Bernard Knight - The Elixir of Death

Hilda pulled a box across to the door and squatted on it, so that her ear was near the crack on the side where the rusty hinges were attached. Though the door was thick and strong, it was a poor fit in the frame, and not only could she hear through the gap, but one eye placed against it gave her a very narrow view down the long crypt. As figures passed to and from the hearth, they were fleetingly visible in the dim light from the fire and the rush-lights. Most of them were the white-robed Saracens she had glimpsed when she was dragged in, but now and then she saw a large man in a dark tunic and a smaller one wearing what appeared to be a thin jerkin over a skirted robe.

The snatches of speech were disjointed and hard to make out, as the crypt was long and the acoustics poor. The Turks were farther away, and she could distinguish almost nothing of what they said to each other, but she did a little better with the little man in the tunic. He was asking questions in French, with a strange accent that she could not identify. It seemed that the Turks also had a problem understanding him, as he spoke slowly, loudly and with pedantic correctness. Only one voice ever answered him, in slurred French, and she decided that the large fellow and the other two Turks spoke none of that language at all.

The gist of the questioning was at first about her and her presence there. When the small man demanded to know what was going on, the Arab informed him shortly and with apparent ill temper that this was some local woman who had been caught spying on them.

'She should be killed, for safety's sake!' he snarled, which sparked a gust of protest from the questioner. Hilda failed to hear much of the rest of the argument, as the men seemed to have turned away from her. After this, all she heard were sporadic questions and even more grudging answers about some processes in which they were engaged.

In spite of her good intentions to eavesdrop indefinitely, within a couple of hours Hilda felt overcome by fatigue and worry and crept to the bag of straw, where she soon fell asleep.

De Wolfe had been living in the Bush for more than a week when one afternoon two worried men called at his chamber in Rougemont. They were Roger Watts and Angerus de Wile, the two ship-masters from Dawlish.

'We left it until now in the hope that Mistress Hilda would come back,' said Watts. 'But we waited at Salcombe until yesterday, then decided we had better catch a fine sou'wester and sail back home.'

John listened with mounting consternation as the two men related how their new employer had sailed with them to Salcombe, ostensibly to visit the Mary and Child Jesus and see the scene of her husband's death.

'But then she left her maid in the tavern and took off somewhere, dressed as a pilgrim,' declared Angerus. 'It took us a day to ask around and finally discover from the parish priest that she had left with a party for St Anne's Chapel.'

At this, de Wolfe guessed straight away that Hilda must have gone on to Ringmore to see where Thorgils had been washed ashore and laid in the church. Roger Watts soon confirmed this.

'We were worried out of our minds, Crowner,' he said bleakly. 'We felt responsible for taking her there and letting her go off on this wild-goose chase all alone.'

'Not that we knew what she was going to do,' added de Wile, defensively.

They described how they had followed her route to the chapel and discovered that she had walked from there to Ringmore. They sought out the bailiff and were told that she had left there to return to Salcombe, allegedly with a pilgrim band, but the old custodian of the chapel had already told them that she had come back and gone down to Bigbury village.

'We hastened there and were told that she had arranged to stay the night with the ale-wife in a tavern,' said Watts dolefully. 'But she went out that afternoon and vanished. No one knew what had become of her, but she seemed to have this marked interest in the forest.'

The trail had petered out at that point, and though the two sailors had made half-hearted attempts to search along the edge of the nearby woods, they decided it best to hurry back to Exeter and report to de Wolfe, whose interest in Mistress Hilda was well known to everyone in Dawlish.

'Did you learn anything more from any of the people in that miserable village?' snarled John, now angry and worried at the news.

'Only that she questioned everyone she could about what might be in the forest there,' said Angerus. 'There were unlikely tales about ghosts and demons trotted out by the local folk, but they are a pretty backward and superstitious lot in Bigbury. We reckon there are outlaws and chicken thieves aplenty there, and the worry is that our lady might have been attacked by some of those bastards.'

This seemed all the two shipmen could tell John, but as they were leaving, Watts fumbled in the scrip on his belt and pulled out a crumpled scrap of parchment.

'When we were searching for Mistress Hilda just inside the forest boundary, I came upon this on the faint track that led deeper into the trees. I doubt it has any bearing on the matter, but I thought I had best bring it.'

He held out the parchment, which was stained with dried muddy water and had some shreds of grass stuck to the surface. John looked at it and saw some unintelligible writing, interspersed with strange symbols, which meant absolutely nothing to him. He thrust it at his clerk, who, like Gwyn, had been listening with avid concern to the ship-masters' tale.

'Does this mean anything to you, Thomas?'

The clerk smoothed out the small page of sheepskin on his table and picked off a few shreds of vegetation as he studied it.

'These are alchemical symbols,' he pronounced. 'I am no expert, but I recognise the signs for mercury, sulphur, lead, tin, copper and gold.'

'What about the other writing there?' demanded the coroner, now very worried about Hilda's disappearance. 'Even I can tell that it's not Latin.'

Thomas peered more closely at the soiled and smudged parchment.

'Some of it is Greek, but some is an oriental script that I have no knowledge of. It could be the language of Araby.'

'You are a great scholar. Can you make anything of the Greek?' demanded de Wolfe.

'I know only a few words of Homer and Aristotle,' said the little priest, defensively. 'I can make out 'life' several times and 'water' or 'fluid' … and yes, there is 'gold' again.'

Gwyn had a suggestion. 'Maybe the fat monk Rufus up at Rougemont could read it — he seems to be familiar with the Saracen world.'

Thomas bridled at this reflection on his linguistic abilities.

'I doubt he'll make much of these few words! It seems to me that the congruence of 'mercury, lead, tin and gold' points to the main preoccupation of alchemists, the transmutation of base metals into gold.'

'What about the rest of it?' snapped de Wolfe.

'The words 'life' and 'fluid' may refer to the parallel search for the liquid form of the Philosopher's Stone — the Elixir of Life, which is supposed to confer health and everlasting life on those who partake of it.' Thomas crossed himself as he spoke. 'It is a form of blasphemy, seeking an alternative path to everlasting life other than through the love of God and the Holy Trinity.'

Gwyn was the usual dissenting party. 'Whatever it means, it doesn't help us find Hilda.'

John rasped his fingers over his stubble, a habit that seemed to stimulate his thoughts. 'I'm not so sure, Gwyn. Parchments like that don't land in lonely Devon forests unless someone is there to lose them. It tells us that someone is in that area who doesn't belong there. It smacks of Mohammedans with that Levantine script, adding to the suspicions we already have.'

'What about this alchemy gibberish?' grunted the Cornishman, still unconvinced.