Alchemy

by Maureen Duffy

  The gaoler’s wife crossed herself: ‘This is indeed magic for I feel the heat rising already in my own privities. It is a pity we women cannot conceive as and when we please, with or without men. Then the world could be better ordered.’ She gathered up the things into her apron pocket and went away laughing.

  All next day I waited for news of the Grand Jury, sometimes able to write in my memorials, sometimes only to walk about the cell or stare up at the changing square of light. Even the mouse seemed to have left me. At length as the day was fading and I was in need of a light for my candle, I heard the door being unbolted. I stood up in spite of the trembling in my legs. It was the gaoler.

  ‘Your fate is decided mistress, the Grand Jury finds not enough case for a trial in the allegation of witchcraft since there is no evidence from others than the doctor, and the lady lives. Yet your confession of being a counterfeit will keep you here, for they say that you showed no real penitence. Therefore you are remanded to the gaol for a twelvemonth. But for your help to my wife you shall have no harshness from me. Only I could say something if I would that could yet have you tried as a witch. But you are safe with me. Here is the light for your candle and a cake of my wife’s baking.’

  When he was gone I was torn again between relief and despair: relief that my trial was not to be but despair that I should languish here at the mercy of the doctor. And no matter how grateful the gaoler and his wife were now, if he should fail again and my remedy cease to be efficacious, then he would turn against me, and I knew no more that I could prescribe to his help. Then he might accept a bribe and let in the men who had brought me here. It would be easy for them to smother me and put it about that I had died of gaol fever as indeed I might. So I turned this way and that, seeking a way out and wishing I were indeed what they had alleged and had the power to shrink myself to the size of the mouse that came and went as it pleased or fly away out of that place.

  The ambulance man insisted that all three of us, me, Charlie and Omi, should be checked out for smoke inhalation or burns and whisked us off to the nearest A & E department. There we sat about, falling asleep while the real wounded were attended to, getting cups of vile coffee and bars of chocolate from a machine until called, examined and discharged.

  ‘You’re not fit enough to drive, however. Where do you live?’ the tired young doctor said as I sat on the examination couch with its dried-blood plastic skin.

  ‘London.’

  ‘Take a train.’ So we abandoned our bikes which anyway were five miles behind us in the shed at Wessex if they hadn’t gone up in flames with the rest of the building. I was too tired to ask or even to care. I slept most of the way to Waterloo, said goodbye to the boys and staggered through the streets where the shapeless, headless bundles of the drunks and the homeless huddled in doorways. I had just enough energy left to shower off the soot and sweat, knock back a glass of wine and fall into bed.

  When I woke in the morning I switched on the news while I drank the mug of tea I had taken back to bed. Four people had died in a fire at a private college in Hampshire. The cause of the fire was unknown but an electrical fault was suspected.

  I get out of bed and go over to the computer, log into my server and key in the Temple website. There’s nothing. It’s gone. Pulled. As if it had never been. I’m totally zonked, bone weary and wander about like a zombie making toast and coffee and having a long slow bath. I know I have to go back and find out what’s happened and if the Crusader survived. And there are the four dead, one of whom is almost certainly Daniel Davidson. Then the phone rings. It’s the police.

  ‘Ms Green? We understand you were involved in last night’s events at Wessex University. The officer in charge took your details.’

  Just in case I might try to pretend I hadn’t been there. Honest, guv, it wasn’t me. I’d had just enough sense left to give my own name. Lucy Cowell is dead.

  ‘We’d like you to come in and make a statement as soon as possible. If you’re up to it. We understand you were among those taken to hospital. When might you be able to come?’

  We fix a time. ‘There were three of you, weren’t there? We only have contact numbers for the other two, mobiles and an address for Mr Gao. I understand Mr Omi was resident at the college.’

  When he’s gone I ring Charlie. He hasn’t been contacted yet. Perhaps they’re going to hear what I have to say first. We agree a story that’s a part of the truth. We were curious. We wanted to watch the ceremony. I’m still so tired I fall asleep on the train and then take a taxi to the police station. Eventually I’m shown into an interview room. The man behind the desk stands up and offers a hand.

  ‘Detective Inspector Bradley, and this is Detective Sergeant Beavan.’

  The sergeant is an attractive, confident thirty-something, hoping to be the next female commander à la Helen Mirren. Could I fall for a member of the fuzz? Concentrate, Jade.

  He switches on the recording machine and goes through the identification ritual. ‘Now, Ms Green, could you tell us in your own words what happened? Why were you three there and indeed where were you?’

  ‘Before I go into all that, inspector, could you tell me what happened after we were taken to hospital? The BBC wasn’t very informative.’

  ‘The fire brigade managed to break down the door but they were beaten back by the heat and smoke. They did stop the fire spreading to the rest of the building and eventually they got it under control in the part where it started, unfortunately they were unable to save anyone. Four bodies have been recovered but it will need DNA or dental records to identify them. A pity they didn’t know about the trapdoor. They could have all got out.’

  ‘Trapdoor?’

  ‘You didn’t know about it either? It was in the floor behind some kind of wooden structure. We’re still trying to get a picture of the inside of the building. It was completely gutted.’

  I see the chapel rising in a great Pentecostal flame, taking Davidson up into his imagined heaven like an image of a burning ship in a sea story by Conrad we did for GCE. ‘An immense and lonely flame from whose summit black smoke poured continuously at the sky.’ Something like that.

  ‘The building was a chapel. The trapdoor must have been behind the pulpit.’

  ‘So what were you doing there, Ms Green, and where were you? We haven’t of course ruled anything out yet. We don’t know if we’re looking at an accident or arson. But four people are dead and that makes it very serious.’

  ‘We were up in the first gallery. There’s an outside staircase at the back that leads to the two galleries.’

  ‘It doesn’t any more. The roof seems to have fallen first and then the windows.’

  ‘The roof would have brought down the galleries?’ He nods. I see a John Piper stump of a building, silhouetted against flame.

  ‘I understand from some of the students who have recovered enough to be interviewed that someone let down rope ladders from the galleries and helped them escape. Was that you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what were you doing there with rope ladders?’

  ‘They, the authorities, didn’t like anyone to watch their religious ceremonies, anyone who wasn’t a member, that is. We knew this was going to be a big one and we were curious to see it.’

  ‘But why the ladders?’

  ‘We thought we might get locked in and have to climb out of the building somehow. It was a precaution.’

  ‘In fact the doors must have locked automatically when all the electrics shorted out so you would have found yourself down there with everyone else all shut inside a burning building.’

  ‘Well, lucky for us, inspector, the doors leading to the galleries were the old-fashioned kind and weren’t on the automatic circuit.’

  ‘Lucky for the rest I’d say or we’d be looking at nearer thirty deaths. There are a lot of things that still aren’t clear to me. We may well need to talk to you again so stay where we can reach you. Most of the students we’ve talked to seem to be foreign.
’

  ‘It wasn’t a regular English college. More of a private one.’

  ‘The whole building has been sealed off while we and the fire brigade make a more thorough investigation. Nobody seems to be responsible for the place and it’s legally owned by some company abroad. Do you have any thoughts on that, Ms Green?’

  ‘I only met the dean and his secretary and a couple of the staff.’

  ‘Names?’

  I give them and wait while Sergeant Beavan writes them down. ‘Could you give me some sort of authorisation to get into the college? My bike is still in the shed there and I’d rather like it back.’

  ‘Bike?’

  ‘Motorcycle. Cheap, quick way of getting to classes.’

  ‘If I may say so you look a bit older than the average student. I’ve a daughter in her first year at uni – Leeds.’

  ‘These days you have to keep topping up your skills and qualifications. They call it lifetime learning but it’s really just a way of not being left behind in the rat race.’

  ‘Don’t we know it. Even in our job.’ He smiles conspiratori-ally at the sergeant. ‘I can’t see why you shouldn’t be allowed to collect your cycle. Just let them have the number and other details at the desk. They’ll give you a chit.’ I’m being dismissed. He presses a bell and a young constable appears to take me to reception where I sit on a worn pale-blue plastic and tube chair until summoned. Then at last I’m let out with the paper in my hand authorising me to take my own bike.

  Why haven’t I told them everything I know or think I know instead of just the bits I agreed with Charlie? Because it’s complicated. Because they wouldn’t believe me and I would have to explain endlessly, involving Galton who couldn’t be relied on not to feed them some garbled tale of witchcraft and persecution. Because they might suspect that Charlie, Omi and I had something to do with the fire and they haven’t ruled out arson.

  I take the bus to the gates of Wessex. They’re closed with a policeman on duty in front. I produce my authorisation and he swings open the gate. Not locked then. He wanted to know exactly where I was going and cautioned me for my own safety to stick to the paths. But I have to see the chapel. The smell of smoke and burning stains the air all over the campus. I take a chance that the electricity is still off and the CCTV not working and duck round the back of the bike shed. But I don’t get far. The area leading to the chapel is cordoned off. The corridor that runs past it has gone too. Smoke is still filtering out of the blackened stubs of walls and from the piles of debris on the ground. Men in uniform pick through the charnel heaps. I turn away, hoping at least the three students had lost consciousness before they died and that Daniel Davidson’s beliefs had somehow anaesthetised him against a horribly painful death.

  Bishop and Molders, if those were their names, must be out of the country by now. Were they lovers or just partners in greed? And then there was the Apostle Joachim if he existed and wasn’t just a phantom conjured up by the new alchemy, virtual reality, part of the trappings of the scam. I am glad of the throb of the Crusader, its solid metal and leather, and the rush of air over my helmet. I know I have to make contact with Galton but as I near the point where I could turn off for his road I notch up the engine and roar on.

  There is a message from Charlie waiting for me. The police have merely told him to keep himself available but haven’t called him in. Omi is staying with him at the Gaos. He has rung some of his Wessex friends on their mobile phones. They had seen the chapel burning from the hall windows but couldn’t break the locking circuit until suddenly it went, presumably with the rest of the electrical system. They’d been evacuated by the police to a church hall in the town. Now they were making arrangements to go home.

  Some of those who’d been in the chapel are still in hospital. Their families have been notified. The staff are being interviewed in turn but since they all live away from the college they know nothing, except that they no longer have an employer or a job. Wessex University has simply melted in the flames, dissolved into an airy nothingness.

  I feel I should be doing something but I don’t know what. Presumably the police will get round to setting Interpol on to the supposed owners of Wessex, to trying to trace Bishop and Molders. Unfinished business. To pass the time and deal with my own restlessness and frustration, I decide to read the last few pages of Amyntas’ memorial though what reference it has to recent events I can’t really see. Still it’s something to do and it may give me the impetus to ring Galton.

  Thus I contemplated my fate and the remedies I had in my hands which could offer me only the comfort of death. And so the night came and I fell into a sleep with the help of a little of the poppy the gaoler’s wife had procured for me. Then in the morning when I was ready to despair at the emptiness, except of fear, of the days ahead, for I had brought my memorials up to the present and no more was likely to befall me in that place except that I should not live to record, I heard the gaoler at the door of my cell.

  ‘You have a visitor mistress.’

  I could not descry the figure that stood behind him in the darkness of the passage but terror seized me that it might already have the face of death. Great was my relief then when the duenna came forward into the poor light of my cell. ‘I will leave you,’ the gaoler said. ‘Knock when you are ready to go.’

  ‘Our lady hearing of the decision against you has sent me. I am sorry to see you in such a place for all you have put her in some jeopardy.’

  ‘How could she hear in so short a time since she is gone to London?’

  ‘She removed only to Ivychurch but let it be thought that she had gone away. She was brought word of the Grand Jury its judgement that you were not to be tried but also of Justice Ludlow’s confining you at Dr Gilbert’s insistence.’

  ‘I cannot endure this place for so many months together. I would rather die.’

  ‘Do not be so passionate child. The countess knows this well enough. She sends you this letter and purse and your own little chest from the laboratory at the great house. She has made provision for your safety. You must leave here as soon as it is dark. Ask no more and speak to no one of it. Now I must go. No one must know that I have been here, except the gaoler. But you must not speak even to him of it.’

  Then she knocked upon the door. It was opened, she passed through and I heard it bolted behind. I went to stand beneath the window and opened the letter from my lady.

  ‘Child, I know your distress and will not abandon you. Yet my hands are tied. Do as you have been bid and God go with you. Think of me sometimes with kindness.’

  It was signed MH with the Sidney pheon as was her custom. I opened the purse and discovered more than sufficient money to effect my escape and sustain me for a while. In my own little chest I found as well as several of the things necessary to a physician, a little ivory-handled dagger, with her symbol engraved on it, to cut up meat, sharpen my quill and defend myself. Yet I wept, half in gratitude but most because this was a last farewell. I knew I must vanish from her presence and never attempt to be near her again. I have waited out the day in fear that some harm should come to me before the night. When the gaoler came to bring me meat and drink he would not look into my face. At the last when he returned with a taper to light my candle he looked back at the door and said: ‘A good night to you mistress from me and my wife.’ Then he left. I heard the latch fall but no bolt being shot. Now I am dressed in my clothes as Amyntas with my other few possessions bundled into my gown. I must put out my candle before I see if the door will open. Then I must make my way feeling along the wall, silently past the cell where the felons lie, trusting that the door at the end and the postern beyond are open and unguarded. I have put down a crust of bread for the mouse and am ready to take my leave.

  I close the page. I hope she made it but I’ll never know. I feel as if someone has gone out of my own life. Time to ring Galton.

  ‘Ah, Ms Green. I thought I might have a call from you soon.’

  ‘I’m not sure h
ow much you’ve heard. It’s all been rather hairy.’

  ‘I saw the reports of the fire but they didn’t give a great deal of information. Can you tell me any more?’

  ‘I was there.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the chapel when it caught fire. Up in one of the galleries.’ ‘Indeed. I believe they found four bodies.’

  ‘Yes. There would have been more killed but most of them managed to climb out.’

  ‘So what is happening now?’

  ‘Wessex has ceased to exist. As far as anyone knows Bishop and Molders have left the country. That’s my guess anyway.’

  ‘Almost a kind of justice. Retribution.’

  ‘Except that four relatively innocent people died.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. What do we do now, Ms Green?’

  ‘We do nothing. There’s nothing to be done. You can’t take a chimera to an employment tribunal.’

  ‘The Temple of the Latent Christ? The putative owners?’

  ‘Vanished. If they ever existed. How much did you really know, Dr Galton? I believe it was all set up to get gullible young people to make over their money to the organisers. That it was meant to look like a mass suicide. If you suspected this and you could have told me right in the beginning we might have prevented even those four deaths.’

  ‘I didn’t know the details. I only knew something was wrong. I’d felt it, a miasma of evil from the time they took over. I came to you because I hoped that in looking into my dismissal you would find out. If I’d tried to tell you, or anyone else for that matter, that I felt that something was wrong you would have said, quite rightly, “where’s your evidence?”’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘I needed someone independent. The name attracted me of course. I hoped you would be young. Willing to delve more deeply into rather strange waters than a conventional firm.’