The boy had very blond hair and blue eyes. The roundness and delicacy of his features put him at about seven years of age, although his height and stocky build made him seem older.
“All right, young man. Start by telling me who you are.”
He seemed to want to refuse, but he only swallowed hard. “I’m George, son of Charles the Carpenter, Mistress.”
“I know something of Charles,” she told him severely. “An honest man by all reports. Why is his son slipping around in the middle of the night stealing other people’s fruit?”
“No, I’m not!” George protested loudly.
Dory’s brows lifted. “Oh, and just what was in that purse my cat rescued, pray tell?”
“Medicine!” he responded stoutly. “It’d be bad for a boy like me to eat Scholar Ambrose’s berries, but physicians and healers use them to make sick folks better.”
“What do you want with them, then? You’re as stout and strong a lad as I’ve seen in a good while.”
“My friend Sammy’s sick. They’re for him.”
Dory gasped. She drew a deep breath. “George,” she said quietly, “have you given berries like these to Sammy before now?”
“I have,” he answered proudly. “That’s why he’s going to get better. He used to sneeze all the time.”
“How do you get them to him?”
“I climb up the tree outside his bedchamber window.—I’m a real good climber.”
“So I see.” Dory grew grave. “George, I want you to listen carefully to what I say. It’s true that Ambrose’s berries can help make people well, but only those ailing from certain diseases and only when they receive the correct kind of berry, usually in very small amounts. That might be a single one or even less than that, normally mixed with other special things. It takes years and years of study for a person to learn how to use such ingredients properly. If Sammy ate even part of what was in that purse after all he’s had before, we probably wouldn’t have him with us anymore.”
George gulped. His face screwed up as he started to cry.
Dory gently stroked his hair. “He’ll be fine now, once you explain what’s happened.”
“Explain?”
“Go straight to Sammy’s house and tell Doctor Solomon and Scholar Martin what you’ve done. That should be information enough for them to be able to set your friend to rights.” That and the actual berries Jasmine would have delivered there by now, but she thought it best not to mention the cat’s seemingly remarkable abilities.
“They’ll yell,” he said doubtfully.
“Maybe,” the woman conceded. “They’re both scared about Sammy, and that can make people talk hard, but you still have to go.—George, you were brave and strong to get medicine that you thought would make Sammy better. Now you must be even braver and stronger to really help him.”
He hesitated only a few moments. “I’ll go,” he said at last.
“Good lad!—Run now. Don’t waste any time getting there.”
“I won’t.” Even as he spoke, the boy wheeled about and raced out of the alley, a small, determined figure prepared to do and endure what he must to aid his friend.
* * * *
Dory’s head lowered. “A fine little fellow. I hope we did right in sending him off to Solomon’s house instead of home, but his story should be a big help.”
The woman sighed. “I’m so ashamed, Trouble. I wronged Scholar Ambrose terribly. If I’d said anything—” She shuddered. “Great Lord, the harm I could have done!”
The cat was about to reply but hissed instead. “Someone comes!”
Even as he spoke a cloaked figure turned the left corner into the alley. “Young woman, what are you doing snooping around my property at this hour of night?”
Ambrose the Scholar! Dory flushed with shame, but despite her guilt, her head came up at the tone of his voice. “This is a public street,” she responded, “and I’m here to avert disaster.” Quickly, she described her adventure of the evening, omitting only the little boy’s name to spare him and his family further embarrassment, that and the fact that she had been keeping her neighbor under watch.
The man said nothing for several long seconds. His head lowered. “A terrible tragedy so narrowly prevented.—I’ve warned the neighborhood youth time and again about the dangers of my plantings, but I suppose this one was just too young to really understand.”
“You’re not to blame, sir.”
Dory might have said more, but there was a nagging at her inner mind, the feeling that something was wrong about all this.
Her eyes and mouth hardened as she realized what it was. Ambrose was to blame. He might not have put George up to taking those berries—in all likelihood, he had not—but he had known full well what was going on once the deadly process had begun.
It could not be otherwise. Sammy’s illness had been widely discussed throughout the square and those around it since the mysterious sickness had begun. The botanist had to have heard of it, and the symptoms were specific enough to have aroused immediate suspicion in a man of his knowledge and experience.
As for the rest, he might not have actually witnessed the young culprit in action, but he had seen evidence of his presence. Ambrose tended all his gardens carefully, and a small boy burglarizing a berry patch in the dead of night could not have hidden or removed every sign of his presence. He probably would not have thought to try.
Above all else, especially as the season advanced and the crop began to diminish, Ambrose could not have missed the fact that he was losing fruit. Given the nature of those berries, the potential hazard they represented, how could any man of conscience and reason not raise an alarm over their disappearance? The fact that he had not in itself condemned Ambrose.
More did as well, a memory that chilled her heart. This-creature before her had not merely allowed the poisoning of Solomon’s child to continue. He had willed that it should do so.—Ambrose the Scholar? He would better and more fittingly be titled Ambrose the Monster.
He was watching her narrowly. The sorceress recognized her danger. One who could permit an innocent child in no way connected with him to die would have no scruples at all about eliminating a woman whose virtue he believed to be questionable, intact only for the sake of expediency and a planned high sale later.
“There is no tom smell,” Trouble informed her.
“No. I’m a threat now, not potential amusement.” She knew too much, had seen too much, even though she was controlled enough not to reveal that she realized there was anything amiss. A careless remark or formal testimony under oath could bring to light what Ambrose the Scholar did not want known.
He would realize that the business about the child was out and that he could do no more than make a show of sorrow about it, but he had other work afoot this night. Dory’s bare feet rammed into her brogs, the trousers hastily drawn on over her nightdress, her hair braided for sleep all corroborated her tale. Her neighbor’s garb bore different witness. All in black with a cowled, three-quarter cloak and boots soft soled for silence, he was as a shadow slipping through the dark.
To what purpose? The only places open in town at this hour were the taverns with their gaming rooms and the two brothels, but Ambrose was not a habitué of either. His destination was within the town or near it, for she heard no horse. A meeting, perhaps, with someone who did not dare come to the house or who had transport to take them farther? Whatever the answer, he had taken pains to conceal his plans for the evening, and if his purpose were strong enough, dark enough, he would readily kill to preserve his secret.
“I’ve summoned Martin. He’s on his way,” Trouble informed her. Mind speech traveled little farther than that of the voice, but other cats were near. He had called to them, and they had carried his message.
She could die three times over before the master sorcerer reached them, especially if he had to make excuses for his going.
Dory did not need her cat’s warning hiss to see the slight, almost infinit
esimally slow movement beneath their foe’s cloak. She could just make out enough of a shape to see that it was too large and wrong in form for an empty hand or fist.
It was no knife, either. The woman gnawed on her inner lip. If only she had her mirror!
It would have done no good anyway since she could not see the object.
“And what have you been studying besides botany since last fall, twit?”
Dory’s eyes glowed. Her own hand twitched slightly, as if nervously. The answering breeze was short-lived, just sufficient to blow the screening cloak aside momentarily.
That was enough. Ambrose held a globe, no, a narrow-necked flask. There were two flasks, rather, one inside the other. Both were filled with pale liquid.
Her heart beat painfully. Vitriol? Did he plan to fling it on her and kill her while she was disabled by pain and terror? Was it something more directly deadly? Who knew what this poisoner of children could do?
“Trouble, get out of here,” she commanded sharply. “Fast.” This was her business, human business. Human evil. Her little cat must not suffer because his love for her kept him near her.
“Rot,” the tomcat responded curtly. “Just see to it that he doesn’t use that stuff, and neither of us will have a problem.”
“But—”
“The flask, idiot kit! He’s going to throw it!”
Dory’s will snapped out, flogged by fear and anger. Even Ambrose’s well-schooled features could not conceal his surprise and fright when his hand abruptly froze, fingers grasping the neck of the vessel with vise-like force.
The sorceress’ eyes were cold as glacier ice. Trouble and she had known danger before, but that had been from a brutal, ignorant drunk. This man was something different, evil, a blight on life and on the clean face of their world.
Slowly, her will shifted a little. It was a strain to hold him paralyzed like this, nor could she extend her control to bind all his body for more than a few moments. There was a better way.
The air shimmered slightly between them and settled once more. With a sigh of relief, she released the bonds on her enemy’s hand.
Her teacher arrived at that moment, sweeping as silently as vapor around the corner into the alley. He noted what she had done and nodded his approval but did not speak to her. He fixed his gaze on the other man.
The whole incident had taken only moments, however long it had seemed to Dory, no more time than would be required to draw and release a couple of deep breaths. The botanist blinked in surprise, then dismissed the vanished paralysis as the work of overwrought imagination. He looked from Dory to Martin, his newly freed fingers caressing his weapon.
“Give it over, Ambrose,” the master sorcerer warned. “We have you. Even if you could escape, you wouldn’t enjoy life on the run. There’s little romance in it but many missed and poor meals and many a cold night spent under a dripping hedge.”
The other’s expression did not alter as he cast the flask, not at Martin but at the ground midway between him and Dory.
The missile flew fast, but it traveled scarcely a foot before shattering with great force, seemingly on the air itself.
The botanist gasped, but his nerve held. Even as the remnants of the flask dropped to the ground, he leaped for the street behind him. Speed alone would buy him his life now.
He went to his knees, the breath driven out of him.
Ambrose’s senses steadied. He had hit something, a wall of some sort. It was fully perceptible to his fingers although completely invisible. It must have been this which had stopped and broken the flask...
His eyes fixed on the greasy-looking smoke boiling out of the seething contents of his shattered weapon. He shrank back as far as he could from it and covered his mouth and nose with several thicknesses of his cloak.
His body gave a tremendous jerk, then another that threw him flat. His face twisted, darkened, as he fought for air and against that which the air surrounding him contained. He was not aware of the others. Only the agony of the present and the terror of the judgment and eternity before him existed for him now.
* * * *
Within minutes, it was over. Martin looked into the contorted face of the dead man. “A hard ending and a just one.”
He gestured sharply with his hand. Fire answered, pale yellow flames that touched neither cloth nor flesh but consumed the venom in the air and that still clinging to the broken glass.
He looked at the woman. She was staring at the corpse, her eyes huge with horror, but she responded at once to his soft call.
“Remove your dome now,” he told her gently.
She did so. “I was right to distrust him,” she said. “He was as malignant as those poisons of his.”
Dory stared once more at the body. “He probably didn’t even know Sammy, but he wanted him to die, just so he could see how long it would take for one little boy to kill his friend, the same as he wanted to see how long it would take Jasmine to die when she accidentally poisoned herself in his courtyard.”
“Ambrose had reason to permit the experiment to continue, the love of pure knowledge aside. His profession demanded that he develop new techniques and new angles of approach.”
The apprentice looked sharply at her teacher. “His profession?”
“I didn’t dismiss your observations about the nature of his plantings, especially when I read over your notes and saw how well you had documented them, though I did think you’d grossly overestimated the number of totally baleful varieties. That did prove true in many cases when I consulted more advanced sources than we have in the house, but what remained was far too high a percentage to be dismissed as a scholar’s curiosities. He didn’t have the land to squander like that.
“I became even more suspicious when I had his affairs thoroughly investigated by members of our order and discovered that those investments of his were negligible. They provided no practical support. His medical trade alone wasn’t doing it all, either. It supplied a sufficient income to maintain him very quietly here, but not nearly enough to buy the wines stocking his cellar or the quality furnishings in his home. It certainly did not pay for the lodgings he took and the entertainments he enjoyed when he went off to the capital, as he did several times a year.
“We had a job ferreting it out, but our Ambrose had yet another profession, one at which he excelled to the point that he didn’t have to actually work at it often. That was why he seized upon the opportunity to study the situation that developed here. A lot of influential people have loyal, loving small children who would not mind giving Da medicine to cure his cold or a special sweet to Mama. A master assassin could capitalize on that fact.”
Dory stared at him. She shuddered. “It’s a miracle we escaped,” she whispered. She frowned. “It was a queer weapon, though, wasn’t it?”
“I think it was pure chance that he had the flask on him. He must have been en route either to deliver it to someone else or to carry out a commission.—Your night’s work has saved a life, or lives, probably. That gas could have taken out a roomful of people and was likely intended to do just that.”
The apprentice shivered again. She held out her arms to Trouble, who leaped into her embrace. She pressed him tightly against her. “I couldn’t have done anything at all without Trouble. He was brave and calm through it all and kept me thinking and acting correctly.”
The pink tongue rasped her chin. Let the kitten believe that. For his part, it had been a horrifying experience almost from the start, and he was very glad to be here, alive and secure in his Dory’s arms.
The tom collected himself. He could not resign his responsibilities because of relief or residual fear. Humans seemed able to concentrate on only one thing, one danger, at a time, without recognizing all the other shadows looming around them. “So we have one dead butcher whom no one else knows for a killer, and George’s story will put Dory here at the right time.”
Martin smiled. “Good thinking, cat. Don’t worry. Ambrose, along with the pieces
of his flask, will be discovered on the floor of his own study. The townsfolk will be left to wonder whether it was his heart, accident, or suicide that finished him. Ordinarily, I don’t approve of tampering with evidence, but this is rather an exception—”
“Naturally. We are involved,” the cat remarked dryly.
“Precisely.”
Dory’s eyes darkened as a troubling thought came to her. “How many will die or stay sick now that Ambrose isn’t here to supply medicines for them?”
Martin gave her a quick, respectful look. “Well questioned. I believe I can help with that. There’s a nice young fellow in our order whose specialty is botany—”
“Young?”
“Only about a hundred seventy-five years old.” He chuckled, then grew serious again. “It’s about time for him to move again, and I think he’ll be pleased to take over this business.”
His smile broadened as a graceful gray form slipped into the alley and rubbed against his leg. “Here’s my little lady. Ye three go back into the house—under an invisibility shield, please, considering Dory’s rather unconventional state of dress. I’ll finish up here and then join ye inside. I think ye have a story to tell me.”
Trouble purred. “It’s well worth the hearing, but what else could you expect with two cats and a sorceress acting in league?”
The man bowed his head in agreement. “Nothing less, Master Trouble, and maybe a great deal more as time goes on.”
About the Author
Pauline (P. M.) Griffin has been writing since her early childhood. She enjoys telling a good tale, and since she always works with characters and situations deeply interesting to her, she finds the research as rewarding as the scribbling/keying.
Griffin’s Irish love of story telling coupled with her passion for history, the natural world, and the above-mentioned research have resulted in twenty-seven novels and twelve short stories, two Muse Medallion Award winners among them, all in the challenging realms of science fiction and fantasy. She has also written several nonfiction articles, primarily for the Brooklyn Aquarium Society’s publication AQUATICA, several of which have won the Editors Choice for Excellence Award.
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