Jeri Westerson - Shadow of the Alchemist

He grabbed his scrip, still captured by her gaze, and fished around until his fingers lighted on a scrap of parchment. It wasn’t a dream, then. They had found a parchment that night that Flamel tried to claim was something of his. But it obviously had not been. It had been left by the abductor. And Flamel knew it.

He pulled it out and compared it with the other note. Yes, they looked to be from the same hand. The smaller fragment held Hebrew letters, Greek letters, Latin.

Flamel grabbed his hand. “What are you doing with that?” But then he stopped himself. He remembered, too.

“You knew this wasn’t something of yours. You knew this was from someone else. Why did you lie to me?”

“I was worried what it might be. And then you took it before I could assess. Sometimes, Maître, ” he said, shaking a finger, “you are a very impetuous man!”

“So I’ve been told,” he said absently, studying the fragment. “This is very strange. There are only these letters, the same in succession, over and over.”

“Ah! Look here.” Flamel pointed with a finger with a broken, yellow nail. “You see, don’t you? The Greek letter alpha

and the symbol for the Hebrew letter aleph

And here. Do you see this symbol?

It is the astrological sign for Aries. It is the first of the signs. What does that suggest to you?”

“Beginnings. ‘Begin at the beginning.’ Then we must find these symbols among all the rest, to begin. This is the key.”

“Right, then,” said Jack, leaping to his feet. “Let’s go.”

“Wait, Tucker. Where?”

“Eh?”

“Where would you suggest we begin?”

Jack sagged back down to his seat. “Oh.”

“Would we find these symbols randomly around London, or would they begin at a specific location? The more I see of this fellow, the more he makes a certain sense to me. I do not believe he would start us just anywhere. Where should we look to find the first clue? Where would anyone begin?”

They sat quietly, thinking, until Jack perked up again. “Birth.”

“Too broad an idea. It could be a manger, a church of the Virgin, anything.”

“Well,” said Jack, scratching his chin and the few sprouting hairs there. “Scriptures?”

“‘In the beginning God made of nought heaven and earth. Forsooth, the earth was idle and void, and darknesses were on the face of the depth; and the Spirit of the Lord was borne on the waters. And God said, Light be made, and the light was made.’ Should we look for light, then? A sunrise? A candle?”

Jack frowned. “As you said. Too complicated.” He screwed his face up in thought. “Master, a journey is a beginning. And it begins on a road.”

“No,” said Crispin, thinking. “It begins at one’s front door.”

Jack rubbed his nose. “I’ve not seen any carvings at anyone’s front door. It would make the most sense to have it at this front door.”

“True. But there is none here.” He looked at Flamel, who was staring back at him with interest. “A front door. What is the front door of London?”

“The Tower?” said Jack, brow furrowed.

“The Tower is not a door. If anything, it is within doors.”

“The gates!” Jack said quickly.

“Better. Which is the right one?”

Jack ticked them off on his fingers. “Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Bishop’s Gate, Aldgate, Postern Gate. That’s too many front doors to choose from, Master.”

Crispin sat back, arms folded. “In days gone by, when I rode in and out of London, mostly toward Westminster, I often took Ludgate. Let us start there.”

Avelyn could not be persuaded to stay behind at the shop, no matter how many ways Flamel threatened her.

“You need to discipline your servant more thoroughly, Master Flamel,” said Crispin, taking the lead. “I suggest a good beating.”

“That will not curb her willful tendencies. She is a strong-willed girl. Obstinate. Perenelle fawns on her as if she were her own child. And Avelyn thrives on it. It is no use, she has always been this way. There is no schooling her.”

“Put her on bread and water for a week. That might help.”

Avelyn trotted up to him with a calculating smirk on her face. Surely she had not read their lips, for she had been behind them. She tried to take Crispin’s hand, but he shook her off. “Are you quite certain she’s deaf?”

“Quite, Maître . And quite mute. She would have a great deal to say if she were not. As it is, her fingers can talk rather quickly.”

Again, she tried to take Crispin’s hand and he shook her off with a flick of his wrist. He stopped in the middle of the street and wagged his finger in her face. “No! You must stop this at once. I am not some ploughman or stable boy.”

She shook her head and smiled. Her humoring him infuriated. But he said nothing more as he stalked ahead. He turned at Jack’s snort, only to catch her imitating Crispin’s furious stride and posture.

There was nothing to be done. It was best to ignore her.

Since they were already outside the city walls, they headed down the Ditch to Fleet Street, passed over the bridge spanning the pungent Fleet stream, and meandered down toward Ludgate. Upon reaching the stone archway, they separated and each scoured the structure, both on the west side, the inside, and the eastern side in London proper.

It was Jack who found it.

“Oi! Master Crispin! Over here!”

Crispin and Flamel came running. Avelyn looked up and soon followed. On the London side, Jack pointed upward to the arch and to the right. “When did they carve this, I wonder, and escape the guards’ wrath?”

It was a good question, thought Crispin, examining the carving of the alpha, the aleph, the sign of Aries. They had not seen this one before. Who knew how many more symbols were carved over the city?

Avelyn was suddenly at his shoulder, staring up at the markings in the stone. He studied her face, proving his desperation by trying to glean something from her furious scrutiny of the gate. Crispin turned from her and laid his hand over the markings. He felt the rough edges where a steel implement had etched deeply. If this was where to begin, then what now?

He slid his hand down the wall from the carvings, the wet stone slick under his hand. It was as solid as the city itself, as solid as its walls. Yet before he dropped his hand away, his fingers slipped into a niche, a mere crevice between two stones … where he felt the edge of a parchment.

“God’s blood,” he whispered. Reaching farther, he closed his fingers on it and then pulled it forth. A folded scrap of parchment. He unfolded it and examined the writing, which looked like Hebrew sigils. Jews? How could they be involved?

Jack nearly ripped it from his hands. “Master Crispin! What have you found? Blind me! Could they all have parchments hidden somewhere near them?”

He stared at his apprentice in the falling light as his words sank in. Was that the reason for the markings? To hide clues?

Flamel took it from him and studied it.

“More Kabbalah?” asked Crispin, cringing at the thought.

“Perhaps,” he said. But then he held it up to the light. More quill scratch writing between the lines. Crispin snatched it back and held it up to the pale yellow sun.

He read aloud, translating as he did, “‘A bow o’r reaches, grass, water, grass. Unless one is willing, he shall not pass. From here to there, o’r wavering glass.’” Crispin turned it this way and that in the sun. “Grass, water, grass?”