The Marechal Chronicles: Volume V, The Tower of the Alchemist (5 page)

They did not.

“Looks like idiot's work if you ask me,” Harki said as he peeked from between Bellamere's knees.

The young man looked down sharply, past his oversized belly, and muttered, “Shut up.”

Looking back up, Bellamere saw Etienne staring back at him with one eyebrow slightly raised.

“This old hammer is the best of the lot right now and I'll never get anywhere with it like this,” he said then, and for that Bellamere was more than grateful.

“No, I suppose not” he replied while drawing his legs together and forcing the red pantsed little man back.

“But, I've got a few among others that just might do the trick if you're willing to help unload them.”

Etienne flashed one of his rare grins and threw down the worn hammer in his hands.

“Excellent.  Let's see what your father has come up with for me.”

It had been three months since Etienne had visited the smith's atelier, and as always, he came to place an order for an assortment of hammers, chisels, and wedges.

That time, though, had been unusual in that he had spent a very long time in discussion with Bellamere's father and without ever saying what exactly they were for, Etienne and the smith worked out a half dozen different kinds of hammer heads that would be suitable for “heavy masonry work”.

When the smith asked which of those he would like him to build, Etienne simply shrugged and replied that he would take them all, as well as all the rest of his usual order.

The smith did his best to remain stoic, but Bellamere knew that his friend had stunned his father.  Etienne was not done with his surprises, though, when he set a bulging sack of gleaming coin before the smith while saying that the Alchemist would pay in full right then. 

Etienne told the smith that he wanted his best work as always, no matter how much time it would take. What he did not say was that he paid beforehand so that the smith would not hurry to make the alchemist’s hammers in order to be paid more quickly.

Instead of one month, Bellamere's father had taken three.  As usual, the young man had done what he could to avoid his father and the sweaty work at the forge, but Bellamere had remarked all the same the billots of metal that were folded over and over again, with yet other kinds of alloys folded in with them. 

He had never seen his father work so hard.  Still, he had been thankful for it since when the smith finished for the day, he had no strength left to criticize his portly son.

Thanks to Etienne, Bellamere had enjoyed three months of blissful reading under shade trees, far from the clamor and red-hot sparks of his father's tools and temperament.

The two friends threaded their way through the litter of stones to Bellamere's wagon, although Etienne got there first.

His strides were longer than those of the smith's son and his enthusiasm for new tools was clear.

Bellamere caught up to him and found him looking over the smith's work with an admiring eye.

There were twenty-some hammers overall.  The smallest had made the trip on top of the rest.

As the smith's son had expected, Etienne reached for the biggest of the lot, not minding that it was weighed down under all the rest.

With a heave that sent the other tools clattering to the ground, he pulled his prize free then grunted as its weight bore it to the ground.

“Okay,” he said.

“This is starting out well,” he continued with a grin.

He shifted his one-handed grip then seized the hammer's haft with both hands and wrenched it up in the air like a hero out of legend with his mighty greatsword.

Then Etienne brought it sailing down to land with a heavy thud just between Bellamere's feet.  The smith’s son jumped backward, narrowly missing Harki as he did, then wiped the dirt sprayed up from the ground from his brow.

Etienne did the same, saying, “Sorry.”

Then the two of them laughed out loud.

“Father said it isn't pretty, but it ought to last twice as long as any other hammer he's ever made,” Bellamere said.

“He's made it of folded iron fused to some other metal.  I don't remember which except that he said it was like lead, only harder.  He said it's supposed to make it malleable while retaining some spring to it.  Something about not breaking or deforming as fast as the others.”

Etienne grinned.

“That just might do it, indeed.  And the other five are there?”

Bellamere nodded.

“Oh yes.  Of course.  Them and all the rest.”

Etienne's grin went just a bit wider.

“Do you know what I'm thinking?”

Bellamere shrugged and said, “I'd wager I could guess.”

“Don't bother,” his friend replied as he reached down to take that heavy hammer into his hands once more, then continued, “I'm of a mind to try it out. Right now.”

Bellamere stumbled after his friend, and the two of them went back the way they had come and without waiting for any kind of preamble, he watched as Etienne heaved the hammer in a high arc overhead to bring it down with all his might upon one of the stones that had defied his every effort until then.

There was a deep clang, then Bellamere saw that hammer rebound into the air as its haft slipped from Etienne's grasp.

The alchemist’s son jerked his head to one side as the hammer flew past him to land with a thud several paces behind them both.

They both turned their eyes slowly back to the oblong stone, expecting that something wondrous had been exposed with such a prodigious stroke of the hammer.

Instead, there was barely a mark upon it, only a half round scuff that had scraped away a little of the lichen growing upon the stone.

And from behind them both came a noise that sounded suspiciously like laughter.  Bellamere looked wildly all about himself, but Harki was nowhere in sight.

Etienne shook his head, then lifted his chin in the direction of gateway through which Bellamere and his wagon had come.

“No, Louf.  It came from over there.”

He looked where his friend indicated, but there was no one there and whatever or whoever it was had fallen silent.

“No one followed you here, did they?” the alchemist’s son asked.

Bellamere shook his head.

“No, of course not.  I came alone,” he replied then hissed, “Aie!”

Harki had chosen that very moment to reappear and had given his companion a sharp kick in the shin.

“Are you alright, Louf?” Etienne asked, frowning.

Bellamere shook himself and did not miss the chance to kick back at the little red man beside him.  Naturally, Harki neatly sidestepped Bellamere then disappeared again.

“Fine … yes, yes, I'm fine.  But I suppose I should say that I had a strange feeling on the road.  Once in a while, it was as if someone was watching me from the shadows along the way.  As if the trees themselves were looking back at me.”

He shifted his feet and avoided looking at his friend.  He knew that Etienne was well aware of what people said about him, and he did not want to see the familiar face of someone looking with pity back at a madman, nor did he want to see sympathy for his idiocy, either.

“I didn't think too much about it, really,” he mumbled, then said, “Or at least, I tried not to.  Mostly I thought it was because of all those stories I've been hearing about the Black Boar that had me thinking … well … you know … “

Bellamere's voice trailed off, then despite himself, he did look at his friend and what he saw surprised him.

Etienne's brow was drawn down and his lips had thinned.

That was when Bellamere realized that the unfamiliar expression he was seeing was that of his friend terribly angry … something he had not seen since the very day the two of them had met for the first time so long ago.

 Four village boys had surrounded him.  Bellamere had been sent to the baker for one of his enormous bread loaves that would last him and his father most of the week.

He had not said a word to anyone on his way there, unless it was the steady conversation he held with Harki who had been going on about all sorts of strange creatures in some faraway place.  His head had been down, as he was wont to do, when from nowhere Bellamere heard a dull sound just as stars burst in his vision.

He had staggered, then had lifted his hand to his head only to come away with it bloody, then the four boys were all around him calling him names.

“Bella le Fou! Bella the Mad!  Le Fou, le Fou!”

They had been drawing in closer, circling around him as they chanted their insults, and he had had no idea what to do.

For lack of any better ideas, Bellamere had simply sunk down to the ground and was about to cover his head against the blows he knew from experience that would inevitably follow.

Only they never did.

Instead, he had heard someone grunt, then the insults came to an abrupt halt.

Just after that, he had seen a fifth pair of booted feet appear among the four others and those soft leather boots ran up to the knees of a boy his same age, only that boy's jaw was set in hard lines and his grey eyes spoke volumes of his contempt for those who had thrown a stone at Bellamere.

His fists shot out and even as young as he had been, those blows were thrown from lean, corded arms that hit harder than any stone those four had ever thrown.

Soon enough two of them were down on the ground next to Bellamere and the other two had run off while the newcomer stood still, his legs wide apart and his mien daring anyone else to have a go.

No one did.

After a moment, the strange boy reached down and said, “Up you go, Louf.”

Bellamere did not hesitate to take that outstretched hand and his nickname along with it. 

Etienne had never in all the time they had known one another accused Bellamere of being mad.  The closest he had ever come was that very day when he spoke and had simply turned the other boys' phrase on its ear and
Le Fou
, the Crazy, had become
Louf
.

After that, two boys who had always felt on the outside of things found themselves, when together, on the inside of something at last.

But the anger Bellamere had seen that day had never come back until now, and Etienne was fairly burning with it.

“Black Boar?” he grumbled, then said, “Don't be an idiot, Bellamere.”

His tone was bitter and Bellamere was forced to admit that it might very well have been the first time he had ever heard Etienne call him by his proper name.

“Old folk's stories and legends … it's nothing but smoke and dreams.  Pale words worth far less than the brittle pages they're written on.”

Bellamere saw his friend's face turn into a bitter sneer and thought it made him look thirty years older.

“Magic and monsters don't exist … they never have.”

Then he stalked off and wrenched the hammer out of the hole its head had driven into the ground where it fell.

Bellamere was not sure if he should follow after him, then made up his mind when he remembered that they had both heard someone laughing and Etienne obviously meant to find out who it was.

The smith's son caught up to his friend at the entrance to the courtyard. 

Like the first breath of spring flowers after a long, hard winter, he caught the unmistakable scent of a woman's perfume in the air.

Then the two men stepped through the archway, craning their heads in every direction, but whoever had been spying on them had disappeared.

“Well, whoever it was is gone now, I guess,” Bellamere mumbled.

Etienne did not answer for a time, only lifting his nose as if he could scent which way the person had gone.

“Maybe.  But what's sure is she couldn't have gone very far just yet.”

Bellamere sighed as his friend leaned his hammer against a wall, then strode off looking for all the world as if he knew just what he meant to do.

Despite the fact that there was no one there to hear him … not even Harki … he said, “I think I'll go inside if no one minds.  I need to give a book back to Maitre St. Lucq.”

He did not continue on to say the rest of what he thought and that was he hoped he might borrow another one straight away.

The door did not squeal as Bellamere entered the tower.  Its hinges were well oiled and as he ducked his head to pass under the archway of its opening, he could clearly see that all within had been recently swept clean.

Bellamere knew that Etienne was tireless in his efforts upon the behalf of his father, the Alchemist.

Tireless on so many fronts but for one, and that was the unending research that the Maitre carried out high above upon one of the topmost floors of the tower.

Here, though, the surroundings were relatively bare, a great round space broken only by the stone staircase built directly into the tower's exterior wall that wound its way far overhead, floor by floor.

Otherwise, the most remarkable thing about the entryway to the tower was the series of enormous pipes that rose up from the floor and continued on to pass through the ceiling above him.

And while he had never gone down to see for himself, he had been told by the Alchemist that they were joined to a number of furnaces and boilers in the extensive cellars beneath the tower, these in turn connected to chimney pipes that ran alongside the others.

Unfortunately, Bellamere could see that the Alchemist was not at the ground floor, so he began the arduous, winding climb upward.

As he went, he imagined the pipes followed him upward through the center of the tower, some of them a dull black metal while others gleamed bright orange and still others were not metal at all but a type of baked earthenware that the Maitre had once remarked as being rather miraculous in that most of them had survived the voyage back over the seas and then, and even more unlikely, the trip overland to the tower itself.

As it was, Bellamere remained somewhat foggy over the point of those pipes.  The Alchemist had gone on at length about techniques of refining and used strange words like
refraction
and
distillation
, but what Bellamere did remember was because he saw evidence of it every so often at various floors.