Alchemy and Meggy Swann (16 page)

As she turned down the lane from Candlewick Street, she could smell the spice-cake smell that meant the cooper was firing oak casks. Her mouth watered at the aroma. As important as casks and barrels were, she could not help but wish it truly were spice cake he was baking.

A wagon was drawn up in front of the house at the Sign of the Sun, and a carter was moving barrels and boxes in. Laughter streamed out the open door. Meggy thought of her own very different arrival some months ago. She stood staring at the house for a moment, remembering what was and imagining what might have been, and then she turned to the cooper's.

The cooper's shop was free of charred wood and ashes although the beams and the walls were still blackened from the fire. In one corner the cooper was busily smoothing barrel staves, and Nicholas played with his horse in a mound of sawdust. Meggy explained to the cooper why she had come. "Ah, Mistress Meggy, I can do better than that," he said. From the back of his shop he brought out a pair of walking sticks, fine oak and polished until they were like satin. The tops of the T shapes were padded with leather. "To thank you, mistress, for your kindness to my boy."

Meggy grinned as she tried them out. With these fine new sticks, she was steadier and stood taller, and—wonder of wonders—her hands did not hurt.

"How fares your beauteous goose?" Nicholas asked Meggy as she paced the length of the shop. "Where is she? Do you miss her? Shall she be coming back to Crooked Lane?"

"Soft, Master Nicholas, soft. Louise does dwell now with someone else, and aye, I miss her and her squawks and her waddles."

"I do wish I waddled like you and Louise," the boy said, watching Meggy. "It be most like dancing."

Meggy was astounded at his words. She had ever thought her lameness ugly and her wabbles ungraceful, but her gait in truth was a bit of swaying and a bit of bobbling and joggling. In some measure like dancing indeed.

"Someone came seeking you this very morning," Master Cooper said. Meggy's heart leapt. Roger! "A tall, scar-faced man." Not Roger. Master Merryman.

Meggy thanked the cooper and headed for Pudding Lane to see what Master Merryman wanted of her. In truth she hoped to find Roger there. Roger. Her heart lurched back and forth between joy and dismay at the thought of seeing again that big nose and foolish grin.

One of Master Grimm's apprentices opened the door. Inside was a crowd of people—apprentices, Master and Mistress Grimm, Master Merryman, all the Grimm children, Francis Shore the fencing master, and a number of men she remembered seeing in the play but had not yet met—laughing and talking.

"Mistress Swann," Mistress Grimm, coming to Meggy's side, said over the bibble-babble. "Sweeting, we have been looking for you but no one knew where you had gone."

"Wherefore this celebration?" Meggy asked her.

Master Grimm's voice rang over the others. "I have no doubt it was my performance in
Master Gamecock and the Death of the King
that convinced the baron to give us this opportunity. In sooth, who could have watched my Master Gamecock and not been moved?"

"Our fortunes have taken a goodly turn," Mistress Grimm said. "I will let Merryman tell you, for he was there." They pushed through the crowded and noisy room to where Master Merryman leaned against the fireplace, smiling his sad smile.

"Mistress Swann," he said, "well met. You are just in time for our festive gathering."

"What and why do you celebrate?" Meggy asked. "No one yet has said."

"It appears that Sir Mortimer Blunt, the baron Eastmoreland, has commanded a performance of us. He had his fellows call on us this very day. If we please him, belike he will give us his patronage and a license to play." He smiled his sad smile at the girl.

"Mistress, have you heard?" Master Grimm shouted over the noise. "We are to be Sir Mortimer's Men, for I am sure we will please him. Our future will be assured and our fortune made!"

So the baron had done as she had asked! "'Tis good news indeed, Master Grimm, Master Merryman, and well deserved." Meggy remembered how swept up she had been in the play she had seen. If the baron was moved as much, the company would be Sir Mortimer's Men without fail.

She felt warm with the knowledge that she had been of such assistance to people who had been kind to her. But she had something more on her mind. "Where is Roger?" she asked. "I do not see him."

Mistress Grimm gestured to the door. "The pigeon-livered boy went into the kitchen when he saw you come. He says you two are angry."

Meggy hurried to the kitchen. There was Roger sitting at the table, piercing an apple over and over with his knife.

"Leave off torturing that apple, Oldmeat," Meggy said. "It has done you no wrong. It was I."

He looked up. "Go away," he said.

"I have come to say I am sorry. Pray pardon me for—"

"Get you gone."

"But, Roger, I beg you to—"

"Leave me!"

"Will you not even listen and give me—"

Roger stuck the knife deep into the heart of the apple. "Go away, Meggy Swann. I wish to hold on to my anger yet for a time before I forgive you."

Relief flooded Meggy like warm soup. He would forgive her. They would be friends again. "You were right, Roger, to say what you did. I am indeed a selfish, ungrateful girl, and I cry your mercy. I will try to improve. After all, you are my only friend who is not a goose."

"Only friend?" Roger gestured toward the other room. "Are you not now among friends? You no longer be the solitary, sorrowful girl who first came, although your bad temper remains, as I can attest."

Meggy considered his words. Was she so changed? Just when had that happened, and how?

Roger led her back to the parlor. "Mistress Grimm," cried Master Grimm, "this good fortune has made me hungry. My empty belly rumbles like a cart. Bring us beer and bread, apples and nuts." He put his arm around Master Merryman's shoulder. "My good friend and fellow player Dick Merryman will stand treat, will you not, Dick?"

Master Merryman winked at Mistress Grimm. "Indeed, Cuthbert, indeed," he replied, and she turned for the kitchen.

The company resumed their rejoicing. The little Grimm girls danced about the room like spinning toys. The apprentices slapped one another's backs and punched one another's shoulders. One of them began to sing a wordless song with a tootling tune.

And Meggy, caught up in the joyous spirit, began to sing a celebration song she had learned of her gran:

Good fellows must go learn to dance
Thy bride-ale's full near-a.
There is a dance come out of France
The first ye heard this year-a.

Master Grimm swung Ivory Silk (or was it Silver Damask?) around, Master Merryman led Violet Velvet in a stately dance, and Roger leapt and twirled with Russet Wool in his arms. The apprentices laughed and whooped, "By my faith, a fine song!" and "More, Mistress Meggy, more!" so Meggy gave them more:

For I must leap and thou must hop
And we must turn all three-a
The fourth must bounce like a top,
And so we shall agree-a.
I pray thee, minstrel, make no stop
For we will merry be-a.

Roger put the baby down and clapped excitedly. "Who else has a song? Who else?" he called.

"You sing for us, my dear," said Master Grimm to his wife, who was returning with great mugs of ale. "Let us have 'The Fair Maid of Islington,' as you sang it when first I wooed you."

Mistress Grimm protested but finally said, "For you, Cuthbert, on this happy day." She began to sing:

There was a youth, a well-beloved youth,
And he was a squire's son.
He loved the bailiff's daughter dear
That lived in Islington.

In truth she twittered and twangled and wheezed, but it was enough like singing that the others clapped and danced.

Meggy was happy for them, but she felt suddenly alone, knowing that her own father had discarded her like an outworn shoe.

Russet Wool, crawling on the floor, had found Meggy's sack and busily pulled out the broadsides. At the bottom he found Meggy's scorched and ragged kirtle, wadded into a ball, and he shook it about until it opened out and, with a thud, hit his head. He began to cry.

Thud? Meggy wondered as Mistress Grimm picked Russet up and comforted him. How is it my kirtle thuds?

Meggy sat down on a bench, the kirtle in her lap. Something was knotted in the hem. When she untied the knot, a small parcel fell onto the floor, a parcel wrapped in a page torn from a book, and on that page was written
Margret.

She tore off the paper to find a large gold coin. A sovereign. One of the two sovereigns her father had been paid by the assassins. The Tudor rose on its surface winked at her, and her belly filled with both joy and sadness.

Her father had not left her without a thought. Selfish he might be, and remote, and consumed by his work, even a fraud and a murderer, but he was not indifferent to her. He had not much to give, but he had shared it with her. Her eyes filled with tears again, and she clutched the coin tightly. "Naught matters but my work," he had said. "Naught." But he had left a coin for her. And he had, after all, known her name.

Farewell, sir, she thought. And then, Farewell, Father. And Godspeed.

She slipped the coin into her sack. She would not spend it, she decided, not be enriched from gains so ill-gotten, but would keep it as a remembrance. It was all she had of him. No, not quite all. A coin and her black eyes and, she admitted, her curiosity, stubbornness, and persistence.

While Violet Velvet sang "Bonny Sweet Robin," Mistress Grimm danced with Russet Wool, the bump on his head forgotten. Meggy looked on in envy. Had she ever had such warmth and care from her own mother? No, all warmth, all kindness, all gentleness had come from her gran. She had naught from her cold, ungenerous mother. Well, mayhap her sharp tongue ... her suspicious nature ... a skill at bargaining, and—she smiled—a great many words of insult. Even Louise had given the girl something, the knowledge that one did not have to be perfect to be beauteous. All these—and, in sooth, her own cleverness and fierce determination—had led to this day, she realized. She had friends, a place of her own choosing, the promise of plenty to eat. She was rich indeed.

"Meggy, Meggy, come dance with us," the twins shouted, pulling at her. While Violet Velvet sang on, Meggy spread her arms wide and leaned on her new sticks, and the girls threaded themselves under and around and under again, laughing and singing along,
My Robin loves me, aye, he does.
She lifted one leg and twirled round on the other, and back again. She swayed and bobbled and joggled.

There she was, Meggy Swann, dancing! Her linen cap flew off, and her hair spun and tangled and found its way into her eyes and her mouth. She looked around as she twirled, part of a scene of joy and friendship and gaiety. Ye toads and vipers, here was transformation indeed! Master Merryman nodded his approval of her dance, and Roger winked. Meggy laughed. She, Meggy Swann, the formerly ugglesome crookleg, the foul-featured cripple, she was dancing!

Queen Elizabeth I of England has lent her name to an extraordinary period in Western history. The Elizabethan era, from her accession to the throne in 1558 until her death in 1603, was a proud time for England. The land was united and mostly at peace. It was the age of the Renaissance, of new ideas and new thinking, artistic brilliance and daring exploration. European wars brought continental refugees into England, exposing the English to new cultures and understandings. Advances in printing made books more available to both scholars and ordinary people. Poets, playwrights, and musicians produced works of enduring beauty and power.

Laboratory experiments resulted in advances in natural philosophy, which would later be called science, although such pursuits as astrology and alchemy were still taken seriously by educated people. Alchemy was not an Elizabethan, or even European, invention; people over the globe and over the centuries searched for the secrets of the universe. Alchemy had roots in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, India, Japan, Korea, and China, in classical Greece and Rome, and in the empires of Islam. Much of the existing material about alchemy reflects a mixture of scientific experimentation with the supernatural. These writings are often deliberately obscure, as alchemists balanced the need to communicate with their desire to protect alchemical secrets.

Alchemy is based on the idea that the world is composed of four elements: fire, earth, water, and air. The eighth-century Islamic alchemist Geber analyzed each element in terms of four basic qualities: hotness, coldness, dryness, and moistness. Fire was hot and dry, earth cold and dry, water cold and moist, and air hot and moist. Geber theorized that every metal was a combination of these four principles and so reasoned that the transmutation of one metal into another could be effected by the rearrangement of its basic qualities. To do this, one would need the help of the philosopher's stone.

The illusory philosopher's stone was thought to be a magical substance capable of turning lumps of inexpensive metals into gold. It was also believed to be an elixir of life, or panacea, useful for healing, for rejuvenation, and possibly for achieving immortality. It is said that many alchemists tested their discoveries on themselves and died of mercury, silver, or lead poisoning. Master Ambrose's beliefs and the experiments that he carries out in his laboratorium are all based on what I could understand from ancient and modern writings about alchemy.