The Blackthorn Key (7 page)

No
, I thought.
Not just a lesson.

Last night, before he'd given me my present, Master Benedict had hesitated. He'd asked me if I wanted to stay with him, despite whatever danger he was in. Even when I told him yes, he'd hesitated. He'd prepared this gift for me, yet until that final moment, he hadn't decided whether to hand it over.

The cube, the book, his words, this puzzle . . . it was more than a lesson. It was a
test
.

But of what?

I ran a fingertip along the grooves in the cube. Tom had said the thing was worth a fortune. I didn't care about that. For whatever reason Master Benedict gave it to me, as a gift it meant so much more. I'd starve in the streets before I'd sell it.

“Wait here,” I said.

I went upstairs to my master's room. He was still asleep, his chest rising and falling softly. I didn't wake him. Instead, on the table beside his bed, I left the piece of apple pie I'd set aside for him. Back in the shop, I placed the open cube on the counter beside Master Galileo's book, right where Master Benedict would be sure to see it.

Tom was still fondling the shilling. “What are you going to do with this?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe I'll go see if I can find a best friend who'll help me spend it.”

“I'm a best friend.”

“Oh? Well, then, what do you think I should do with it?”

“Buy icy cream?” he said hopefully.

“Today? It's so cold out.”

“I love the cold.”

“You just said you hate the cold.”

Tom looked indignant. “I never said that.”

“All right.” His face lit up, as bright as the fire. “But we have to save a penny.”

“For what?” he said.

“What else?” I grinned. “Eggs.”

•  •  •

It may be a lot of money, but on a holiday, a shilling doesn't go as far as you'd think. By late morning, the rain had stopped. The cobbled streets remained an awful muck, and the rain did nothing to ease the clogs in the gutters, so the roads smelled as horrid as ever. But the clouds broke, and the warmth of the sun reflected in the face of the city. Banners hung everywhere, strung from one balcony to another, flashing colors, patterns emblazoned brightly with the king's coat of arms. The crowds pressed, packing every street to see the sights, the gardens, the entertainers: jugglers and acrobats and musicians, even a dancing horse. And though it was officially a day of rest, the street vendors were out, calling like crows, trading on the goodwill of the holiday to charge ridiculous prices for treats people wouldn't otherwise buy.

I'd never bought anything in my life, as I'd never had any money. The few pounds I'd inherited as a baby had been saved by the masters at the orphanage to cover my
admission fee to become an apprentice, and apprentices didn't get paid. As for Tom, his family sold a lot of pies, but he never had any money to spend, either, since his father kept his purse strings tighter than a hangman's noose.

So the shilling went. I spent the first four pennies on two orange water icy creams, as promised. The confectioner even let us make it ourselves, Tom furiously cranking the handle that churned the cream, milk, and sugar with the orange water in a bucket immersed in salted ice. It was so tasty, I bought a third icy cream for us to share, dripped this time with honey and lemon. After that went one penny each for walnut sugarplums and a handful of chewy chicle imported all the way from the New World, and two more for a lunch of hot, steaming lamb with spiced potatoes and peas slathered in chive butter. That left us with two: one for half a dozen gassy rotten eggs, the other burning a hole in my pocket.

The eggs, of course, were not for eating. On Oak Apple Day, everyone wore a sprig of oak to honor the return of our king, Charles II, the Merry Monarch, whose life was spared by God when he hid from Puritan traitors high in the branches of an oak tree. After a decade of exile and oppression, our king had regained his rightful place in 1660 after
the tyrant Oliver Cromwell died and the city's government of brutal, joyless Puritans fell. Now London was allowed to have festivals—and fun—once more.

Only the most boring of men would stay indoors today—or Puritans, I suppose, who might have found it troubling to see children dancing around the maypoles, the girl in the lead waving a thick oak staff with a Puritan's sun-bleached skull rattling on top. As for everyone else, they'd better sport the oak on their lapel or they'd get pelted. Fruit was a popular choice, and mud was readily available. But I'd always felt that rotten eggs made a real statement.

The problem was that in the five years since our king had returned to us, everyone had learned their lesson. No one dared walk the streets ungarnished. We'd almost got lucky earlier, when an oak apple had fallen off a gentleman's overcoat, but by the time we got there, he'd managed to pluck it out of the mud after being introduced to four tomatoes and an onion.

By late afternoon, I was getting restless. “This is terrible,” I said. “What am I going to do with half a dozen rotten eggs?”

“Put them in one of your remedies?” Tom said.

I was just about to retort when I stopped in my tracks.

“What's the matter?” Tom said.

Nathaniel Stubb was the matter. I saw him, on the other side of Lombard Street. He was pushing through the crowd, swiping at children who got too close with his silver cane.

My blood grew hot. Master Benedict had claimed it wasn't Stubb who'd attacked him. I wasn't sure I believed him, and frankly, I didn't care. I wanted vengeance. And I'd have it, on that man over there.

That's when I saw his collar.

I couldn't believe my luck. Another birthday present, this one from God Himself.

I grabbed Tom's arm. “He's not wearing the oak,” I said.

“Yes, he is.” Tom pointed.

I deflated. He was. An absurdly small—pathetic, really—oak apple was hanging from Stubb's coat. It had slipped down its pin and now dangled loosely from his lapel.

Loosely?

Tom knew that look. “No, no, no.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” I said.

“That's not fair play.”

“Only God may judge,” I intoned. “Now go knock it off.”

He looked panicked. “Me? No way.”

“I can't do it. He knows who I am.” Actually, he'd probably forgotten me again, but still.

“If he knows you,” Tom said, “he might know me. Forget it.”

“Please,” I said. “Pleeeeeease. He's getting away.”

But Tom folded his arms and wouldn't budge.

Then I had an idea. A
great
idea.

I ran ahead, Tom following reluctantly. Up on the corner, three parish boys, maybe nine or ten years old, were playing at jousting, sprinting at full speed toward each other with badly bent maple branches. A girl of about twelve sat on the stoop of a nearby fishmonger's stall, seemingly oblivious to the smell. She watched the action, twirling a lock of her auburn hair around her finger and petting a gray alley cat that sat purring in her lap.

“Hello,” I said.

The boys stopped their game and eyed us warily; me with the eggs, and Tom just because he towered over everyone. One of the boys, thin and wiry, squared off against us with a curious combination of boldness and fear. “Wha'd'you want?”

I pointed at Stubb, on the other side of the street. “Knock his pin off, and I'll give you each an egg to throw.”

To his credit, the boy considered it. Unfortunately, the swinging silver cane won the battle. “Nah. He'll hit me.”

“Not if you're fast enough,” I said. But he shook his head.

This was
so
frustrating. I turned to leave.

“I know you,” a high voice said.

I turned back. It was the girl on the stoop who'd spoken.

“You were at Cripplegate,” she said.

She surprised me. Few of the orphans at Cripplegate were girls, and they were housed separately. We saw them mostly at mealtimes, when older children were assigned to duties helping the masters and caring for the younger ones. I'd been placed in the kitchen, boiling broths under the supervision of the head cook, Sedley, who liked to crack his charges on the forehead with a long wooden spoon when they made a mistake. I'd taken enough spoons to the skull to eventually become pretty good at seasoning the soup.

In fact, my broths were how I became apprenticed to an apothecary in the first place. Occasionally, men of high standing would tour the school. One Sunday, when I was nine years old, Cripplegate was visited for dinner by the three members of the Apothecaries' Guild Council. As I
served the soup, one of the Council, Oswyn Colthurst, called me over.

I was completely awed by the apothecaries. From what little I'd read of them, they seemed to have talents that were almost magical. And while our headmaster, Reverend Talbot, always treated his guests with deference, the way he fawned over the Guild Council made me realize these were incredibly powerful men.

Though Oswyn was the most junior member of the Council, to me, he was the most fascinating of the three. He'd shaved his head bald, and against fashion, he wore no wig. He looked at me with intelligent eyes and said, “I'm told you're to thank for this delicious meal.”

I tried not to stare at his scalp. “Just the broth, Master Colthurst,” I stammered.

“The broth is the best part. You have a real talent for herbs.”

He was probably just being kind to an orphaned boy—a man of his stature must have eaten at much better places than the dining hall at Cripplegate—but my heart still swelled under his praise. “Thank you, Master.”

Reverend Talbot leaned over and said, “Christopher has a small sum left from his inheritance. We're planning to use that money to apprentice him to a cook.”

“If he has the funds,” Oswyn said, “why not send him to our Guild instead?”

Reverend Talbot seemed just as stunned as I was. Oswyn looked amused.

“You believe only men of high standing can become apothecaries?” he said. “On the contrary. All we require is a disciplined mind, an appreciation for nature, and a keen desire to learn.” Oswyn gestured at me with his spoon. “Boys like Christopher, in fact, are exactly what our Guild needs more of: plain and simple Englishmen, who grew up knowing hard work.” He returned to his meal. “Think on it, Reverend,” he said, and from that casual remark, my path was set. The very next day, my studies—and, to my dismay, the beatings I got when I answered wrong—doubled in intensity. Reverend Talbot wouldn't tolerate my bringing shame to his school by failing the entrance test to the Apothecaries' Guild.

I studied the face of the girl on the stoop. I'd left the orphanage three years ago, so she would have been around nine at the time. She had big green eyes and a slightly upturned nose with a dusting of freckles across its bridge.

I
did
remember her. She'd come to Cripplegate a few years before I'd left, after her parents died on a merchant
voyage to France. I'd helped the nurses care for her the last winter I was there, feeding her chicken broth for three weeks when she'd had a terrible case of the flux. Her name was . . . Susanna? Sarah?

It came to me. “Sally.”

Her cheeks flushed, pleased that I'd remembered her. “What happened to you?” she said.

“I'm an apprentice. To Master Apothecary Benedict Blackthorn,” I said proudly. She nodded, as if satisfied. “How much longer do you have?” I asked her.

“A couple of months, maybe. They've been trying to find me a job. But . . .” She shrugged.

I knew what she meant. The masters did their best to place the children before they turned thirteen, but not everyone ended up with a job or apprenticeship. If you aged out without anywhere to go . . . life on the streets wouldn't be good to you. Especially if you were a girl. I remembered how little I'd had at Cripplegate: nothing, really, but the slightest hope of something better. Sally barely had that.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the last of my pennies. I held it out to her. “Here.”

Her eyes went wide. The three parish boys stared with
her. One even took a step forward, but Sally was off the stoop before him, the cat springing from her lap and bolting around the corner, knocking over a wicker basket as it fled.

Sally clasped the coin to her palm. She stared at her knuckles, as if afraid the silver might leak out. I turned to go.

“Wait.”

Sally nodded toward Stubb, who stood in the lane, waiting impatiently for a parade of brightly painted sheep to pass. “What did he do?”

“He threatened my master,” I said.

She held out her hand. “Give me an egg.”

I glanced over at Stubb's silver cane. I'd felt its sting before. “You don't have to.”

“I want to.”

I handed her one of the eggs. She rolled it in her fingers, not meeting my eyes.

“You made good soup,” she said quietly. Then she wormed her way across the street.

The three boys clamored for an egg of their own. We all inched forward, hiding behind a carriage stopped by the side of the road. Tom, standing farther back, looked disapproving and muttered about there being rules and things.

If I hadn't been watching, I wouldn't have seen Sally do it. She darted in range of Stubb's cane and casually flicked the oak apple away. It fluttered down and landed on the cobbles.

A second later she shouted, “He's not wearing the oak!”

For a moment, Stubb didn't seem to understand what was happening. Then he realized everyone was staring at him. His hands went to his lapel, but all his fingers found was the sharp end of an empty pin. Stubb looked frantically at the ground.

I threw first. The egg shattered on his shoulder, sending yellow goop flying into his ear. He recoiled like he'd been shot with a musket.