Alchemy and Meggy Swann (13 page)

A gold-crowned head peeked around the platform. Master Grimm. Go to! That was why the king, even in all his finery, had looked like a sack of flour on legs. "Ah, Mistress Swann, come to see us. How liked you the play?" he asked.

"'Twas wondrous grand," she said. "I never knew of such a thing. I would be a player, too, if only women could be players. But it was excellent to watch."

"Come sit with me and tell me more. Tell me how I out-braved and outbragged the other players." he said. "'Pon my honor, I did play brilliantly. Never was a king more kingly and a death more deadly. Come, tell me."

"Nay, I must find Roger."

"Go then, ill-mannered girl. I shall find some other one to dazzle. Roger be yon, behind the stage, leaving off his costume."

She went where he pointed, and there was the beauteous lady who had swooned so distressingly. "Good mistress," Meggy began, and the lady turned. It was Roger. Roger! Meggy thought she would recognize that nose anywhere, even under a shipload of paint.

"By my troth, it be the fetching Mistress Swann, come to see me play," said Roger. "Was I not grand? Do I not have the most magnificent gown?" He twirled. "And see my—"

Were all players this boastful? Meggy wondered. "Enough, Sir Pridesome," she said to him. "I am confounded and bestraught and do seek your counsel."

He curtsied, in tolerable style for one with such shoulders. "At your service, Dame Impatient. Let me become Roger again. I shall beg off from my fellows and escort you home, and you will tell me what you want of me."

Roger returned in a moment, the golden curls and lace ruffles gone, wearing a leather jerkin over his doublet and hose.

"More wages gone for clothes, Oldmeat?" Meggy asked.

"Is it not fine? Real Spanish leather. Master Grimm grew too stout for it and now it is mine. Do I not look lordly?" He twirled.

"You grow vain, Oldmeat," she said.

"Not at all. I have always been vain. It be my tragic flaw. In all the very best dramas the hero has a tragic flaw." He started to walk across the courtyard, and Meggy wabbled alongside him.

"Enough of your prattling, my Lord Vanity," Meggy said. "Tragic reminds me wherefore I am here. I fear my father is involved in misdeeds that might leave someone tragically dead and me tragically alone. I pray your help, Oldmeat."

Roger stopped. "I do believe that the first rule of asking a favor of someone is to call that someone not Oldmeat but instead Roger."

There was silence for a moment, but at last she said, "Aye,
Roger.
Now hearken,
Roger,
and be still. Men came to my father,
Roger.
They would poison a noble lord called Baron Eastmoreland, and they sought my father's assistance."

"Poison? Nay, 'tis not so. What has the master to do with poisons?" He scratched his head, and his earring winked in the sunshine. "But I did hear comings and goings of strange men in the night ... and he did send me on useless errands at times..."

"'Tis true. My father supplies poison for the elimination of rats and mice and unloved lords. And he is a fraud, doing tricks to cheat people out of their money. He be a poor father, indeed. But in truth a poor father is better than no father at all. I do not wish to see his head on London Bridge. Oh, Oldme—Roger, will you help me choose the right course?"

Roger took her arm. "Come, we will visit a cookshop and eat pigs' trotters by the river while you tell me more."

Meggy and Roger took their food to the ruins of a wharf by the river. They sat on stones warm from the afternoon sun. The music of lutes and viols could be heard from the windows of a big house nearby, and barges with silken canopies sailed past, followed by a silent procession of swans like lanterns floating on the river.

Meggy told Roger what she had overheard. "I could accuse him to the watch," she concluded, "but then he would be seized. Or worse."

Roger stopped chewing to ask, "And if you do nothing?"

Meggy sighed. "Indeed, I would prefer to do nothing, for it would mean less trouble for me. But a man would lie dead, my father would be murderer, and I would know it. And God would know it. I would be known to all as the daughter of a murderer." Tears filled Meggy's eyes, slipped down her cheeks, and splashed on her bodice.

Finally she snuffled and wiped her face with her kirtle. "I cannot do nothing. I must try to save the baron and keep my father's head on his shoulders." She sighed again. She and Roger sat in silence for a time, and then Meggy asked, "Why does someone seek to dispatch this Baron Eastmoreland?"

"He is an honest man, it is said, loyal to the queen, and thus misliked by those who are not."

"Including," Meggy said, "his gorbellied food taster and an odious ginger-haired man." She thought a moment, chewing on her lip, and then said, "Mayhap if we warned the baron that there was danger, that he should be wary and look to his food, he would be on his guard."

"And how might you do that? Mark me well, Meggy. He is a baron, and you be the daughter of an alchemist from Crooked Lane. Think you to knock at his door and say, 'Open to me. I would have speech with the baron'?"

"Who might have speech with him then? A water carrier? Fishmonger? Chimney sweep?"

"Meggy Swann," said Roger, "you know a poor pennyworth about barons. Tradesmen speak not with barons but with their servants."

"A letter then. What think you of a letter?"

"Know you how to write a letter?"

"You do."

Roger nodded. "Aye, in Latin. Does he read Latin?"

Meggy shrugged.

"Have you paper? Ink? A pen?"

She shook her head.

"We know not where he lives. We could not get past his door. And he would pay us no heed anywise."

"Roger, all you say is not, not, not," Meggy said, slapping her hand against the stones. "I pray you be more help than that."

"What then be your will, my lady?" Roger asked. "Shall I fly in through his window with a warning in my mouth? I say do not fret over this matter. It concerns your father and the baron. 'Tis naught of your affair."

Meggy banged one of her sticks against the ground. "Oldmeat, you are a craven coward and no use to me at all!"

Roger stood and bowed with a sweep of his cap. "Then I shall leave you, Mistress Crosspatch," he said, and turned and walked away.

"Go then, you writhled, beetle-brained knave!" she shouted. "You churl, you slug, you stony-hearted villain! May onions grow in your ears!"

Meggy stood and slowly wabbled toward home. Where Fish Street Hill crossed Crooked Lane, she saw her father, head down into the wind, hurrying to the house. He looked so worn and so worried that she was filled with pity despite herself. Aye, he was cold, remote, willful, hard, and selfish, a fraud and a trickster, mayhap even villainous and a black-hearted murderer. He had left her mother with child and his daughter before he knew her, had sent for her but did not want her, and now sometimes made her feel like a ha'penny, small and not worth very much. But such as he was, he was her father. She would not let him be but a head on London Bridge. She would warn the baron and then do what she could to help her father with his Great Work. And chicken-hearted Roger must be made to help.

Meggy did not turn for home but climbed to Pudding Lane, cursing the boy for causing her to chase after him. Finally, stepping carefully over pigs' innards steaming in the sunshine, she arrived at the Grimms'.

Master Grimm and Master Merryman were leaving the house as Meggy arrived. Master Grimm grumbled, "No time. We have no time for you," and strode off. But Master Merryman smiled sadly and spoke. "We are to see about the purchase of a wagon. Without patronage it be right hard to secure a space to perform. We may have to return to the road." He shook his head. "Even there belike we will not be safe from the law."

Roger, he told Meggy, had gone with friends to the Bellowing Bull on Candlewick Street. Meggy hastened there. A pox on Roger, she thought. If he was cupshot, up to his eyes in ale, he would be no use to her.

The windows of the inn were thrown open to the day's warmth, and Meggy peered in each one until she found Roger.

The other young men at his table were carousing, teasing and laughing, but a downcast Roger sat quietly. "Roger," Meggy called softly, but not softly enough. The entire tableful of fellows turned to her.

"What ho!" shouted one. "A maiden with the sweetest face this side of sugared plums beckons us."

Roger looked up. "Begone, Meggy," he said.

"No, I pray you, Roger, come hither. I want you."

"Oh fortunate Roger," one of the boys at the table called. And another, "Would that your sweetheart wanted me!"

Sweetheart? Ne'er! Impossible! She had no desire for a sweetheart. But belike if she had...

Roger was blushing red as a summer sunset as he hurried to her side. "What?" he asked.

"Roger, be you codswalloped?"

"Nay, I am as sober as a newborn babe, not that it be your affair."

Meggy nodded. "Good," she said, and she began as she had practiced on the way. "I have resolved to see the baron, myself, without you, as you will not. It must be done. I care not for the danger, although if I am assaulted or imprisoned, 'twill be on your head for compelling me to go alone. And so farewell, Roger, if it should happen that we ne'er see each other again."

"How will you find him, Lady Obstinate?"

"I will ask. And ask. And ask. I will ask every living soul in London until I find someone who knows where lives this cursed baron. Now, I say again, fare thee well."

Roger sighed a sigh that could have blown the entire English fleet to France. "The baron dwells off Dowgate, near the river."

"How know you that?"

"I asked," he said. "And I will attend you, as you have known all this time I would."

Meggy smiled as they turned for Dowgate Street. 'Twas true. She had known.

Meggy and Roger walked a middling long way down from Candlewick Street and over on Thames Street. On one side of Dowgate Street were shops, taverns, and houses much the same as in the rest of London. On the other side was a residence that was nearly a city unto itself. Beyond a short wall of stone, Meggy saw, was a jumble of large redbrick buildings—towers, chapel, stables, and various chambers—set in a garden with abundant trees and a stretch of grass down to the river.

They stopped before the vast gatehouse. Meggy cleared her throat and called out to a face in a window, "Good morrow, good sir. Be you the baron?"

Roger poked her. "Clotpole! He is but the gatekeeper."

The face attached itself to a gross-bellied man who came through the door and stood before them, legs apart. "Be off with ye! No beggars here."

Meggy frowned, remembering the similar welcome given her by her father. She pulled herself as tall as she could. "We are not beggars. We would have speech with the baron."

The man laughed and rubbed his nose. "She would have speech with the baron! I would be knighted by the queen! Now off, I say!"

"But we bear a message for—"

He thrust his great belly toward them. "Do ye wish me to call the dogs?" Roger took Meggy's arm and pulled her away.

Men came and went through the gatehouse, but Meggy could see no way of attaching herself to them and sneaking past the gateman. Dowgate was crowded with peddlers and hawkers and vendors, but they were all shooed away from the baron's gate. All but the ballad seller, for the gateman and passersby both stopped and listened as he sang, offering the last words, confession, and dying declaration of one Anne Fogget, hanged that very morning for the crime of murdering her husband:
My husband coming home somewhat in drink, as he was going to bed,
the ballad seller sang,
I took an axe I had prepared, and clove him in the head.
Meggy shivered, imagining the last words and dying confession of an alchemist of the city, hanged for preparing poison for a noble lord.

She pulled Roger away from the gate. He bought herring pies from a passing peddler, and they walked to the river to eat. Pigeons and sparrows and gulls cried as they fought over scraps of fish and other bits from the gutters. Roger took a large bite of his pie and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "We have tried, Meggy," he said, "but we cannot—"

"Cannot, will not, would not!" Meggy said. "Do you wish to see my father's head spinning in the wind on London Bridge? Hear his last confession sung on London street corners? We must think of something."

"You are as stubborn as a donkey with sore feet! What think you to try next? Tying a message on one of those pigeons and letting him fly to the baron? Or mayhap you will take flight over the baron's walls and sing a song at his window." Roger began to sing in a surprisingly sweet voice.

Oh Baron, most loyal,
Although you recoil,
I must tell you this:
Something is amiss.
You must not partake
Of comfits or cake
For—

He began to laugh so hard at his own foolishness that he slipped and dropped his pie into the water, whereupon it was fought over by ducks until it sank to the bottom of the Thames.