Jeri Westerson - Shadow of the Alchemist

Flamel shrugged. “Strength. Courage. Kingship.”

Jack toed the parchment. “Daniel in the lion’s den.”

“Biblical,” Crispin said with a nod. “Very well. Lion’s den. Lion skin. ‘And lo! a swarm of bees was in the lion’s mouth, and an honeycomb.’ Bees? No, foolish. It is winter now. No bees. Samson, perhaps?” And then he smacked his forehead with his hand. “Saint Mark! His symbol is a lion.”

Flamel edged forward, hope in his eyes. “Is there a St. Mark’s church in London?”

“No,” said Crispin, sagging. But he perked up immediately. “But there is a Mark Lane .” Without another word, he turned and hurried down the road to Tower Street and headed north until they reached it.

“Jack, you go that way, and I’ll go this way.” Flamel followed Jack while Avelyn grabbed Crispin’s cloak and held on. He took care to scour each post and lintel on every shop and house but found nothing. He looked once or twice at Avelyn’s concentrated face as her eyes tracked over plaster and wood.

By the end of the street where it changed names, they had searched all the structures. Crispin turned to survey Jack and Flamel, but they had disappeared beyond the curve of the road. Crossing his arms under his cloak, he’d just begun to wonder if he should look again when a stone post caught his eye. An iron ring hung there to tie off a horse, but there was a raised carved surface where the ring met the stone.

He allowed a heavy cart burdened with winter fuel to lumber by in front of him before he ventured into the street to cross the lane and stand over the granite post. Now that he was upon it, he could clearly see that there was the carving of a lion’s face with the iron ring protruding from either side of its mouth. He reached around it, beneath it, where the iron ring pierced the stone … and touched parchment.

After withdrawing the tightly rolled piece, he unfurled it and held it up to the fading light.

You are clever and shall be rewarded for your diligence:

We’re those who reach toward heaven, scale the heights, an assembly which one bond unites. As he who clings to us, through us on high alights.

Thinking a moment, Crispin read the words again. “An assembly. One bond uniting. Scale the heights. Ah. A flight of steps,” he said aloud. “Avelyn, go get your master and my apprentice.”

Off she went, moving quickly over the snowy street until she, too, disappeared around the bend.

Crispin worked on the problem of what staircase could be meant by the riddle while he waited, and it wasn’t long until she returned with Jack on her heels and Flamel picking up the rear, breathing hard.

“You found something?” The alchemist huffed, swallowed.

“We need to find a staircase.”

“A staircase?” He looked around. The light was falling quickly now, and the street lay almost in darkness, mostly because of the tall buildings shadowing the lane. “Where?”

Crispin racked his brain for an idea as to where he could find a prominent staircase in the city. Had to be St. Paul’s. Not only did it have the widest, grandest stair, but, as the riddle said, it would reach toward heaven.

“I think St. Paul’s cathedral,” he said. “It sits on a hill and is therefore the highest church with the highest staircase in the city.”

No one would gainsay him, whether through weariness or because they thought him right. Together they moved through the darkening streets, as windows became shuttered and storefront doors were bolted. Candle and lamplight from windows and open doorways painted the snowy ground with gold, even as the snow itself tinted blue from the falling darkness.

“We will soon need a lantern,” said Jack as they turned up Budge Row.

Avelyn tapped the boy’s shoulder and Jack turned to her. She motioned to herself, made a nod to Crispin, before she lifted her skirts and ran like the wind toward the Ditch. She’d have to be fast to get out of the gate and back through before the guards closed it up. He doubted she would make it.

“I suppose she will meet us at the church,” said Crispin.

They hurried, not wishing to be stopped and told to go home by soldiers or the Watch. They threaded over Watling Street and then dropped down to Carter Lane before going up Old Dean’s Lane to the west door of the cathedral.

Clerks were hurrying down the steps, eager to get home to their meager suppers after an unsuccessful day of soliciting work within Paul’s Walk. Crispin bumped a few shoulders, and the men looked back at him with scowls. He tried to bow, to be polite, but his mind was on other things, on finding more symbols and more parchment.

Jack made it to the top step first and waited with an impatient jiggling leg for Crispin and Flamel. When they arrived to the top of the stairs, they all spread out across the porch, searching for symbols.

This is damnable, thought Crispin as his eyes scanned anything and everything. How many more clues would they be required to find? Flamel must be going mad. But of course, because of the cruelty of it all, this might very well have been the plan all along.

Yet after many minutes of fruitless searching, Crispin swore under his breath.

“I don’t see anything here,” said Jack, voicing all their concerns.

“No,” Flamel agreed. “Should we look around the rest of the building?”

Crispin gave the church door one more glance. “It makes more sense that he should have led us inside. There are steps up to the quire as well.”

In they went, entering through the smaller door cut from the large double doors. Crispin’s steps echoed in the quiet church. Long shadows fell diagonally across his path down Paul’s Walk, a busy thoroughfare during the day, but dark and ominous once night had fallen.

Crispin could see monks in the arcades beside the nave. Their cowled heads turned warily toward his little group as Crispin led them up to the quire’s wide steps. He motioned for Jack and Flamel to search while he went off to do the same.

Each carving and floret suddenly looked different. He had seen them hundreds of times before, but now he doubted his own senses. Had he seen them before? Were they new to his eyes? He felt the weight of the lion tile in his scrip. Were any of these recently added?

Flamel made a shout, which echoed throughout the long nave. Whirling, Crispin saw him point and he trotted through the arcade to halt beside him. The carving was not an alchemist’s sign, but the rudimentary drawing of a fox.

Crispin frowned. “How do you know this is it?”

“ Renard . What you call … a fox. This is the protector, the cultivator, of the Elixir of Life.”

Nodding, Crispin searched. Yes, it was plainly not of the mason’s art, for it was carved on the stone with a metal instrument, quickly and crudely … and recently.

His hands felt along the pilier cantonné, higher, higher, around the wide, irregular column. Fingers dipped between the stone shafts flying up the pillar. The mortar was solid nearly all the way up … until his fingers found where it had been scraped away. A fingernail passed over the parchment, but his fingers were too big to grasp it.

He turned to Jack. “You have nimble fingers. Come.” The boy complied and stood before Crispin in the darkening nave.

Jack stepped up and balanced against the stone. With two fingers, he reached it and snatched the parchment, waving it to show he had done it. He jumped down and immediately surrendered it to his master.

Crispin opened the parchment as Jack and Flamel crowded around him, peering over his arm. Jack translated and read aloud:

“‘I congratulate you. You play the game well. Your reward: I perch in silence on my peak. A tongue have I, but do not speak. Until I’m moved I must be meek.’”