The Alchemist's Daughter (12 page)

He lifted his hands, spread them wide, dropped them to his sides in an all too human gesture of frustration. And then he took a quill from Lady Mary's writing case, dipped it in ink, opened the book that lay on the chest before her, and wrote.

Curiously, at this moment, Sidonie felt no unease, no apprehension: only sadness, and a vague astonishment at the strangeness of things. And then with Philip Sidney's sorrowful gaze still fixed upon her, her knees gave way, the room spun round, and she tumbled into darkness.

At first, there was only darkness — a hot, smothering, inky blanket, clogging her mouth and nostrils, lying like a dead weight upon her chest.

Then the visions came.

Out of the black depths of her fever crawled a crude, misshapen mannequin forked like a mandrake root, a charred black rotting thing reduced to the barest semblance of a man. In horror and disgust she tried to flee as it staggered towards her on its half-formed limbs, but her feet were mired in wet clay, and she could not move.

All at once the darkness rolled back and the world was flooded with a luminous ice-cold light. A gibbous moon hung low on the horizon. Sidonie reached out and seized it with both hands but like quicksilver it slid from her grasp. And then she was walking through a vast arched space where rooms endlessly unfolded into other rooms. Everywhere there were mirrors, and in each one, other mirrors were reflected, infinitely receding.

She found herself in a library, where every book was written in some indecipherable foreign script; where gramaries, herbals, works of mathematics lay scattered beneath her feet like broken tiles.

Bells chimed a long way off, and she knew she was late for a wedding, though whether it was her own, or Lady Mary's, or the Queen's, she could not recall. Seized by a feverish urgency, she hurried from room to room. The corridors were lined with statues of heraldic beasts — leopards, panthers, griffins, dragons. They snapped and snarled at her as she passed.

Now she came to a walled garden where a copperhaired woman sat by the edge of a pool. Her skin was as pale as milk and her gown was the red of cinnabar. She looked up at Sidonie with topaz-yellow eyes. “They call this chamber Paradise,” she said. “Sidonie Quince, where is my gold?”

Lost in her fever-dream Sidonie rushed on, until she found herself at last inside a cavern with curving walls and roof of glass, walled round with flame. She could not breathe in that furnace-heat. It seared her skin, set her hair aflame; her flesh dripped away like tallow. And there in the midst of the flames stood a lion with a burning mane and wings as red as pomegranate seeds. She leaped astride his back, clutched his fiery mane. Together they broke through the walls of glass, soared higher and higher, until they flew into the golden mirror of the sun and were consumed.

There was a murmur of voices. She felt cool fingers pressed to her brow.

“The fever has broken,” a man's voice said. “By God's grace the worst is over, I think.”

Another, younger voice. Kit's voice, surely? “But she is still unconscious?”

“No, merely asleep, now. A wholesome sleep, at last.”

Sidonie opened her eyes. She stared up at the plaster foliage on the ceiling, blinking hard until its blurred outlines sharpened.

“Sidonie . . . ” She turned her head on the damp pillow. Why did Kit sound so tired, so anxious? His face, as he leaned towards her, looked thinner and paler than she remembered. There were dark circles under his eyes.

She struggled to sit up, feeling weak and light-headed. The effort made sweat spring out on her forehead and she fell back, exhausted.

“Kit — what has happened to me?” The words came out in a hoarse whisper.

“You have been ill,” Kit said gently, “Quite out of your head for three days, and worrying us half to death.”

“But what is this place?”

“You are at Wilton House, and thanks to the good Dr. Moffett” — he nodded to the physician, who, looking grave but relieved, was standing at the foot of the bed — “it seems you will live.”

Memory came flooding back. She struggled to lift herself up on her elbows. The room swam. “Wait,” Kit said, and he pushed an embroidered cushion behind her back. “Lie still, Sidonie. There is nothing you must do now but rest.”

“But Kit — three days! What will my father think, when he returns from London and finds me gone?”

“Fear not, Lady Mary has sent a most devious message to Charing Cross. She has written to your father that she was in need of a scryer, and sent for you in his absence, and that you fell ill, but are recovering. Much of which is true.”

“Mistress Sidonie?” A small hushed sickroom voice. Sidonie turned her head, saw Alice tiptoeing into the room. “Oh, mistress, I am so happy to see you returned to your senses.”

“Truly, Alice, I have been asleep for three days?”

“'Struth, Mistress Sidonie. But it was no proper slumber. All the while you threshed, and flung yourself about, and raved like Tom o' Bedlam.”

“Raved, Alice?”

“Aye, mistress, you had a great deal to say, and not a jot of sense in any of it.”

“Of what did I speak, Alice?”

“Oh, of everything, and nothing. Of mirrors, and moons, and ghosts, and all manner of nonsensical things.”

Sidonie felt a sudden release, a weight lifting from her chest. The world, after all, was a rational place, where the dead lay quiet in their graves. Sir Philip's ghost had been nothing more than a fever-vision, that would soon fade like the other chimeras crowding her overheated brain.

She took a few sips of the barley water that Alice had brought her, let Alice wash her face and comb her draggled hair, then lay back on the pillows and drifted into dreamless sleep.

“What a fright you gave us, Mistress Quince!”

It was Adrian Gilbert, no longer wearing workman's garb but elegantly clad in chestnut hose and a doublet of tawny velvet. He was smiling broadly, and carrying a pewter posset cup on a tray.

Sidonie, now propped up with a surfeit of cushions and wrapped in a brocade dressing-gown, accepted the cup, and took a cautious sip. 'Til now she had recoiled at the thought of food, or any drink but barley water. But this concoction, smelling pleasantly of flowers and spices, seemed at once to settle her stomach and clear her head.

“Tell me, what is this magic elixir, Master Gilbert?”

“Why, it is my own invention, Adrian Gilbert's Cordialle Water, an infallible remedy for colic, consumption, fevers, measles, pox . . . not to mention swooning and disorders of digestion.”

“And may I be told what it contains?”

“Mistress Quince, you are far too curious — but this much I will reveal: roses, cinnamon, gillyflowers, peaches and sundry other ingredients, distilled and mixed with civet, musk, and ambergris . . . but the secret is in the powdered unicorn's horn.”

Sidonie laughed, not sure whether he spoke in jest. “Certes, it is the unicorn's horn that is restoring me to health. Are you then a physician as well as a gardener and a chemist, Master Gilbert?”

“Nay, the diagnoses I leave to Dr. Moffett — but chemistry too is a branch of medicine.”

“And besides the swooning, from which of that long list of ailments have you cured me?”

His smile faded. “At first Dr. Moffett feared smallpox, or worse yet the plague, but by God's mercy, it proved not so. He suspects you may have taken some fever from the poisoned breath of the beggar who accosted you.” He drew up a chair to the bedside and sat down. “Giddiness, headache, an excess of perspiration, all are symptoms of the sweating sickness, though Dr. Moffett swears there has been no case in England since Edward's time. If in truth it was sweating sickness, you have had a miraculous escape.”

“Indeed,” said Sidonie, “I sweated so much it is a wonder there is anything left of me but a dry husk.” She held up the empty posset cup. “And I have a fearful thirst. Perchance, is there any more of this wizard's brew?”

Gilbert laughed. “In good time, Mistress Quince. Too much at once, and we will have you dancing the
volte
in your bed-slippers. I'll be back this evening. And see, you have another visitor waiting.”

Sidonie glanced round, saw Lady Mary hovering in the doorway, looking more than usually forlorn. “My lady!”

“Dr. Moffett tells me you are much improved.”

“Indeed she is, Lady Mary,” Gilbert said. “A miraculous recovery, for which we may all be grateful.” With a sweeping bow first to Sidonie, and then to Lady Mary, he strode out in obvious high spirits.

“My lady, do sit down.”

“Yes,” said the Countess, vaguely. She gathered up her skirts and sank into the bedside chair. “I have prayed for you, Sidonie. We have all prayed. Thank heaven those prayers were answered.” She held one of Sidonie's hands in her cool, dry grasp. “But how quickly the young heal. You look almost your old self.”

“Master Gilbert has been cossetting me with his potions, my lady.”

“Yes,” said Mary Herbert, with a faint smile. “They work magic, those concoctions of his. Would he could mend hearts as easily.”

“My lady?”

The Countess's fingers tightened on Sidonie's. “You were there. You saw.”

“My lady, I know not where I was, or what I saw. Dr. Moffett says I wandered in my sleep, and that I had a fever-dream . . . ”

“You know that what you saw was no dream, Sidonie — though it might have been for all the comfort it brought me. Though my arms ache to embrace him, he is nothing but shadow and smoke, that vanishes at my touch.”

Poor lady
, thought Sidonie.
In her grief, she can no longer
tell what is a dream, and what is real
. And yet, she thought in lingering confusion, how strange that she and the Countess should have shared the self-same vision.

“You must let him go,” said Sidonie, with a wisdom she hadn't known she possessed.

“God knows I have tried,” said Lady Mary. “But each night I cast the spells anew, hoping for the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand — for consolation.” She leaned forward. Her green eyes had a hectic, feverish look. “My child, you must promise you will not betray me. What I did was against the laws of both God and man.”

Sidonie said softly, “Surely God will forgive you, knowing you acted out of love.”

“God perhaps, if He is as merciful as you imagine. But if I am found out, will the courts forgive me?”

“According to the statute, my lady, it is only a felony if the spirits you invoke are evil ones.”

The Countess gave her a wry smile. “So not to be hung, then, but only gaoled and pilloried? But Sidonie Quince, you seem uncommonly well acquainted with the law.”

“So would you be, my lady, if you were the daughter of Simon Quince.” And then, with a pang of conscience, Sidonie remembered the task she had left undone. “Forgive me, Lady Mary, I promised to scry for you, but the images would not come. And then I fell ill.”