Death of an Alchemist

by Mary Lawrence

She thought how she might give him the brew when suddenly John’s eyes shot open. He opened his mouth for a sudden gasp of air. Bianca set down the tea and jammed a pillow behind his back to help him sit. He gripped her arm, his eyes wide with panic.

  “John,” she said, bending over him. “Take small breaths.” But she had no idea what he should do. She could only encourage him to keep trying for breath.

  John gulped. His eyes rolled. Surrounded by air that could save him, he struggled, unable to take what he needed. Bianca regretted his not drinking the tea infusion earlier. It might not have prevented the dyspnea, but she worried that if his lungs filled with mucus, he would suffocate. He held his sides and tipped his chin up and down as if nodding, but it was only an effort to fill his lungs with life-giving air.

  Forcing him to take the tea now could result in his drowning from it. Helpless, she stood by his side, unable to think what to do or how to comfort him.

  His struggle to breathe went on for hours. She thought he would have fainted, but finally his panic and short breaths slowed. Bianca lit a wall sconce and tallow and paced the length of the room. His breaths grew longer, but with them came a disconcerting rattle. His lungs were filling with mucus.

  The moment she felt he might be able, Bianca encouraged him to down the tea infusion. “John, drink this.” She held the cup to his lips. His eyes found hers and she gently tipped the drink into his mouth. He settled back against his pillows.

  Bianca returned to pacing, thinking what to do. She gazed up at the herbs, racking her memory for possible healing combinations. But with the sound of each labored breath, the rattle of congestion further unnerved her.

  Bianca could think of nothing else to do. No poultice, no syrup, eased his pain or struggling. If his humours were unbalanced, she knew not how to balance them. The only possible way to restore his health would be to bleed him. With no alternative, she caved to protocol. She sought her neighbor across the way to summon Barnabas Hughes, the physician.

  As she waited for Hughes’s arrival, Bianca returned to the alchemy journal. Mostly she wanted to occupy her mind and distract herself. Perhaps the book might contain enough information to make a healing tincture without going through the entire process of creating the elixir of life.

  Eventually she found the beginning of Stannum’s last experiment. He did not make a notation of when he began the process. Dates were conspicuously missing in his journal, making it difficult to gauge the length of any one stage in the process. She was familiar enough with alchemical methods to deduce the time required for some of the stages; however, the journal kept its secrets. Stannum had never worried that anyone else might confiscate his work, probably because only a handful of experienced alchemists could correctly interpret it.

  Bianca had no idea how long she had been studying the journal when Barnabas Hughes arrived. She heard a gentle rapping and inquiry and looked up from her reading. “Sir,” she said, standing and crossing the room to greet him. “I fear my husband may have the sweat.” She led him to their bed. John was oblivious to their presence.

  “I have given him mulberry root bark tea and silverweed to help him breathe.”

  Barnabas Hughes set his satchel on the edge of the bed. “I will need a bowl.” Withdrawing a bottle from his satchel, Hughes removed the rag stuffed in its opening.

  Bianca went to the table and rummaged about for a bowl with dried ingredients that she could dump. In her concern for John she had forgotten about the rat she had given Hughes’s tincture to. She lifted its cage and peered in. The rat lay unresponsive. True, he had said it was a sleeping philter, but even after a vigorous shake, the rat slid about, lifeless. Bianca set the cage under the table. She looked over at Barnabas Hughes, her stomach churning. Her hand shook as she poured the contents of the bowl into a jar, spilling most of it on the table.

  Hughes didn’t notice her difficulty holding the bowl still as he tipped the bottle’s contents into it. Out slithered several leeches. Their flat bodies undulated gracefully as they swam in clear liquid. Unfolding a worn leather wallet, Hughes removed a polished lancet. He touched a thumb to the blade, producing a small drop of blood. Approving of its sharpness, Barnabas Hughes ran a finger along John’s neck.

  “Must you bleed him there?” asked Bianca, alarmed.

  “Your husband is delirious from an accumulation of blood in his skull. This is the quickest and most effective way to release that pressure. I must ask that you turn his head and hold it still.”

  Bianca set the bowl next to Hughes and moved to the front of the bed. In spite of John’s protest, she placed her hands on either side of his face and turned his head toward the wall. He had been unaware of the doctor’s presence until that moment. “What?” he exclaimed, catching a glimpse of the lancet near his face. His eyes wild, he began to struggle.

  “You must hold him still,” said Hughes. He located the vein he would puncture and pressed his finger firmly against John’s throat.

  Bianca bent close and murmured in John’s ear. Her reassurance worked, for the tension in John’s body drained and he lay still, though likely he may have exhausted himself.

  Her eyes welled as Barnabas Hughes pressed the lancet into John’s flesh, causing John to flinch. A crimson ribbon of blood trickled down his neck. Hughes reached into the bowl and picked out a leech. He held it between his thumb and first finger. Carefully, the physician touched its mouth to John’s wound.

  “Couldn’t you collect the fluid in a bowl? Why must you attach those?”

  Hughes answered in a reassuring tone. “They prevent the blood from clotting.”

  Bianca could barely watch as it gloried to the taste of her husband’s blood. Once it had secured its mouth against John’s skin, its body began to constrict and pulse as it fed. Hughes attached a second leech to John’s neck.

  John kept his eyes tightly closed, placing his full faith in Bianca. She touched her lips to his ear, whispering words of comfort. Struggling to calm her growing unease, she laid her cheek against his and shut her eyes until the leeches were removed.

  “I’ve done all I can,” said Barnabas Hughes as he dressed John’s wound with a plaster of herbs. “He is in God’s hands now.” He wiped the lancet on the bedsheet.

  Bianca stared at the leeches floating in the bowl, lethargic from their meal.

  “You may throw them in the stream,” said Hughes, noticing her reticence. “There is no short supply. I have no more use for them.” He packed his leather satchel, closed his bag. “If that is all, I shall bid you well.” He rose, laying his hand across John’s forehead for a moment. He took up his limp wrist to feel John’s pulse. Hughes looked over at Bianca. He read the fear on her face, so like his own. So like that of anyone about to lose a loved one. Hughes felt the urge to assure her, to comfort her. Youth was so blissfully ignorant of life’s painful misfortunes.

  “Time moves slowly for those waiting to see what it has in mind,” he said. He wasn’t sure what he saw in her reaction. Was it gratitude? Or the naïve refusal to accept her husband’s inevitable death? Bianca Goddard was especially difficult to comprehend. He started for the door. Halfway there, he paused at the table where the alchemy journal lay open. “You now dabble in the noble art?”

  Still spent from what had just taken place, Bianca shook her head, distracted. She was holding the bowl of leeches and staring at them. “Should I not kill them first?” she asked, glancing up.

  Barnabas Hughes studied her before answering. “If it should please you. Then certainly.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Dusk settled over London, painting the sky vermilion. Though night had not yet fallen, Bianca couldn’t shake an unsettled feeling as she hurried down the bridge’s center. The lane was always dimly lit from the stately merchants’ homes and shops lining the span. Every merchant or haberdasher worth a groat wanted his address to be Tower Bridge. And while some natural light seeped through the gaps between buildings, it was not enough to put her mind at ease. Bianca wis
hed she had either left earlier or perhaps waited until the shopkeepers and residents had lit their lanterns.

  After hours of trying to make sense of Stannum’s final process, Bianca determined she needed the wisdom of the one person she knew who might be able to decipher some of Stannum’s elusive Decknamens.

  Her father.

  She did not relish having to convince him to help her, but she knew it was futile to try to re-create Stannum’s process without his advice.

  So while John rested from his bloodletting, Bianca wrapped the alchemy journal in its linen cloth and dropped it in a satchel she slung over her shoulder. She considered asking her neighbor to check in on him, then worried he would be exposed to the contagion. Deciding she would not be gone long, she kissed John’s forehead before leaving him in the care of the black tiger, which had groomed itself and was turning circles next to John’s legs, finding a suitable spot to nap.

  It had been months since Bianca had last seen her parents.

  Albern Goddard worked in an abandoned warehouse near the Thames. She expected her father to have heard of the accomplished Ferris Stannum. Stannum had to have been one of the oldest practitioners in London. Alchemists, while feigning disinterest, were quite aware (sometimes painfully so), of other alchemists’ achievements and purported wealth. But whether rumors of Stannum’s elixir of life and his sudden death had reached her father, she did not know.

  Bianca kept a hand on the shoulder strap of the satchel and met the eye of every pedestrian and loiterer she passed. Only a few gave her pause, but the feeling she was being followed never waned. As she neared the drawbridge, she found it difficult to shake an eerie sensation. It was not usual for her to feel apprehensive walking across the exposed span. She tentatively stepped onto its iron grate. Shaking off her fears, she dashed across.

  On the other side, Bianca kept a lively pace until she emerged onto Thames Street and into the bustle of London. Even in the fading twilight she could see better than she had on the bridge. Relieved to be out in the open, she followed the road paralleling the river until it intersected with Lambeth Hill.

  Her parents’ rent was one of several lining the slightly inclined neighborhood, known for its tawdry cluster of residences. She turned onto the lane and noticed the small changes only those once intimately familiar with the neighborhood would see. Mrs. Templeton’s front door had rotted through near the bottom, and a shutter that once hung squarely over the family Dodd’s window now drooped, held by a single hinge. Bianca had forgotten how the fusty smell of moldering thatch roofs permeated the air. A twinge of apprehension settled in her stomach as she wondered what kind of reception she would receive. Hopefully her mother would be home, as she balanced her father’s cynical disposition. Besides, Bianca missed spending time with her.

  The timbers between the sorrel daub had darkened from mildew, almost black in some areas. A spreading mat of moss grew at the bottom of her parents’ door from the perpetual shade and damp. The window shutter was open and Bianca stood back a distance to peer inside.

  All was as she remembered, unadorned walls and an interior simply furnished. Her mother worked at a table tying bunches of herbs, tossing them into a pile to be hung overhead later. Bianca scanned the room for her father but did not see him. Perhaps he was in his room of alchemy. She decided to visit anyway.

  She knocked, calling for her mother as she cracked the door open.

  “Bianca, my child,” said her mother, looking up from her collection of herbs. “Help me gather this mint.” She pushed a mound of cuttings toward Bianca.

  It would have been unusual for her mother to have acted surprised or even pleased to see Bianca. It simply was not her way. Instead, she treated Bianca as if she had merely stepped out for a moment. Their relationship continued where it had left off. The passage of time had not changed her mother, nor did her mother seem to think the passage of time had changed her daughter.

  “How do you fare?” Bianca asked, ducking under a structural beam. She set her satchel on the table. Inquiring out of consideration was not a lesson she had learned from her mother. She snipped off a length of string.

  “What do you mean, how do I fare?” Her mother looked up from tying off a thick bunch of rue. She pushed her wavy hair off her face with her upper arm. “I fare as I always do. I manage. I make my salves. I take care of my people.”

  By “people” she meant a group of neighbors who regularly sought her remedies and medical advice. Her mother’s old-world mentality served her well. She could spout all kinds of nonsense and her patients believed every word. As a child, Bianca had been fascinated by her mother’s outlandish cures, but more so with her clients’ reactions. She recalled her mother had treated a plantar wart by cutting a dead mouse in half and binding its torso to the bottom of the man’s foot. Once the mouse was in place the man’s entire demeanor changed. He happily paid her mother and hobbled out the door. Bianca had never forgotten how pleased he had been to have a dead mouse tied to his foot.

  It was that sort of appreciation that inspired Bianca to make her own remedies. But to her credit Bianca was able to discern between the strange and what could be thought of as reasonable.

  Bianca ignored her mother’s defensive response. She collected some peppermint and wound it with twine. “Some time has passed since I have seen you. How are you managing in the heat?”

  “As long as I have the rain barrel to stand in when I get wilted, I can cope. The heat cannot last forever.” Her mother tossed the bound bunch on a pile. “I only see you when you’ve got some news of importance or need help.” She tipped her head back and looked down her nose at Bianca. “You with child?”

  “Nay, do I look to be?”

  Her mother tilted her head to one side. “I don’t suppose you do. You’re too thin.” She gathered another handful of herbs and arranged them with their stems in one direction. “Last time you visited, you told us you married that John.”

  “Mother, ‘that John’ is now my husband. You may call him simply John.”

  “Well then. How is simply John? It doesn’t look as though he feeds you.”

  “John is ill. I believe he has the sweat.”

  Her mother laid down the sprigs and put her fists on her hips. “Then what are you doing here? You should be with him.”

  “He is sleeping. There is nothing I can do for him at the moment.” Bianca glanced around, avoiding her mother’s disapproving stare. “I am looking for Father. Is he here?”

  “You’re looking for your father?” her mother repeated, surprised. She searched Bianca’s eyes, puzzling over her daughter’s unspoken intentions. Still watching Bianca, she gathered another bunch of herbs and motioned to the alley. “He is standing out back in the rain barrel.”

  Bianca had not spoken to her father since she announced her marriage to John. She had thought he would show at least a little joy having one less body to provide for, but she had been wrong. Her father met the news with typical disinterest.

  His apathy no longer fomented her resentment. It was simply what she expected. Dismay served no purpose. However, she did believe she was entitled, on occasion, to seek his help, since she had once given him hers.

  Bianca knew she would be received coldly, but she also knew her father would be unable to resist looking at another alchemist’s journal. Especially Ferris Stannum’s.

  She walked through the rent, past where her pallet had once been—the space was now taken up by a cupboard. The door to the back alley was open. Her father did not immediately see her, which gave Bianca a moment to brace herself for his cool indifference.

  He looked like a stork wading in a pool. His long, thin legs were bare and he stood in the barrel, which came up to his thighs. He wore a linen shirt that reached his knees and a straw basket on his head to protect his thinning pate from the sun. Even half-dressed and wearing unconventional headgear he looked forbiddingly unapproachable. He must have sensed his being watched, for he turned his head regally to look
on her.

  “Father.” Bianca tucked her chin in respect.

  His gray eyes ran down her person and up again. He returned his gaze back to his previous view, which seemed to be a fissure in the building opposite.

  “Father, I’ve come to ask your assistance.” She detected a subtle lift of an eyebrow as the basket slightly wobbled. Appealing to his sense of humanity, his sympathy, would be useless, so Bianca did not mention John’s illness or her desire to cure him. Instead, she solicited her father’s help by interesting him in the journal.

  And interested he was. He removed the straw basket and placed it on the ground beside the barrel. Lifting one leg to his chest and then the other, he stepped out of the cistern, reinforcing Bianca’s comparison to a stork. She followed him inside.

  “Where is this book?” he asked, glowering at the table piled in herbs.

  Bianca’s mother returned his glare and maneuvered a stool under a beam to hang the sprigs of herbs. She snapped up an armful of sprays and endeavored to teeter upon the stool.

  Bianca removed the swaddled tome from her satchel and laid it before her father. He stared at the journal for an extended moment before speaking. “Do you plan to remove the cloth, or do you expect me to first comment on the wrapping?”

  Bianca bit her tongue and pulled the covering off the book. Her patience nearly drained, she opened the journal to Ferris Stannum’s final experiment—his recipe for the elixir of life. “I was able to decipher most of his symbols and Decknamens, but I am confounded by this final process.”

  Albern Goddard scoured the elaborate illustrations, the brilliant colors, the inspired and fanciful drawings depicting his beloved science. Not only was the text filled with ingenious combinations of base metals with minerals, but the presentation of Stannum’s methods, his detailed yet subtle drawings, was a work of art. Albern dropped onto the bench and moved the book closer to better study it.

  “Find my spectacles and bring me that light.” Albern waved his hand in the direction of an unlit candle.