Love's Alchemy

by Bryan Crockett

  “Water. What do you think it could mean?”

  Burr shrugged. “Mayhap it means but that I dreamed.”

  “Yet the dream lingers.”

  “It lingers. And the water stank. I feel as if I stood in it still.”

  “Well.” Jack swung himself onto his horse. “You look dry to me, and you stink no more than usual.”

  Now Burr seemed himself again, his eyes grown canny beneath bristling, gray brows. “Master Jack, you were ever ready with a blandishment. I thank you most sincerely. And I might add that a bath, a bit of soap-lye, and a coarse brush would do nothing to diminish your resplendence.”

  Jack smiled. “They have baths as well as a castle in Warwick, do they not? And that’s as good a place to ride to as any.”

  When they arrived in Warwick in the late afternoon after a short rain, the sun invisible behind the general gloom, Burr insisted on riding around the castle. They circled at a distance of half a mile or so, the vast bulk of the castle sometimes visible between buildings, sometimes not. Burr kept turning to look at the fortress and frowning slightly after each glance. As they rode, it seemed to Jack that the massive structure loomed heavier and heavier, its ancient battlements foreboding some unfathomable loss. At last Burr said, “There. That’s how it looked in my dream.”

  “I hope that means the inn from your dream is hard by. I could do with a stoup of good Warwick ale.”

  Burr looked up and down the street. “I don’t remember how the inn looked. But there’s a sign for the White Lion, and it seems fair enough.”

  “Fair enough for me.”

  The White Lion was anything but fair. It was so dark inside the two men thought at first it was closed. The thick, distorted panes in the high windows were smudged with layers of age-old grime. Despite the failing afternoon light, no lamps had yet been lit for night trade. The ale, though, was rich and bracing. Jack and Burr sat on a bench beneath the windows where they could stretch their legs, sit back against the wall, and watch the few half-shadowed customers hunched over their drinks. Gradually Jack perceived, partly by the hollow sound of voices deep within the dark, that the room was large, stretching far back from the narrow frontage along the road.

  After half an hour or so, from the depths of the room a form emerged like a huge, swaying apparition. Somehow the footsteps made no sound. It was not as if the big man moved into the dim light, but as if the pools of thick darkness slowly poured from his body. He was enormous, a full head at least taller than even Jack and perhaps twice his weight. He had to stoop beneath each ceiling-beam as he advanced directly toward the two travellers. From neck to ankle he wore light-colored clothing: whether white or something near white was impossible to tell. His feet were bare. There was purpose in his progress if he had been waiting for the two men’s arrival. He carried a large tankard that looked like a small cup in his massive hand. Jack drew up his legs so he could rise quickly if need be, and he slowly laid his hand on the hilt of his sheathed dagger. If the man saw the gesture, he did not show it. Slowly he turned and lowered himself onto the bench where the two sat. Jack could feel the thick board warp and lift him slightly as the man settled beside him.

  “Good day,” Jack said, turning to look at him. “Or good e’en, whichever it be.”

  The huge man nodded slowly, then raised the tankard to his lips. As far as Jack could tell, there was not a hair on him: neither on the pallid skin of his head nor his hands. No eyebrows, not even eyelashes. When the stranger raised his head to drink he added two or three folds to the back of his neck.

  Burr was sitting forward on the bench. “What would you say to us?” he asked.

  Slowly the man turned to look at Burr. “Why do you think I have aught to say?” The voice was deep and sonorous, befitting the form. He dealt the words out one by one, as if carefully laying them on a table.

  Burr took his time before replying. “I do not think it. I know it.”

  Again the pale man slowly nodded. Then he said, “You seek someone.”

  Burr glanced at Jack, who gave a little nod of consent. “Guido,” Burr said. “He is called Guido.”

  Jack thought the stranger’s eyes looked in the gloom neither brown nor blue, neither green nor gray, but a pale red, like blood leached into water. The man had not blinked since he sat. He took in a deep, slow draft of ale, spanning the time it would take most men to draw several breaths. His girth expanded, then retracted as he exhaled, and there was no more movement—as if, like some leviathan risen from the deep, he needed to breathe only once every few minutes. At length he said, “Ah.” The syllable was so rich, so resonant, that Jack felt the waves of it running through the vessel of ale in his left hand. His right still lay on the dagger. “Guido,” the big man said as he nodded. “Baddesley Clinton.”

  Burr asked, “Who is Baddesley Clinton?”

  A slight smile curled the corners of the stranger’s broad mouth. Jack answered the question for him. “Not who; what. Baddesley Clinton is a manor house. Not, I think, far away.” How he remembered as much, Jack couldn’t say. Some scrap of information from childhood, perhaps, lodged in the back of his mind. But that was all he knew about Baddesley Clinton. “Who owns it?”

  For the first time the big man turned a little to look from Burr to Jack. “The sisters Vaux.” Jack felt a thrill of recognition, whether because he had heard before and then forgotten who owned the house or because once again Eliza Vaux, who trusted him, might be able to help. She, or more likely her sister-in-law Eleanor, could be sheltering this Guido. So Eliza and Eleanor Vaux owned not only Harrowden Hall in the North but Baddesley Clinton in the Midlands. Like as not, he and Burr would find Guido tomorrow.

  Burr asked, “Can you tell us the way?”

  The stranger turned away and slowly, steadily drained the rest of his ale. He rose from the bench with what appeared to be little effort. “You know enough,” the man said, and he strode smoothly from them, ducking his head rhythmically under the beams as he made his way back into the shadows.

  Jack found himself exhaling forcefully, as if he had been unconsciously holding his breath. Then he said in a low voice, as if the huge man might hear him amid the dim chatter in the room, “Your dream. He was the hairless man from your dream, was he not?”

  Burr pursed his already wrinkled brow. “He was, and he was not. The man in my dream was nothing so large as this. I cannot remember what he wore. Not, I think, all white.”

  “Still, how did this creature know we were seeking someone?”

  Burr considered the matter. “We were two strangers, watching the customers. Maybe he guessed.”

  “Yet when he asked why we thought he had something to tell us, you said you did not think it, but you knew it. How did you know it?”

  Burr rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t think I did; but it seemed the thing to say.”

  “No. You dream of a hairless man, and that very day we find a hairless man who seems to know our business. Tim, you are a prophet.”

  Burr sipped his drink, then said, “If I am, I want no part of it.”

  “That is the way with prophets.”

  The two decided to put up for the night at another inn, the doings at the White Lion having left them uneasy about staying there. They found a comfortable enough room a mile or so away after taking a circuitous route and checking frequently along the path to be sure no one followed them.

  The next morning the innkeeper gave them good directions to Baddesley Clinton, telling them the house was less than three hours’ ride away. They rode north from Warwick as the clouds began to break, and as the mid-May sun rose in the sky, they began to feel warm and dry for the first time in days.

  The two travellers found the road to Baddesley Clinton, having been told at the inn that it led after a mile or so to the manor house and that no other dwelling stood along that road. The Vaux sisters owned all the land around, and the few husbandmen who tended the small portion of cleared land had their houses in a corner of the
estate fronted along another way. The road to the manor house had been cut through what Jack guessed was a remnant of the original Forest of Arden: the woods on either side stood thick with ancient oaks that looked as if no woodsman’s axe had molested them, time out of mind.

  The two men rode into a large clearing and stopped to look at the manor house at the center. Of itself the stone dwelling seemed warm and welcoming. But the moat that ringed it gave the house the look of a fortress. The two had to circle to the far side to find the bridge. Jack admired the design: anyone approaching the house could be seen from various vantage points within. Catholics holding a Mass would have time enough to hide crosses, rosaries, and the like. And priests: there would be time to hide priests.

  The bridge was wide enough for a wagon but led to a lowered portcullis with stout-looking oak doors behind. A thin, freckled boy of eleven or twelve sat on the bank of the moat beside the near end of the bridge. He held a fishing line that he pulled from the water when he saw the two horsemen approach. Jack thought he saw the boy also pull another string, twice, this one barely submerged beneath the water’s surface. Probably some sort of bell or other warning device would sound. The boy stood and squinted into the sun as he looked up at them.

  Jack said, “This, I take it, is Baddesley Clinton, the Vaux sisters’ house, is it not?”

  The boy said, “Indeed it is not, sir.”

  Jack raised his eyebrows. “Not?”

  “Not, sir. For you said you take it. If you take it, it is yours, not theirs.”

  Jack glanced at Burr, who looked back at him as if the boy spoke nothing but the purest truth. “Well,” Jack said. “Then I return it, with my compliments. And so I ask again: this is the Vaux sisters’ house, is it not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Then may we enter?”

  “That were impossible, sir.”

  Jack thumbed his hat back on his head a little. “Impossible, you say.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Your reason?”

  “You said ‘This is the Vaux sisters’ house, is it not?’ And I said yes, for it is not.”

  “So this is not the Vaux sisters’ house.”

  “That is true, sir, as I have just told you.”

  “Does Lady Eliza Vaux own it, or any part of it?”

  “She does.”

  “And does Mistress Eleanor own it, or any part of it?”

  “She does.”

  “Are the sisters within?”

  “They are not, sir.”

  Jack slowly shook his head, took a deep breath, and said, “Your reason.”

  “Which reason? For there are two.”

  “Both reasons, sirrah, if you please.”

  “The first is this: the sisters Vaux are not Vaux, and yet they are. For one was Vaux and now is not, and one was not and now is. Lady Eliza was never Vaux until she married Sir George Vaux and took his name. And Mistress Eleanor was born Vaux but married, though her husband is now long dead. So: the sisters are not sisters but sisters-in-law. If they were not they would be sisters out of law, and I were loath to think so ill of them.”

  “I see,” Jack said. “Your respect for the law does you great credit. And, if it please you, tell us your second reason, for I should like to finish this catechism before tomorrow breakfast.”

  The freckled boy smiled. “The second is easy: the sisters are not within the house because one of them is away at Harrowden.”

  “Which?”

  “Witch, say you? Oh, no, sir, she is no witch but a good Christian lady.”

  Jack turned to his companion. “Did you sire this child?”

  “I would be loath to think so,” Burr said dryly.

  “Well, God shield us from another Timothy Burr.” Turning back to the boy, Jack said, “Would the sister”—he corrected himself—“sister-in-law be the Dowager, Lady Eliza Vaux?”

  The boy put on a puzzled look. “Would she be? Do you not mean to say is she?”

  Jack looked at Burr. “Tim, I am sure this riddling bairn is of your tribe. Perhaps you can catechize him.”

  “With pleasure, Master Jack.” Burr turned to the boy. “Mistress Eleanor is within the house. If I speak true, tell me so.”

  “So.”

  Burr turned back to Jack. “What clearer answer could you seek?”

  The boy said to Burr, “You see, sir, this catechism is not as hard as your friend would make it.”

  “Well,” Burr said, “we must be kind to the addle-pated. But as for you, boy, who is your mother?”

  “Why, she that bore me.”

  “I think she did not,” Burr replied.

  The boy shielded his eyes with one hand to block the sun and get a better look at Burr. “Not?”

  “Not, sirrah, for no woman could bear you and your impertinence, nor no man neither. And so they have cast you out of the house and closed the gate.”

  “That much were true enough,” said the boy. “I am glad one of you speaks truth.”

  Burr turned to Jack and slowly lifted his palms as if to say, There: I have been telling you so these many months, and now a third party has confirmed it. Turning back to the boy, Burr said, “I think I speak truth when I say that if you went and asked Mistress Eleanor to admit us, she would do so.”

  “Again you speak truth, sir, as befits your years. You must teach the younger gentleman here to tell truth and shame the Devil.”

  “It were a lifelong venture,” Burr said. “Now, sirrah, what is your name?”

  “Ned Tidwell, an’t please you.”

  “An’t did not please me, would you be Ned Tidwell still?”

  “I would, sir.” The boy looked from Burr to Jack. “See? How clear this man reasons! We must look to the elderly for wisdom and truth.”

  Jack shook his head in half-serious exasperation and gestured to Burr. “Master Tim, I defer to your wisdom.”

  Burr nodded solemnly, leaned toward the boy, and said, “Ned Tidwell, would you go and ask Mistress Eleanor to admit us?”

  “I would, sir, if—”

  Burr stayed him with the lift of a finger. “If you do so within the next half a minute, Master Donne will give you two shillings sixpence.”

  The boy dropped his fishing line and bolted along the bridge toward the house. Jack glared at Burr, who looked him in the eye and said, “You deferred to my wisdom.”

  Ned Tidwell turned sideways, slipped between the bars, and pulled twice on a cord that hung between the portcullis and the heavy doors. After half a minute or so a small panel in one of the doors slid open, and the boy said, “It’s me. We have guests: two friends, as they say, of Lady Eliza.” The panel slid shut again, and the riders heard the sound of sliding bolts. The door with the panel creaked open enough for the boy to enter, then closed again. The bolts slid back into place.

  Jack and Burr waited for several minutes before they heard the sound of the bolts again. Then the door opened and with the clanking of a chain around the belly of a wooden winch, the portcullis slowly creaked upward. When the bottom of it was chest-high, a woman’s voice said, “Welcome, Master Donne, Master Burr.” So the boy had remembered their names, which they had mentioned only in passing. Jack wondered how much of Ned Tidwell’s evasiveness had been the whim of a quick-witted boy and how much a deliberate device to give the inhabitants of Baddesley Clinton time: maybe delaying visitors was something the boy had been trained to do.

  Only with the invitation to enter did the men dismount and tether their horses to a post at the near end of the bridge. Jack unfastened the rolled blanket containing the skull and carried it with him. By the time he and Burr reached the portcullis it was high enough to enter without stooping. Then it dropped behind them with clamorous speed, slowing only within a few inches of the threshold before the spiked bottom settled into holes and the base-plate thudded into place.

  Mistress Eleanor Vaux was a small woman, slightly stooped but vigorous, with dark hair just beginning to gray and piercing blue eyes s
et in a plain face. Jack could well believe she was no sister but a sister-in-law to the large, square-jawed Dowager of Harrowden. Eleanor’s gait was quick despite what must have been painful joints. She resembled nothing so much as a light-boned bird of prey. The likeness between the sisters-in-law, Jack guessed, lay in their leather-tough souls.

  Eleanor turned first to Burr and spoke crisply. “I am afraid Ned’s mother, who cooks for us, has taken ill today. But Ned knows his way about the larder and kitchen. Would you be so kind as to help him prepare us some dinner?”

  Before Burr could reply, the boy said, “We could have fresh fish, an’ if you would let me finish catching some.”

  “After dinner,” she said, “you may fish for our supper. But for now”—she pointed toward the kitchen—“show Mr. Burr our provisions, look to our guests’ horses, and then return to help him prepare the meal.”

  As Ned started to slink toward the kitchen, Burr nodded slightly to Eleanor Vaux and said, “I make no promises, but perhaps the result will be edible.” He followed the boy.

  As Mistress Vaux led Jack away in the other direction, she said over her shoulder, “Ned tells me you know the late Sir George Vaux’s wife.”

  “I do,” Jack said. “She showed us great kindness at Harrowden.”

  “If she mentioned your visit, it has escaped my poor mind. Nor would it be the first thing to escape.”

  “She introduced me to. . . . May I speak openly, Mistress Vaux?”

  “Of course. All in my poor household are friends.”

  “To Father Gerard. He heard my confession.”

  “Ah. A good man, Father Gerard. Or so it is bruited about.”

  So Mistress Vaux still had her guard up. Jack had little doubt she knew John Gerard well. Probably she knew every other Jesuit in the land, too.

  They entered a simply appointed room. She sat, motioning him to do the same, and asked, “Did you meet anyone else at Harrowden?”

  “Owen. One Nicholas Owen.”

  “Ah. I have heard the name, I think.”

  She no doubt knew Owen too, master-craftsman of priest-holes. Probably some of Owen’s hiding places lay concealed in this very house. Jack would have to convince Mistress Eleanor to trust him. “Perhaps you know my mother,” he said, “or have heard of her. Two of her husbands have died, and the Channel separates her from the third. She is now Elizabeth Rainsford, before that Elizabeth Syminges, before that Elizabeth Donne.”