Alchemy and Meggy Swann

by Karen Cushman

  He frowned when he saw her and might have spat, but she spoke first. "I wish to strike a bargain with you," she said. "If you cease shouting and spitting and hurling accusations at me, I will not fire your shop."

  He looked about at the piles of old cloaks and doublets and shoes, and his face grew pale. Even so he took a step toward her and said, "I do not bargain with detestable crook-legs and Devil's spawn."

  "As you will," said Meggy. "I shall call upon my legion of demons to assist me in my dark work. Belike we will begin by burning this row of fine leather boots." She motioned to him. "It were best you stand apart, lest you be scorched by the flames."

  The man's mouth gaped and his eyes bulged. "Nay, nay!" he shouted. "I will do as you wish. Avaunt! Aroint, you witch! Leave my shop and take your fiends, demons, and hobgoblins with you."

  Thundering toads, the lean-witted old goat truly believes I can do it, Meggy thought. He was more gullible and more craven than even the youngest villager! Never had her affliction served her so well. "We will leave you in peace," she said, "all of us, so long as you remember our bargain. You, little imp, hiding in the corner. Pick up your tail and come along. Yes, that is right."

  Staring at the corner, Master Old Cloaks flattened himself against the wall. "We give you good morrow, sir," Meggy called over her shoulder as she left the shop.

  Once safely back in the house at the Sign of the Sun, Meggy let her breath out with a whoosh. She dropped onto the bench and rested her head on the table. Belike it was dangerous, her pretending to be a witch, but she thought the watchman's threats would keep Master Old Cloaks silent. And Roger should have seen me, she thought. He would doubt not what a fine player I would be. Relief, pride, and amazement at what she had done with her poor pennyworth of courage filled her.

  Master Peevish hastened down the stairs and through the room. Meggy sat up. "Sir, I am returned," she began, but he waved her off.

  "I must away," he said, and he hastened out the door and up Crooked Lane.

  Meggy was hungry. She climbed to the laboratorium and looked for coins in the copper pot. There were not many, and none were gold. Meggy snorted as she fished them out. Great Work indeed. Immortality, hmph. Better he should seek to change metal into sausages so she could eat.

  In a cookshop on Thames Street Meggy bought a rabbit pie and a berry tart. On arriving back at the house at the Sign of the Sun, she climbed again to the laboratorium, where she left half the pie for her father. She tucked one penny into her bodice, for she knew she would be hungry again anon, and put the remaining coins back into the copper pot.

  She ate a bit of the rabbit pie but finished every crumb of the berry tart, sitting on her pallet before the empty fireplace, delighting in the juicy sweetness that ran down her chin.

  ELEVEN

  When he returned, Master Peevish spurned her help, so Meggy went to see how the cooper fared. His shop smoked but still stood. Inside, the cooper was sifting through the soggy ashes of his planks and barrels.

  "Right sorry I am for your trouble, Master Cooper," Meggy said from the doorway.

  He smiled a weak smile and said, "I thank you for your kind thoughts, Mistress Meggy, but the fire has burned out, my stock can be replaced, and, God grant us mercy, my son is safe. Our troubles be trifling indeed."

  The cooper's son came to her side, wiping tears from his soot-streaked face. "My horse is gone," he said to her, "and I like not all these reeky ashes."

  The cooper pulled at his hair until it stood up on his head like tufts of red grass. "I told you, boy, you must—"

  In the smoky air Meggy saw her granny's face. What Gran would do is what I shall do, she thought, and she took the boy's hand. "He must come and listen to a ballad, that is what he must. It be a right good story, and I am eager to share it."

  The girl sat on the doorstep in the only spot of sunshine that found its way into Crooked Lane. Nicholas sat beside her and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

  "So, listen with patient ears, young Master Nicholas," Meggy said, "and I will begin the tale of the strange wedding of a frog and a mouse."

  "What kind of mouse?" he asked, wiping his nose on his other sleeve.

  "An ordinary mouse. Gray and small. With a tail. Runs about in the meadow."

  "What kind of meadow?"

  "A meadow, a green meadow, a brown meadow, any meadow. Now hearken." And she began to sing, as her gran had, not so many years ago:

  A frog he would a-wooing go,

  A-too-re-lal, a-too-re-lal,

  He went into Miss Mousie's hall,

  A-too-re-lal, a-too-re-lal

  "What means a-too-re—"

  Meggy pinched the boy's lips together gently. "Hush. You tire out your tongue and my ears, Master Gibble Gabble." Nicholas sat at Meggy's side and listened until she arrived at, The frog came swimming cross the lake, and there got swallowed by a snake, a-too, ad-diddle-de-day.

  "Why did the snake eat him?"

  "Belike frogs look all good and juicy to a snake, as joints of beef and legs of chicken and roasted pork ribs look to us." Meggy's belly rumbled at the picture.

  "Why?" Nicholas squeaked.

  Meggy sighed a great sigh and leaned back against the front of the building, where the wood was warm from the sun. "Enough of your annoyous prattle. You have more questions than I have answers."

  "Sing me a story about a horse," Nicholas said.

  Before she could respond, the cooper came out with bread and a bit of cold sausage, which he gave to Meggy. "Nicholas and I must to Cooper's Hall to discover what aid the guild might offer. My thanks to you for attending the boy. Since his mother died, he lacks a woman's care."

  Meggy had enjoyed the sun, the singing, and the warm, small-child smell of Nicholas. Now, as she finished her sausage, she thought again of her promise to take a ginger cake to Gilly, the printer's girl.

  Meggy stood, brushed crumbs from her bodice, and climbed to Eastcheap, where she spent her penny on two ginger cakes. One she ate right there in the food shop, licking her fingers so as to savor every crumb. The other she carried across London to the printer's.

  The printer was standing in the doorway of his shop when Meggy arrived. "What lack you, mistress? See a new broadside come forth. Buy a new ballad for—" He stopped when he recognized her. "A good morrow to you, little mistress," he said.

  "Good day, Master Printer. I be Margret Swann, but you may call me Meggy, as my gran did."

  "Well met, Meggy Swann. And I be John Allyn, impoverished printer," he said with a little bow.

  Meggy looked past him into the shop, at the great levered contraption he had called a hand press, the compartmented boxes, sticks, racks, and mysterious stuffed leather bags. "Are all these objects used for printing?" she asked.

  "Indeed. Come inside and I will show you."

  "I have brought a ginger cake for Gilly," she said.

  "Nay," said the printer, pulling up a stool for her, "you should not have come all this way for that. You are not strong enough nor hearty—"

  Frowning, Meggy waved away his pity and his stool. "I will stand, Master Printer. I am not breakable, and I be stronger than I look." And to her surprise she realized she was.

  "Ah, here is my Gillyflower, who should be napping," said the printer as the little girl toddled out. Meggy wabbled toward her, but Gilly, affrighted, ran to her father and held tightly to the hem of his jerkin.

  "Do not be afraid, Gilly," Meggy said. "I may be crooked, but I come with the freshest, sweetest ginger cake in all of London." She held out the cake, and slowly Gilly let go her father, took the cake from Meggy with a small smile, and scampered off to the back of the shop.

  "Deftly done, mistress," said Master Allyn to Meggy, who found she took pleasure in making children smile. "Now you shall see how ballads come forth." The printer moved to the press, laid a piece of paper over the tray, grasped the lever, and leaned forward, so that the screw pushed the whole top of the press down against the paper. When he pulled the handle
up and removed the paper, there were letters on the page. Nay, words. An entire page of words!

  Meggy could hardly breathe with the wonder of it. Here was true abracadabra. "Is it magic?" she asked.

  "Not a bit. Printing, it is," Master Allyn said, "writing by means of a machine."

  "Wondrous," Meggy said, "'tis a wondrous machine."

  "Aye. But 'tis wasteful that I use it only to print ballad sheets and broadsides for impecunious poets."

  "Might you not print other things?"

  "The queen has given preference to so many printers—John Day may print ABCs and catechisms; Jugge prints Bibles; Tottle, law books; Roberts and Watkins, almanacs and prognostications, and so forth—that there is not much left for the rest of us."

  "I have fine imaginings and I know a great many words," Meggy said. "Mayhap I could write something for you to print. But I cannot pay."

  He laughed. "Yet another impecunious poet. I vow, I am infested with them." He took the printed page and draped it over a rod to dry. "I have trade aplenty, which means I have no time, but still no money. How that happens is a mystery. Ah," he said, turning, "here are Mistress Allyn and young Robert."

  A young woman, carrying a baby in her arms and another, it appeared, in her belly, came into the shop. She handed the baby to Master Allyn. "Eustace Price," she said, "will be here on the morrow with an epitaph on the death of Umphrey Spenser that he wishes printed. And Andrew Gypkin wants us to print his broadside condemning broadsides." She laughed. "He says they promote scandal and smut and debauchery."

  "He yet owes me for the ballad warning London women against the sin of vanity," Master Allyn said. "Did he speak to you of payment?"

  "He says you will be paid by selling them." She held her great belly with one arm as she leaned against the wall.

  Gilly called from back of the shop, "Papa, come—I have wet me."

  Master Allyn sighed. "Sell? When have I time to stroll the streets to sell sheets of Gypkin's rantings?"

  Meggy bade them farewell, left them to their troubles, and went home to her own.

  Her father was seated at the table, a jug of ale before him. He looked up at her, his eyes as flat and black and cold as bits of coal in his pale face. "Behold, daughter," he said, his voice slow and thick. Cupshot, Meggy thought. She knew the signs. "See what my Great Work has brought me to." He took a mighty swallow.

  What meant he? Was he speaking of the men she had seen in the laboratorium?

  Meggy sat down across from him. "My daughter," he said, shaking his head. "Your mother ... is she well?"

  Meggy was astonished. Ne'er had he mentioned her mother. The girl nodded; her mother was no doubt well ... she always was.

  "Be she yet the most beauteous woman in the county?"

  Beauteous she was, but how best to describe her? "She is as beauteous as ice crystals on a windowpane, as water rumbling over rocks, as bolts of lightning shooting cross a darkened sky."

  The alchemist nodded. "In sooth Bess was ne'er easy," he said, "but a beauty nonetheless."

  Ne'er easy? A kindly thing to say. Meggy herself thought her mother as bad tempered as a wet witch.

  The man inspected the girl. "You have not the look of her."

  "I believe I have the look of you, sir," Meggy said, surprised that it was true, "for we share the same dark hair and lean-fleshed form."

  "But your lameness," he said, gesturing, "whence is that?"

  Meggy was surprised that he cared enough to ask. "My gran said I was born this way and never did learn to walk right. My mother told me it was God's curse on me."

  He shook his head. "Nonsense. Village ignorance."

  Nonsense? Ignorance? This conversation was full of surprises, Meggy thought. Perhaps, full of ale as he was, he might talk of other things that she had long wanted to know. She refilled his mug from the jug on the table.

  "Sir," she began. She cleared her throat. "Sir, if you please, wilt say how you happened upon my mother and how I came to be?"

  He took a large swallow of his ale and wiped his lips on his sleeve. For long moments he sat in silence, and then he said, "I was at Oxford and it was spring. Inspired by the great Paracelsus, I desired to know man not through books but by knowing his world, so I took to the road. My travels sent me south, through London, to Millford village, where I stopped for refreshment at an alehouse." He nodded at Meggy. "An alehouse you know well. I was young and my blood was hot, and I lusted after both the drink and the tavern keeper's daughter." His voice, mellowed by the ale, was as rich and sweet as honey, a likely snare for a village girl.

  He motioned to Meggy to fill his mug again. "By harvest I understood Bess was with child, but more important, I understood at last what my work was. I resolved to return to Oxford and begin. She threw a copper pot at my head as I left. I bear the scar still." Another swallow and another wipe on the sleeve.

  "And what of the child?"

  He shook his head. "It was my work that was important. It consumed me. I wanted to do the impossible, know the unknowable. And if I succeeded, I would defeat death itself. Naught was more important."

  "But to leave without a thought. I wondered about you sometimes—what your name was, and what you looked like, and where—"

  A shadow passed over his face. He took a deep breath and another swallow and set his mug down sharply. "Enough idle talk." He stood up. "I must return to the laboratorium."

  "But, sir, can you not—"

  "I have no time for petty matters," he said, turning for the stairs. "I have my work."

  Petty matters? He thought she was but a petty matter? Meggy opened her mouth to protest. She imagined her gran's face frowning at her, and she put her fists down. I have done for the moment, she thought, but I will visit this again later. And wrapped in her cloak, she fell onto her pallet and into sleep.

  Before first light the alchemist's voice echoed down the stairs and into her dreams. "Daughter," he was shouting, "come here to me. Make haste!"

  Margret, Meggy said to herself, Margret, but she supposed daughter preferable to mistress or err. She stood and quickly tied her bodice and kirtle on over her smock.

  He was at the furnace, pouring a powder into a vessel over the flames, when she entered. "Hasten, take the bellows. This fire must be kept exceedingly hot."

  Meggy took the bellows and began a furious pumping. She began to sing: O good lord judge and sweet lord judge, hold your hand awhile. Methinks I see my father come, riding many a mile.

  The alchemist stopped her with an abrupt motion. "Silence, you tweedling baggage! I must have silence. By my troth, in sooth you are worse than no help at all!"

  Meggy's cheeks grew hot. The marble-hearted tyrant! Cold and ungenerous, he was unchanged from the man who had left her mother and forsaken his child before she was born.

  A petty matter, he had called her. Did he think her a petty matter because she was lame? And what if she were whole? Her thoughts were all skimble-skamble as she pumped the bellows in silence. Although the fire stayed hot and the powder in the vessel turned to a silvery liquid, she came no closer to understanding that man in the shabby black gown who called her daughter.

  At midday he said, "Enough," and Meggy gladly put the bellows down, for her arms ached from the pumping and her legs from standing. He took the vessel off the flame and put it on the table. "I must fully understand the ways of mercury," he muttered, "for it is said mercury carries the secret of transformation." He took a bottle from a shelf and poured a measure of clear liquid onto the mercury in the vessel. A thick red vapor formed and hovered over the surface, leaving bright red crystals in the bottom.

  "Behold, mistress!" he shouted. "Red crystals! It is known that red is on silver's way to becoming gold." Her father's voice grew shrill with excitement. "If I could now remove the quality of redness from the crystals and add yellowness..." The arms of his gown flapped as he paced around the tiny room, nearly colliding with table here and shelf there. "Close, I am close, I am certain of it." H
e started for the stairs. "You there—err, mistress—wash these bottles. I must away. I must away." And he was gone.

  Go to, Meggy thought, looking into the vessel. She saw no gold. Wat Tuttle in her village believed he could fly, but that did not make it so.

  Meggy cleared the table and washed the bottles in the water bucket. She looked around. Her father was gone, and she was alone in a warm room. Here was her chance to wash the smoke from her hair, her smock, and her kirtle.

  Her hair she let hang wet on her shoulders, and she spread her clothing on the furnace to dry. But the fire was yet too hot, and her kirtle scorched and sizzled. Ye toads and vipers, she thought as she gathered up her damp smock, ruined kirtle, and the water bucket and juggled them slowly down the stairs. She put on a clean smock and her other kirtle, her favorite, of Bristol red, and stuffed the ruined one into the bottom of her sack. She emptied the dirty water into the street and left the bucket by the door for the water carrier to fill. Then she sat and waited for her father to return. But when he did, he hurried past her up the stairs, saying nothing to her at all.

  TWELVE

  The heat was excessive for autumn, and the air heavy. The streets rang with the sounds of people making merry, but Meggy cared not. She sat at the table, mopey, alone, and plentifully hot.

  Of a sudden the door banged open. "Come, Meggy Swann," Roger called. "We are off to the river in search of a breeze."

  She looked up, hiding the joy she felt at seeing him, and said, "Pray, sir, pardon me. For a moment I mistook you for someone I did once know. Someone who swore he was a friend and then abandoned me to sink under my afflictions in this—"

  "Nay, Meggy, be not spleeny. I was occupied with drilling the apprentices and learning a new part myself. Rein in your temper and join us, if the master can spare you."

  "Spare me? Of late," Meggy said, "he labors all day and night and does not let me in nor make use of me." What did he now in his laboratorium? Why had he not again called for her?