by Anne Groß
The sound of foot falls returned, distant at first. Then came the scrape of shoes as the young man slid into the turn. Finally, Jean-Claude burst back into the laboratory. “I have it!” he shouted with an optimistic smile. He held aloft a ceramic pot which he then presented to the emperor with a flourish. The pot was covered with what looked like a sheet of wax.
“What’s this?” Napoleon asked.
“Open it,” said Jean-Claude with a grin. “Open it, your highness.”
Napoleon turned to look at von Flugelderhorn for confirmation before peeling off the wax layer, revealing a cork stopper. He tried to lift the cork from the jar, but it was wedged tight.
“Twist it open,” said Jean-Claude. “Twist it, your highness.”
Napoleon twisted and the cork came off with a loud pop. All eight men in the room politely applauded. “I don’t understand,” Napoleon said taking the spoon helpfully offered to him and dipping it in for a mouthful of jam.
“That jam is eight months old,” Jean-Claude hooted.
Seeing the emperor suddenly balk at taking a second spoonful, von Flugelderhorn jumped in to explain. “The jam may be old, but I assure you it is perfectly safe to eat. Jean-Claude has discovered that if you put a sealed jar in a bath of boiling water, the air within is removed. With no vapors inside the container, the food takes much longer to spoil. Unfortunately, this vaporless state does not last forever. We’ve discovered that a jar which does not pop upon removal of its lid has contents which are spoiled.”
“Poor Hervé,” came a sad whisper from the end of the table.
Von Flugelderhorn nodded sympathetically. “Indeed. Alchemy is not without its tragedies. More research needs to be done, but I thought you’d be interested in our progression towards preserving food for the army.”
“You thought of this?” Napoleon asked the young man.
“Well, to be honest, I’d watched my mémé doing something similar last summer.”
“Your mémé?”
“Yes, my grandmother.”
“Your grandmother,” Napoleon repeated, and shook his head sadly, taking another spoonful of the sweet jam. “I ask for gold, and they give me grandmère’s strawberry compote.”
Adelaide’s spirits were high as she approached the inn where she and Dodo were staying. The invitation to dine with Captain Briggs on board the Sea Otter was a huge turn of luck. She’d spent the entire trek back from the London Docks trying to imagine what she might be served. It almost didn’t matter at this point. Any dish would be welcome, as long as it wasn’t the watery stew of turnips and slippery meat she’d grown accustomed to eating.
The mental image of the captain gazing down at her from the height of the his ship was almost as enticing as the offer of a meal. He was a handsome man, that Capitaine Briggs. Stout, but muscular, tall, but not towering. He exuded strength and leadership without the overt trappings of power. Adelaide blushed just thinking about the way he’d accepted her little bouquet, with a bow and a flourish of his hat, revealing blond curls that were beginning to silver at his temples. Even the accent with which he spoke French was charming. Her luck was turning, most definitely.
There would not be enough time to ensure Dodo recovered from his wounds before she embarked on the Sea Otter. Of course, he would have to be left behind. She felt a stab of regret. Or, at least, she thought she did. It might better be described as a poke, or a glancing blow of regret. Or it could have been hunger pains. Adelaide decided she would send word to Mrs. Southill asking for her to look in on Dodo, forgetting that she had no money to pay a messenger and no friend to do it for free. But she refused to let thoughts of her mentor’s physical condition dampen her spirits. Dodo was a strong man, a sorcerer of high repute, and would pull through.
Adelaide stepped into the Dancing Bear and felt the delicate hairs in her nostrils curl. The ever present odor of boiled offal and rancid smoke from a chimney that wouldn’t draw was apparently an attraction, considering the number of men who patronized the bar, night after night. The humidity kept the smell suspended like herbs in oil. Three mouse-like sneezes and a lace-edged handkerchief to her face dulled the vile experience.
When Adelaide had left that morning, the proprietor’s narrow bottom had been planted on the stool behind the reception desk. She wondered that it wasn’t sore, as he was there still, scribbling columns of numbers into an enormous ledger. He paused in his work to insert the sharp end of his quill under his powdered wig—a wig he undoubtably wore as a trapping of respectability—to scratch the inevitable itch. Adelaide curled her lip. In France, such a hot monstrosity was certainly not au courant, at least not since the Bourbons lost their wigs in the same basket as their heads.
“Mam’selle Bonnediseuse, a man is here to see you,” he said without looking up.
“A man?” Adelaide’s blood ran cold. Her thoughts went straight to Dodo’s wolfish attacker. “For moi?” Mademoiselle DuBette had said the man from the Quiet Woman had left with the golem, but he could have sent a member of his pack.
“That’s right, mam’selle, a frog. . .er. . .Frenchie. I sent him up to see your husband.”
“Frenchie?” Damn the English and their awful language. What was the man saying? Had a man from France arrived? “’Ere?”
“Not here, lass. Frog’s up there.” The proprietor stopped scratching his head to give a meaningful jab at the ceiling before waving the quill at the back stairs. Then he went back to his ledger book, information imparted, conversation over.
Adelaide looked towards the stairs with a lump in her throat. Napoleon’s head of police had found her. As Dodo had warned would happen, Ministre Fouché must have read the letter from Mrs. Southill and discovered the whereabouts of the golem. Dodo, oh poor Dodeauvie. Her mentor was likely already dead, Fouché would see to that. Adelaide felt her eyes well up with tears as she backed away from the reception desk. At any moment, the minister could descend and find her. Every second she remained in the Dancing Bear was a gamble, both to her own life, and to the lives of the women in la Société who were now depending upon her.
With a jolt, she remembered her grimoire—her cherished book of spells. Dodo was using it behind his pillow to prop himself up. She took two steps towards the stairs, drawn towards her life’s work. Indecision and fear surged through her. Her mind raced to come up with some solution, some machination for retrieving her belongings. If she’d had more time, perhaps she could have considered climbing in through the window in the dead of night. The thought made her wince, remembering that the last time she’d climbed to escape a tight spot, Dodo had found her frozen in fear along the top of a high wall.
She would never fool herself a second time into climbing through windows, but she couldn’t leave her grimoire without knowing with certainty that it was irretrievable. She would have to ascend in the normal way, using the stairs. She mustered a brave smile for the proprietor, who didn’t notice, and walked towards the stairs as though headed to meet death himself. She held her head high as she passed near a table of men, suddenly feeling very self-conscious of the way her skirt swished around her ankles. “Good evening,” she said. One had the good decency to at least nod acknowledgement, but the other four lifted their mugs of rank, black porter to hide their faces while their eyes continued to follow her.
The staircase banister felt solid as she began her ascent. Enough hands had slid along its surface, either going up or coming down, to have imparted a golden gloss to the wood. It was the kind of banister that invited a person to lean, to trust. Adelaide used it to pull herself up each reluctant step.
She sharply sucked in her breath at the first sounding creak of her weight on the stairs. She then strained her ears to hear any corresponding shifting of weight from the ceiling above, the sound of someone entering the hallway, footfalls descending the stairs from around the blind corner.
Nothing.
She released her breath in a long, pursed-lip blow and moved towards the wall where a line was painte
d with the sweat of countless others who had used one hand for stabilization as they traversed the stairs. Adelaide’s fear abated for just a second, long enough to take note of the trail of filth and yank her hand away. The creaks weren’t as loud near the wall, yet she still went slowly, trying to be as light-footed as possible while silently cursing all the saucisson makers in Paris.
At the top of the stairs she paused to let her heart settle, concerned it might be heard beating like a drum, before approaching the door to the room she and Dodo had been sharing. The door was pulled all the way closed. She tiptoed forward and put her hand on the doorknob.
What if it was a colleague of Dodo’s? What if Jacques Noisette had found her to give her a last minute message? It didn’t have to be Fouché, she reasoned. There were so many possibilities in life, all of them viable. She was a purveyor of these possibilities—each card she turned, each colorful image translated was a seed of action deposited in the fertile minds of her clients. She ached to know what her own future was, right at that moment, but her cards, fanned against her chest, had been silent for what felt like weeks.
Tonight she would just have to draw her clues from the life around her, like everyone else. She squatted and peered through the keyhole.
Just as her eye came level with the opening, a loud voice punctured the silence of the hallway. “Oh hooo. . .what have we here? A peeping Thomasina?”
Adelaide straightened instantly, barely stifling a startled screech by merely emitting a gasp, and turned towards the man who had just caught her in flagrante delicto.
Adelaide had no idea what he was saying. She watched as his tongue flicked words behind his gray teeth. She heard “spanking” and “naughty” and, based upon his lecherous grin and his wiggling eyebrows, assumed his intentions weren’t good. His thin arms came towards her, sticky, like the legs of a spider about to draw in prey.
“Don’t be shy,” he whispered.
The sound of chair legs scraping on the wood floor came from Dodo’s room. It might as well have been the sound of a heralding trumpet. Adelaide didn’t wait to see if friend or foe would walk through the door. She pushed the man aside and ran.
To hell with Dodo and his interminable death. To hell with her heavy grimoire and the spells that didn’t work. To hell with possibilities and probabilities—Fouché had been behind the door. She knew it. She knew it in her gut. She ran past the four men drinking at the table. She ran past the proprietor who yelled for his back pay. She ran until her lungs burned and her legs ached, two entire London blocks. Then she walked. Swiftly.
That night would be spent on the Sea Otter, and the next morning she would set sail with Captain Briggs. Perhaps she’d find the emerald. Perhaps, she thought hopefully, the handsome captain would help her forget the damned rock entirely.
Mrs. Southill eyed the small group that waited patiently in front of the grand doors to the British Museum, once the Montagu house. It had taken her some time to walk from her clearing in the woods, but the exercise had felt good. Every so often it was nice to spend time in London so that she could, upon returning to her woods, feel confident in her decision to hate it. For her journey, she had brought a drawstring pouch, the same pouch she’d given the golem, and filled it full with the tools of her trade. There was always a need for a healing woman’s touch. In the East End of London you couldn’t walk three steps without hearing someone with a wet cough—and no wonder, the very air smelled like death. She stopped to give a child with a festering wound a fresh plaster. Willow bark was given to a young man who’d been living with an old man’s back for nearly four days, keeping him from work. A bit of tincture of clove was given to a woman with a bad tooth, but Mrs. Southill had advised the moll to see a barber. Even with the soothing tincture, she would suffer for days with throbbing pain that slowly increased into blinding agony if she didn’t see a barber. Alternatively, if the woman was brave and took Mrs. Southill’s advice, she’d suffer the blinding agony of a barber’s forceps that would slowly resolve into occasional throbbing pain. A toothache was a terrible thing.
Mrs. Southill had promised to tend to the child again the next morning on her way home. She wasn’t entirely certain where she’d spend the night. She had the vague idea she’d stop by the Quiet Woman to see Mrs. Postlethwaite after completing her errand, but that was something she’d worry about later. At that moment, she was more interested in solving the problem of maneuvering around the crowd that had arrived at the museum before her.
At the top of the steps, two young ladies chirped to each other in familiar tones. They seemed the type to be entirely bored of London, but too headstrong to want to return to their family’s estates after the end of the season. Likely tired of having to make that dreaded call at Mrs. So-and-so’s estate, or yet another staid dinner at the parsonage, a pass through the halls of the museum, while not entirely a thrilling afternoon for young ladies so full of repressed energy, would be a welcome change.
The ladies’ chaperone stood slightly to the side. She was still a young woman herself, perhaps the poor cousin of their mother’s youngest brother, or a newly widowed sister of their father’s closest friend. In any case, she’d taken on her role of interloper with ease, foiling the eager looking suitor, who stood two marble steps below the women, from all his attempts at making himself the most clever man imaginable. Each time he opened his mouth to relay his opinion on the current gossip, the chaperone heaved a sigh and rolled her eyes. Any smiles the ladies turned upon their handsome friend lost the power of innocence in the face of such exasperated derision from their older companion.
Three other men stood on separate steps, entirely oblivious of the women. Their eyes were glazed with deep thoughts; their satchels overflowing with books and documents. They were the typical academic types—ill fed, all arms and legs, with necks that were stuck in a position horizontal to the ground.
These were the elite few that had arrived prior to the museum’s opening and had grouped themselves at the top of the stairs. Every one of them had noted Mrs. Southill below, not by directly turning their heads towards her with nods, but with sidelong glances and a couple wary twitches. Still more people were approaching across the courtyard of the once stately estate.
Mrs. Southill would take a case of gout or an outbreak of pustules any day over the anxiety inducing social trivialities required to mix politely amongst the London well-to-do. As the crowd gathered, her anxiety caused her to squeeze her hand around the long scroll she carried, forgetting that she would need the paper to be without a crease for her plan to work. She told herself that she was only imagining people were looking at her and that, anyway, the opinions of others did not matter, but the side-long glances were very real and made her think again of haughty Adelaide Lenormand.
That witch was a trouble-maker, thought Mrs. Southill. She’d shown no sense of creativity, no sense of wonder when she’d explained her project of capturing light. She shook her head, still amazed that a witch with Mlle Lenormand’s talent wouldn’t be interested in harnessing a power like that. Mrs. Southill was convinced that if she were to succeed, it would be a feat of magical ingenuity seconded only to Merlin’s putting Arthur on the throne.
But no, Mlle Lenormand was only interested in serving her mentor Dodeauvie and had been irritated by the delay in her afternoon. The young witch’s behavior had been shocking. How could she have acted so put-upon by the Society’s request for her help—help they wouldn’t have needed had she completed her task instead of making a mess of it? It wasn’t as though she was the only one being asked to make sacrifices. Mrs. Southill’s own task was as odious as any, given her predilection for solitude.
She attempted an ingratiating smile at the youngest of the women at the top of the stairs, who flushed and quickly looked away from her toothless grimace. The reaction caused her to give the paper scroll another couple squeezes. It hurt to not have her smile returned. She looked down at her best apron, which she’d tied over her tattered dress that morni
ng in the hopes that the worst of the moth holes would be hidden, but now Mrs. Southill realized that even her best apron was dreadfully stained. To feel shame about her attire at her age was worse than feeling it as a young woman. London society was a cold and unforgiving mirror, and Mrs. Southill would have rather not seen herself reflected so starkly.
Suddenly the doors to the museum were thrown open and a strange breeze cooled her cheeks, as though the art and history within the hallowed halls had sighed. A well-heeled scholar stood in the doorway and peered at the small crowd over his precariously set spectacles. He bowed at the young ladies and beckoned everyone to enter. The invitation erased all the unease that Mrs. Southill had been feeling. Excited to see the collection of curiosities that were being hoarded inside, she hurried up the steps after the group.
Her old knees creaked. It had been a long walk, after all, and she was tired. She pressed on her thighs with each step, giving herself a little aid, only completing the last three steps by making loud grunts. Once at the top, with her heart beating in her throat from the effort, she rushed towards the door.
Who cared if the fancy ladies sneered at her lack of fashion? The treasures of the Acropolis and the Parthenon were behind those doors! The art and antiquities alone were fascinating enough, but then there was the natural science—bugs on pins, stuffed birds in drawers, bones of all sorts—which drew her like a moth to flame. And a library. A library that could possibly compete with that which was lost in Alexandria. What were a few derisive looks when access to all these things were held in the balance?
“Not you,” the imperious scholar said, holding up a hand.
Mrs. Southill glanced behind her. Perhaps he was talking to someone else? “I beg your pardon?”
“Did you not hear me? Not! You!”
