Shadow of the Alchemist: A Medieval Noir

by Westerson, Jeri

  “Is she still alive, do you think?”

  “Yes. He sent us a lock of her hair to prove it.”

  “Do you think it is that man that Flamel thinks is dead—Perenelle’s old suitor?”

  “He said he died in a fire along with his son. But someone else could have been mistaken for him. One charred body looks much like another. Though why he should wait so long for his revenge is more to the question.”

  “Motivation and opportunity, that’s what you are always telling me,” said Jack, moving forward again. Crispin followed beside him. “Motivation? Well, Flamel said she spurned him in favor of Flamel. But from what I gather, that was a long time ago.”

  “Only a heartbeat to the mad.”

  “That’s true enough. And opportunity? That’s a tougher one, isn’t it? If they all knew one another in France, why’d they come here to do it?”

  “And how does he know all of London’s landmarks? Perhaps I made a hasty assumption.”

  “It’s the only one we’ve got. The only one that makes any sense.”

  They came at last to a halt. “It’s here, Master.” A grand structure, or at least it had been. Some sort of ancient hall in disrepair. It did not look as if it had been used in the last fifty years. The shutters were boarded up and a bird’s nest sat on the porch by the door, the skeletal remains of a bird still residing there.

  “It’s just here, Master Crispin,” said Jack. He had climbed the stair and up onto one of the pillars upholding the pediment. He stretched the long length of him to nearly touch the sigil.

  “Can you reach it, Jack? Can you see if there is a pocket for the clue?”

  “Aye, sir. I think I can.” Like a squirrel, the boy shimmied up the pillar, grabbed hold of the overhanging pediment, and swung himself up to the rickety roof.

  “Be careful,” Crispin murmured, and then chastised himself for the old woman he was becoming.

  Jack leaned over the side of the roof and, nearly upside down, reached underneath and plucked the parchment from its hiding place. He looked up with a wide grin and waved it about. But then he jerked forward and slipped off.

  Crispin gasped, helpless to do anything as the boy plummeted over the side, heading for the stony road below.

  Arse over heels, Jack somersaulted and at the last moment threw a hand out and barely caught the edge of the eave. Ink-stained fingers gripped the icy tiles. He hung by one hand, legs swinging carelessly, until he let go and landed on his feet in a crouch before he straightened and heaved a satisfied breath. “Nearly broke me neck,” he said almost proudly, before shuffling down the stairs and handing Crispin the parchment.

  “Nearly,” muttered Crispin. “See that you don’t. I’m too old to train a new apprentice.”

  Jack sidled up to him and Crispin unfolded the parchment.

  You are a clever man, Crispin Guest. You have reached your goal.

  “Our goal?” echoed Jack. “What? Here?”

  Crispin climbed the steps and tried the door. Barred. He leaned over toward a shuttered window and peeked through the cracks. An empty space, with dried leaves on the checkered floor and dust on every surface. The walls were punctuated with niches that seemed to have once held something, like statues, but what statues remained stood on the floor in no particular semblance of order. The candles that were in the sconces had long ago burned down to nubs, and all that remained were cascades of wax hanging from them.

  He could see no doors, nothing leading to any other room. It was only a barren hall.

  He trotted down the stairs and studied the foundation. There did not look to be enough of it to offer a cellar or mews below. Whatever he had meant by this clue, this was not where Perenelle Flamel was being kept.

  “It don’t look inhabited, sir.”

  “It doesn’t look inhabited,” he corrected. “And it isn’t.”

  “Then he’s lying.”

  “No, that is not part of the game. That wouldn’t be playing fair, Jack, and so far he has not lied to us.”

  “How can you defend him? He’s killed, and stolen that woman!”

  “I am not defending him, Jack. I am merely trying to understand him. He has set the parameters of this game and he means to keep to them. He does not like it that we step out of line, and tells us when we are wrong. And now that he is mentioning me by name, he obviously enjoys the novelty of adding me to the game. You see, Jack, to defeat your enemy you must learn how he thinks. The game is fair. It is up to us to figure out the rules.”

  “How? If this is our ‘goal,’ then where is Madam Flamel?”

  Crispin handed him the parchment. “Read it again.”

  “‘You are a clever man, Crispin Guest,’” he read aloud. “‘You have reached your goal.’ I don’t understand, sir.”

  “What is my goal, Jack?”

  “Finding Madam Flamel.”

  “Is it? Not according to him. By his reckoning, I must have another goal.”

  “Finding … him?”

  He smiled. “And so. This building must mean something to him that I can use to find him.”

  “He is mad. It’s nothing but an abandoned building. There are many such in London.”

  “But he led me to not just any abandoned building, but to this particular one. What is it, I wonder?”

  “Guildhall of some kind.”

  “What do your reasoning skills say about the building, Jack?”

  Jack dug his teeth into his bottom lip, thinking. “Well, sir, it’s abandoned. It’s a guildhall. And … and … Blind me. I see, Master Crispin. All guilds are proud of who they are and what they represent, and proudly display their ornaments or arms. But this one…”

  “This one doesn’t. Not one thing to indicate who the guild members are or of their vocation. And what does that suggest to you?”

  “I … I don’t know, sir. That they didn’t want nobody knowing which guild it was?”

  “Ah!”

  He climbed down the steps, with Jack following. Something caught his attention off to the left. Had that shadow moved? His hand found his dagger.

  “What sort of guild would that be, Master?”

  “A very good question, Jack. Walk with me.”

  Jack scrambled to fall in step beside him. “I can’t think, sir, of what guild wouldn’t be proud to be—”

  “Jack,” Crispin said quietly out of the side of his mouth, “we are being followed by our shadows again. I don’t know about you, but I weary of it.”

  Jack straightened, all business. “How many, sir?”

  “Two, this time. One on each side of the road. Perfect. You take the one on the left and I’ll take the right. On the count of three.” He raised his chin, looking straight ahead. “One … two … three!”

  They turned. The cloaked man tried to throw himself against the wall of a fishmonger’s stall. Crispin dove for him and wrestled him to the ground, punching him once in the face. His fist skidded off the man’s cheek and hit his nose but did not break it. It gushed with blood, and while the man was distracted by it, Crispin hauled him to his feet.

  Jack was dragging his own bruised captive toward Crispin, where they threw them both up against the wall. Jack drew his knife and looked more than ready to use it.

  Crispin folded his arms over his chest. “This ends here. Why have you and your ilk been following me?”

  “We mean no harm, Master Guest,” said the one with the bloody nose.

  “Oh? Is that so? Then why have you been tailing me for days? I have seen you, and two more of your peers. You need not lie.”

  “No, Master. There is no need to lie. We were merely keeping watch of you. And now you’ve come … here.” He cocked his head toward the building they had just left.

  “Here? And just what is ‘here’?”

  The bloodied man looked toward his bruised companion. The other nodded, seeming to give permission, while keeping a wary eye on Jack and his knife.

  “Very well, Master Guest. I shall answer. We,
and others like us, have used this guildhall for generations. But it has fallen into disrepair for some time.”

  “And this guild? What is your company?”

  The man touched his chest and bowed. “We are of the noble and secret society of London alchemists.”

  25

  CRISPIN SNORTED AT THE man with the blood on his face. “Lovely. Secret society. Damned secrets.” He grabbed the man by his coat again and shoved him hard into the wall. The sound of it made even Crispin wince. His face was smooth and pale. It was hard to tell just how old he and his companion were. “Where is she? Where is he keeping her?”

  The man tried to look toward his companion again when Crispin slapped his face, leaving a red mark on the pale cheek. “Don’t look at him when I’m talking to you. Answer me!”

  “I … I know not who you are talking about.”

  “Don’t you? And what about him?” He thumbed in the direction of the other man, whom Jack had surrounded with his long, wiry limbs. “Does he know? I don’t care if you both take a beating for it. One of you will tell me. One of you might still have teeth with which to tell me.”

  The man in front of Crispin held his hands before his face and cringed down, shoulders hunching up to his ears. “Wait! I’m speaking the truth! Please! Blessed Saint Luke preserve me!”

  “How do I know you are speaking the truth? You and your ilk have been following me for days. Don’t lie, I saw you. Why were you following me if not working for that foul villain?”

  “We don’t know who you mean,” said the other man, trying to jerk away from Jack’s sudden grip on his arm. “As soon as we learned that Nicholas Flamel was here in London, many were chosen to guard him, to follow all who came and went to his shop. We mean you no harm. Nor him. We … we greatly admire his work and wish to allow him the grace in which to do it.”

  “Out of the goodness of your hearts, no doubt.”

  The man before Crispin lowered his head. “Well, we hoped that he might share some of his secrets with us. However unlikely that was. We thought he might be grateful enough…”

  “Good Christians, all. God save Flamel from his saviors.” He released the cowering man and stepped back, loath to continue touching him. “Prove it. Prove to me that you are not lying.”

  The man wiped his palm up over his nostrils, trying to stanch the trickle of blood. His hands were now red with it. “But how? How may we prove our sincerity?”

  “Tell me, then. How did you discover Flamel was here?”

  “His apprentice.” He becrossed himself. “Bless his wretched soul. Someone overheard him talking. And I heard them say it, and … well. We approached him, told him who we were. I told him that to boast of the name Nicholas Flamel was not only dangerous but disingenuous. I questioned him, only wishing to know if his master was the Nicholas Flamel. But he grew suspicious of our interest. Clearly his master did not entrust him with … certain knowledge. After a time he would talk no more with us. It was soon thereafter that it was agreed that we should watch Master Flamel’s comings and goings.”

  “Did you see anything of his apprentice’s abduction?”

  “No, alas. We saw him leave the shop with the alchemist’s wife. But we were not concerned with them. Only Master Flamel.”

  “How convenient.” Crispin rested his hand on his dagger hilt. “What of these other alchemists of your guild? I would meet them.”

  The man made a strained sound, halfway between a laugh and a cough. “Perhaps you forgot that we are a secret guild, Master Guest.”

  “Oh, well. Quite understandable.” He gave Jack a false smile. Jack did not return it. “Then you would not mind should I decide to announce this secret society on the streets of London?”

  “W-what?”

  “This secret society,” he said, raising his voice.

  The two alchemists shushed him. “Master Guest!” the other cried.

  “I’m simply bursting with the need to share what I have learned. A secret society,” he rattled on, raising and lowering his voice. “Fascinating, don’t you agree? The citizens of London would also be fascinated, as would be her sheriffs and aldermen. And the bishop of London, too, I should imagine. I understand how well thought of are alchemists.”

  “Master Guest, please. That is very ungracious of you.” He snorted a bubble of blood back up his nose. “We have told you all we can.”

  “I don’t think so.” He put his hand on the wall beside the man’s head and leaned in. The man shied back, turning his face away and blinking rapidly. Crispin noticed he was young. He hadn’t expected that. He didn’t think of alchemists as particularly young, though why he didn’t was his own ignorance. Flamel was young once, as was the real Bartholomew of Oxford. Young and successful. As had been this other, this knave who kept them playing this cruel game all over the city.

  “Acquainted with a Piers Malemeyns?” asked Crispin, close to the man’s ear. He watched his face for any sign of recognition at the name. There was none.

  “No,” he said, voice quivering. “I tell you we know nothing of this other mischief.”

  “But you have been following me all over town. Do you have any idea what we have been doing?”

  He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing on his thin, beard-stubbled neck. “You have been following the alchemical symbols etched on the walls of the city. We … we wondered about them. We tried to scratch them out when we found them. We thought that someone was trying to expose us. We had no idea that there were messages hidden near them.”

  “We saw you extract the parchments,” said the other, eyes glued to Jack’s stern glare. “And so we, too, investigated. When we saw that they were little more than riddles and taunts, we left them alone.”

  “Are you certain of that?” Crispin gritted his teeth. It wasn’t good news at all that they might have tampered with the messages.

  “I swear by my Lady, Master Guest. We read them, and knowing that you would come upon them, we replaced them as we found them.”

  Crispin toyed with his dagger hilt, raising it slightly from its sheath. The metal gleamed in the dim light. “I’m having difficulty believing you.”

  “It is the truth, Master Guest,” pleaded the man he had cornered.

  “Prove it, then. Get me into that guildhall.”

  The man sucked in a breath. He wiped his nose futilely one last time, smearing blood on his face, before he nodded. “Peter has the key.”

  Crispin looked to the other one. “Are you Peter?”

  “Me? Oh, no! Not I. I am Damian Fallowell.” He nodded in an abbreviated bow. “And this … er … this—” He gestured to his companion cringing under Crispin’s menacing posture. “This is Cosmas Blusard. We are not the keeper of the keys.”

  “Then you had best take me to him.”

  “But we can’t do that!” cried Cosmas.

  Crispin turned calmly to him. His dagger was in his hand. “Why not?”

  The alchemist stared cross-eyed at the dagger in front of his face and slumped down the wall, knees nearly buckling. He licked his blood-smeared lips. “A good question. I truly don’t see why not.”

  “Cosmas!”

  “You don’t have a dagger in your face, Damian!”

  “Oh, very well! We shall be thrown out of the guild for this. And after all the trouble we went through. We’ll take you to Peter.”

  Crispin couldn’t help but feel he was getting in deeper than he liked. It was a simple matter for Jack or himself to easily break into the guildhall, but there was obviously more to all of this than he was aware of.

  “Lead on,” he said, sheathing his dagger.

  * * *

  THE TWO ALCHEMISTS TOOK Crispin and Jack down several alleys off of Old Fish. They came to a dead end at a crumbling wall in a narrow close. Crispin drew his dagger and Jack did likewise. “What is this?” Crispin demanded.

  Cosmas blinked at him stupidly. Mouth open, face smeared with blood, he was the picture of perplexity. “It is the way i
n,” he said, indicating some distant point in the darkness.

  Crispin stepped between the men and grabbed Cosmas’s arm. Jack followed suit and curled his fingers around Damian’s arm above the elbow, digging so deep that the man winced. “Then we’ll go in together,” said Crispin.

  Cosmas stumbled as he tugged Crispin with him. The crumbling wall reminded Crispin of Lenny’s hideaway. Thinking of the thief caused a hollow in his belly. Or was it only part of his earlier nausea that was rearing up again? He felt sweat ripple over him and he swallowed an excess of saliva that had flooded his mouth. Was it guilt he felt at banishing the thief from his presence? The man wasn’t worth the trouble, this he knew. But still. Crispin felt he had let the man down, hadn’t cultivated him enough. Though not every thief could turn out to be a Jack Tucker.

  He looked over his shoulder at his apprentice. Face chiseled into a stoic expression, Jack steered his charge forward, his dagger clutched in his other hand.

  This illness that had overtaken his belly was making Crispin unsteady, but he tried to mask it by pushing the alchemist forward. The crumbling wall was only a façade, hiding the true entrance to a dark parlor.

  Cosmas tried to pull away, but Crispin yanked him back.

  “Master Guest, I must … light a candle.”

  Crispin released the man and covertly clutched his stomach. “Very well. Make haste.”

  He followed the alchemist with his gaze as he stumbled about the room, finding a tinderbox. A spark lit all the points of their faces before flame touched candlewick.

  Cosmas held up the lit candle on its silver sconce. The light shone dully on lackluster blond locks that hung to his shoulders. “He is in the next room. I’ll get him.”

  “No,” said Crispin, adjusting the grip on his dagger. “I’ll get him.”

  He strode to the door. He didn’t bother knocking. He lifted the latch and pushed through.

  He beheld a room full of the instruments that were becoming familiar to Crispin, with bubbling cauldrons and foul smells. A man sat at a tall writing table, bent over parchments and books. A quill was poised in his ink-stained fingers. A candle on the desk lit him and his work in a pool of golden light. Perhaps he had not noticed in his industry that the hearth had nearly gone to glowing coals and the room was cold. He did not look up as he said, “Yes?”