The Blackthorn Key (2 page)

Tom raised his eyebrows. “Master Benedict keeps cannon fuse?”

“We use it to light things from far away,” I said.

“You know,” Tom said, “things you have to light from far away probably shouldn't be lit at all.”

The mixture we ended up with looked harmless, just a fine black powder. Tom poured it into the open end while I propped up the pipe. A narrow stream spilled over the side, scattering charcoal grains onto the floor. I stamped the powder in the tube down with cotton wadding.

“What are we going to use for a cannonball?” Tom said.

Master Benedict didn't keep anything in the store that would fit snugly in the pipe. The best I could come up with was a handful of lead shot we used for shavings to put in our remedies. They scraped down the brass and landed with a hollow
thump
on the cotton at the bottom.

Now we needed a target, and soon. It had taken a lot longer to put everything together than I thought it would, and though I'd assured Tom that my master wouldn't return, his comings and goings weren't exactly predictable.

“We're
not
firing this thing outside,” Tom said.

He was right about that. The neighbors would not look kindly on lead shot flying through their parlors. And as tempting a target as the stuffed beaver on the mantel was,
Master Benedict was even less likely to appreciate us going to war with the animals that decorated his shop.

“What about that?” I said. Hanging from the ceiling near the fireplace was a small iron cauldron. “We can shoot at the bottom of it.”

Tom pushed aside the antimony cups on the other table, leaving enough space to put down the cauldron. I picked up our cannon and pressed it against my abdomen to hold it steady. Tom tore a scrap of parchment from our deciphered recipe and held it in the fire until it caught. Then he lit the cannon's wick. Sparks fizzed, racing toward the pipe like a flaming hornet. Tom dived behind the counter and peeked over the top.

“Watch this,” I said.

The blast nearly blew my ears off. I saw a burst of flame, and a mound of smoke, then the pipe kicked back like an angry ox and nailed me right between the legs.

I HIT THE FLOORBOARDS LIKE
a sack of wheat. The cannon bonged off the wood next to me and rolled away, smoke pouring from the end. From far away, I heard a voice.

“Are you all right?” it said.

I curled into a ball, hands cradling my groin, and tried not to throw up.

Smoke billowed everywhere, as if the air itself had turned gray. Tom appeared through the haze, waving his hands and coughing. “Christopher? Are you all right?”

“Mmmunnnggguhh,” I said.

Tom scanned the shop for some remedy that could help
me, but sadly there was no Blackthorn's Private-Parts Pain Poultice. Suddenly, he spoke, his voice strangled. “Christopher?”

I squinted up through the smoke. There I saw the problem. I wasn't the only one who'd taken it where it counts. The cauldron I'd so carefully aimed at didn't have a mark on it. The bear in the corner, however, now had a real reason to be angry. The lead shot from our cannon had shredded the fur between his legs. He roared in silent outrage as his straw guts spilled into a pile between his paws.

Tom held his hands to the sides of his face. “Your master will kill us,” he said.

“Wait,” I said, the pain slowly being replaced by the pit of horror growing in my gut. “Wait. We can fix this.”

“How? Do you have a spare bear's crotch in the back?” Tom clutched his cheeks and moaned.

“Just . . . give me a moment to think,” I said, and naturally that was when Master Benedict came home.

He didn't even take one full step inside before he jerked to a halt. So tall that he had to duck to pass through the door, my master just stood there, hunched over, the long, dark curls of his wig swinging in the evening breeze. He was hugging a large leather-bound book to his chest with his lanky arms; Culpeper's new herbal. Peeking from under
his dark velvet coat was his burgundy canvas sash, one foot wide, wrapped around his waist. It was covered with pockets, each one not much larger than a man's thumb. Tucked into each pocket was a glass vial, stopped with cork or wax. There were other pouches, too, with all kinds of useful things: flint and tinder, tweezers, a long-handled silver spoon. My master had designed the sash himself to carry ingredients and remedies—at least the ones I didn't have to lug around behind him when we went out on a house call.

Master Benedict stared at the brass cannon, which had rolled away and come to a stop at his feet, still trailing a wisp of smoke. His eyes narrowed as they tracked from the pipe to the two of us, still on the floor.

“Let's get inside, Benedict,” a voice boomed from behind him. “It's cold out here.”

A burly man shouldered past my master and shook the dust from his fur-trimmed cloak. This was Hugh Coggshall, who fifteen years ago had graduated from his own apprenticeship with Master Benedict. Now a master himself, Hugh owned a private workshop in a bordering parish.

His nose crinkled. “Smells like—” He broke off when he spotted me and Tom. He covered his mouth, glancing sidelong at my master.

Moving as gingerly as I could, I pushed myself off the floor to stand in front of him. Tom stood beside me, as rigid as a statue.

A deep, dark vein pulsed in Master Benedict's forehead. When he spoke, his voice was like ice. “Christopher?”

I swallowed, hard. “Y-yes, Master?”

“Did I miss a war while I was out?”

“No, Master.”

“An argument, then? A discussion of court politics?” His words dripped with sarcasm. “Have the Puritans once again seized Parliament and overthrown our returned king?”

My face was burning. “No, Master.”

“Then perhaps,” he said through grinding teeth, “you could explain why in God's holy name you shot my bear.”

“I didn't mean to,” I said. Tom, beside me, nodded vigorously. “It was an accident.”

This seemed to make him even angrier. “You were aiming for the beaver and missed?”

I didn't trust myself to speak. I pointed at the cauldron, still tipped on its side on the display table near the fire. For a moment Master Benedict was silent. Then he said, “You fired lead slugs . . . at an iron cauldron . . . from six feet away?”

I glanced at Tom. “I . . . we . . . yes?”

My master closed his eyes and held his hand to his forehead. Then he leaned in close. “Thomas,” he said.

Tom trembled. I thought he might faint. “Yes, sir?”

“Go home.”

“Yes, sir.” Tom sidled away, bowing awkwardly over and over again. He grabbed his shirt from the display table and fled into the street, the door slamming behind him.

“Master—” I began.

“Be silent,” he snapped.

I was.

This would normally be when the apprentice—in this case, me—would receive a solid, heartfelt beating. But in the three years I'd lived with Master Benedict, he'd never struck me, not once. This was so unusual that I'd passed a whole year under his care before I realized he really was never going to hit me. Tom, who felt the sting of his father's hand every day, thought this was unfair. I felt it was more than fair, considering I'd spent my first eleven years in the Cripplegate orphanage, where the masters doled out beatings like sweeties at an egg hunt.

Sometimes, though, I kind of wished Master Benedict
would
hit me. Instead, he had this way of looking at me when I'd done something wrong. His disappointment
burrowed into me, sinking to my heart and staying there.

Like now.

“I put my trust in you, Christopher,” he said. “Every day. Our shop. Our
home
. This is how you treat it?”

I bowed my head. “I—I wasn't trying to—”

“A cannon.” Master Benedict fumed. “You could have burned your eyes out. The pipe could have exploded. And if you'd actually hit the cauldron—and the Lord must love a fool, because I can't see how you missed the thing—I'd be scraping pieces of you off the walls from now until Christmas. Have you no sense at all?”

“I'm sorry,” I mumbled.

“And you shot my bloody bear.”

Hugh snorted.

“Don't you encourage him,” Master Benedict said. “You've already given me a lifetime of grief.” Hugh raised his hands in appeasement. Master Benedict turned back to me. “Where did you even get the gunpowder?” he said.

“I made it,” I said.

“You
made
it?” He finally seemed to notice the jars on the table. Then he saw the parchment with the code Tom and I had left beside them. My master peered at it, turned it over. I couldn't read his expression.

“You deciphered this?” he said.

I nodded.

Hugh took the page from my master's hands and examined it. He glanced up at Master Benedict. Something seemed to pass between them, but I couldn't tell what they were thinking. I felt a sudden swell of hope. My master was always pleased when I surprised him with something new. Maybe he'd appreciate that I'd solved this puzzle on my own.

Or maybe not. Master Benedict jabbed a bony finger into my ribs. “Since you're feeling so creative, I'd like you to write out your recipe for today's little adventure—thirty times. Then write it another thirty times—in Latin. But first you will tidy this room. You will put everything back where it belongs. And then you will scrub the floor. The store, the workshop, and every step in this house. Tonight. All the way up to the roof.”

The
roof
? Now I really wanted to cry. I knew I hadn't exactly been on the side of the angels this evening, but apprentices were already worked to exhaustion. Master Benedict may have been kinder than any master I knew, but my duties didn't change. My days started before the cry of six. I had to wake first and get the shop ready, help customers, assist my master in the workshop, practice on my own,
study, and so on, until well after the sun had fallen. Then I had to put everything away, prepare the day's last meal, and clean the shop for tomorrow before I finally got to sleep on my palliasse, the straw mattress that served as my bed. The only rest I got came on Sundays and the rare holidays. And we were right in the middle of a once-in-a-decade
double
holiday: today, Ascension Day, and tomorrow, Oak Apple Day. I'd been dreaming of this break all year.

According to the papers of apprenticeship, Master Benedict wasn't allowed to make me work on a holiday. Then again, according to the papers of apprenticeship, I wasn't allowed to steal his goods, make gunpowder, or shoot stuffed bears. Any bears, really. So I just slumped my shoulders and said, “Yes, Master.”

•  •  •

I returned the pots and ingredients to the shelves. My master took our cannon and hid it somewhere in the workshop in the back. I then spent the next several minutes gathering soot-stained lead pellets, which had rolled to every corner of the store. That left me wondering what to do about the poor bear.

Master Benedict had hung up his apothecary's sash with the vials of ingredients and remedies behind the counter before he'd disappeared into the back. I looked from the
sash to the bear in the corner. If we stitched some pockets into a blanket and wrapped it around the beast's hips—

“I wouldn't do that if I were you.”

Hugh was slouched in the chair beside the fire, flipping through pages in my master's new herbal. He hadn't even looked up to speak.

“I wasn't going to use
that
sash,” I said. “But I can't just leave him like this.” I thought about it. “What if we gave him some breeches?”

Hugh shook his head. “You're an odd sort of boy.”

Before I could respond, the front door creaked open. I smelled the man before I saw him, a nose-curling stink of rose-water perfume and body odor.

It was Nathaniel Stubb. An apothecary who owned a shop two streets over, Stubb waddled in to foul our air once a week. He came to spy on his closest competition, if “competition” was the right word.
We
sold actual remedies. He made his money selling Stubb's Oriental Cure-All Pills, which, according to the handbills he slapped on every street corner, fixed every ailment from pox to plague. As far as I could tell, the only real effect Stubb's Pills had was to reduce weight in the coin purse.

Still, his customers bought them by the handful. Stubb
wore his profit for all to see: heavy, jeweled rings squeezing his fat fingers, a silver snake-head walking cane in his hand, a brocade doublet strained over a shiny silk shirt. The bottom of the shirt was puffed ridiculously through his open fly, supposedly the new fashion. I thought it made him look like he'd stuffed his drawers with meringue.

Stubb waved his cane curtly at Hugh. “Coggshall.”

Hugh nodded back.

“Where is he?” Stubb said.

Hugh answered before I could. “Benedict's busy.”

Stubb straightened his doublet and eyed our shop. His gaze lingered, as usual, on the shelves behind the counter, where we kept our most valuable ingredients, like diamond dust and powdered gold. Finally, he seemed to notice me standing beside him. “Are you the apprentice?”

It being a holiday, I wasn't wearing the blue apron that every apprentice was required to wear. I could see how that had confused him, since I'd only lived here for three years.

I nodded. “Yes, Master Stubb.”

“Then go get him,” Stubb said.

Stubb's command put me in a bind. Officially, I was only required to follow my master's orders. On the other hand, showing anything but the utmost respect to another master
could get you in big trouble with the Apothecaries' Guild, and Stubb wasn't the kind of man you wanted to cross. Still, something in Hugh's manner made me think it would be better if Stubb didn't speak to Master Benedict tonight. So I made a second mistake that evening: I hesitated.