The Alchemist's Daughter (6 page)
They rattled through the Westminster gate at first light, leaving the Strand and the waking city behind them. The post road to the west was crowded with the carts and wagons of country folk, bound with their produce for the London markets. Before long Sidonie could see, above the roofs of the Abbey and Lambeth Palace, the first thin line of sunrise.
Gazing through the dawn mist at the long rough road that stretched before them, she felt a faint shiver of premonition down her spine.
“Are you cold?” Kit asked solicitously. “Shall I lend you my cloak?”
“I'm not cold,” Sidonie told him, “just a little affrighted, of a sudden.”
“It's not too late to turn back,” Kit said.
She shook her head. “I must finish what I have begun. My father tells me that is a failing I inherited from my mother.”
“Not your only failing, I would venture,” Kit said, laughing. “What would your father think of this escapade?”
“I suppose he would forbid it. That is, if his mind was not preoccupied with metaphysics.” She added, a little wistfully, “My mother would certainly have forbidden it. But then, if my mother were alive, there would be no need to make this journey. She was the only one my father ever listened to, the only one who could laugh at him and make him see his folly.”
“How did your mother die, Sidonie? You have never told me.”
“No,” said Sidonie. “I have never told anyone.” A lump had lodged like a stone in her throat. “She went into the garden and gathered monkshood, and made it into a tea, and drank it.”
“But why?”
“Kit, we never knew. But I can guess. It was the year of the plague, 1583. I was only thirteen, but I remember how, even so far from the city, we lived in terror. My mother looked into a mirror, and she said she had seen her own death.”
“Of plague?”
“That may have been what she saw. We will never know. We escaped the plague, my father and I. But my mother, who often visited the poor and sick of our village, to take them herbs and potions . . . ”
“Ah,” said Kit. “She might have taken the plague, unwitting . . . ”
“And brought it into our house. I think that is what she saw, when she looked into the mirror. And so by taking her own life, she cheated fate.”
“Did she cheat fate, I wonder? She died all the same.”
“But we lived. She would have counted that a victory, I think.”
“Is the future so inalterable, then? Might she not have chosen instead to give up her good works, to bide at home till the danger was past?”
“You did not know my mother, Kit. She could never have turned her back on anyone who needed her.”
“And you, Sidonie? Do you believe that what you see in the mirror must be your fate?”
“Have you not observed,” Sidonie said, “that I never look in mirrors?”
All day the carrier's cart lurched and jolted its way past sheep pastures and shorn fields. The hedgerows were a bright tangle of honeysuckle and wild clematis. It had rained in the night, settling the end-of-summer dust, and the air was cool and fragrant.
How beautiful the world is
, thought Sidonie.
How can anyone bear to leave it?
All the same, after a long day of jouncing over ruts and potholes, she felt as though she had been rolled downhill in an empty barrel. Her head ached, her backside was bruised, and she could think of nothing but a soft place to sleep.
“When we reach Silchester,” she told Kit, “I will buy you a good supper, and a bed at the inn.”
“Have you money enough?” asked Kit. “I had resigned myself to spending the night under a hedge, with the rest of the vagabonds.”
“Not I,” said Sidonie. “I saved a few shillings from the housekeeping so we should not have to sleep rough.”
In growing darkness they rattled over the broken cobbles of a village street. The Red Lion, announced the brightly painted sign at the hostelry's gabled front.
“An omen,” Sidonie told Kit, only half in jest. “Now we know we are on the right path.”
The inn at Silchester was a humble enough establishment. Still, to Sidonie's discerning eye it seemed clean and properly kept, the rushes on the floors sweetsmelling and the bedrooms freshly aired. For supper there was cold roast mutton, pigeon pies and bread and butter, with currant cake and apple pasties after, and plenty of barley ale.
But as they sat down to eat she whispered to Kit in embarrassment, “The rooms are dearer than I thought. Two would be a great extravagance.”
“Then take one for yourself,” said Kit obligingly. “A corner of the stable will suit me well enough.”
“Fie, Kit,” said Sidonie. She spoke with brisk assurance, to cover the awkwardness of the moment. “I have put you to enough discomfort on this journey. We are brother and sister, remember, and I trust you to behave as a brother would. You shall have the featherbed, and I will ask for a pallet on the floor.”
“And what brother would ask his sister to sleep on straw while he slumbers on goosedown? Unless â ” Kit set down his tankard and added with a teasing grin, “I borrow a sword and we do as Tristan and Iseult.”
Sidonie gave him a sharp look. “Enough,” she said tartly. “If you imagine I will lie with a sword down the middle of the bed, then you'd best sleep with the horses after all.”
Sidonie drew the bed-curtains, undressed to her smock, blew out the candle, and climbed between clean lavender-scented sheets. She heard a soft thump, and then another, as Kit, in the far corner of the room, drew off his boots. His straw mattress rustled faintly.
For a while she lay in the darkness, listening to the slow, deep sound of Kit's breathing, and taking comfort in his presence. Then she too drifted into sleep, and did not wake till dawn.
O villany! Ho! let the door be lock'd
â William Shakespeare,
Hamlet
Emma was scrubbing the hearthstone on her hands and knees. With both Dr. Quince and the young mistress out of the way, what better chance to give the cottage a good turn-out?
Behind her, the front door opened and closed. She reached out for the poker, and scrambling to her feet she turned with it raised to strike. “Oh,” she said, letting the poker fall to her side. “It's you. Have you not manners enough to knock?”
“Forgive me if I startled you. The door was unlatched.”
“Still no reason to walk in as though you owned the place. And why are you here at all, and not in London?”
“I'll not be staying. There are some papers I've been sent to fetch.”
Emma could tell that was all the answer she was likely to get.
There is on the confines of Britain a certain royal island,
called in the ancient speech Glastonia, marked out by broad
boundaries, girt round with waters rich in fish, and with
still-flowing rivers, fitted for many uses of human indigence,
but dedicated to the most sacred of deities.
â St. Augustine
Late the next day they came to Salisbury. As they crossed the meadows the sun was just setting behind the slender spire of the cathedral, and the city was wrapped in a blue haze of woodsmoke. The cart rattled through quiet streets past the deserted marketplace and drew up in the courtyard of an inn.
Settled at last in the inglenook in front of a blazing fire, Sidonie sipped a beaker of mulled ale and felt herself slipping into a comfortable half-doze. But just as sleep was about to overcome her, something â a prickling sense of unease, the faint weight of curious eyes upon her â brought her abruptly awake.
“Kit,” she whispered. “Pray don't stare â but is someone watching us?”
Kit turned to her with raised eyebrows, then glanced covertly round the low-ceilinged, smoky room. “None that I can see,” he said. “Wait now . . . that fellow on the bench beneath the window, with his nose thrust into his beaker. Methinks just now he was looking this way. What of it, Sidonie?”
She followed Kit's gaze to where a man in nondescript dark garments huddled over his ale, his face in shadow. All she could see was lank black hair falling over narrow black-clad shoulders, and, stretched out under the table, one of his legs in a dusty riding boot.
She shrugged. “Perhaps it was only a fancy of mine. I am weary of travel, and my nerves are all a-jangle. I will be glad to go on foot tomorrow, and walk the aches out of my bones.”
Come dawn they breakfasted on cold game pie and paid the reckoning. Crossing the innyard they came upon a carrier wagon laden with carpets, bolts of cloth and fine bed linens, bound for a gentleman's country house near Wells. “Here's a piece of good fortune,” said Kit, after conferring with the driver. “There's space for us in the back of the wagon, and he's travelling straight through till tomorrow morning. We'll save the price of another night at an inn, and from Wells it's an easy day's walk to Glastonbury.”
Sidonie looked into her purse and found it was emptying faster than she had hoped. “Then you'd best hire us two places,” she said resignedly, fishing out tuppence. She dreaded the thought of a sleepless night in a jolting wagon, wedged in among carpet rolls and packing chests. Still:
'twas you who chose to make this journey, my lass,
she told herself sternly;
now you must needs put on a cheerful face, and
make the best of it.
At Wells they parted company with the waggoner, and followed a sheep-track that led across the green pasturelands to Glastonbury.
“There is the Tor,” said Kit, pointing to a strange, steepsided hill that rose like a beacon from the misty fields and osier beds. And Sidonie quickened her pace, her weariness for the moment forgotten. She had seen in vision that mysterious, beckoning shape.
Towards evening they came to the desolate ruins of the Abbey. Standing knee deep in long rank grass, Sidonie gazed silently at the crumbling ivy-covered walls and shattered piers. There was a sick, hollow feeling in her belly.
The holiest place in England
, she thought.
What
wickedness can men achieve, and swear it is God's work.