Death of an Alchemist (18 page)

Blood dripped in his eyes and he dashed the cut with his sleeve, resuming a menacing pose. “Come, now,” he squawked, losing his nerve. “Show yourself.”

No one did.

He waited another minute, ears straining for any telltale hint. He was rattled to the point where he thought he might puke; his attention wavered. His singular notion was to make it home.

He started walking backward, still watching for a stalker to show himself. Seeing no one, Plumbum turned back to face the road ahead of him and quickened his step.

If he weren't so anxious to be home, he would have circled back to St. Benet's to see if the satchel was still against the wall. His head throbbed. He was so weary he didn't even think he could make it there and back.

Blood continued to trickle from the gash, and it ran down his face, dripping onto his front, further aggravating him. “Ach, and now the doublet is staining with blood.” He muttered how he would have to soak it in his rain barrel but remembered this was not possible since the barrel was now empty. He had dumped the water—fouled with Jack Blade's piss—into the alley. “And no rain in a fortnight,” he said, feeling demoralized.

He stopped to look at something orange in the road that caught his eye and bent down. “Aw, poor bird,” he said, picking up the dismembered foot of a duck. He envisioned the creature trying to walk on one leg and burst out laughing imagining it. The sound of his guffaw startled him. He was drunker than he thought. He glanced around to see if anyone had heard him. Seeing no one, he reasoned aloud, “Well, he just stays in the water.” He wondered how a duck would look swimming with one foot. Would it wobble in the water? Or would it swim in circles? He tossed the foot over his shoulder and continued on.

As he neared St. Paul's Cathedral, he paused to watch the young gamins sleeping in the shadows of its massive stone exterior. A pang of desire stirred his membership, and he adjusted his codpiece but thought better of it. He was nearly home and mustn't risk his chance of getting there.

His jittery nerves and drink caused him to suddenly appeal to the heavens. “Have I not proven myself?” He did not wait for an answer, but forced himself to keep walking. “My past may have been filled with poor decisions, but have I not redeemed myself?” Somewhere a dog began to bark. “Do I not deserve some reward? Some mercy, some compensation for my atonement?” He stopped and stared up at the stars, looking for a sign. Was that a shooting star? The red planet? “At least acknowledge that I have proven myself worthy.”

But Thomas Plumbum would get no commendation on this dark night. He dropped his head to his chest.

With an exasperated sigh, Thomas staggered on. It would soon be morning, and with it came the promise of a new day. From now on, he would live a virtuous life. If God didn't feel like bargaining today, maybe He would tomorrow.

Within sight of his neighborhood, Plumbum smiled with relief. As he turned onto his lane, he mistakenly clung to the corner instead of keeping to the center. It would have given him a few extra seconds.

Had he not partaken of the Royal Poke's noxious swill, he would have had enough sense to avoid a grim situation. But God turned an indifferent shoulder to Plumbum's redemptive plea. He had something else in mind for the alchemist.

Thomas Plumbum's eyes opened wide in surprise at the sudden recognition of a rogue lunging forward, seemingly out of nowhere. He did not hear the knife being plunged into his liver, only the bestial utterance of the man doing it. A searing pain caught up to his surprise as he looked down at the hilt of a dirk protruding from his side, and the man's hand still upon it. Seconds inexplicably lengthened as the alchemist realized that these precious moments would be his last.

Hunching over, he reached for the knife just as his assailant withdrew it. Plumbum dropped to his knees, withering from agony.

It was not by accident that Thomas Plumbum breathed his last. It was with cause that the alchemist saw his end. He had been warned. But being distracted by a ludicrous belief was as much to blame as it was his nature. In the end, Thomas Plumbum was a victim of his fatuous pursuit of an unobtainable dream. And, as he lay crumpled in the lane and took his final breath, he thought that if this was his reward, then God had a sadistic sense of humor.

C
HAPTER
22

The last few steps took longer than all that had come before. Bianca slowed as she neared her room of Medicinals and Physickes. Not only did she ache from her brutal attack, but her trepidation over John and what she might find weighed her down. She scolded her fears into submission and dragged herself up the stoop.

She had left the door ajar, hoping for a cross breeze to keep John cool. Doing so had left the rent and John vulnerable. Aware that perhaps it had been poor judgment on her part, she cautiously pushed on the door. It creaked open and the black tiger approached to greet her.

Bianca peered into the dark, her eyes finding John in their bed. She set the satchel on the board and went to him.

At first she thought he was sleeping peaceably, and for that she was grateful. She quietly sat on the edge next to him, not wishing to disturb his rest, but hoping he would respond to her weight. But he did not. Bianca brought her face close to his.

“John,” she said, hoping he would stir.

When he did not, she gently shook him.

Her query went unheeded.

Alarmed, she rocked him enough so that his head lolled from side to side.

“John!” she said louder and more firmly. When he did not answer or open his eyes, she laid her head on his chest to listen for the beat of his heart. The black tiger walked across John's legs and sat observing the two of them.

Though the cat's boisterous purring made it difficult, Bianca finally caught John's heartbeat, faint and slow. She pulled his eyelids back. The whites glinted in the dim light. John stared, unseeingly, at the ceiling overhead.

If she had stayed and not gone to her father's, could she have prevented his slipping into the heavy sleep? She chided herself for leaving, but how could she have prevented him cascading into the world between the living and the dead?

She observed his chest expand shallowly, worrying that the rattle in his lungs would worsen. He could not continue to lie flat or the phlegm would drown him and he would never stir. Taking her pillow, she maneuvered it under his head, raising his shoulders to a slight incline. She sat beside him and thought.

Despite her tears, Bianca knew she must not despair. She must not sit in regret of what she had or had not done. Her reason for leaving him was to find out what she needed to know in order to cure him. She reminded herself that her intentions were born from love.

The cat, sensing her distress, gave a short chirp, as if asking if she was all right. She ran her hand down its back, feeling the need for reassurance. In return, the cat gave her an appreciative rub against her chin.

Night would soon give way to day's boisterous arrival. Sleep would elude her, but neither did she have any desire to rest. Her mind galloped on, thinking what she could do to save John. She wandered over to the shelves of ingredients, medicants, and syrups as she had done earlier in the day. Was there some combination, some mixture or technique that she had missed? She ran through the possibilities. But her mind could still think of nothing.

Her father claimed she could not make any one part of the elixir of life and expect it to help. Bianca disagreed. Surely at some point, the elixir would start to wield its healing powers.

The cat jumped on the table and knocked a wedge of cheese to the floor. She reached down and shaved off a few slivers for its meal.

And what if she did succeed in creating the elixir of life and gave it to John?

Indefinitely extending
one
person's life would not disrupt the course of humanity, she reasoned. Extending everyone's life certainly could.

“Well,” Bianca said to the cat, “I only seek to save John.”

Besides, did it matter if one person lived forever, walking the earth for eternity? Belief in God ensured an everlasting life after death. Did it not? If one believed, did one get to sit at God's table and pass Him the plate of potatoes?

But was it right, was it just, to keep John from joining this ethereal divinity? She refused to entertain the thought that her pursuit to save John was a selfish one. She could no more think of continuing life without him than she could face that his fate, whether he lived or died, was not hers to determine. She refused to consider the notion. She must do everything she could to save him.

Bianca untied the satchel's flap and removed Ferris Stannum's book of alchemy. She cleared a space on the table and opened the journal to his final experiment.

The first page of the process was an elaborate drawing of what Stannum hoped to achieve. Bianca interpreted the symbols, determining what the first step entailed and what equipment she needed. She read aloud from the second page, committing the verse to memory and repeating it until she thoroughly understood the direction of the projection.

Eager to begin, Bianca collected the ingredients and set up her table with clean mortars and bowls. She filled a jug with rainwater from the cistern and washed several flasks. Though the night was still uncomfortably warm, she would need a fire for the first stage. She gathered kindling and dung patties to stoke her furnace.

Once she had ground the gentian root and zedoary, she searched her shelves for stibium, which she had nabbed from her father years before. He had once performed a process similar to the one she was about to try. The result had seemed like magic, and she had stolen some ore as a reminder of what she had seen and to someday create her own “magic.”

The first step required calcinating the ore until she obtained “the wolf of amber glass”—the transformation she had witnessed as a girl. She lit a fire in her furnace and pulled a stool next to it. The process required constant stirring and attention to heat until the ore melted. Once the ore melted it would go through a transformation and solidify.

Day began to break and Bianca's arms tired from stirring. John had not moved the entire night, and the black tiger slept curled against him. Fatigue tempted her to abandon the experiment and take a quick nap, but she fought the seductive lure of sleep. She kept herself awake by reading aloud snippets from Stannum's alchemy journal . . .

A rooster crowed from across the way and London began to wake. Bleary-eyed from reading in the dim light, Bianca recited whatever came to mind—her father's discourse about alchemy, Meddybemps's street patter. She kept dogged attention to the process, to her stirring, and suppressed her weariness and dread of failure.

Hours of work seemed to have produced nothing, and she wondered if the calcination had failed. As she pondered what she had done wrong, her enthusiasm waned. Should she start over? She glanced at John, worried.

How long would John stay in that deep sleep? The sweat usually killed its victims quickly. But the deep sleep was a different matter. She had heard people could linger insensible for days. Even weeks. Finally, the afflicted withered from lack of drink and starved. But if she stopped the process and accepted failure, John would surely die.

The thought of losing him spurred her on. Bianca stubbornly kept on stirring.

Again she turned her thoughts to Ferris Stannum.

It seemed entirely possible that the alchemist had been murdered by someone wanting his alchemy journal. Bianca envisioned the murderer creeping into his room while he slept and smothering him with his pillow. She wondered if Stannum had heard his murderer approach. But there was no indication that he had put up a struggle. In her mind, the hidden bloodstained pillow she had found was proof of treachery. Though John thought Stannum could have slept on his stomach and caused the stains, there were three facts that ran counter to his theory. One, the pillow was far from Stannum's bed, and two, the pillow had two perfectly spaced stains. Three, the journal was missing the next day.

But why had
she
been given the journal? Was it given to her for safekeeping or because someone believed she might be able to interpret it?

Bianca gazed over at John. It occurred to her that she had not followed up on her experiment with the rat, testing Hughes's tincture to see if it had been poison. Originally, when she had checked the cage, she had found the rat unresponsive. It had appeared dead. Bianca stopped stirring the solution and found the cage under the table. She slid it out and lifted the cage onto the table. The rat was alive.

So Barnabas Hughes had not poisoned Mrs. Tenbrook.

Bianca set the cage back on the shelf with the others. Perhaps the coroner had been right in his diagnosis. After all, she had no direct knowledge of the sweat or its process. Like other diseases she had seen, the sickness could probably manifest differently in its victims. The coroner had been quick in his decision, declaring the landlady succumbed to the disease without giving it a second thought. But a swift diagnosis did not always guarantee a correct diagnosis.

What if Goodwife Tenbrook had not died of the sweat? Both she and Stannum had unusually red eyes. It was a symptom not associated with the disease. Bianca returned to her furnace and took up the stir rod.

If the landlady had smothered Stannum, the mischief would have ended with her. But the arrival of the book of alchemy in Bianca's room of Medicinals and Physickes and the attack on her near Burley House contradicted that.

So who gave her the book and how did that person first get it?

Bianca dipped the rod back into the flask. As she began to stir, Amice and her husband, Gilley, came to mind. She wondered if he had married Amice for love. Or did he marry expecting a dowry that he believed was his right? Bianca sniffed. Anyone marrying an alchemist's daughter should know that the reward for doing so is paltry at best. Unless he expected to benefit in some other way. Bianca gave some thought to this. Perhaps he wanted the journal but had been prevented from acquiring it. Bianca's face darkened. Perhaps he had been the man who had attacked her.

Bianca dropped her arms to give them a rest. She rubbed the back of her neck and threw another dung patty in the stove. The fire snapped, throwing sparks in the firebox.

She had just gone over to check on John when the transformation she had been hoping for began.

The ore passed through a stage of hardened grayness and began to dissolve. Transfixed, Bianca gaped at the inexplicable magic happening before her. In a moment, a brown fluid covered the bottom of the flask. Bianca resumed stirring. The liquid thickened around the iron rod, solidifying into a deep yellow, brittle-looking glass. It was the “glass” that Stannum had written of.

Thrilled by her success, Bianca cackled in delight. The black tiger lifted its head and eyed her suspiciously.

“At last! The moon of perfection!” Bianca clapped her hands together and brought them to her lips.

She removed the flask from the heat and hurried to the front door to examine the glass in the early morning light. “I have never seen a more beautiful wolf,” she cried.

Her neighbor, throwing handfuls of grain to his chickens, looked over his shoulder in alarm. “Wolf?” he exclaimed. “Where? Where is wolf?”

Bianca waved the flask over her head and smiled. She disappeared into her rent and shut the door, leaving her neighbor gawping after her as if she had lost her mind.

In a way, she
had
lost her sense. Her mind was in a haze from lack of sleep, and her concern for John had left her nerves frayed. She consulted Stannum's journal of alchemy to see what stage was next.

Bianca closed her eyes, concentrating. “Grind thy livered wolf” was simple enough. She fished the yellow solid out of the flask and pulverized it in a mortar.

“But look thee to element three, must in dissolution of red most soured.” She read the line over and sat back in thought. “Element three,” she mused. The four elements were air, water, earth, and fire, but which one was the third? Bianca considered the riddle. She read over the second half of the sentence, “must in dissolution of red most soured.”

Dissolution was a liquid process. The third element must be water. “Dissolve the livered wolf in a liquid that is red and sour.” The only liquid that came to mind was a bottle of wine that had turned to vinegar. Bianca retrieved the bottle and poured the soured spirits in a flask. Next, she shook the ground “wolf” into it.

The particles of powder disappeared into the liquid. Bianca swirled the solution and the liquid became cloudy. She ran her finger under the next line of text, understanding what she must do, but a lump settled in her stomach at the thought of it—

“And then in sublimation lives.”

Sublimation—the method she had yet to perfect. Her failure being the reason for seeking Ferris Stannum in the first place. She looked over her new retorts and wondered if she should chance using them. She had no more stibium to repeat the process if she failed. She also had no kerotakis. The hard-earned amber wolf sat at the bottom of the flask. She had one opportunity to make it work.

She froze, demoralized. Perhaps her father, with his years of alchemical expertise, was right in saying she could not produce the elixir of life. According to him she had not been given that destiny. Nor did she have the correct apparatus—the kerotakis—to even attempt the next step.