Alchemist's Apprentice (10 page)

There was a long silence. The fire had done its work and was dying down again. The drizzle trickled soundlessly down the window pane like tears. Jack stared at it until he could stand it no more.

‘I don't even know what it looks like, this stone.'

‘Nor do I,' said Barnstable. ‘But you will, when you find it.'

There were more questions, but Jack knew that they wouldn't be answered, except by more of Hermes' trickery. He allowed the silence to descend again. In the hearth, the pile of embers shifted and collapsed into its own hollow heart. There was nothing left to wait for.

J
ACK CAUGHT A GLIMPSE
of the two birds through the dense crowd. They glared at each other from the restraints of their owners' arms. There were still people gathering round to inspect them both before making their bets. It was a good crowd for Jack's purpose. There was plenty of money about.

A murmur ran through the gathering and Jack pushed closer in towards the centre. The cockers were baiting the birds; swinging them at each other in a way designed to enrage them both. Jack felt the pressure of bodies around him as people pressed forward for a view of the action. He braced his elbows to give himself breathing-room, but other than that he kept still and quiet. He didn't mind the crush. It created ideal conditions for his work.

A man beside him jangled a pocketful of coins. ‘Care for a penny on the speckled, Jim?'

Jack didn't hear the reply. There was a flurry in the ring as the cocks were released and everyone's attention turned towards them. The man shook the coins again. Jack didn't look up at him, but he allowed the shoving of the crowd to push him closer, so that his hip was pressed up tight against the man's leg. The speckled cock leapt forward, leaning back on his flapping wings, striking out with the iron spur tied to his leg. The red cock sprang up and clear, then landed a fine blow with his beak on top of his rival's head. Jack's fingers touched the stitched rim of the man's trouser pocket. The cloth was of good wool, close woven and warm. The cocks rose together, each of them striking, neither hitting home. They landed and rose again in a swirl of red and grey and iridescent green. Feathers were fluttering up into the air, and the crowd was roaring and pushing to get closer. Jack's hand slid home. His fingers made contact with the edges of the coins. A bit further and he would have them.

There was a hiss as the speckled cock got the advantage and forced the red one to the ground, going for its eyes. The cockers stepped in to separate them, and for some reason the man chose that moment to give his money another shake. But instead of the coins in his pocket, he discovered Jack's hand.

He turned, his mouth open in astonishment. Jack tried to pull away but his hand was trapped. He tugged harder. The cloth ripped and his hand came free, but it wasn't much help to him. He was hemmed in by spectators, and there was nowhere for him to go.

‘You little swine!'

The flat of the man's hand caught Jack full in the side of the face. ‘Pick my pocket, would you?'

The cockfight was forgotten, and the crowd parted with mysterious ease to create a new ring around Jack and his assailant who slapped him around the head a second time, then closed his hand into a fist and hit him full in the mouth. Jack fell on to the cobbles and tried to scamper away on all fours, but the man caught him by the collar and dragged him to his feet again. Jack heard the cloth rip and felt a cold draught across his back.

Two younger men waded in and tried to end the fight.

‘Come off him, Barney. He's only a lad.'

But Barney wasn't in the mood to be restrained. If anything, his fury was increasing, and Jack was beginning to fear for his life.

Once more Barney hit him and knocked him down. Jack wrapped his arms around his head and waited for more, but it didn't come. A strange hush descended on the crowd and into it came the sound of a woman's voice.

‘Shame on you, Barney,' it said. ‘I would have thought you had more decency than to pick on a boy that size.'

Jack looked up. A tall, thin woman was standing with her back to him, facing Barney who was breathing hard but looking somewhat chastened.

‘He was robbing me, Nell!' he said, but without the conviction that had caused his previous fury. Jack scrambled to his feet and tried to make a getaway, but Nell reached out and took him by the arm. Her fingers felt like the pincers Tom used to remove worn shoes from horses' hooves.

‘Let me have a look at you.'

Jack gazed at her as she began to examine his face. Her accent was unlike any that he had heard in the surrounding districts. If it reminded him of anyone it was Master Gregory, and yet she wore clothes as plain as any of the townspeople around her. She seemed to have a natural authority as though she expected to be listened to and respected.

‘Well,' she said, when she had finished her inspection of Jack's injuries. ‘You've made a right mess of the lad. You've split his lip and knocked out his teeth and you may very well have broken his jaw as well. Fine work for a man of your size. Are you pleased with yourself?'

Barney looked thoroughly shamefaced, and it was clear that he didn't have much support among the crowd. Jack ran his tongue around his teeth. One of them was broken and hanging by a thread from his gum, but as far as he could tell it was the only one.

‘Are you going to take him off and patch him up?' Nell continued.

Barney muttered and looked down at his feet.

‘Well, cough up, then,' said Nell, ‘so that somebody else can. You can't send the lad off like this, whatever he's done.'

There was no move from Barney, but Nell was not about to give in. ‘Cough up a bit of that change, Barney. Before people start asking where it came from.'

With a disgusted grimace, Barney delved into his pocket and shoved a couple of coins into Nell's hand. Then he turned and stormed away through the crowd. Nell smiled and winked at Jack.

‘You're a rogue,' she said, ‘but not as bad a one as he is.'

N
ELL LED JACK THROUGH
the damp backstreets of Shipley, stopping twice along the way to spend some of Barney's money on dried peas and a ham bone. Her house was in a row of small cottages, very similar to the one in which Jack had spent his childhood. Inside it was almost pitch dark until Nell opened the shutters and let in the gloomy daylight.

‘Now, let's have a look at you,' she said, drawing him forward into the best of the light. Jack winced as she poked and prodded around the bruised tissues of his face, but her verdict was favourable.

‘You'll live. That tooth will drop away in its own time. No sense in forcing it. Then you'll have to get a gold one, won't you?'

She laughed, but Jack wondered if he might, one day, when he had learnt how to make it. It would certainly look rather elegant.

‘You still have a lot more than I have,' Nell went on, opening her mouth and revealing more gaps than teeth. ‘But I don't mind it. There are many who would have given more than gold to live long enough to lose their teeth.'

Jack nodded, reminded of his dead brothers and sisters. Nell set about lighting the fire. ‘You don't seem like a bad sort,' she said. ‘I wouldn't say you were brought up to be a thief any more than I was.'

‘No, I wasn't,' said Jack, remembering his mother's fierce sense of honour. For the first time he found himself wondering whether she had been right. Perhaps things might have been different. Perhaps one or two of the little ones might have been saved.

‘I wasn't,' he said again, reeling away from the pain his thoughts were beginning to ignite.

‘Then how did you come to it?' asked Nell.

Jack gazed at her blankly. He had, he realised, no conception whatsoever of how long it was since he had left the alchemist's warm fireside. It could have been weeks, months, even years. To begin with he'd had to survive on hedge berries and sour crab-apples and green hazelnuts, so that if his belly wasn't empty it was griping. He slept in the crooked arms of old oak trees or beneath thick, voley hedges, or under the skirts of hay-ricks which weren't too close to their owners' houses. There was some other kind of quest as well, which he found he had almost forgotten about. A search that made no sense to him now.

He had walked the roads and tracks, stopping to search for the mystical stone in foxy hollows and pig-ploughed paddocks, in brambly ruins and in sludgy ponds. Occasionally he would find an interesting possibility and drop it into the cherry bag. In quiet moments he would take it out and examine it, trying to convince himself that he had found what he was looking for. But it never worked. No matter how much he wanted to believe it, Jack could not manage to invest the stone with the magical properties he knew the
prima materia
must have.

So he carried on; he puddled and probed in hollows and fissures and trenches. He put his hands into rabbit holes, was chased out of badger setts, and was observed with perplexity by creatures both wild and domestic. He dug beneath trees and forgotten foundations, lifted flat stones and rolled back boulders. He investigated ring forts and hollow barrows, burrowed into muck heaps and wallowed in drains. He found worms and horse leeches, toads and newts; he found bits of rusted metal and shards of old pots. He found beautiful things; white and pink crystals, and a fish that some wizard had turned into stone. He hid them again in case he came back, and moved on, still searching, still hopeful.

But although the bag sometimes got quite full of strange and beautiful stones, it was always emptied again, sooner or later when it became too heavy, and Jack seemed never to come any closer to his goal. But he didn't stop believing. He was certain that sooner or later it would all be behind him; the searching and striving, the hunger pangs that he endured hour by hour, and day by day. He would find the
prima materia
and he would turn it into gold.

Nell was still watching him; waiting for an answer.

‘I was hungry,' he said.

He had tried to earn his keep, but although he did his best to appear bright and cheerful when he went to someone's door to ask for work, it was clear from people's expressions that he was beginning to look as desperate as he felt. Time after time, his mind produced images of the beggar boys he had seen in the streets of London. He remembered their eyes, mean and hopeless, utterly lacking in pride. Whatever else happened, he couldn't bear to end up like that. Instead, he began to steal.

It was innocent enough at first; a few sweet apples from a twilight orchard or a bunch of carrots and a few potatoes from a cottage garden. Jack could easily convince himself that no one would even notice that they were gone. But then one day, he came upon a more tempting opportunity for theft.

It was late morning and he was passing down a quiet road between copses of oak and beech when he noticed a jacket hanging on a branch, just a few yards in off the road. He stopped and listened. Above the bubbly drone of the wood pigeons, he could just make out the sound of a saw, deep in the woods. He looked round, his heart in his mouth. Apart from the flies which darted erratically in and out of the sunlight, there was no movement at all. Slowly, carefully, Jack crept into the shadows, stopping every few paces to listen again. The saw stopped for a while, then started up again. A hornet lumbered by, inspecting several trees as though it were lost. Jack slunk forward and reached for the jacket.

He didn't know what he expected to find or what he intended to do, but when his exploring hand fell upon the pocket of the jacket he was left with no doubt. Inside it was a heavy slab of griddle bread wrapped in a piece of an old shirt. Before he knew what he was doing, Jack was back on the road again and heading for one of those hidden, gloomy places that by now he knew so well. The bread was hard and sour, but Jack was so famished that it tasted delicious. Afterwards he slept soundly for a couple of hours, and when he woke, he felt no remorse for what he had done. But hunger was a hard master and guilt was no match for it. Jack became bolder and more adroit, creeping into houses while the occupants were out working or even, occasionally, while they were sleeping. He hung around the market-places of the small towns he passed through, palming muffins or quinces or dried figs despite the vigilance of the stall-holders. He learnt to brush up against people by accident and slip a hand into their bag during the confusion. There was rarely anything in them that he could use, but on one occasion he came away with a smart tinder box, which he swapped in the next town for a whole jugged hare.

‘Have you no family of your own?' Nell asked.

Jack told of his mother's death, and of being taken on as an apprentice by Tom. His words were a bit mumbly because of his broken tooth and swollen mouth, but he managed to tell the story of the cart accident and his flight to the river. Then he stopped, remembering in the nick of time that he was sworn to secrecy. Nell noticed his hesitation.

‘And?' she said.

‘And so I set out on my own.'

‘You walked all the way to Yorkshire? Whatever for? There's a lot more pickings to be had in London, I would have thought.'

Jack shrugged. Nell emptied the peas into a dish and began picking through them for maggots and mouse droppings. For a long time neither of them spoke. The fire took heart and Jack moved closer to it. Nell finished with the peas and poured them into the pot around the ham bone.

‘Would you like to hear my story?' she said.

Jack nodded politely. Nell settled the pot above the flames and pulled up a stool beside the hearth.

‘I was born into great wealth,' she began. ‘My great grandfather was a knight of the realm and was given half of Yorkshire by the king. Much of it had been sold off by my father's time, but he still owned thousands of acres of good land and a few grand houses besides. I grew up surrounded by servants; waited on hand and foot. I never wanted for anything. My life was mapped out for me before I was even born, and it would have been a comfortable one, you can be assured.'