Death of an Alchemist

by Mary Lawrence

  “Constable, let Hughes continue.” Bianca abhorred Patch’s attempts to antagonize the physician. It was a tendency familiar to Bianca and one that delighted the constable.

  Patch glared at Bianca. He sought to put an end to her self-appointed charge in the matter. “I would appreciate it if you kept your commentary to a minimum, my lady.” He turned a smug face to Barnabas Hughes. “Continue, sir.”

  “My intention was to secure Ferris Stannum’s alchemy journal. When I returned I could not find it.”

  Patch glanced at Bianca and broke in before she had the chance to open her mouth. “You did not ask Goodwife Tenbrook why she had it?”

  Hughes shook his head.

  “So she was already dead by the time you got there,” said Bianca.

  Constable Patch shot an angry look at her. He had wanted to say that.

  Barnabas Hughes said nothing.

  “Sir, your silence is suspect.” Patch waited for Hughes to speak. After a moment, Patch sighed. “So’s, you went to her room and could not find the book.”

  “It was gone. The journal simply disappeared.”

  “Why did you not wait for her to fall asleep, then take it?” asked Bianca.

  “Do you not remember? I could hardly take it while you were there,” he said bitingly. “Besides, I needed to return to Verity. I had left her alone.”

  “When did you next learn of the journal’s whereabouts?” Patch asked.

  Hughes looked at Bianca. “When she summoned me to bleed her husband.”

  Two days ago, Bianca had sat at her table studying the book when Hughes arrived. In her exhaustion she had not bothered to conceal the journal or even consider that the physician could have wanted it. “So it was you who followed me to St. Benet’s,” she said.

  Hughes nodded.

  Bianca’s belief that Tait had wanted the journal was ill founded. But why did she associate the smell of roses with the night she was attacked? She had remembered a rosebud tucked in a buttonhole on Tait’s doublet and mistakenly directed her suspicions on the usurer. “You were not successful in taking the journal,” she said. “Someone stopped you.”

  “Thomas Plumbum intervened on your behalf,” said Hughes. “The idiot.”

  “But he did not take the journal,” said Bianca. “He left it in the satchel.”

  “He did not want it. He had his chance to take it. Why else would he have left it? He wanted you to have it.”

  “He must have been the one who threw it into my rent. How else would he have known I had it?”

  Hughes looked up. “Is that how you came into possession of the book?”

  “I found it one morning on the floor of my rent.”

  Hughes sniffed. “It is becoming clear to me.”

  Fisk, having remained unusually attentive and respectfully quiet, spoke. “Goodwife Tenbrook had me deliver a note to Thomas Plumbum, the alchemist.”

  “Plumbum acquired the journal from Tenbrook,” said Bianca.

  “For a price, I am certain,” said Hughes. “Goodwife Tenbrook was a shrewd woman.”

  “But why would Plumbum give it to me?”

  “Plumbum was more accomplished in lying than alchemy. He was probably unable to decipher Stannum’s method. I imagine he sensed you had more ability. Or assumed you had greater knowledge of the process since Ferris Stannum had taken you into his confidence. But make no mistake, if Plumbum had not met an unhappy end, he would have found a way to profit from your success.”

  “But why throw it through my window and hope for such an outcome? Why not approach me directly?”

  Constable Patch believed Bianca was vying for control of the inquest again. “Perhaps he was unable to,” he said, looking pointedly at Hughes.

  “I never knew Plumbum had the journal,” said the physician.

  “If Plumbum feared being followed, he may have supposed it was because he had the journal,” said Bianca. She remembered her own skittish feelings and concern that the journal may have been cursed. “But we know Plumbum was being followed for reasons unrelated to the alchemy journal.

  “You followed me and Meddybemps to the tavern last night.”

  “You gave him the satchel,” said Hughes.

  CHAPTER 33

  It was altogether appropriate that he dwelled beneath a bridge spanning two cities, disparate worlds apart. Like the bridge, he, too, was caught in between.

  He was wrought from those who had succumbed to plague. He was vulnerable to their tortured souls, and they poured into the vessel of his being, for he was neither living nor dead. The Rat Man was caught in a limbus of his own making.

  A failed alchemist, a broken man, his quest for immortality had gotten him what he wished for—eternal existence. But this endless purgatory was not what he preferred.

  His chance for salvation had twice passed over the trestles above him. He knew the smell of alchemy. The acrid stench of chemical on paper. And he knew the journal had passed hands. He eagerly wished, indeed willed, a chance to obtain the journal. Possession of the journal, possession of its knowledge, was all that he needed.

  But the physical world and his did not perfectly mesh. In the small hours of night he poled the shallows near Romeland, which was lined with warehouses and an abundance of rats. He hunted the creatures, fare for his unearthly appetite, and tossed them in a pile to be savored later. That night, the prey had been plentiful and his skiff rode low in the water from his industry. In his focused pursuit he missed the tang of alchemy wafting from the bridge. Only when he stopped hunting did he notice its smell.

  He turned his nose in its direction and flicked his tongue.

  Abandoning his rodent hunt, he pointed his boat toward the bridge. He rode the river’s swells and valleys, his black cape billowing in the wind.

  The wraith saw a struggle. He willed his skiff faster and a man appeared against the railing, leaning dangerously out over it. An arm dangled over the water. A satchel fell. The bag tumbled through the air, caught by the wind. For a hopeful moment he wished it to stay suspended. He would be there to catch it. But he had no power over nature’s pull. The rucksack fell into the water. The satchel descended to the river’s depths.

  Yet he still smelled alchemy.

  Wind blew through the Rat Man, being of no consequence to his skeletal frame, but his wherry slowed from its force. The gale succeeded in keeping him just far enough away. When Bianca Goddard stood at the railing, the Rat Man could do nothing but watch. She hurled the journal with its secret for the elixir of life out over the water. The book spun and its covers opened. A silent scream rose from the depths of his being. Helplessly, the wraith watched the journal land on the surface of the Thames, then sink under its waters.

  When he had reached the bridge with its twenty starlings, Bianca had gone. He searched the supports, hoping by chance that the book had landed on a wooden structure instead of the water. But his search was futile.

  In his disappointment, he waited beneath the span for the tides to change twice before he ventured out from the darkest cavern, in the blackest hour of the night. The air had changed and with it came the small hint of chemistry. His nose twitched. His skiff darted out from an archway and disappeared under the drawbridge.

  No one approached. No one passed overhead.

  The Rat Man sniffed the air.

  He listened.

  The souls that dwelled within, the restless souls who sought their refuge while hounding his outcast state, rejoiced.

  His work was not yet done.

  There, against a wooden structure that had supported the bridge for three hundred years, lay a book. Half-submerged, its leather covers were spread like a cormorant drying its wings. The wraith moved close. He extended his pole, fishing the book into his boat. Some of the pages were sodden with water, but all was not ruined. He placed it upon his mound of dead rats.

  Ferris Stannum’s journal of alchemy.

  CHAPTER 34

  The sharp sliver of light through the win
dow had softened with the day’s end. Their questioning of Barnabas Hughes came to an end. Bianca, now satisfied she understood what had happened to her mentor, Ferris Stannum, thought of home and John.

  She and Fisk left Barnabas Hughes with Constable Patch. No doubt the constable would smugly commend himself for solving yet another murder. Patch would have the justice of the peace draw up the necessary indictment and writ of arrest. Barnabas Hughes would face his end at the gallows at Tyburn.

  Bianca and Fisk walked together as far as the Little Conduit on Cheapside.

  “Ye be going to see about his daughter?” he asked.

  “I promised I would,” said Bianca, digging around in her pocket. She withdrew a groat. “This is for your trouble.”

  Fisk brightened, snatching the coin and tucking it inside the band of his cap.

  “Someday you might undertake such duties of conscience without asking for money in return.”

  The boy shrugged in reply, set his cap on his head. With a sly smile, he took off running, as if late for his next misadventure.

  Bianca turned in the direction of Barnabas Hughes’s home. After a short walk, she discovered the lane, less traveled than most. A pair of oaks grew in side gardens, their limbs arching heavily over the road. From Hughes’s description, Bianca found the stone building with ivy clinging to the front. He had said his neighbor, Goodwife Malcott, was caring for his daughter, though he expected she had probably taken her back to her rent, which was next door above their bakery.

  After trying the door of the physician’s home and finding it locked, Bianca knocked at the bakery shop door. In a moment a muffled footfall grew louder and the door creaked open. The plump face of a man peered out at her, his thick eyebrows holding a dusting of flour.

  “The shop is closed for the night,” he said wearily.

  “Is this where Goodwife Malcott lives?”

  “It is.”

  “I have been sent by Barnabas Hughes. He has asked me to see after Verity.”

  The man’s expression was inscrutable, puzzling Bianca. She shifted uncomfortably under his steady gaze.

  He asked, “Might I ask why the good physician sent you?”

  “Unfortunately, sir, he is no longer able to care for her.” Bianca felt a prickling guilt, having pressed Hughes into admitting murder. For a moment she was stricken with shame, realizing the consequence of her desire to know what had happened. She had, in effect, orphaned a child. And an ailing one, at that.

  “Can you tell me why, all of a sudden, can he not care for her?”

  Bianca swallowed. Her conscience screamed at her. She was no better than the physician who had murdered a man to save his child. London was rife with neglected children, cast from their homes due to loss or abuse. She saw them every day, wandering the streets, sleeping beneath empty food carts, their eyes vacant and scared. She thought of the two children with whom she had shared a wherry. She hoped they had found a loving home with their aunt. But so many children were not so fortunate. Was not John once among them? And her friend Jolyn?

  Bianca stared past the baker into the dim light of his shop. She sought to care for a child who was already loved. Desperately loved. What could she offer the girl that her father could not? And now she had succeeded in denying the girl the one person who cared for her beyond all others. One day, the girl would ask about her father, and what would she say?

  The baker’s expression changed to disdain, and Bianca, in her sensitive state of mind, could not help but think his enmity was directed at her. And why not? Didn’t she deserve the man’s scorn?

  He snorted. “Well, it is no matter now, I suppose. The child has passed.”

  Bianca started from her thoughts. “She has died?” Her voice sounded far away.

  “You look as pale as milk,” said the baker, seeing her blanch. He took hold of her elbow. “Here, come and sit.” He guided her inside to a stool.

  Unblinking, she lowered herself and sat. Her only chance to make good on her promise and she was too late.

  The baker poured her a cup of ale and she dutifully drank. The ale wet her mouth and warmed her throat, but she did not taste it. He could have given her bilge water and she would not have noticed.

  Was this God’s grace? Was Verity’s soul so inexplicably bound with her father’s that neither of them could survive without the other?

  “May I see her?” Bianca asked.

  The baker led her up a stairwell to his quarters above the shop.

  Inside, his two boys and a girl sipped boiled stew. They raised their heads at Bianca’s arrival. Their spoons paused long enough so they could watch as she walked past. Near the front of the room facing the street, Goodwife Malcott stood beside a priest.

  His susurrations were punctuated with the sound of slurping, but the children were mindful to keep from conversation until he finished his prayers. He glanced over his shoulder as Bianca neared, made no acknowledgment of her presence, and returned his attention to Verity. His murmurs and gesticulating continued without falter.

  Bianca was struck by the child’s angelic face. Her delicate nose and mouth resembled the physician’s. Over her pillow, her fair hair spread like white ivy. Bianca wondered if its color had reminded Hughes of his wife’s. Death had not stolen the child’s innocent beauty or the gentle quality of her life.

  It would have been easier for Bianca to have left when Malcott told her of Verity’s passing. She could have let the baker and his wife tend to her final needs. After all, the child had been familiar with them and Bianca was nothing more than a stranger. But she wanted to see Verity. Bianca wanted her face emblazoned in her memory.

  She waited for the priest’s final “amen” and crossed herself. The smell of incense traveled the inroads of her memory to a time when she had obediently attended mass. When had she stopped going? When had she become so cynical?

  Had her interest in chemical process and her desire to understand sickness replaced what tenuous belief she had in faith? Faith, with its demand to believe in the intangible, the impalpable, the abstruse. When had she decided that if God’s existence could not be proven empirically, then there was no reason to believe?

  She might not be any closer to deciding if she believed in God, but at least she believed in love. And was that not proof of the divine? The divine inherent in each of us?

  Yet she could not deny a certain underlying steadfast certainty (or was it simply a wish?) that people’s souls were immortal. A soul could not be seen. It could not be bottled. Did it even exist? But Bianca needed to believe that it did. If believing offered nothing more than comfort as one contemplated mortality, was that so wrong? There was nothing to lose by believing it so.

  Bianca handed Goodwife Malcott the coins in her purse, saving enough for a fare home. She would later return with more.

  Goodwife Malcott looked at her questioningly. The children stopped eating.

  “For a resting place in consecrated soil.”

  With night falling, Bianca opted to take a wherry rather than cross the bridge on foot. To satisfy a question that had been troubling her since Hughes’s confession, she strode past St. Benet’s on her way to Burley House and Paul’s Wharf. She slowed as she neared the spot where she’d been attacked two nights earlier. Bianca closed her eyes and, lifting her chin, sniffed. A heavy whiff of river and mudflat masked any underlying odors. She moved away from the bustling pedestrians and street traffic to the side of the lane and stood still. Turning her back to the river, she concentrated on the area’s subtle undertones. As she sorted them out in her mind, cataloguing the foul from the less offensive, she caught the faint scent she’d been seeking. The sweet perfume of roses.

  With eyes slit barely open, she followed its bouquet until it was strong. When a stone wall stopped her, she opened her eyes. It had not been her imagination that night. She had smelled roses. But the fragrance had not come from Tait’s buttonhole. A rosebush twined with careless abandon in the rectory garden.

 
; At Paul’s Wharf, she shared a boat with a gentleman, too well dressed to be a resident of Southwark. He was probably out for an evening of recreation. She paid no heed to his appraising ogle, knowing it was typical, the disagreeable habit of men anticipating their visit with London’s wanton sister.

  The previous evening’s wind had lingered, leaving a drier feel to the air. Even the rank odor that permeated London had been chased away. Or at least beaten down and momentarily forgotten.

  Autumn’s cool breath reminded her of winter’s creeping imposition. Seasons didn’t remain the same. Nothing remained forever. Time changed life, but she saw in winter’s quiet attendance the opportunity for study and contemplation.

  As she passed the neighbor’s chicken coop in Gull Hole, Bianca’s steps slowed as she neared her room of Medicinals and Physickes. Her life had been better for loving John, and she would follow that love through to its conclusion. Whether his end had already come or whether it would be ten years in the future, she knew that inevitably, it would come.

  Instead of hesitating on the threshold, she took a breath and pushed open the door.

  The room was dark. It kept its secrets. Hobs jumped from a height and padded over. She stroked his back, lit a candle, and raised it in the direction of the bed.

  No movement or reaction issued in the light. John lay as she had left him. Her heart in her throat, Bianca went to him and touched his face.

  He did not startle. His skin was still warm against her fingers. She sat and laid her ear on his chest. His heart beat softly. John was alive.

  She watched him for a long while. She watched his chest rise and fall as if he were sleeping, wishing he were merely asleep but knowing he was not.

  Bianca reached across and picked up her pillow. She held it in her lap. If she ended his suffering, her suffering, it would be easier to do it now rather than in the morning. Night mutes what would be harsh reality by day. Yet she could not place the pillow over his face.

  Her mind churned. Rational thoughts tangled with her emotions until she was utterly confused from trying to sort it out.