A Secret Alchemy (26 page)

I flinch. “Don’t have to what?” It occurs to me that we’re both a little bit drunk.

“Don’t have to try to make it better. Join me in. I’m not family. I never was family. But it was all right, wasn’t it? They didn’t have to tell me to keep my hands off Izzy, or sack me, or cut my balls off. They—you—you just had to pay me.”

“Was that how it felt?” I ask, trying not to hear what he’s said about Izzy.

“Oh, yes. Always. Why do you think I did so much around the house? I wasn’t paid for that. But in the end…Haven’t Lionel and Izzy made it clear enough?”

“But not Gareth.”

“No…not Gareth.” He gets up. “Where’s your toilet?”

I tell him, and he goes out. Winded, I lean shakily back in the corner of the sofa, and try to sort out Mark’s anger into something that makes sense.

If he was so angry then, I’d no idea. Perhaps it would have helped if I’d known. Or perhaps not: I can’t imagine knowing how to deal with it at twenty.

But he never said. Just tapped on my open bedroom door when I was kneeling on the floor, packing my suitcase to go back to the university after the Christmas holidays.

He had to clear his throat before he spoke, though. “Just thought…” He closed the door behind him. “Just wanted to tell you that I’ve got a job.” Scarlet began to creep along his cheekbones.

“A job?” Something began to sting in my hands. “You mean, not here?”

“Yeah, in Preston. Handyman for a big engineering factory that was blitzed. They’re rebuilding, all landscaped and everything.”

I couldn’t seem to make my voice work properly, and when he finished his speech, he just stood there. I tried to say, “I see,” but what came out was “Why?”

“Time to move on. Stand on my own two feet.”

“But…But you belong here.”

He shook his head. “No. I’m not family. Your uncle…your aunt’s been very kind…and all of you. I’m very grateful.”

I stood up. “Has—has something gone wrong? What’s happened? Have you had a row with someone? Lionel? Someone in the workshop?”

“No. Nothing like that. Just, well, like I said. Time to move on.”

“But we
need
you.” I wasn’t going to cry, I wasn’t, but my throat hurt and I couldn’t keep the roughness out of my voice.

“No, you don’t. Your uncle’ll find others.”

“But it’s not like—it’s…
Handyman?
It’s not a career. Not like here! It’s—just mowing lawns and things.
Why?
”

“You don’t get it, do you? The likes of me don’t have careers. We have jobs. And when one job ends, we get another.”

“But—but you’re a printer. Uncle Gareth—you’re his deputy. You, not anyone else.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mark. “I’m so sorry.”

He means it, I thought, and my heart began to hammer. He’s going, and I can’t bear it. It mustn’t happen. Think, now, Una. Think what could have done this, because then you can try to change his mind. Think quickly, because once he walks out of that door he’s gone forever. Think! He’s used to you loving him. Maybe he’s even forgotten—or maybe he hasn’t. Don’t say it, in case. But what’s changed, that he won’t stay?

Fighting to keep my voice steady, I said, “But what about the Press? We
do
need you. Uncle Gareth needs you. It must be nicer
living here than in some horrible digs in
Preston
, of all places.” He blinked and I thought I’d touched a nerve. “How can you go? You don’t even want to. And you don’t care what happens to us…” A horrible thought gripped me in the guts. “Or is it Izzy? Is it because Izzy and Paul won’t be living here? It is, isn’t it? Izzy’s gone and you don’t care about anyone else. You only care about her.” I’d have been shouting if I hadn’t been whispering, because all I could manage was not to let the tears come out. “But she doesn’t care about you. She never has and she never will. You can’t have her! You can’t have Izzy! But what about…What about the rest of us? What about me? I—”

I didn’t say it. I managed not to, but it took all my strength, and I’d none left to stay standing or keep the pain in my guts pressed down. My legs gave way and I sat down on the bed and cried and cried. He must have known what I didn’t say, though, because he just gripped my shoulder for a moment, then went out and closed the door gently behind him.

Only then did I say it to the empty room: “What about me? Because I love you. Is that why you’re going?”

He wasn’t there when I did the rounds of my own good-byes the next day. Uncle Gareth offered me a lift to the station in the van. He said it was on his way to the binder’s, though I knew it wasn’t, not really.

“I wish Mark wasn’t going,” I managed to say quite calmly.

“So do I,” he said. “But he…he wants to make his own way in the world. That’s as…as it should be.”

“I suppose so,” I said. Uncle Gareth, of all of us, must know why Mark was really going, but I didn’t dare ask him, for fear of giving myself away. “Will…will you say good-bye to him for me?”

“Of course,” he said, as he pulled up in front of the station and tugged on the hand brake. Then we got out and he lifted my suitcases from the backseat for me. “Well, Una my dear, have a good term and we’ll see you at Easter.”

“I will,” I said, and gave him a hug.

He held on to me. “Mark will be all right,” he said quietly in my ear, but very firmly. “He’s a good man. You’ll see. And maybe…he’ll be back, someday.”

And then the up train was signaled and I had to hurry. Usually Uncle Gareth would have got a platform ticket and helped me onto the train with my bags, and stayed to wave me off. But when I turned around from the ticket-office window, he’d gone.

Now I know why Uncle Gareth went, and what—perhaps—he didn’t want me to see. But I still don’t know why Mark left. He never gave me a reason: a solid, human need or want or fear, something I could hold and understand, argue with or soothe away. And that’s what screamed and cried at me in the night, twisting and turning in my narrow bed in my college room.
Why? Does he love Izzy so much? Does he hate us so much? Does he hate me? What did we do? What did we not do? Was it that he knew I loved him? Why did he go?

And when I wrote and told him that Grandpapa had died, and Uncle Gareth was struggling, that the Press might not be able to keep going, that only he, Mark, could save it, I got no answer.

Mark comes back from the loo and sees me reaching for the wine bottle.

“No more for me. Shouldn’t be driving, really. Must go.” But he sits down on the sofa again, his long legs covering half of the hearth-rug, as Adam’s used to, and his face gilded by the firelight, and my belly’s suddenly gripped with longing for him to stay, for a
deeper voice to disturb the thick fog of silence of my empty house, for a male body warm and breathing in my bed.

I lean forward and fill his glass. “I can always call a cab to take you home. If…if you
could
come with me tomorrow, I could pick you up. Or something. But…I’ve been thinking. I do…I really do think I ought to go and see Fergus. It’s not the same on the phone. And you
would
explain it so much better—the Chantry and so on. You know you would. You can talk concretely about what the plans are.
You
know what needs doing. The whole thing—”

“Don’t tell me—the Chantry project needs me again. How lucky I turned up.”

“No!” I say, and new understanding bursts like a firework in my head so that I grab his hand and go on before he can interrupt again. “It’s not that. You
are
the Chantry—the Solmani Press—everything. Don’t you see? You’re the keystone, the one thing that makes it work. Without you, it’s not
going
to work. The Press will die, and the Chantry will get turned into smart flats for suburban yuppies, and Gareth will shrivel away to nothing in sheltered housing somewhere. You’re the only one who can keep it alive. Come with me and persuade Fergus. Before Izzy gets to him. Please?”

He’s silent, and then he slides his hand out from under mine. Is he still too angry? Should I not have mentioned Izzy? Is he going to refuse? Have I ruined everything?

“Well…” he says at last, and a smile breaks over his face. “I’ll do you a swap. I’ll come to Sheriff Hutton and Pontefract and talk to Fergus, if we can go to Leeds as well, so I can see Morgan. I haven’t seen her for ages.” He sits up so he’s farther away from me, but he’s holding out his glass. “Give us a bit more, and then I must go home.”

Elysabeth—the 16th yr of the reign of King Edward the Fourth

True to his word, Antony wrote from Ludlow every week, that I
might know always of Ned’s growing and learning. He told tales of what Ned ate and drank, what he said and sang, how he learned to pray and fight and dance, and these did ease the ache in my arms for the absence of my boy. As Edward had promised, it eased my sorrow, too, that to have a Plantagenet Prince of Wales living in the western Marches—and him and his Council governed by so great a man as Antony, Earl Rivers—did as much for the security of the realm as half a thousand men-at-arms.

I had read this far when Margaret entered.

“Madam, if we are to reach the Archbishop’s mint at the hour appointed by the King, we must make haste. And it is cold outside, you’ll need your furs.” I tucked the letter into my gown, and rose. Great things for the betterment of the realm were promised through the mysteries of science, and since such things
must be paid for, I had resolved to see for myself what might be done.

When I reached the mint, Edward was already there, and Archbishop Neville was as full of hospitality and self-importance as his brother Warwick had been, although with an ecclesiastical tinge of humility before God if before no other. The workshop was warm; I loosened my furs, and gave my hand to the man who knelt already before Edward. He was some years older than any of us, and his head was properly bowed, but his eyes, I saw, looked sideways to where a vessel filled with water steamed above a little brazier of charcoal.

“Your Grace,” George Neville was saying, “this man has studied alchemical science with the great Ripley himself, and at Peter-house, and learned what Ripley will not let be written down. We have every hope—God willing—that this will prove what we have so long searched for.”

“Ah, Master Wintersett, good day to you,” said Edward, waving him toward the workbench. There were jars labeled
argent vive
and
lupus metallorum
, vials of liquids blue and gold and deep brown, and glass vessels with beaks and spouts, more like creatures than a dish or a bottle. “Tell us more of what you will do. I think I met your brother once—or your cousin, perhaps. Does he not have lands adjoining mine in the West Riding?”

“Aye, Your Grace” was all Master Wintersett said, heaving himself to his feet. “Now, to the matter in hand. I would—that is, Your Grace, though I have all the resources of my lord Archbishop’s mint”—George Neville smiled like an innkeeper—“if you permit, I think that one of your old nobles, and from your own hand, will provide the best matter for transmutation yet.”

“So you alchemists don’t care for my new angel coins?” Edward said, snapping his fingers for a page. The lad was one of my son Thomas’s bastards, I recall, that had been named Grey for his grandfather, and he came forward, struggling with the strings of a purse, his frown so like my brother John’s—dead at the hands of the Nevilles—that I felt winded.

Edward took the purse from him, and brought out a handful of nobles.

I remember the weight of an old noble in my hand, can still feel it in my palm, heavy with gold, as I can still feel the weight of my babies in my arms, and Edward’s body pressing into mine.

“As to that, we all know what stability and good fortune the recoinage brought,” George Neville said hastily to Edward, but with a bow to me, “even as the same year brought Her Grace the Queen to her throne. May I ask if my lord Hastings is to join us?”

I looked sharply at him, but he was all deferential smiles.

“We performed our own alchemy, did we not?” said Edward. “More golden angels were made than nobles had been melted down.”

“Indeed!” said Neville.

Wintersett shook his head. “True alchemy is more than melting gold. Even as the sinful human spirit is refined in holy fire,” he glanced at George Neville, who nodded as one wise man to another, “so we alchemists refine base matter that it, too, may become the purest gold. And the touch of an anointed king…” He took the noble from Edward with a bow, and set it in a great stone mortar. “Now, the first stage…”

From a flask he poured mercury—slippery, bright, and dark—then from another vinegar, with a whiff of the kitchen, and finally
salt in white crystals so clean they seemed to glow in the lamplight. He bent over the mortar and began to work the mixture.

He spoke quickly and in a low tone, as if he were more accustomed to talking to an apprentice, or another alchemist, than to a king and his court. “This is the
nigredo
—the base matter. Ripley boiled this for a day and a night before straining it in linen, but I have found that if I use
regulus
of antimony, and a little arsenic, the precipitate is almost…” When it was ground to a slurry, he poured it into a glass and set it in the little bath of boiling water. I needed to know of this work, but I had never troubled to learn enough of the simple matters, and now could not understand that of which he spoke. Margaret was rapt, following every word, even taking out her tablets to write down the substances that they spoke of:
albedo
and
rubedo
, the
opus circulatorium
, the
solve et coagula
. Edward, too, seemed to know more of these matters than I had thought. Of course, Antony had said alchemy was much discussed at Bruges and studied at the University of Leuven.