Jeri Westerson - Shadow of the Alchemist

Venour scowled. “But if we close it, the people will rage. They will blame the king.”

“They will blame him with great cries and lamentation if he allows more innocents to die and could have prevented it. You stand for the king and his justice. Do this and be champions.”

“Do it and be thrown into the stocks!”

“Now wait, William,” said Fastolf. “A few days, did you say?” he said to Flamel.

Flamel shrugged. “When it rains or snows again.”

They all looked toward the window. Clouds had moved in and Crispin was never so glad to see their dark undersides, heavy with snow.

“For three days only, then.” Fastolf looked to Sheriff William for confirmation, and the man reluctantly nodded. “And a guard will be sent to the others. Will that suffice?”

“It will do very well, Lord Sheriff,” said Crispin with a bow.

“Oh, good. I’m so glad you’re pleased. Now, take this away.” Fastolf flapped his hand at the untouched goblet.

Crispin took the goblet and tossed its contents into the fire. The fire hissed and flamed blue for a moment before settling down. He bowed to the sheriffs again without another word, took Flamel’s arm, and left.

Escorting flamel back to his shop, Crispin couldn’t be certain if his shadows had returned. There were too many people on the streets, too many horses and carts, but he thought he saw men in the shadows pacing them, until he quickly turned at the last moment before they rounded a corner … No one there.

“Master Flamel,” he said quietly into the man’s collar, “do you suspect any connection between these poisonings and your missing wife?”

He shot Crispin an astonished look. “ Mon Dieu! Do you believe that to be so?”

“I don’t know. But they coincide, and I have a mistrustful nature. Do you believe it? I’ll admit that alchemy and its practitioners are strange to me.”

Flamel lowered his brows in thought just as they came to the steps in front of his doorway. “I do not see any connection, Maître . Would that I could. If it would bring back my Perenelle…” He breathed a quivering sigh.

Crispin scowled. The weight of her disappearance lay heavy on his shoulders. He hated this helpless feeling, these dead ends where he had nowhere to turn, no one to ask. That damnably abstruse parchment! He hoped that Jack was back with some good news.

They passed over the threshold into the warmer lodgings. Avelyn was at the fire, tending it, rocking her head from side to side as if singing some silent song in her mind.

Jack rose from his seat. He looked distinctly uncomfortable beside her. “Jack!” Crispin rushed to the boy. “What have you learned?”

“Precious little, Master Crispin. But I did discover he is staying at an inn at Billingsgate.”

“An inn? Not with a local bishop or priest?”

“Seems not, Master.”

“Perhaps his preachings do not adhere to the current mood.”

Jack shrugged. “All I know is, I sat in that inn, the Cockerel’s Tail, all morning and saw naught of him.”

“We will return, Jack, and see what a coin or two can do that your diligence did not.”

The lad nodded. He sat at the table with the others. Before Crispin could ask if Flamel had ale, Avelyn pushed a metal cup toward him, full of amber wine. He signed “thank you” to her and she beamed, reaching up to kiss him on the cheek. Jack smirked and Flamel looked aghast. Crispin cleared his throat and ducked his head, hiding his face in the cup. After he drank a dose, he leaned toward Flamel. “We must make some sense of these symbols and of the parchment that urges us to start at the beginning. What beginning does he mean?”

Avelyn served the others, and the alchemist scratched his head over his cap. “What does it all mean, Maître ? How can these symbols help?”

“I don’t think that someone would have gone to all this trouble simply to leave nonsense about the city. There is a purpose. Can you think of anything? You said that they were alchemical symbols.”

“And I also said that they were random, meaning nothing.” He laid his forehead in his hand. “I am so weary with anxiety. I cannot think any longer.”

“Childish games,” Crispin muttered.

Avelyn hovered behind Crispin, running a feather-light hand over his hair. He gave her an admonishing look, but he might as well try to make friends with the sheriffs as stop her from doing anything she was set on doing.

He did his best to ignore the caresses and Tucker’s impertinent chuckles.

They all fell silent. There was only the sound of the fire flickering in the hearth and Avelyn’s cooing sighs.

They all startled when Jack slammed his empty cup to the table. “It’s no use, sir. There’s no sense to any of it. If they were some sort of clue, then we can decipher it. There needs to be reason from disorder.”

“Indeed,” said Crispin, lulled by the gentle fingers running over his hair, the good wine at his elbow, and the few hours of sleep this morning. “Reason from disorder,” he murmured. He closed his eyes, sitting back. Oh, to sleep! To allow the peaceful respite from the chaos around him. At least the sheriffs finally acted to protect the city. The citizens who used that cistern would not like being inconvenienced, but it was surely better than the alternative. He doubted that the sheriffs’ guards would be informed as to why they closed the cisterns and guarded the others. No use in fostering panic, but discord, no doubt, there would be.

He sank lower on the chair, relaxing. Avelyn’s fingers softly caressed his neck and shoulders. If only he could figure out the meaning behind the symbols. He supposed the best direction would be to decipher them all. Though Flamel had said they meant nothing. A code, then, that the alchemist was unaware of? Crispin had come upon many such codes in his travels when he acted for the old king. Diplomacy was full of such secret messages. He’d just start at the beginning with the first one he found and-

He jerked upright, eyes wide. “God’s blood!” His exclamation had startled Jack, who blinked at him with mouth gaping. “We need to ‘begin at the beginning.’ To be able to find the pattern-if pattern there is-then we must find the first symbol.”

“But how do we know which the first one is?”

Flamel wiped the wine from his lips. “Might the answer be in the symbols themselves?”

“Yes,” said Crispin, scooting closer to the table. “These are alchemical symbols, so you said.”

“But from what I have seen,” said the alchemist, “nothing suggests a starting point.” He sat back, slumping. “What is the key?”

Jack scratched his head, making his messy curls messier. “We’re missing something vital. What did that parchment say, Master? You shall never see her return unless you play fairly. You had best begin at the beginning . If these symbols have aught to do with that note and they are meant to be clues, then that miscreant would have left us some way to reckon it.”

Something ticked in the back of Crispin’s mind like an annoyance, a half-remembered thought or dream. He closed his eyes and knocked his head back. Avelyn carded fingers through his hair, now hanging free over the back of the chair. “Stop it, you damnable woman,” he muttered. “I’m trying to think.” But she either had not read his lips or didn’t care to comply. She had been like this from the moment he’d met her, though he recalled very little from that night, as drunk as he was.

He opened his eyes slowly. He had been drunk, yet Avelyn had been playful but determined. She had done something that annoyed him. What was it?

He turned to look at her. She smiled and cast her eyes down to his scrip. Her eyes were bright with amusement.