The Alchemist's Daughter (9 page)

“Oh never say you are foolish, mistress,” protested Alice. “My own aunt on my mother's side, who is a woman of great sense and good judgment, once gave a shilling she could ill afford out of pity for a clapperdudgeon, who had rubbed ratsbane into his own flesh so as to cover himself all over with fearsome sores . . . and here is your chamber, mistress,” she added, scarcely pausing for breath.

The bedroom was filled with a delicious confusion of smells. Lavender-scented steam rose from a large wooden tub set before the hearth. Applewood crackled on the fire and on a low chest, musk burned in a censer.

“Your bath is ready,” said Alice, “and I have set your night-things out.”

Sidonie undressed to her smock and handed Alice her mud-stained, dusty garments. She picked up a ball of rosemary-scented soap, dropped her smock to the floor, and sank into the bathwater with a sigh of content. She felt as pampered as a queen.

While Sidonie scrubbed away the grime of her journey, Alice busied herself arranging tooth-cloth and soap on the enamelled washstand, and silver-backed ivory combs on a chest. Then she helped Sidonie wash her hair.

Sidonie leaned back against the side of the tub and gazed curiously around the room, much of which was taken up by a four-poster bed with a fringed valance and a painted headboard, across which nymphs and shepherds frolicked in a summer wood. The silk coverlet was periwinkle blue, and the hangings, edged with silver embroidery, were the deeper blue of the evening sky. The chamber was furnished as well with an ebony and silver writing table, two chairs covered in rose damask, a low chest inlaid with pearl and another with marquetry, and a rosewood chest of drawers. This was a bedchamber fit for a princess of the realm, not plain Sidonie Quince of Charing Cross.

“Come, mistress, the water is growing cool.” Alice had set out a linen towel, a pair of house-slippers, a clean smock embroidered in coloured silks, and a velvet-lined blue silk dressing gown trimmed with silver lace. “If you are finished bathing I will dry your hair and comb it for you.”

Sidonie, slippered and smock-clad, sat down obediently beside the fire.
What luxury is this
, she thought, as Alice rubbed her hair with a towel and patiently combed the tangles out. She tried to imagine such attentions at the hands of sharp-tongued, slapdash Emma.

“Is the household in mourning still?” asked Sidonie by way of conversation, while Alice struggled with an obstinate knot.

“Indeed yes, mistress. Alas, poor Lady Mary, it is not twelve months since Sir Philip was slain in the Netherlands. She lost her mother, her father and her brother all in the span of a year.” The tangle was at last subdued and Alice waved her comb in triumph. “Such a high-spirited lady she was, and she and her brother as close as peas in a pod, and now she is so weighed down by grief that all the light has gone out of her face.”

“Then surely, Alice . . . she may not look kindly on unexpected guests.”

“Oh, fie, mistress, you must not worry on that account. Wilton House is always full of friends, and relatives, and visitors, and all manner of guests. They are often as not two score at table, and it is hard to tell who is family and who is not.” She gave a small cluck of satisfaction. “There, now you are properly combed, do you put on your dressing gown, and I will go see if cook has your supper ready.”

Sidonie opened her eyes after a long night filled with restless dreams, and fancied she must still be dreaming. The sunlight falling through the tall narrow window threw diamonds of jewelled light, rose-red and sapphire blue and topaz, across the floor. She sat up, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

There was a soft knock on the door, and Alice came in carrying a tray. She set it down carefully on the chest beside the bed, next to a velvet-bound copy of Froissart's
Chronicle
. There was fine white manchet bread, butter spiced with nutmeg, a pot of honey and another of gooseberry preserves, orange slices, a dish of stewed pears, and a silver jug of barley water.

“I have a message from Master Aubrey,” Alice said. “He bids me tell you, he is alive and well, and when you have breakfasted, he awaits you in the physic garden.”

“A welcome message indeed,” said Sidonie, around a mouthful of bread and honey. “But Alice, where are my clothes?”

Alice looked momentarily disconcerted. “Alas, mistress, I fear your kirtle is in a sorry state, and your petticoats little better.”

“But Alice, what shall I wear? I cannot go out in my smock.”

Alice giggled. “Nay, mistress, Lady Mary has gowns to spare. Do you finish your breakfast, and I will be back in a trice.”

When she returned her arms were heaped with garments. There was a kirtle of fine pale green lawn worked in silver threads, an apron in ivory silk, a boned underbodice, and a froth of petticoats to go beneath. “Lady Mary is a little taller,” she said, “and a little plumper in the bosom, but these will do well enough, methinks.”

When she had finished tying Sidonie's laces and pinning her ruff, she stepped back to admire her handiwork. “Marry, Mistress Sidonie, you are the very picture of a lady. But something must needs be done about your hair.”

Sidonie pushed back her tumbling mass of dark brown curls. “When my hair is fresh-washed it has a mind of its own,” she said ruefully.

But Alice, with a practised hand, gathered up the wayward curls, sleeked them down with rose-scented lotion, and held them in place with a velvet cap. “There,” she said with brisk satisfaction.” Now see.” And Sidonie, who hated mirrors, could not resist a sidelong glance. A slender, elegant figure in green looked out at her from the glass. Sidonie stared bemusedly back. She scarcely recognized herself. “Now, mistress, “ prompted Alice, “you must tarry not a moment longer, it is a rare fine day, and Master Aubrey is waiting.”

Sidonie strolled in her borrowed finery across the long green lawns. There was no need to hurry; Kit would be happily occupied for hours among the Countess's botanicals. And so she wandered, pleasantly distracted, through knot gardens bright with late summer flowers, along grassy paths, through arbours and walkways shaded by honeysuckle and clematis. At the far end of a lawn two young men were playing noisy tennis. Further on, beyond a clipped yew hedge, she came upon a game of bowls, the players in their summer silks and feathered hats as gorgeous as the peacocks that strutted on the nearby grass.

Presently she climbed a flight of moss-grown steps to a terrace, where a man was deadheading roses. Imagining him for one of the servants, Sidonie was about to ask for directions. Then he looked up, secateurs in hand, and she was startled to find that the gardener was Adrian Gilbert. Today he wore no silks and velvets, only plain workman's breeches and jerkin, and a broad-brimmed felt hat to keep the sun off his face.

“Mistress Quince, I bid you good morning.” He made an elegant leg, whipped off his hat and swept it low.

“Good morning to you, Master Gilbert.” Should she curtsey? Sidonie wondered. How little prepared she was for life in these exalted circles! She settled for a courteous nod. “Sir, you took me quite by surprise.”

“Oh, you will often find me in the gardens. I do what little I can to earn my keep. But tell me, Mistress Quince, does all go well with Master Aubrey, and with yourself?”

“Happily, Kit is mending, “ Sidonie replied. “Thanks to your kindness, and the skill of Lady Mary's physician. But as for me, sir . . . I fear I am in a sore predicament.”

“How so?” He gazed at her with genuine concern.

“I needs must return to Glastonbury, to replace what was stolen from me . . . ” She saw Gilbert's raised brows, knew he was waiting for an explanation, offered none. “As well I must be back in Charing Cross before my father returns from London.”

“A quandary indeed, to be in two places at once,” said Gilbert. “But easily enough solved, I think. Do you ride, Mistress Sidonie?”

“Kit does. I fancy I can stay on a horse, if he be well-mannered.”

Gilbert laughed. “Honestly spoke,” he said. “So then. We will find you the most amiable beast in Lady Mary's stables, and as soon as the physician declares Master Aubrey fit to ride, you shall be away to Glastonbury. And as for your return to London, Lady Mary intends to travel there by coach in a few days' time. There will be room and to spare for you and Master Aubrey.”

“But you are all so kind to us,” declared Sidonie with relief and gratitude. “Lady Mary has treated two bedraggled strangers as though we were her own kinfolk.”

“Bedraggled you may have been,” said Gilbert. “But hardly strangers. Your reputation precedes you, Mistress Quince.”

Sidonie puzzled over those words. What reputation could she have, among these clever, courtly folk? The service she had done the Queen was paltry enough, considering that she had scried no more than the Queen already guessed.

And then, as she was bidding Gilbert good day, she had a disconcerting thought. Out of ambition and foolish pride her father had sworn to make gold for the royal coffers. What other rash promises might he have made, that Sidonie would be required to keep?

At length she came to the physic garden, a sun-drenched enclosure heady with the scents of sage and thyme, lavender and rosemary. Late-blooming borage, marigolds, rose campion made a bright display against the soft plum colour of the old brick walls. Kit was on his knees, examining a plant with that particular intensity he reserved for growing things. He glanced up as Sidonie approached.

“Sidonie Quince, can that be you? I swear, you look like Lady Greensleeves.”

She laughed. “It seems I am to be duchess for a day. Tomorrow I expect I will be plain Sidonie again. But Kit, are you quite recovered?”

“My head thrums like a lute string if I move too quickly, but the physician tells me that will pass.”

Save for the bandage round his head, he seemed his usual stalwart self. “Look you, Sidonie, this is such a garden as I have only dreamed of.” Wincing a little as he got to his feet, he seized her by the hand and guided her among the bricked-edged plots, pointing out the rarest specimens.

“See, here are apples of love from Spain, and madde apples nearly ripened. There is mandrake in that corner, over here white hellebore from the Alps, tiger lilies all the way from Constantinople . . . scores of plants, Sidonie, that I have only read about in herbals.”

She laughed, enjoying his excitement. “Study them well while you may,” she said, “for on the morrow, if you are well enough to ride, we return to Glastonbury. Master Gilbert has offered to lend us horses.”

“You have never ridden a horse,” Kit pointed out.

“I will learn. I do not mean to go home empty handed.”

She was silent for a moment, watching a cloud of butterflies dancing in a stand of goldenrod. In this peaceful autumn garden with its tidy geometric beds, all was order and reason. Here, humankind and nature seemed in perfect accord. Yet in some corner of her mind there stirred a faint unease.

Finally she said, “Kit, do you not find it curious, how we have been made so welcome here?”

“Curious? What mean you, Sidonie? One could not have asked for more gracious hosts.”

“I meant only that we are strangers, with no special place in society, ragged and travel-stained to boot. Surely in most great houses we would have been sent like beggars to the kitchen door, not treated as honoured guests.”

“Sidonie, you think too little of yourself. You are a learned woman, as the Countess is, and besides, this is no ordinary house. It is like a little Oxford — there are scholars and poets visiting from every corner of England. Sidonie, now that you have been to court, you see plots and machinations behind every bush.”

“When
you
have been to court,” retorted Sidonie, “you will see that there
are
plots and machinations behind every bush. Kit, these are no idle fancies of mine, this is a world ruled by plots and politics, and it can be death to misplace your trust.”