Alchemist's Apprentice (4 page)

T
HE MARKET WAS A
dangerous place for Jack to be. He was there nearly every day, running one sort of errand or another, and most of the stall holders knew him by name. Although he had no way of knowing whether Tom had put the word out about him, he was certain that everyone would have heard about the abandoned pony and cart, and that it would soon get back to the blacksmith if he was seen. So instead of walking through the centre, he arrived by way of the back lanes and alleys. This brought him out at the end of one of the side streets that radiated outwards from the market square.

These streets were never too busy. The stalls which lined them offered specialist wares which people didn't need every day. Shoemakers set up on low stools with their lasts and tools spread out in front of them. Tailors patched and altered and occasionally got an order for a new garment. New pots and pans could be bought from the ironmongers in the square, but out here, tinkers mended old ones. Beside them, men with whetstones sharpened knives and scissors and shears. Bakers passed through with trays of penny loaves, and among them all, children dodged and begged and thieved.

Nancy was well known to every one of them, and to many more besides. Her little stall at the top of the street sold anything old that had any use left in it at all. She sold dented ladles and bent spoons and billy-cans ten times mended. She sold chipped chamber pots, buckets without handles, bits of rusted harness, twig brooms, butter churns. Best of all, for the hungry children of the town, she sold buttons and buckles and bootlaces, hooks and handles and hairpins, needles, thimbles, harness rings; all those small things that got dropped from time to time around the place and could be found by sharp eyes and retrieved by nimble fingers. A good collection of things might earn a small coin, but in general Nancy paid her suppliers with a piece of toffee or a pickled onion or, in the season, a plum or an apple. No one, whether they were buying or selling, ever left Nancy's stall feeling cheated. She was known throughout the entire city. If it wasn't to be found anywhere else, Nancy was sure to have it.

She was there as usual, sitting broadly on a chair with three and a half legs and no back. Jack waited, hugging the shadows of a workshop door until a couple of women who were browsing through boxes of oddments got bored and wandered on to the basket maker on the next stall. Then he darted over and slipped in between Nancy's stout knee and a stack of boxes filled with dented pewter. Nancy whooped with surprise, then burst out laughing.

‘Gracious, Jack. What will you be up to next?'

Jack put a finger to his lips and shook his head.

‘On the run?' said Nancy. ‘Not you, Jack, surely? Who from?'

Again Jack made a plea for silence, but Nancy was not to be deterred.

‘You just tell me, lad. I'll teach them something they never knew about widows.'

Nancy made boxing motions in the air in front of her face. She made no secret of the fact that widowhood was the best thing that had happened in her life. In the ten years since her husband died, she had changed from a subdued servant into a successful businesswoman. She welcomed the attentions of the many bachelors who took a remarkable interest in her wares, but if they tried to get too close she wasted no time in setting them straight. Nancy was her own woman and had no intention of ever becoming anyone else's again.

Jack despaired of shutting her up and, instead, held up the object he had found. It had the desired effect. A puzzled expression came over Nancy's face. She took it from Jack and turned it round in her fingers.

‘What is it?' she whispered.

Jack's heart sank. ‘Don't you know?'

Nancy shook her head, then giggled. ‘It reminds me a bit of a certain gentleman I used to know …' She stopped, seeing the disheartened expression on Jack's face. ‘No, no,' she went on, her voice becoming quite serious. ‘I'm sure it's something. Let me see now.' For a long time she examined the mysterious pot, turning it this way and that, shaking it, polishing it with spit. She was kind to her suppliers and would gladly have sent Jack away with a handful of the raspberries that were under the stall, but she had a feeling that he expected more than that. Since she had no idea of what the thing was worth, she couldn't make him an offer.

A customer came and, after much haggling, bought two short lengths of chain. When he had gone, the cogs of Nancy's mind were beginning to turn.

‘It has to be something,' she said, turning it round and sniffing at it. ‘Where did you find it?'

‘In the river.'

‘Where in the river?'

‘Beside the monastery.'

Nancy's mind was engaged in such profound concentration that Jack feared for her. Then, suddenly, it happened. She looked up and met his eyes with a fierce certainty.

‘I know what it is.'

Butterflies danced under Jack's ribcage. ‘Do you?'

‘I do,' said Nancy. ‘It's a relic.'

‘A what?'

‘A relic. That's definitely what it is.'

‘Then what's it worth?' Hope created a terrible pressure in Jack's chest.

‘I can't say,' said Nancy, ‘because I don't deal in relics. But I can tell you who does and you can go there yourself and find out.'

She stood up and pointed across the street, not at the houses on the other side but straight through them, as if they weren't there. ‘You have to cross over by London Bridge and go out of the city towards Dulwich. When you get there, you can ask anyone for Master Gregory's house and they'll tell you the way.'

‘Is it outside London?' said Jack.

‘Of course it is. Haven't you been there before?'

Jack shook his head. ‘Never.'

‘Well, it's about time you did, then. You'll have no trouble as long as you mind your manners. People are the same everywhere. And you'll enjoy the countryside. It's beautiful in this kind of weather.'

Jack nodded and retrieved the pot from Nancy. ‘Will Master Gregory buy it from me?'

‘Depends if it's a good relic or not. I know he likes old ones.'

‘It looks old,' said Jack.

Nancy reached into a basket beside her knee and pulled out a bundle wrapped in flannel. Inside it was a small loaf of bread and a pair of pigs' trotters. She gave Jack one of them and half the loaf.

‘Now get on, before you waste any more of my good time.' Her voice was stern, but she was smiling. ‘And don't tell anyone where you got that or they'll all be here looking for some.'

Jack chewed the trotter down to the bone as he walked along beside the river, but didn't throw it away. It was still good to gnaw on. Above his head, gulls were flying purposefully upriver, heading away from some unseen storm at sea. The people he passed along the way seemed to share their apprehension, hurrying about their business, answering his requests for directions curtly. An occasional cool gust blew in from the estuary, causing Jack to wonder whether he ought not to turn back and wait for another day to make the journey. He might have, had there been anywhere for him to return to.

He crossed London Bridge with the relic held by its neck in one hand and the pig's trotter in the other. The day was as hot as the one before, but in a different way. A low bank of cloud had moved in and the air was damp and close. Jack's clothes were sticky against his skin.

His path led him away from the river, and in a surprisingly short time the crowded streets gave way to open countryside. For a while, Jack forgot everything, entranced by the scenery. It wasn't that he had never seen such things; there were trees in the city, and grass, and vegetable gardens. But to see a hundred trees together and whole eyefuls of green and yellow grasses took his breath away. He had seen cows before, and sheep penned up beside the butcher's, but he had never seen them where they belonged, grazing freely on green commonage, placid and fat. There were no gulls or pigeons, but the hedgerows were alive with small brown birds which fluttered out of his way, then burst into song behind him. The horizon was immeasurably distant; nothing except the sky had ever seemed so far away and it felt as though his eyes had to stretch to look at it. It was all so different that it made him uncomfortable, smaller than ever amongst such largeness. And yet it excited him. He had the impression that he had lived in a box all his life and had just discovered how to open the lid.

Despite its vastness, the countryside was very far from empty. All along the way, farmers and labourers were working flat out, desperate to save the hay and thatch the ricks before the rain arrived. On two occasions, Jack was called upon to lend a hand. He didn't like to refuse, but he was reluctant to display his ignorance, and even more reluctant to undertake anything which would require him to let go of his precious pot, even for a short time. So both times he pretended he hadn't heard and passed on along his way between ripening orchards and cottage gardens, everything bursting with life.

It was early afternoon when Jack arrived in Dulwich. The village street was long and narrow, and surprisingly empty. The only activity Jack could find was at the forge, where a small crowd of waiting customers had gathered, watching the blacksmith repair the axle of a hay-wagon. Jack approached a boy who was holding a broken pitchfork. It looked as if he would have a long wait but he seemed happy enough, despite the urgency in the surrounding countryside.

‘What you want to go there for?' he said, when Jack asked him for directions to Master Gregory's house.

Jack folded his arms across the relic. The trotter bone was still in his hand. ‘I have a message for him.'

‘From who?'

Jack made to move away, to ask someone less curious, but the boy reached out and took him by the arm.

‘See the tall sycamore, there? Turn in just beside it, through the iron gates.'

‘How will I know the house?'

‘You can't miss it. There's only one house. What you got there, anyway?'

‘Nothing.'

The boy let go of Jack's arm and shrugged. ‘I don't care. Go there if you want. He's mad, though. Did you know that?'

Jack looked over towards the sycamore tree. The boy laughed sneeringly and twisted a finger at his temple. ‘Mad as a March hare,' he said.

The iron gates were wide enough to admit two carts side by side, if not three. They swung soundlessly on well-oiled hinges as Jack went through. As he walked timidly along the broad, tree-lined avenue, he thought about what the boy had said. In what way was Gregory mad? Was he mad like the drunkards who rolled outside his mother's door in the early hours of the morning, laughing at the moon and shouting at ghosts? Or was he staring mad like the man who had challenged Jack when he first found the relic down beside the river? And if he was mad, how could he have money?

Red squirrels dashed through the branches above Jack's head, and a bright green woodpecker with a red head dipped across the open space of the drive. Anything could happen here, in a place like this. It was like a dream after the drabness of London. And it became even more like a dream when he turned a bend in the drive and saw the horses. They were standing in a smooth, green paddock beneath huge oak trees and they were like no horses that Jack had ever seen. Even though the sky was full of clouds, their coats shone like new conkers. There were bays and browns and chestnuts, the colours fresh and bright against the sweet green of the pasture. Foals lay flat on the grass, motionless apart from the occasional twitch of a fuzzy tail. Jack crept up to the paddock rail, with eyes for nothing but the horses. The mares surveyed him with mild interest, nodding their heads against the flies. He clucked and called to them softly, pleading with them to come, but they ignored him.

A sound behind Jack made him turn. He had been so intent upon the horses as he rounded the bend that he hadn't looked the other way at all. Behind him, a sheet was flapping out of the open window of the biggest house he had ever seen. It was the length of his own lane in the city and four times as high as his mother's house. The sheet was gathered in again by the maid who was airing it and the window closed behind her.

Had she seen him? Was she running now to set the dogs on to him? There had clearly been some mistake. No dealer ever lived in a house like this, not even a dealer in relics. Either Nancy had been mistaken or that stupid farmer's boy had given him the wrong directions as a joke.

T
HE LONG-THREATENED RAIN
started to fall in big, warm drops. Small patches appeared on the stones of the driveway, then spread into each other until the whole area changed colour. The foals woke and sniffed the air, then got up and ran to their mothers to feed. The shower became heavier and thunder rolled in the distance. Through the deluge the house looked even more forbidding than before, but as Jack was despairing of ever finding the courage to approach it, a strange thing happened. The rare and delightful smell of the thirsty earth rose up through the air and wrapped itself around him, as warm and comforting as his favourite blanket. All of a sudden he knew that Nancy would never make a fool of him. She would not have sent him all this way for nothing.

He slipped along beside the paddocks and around the side of the house. The stable yard which formed a square against the rear wall of the house was empty. The doors of the loose boxes stood open. Nothing moved, not even, to Jack's relief, a dog. The rain was falling hard, making balls out of the dust and sending them scudding across the yard. The drain pipes which ran down the walls were just beginning to gurgle and drip.

Jack was soaked to the skin. As he approached the back door his clothes felt too tight for him and his heart seemed restricted inside his chest. He intended to knock with confidence, but his fist made a thin, timid little sound on the heavy wooden panels. There were mutterings and scufflings from within, then a tall, lean woman opened the door. She greeted Jack with a look of mild irritation and said, ‘Wait there.'