Alchemy and Meggy Swann (10 page)

"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." He 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.

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?

"Well, then, let us be off," Roger said. "The queen will be barging to Westminster. If we make haste, we will see her!"

The queen! Her mopes and sulks forgotten, Meggy grabbed her walking sticks and followed Roger out the door.

The Grimms were gathered in the lane outside. "Well met, Mistress Meggy," said Mistress Grimm, straightening the girl's cap. "Well met, well met!" squealed the twins, while they danced and twirled in their impatience to be off.

Master Merryman sneered, and Master Grimm's face grew hard. "She will but delay us," he said, "limping and shuffling. Must we—"

Mistress Grimm pinched his arm, and he stepped aside to let Meggy pass.

Roger walked a few paces ahead of Meggy and stopped. He twirled and stopped and twirled again. Then he walked back toward her, his arms swinging like windmill blades.

"Why do you fidget so?" Meggy asked him. "You wiggle about like a water snake in the shallows. "

"Have you not noticed, Mistress Meggy, that I wear a splendid doublet and trunk hose?" He twirled around again and struck a pose so that the sun glinted off a gold earring in his ear. "You have not remarked upon me. Am I not fine? Do I not look a very picture?"

"You, my Lord Vanity, look the very picture of a fool, prancing and preening like that," said Meggy, and Violet Velvet snorted.

"Come, hurry, hurry," cried the twins, and each grabbed one of Meggy's arms and began to run. The three fell aheap in the street.

"Fie upon it!" shouted Master Grimm. "Did I not say—"

"You, Ivory Silk," Mistress Grimm shouted as she slapped at the twins, "have a care for Mistress Meggy. And you, Silver Damask, are a thoughtless baggage!"

Roger helped Meggy up and handed her the fallen walking sticks. She was a bit bruised and dirty but oddly pleased that the twins had forgotten for a moment her lameness. "Pay him no mind," Roger said, gesturing toward Master Grimm striding on ahead. "He desired to see the hanging at Wapping in the Woze but was shouted down in favor of the river and the queen. As a consequence he is bad tempered as a man with a boil on his bum."

The twins had jumped to their feet and with hands all mucky from the street grabbed Roger's. "Come, Roger. Let us quick away!" And the three hurried around the corner onto Fish Street Hill.

Although Meggy went as quickly as she could, they stopped now and then for her to catch up. Master Grimm grimaced and grumbled. "Fie and fie again!" he said at last. "The queen is likely to be in France afore we reach the river with this laggard." Meggy stopped, her face burning. She would turn back, queen or no queen.

Master Merryman touched Master Grimm's arm and said, "You and the family hasten on, Cuthbert. Mistress Swann and I will follow at a more sedate pace."

Master Grimm grabbed Mistress Grimm with one arm and Violet Velvet with the other, and they hurried after Roger and the twins.

Meggy stood still, both grateful and fearful to find herself alone with the ill-favored Master Merryman, but he spoke softly and kindly. "Befitting the name of Grimm," he said, "Cuthbert has ever been churlish and spleeny. Pray pardon him."

"But," Meggy said, "he appears so merry."

"Ah, appears. You and I, Mistress Swann, know better than most how one can be misjudged because of how one appears." His good eye was heavy and sad, and his expression, she saw now, more woeful than sneering. "Will you walk with me, mistress?"

Meggy nodded. He walked slowly on, and drawing a great breath, she walked on beside him, stick-swing-drag. After a long moment she asked, "If Master Grimm be so much a scowling scold, why do you call him partner?"

"Grimm he may be," said Master Merryman, "but Cuthbert does run a fine company. Anywise, he will as long as he is allowed. Laws are becoming stricter and officials more vigilant. In time no player will be able to wear a wig or dance a jig less he is sponsored by some noble and licensed by the lord mayor. How we can accomplish that I know not." He shook his head.