Alchemy

by Maureen Duffy

  The lane was narrow with the upper storeys on either side overhanging the street and cutting out the light of sun and sky. Yet this was nothing to the darkness that fell upon me when one from behind threw a cloak or sack over my head choking me in its folds, at the same time pinioning my arms. I felt he had the barrel of a pistol pressing into my ribs and heard a voice I did not know warning me not to cry out as I was hurried stumbling along, with my feet hardly dragging on the cobbles.

  At length I felt myself being bumped down a stairway and smelt the river stink even through the folds of the cloth covering my head. Then I prepared to try to swim for my life, though I had no skill in it, thinking my captors intended to drown me in the Thames. Instead I was thrown into the bottom of a boat that rose and fell with the waves from other passing boats. I lay there face down with a great weight pressing on my back which I understood from the reek of piss and ordure was one of my captors sitting on me. At length the boat drew in to the shore again. I was lifted to my feet and hurried up more steps. At the top we paused. Suddenly I felt a blow on the back of my head. Darkness overcame me and I fell down in a swoon.

  When I came to my senses again all was still dark. Now my arms and ankles were bound and I seemed to be completely shrouded in a sack from head to foot. I thanked God that it smelled of straw and nothing worse and was of a loose weave or I might have stifled unable to catch my breath.

  Even so I swooned from time to time and the bumping of the cart or coach in which I lay gave me a great pain in my head from the blow it had suffered. Sometimes I felt a sneezing fit threaten me from the dust in the sacking but I knew that I must be very quiet and pretend still to a swoon or one might silence me for ever with a cold blade. Many hours as I believed passed while the carriage rumbled on jolting my every limb as I lay there.

  Sometimes I despaired at the thought that I was being taken to some lonely spot to be murdered. At others that I would simply die of pain and thirst so that I was grateful for those times when I lost all sense of the world and blackness closed in on me again. At last after one such fit, I woke to find the cart had stopped.

  A voice said: ‘We should let him drink. We were charged not to let him die on the way before he can be brought before the justice.’ I recognised in it the speech of my native country.

  ‘What has he done?’ another voice asked.

  ‘I was not told, only that the doctor could get nothing from the law in London where they are all rogues and atheists and would have him brought home to be judged by our own magistrate, and where witnesses can be summoned to speak against him. I will take off the sack and give him some water.’

  I felt one to jump down beside me where I lay and continued to feign dead as the cover was taken from me and I could smell night air. ‘Wake up young master,’ the first voice said and I suffered a stinging blow to my cheek that made me open my eyes. ‘That’s better. We would not have you die on us. Drink some of this.’

  My head was lifted up and a leather bottle of water put to my lips which I sucked on greedily. ‘You have hit him too hard Master Avery. See, his head still bleeds.’

  ‘It is but a little blood.’

  ‘There is more on his shirt. How came that there?’

  ‘How should I know? It is none of my doing. Something in the bottom of the boat or the cart.’

  ‘Nevertheless we should search it for fear he should bleed to death and we have laboured for nothing.’

  I heard the first man curse and then he laid hands on my shirt and tore at the fastenings. I turned my head away.

  ‘What have we here? Look, Woodman, a woman’s teats.’

  ‘Not so Master Avery. They be too small.’

  ‘Small I grant you but a maid’s. See the nipples on there. A boy’s lie small and flat no bigger than half a young pea. Remember your own as you was coming to manhood.’ He here slapped my cheek again. ‘Tell us, are you man or a maid?’

  ‘Perhaps it is a eunuch. As I have heard they have the breasts of a woman.’

  ‘There’s one way for the truth of this. Off with his slops.’ They began to drag the rest of me from the sack.

  ‘Stay, stay.’

  ‘Ah, it speaks at last. Tell us what you are.’

  ‘I am my father’s daughter, and his only son.’

  ‘Do not jest with us or try to trip us with fine words.’

  ‘I am the survivor of twins and therefore may be carrying both within me.’

  ‘This is scholar’s talk. Answer us plain.’

  ‘My brother died when our mother bore us.’ ‘So in place of a pretty boy we have a pretty maid.’ ‘But she is in man’s attire Master Avery and such are either rogues, whores or witches.’

  ‘Have we here a thieving Moll Cutpurse or Joan, the French witch, you mean? We could throw her in the pond nearby to see if she floats. What do you say mistress? Or I could make trial of her myself. If the rest is as pretty as what we see it would be no great penance.’

  ‘Have a care Master Avery. They do say that if a man lie with a witch his prick will blacken and shrivel for he goes where the devil has been before. And it may be that as the devil gives witches the power to change shape, then this that we thought a man at first is indeed so, only now changed to deceive us into kindness. Then had you lain with a man in likeness of a maid who might perhaps change back even in the midst of the act.’ ‘God defend us, you are right Woodman. I will not meddle with her. Let us close her up in the sack again lest she cry out against us, for she has a nimble wit and tongue and might accuse us of a felony against her. By her manner of speech she may have powerful friends. Let us be on our way and rid of her as soon as may be.’

  I hadn’t opened the envelope Davidson had passed on from Mary-Ann Molders since he had given it to me. I’d put it in the drawer of my desk and forgotten about it. Now I’m wondering if it might hold any clues to what’s really going on at Wessex. I spread the contents out to give them the onceover, as Marlowe might have put it, or maybe that was Damon Runyon.

  There’s a glossy brochure with stuff I recognise from the Temple website including Apostle Joachim’s address. This is public stuff and doesn’t add anything to what I already know. Then there’s a couple of sheets stapled together, marked strictly confidential: Guidance for the Elect. Introduction. Aspirants for Election. Submission to The Word and the Covenant. There’s a lot about ‘purity’, by which they seem to mean abstinence from sex, and having all things in common. Then there’s a section headed: ‘Resurrection People’. It’s Joachim’s old theme of living in the last days, on the fringe of eternity.

  ‘And in the last days the children of light shall gather together to wait upon the coming. And they shall all take oath together to be lifted up, leaving the darkness below, and they shall rise into the light and stand before the lord of the covenant forsaking Belial and the snares of this world. And those who have gone before shall welcome them into the resurrection.’

  Where does this rigmarole come from or is it Joachim’s own confection, whipped up with bits of religious texts from here and there and put through the Temple blender? Even more bizarre is why anyone should go along with it. Except of course those deep in depression or who can’t cope with all the stuff just living throws at you. The unsure, the vulnerable. It’s a clever mix made up of the security that can come from belonging to a community and of the simple life away from the messiness of being in the world. And they all lived and died happy ever after.

  I still can’t see what the Joachims and Bishops get out of it apart from an exercise of power, of being able to manipulate other people. But then I’m forgetting Charlie’s cousin and the will she made in favour of the Temple. All the soaring high-mindedness may boil down to simple greed. Except that greed is never that simple.

  The phone rings. It’s Charlie.

  ‘Where are you, Charlie?’

  ‘I’m at my uncle’s. My friend says there is great excitement among the elect. Something is going on but he doesn’t know what it is.
Yesterday evening all the theology students were called to a special service in the chapel. The dean told them that Hester Ado had gone to prepare a place for them. That she was tired of this world and wanted to go home. Then the rest were asked to leave and only the elect stayed behind. It was when they came back to hall that he noticed the excitement but no one would talk about it.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘My friend rings me on his mobile. He says he’s sure something will happen soon. All the other students are away revising. What can it be, Jade?’

  ‘Is your friend frightened?’

  ‘Not for himself. He thinks whatever it is only concerns the elect. But he says they were all told to wait for the coming of the Paraclete at Pentecost. I don’t understand what that means, Jade.’

  ‘You’re not a Christian, Charlie?’

  He laughs. ‘Confucius he say…’

  ‘Well if I remember rightly the Paraclete is the Holy Ghost, the Comforter in Christian terms and he or it came down as tongues of fire and settled on the heads of the followers of Jesus and they were able to prophesy but in different tongues from their own. A sort of mass takeover by a spiritual power with a divine translation service.’

  When Charlie rings off promising to keep me up to speed on anything more his friend learns, I worry about the timing of this event the elect are being prepared for: Pentecost. The happening itself could be just another of those ‘Gatherings’ where somebody goes into a trance, the next Hester Ado. In which case he or more likely she could be in danger of some kind especially since, according to Charlie’s friend, everyone’s pretty hyped up already.

  I log on to Google and search for Pentecost. Alias Whitsun in the Western Church. The date was last Sunday and nowadays it doesn’t even merit a Bank Holiday to follow. I seem to remember having at least a day off school when I was at primary. Was that the day Hester killed herself? If that’s indeed what she did, and does the date have some symbolic meaning? There’s more to the entry. In the Eastern Orthodox Church I see Pentecost is a week later. Everything is: Christmas, Easter. So it’s still to come. Maybe the elect get two goes at Pentecost. I dig out the Bible I keep in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet in case anyone wants to swear on it. According to the internet entry Pentecost is described in the Acts of the Apostles. I turn the pages and read: ‘When the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire…’

  The theology students were all told to wait for the coming of the Paraclete at Pentecost. So whatever happened to Hester Ado wasn’t the big number, even if it happened at the Western Whitsun. The real happening will be next Sunday to coincide with the Eastern date. That’s what the elect are being whipped up for. But what do they expect? Tongues of fire. The gift of prophecy. To be transformed.

  On an impulse I go downstairs to the Crusader and set off for Wessex. I’m too hyped up myself to sit still and I’ve chewed over what we know until there’s nothing more to be got out of it like a lump of overworked gum. I wonder if my security card will let me through the gate or if the CCTV cameras will set off an alarm somewhere deep in the building. But the theologs who live in can’t be locked up for ever. Presumably they’re allowed to go out into the town to buy toothpaste. Even so it’s a relief of sorts to be through the gates and wheeling the Crusader along the tarmac path without, as far as I can tell, all hell breaking loose around me.

  I decide to play it cool, knowing I’ll be watched, and head for the library. Almost I expect to find the door locked but it swings open with a push. There’s no one sitting at the desks. I’m alone. I browse along the shelves pretending to search for a book, take down a couple, check the contents pages, linger over the index and put them back. Finally I settle on Who’s Who on the Elizabethan Stage and try to look engrossed. As the minutes run by, time doesn’t tick any more, it goes with a digital flow, I’m sucked in by the ghostly procession of actors in that old history play that was the backdrop to Amyntas’ life. After half an hour in which no one else has come into the library, I feel I’ve established my bona fides and return the book to the shelf with a show of reluctance that’s only half feigned.

  Everything about the place seems normal, apart from the absence of students. Then I think I hear a voice from the direction of the chapel and head off there framing my alibi as I go. Just popping in for a quiet word. As I get closer the sounds get louder and more varied: voices and knocking. I turn the corner, stop and backtrack quickly. It’s a regular hive of activity out there with unidentifiable equipment being carried in under the supervision of the Molders.

  I decide not to confront her but to try to get round the back of the chapel and see if I can find another way in. There’s a little door in the corridor that might lead outside, a door that Alice might have squeezed through to another world. I turn the handle and slip out. Presto! I’m where I want to be alongside the chapel walk. There’s a fringe of tall nettles growing out of the gravel giving off their unmistakable acid smell under a hot sun rare for early June. I make my way round two sides with the long windows high above stretching towards the cupola. I try to visualise the inside of the chapel as I saw it before but I find I have only an impression of elongated saints and columns in dried blood, purple and gold.

  Round the next angle I see the nettles have been hacked away at the foot of an iron stairway that must have been an emergency exit put in by the Victorian builders. There’s a small door underneath the bottom spiral, another halfway up the building and a final one at the top. Perhaps it wasn’t an emergency exit but for access to the roof for maintenance. The top of the cupola has a lightning conductor. Maybe that’s it. Or perhaps there was a bell up in the roof for summoning the girls to matins when it was St Walburgha’s. The nettles have been cleared right up to the first little door under the curving fretted iron treads. There’s a big iron ring I grasp and turn. The latch lifts. The pointed Gothic door gives. With a quick look round and hoping there’s no one already in there I step inside. I want to close the door behind me but it’s too dark to see apart from a thin rectangle of light that must be outlining a door on the other side. I can hear noises from beyond it: the same noises I heard in the corridor. I run my hand down the damp stone door frame and find a switch but daren’t put on the light. If only I had a torch.

  Gradually my eyes begin to pick a shape out of the gloom: a big fuse box that looks as if it dates back to the original Victorian Gothic building. Beside it gleaming in white plastic is a new installation. I cross the coldly sweating brick floor and pull carefully on the front corner. Suddenly it drops forward on a hinge at the bottom. There’s a main fuse and two switches in the off position. I close the cover. Time to get out of here. At the door I peer quickly round the frame. There’s still no one about. I step through, pull the door to behind me and drop the iron latch, expecting every second to hear a voice demanding to know what I’m doing.

  My legs are watery with fear and tension but I have to go on. With another quick look round I start up the iron stairs hoping they’re not going to collapse in a heap of rust under my feet or the old brackets fixing to the brickwork be wrenched out with my weight, letting the whole spiral cascade in slow motion down the side of the chapel, with me clinging on, like in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

  The two higher doors are duplicates of the one at the bottom with the same big iron ring latches. I open the lower one and step through. The floor is stone not brick and there’s the same outline of a door opposite. I need to know what’s out there. Surely you can’t just walk out on air with a sheer drop to the chapel floor. Splat! I can’t hear the noises up here. Is it because I’m too high? Or have they really stopped? I must find out if that door will open and what happens on the other side. I cross the floor and feel for some kind of handle.

  It’s the same ring as th
e others. I turn it as silently as I can and edge the door open a crack. I put my right ear to it and listen. Silence. I risk opening the crack up a couple of inches and put my right eye to it. I can see that the door opens on to a gallery with a twisted barley sugar railing only a few feet away. I crouch down and open the door enough to get my head through so that I can turn it to look in both directions and across at the far side of the chapel. The gallery runs all the way round. There’s not a sound from below. I crawl out on hands and knees and look down through the twisted fretwork of rails. The chapel is empty. The big doors are shut but I don’t risk standing up.

  Craning my neck to look up I see there’s another smaller gallery running round the inside of the cupola. That must be what the top door opens on to. Looking down again I see a giant screen has been fixed to where the altar would have been. Then I notice at equidistant points along the railings what looks like some kind of spotlight. There’s one not far from the door. It seems to have a strange bulb. Halogen perhaps. But I daren’t go out on to the gallery to examine it properly. Instead I crawl backwards through the doorway. Stand up. Close the door and go out on to the iron staircase into a sunlight that hurts my eyes.

  At first I can’t see at all and feel naked, exposed up there against the wall like a fly waiting to be swallowed. Again I’m lucky and there’s no shout of command to come down. When my eyes have adjusted I begin to climb the last bit of staircase. By now I’m an expert with these doors. It occurs to me that the locks and hinges must have been used or even oiled recently for them to work so smoothly. I step off the emergency stairs into the last little darkened room. This time I cross boldly and open the door a whole inch. The second gallery, railed like the first, is in front of me but above it are the panes of the cupola letting in a strong white light. I glance down and my head swims a bit with vertigo. Not for the first time I decide abseiling, skydiving and all the dangly sports aren’t for me. I cling on to the door frame for support.