Alchemy and Meggy Swann (6 page)

Her speech was interrupted by the cries and moans of the little girls petting Louise: "You cannot cook her! You would never eat her!"

Louise looked smugly up at Roger, stretched out her long neck, and bit him on the knee.

"Hellborn goose! Fat-headed pignut! In sooth you should be roasted, you clay-brained louse!" Roger shouted, and he drew back his foot to kick her, but the children seized his leg, crying and calling to Mistress Grimm for help.

"Enough," said Mistress Grimm, pulling the girls from Roger. "I can easily put this right. Let the goose remain here with us for a time," she said to Meggy, "and find your father's dinner at a cookshop."

Louise would be saved. It was what Meggy had hoped for, but there was still a difficulty. "I have but a ha'penny," she said.

"Roger, give her coins. Fourpence, belike."

Rubbing his knee, Roger scowled and began to protest, but Mistress Grimm reached out a hand as plump as a summer melon and pinched his ear.

Roger grimaced and grinned at the same time, looking much like the gargoyles adorning the drainpipes. "Certes, with all haste, for I be always obedient to your majesty's will," he said to Mistress Grimm with a bow, and he offered Meggy some coins.

"Now," Mistress Grimm said, "all is well. Sit you down, girl, and I will fetch a mug of warm, spiced beer. You look as cold as a dead man's nose."

As Meggy sat, a swarm of little girls flew at her, asking, "For what are those sticks? Why do you walk that way? Are you wife to Roger? Where be you from? Play you games with cards? Primero, trumpit, or gleek?"

"Here, sweeting, this will warm you," Mistress Grimm said to Meggy as she returned with the mug. And to her girls, "Soft, soft, my dears. Do give the lass a chance to breathe. You remember Roger telling us of Mistress Swann with the black eyes he so admires. Dark as the plums of the blackthorn tree, he said."

Mistress Grimm and the girls all peered into Meggy's eyes as if to see for themselves. Mistress Grimm nodded, Roger blushed, and Meggy felt herself grow warm, from the beer, the compliment, and the knowledge of Roger's discomfiture.

"You, girls, move away and cease troubling Mistress Swann," Mistress Grimm said as she busied herself about the room. In her black and yellow she seemed a vast bumblebee buzzing about, straightening a bench here, patting a head there, and dropping kisses on little faces. "Stop," she shouted to the boys on the stairs. "I have told you, no dicing in here! Roger, take them upstairs and set them to learning their lines." She finally landed on a bench across from Meggy and began fanning herself with her wings—nay, her apron.

Roger herded the boys, shoving and arguing, up the stairs. The girls moved away from Meggy and then crowded around her again as she sipped the beer.

"Carter Simpson says all crooked people are witches," said a little girl with flaxen hair and dimples.

"Be you a witch?" asked another little dimpled, flaxen-haired girl.

Meggy thought to make a horrid face and shake her sticks, but the beer and the fire and the welcome had gentled her, so she simply replied, "Were I a witch, would I not cast a spell to make my legs straight and strong and turn my walking sticks into sausages?"

There was silence for a moment; then, "Belike you are right," said one.

"Carter Simpson is a dolt," said the other. "And his breath smells like the backside of a goat."

"Enough of your chatter, my girls," said Mistress Grimm. "Mistress Swann's ears are spinning."

There was silence again, but again it did not last. The tallest girl, also flaxen-haired but not dimpled, said, "I am right pleased to present myself to you, Mistress Swann. I am Violet Velvet."

"Named for Lady Ariana's ball gown in
The Revenge of Lord Gerald.
What a fine costume it was," said Mistress Grimm with a sigh.

Violet Velvet continued. "These be the twins, Ivory Silk and Silver Damask." The dimpled girls smiled at Meggy.

Meggy looked at Mistress Grimm, who obliged. "Aphrodite's and Athena's garb from the last act of
The Judgement of Paris.
"

"And the boys?"

"Roger you know. The other boys are apprentices, and rascals all," she said, lifting a crawling babe onto her lap, "but this little fellow is mine. Master Grimm wanted him to be Chestnut Fustian, but I said, 'Master Grimm, if you think I will call a helpless babe Chestnut Fustian, you may think again. He will be Russet Wool.' And so he is, be you not, Russet, my love?" She cooed at him, and Meggy felt a pang, remembering long-ago cooing and cuddling. Her gran, soft and warm and smelling of meadow grasses and ale, had cooed at her so and sung her to sleep. Meggy let the little girls snuggle up against her, which eased her spirit just as the drink eased her bones.

In the sudden quiet of the room, Meggy could hear bits of conversation from the two gentlemen at the fireplace: "How know you these things ... Thomas Bacon has left the stage and will ... a license to play ... noble patronage..."

Now the voices grew louder. "But a
bribe,
Cuthbert?" asked Master Merryman. "How have we the money for a bribe, even if we knew who and how?"

"We must do something bold," Master Grimm said.

"But will it serve us? The authorities are ever anxious to catch players in misdeeds and missteps, even when there are none."

Meggy looked quizzically at Mistress Grimm. "Another law has of late been passed against 'masterless men,'" she explained. "All players must now be licensed and attached to some noble person, lest they be taken as vagabonds, dragged before justice, whipped, stocked, burned, and packed out of the parish." She shook her head. "Fie upon it! Players, hooligans and scoundrels, discharged prisoners and landless peasants, jugglers and tinkers and horse thieves—all be treated alike."

Just then Master Grimm slammed his fist against the wall and shouted, "To treat me so—me, Cuthbert Grimm, the finest player in London. Nay, in all England! You may bow and kiss their feet if you like, you chicken-hearted coward, but I will not!"

Mistress Grimm stood, sending Russet Wool tumbling to the floor. "I will see the gentlemen calmed. Roger," she called up the stairs, "come see your Mistress Swann home."

Roger bounced into the room. He winked at Meggy and touched his cap in agreement.

Meggy looked at Roger and then at Mistress Grimm. "You, mistress," she said, "may call me Meggy, as my gran did, if you will." Mistress Grimm nodded.

Meggy leaned down to Louise and stroked the soft whiteness of her. "Farewell, Louise. Keep out of mischief," the girl said, and then added, in a whisper, "Oh, I shall sorely feel the want of you, Louise Goose. Now I be truly alone."

Smothered with attention as she was by the little Grimms, Louise did not appear to mind being left. She blinked and preened and snapped at Roger's woolen-clad knee as he passed.

"I am not your Mistress Swann, you tottering wretch," Meggy said to Roger as they started down Pudding Lane. She had to struggle to keep up with him, for, being straight and strong, he was not compelled to stick-swing-drag as she was.

"Fortunate that is for me, you mewling, flap-mouthed flax wench," he responded, slowing down a bit.

"Gleeking swag-bellied maggot," said Meggy.

"Knoddy-pated whey face."

"Fly-bitten—" The girl paused. "You have yet to say cripple-some or crookleg or leaden foot. Why do you not?"

He grinned. "When I look at you, I see not your crooked legs but your black eyes that blaze and snap and those cheeks like apples ripened in the sun," he said, which irritated but also oddly pleased the girl, which irritated her the more.

"Go to!" she snapped. "I am right surprised that you required bellows to tend your master's fire, you bloviating windbag."

Roger laughed, and Meggy found herself laughing, too. They stopped for a moment and let their laughter overtake them. Holding his side, Roger said, "You, Mistress Margret, are passing skilled at this matter of insults, you milk-livered minnow."

"I grew up in an alehouse, you wart-necked mammering clap dish."

They walked in silence for a moment through a river of garbage. Not everyone would have laughed at her insults, Meggy thought. "You be ever merry and good tempered, Oldmeat," she said, "no matter if I am calling you names or Mistress Grimm is commanding you. How is that?"

Roger lifted his cap and scratched his head. "My father died when I was but twelve, and I was plucked from school and made clerk to a lawyer, who beat me fiercely on cold mornings to warm himself." He grasped Meggy's elbow and steered her clear of a mud hole one could sail a ship in. "A twelve-month of that and I ran to London. Now I do what I will and have what I will and no one beats me. Why would I not be merry?"

"Well, your sweet disposition aches my teeth, you canker blossom." Meggy stumbled over a dead dog left to rot in the street. "Fie upon this dirty city," she shouted, "home to every kind of dirt, muck, and slime God ever created."

"That may be so, but you will come to love her as I do," Roger said. "London is a fair that lasts all year. Around every corner is something wondrous—here a man with a dancing monkey, yon our good Queen Bess in silks and satins on a fine white horse. This way there's a hanging at Tyburn, that way fire eaters and rope dancers and the puppeteers in Fleet Street." Gesturing grandly, he nearly knocked Meggy into the teeming gutter.

"'Tis all here," he continued, "the fine and the ragged, the rotten and the pure. London may reek with old dirt, but her streets are filled with new hopes, new dreams, and new ideas. You are fortunate to be here, Margret Swann."

Fortunate? Meggy was unconvinced. She had ever found fortune to be fickle, false, and harsh, and belike it would be no different here in this London.

Meggy was weary and trembling with pain by the time they reached the little house on Crooked Lane. As they stopped before the door, Roger motioned toward her walking sticks. "How did it happen that you ... that your legs..." He blushed. "Or am I too bold?"

"You are." He turned to walk away. "I was born so," she said to his back. "I be the most luckless person God ever did make. Or curse."

"Not so luckless," Roger said, turning toward her again. "You could also have gut griping, ruptures, catarrhs, and gravel in the back, lethargies, cold palsies, and sciatica. You might suffer from the wheezing lung or a bladder full of impost-hume or a dirt-ridden liver."

"Go to! I do not—"

"Or pustules and pimples and pocks, cankers and rashes and St. Vitus' dance."

Meggy leaned on her sticks and kicked out at him. "You are being waggish, Oldmeat," she said, "but I cannot share the humor. I cannot walk without pain, nor run, nor dance. I am called names in the street and spat upon. My mother sent me away and my father does not want me. I have nothing and no one."

"Nay, you have a friend."

"Aye, Louise, but she dwells elsewhere now."

"Not the goose. Me," he said. "Roger Oldham, at your service." With a little bow, he turned and strode away.

Meggy was struck right speechless. She opened the door to the house at the Sign of the Sun with the sense that she had left something unfinished. Something important. "Good thanks to you, Oldmeat, for seeing me home," she called after him. He lifted his cap in salute but did not turn around. "And for the coins." He lifted his cap again. "You may call me Meggy, if you will." And he lifted his cap once more.

Meggy watched him go. She had faced him with her fists up as always, but Roger had stood firm. 'Twas like poking a porridge, she thought. It did no harm to the porridge but only made her feel sticky.

As the room grew dark, Meggy wrapped herself in her cloak and lay down on her pallet. She faced a night alone, without Louise. The girl missed the warmth of the goose's body, the soft huffing of her breath, even the furious scritching and scratching after bugs in her feathers. What did Louise right now? Was she nestling with someone else? Meggy's belly prickled with loneliness, envy, and regret.

Early on the morrow, Meggy bought a roast chicken and an apple cake from a cookshop on Thames Street, hoping that Master Peevish would fail to notice that he was not eating Louise. As she returned, she saw Old Cloaks opening the stall at the front of his shop. "Damnable crookleg!" he growled, and he spat at Meggy. She thought to fling an insult at him, but then she saw a man leaving the house at the Sign of the Sun, his cloak pulled high and his hat pulled low. Not Master Peevish. A visitor? Curiosity hurried her on.

Inside, Master Peevish was sitting at the table, his head in his hands. She had seen him only three times since her arrival three days before—once he had called her a beggar, once he had paid her no heed at all, and once he had sent her from his laboratorium to the butcher's. She would speak with him now, if only she could reason out how to begin.

He looked up as the girl wabbled over to him. His peevish face was gray with fatigue, and his eyes dark shadowed. She offered him the chicken, but he waved it away.

Meggy said, "Sir, I have spent nearly all the coins that Roger gave me, and there be no food here. I will have to have money to buy more."

He gestured to the food on the table. "You have chicken."

So he knew it was not Louise, but he said naught about the goose, so neither did Meggy. "I will be hungry again tomorrow," she told him, "and every day. 'Tis how most people are."