The Blackthorn Key (32 page)

Was I awake?

Was I alive?

It hurt everywhere. I didn't think that was supposed to happen when you were dead. My ears rang like I'd spent the night in the belfry at Saint Paul's. Every bone in my body felt like an elephant had stomped on it. A real one.

I rolled over. I half crawled, half fell from the mouth of the oven to the stone below. My body whumped against the floor, sending new bolts of agony everywhere. I lay there for a moment, unable to move.

My eyes stung. My nose was stuffed with smoke and copper. Something jabbed into my back like a dagger where my master had poked me. I twisted my arm behind me, fingers grasping. It was a piece of stone, stuck in my flesh like an arrow.

I pulled it out. My howl was the first sound I made.

There was light now, if that's what you'd call it. The air was thick with a dust cloud of stone. Everything was a haze of gray. I looked around what was left of the lab.

The ceiling had collapsed, crushing the broken workbenches below. Paper was everywhere, floating, flaming, dotted with shattered glass fragments that glinted like diamond
powder. In one corner, a pile of parchment burned lazily.

I looked at the oven, our sanctuary against the five sticks of Archangel's Fire that I'd glued to the ceiling. Lord Ashcombe lay inside, his chest slowly rising and falling. The iron furnace was gray with ash. One side was bent inward, as if shot by a giant cannon.

That was where my head had been. I touched my hair. It sent a wave of pain over my skull. I curled up on the floor, gasping, until the throbbing subsided.

I tried to stand. My legs wouldn't obey. Drops of red splattered on the stone beneath my face. It was a minute before I realized they were coming from me. My ears were bleeding.

The blood made me remember we weren't alone. Or maybe we were, now. The dust thinned slightly, but I couldn't see the others. Where Oswyn and the Elephant had stood, there was nothing but rubble.

There was something else, I thought. Some
one
else. Some reason my master had woken me.

Wat.

Wat, who'd crawled into the corner before the explosion, had escaped the collapse of the ceiling, though not
unscathed. He lay slumped against a heap of stone. His left arm hung lifeless from his shoulder. The left side of his face was blackened and warped. A lick of flame still quivered on the charred linen of his sleeve. His right eye—the only one that remained—stared straight back at me. Then it blinked.

All right, Christopher, I told myself. Get up.

But Wat was the one who moved. He pushed his bulk from the wreckage. He wobbled, then fell to his knees. He huffed, and spat on the stone. All the while, he stared.

Christopher. Get
up
.

Wat staggered to his feet. He took a step. Then another. His blackened fingers gripped his knife. How did he still have his knife?

My mind screamed. I couldn't move. Lord Ashcombe stirred, dragging himself from the mouth of the oven, but he was in no shape to stop the boy, either. I clawed at cracked stone, trying to get away.

Useless. A foot pressed against my hip, turned me on my back. Wat straddled me. His head bobbed, like he couldn't focus.

He could see enough. He raised the blade.

Then it came. From the side of my eye swooped a rolling pin.

I
am
dreaming
, I thought.

The rolling pin, a rich cherry red, was as long as an arm and as thick as a tree. It bonked Wat on the blind side of his skull. His good eye glassed over.

A second blow came, a deep, solid
thwock
on the top of his head. Wat crumpled to the ground. I stared dumbly at his unconscious body.

Tom leaned over. He put his hand on my chest, his face lined with worry.

“Rrrr ooo aaa iii?” he said.

He sounded like he was underwater. I shook my head to clear the bells inside. Bad idea. I turned over and retched. Bile, sour, mixed with stone ash, bitter. I retched again.

Tom held me. This time, through the ringing in my ears, I understood.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“You came back,” I croaked.

“Of course I did. The promise you made me make was stupid.”

“Sorry.” I slumped against him. “Was that really a rolling pin?” I said.

Tom looked embarrassed. “It's the only weapon I know how to use.”

•  •  •

Tom told me later that I crawled up the ladder on my own. I don't remember doing that. I do remember that he carried Lord Ashcombe over his shoulder, and got us to the street, where we were nearly run over by a four-horse carriage.

The driver hauled on the reins, skidding the carriage to a stop. An irritated horse bumped his nose against my head, blowing spit in my ear.

The driver cursed us up and down. The sweating noble inside leaned out of the window to let us have it, too. Then he saw the blood, and the man Tom carried.

Lord Ashcombe opened his remaining eye. “The Tower,” he growled.

The noble blanched. Drips of sweat turned to buckets. He scrambled out of the carriage and tripped on the footstep, sprawling on the cobbles.

Tom loaded us inside. The driver took us where Lord Ashcombe had commanded, whipping the horses at reckless speed through the streets.

The guard at the Tower gate watched curiously as Tom pulled the King's Warden out. When he saw whom the boy was carrying, he dropped his spear. A dozen of the King's Men rushed out to help him.

Half-conscious, Lord Ashcombe pointed at me. “Bring that one,” he said, just before he passed out.

Rough arms grabbed me from every direction. I didn't resist. I couldn't, either way.

•  •  •

The King's Men hauled me into an empty parlor. Two of the soldiers pressed me into a hard-backed chair and stood beside me while I waited. I wasn't sure how long it was—it felt like more than an hour—before an official came. Dressed in fine white linen, he looked me up and down from beneath his wig. “Come with me,” he said.

I tried to stand. The guards had to help me up the stairs. It was so far, my legs so weak, that by the time we reached the top, the King's Men were carrying me. The linen man led us through a banded wooden door to one of the Tower's bedrooms, where the king's soldiers put me down.

The sun streamed through the window, giving off a warm glow. Two chairs rested in front of the empty fireplace, plumped with plush blue cushions that matched the silks on the four-poster bed. Splayed on the bedsheets was an emerald-green shirt, also silk, and dark blue cotton breeches, with soft doeskin boots beneath. A sturdy oak
table held a crystal bowl. It overflowed with fruit: apples, oranges, pomegranates, grapes.

“Lord Ashcombe has ordered that you remain in the Tower, to keep you safe,” the linen man said. “I hope these quarters will be adequate.” He pointed to the door on the left. “There's a bath in the parlor, already prepared.”

The scent of rose water wafted from behind the door. It mixed with the coppery smell of blood on my skin.

“The king's physicians will tend to your wounds as soon as they're finished with Lord Ashcombe,” the linen man said. “In the meantime, is there anything else you require?”

My voice came out like sand. “Where's Tom?”

“Who?”

“My friend. Is he here? Is he all right?”

The linen man shrugged. “You were the only person Lord Ashcombe requested.”

The rug was warm, the weave soft against my feet. I looked down. Somewhere along the way, I'd lost my boots.

I stared at the bowl of fruit. “May I please have one of those?”

“Of course,” he said. “You must be starving. I'll bring a proper meal at once.”

True to his word, twenty minutes later he returned with
four servants. They placed a set of silver dishes on the table. There was roasted goose, braised beef and gravy, seasoned fish, spiced vegetables in white sauce, and half a strawberry cake. I smelled the sweet oil on the goose, still steaming.

It wasn't until they left that I started to cry.

THREE DAYS AFTER THEY'D CONFINED
me to the Tower, they took me to see Lord Ashcombe. He lay on the bed in a room like mine, the king's physicians buzzing around him. A thick white bandage was wrapped around his head, covering the left side of his face. A scarlet slash soaked through it at the cheek. Another bandage was wrapped around his right hand, crimson stains crusting where Wat's ax had removed his fingers.

Lord Ashcombe shooed the doctors away as if they were flies. He beckoned me closer and mumbled into his bandages.

“I . . . I don't understand,” I said.

Lord Ashcombe looked annoyed, although whether
with me or the dressing on his face, I couldn't tell. He tried again, more slowly, slurring through the cotton. “You set. A trap.”

I bowed my head. “I'm sorry, my lord. I never meant to get you hurt. I wanted Master Colthurst to confess so you'd realize he was the killer. I didn't know he'd bring so many men.”

He waved my apology away. “No. In the. Underground lab. The Archangel's Fire.”

“Yes, my lord. I couldn't take the chance that Oswyn might find it and escape.”

“Your trap. You knew. You could get him. If he. Went down.”

“I hoped so.”

“Yet you. Let him torture you. With that liquid. First.”

My fingers traced over my chest. Before the king's physicians had dressed my wounds, I'd seen the melted flesh. My own map of hell, forever burned into my skin. “I did.”

“Why?”

Several steps ahead, Oswyn had said. But I'd already been taught that, by a man so much greater than Oswyn could have ever hoped to be. Secrets under secrets. Codes inside codes.

Traps within traps.

“Oswyn knew I loved my master,” I said. “He knew, after Master Benedict had tried so hard to keep the Archangel's Fire safe, for me to turn it over to him—to anyone—would betray everything my master had given me.

“If I'd just told him about the lab, Oswyn might have suspected another trap. I couldn't take that chance. He needed to think he'd beaten me. He needed to believe he'd won.”

Lord Ashcombe tilted his head. “You used. His nature. Against him.”

I nodded.

Lord Ashcombe regarded me for a moment. Then he laid his head back and closed his eye.

They took me back to my room.

•  •  •

They kept me in the Tower for two more weeks, as a slowly healing Lord Ashcombe directed from his recovery bed the hunt for anyone connected with Oswyn's plot to overthrow the king. He discovered several more men involved with Oswyn's scheme, including two more apothecaries, a trio of landsmen, and a duke, eleventh in line for the throne. There was also the traitorous King's Man, whose interrogation had
led to the capture of the others. The linen man told me that all of them—except the King's Man, who had died during questioning—would be receiving justice in the public square north of the Tower. They'd take me to watch if I wanted. I didn't. That day, I could hear the crowd all the way from the square, howling for blood, and cheering every time they got it. Closing the window didn't help. I lay on my bed and covered my ears, trying to block out the sound.

Other than that day, I didn't mind staying at the Tower. It's not like I had anywhere else to go. The linen man told me the crier had announced my innocence to the city, but I doubted that had changed Tom's father's mind about me. I did wish Tom were there. I asked if I could see him, but the guard just grunted, “No visitors.” I kept my window open, in the hope that Bridget might find me, but I never saw her, either.

In the meantime, they kept me fed, and told me news of outside. Some was good—after a recent declaration of war on the Dutch, the English fleet had fought more than a hundred enemy ships near Lowestoft, and defeated them soundly—but I was worried to hear of the growing reports of plague in London's western parishes. So far, no one inside the city walls had the disease, but the casualties in the
outskirts now totaled forty dead and were rising every week. I feared, with the growing heat of June, things might get a lot worse.

Still, there wasn't anything to do but wait. When they finally did release me, the King's Men marched me to a carriage outside the portcullis. The driver said he had orders to take me straight to Apothecaries' Hall, where the Guild Council had arranged a hearing to decide what they were going to do with me.

“But it's Sunday,” I said.

The driver shrugged. “I do what I'm told.”

Impatiently, he motioned me into the back. I braced myself for a bumpy ride.

•  •  •

The hearing was in the Great Hall. The last time I'd been here, Oswyn had sat at the grand table, piercing me with questions as other apothecaries, seated in rows to the side, looked on. This time, Grand Master Sir Edward Thorpe sat at the center, worn and weary. Guild Secretary Valentine Grey sat at his right, looking even more fussed than the last time I'd seen him. The seat to their left remained empty.

Sir Edward didn't waste any time. “We've discussed your case,” he said. “The membership agrees that you have
been ill treated. As compensation, we are awarding you ten pounds. Additionally, we shall cover, up to another ten pounds, the fee to be paid to a different guild for a new apprenticeship.”

But . . . “What happened to my old apprenticeship?”

Sir Edward cleared his throat. “The members felt, given the circumstances, it would be best if you were no longer to train to be an apothecary.”

My stomach churned. I'd feared the worst. It appeared that I was getting it. “Please . . . Grand Master . . . being an apothecary is all I want. Please let me stay.”

“Your commitment reflects well upon you,” he said, “but we cannot have the recent . . . incidents . . . attached any further to our Guild.”