Jeri Westerson - Shadow of the Alchemist

Once he was able to look more clearly under the falling light from the open door, Crispin noted the smudge of dirt on her cheek, the ragged hem of her skirt, and the filthy apron her bony hands clutched.

It was then that Flamel began the strange motions of his hands and fingers before her face, as if he were playing the strings of an unseen harp. But when she replied silently with the same sorts of motions, Crispin’s skin tingled with unease.

“Here! What are you doing?”

Flamel patted the girl on the shoulder wearily. He seemed satisfied. “She can neither hear nor speak. I was asking her what happened.”

Crispin looked her over again. A deaf-mute, eh? “Well? What did she say?”

“Alas. All of this,” he said, taking in the surrounds with the expanse of his gesture. “She does not know.”

Deaf, mute, and no doubt simple, thought Crispin. “She does not know or does not know how to say?”

Flamel clutched at the lapels of his gown, spotted hands tensing over the dark material. “She can express herself very well, Maître . She simply does not know what has transpired.”

Crispin frowned. “Ask her if she saw anyone or anything. Are your wife’s clothes gone? Jewelry? And ask her where she was during this mayhem.”

Crispin watched as Flamel began his finger dance, but she didn’t seem to be paying attention to him. Her eyes lingered on Crispin and she even moved Flamel aside to walk forward, striding right up to him. She stood almost toe to toe with Crispin and looked up at his face searchingly. She was the height of a child, the top of her head coming only up to his chest. And though not a child, she was perhaps little older than Jack. She studied his face and even raised a tentative finger to touch it. He shied away and glared at the alchemist. “What is she doing?”

“Learning. About you, I suspect. She has a way about her unlike any other.”

“Tell her to stop.” His hand captured her wrist before her fingers could reach his face and squeezed it once, hard, before pushing her hand away and letting it go.

She raised a silken brow at him but didn’t seem at all perturbed, blinking white-tipped lashes. At last, she turned back to Flamel. He spoke in the finger language and she responded in kind. When she was finished, she crossed her arms over her chest and fixed her unnerving gaze on Crispin.

“Well?” he asked.

Flamel shook his head. “She had only just returned and found it this way. There is nothing missing. Our money is still here. Now do you see that something is amiss?”

“Why would your wife ransack your rooms and then take nothing? It makes no sense.”

“I … I do not know.” He grasped his hair again and shook his head. Avelyn swooped forward, picked up an upended stool, and shoved it nearly beneath him. He slumped into it without looking behind him. It looked to be a well-practiced gesture. “I do not know what to make of it.”

“Mind if I look around?” asked Crispin, already moving toward the far wall.

Flamel waved his hand and Crispin examined the disorder. Jack was suddenly at his shoulder.

“It’s a mess, right enough,” he murmured. He kept glancing up nervously at the slowly turning brass planets.

“Yes. But why?”

“Aye,” Jack said quietly, so only Crispin could hear. He looked back at Flamel and sent a long gaze raking over the silent assistant. “If the apprentice ran off with his master’s wife-and no man deserves a whipping more if he done it-then why did they leave their goods behind?”

Crispin cast his gaze about the room. And though it was in complete disarray, he couldn’t help noticing the finery. The carved tables and benches; the dark walnut ambry; bolts of fine cloth unwound and snaking across the floor. Above beside the brass planetary display perched a loft open to the floor below. He made out the shape of a bed in the gloom. Bedding lay over the railing, dipping into the space below like a frozen waterfall.

Clearly Flamel wasn’t lying about his status. But the missing wife was another matter.

He swiveled a little too sharply and nearly lost his footing, forgetting that he was still in his cups. “Just when was it again that you felt your wife was gone too long?”

“It must have been about midafternoon, around None. I was working all morning and had sent Avelyn out on an errand. When I heard the church bells, I remember being startled that it was so late. And that Perenelle hadn’t returned. And my apprentice, Thomas Cornhill, was not here at all. It was Avelyn who stoked the fire and prepared my flasks and jars early this morning.”

“Cornhill? Is he English?”

“Yes. He came highly recommended and has a head for alchemy.”

“So this servant-” He waved a hand at Avelyn. “She stoked the fire and did the apprentice’s tasks. And you thought nothing of this inconsistency?”

“Well, sometimes Thomas is … away.”

“Away?”

Flamel passed a hand over his face. His hair was wild, sticking up out of his cap. “The lad is-how you say- beau . Comely. He catches the eye of many a maid.” Pointedly, he looked at Avelyn, but she was unaware of what he was saying and was busy sweeping the broken crockery into a corner with the noisy upstroke of her broom.

Crispin followed his gaze, but Flamel shook his head. “Oh no, Maître . Avelyn is very particular. She does not allow liberties. I think she has cuffed Thomas rather well a time or two. But…” He sank again. “My wife … she might not be above his charms. She is … older than I, but handsome.”

“Any idea where they might have gone? Does your apprentice, this Thomas Cornhill, does he have other lodgings, family?”

“Family, yes.”

“Then we must go there first.”

“Avelyn will take you. I cannot leave my shop. I mustn’t. I have much work to do.”

Crispin turned to the girl again and watched as Flamel gestured to her. Before he was halfway done, she looked up at Crispin with a smile. He sneered back. He didn’t like the idea of her, this deaf-mute leading him about.

She made quickly for the door and waited under the lintel, staring at him.

“She’s a right comely lass, Master,” said Jack at his elbow. The boy was grinning. “Wouldn’t mind too much following her about, if you know my meaning.”

“All too well. Might I suggest you keep your cod laced and your eyes open?”

Looking back at Flamel, he could see the man was already busily sweeping parchments into his arms. He bent and retrieved a small folded piece under a jar and his eyes widened in shock.

“Master Flamel?” Crispin approached. The alchemist straightened and hid it behind his back. Rocking on his heels, Crispin waited. “Did you find something?”

“Oh, no. No, I-”

Though his reflexes were slowed by drink, Crispin was still able to feint in one direction and lean in the other, plucking the parchment from the man’s hand. He raised it to the cloudy sunlight from a narrow casement window. It fell across its buff surface. The inked lines were a string of several letters, nothing more.

“What is this?” asked Crispin.

“I-it is nothing,” Flamel insisted, and tried to grasp the parchment from Crispin’s hand. Crispin pulled it away.

“Nothing? Then why does it vex you so?”

“It is possibly part of one of my important papers.”

“It is merely a fragment.”

Suddenly the parchment was yanked from his fingers and Avelyn was there beside him, examining it, turning it this way and that. Damn the woman!

“Give that back,” he snarled, and grabbed it, but she wrestled with him and managed to tear it away, holding it close to her body as one holds a candle to protect its flame.