trying to get him to eat another meal.