The Alchemist's Daughter

by Mary Lawrence

  Jolyn had fallen off the bench, taking half the distillation tubing with her. The copper made a terrible clatter; crockery smashed, scattering shards of glass and pottery on the table and floor. Liquids streamed from the table onto the bench. But more disconcerting to Bianca than losing her latest experiment was seeing Jolyn writhing on the floor.

  Bianca rushed to her side, lifting Jolyn’s head into her lap. But it was as if her friend had flown to another place and time. Jolyn’s eyes stared up at her, vacant and unseeing.

  “Speak to me!” Bianca slapped her cheeks, hoping to jar Jolyn back. Instead, Jolyn’s arms swung up in an abrupt spasm. Bianca just missed being hit. She grabbed hold of Jolyn’s wrists to pin them against the floor, but her friend’s strength was greater. Unable to control her friend’s convulsions, Bianca sat back, helplessly watching Jolyn thrash. Jolyn’s head wrenched at an unnatural angle, her jaw tipped up and clenched tight as a vise.

  Perspiration soaked Jolyn’s flushed skin, and her hair stuck to her forehead as if she had been caught in a storm.

  Bianca threw herself across Jolyn’s chest, leaning in with all her weight, hoping to control her bucking. Eventually the thrashing ceased and the convulsions subsided. Bianca sat back and laid her hand against Jolyn’s neck. Her friend’s pulse grew thready and began to fade.

  Had her remedy caused her to convulse? The thought was too awful, and she immediately dismissed her misgivings as she scanned the room for something, an antidote, anything she could give Jolyn to save her. Spying a flask of rancid goat milk, she leapt to her feet and grabbed it off a shelf. The smell made her gag, but she knelt beside Jolyn and forced the liquid down her friend’s throat.

  “Jolyn, drink, swallow. I will not let you go. I am here. Please. Look at me. Swallow . . .”

  Jolyn began to retch. She turned her head and vomited into the rush, drawing her knees toward her chin. Relief washed over Bianca in hopes that her friend could purge whatever was causing her suffering.

  But with Jolyn’s last heave, her body grew still. What little strength remained . . . vanished, and Bianca felt the full weight of Jolyn’s head settle in her lap. She peered down at her friend and saw her mouth part. A trickle of purple-tinged blood coursed from her lips.

  Bianca screamed. She shook Jolyn and slapped her face. When finally her anguished cries faded to whimpers, she laid Jolyn out on the floor and stared into her friend’s wide, unblinking eyes. Eyes that saw nothing but Bianca’s failure to save her.

  CHAPTER 4

  Banes Perkins stuck his finger into the wax of a burning candle. He withdrew it, letting the wax cool, then peeled the cast off his fingertip and admired it. He had made a modest pile of impressions when he heard Mrs. Beldam’s shrill voice carry down the stairs. He ignored her, knowing she’d lose patience and eventually seek him out anyway. Banes had time to melt the casts over the flame before she saw him wasting their precious wax candles.

  “Banes! Banes!” she called, tromping down the stairs. She arrived in the doorway to see him blow out the candle and shove it away. She eyed him suspiciously. “Banes, a rat has got in. Ye needs to take care of it straightaway.” She stood like a sentry, ready to bark at him if he didn’t move fast enough.

  Banes pushed himself from the board with his one good hand. He had a talent for dispensing with vermin—he’d had plenty of practice at Barke House. The residence stood within sight of the Thames and Morgan’s Lane stream—effectively an open sewer. The rats treated Barke House with the same disregard shown by their neighbors. Neither took Mrs. Beldam’s attempt to redeem its sullied reputation seriously.

  Before Banes got two steps, Mrs. Beldam blocked his exit.

  “I’ll need you to go for purgative, but take care of the rat before one of the girls gets bit.”

  Banes skirted her scabbard-gray eyes, avoiding their astute stare. She had a way of demeaning him even when he’d done nothing wrong.

  “Aye, m’um,” he mumbled, squeezing past her squared shoulders.

  He grabbed a cloth he’d reserved for just such occasions and climbed the stairs to the second floor. A few of the women were away for the day, trying to earn what they could by working in taverns or picking pockets at the theater or bear-baiting venues. Not all shillings earned were honestly made, but the aim at Barke House was to at least try. The women’s ultimate goal was achieving a more virtuous life, but it was nearly impossible to do. It required a certain amount of cunning to survive, and wiliness was not akin to godliness.

  Banes sidestepped a pile of laundered clothing waiting to be put away. He moved with stealth, not wishing to alert the rat or women of his arrival. Perhaps he might glimpse Pandy or, he hoped, Jolyn in a state of partial undress.

  He clutched his rat cloth with his right hand, and with the fingers of his left (for he had no thumb) lightly touched the wall to balance as he crept up the stairs. The risers usually groaned with a shift of weight, but he knew where to place his foot on every stair. He was practiced at keeping silent and unnoticed.

  He reached the landing and stood for a moment to inhale the scent of lavender and crushed rose petals wafting from the women’s rooms. The smell was thought to repel mice and centipedes, but as both retreated into the wall cracks ahead of him, Banes thought perhaps the ladies should rethink this idea.

  Jolyn’s room was nearest, and he noted with disappointment that she was not in. He moved forward, hoping to peer undetected into Kara’s room, when suddenly Pandy burst into the hall, screaming hysterically and swatting a rat with a broom.

  “Banes, get him!” she shrieked. Pandy ran behind the homely lad and pushed him forward.

  The rat ran toward them, but when Pandy screamed, it turned and scuttled down the hall in the opposite direction.

  “Kill it! Kill it!” Pandy’s shouts were answered with another scream, this time from Kara’s room, where the rat had ducked.

  Banes straightened, relishing the attention. Mostly he was ignored at Barke House. He heard their titters and saw the distaste in their eyes. One cannot help being born with a shortened arm and missing thumb. Did they think he chose this?

  He stepped forward, readying his cloth, and peered into Kara’s room. The rat had trapped itself in a corner and was desperately scratching at the wall as Kara sat on a window ledge with her knees pulled up to her chin. “Banes, hurry!”

  Banes took in the room, a rare opportunity for him. He saw a petticoat draped across a chair, stockings drying from a nail on a beam. A brush lay on a table with lustrous bronze hair caught in its bristles. The smell of lavender, the smell of a woman . . .

  “Banes!”

  Banes startled, feeling his face color. He held the cloth open, advancing on the unwanted guest. Kara swept up her dangling kirtle and sat on it for fear the rat would dig its claws into the wool and climb. She spewed a stream of foul language at the rodent, and if Banes didn’t soon dispense with the creature, it would be directed at him.

  Banes clicked his tongue at the rat. The creature glanced at the curious-looking human but returned to its frantic scratching instead of running. Banes crouched, steadied his rag, and fixed his inscrutable black eyes on his prey.

  Kara fell silent, entranced by the way Banes approached the rat. He was certainly practiced, but the lad’s eerie manner was oddly mesmerizing. The rat seemed to be listening to his strange clucking. It stopped scratching and quieted as if waiting for him—almost as if it trusted him.

  Banes lunged. He grabbed the rat out of the corner and, with the four fingers of his left hand, threw the cloth over its head. Its legs kicked and its torso squirmed as Banes tightened his hold around its neck. After a minute, its legs went slack. Its ringed tail fell limp. He had squeezed the life out of it.

  Kara noticed the young man, to his credit, did not take pleasure in his task. He was composed in his office, dispensing the rat with cool efficiency. For Banes, it was a matter of routine at Barke House. If she had seen a gleam in his eye or a hint of a smile on his lips, she�
�d have trusted him less and noticed him more. Instead, once Banes had strangled the rodent and left her room, she’d give little more thought to the lad.

  And that was how Banes preferred it.

  With the dead rat held at arm’s length, Banes passed Pandy, who shrank back, then followed him down the stairs. “That’s the second one in a day,” she said. “ ’Ow they gettin’ in?”

  Banes did not answer. He did not know. But he had noticed the increase. He opened the door and glupped across the muddy lane toward the field stream as Pandy watched from the stoop. He glanced once over his shoulder, assuring himself of an audience, then hurled the rat downstream in the direction of the Thames.

  By the time he returned, Pandy was in conversation with Mrs. Beldam in the kitchen.

  “We’ve already gone through it,” said Mrs. Beldam, peering into a jar on an upper shelf. The statuesque woman looked even more forbidding when standing on a footstool. Everyone else seemed to shrink by comparison.

  Pandy stood next to the board, gazing up at her. “Like I’s sayin’. It’s rainin’ rats. One climbed the vine outside and was starin’ in at me with its beady eyes, it was. I had to scare it off with the end of a broom. Was likely to have me for dinner, it was.” Pandy settled at the table.

  Mrs. Beldam looked through another couple of jars before stepping down from her boost. “Well, it is that time of year. Spring brings ’em out. They’re mad to nest a brood.” She frowned at the sight of Banes. “Did ye take care of it?”

  “Aye, m’um.” Banes sat at the board next to Pandy, who scooched away. He leaned his chin on his good hand and watched the two of them.

  “I’d like to know how they be getting in,” said Mrs. Beldam. She settled her fists on either hip and gazed around the room as if considering it from the point of view of a rat. Her sharp nose and calculating stare did little to dissuade Banes from thinking her akin to one.

  “I bet it got in when Jolyn came home,” said Pandy, scratching her neck. “Probably lurked outside the door. It was still mostly dark, then.”

  “Where is Jolyn?” asked Mrs. Beldam. It was midmorning, and she hadn’t seen the fair-haired beauty since yesterday.

  “I don’t knows. Not my job to watch ’at one.” Pandy stuffed a loose strand of hair back under her coif. The young woman was blessed with a creamy complexion rivaling Jolyn’s, but the latter had vivid blue eyes that drew a man’s notice faster than a dog on a crumb. Pandy’s own eyes were a nondescript hazel and mirrored her cunning. “I do know it was the wee hours in the mornin’. I heard her stumblin’ about on the stairs.”

  “She didn’t have breakfast and then she is gone again so soon?” said Mrs. Beldam, furrowing her thin brow.

  “I say she thinks she’s above us now that she’s taken up with Wynders.” Pandy toyed with a wood spoon as her eyes slid sideways to catch Banes’s reaction. She was not above planting seeds of mischief.

  Mrs. Beldam glanced at Banes, whose shoulders, at the mention of Jolyn and her suitor, sagged. “Well, as long as she is here, she’s no better than the rest of ye,” she said, disparaging the girl in her campaign to make him believe that Jolyn was not worth losing his heart over. “She must earn her keep like everyone else. Until Wynders drops on one knee, I put little faith in all his supposed mollycoddling.”

  Mrs. Beldam knew the boy was captivated by the rescued gamine, and she did not approve. He’d be a fool to think that girl would ever consider him more than a grotesque cuffin, one to be shunned and jeered for his devil-cursed deformity. She wished she could make him see his lunacy. Make him set his affection upon someone more his kind.

  “It’s not supposed,” said Pandy. “She keeps prancing in with new boots and gloves.”

  “You’re jealous,” sang a voice. Kara leaned against the doorjamb with her arms folded, listening to every word. She stepped into the kitchen and fetched a drink. “The minute Wynders saw Jolyn, he was done with you.”

  “Well, he never looked at you.”

  “Perhaps because I never looked at him.”

  Banes reveled in the girls’ sniping. It was one benefit to living at Barke House. The entertainment was worth more than a ticket to a dogfight.

  “We’ve more important matters.” Mrs. Beldam drew herself to her full height and fixed them with a stolid glare. “The two of youse need to be on about your day and stop dallyin’ about and givin’ me fits. We haven’t enough to feed the rat traps, and now they’s ready to take up lodgin’ here.” She riffled through the coins in her purse with a crooked finger. “I’ve barely enough for necessities today.” She cinched it closed and let it dangle from the rope attaching it to her waist. The cord was frayed and grungy, but she never replaced it or even removed the purse from her body. “Get on now,” she said to Kara and Pandy. “I’ve had me fill of ye.”

  The two women sauntered from the kitchen and sullenly headed up the stairs. Banes anticipated a gusty bout of name-calling before they finally made it out the door that morning. When he turned back to the table, Mrs. Beldam was watching him.

  “We ’aven’t enough for the rat poison and purgative both.” She placed a shilling on the table in front of him. “For now, fetch the purgative. We’ll deal with the rats later.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Bianca sat in a daze as two men peered down at her friend’s corpse. She’d run to Boisvert’s and roused John from the silversmith’s shop, much to the Frenchman’s irritation, but seeing her distraught and with eyes nearly swollen shut from crying, he relented. He sent them on their way, foisting a bottle of wine on them, which for him was a tonic for all matters both good and bad.

  John sent her home while he sought out the watch and constable from Southwark, who now stood over Jolyn, taking turns scratching their heads and making obvious comments.

  “Well, I would say she’s not with the livin’, that’s for defi-nites,” said the watch. “Should I fetch the coroner, sir?”

  Constable Patch looked up after a moment. His costume appeared shabby and worn, befitting an official not of London but of the more battered Southwark, across the river. A poniard hung from his waist, Bianca thought for show, for the man did not seem to possess the wit to use it. “Aye, this time of day ’e’s most likely at the Turn Bull. Look there first.”

  The watch scurried out the door, eager to tell the coroner and anyone else the news about a young woman’s death.

  The constable crooked his head to look at Jolyn from another angle. “And she just dropped—dead as dung?”

  Bianca flinched at the comparison. She hated public officials. She found them less useful than a hangnail and would not have bothered if John hadn’t insisted. “They’ll hang you straight up if word gets out a girl died in your rent,” he had told her. “You can’t conceal her body or that she died here, Bianca. How would you get her out with no one noticing? And then what would you do with her body once you got her out?”

  She had caved to John’s appeal, but this shivery ass did little to convince Bianca that this had been a good decision.

  “So’s ye say she groused of stomach complaints? Feelin’ squeamish and a bit noxious?”

  Bianca did her best to answer the man with an even temper. “Aye, she mentioned she had eaten of rich foods she had not been used to. And she said she was nauseous.”

  “Rich foods,” repeated Patch, pulling his goatee. “What sorts of rich foods?”

  “She mentioned sweetmeats, stuffed figs, exotical fare.”

  “Exotical fare,” echoed Patch. He continued to tug at his spotty facial hair. “And how might she ’ave come by that, do ye suppose?”

  “She had a suitor, sir. He brought her treats from abroad.”

  “Treats from abroad.” Constable Patch considered this. “So ’e’s a sea captain?”

  “Nay, he is not.” Bianca had little faith that this public official could make any more sense of Jolyn’s death than she. “He might have been an owner of a ship, or perhaps he worked shoreside. I do not know.”<
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  “And did this suitor possess a name?”

  Bianca looked to John. “I don’t believe she mentioned it. Or, if she did, I don’t recall.”

  John shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t remember her saying.”

  Patch turned his sights on the young silversmith and studied him before speaking. “Ye don’t remember?”

  Bianca watched Patch continue to work his chin hair and thought the man would soon have nothing left to pull.

  “Perhaps ye don’t remember because ye don’t want to say?”

  John clamped shut his mouth, stifling the urge to protest. To a man such as Patch, arguing could be construed as evidence of conniving or, even worse, guilt.

  “Sir, she did not say.” Bianca had no qualms setting the man straight.

  Patch now turned his stare on Bianca. His eyes drifted to the elaborate copper contraption that loomed behind her. “And what is it ye do here?” Patch’s gaze traveled the length of the room, taking in shelves lined with jars and crockery. A pear-shaped pot with a neck like that of a swan sat neglected in a corner. Bunches of herbs hung from beams, the smells mingling with more unpleasant ones. Not the usual stuff of a young woman. A red cat perched on a joist, its eyes staring back at him, mirrored yellow.

  But as Bianca started to explain, a knock came at the door, and into her room of Medicinals and Physickes stepped a man most like a roast beef, dressed in a brown doublet and small ruff choking what would be his neck. With a lift of his chin, he appraised his surroundings.

  “Coroner,” said Patch, offering the man a slight bow.

  “Patch,” acknowledged the man in a stentorian voice, but he paid no more attention to the constable than he would a gnat. He tolerated the sniveling fool because he had to. No one else in the ward was willing to take on the role of constable of this godforsaken precinct for so little pay and so little respect. He despised coming to Southwark; nothing good ever came of it.