The Blackthorn Key (29 page)

Had Master Benedict been burning gunpowder?

On the opposite side of the bench rested a short cylinder, maybe three inches high, and one inch in diameter. It was wrapped around with a thin skin of greased parchment. A wick of cannon fuse nearly two feet long was stuck into the top. It looked like some kind of strange, oiled candle. Beside it, on the floor, was a bucket of sawdust.

I remembered Oak Apple Day. Tom and I, returning home, after Lord Ashcombe had found Hugh's body. I'd used sawdust to soak up the boar's blood. Master Benedict had stared at it, fascinated.

And now here it was.

The parchment around the cylinder was pinched in at the top. I pulled it open. The tube was filled with sawdust, wet and sticky. It was soaked with the same oily goop as in the beaker.

I searched through the papers on the desk. That's where I found it, written in Master Benedict's smooth hand. There
were scratches and corrections, all across the pages. But when you put the uncrossed-out lines together, it was a recipe.

The Archangel's Fire

Fill beaker with fuming aqua fortis. Immerse beaker in ice bath. Add fuming oil of vitriol with the greatest caution. Add more ice to bath until near freezing. Add, in small drops only, the sweet syrup of olive oil and litharge. Stir with the utmost care for one quarter hour. Transfer to water, and mixture will settle at the bottom. Take mixture and, in small drops only, add to natron. Repeat three times. The final liquid will have the look and feel of olive oil.

He'd done it. Master Benedict had discovered the raw essence of the Prima Materia.

I looked over at Tom. He still had the beaker in his hand. My heart was pounding.

Tom took a step back. “What's the matter?”

“That's it.” I pointed at the beaker. “That's the Archangel's Fire.”

He stared at it. “How . . . how does it work? Do you drink it?”

“I'm not sure.” I'd tasted it. My tongue still burned.
And now I was starting to get a headache, a low pounding, throbbing in my temples. Did I do something to myself? Was this feeling because of the Fire?

I opened my hand, like I'd seen the Archangel Michael do in the image Isaac had shown us. No beams of light came out.

“Maybe you'd better put it back,” I said.

As relieved as Tom was to get rid of it, he looked disappointed, too. I understood. It wasn't every day that you held the power of God in your hand.

I rifled through more of the papers. They were mostly raw notes from my master's experiments. I did find a separate recipe for how to make the “sweet syrup of olive oil and litharge.” Hugh had made a note on the page, suggesting the syrup might be good for medicinal candies.

I spotted something more when I turned the papers over. On the back of one of them were more notes from my master. One familiar word dragged my eye to the last note at the bottom.

Sawdust is the key. Once it is blended into the Archangel's Fire, the volatility of the mixture is tempered by the sawdust's soft nature, and the Archangel's Fire becomes stable. Thence, only fire releases it. Take care, for only in this way may man safely touch the power of God.

I frowned, confused. Master Benedict was saying the Archangel's Fire needed sawdust to be handled safely. But sawdust wasn't part of the original recipe. It wasn't mixed with the liquid in the beaker, either. Puzzled, I started from the top and read what came above it.

It was a warning, scrawled by my master's shaking hand.

The power is too great. The Archangel's Fire was never meant for mortal men. The slightest tremor brings the wrath of God upon the bearer. What have I done?

I stood, trembling, the paper in my hand. Next to the message were faint brown smears, the same dried blood that stained the floor near the chamber where we'd found the vial, the room where Tom now stood.

A testing chamber. That's what that room was.

My head pounded, my headache growing by the second. I looked at the scarring on the stone, the charring on the door, the bucket, the blood.

I pushed back from the workbench. The stool tipped over, clattering on the floor.

“Tom.” My voice shook. I ran to the testing chamber. “Tom!”

He'd placed the beaker on the dented iron table. He was still hunched over, peering at it. He jumped when I called to him, startled.

“What's wrong?” he said, and his leg bumped the table.

The beaker slid toward one of the dents. It teetered for a moment, then toppled on the slope. It rolled toward the edge, speeding up.

I thought of the blood on the floor. I thought of my master's shoulder, burnt. And I thought of Hugh's body, found in a Christian burial in a garden on Oak Apple Day, charred, blackened, and torn apart.

I grabbed Tom by his collar. I pulled, hard. He fell backward with me, outside the testing chamber, and we sprawled together on the ground.

The beaker rolled off the table.

I tried to kick the door shut.

Then came the power of God.

I FELT STONE, ON MY
face. It was cold.

I'm on the floor
, I thought.

I tried to remember how I got there.

Papers. I'd been reading something. Something bad.

My right arm was twisted under me. It felt numb, more like I was lying on a club than an arm. I shifted, slid it out. Life came back to it, pinpricks jabbing my skin.

I sat up and coughed. I sucked in acrid smoke, worse than what I'd hacked out. My head had a dwarf inside, his hammer ringing on the anvil. I put my hand to my temple. It came away red, warm and wet.

There was another boy lying beside me. He huddled in a ball, whimpering. Seemed like kind of a big kid to be whimpering.

Wait. Tom. It was Tom. I'd pulled him down with me, just before the explosion.

A fire glowed in the corner. A lantern had fallen and shattered, setting the oil alight.

I staggered to my feet. I fell to my knees.

Try again
, I thought. It worked this time.

I reached for the handle on the door to the testing chamber, but the handle wasn't there. Actually, the whole door was gone. It lay beside Tom. A sliver of it remained in the doorway, still swinging from the upper hinge.

My ears were ringing.

I had to put out that fire. There was a bucket of sand in the corner. I dumped it on the burning oil, which seemed smaller than it had when I'd been on the ground. The fire disappeared. Smoke still filled the air.

“Tom,” I said. He'd stopped whimpering. “Are you all right?”

He rolled over. His voice warbled. “Your head is bleeding.”

“I'm fine.” I sat at the bench, pushed the papers aside, and laid my cheek on the wood.

•  •  •

Gunpowder. Oil of vitriol. Madapple.

I'd always said being an apothecary was dangerous. But what Master Benedict had unlocked had, as Oswyn predicted, put our earthly works to shame. The Archangel's Fire had carved new scars in the walls, tearing off stone chunks as big as my fist. The stain on the floor, the blood; I knew whose it was now. It was Hugh's. He hadn't been murdered. He'd fallen to the power of God's general, torn apart by the same kind of accident that had nearly killed me and Tom.

I thought of my master's sad, scrawled confession.
The Archangel's Fire was never meant for mortal men. . . . What have I done?
I thought, too, about him burying his friend the best he could, in the hallowed ground below the stone angel. My master, working all alone in the dark, able to tell no one what had happened. My heart ached for him.

Even still, my master's obsession with how the Prima Materia might be shaped to help humanity made him come back. He'd kept going, even after what had happened to Hugh, to find some way to purify the Archangel's Fire, to see if it could be turned from a weapon of destruction into an agent of healing, like an alchemist turned lead into gold, or an apothecary turned the poison of madapple into
a remedy for asthma. And, at least in part, he'd succeeded. The sawdust—
my
sawdust—had changed the nature of the Archangel's Fire and tempered God's wrath. The cylinder with the cannon fuse had been knocked off the workbench by the blast, but it hadn't exploded when it hit the ground. Master Benedict was right. When mixed with sawdust, the weapon would need fire to release its power.

Power.
Was that word enough to describe God's terrible gift?
Tell no one
, my master had warned. I understood those words now. I remembered him asking me if I'd wanted the life he'd given me, when he'd offered me the chance to walk away. I wondered for a moment what he would have done if I'd taken it, but that was time wasted. I'd never have chosen anything else, never would have abandoned him. Even now, as shaken as I was, I was so proud that he'd trusted me.

With this legacy comes a choice you will have to make
, Isaac had said. I understood that now, too. In sending me here, Master Benedict had placed the final decision about the Archangel's Fire in my hands. What would I do with his discovery? Work with it, like my master had, to try to change its nature further and unlock God's healing power? Hide it, and let no one know it had been discovered? Or should I destroy it, and keep it out of human hands forever?

Master Benedict had searched for the raw power of the universe, to be shaped for the betterment of man, and instead had found an unearthly weapon. His friend Hugh had died because of it, and ten others had been murdered in the hunt. The very first lesson Master Benedict had ever taught me was that our recipes were only tools, directed by the hearts and hands of the men who used them. The killers had already shown us their hearts. And if this tool got into their hands, so many more people would fall.

An army that walks with the Archangel will be invincible
. And the mortal general who led it could do anything he wanted. Who could stop him? Who could stand against the Almighty? A man could overthrow His Majesty, Charles, and proclaim himself the new king.
Kill the king, force Parliament to fall in line, and England will be theirs
, Oswyn had said. And then what? The rest of the world?

Another war awaited us. With the Archangel's Fire, this one would be a slaughter.

The blast had rattled my head. But it also shook the cobwebs away. I remembered Wat, in his apprentice's blue apron; Wat, with Stubb, calling him Master; Wat, at Apothecaries' Hall, conspiring with Martin and the Elephant. And I knew.

I knew the truth about the murderers, the truth about the Cult of the Archangel.

And now I had a plan.

•  •  •

Tom stood over my shoulder as I finished writing the second letter, his hands clasped to his cheeks. “You've gone mad,” he said. “The Fire's scrambled your brain.”

I folded both letters and dripped wax on the edges to seal them. “You don't think it'll work?”

“If by ‘work,' you mean ‘get yourself killed,' then sure, it'll work.”

“If everything goes right,” I said, “I won't even come back to the lab. No one has to know.”

“Of course. Because all your plans are
so
successful.”

I wrote the names on the letters I'd sealed. “Just deliver these,” I said. “And whatever you do, don't come back.”

“What? No. I told you before I wasn't going to leave you to—”

“Not this time. I mean it, Tom. You hear me? You've already done so much more than I could ever have asked. I'm so grateful. But now you have to stay away, all right?” He made as if to protest. I cut him off. “Please, Tom. Stay away. Promise me.”

He scuffed his shoes on the stone, head bowed. “I promise.”

I handed him the letters and pointed at the pendulum clock. The Archangel's Fire had cracked its face. “Remember, tomorrow morning—”

“Deliver the first letter at nine, the second at eleven. I remember.”

He turned to go. Then he turned back. He hugged me, holding me too tight to breathe.

•  •  •

The ingredients I needed were in the storerooms. Master Benedict had already made a large batch of the sweet syrup, which rested in a five-gallon jug on the opposite workbench, so all that was left for me to do was follow the recipe. It was the hardest thing I'd ever done. I had to concentrate to stop my hands from shaking, scared beyond measure the whole time.

The clock seemed to spin. By the time I'd finished with the formula, it was past midnight. By the time I'd prepared the room, it was almost seven. Now everything was ready.

A few more hours. That was all. Just a few more hours and it would be over, one way or another.

I left the lab and went up to the surface, to the sunlight dawning in the Mortimer family garden. There I sat on the grass, like a spring lamb, and waited for the wolves to come.

I CLOSED MY EYES.

The grass, overgrown, ruffled against my neck, its broad blades tickling my skin. The noonday sun shone warm on my face. I heard cooing, and propped myself up to see a band of pigeons perched on the fence at the end of the garden. I looked for Bridget, but she wasn't there. I hadn't seen her for two days now. I wondered what had happened to her, and worried.

Nothing to do about it now.
I sighed and squinted into the sky. For the past half hour, I'd heard the sounds coming from the manor behind me. They'd set my heart to pounding, but I couldn't do anything about that, either. Just wait, and wonder, and worry.

From the alleyway, then, came another sound, the flapping wings of fleeing birds.

Time's up.

•  •  •

The man stepped out of the maze. He came through the gate, past the lions, up the path. At the front of the mausoleum, he stopped, leaning a shoulder against the stone.