The Alchemist's Daughter (16 page)

Sidonie nodded, realising suddenly that she was famished. Her legs felt weak, from exhaustion and sheer relief. She was safe, for now, in the midst of these good-humoured, inquisitive country folk. But where was Kit?

She drew up a bench and huddled close to the fire. Presently the woman brought her a bowl of stew and a tankard of mulled ale. The ale was steaming hot and heavily spiced. The first few sips sent a flush of warmth to Sidonie's face.

She blew on her stew to cool it. “But where is he now, my young man?”

“Why, he has gone with the village lads to scour the Abbey ruins for you.”

“Will you send after him, then, and say I am here, and quite safe withal?”

“Never fear, “ said the innkeeper's daughter. “My father has already sent the stableboy.”

“What a fright you gave me when I found you gone, Sidonie Quince!” Kit had seized hold of her hand, and seemed loathe to let it go. “And when I asked the shepherd lad, he offered me small comfort. He supposed you had been carried down to Annwn by the King of Faerie.”

Sidonie summoned the ghost of a smile, and left her hand in Kit's warm grasp. “Mayhap,” she said, “that was the truth of it, Kit — I was stolen by Gwynn ap Nudd, and all this while I have been wandering in the Underworld.”

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

Foul-cankering rust the hidden treasure frets,
But gold that's put to use more gold begets.

— William Shakespeare,
Venus and Adonis

The innkeeper had sent a messenger ahead to Wilton House, and next day at midmorning Adrian Gilbert arrived in person to collect Kit and Sidonie. After a good night's sleep and an early breakfast of yesterday's bread and cold roast mutton, Sidonie's spirits had risen a little. Nonetheless she had two skinned knees and sundry scrapes and bruises to remind her of last night's misadventure. As they rode across the fields in bright autumn sunshine, her mind was on hot baths, rose-scented soaps and Alice's cheerful ministrations.

“It seems, Mistress Quince,” said Gilbert, riding abreast, “that you are oft in need of rescuing.”

“Pray do not mock, Master Gilbert. He meant to kill me, if I did not do his bidding.”

“I should never have left you alone,” Kit said morosely. “The fault would have been mine, if harm had come to you.”

“It was your fault least of anyone's,” protested Sidonie. “How could you have guessed that such a peaceful place could harbour danger?”

“In these times,” said Adrian Gilbert, “no place is peaceful. There are none of us safe. You least of all, when men believe that you hold the key to riches and power.”

“Did I not tell you it was a curse?” said Sidonie. “And if I truly had foreknowledge . . . ” She broke off, surprised by her own words. Suppose the power of foresight was not in her at all, but only in the crystal? So often her scrying produced a murky vision that try as she might, would not come clear.

Gilbert finished the thought for her. “With foreknowledge you would have known what lay ahead? Methinks, Sidonie, that you have the gift— or curse if you like — but it frightens you so much, that you will not give in to it.”

Kit said, with a wry glance at Sidonie, “When you know her better you will realize she does not give in to anything.”

Gilbert laughed. “'Struth, Kit, I am beginning to understand that.”

Sidonie felt that she should defend herself. “In any case, it would have done no good to give in to the man who attacked me. In the end, it was not gold he wanted, but a thing beyond anyone's power to grant him.”

“And pray what was that?”

“What only a madman would demand. He believed I could find the Holy Grail.”

“Sidonie,” said Gilbert, “you are ill-suited to living in this age. You lack fanaticism. Your curse is not foresight, but rather the curse of all mathematicians —a rational mind.”

That afternoon Sidonie, scrubbed and tidied and freshly gowned, walked with the Countess along the intricately twining pathways of the knot garden. The crisp air had put a little colour in Lady Mary's cheeks. Her step was brisk, and there was a new vigour in her voice.

“Will you look into the glass again, Sidonie? To dredge the pond will be no small task, but well worth the expense if my brother's message proves true.”

Sidonie's stomach tightened. With a conscious effort she kept her voice steady. “My lady, do you mean me to return to Glastonbury?”

“My child,” exclaimed Lady Mary, “do you imagine I would put you in such danger a second time? I never should have sent you and Master Aubrey off without an escort. I imagined the two of you travelling alone would escape attention, but foolishly, I did not weigh the risk.” Absently, she bent to snap a faded marigold head. “You can scry at a distance, can you not?”

“I have done so, my lady.”

“Then will you come to the library after dinner?”

“I will, my lady,” said Sidonie with sinking heart.

In the library the curtains had been drawn, the candles lit, the table prepared for her as before. Sidonie set the scrying crystal in the precise centre of the red silk cloth, and slowly willed her mind to stillness. This time, come what might, she was determined to succeed.

She thought of the terror and outrage she had felt at the hands of her captor. And she remembered Lady Mary's words: “Have you thought what would become of you and me, of all our kind, under Spanish rule?”

Always, she had been ready to see both sides of a question, to feel sympathy for the victims, whatever the cause. But this man who would deliver England into the hands of her enemies, who would have killed Sidonie in cold blood, without a second thought — what sympathy did he or his cause deserve?

The edges of her vision grew blurred as she focussed intently on the point of reflected light in the centre of the glass.

Never before had she felt such perfect quietude of mind. She realized, with vague astonishment, that there was no longer any holding back, no fear of what the crystal might reveal. To look into the glass and discover what was hidden could arm her with foreknowledge, but it changed nothing. Her mother had cheated fate by choosing the manner of her death, but she could not cheat death itself. The glass had revealed a truth as immutable as an algebraic solution.

Sidonie decided, at that moment, that her scrying was neither curse nor gift. She had no power to change what was foreordained. She possessed a skill, like any other — a skill that might well save her father's life, and help to save Elizabeth's throne.

She let her mind's eye linger on remembered images — the stagnant surface of the pond, fouled with rotting weeds, the mossy stones that encircled it, the trees beyond. Today the vision came sharp and clear. Unconsciously she sucked in her breath as dark water closed over her. Down and down she went, to where glints of gold showed through a blanket of black mud, hinting at what lay beneath. And as she went deeper still, in the heart of the crystal there appeared a glorious vision of censers and candlesticks and gold plate, of jewel-encrusted golden chalices: Abbey treasures hidden from the world for half a century.

Sidonie let out a long, slow breath. The image was quickly fading, but she had seen enough. This time she trusted, without question, her own gift, and the truth of what she had seen.

“Alice,” she called out, and Alice put her head round the door so quickly that Sidonie guessed she had been waiting on the other side.

“Mistress?”

“Where is Lady Mary?”

“At her prayers, mistress.”

“When she has finished, will you go to her and say that what was lost is found?”

Alice gave her a puzzled look. “What was lost . . . ?”

“Just say that, Alice. Nothing more. She will understand.”

Next morning Adrian Gilbert prepared to depart for Glastonbury with a work party and half a dozen armed guards. Sidonie came down to the courtyard to watch the men loading the wagon with tools and supplies.

“Let me come with you,” she said to Gilbert, on the impulse of the moment.

Gilbert laughed. “And camp out for a week with the workmen? I doubt Lady Mary would countenance that.”

And do you think me such a cossetted maid, that I have never
slept rough?
thought Sidonie; but out of politeness she held her tongue.

“Nay, Mistress Sidonie,” said Gilbert, “you have done the best part of the work — the glory is all yours. What follows now is mere drudgery.”

“I could stay at the Pilgrim's Inn,” Sidonie pointed out. “I would think it a great favour, to be there when the treasure is found.”

“Then so you shall be,” said Gilbert, relenting. “I will send word when the pond is drained and the dredging begins, so that you and Master Aubrey may ride post haste to Glastonbury.”

That week passed slowly for Sidonie, but at length the summons came, and she set out with Kit for Glastonbury in the mists of an October dawn. They found Adrian Gilbert knee-deep in mud at the pond's shallow margin. Climbing out, he waved them a cheerful greeting and squelched his way across the trampled grass.

“By the end of the first day's work,” he told them, “I had lost all trust in visions. Even yours, Mistress Sidonie. But this morning, with the pool drained at last, we sank an iron-tipped pole into fifty years of muck and weeds and rubble, and struck what we think is metal.”

Sidonie watched anxiously as the workmen dragged the morass at the pond-bottom with hooked poles and ironclawed grapnels. Her heart leaped when one of them gave a great shout: “Master Gilbert, I have snagged summat!”

Everyone stopped to watch as the man heaved mightily on his pole, and succeeded in hauling a large weed-entangled object onto the grass. Adrian Gilbert raced to the spot with a bucket of clean water to flush away the mud.

Then a groan went up from the onlookers, and Gilbert turned to Sidonie with an apologetic grin. The treasure they had dragged with so much effort from the pond was a pot-metal cauldron with its side stoved in — no doubt a reject from the monastic scullery.