Alchemist's Apprentice (5 page)

Jack waited. A moment later the woman returned with a small crust of bread. Jack found that he was still holding the remains of the pig's knuckle. The woman prized it out of his fingers and threw it aside with an expression of distaste. The bread she replaced it with was so stale that it was sharp.

‘I don't want it,' Jack said.

‘Well, it's all you're going to get!' As she spoke, the housekeeper was already closing the door in Jack's face.

‘I got a relic!' he shouted.

The door opened again.

‘Look.' Jack held it up.

The look of irritation on the woman's face intensified, but again she asked him to wait while she disappeared inside.

She was gone longer this time. A fat spaniel emerged from somewhere or other and slunk away towards the outhouses with the trotter bone. The doorway sheltered Jack from the worst of the rain, but his wet clothes were uncomfortable and, worse than that, they were beginning to release odours that even he was aware of. He would have been due a bath and a change of clothes if he had been at home. He wished he was. He wished that none of it had ever happened.

The door opened at last.

‘In you come.'

The housekeeper led the way through a dark hallway into the fuggy heat of a huge kitchen, where a kettle on a black hob steamed softly like a purring cat.

‘Go on up,' she said, settling herself into a chair at a long scrubbed table and taking up where she had left off, podding a large bowl of peas. Jack watched her for a while, then said, ‘Up where?'

‘Have you not been here before?'

‘No.'

Some of the peas were maggoty. The housekeeper continued to separate them for a while in silence, then sighed like old Dobbs and stood up again. Wiping her hands on her apron, she led the way out of the kitchen and into a flagstoned hall that was as big as Tom's forge. Dark paintings and faded tapestries lined its walls and Jack stood gaping for a moment or two, then followed the housekeeper up a flight of solid wooden stairs which doubled back on themselves and led to a large, bright landing. Several corridors led off it, and in one of them a door stood slightly ajar. The housekeeper knocked on it, shoved Jack inside, and was gone.

The room was bigger than any Jack had seen. It was bigger and higher than the whole of his mother's house. The two longer walls were lined with shelves and tables and cases with glass tops. At the opposite end, three tall windows were set into the shorter wall, and in front of them was a long, high desk. A man was sitting there with his back towards the door. As Jack came in, he twisted round to look at him.

‘Come along,' he said. ‘Don't be shy.' His voice bounced hollowly from the walls and the bare floorboards, emphasising the dense silence that followed it. Jack was aware that his clothes were dripping on to the floor. He moved forward. The other end of the room seemed a great distance away. The man turned his chair sideways on and waited. He had the pallor of someone who rarely feels fresh air against his skin, and dark bruises of weariness hung beneath his eyes. His drooping moustache and heavy jowls gave him an air of sadness which surprised Jack. He had always assumed that wealth and happiness were the same thing.

‘You have something for me?'

‘A relic,' said Jack, stepping forward.

Master Gregory peered at the stale crust in the boy's hand with an expression of bewilderment. Jack held up the other hand with the pot in it.

‘Ah, yes,' said Master Gregory. ‘Now I see.'

‘Is it?' said Jack.

‘Is it what?'

‘A relic.'

‘Let me see it, will you?'

When Jack released his grip, his fingers were cramped into claws from clutching on to his treasure for so long. He stuck the offensive crust into his wet pocket and began to rub his knuckles, without once taking his eyes from the rich man's face. But if there were any clues, Jack was unable to read them. Gregory's face remained quite impassive as he examined the object from every conceivable angle. At last he put it down, very gently, on the desk. For a long moment he sat completely still, as though deep in thought. Then he said, ‘What's your name, boy?'

‘Jack, sir.'

‘Jack. I see. And where did you find this, Jack?'

‘In the river, sir.'

‘Where, in the river?'

‘Blackfriars, sir. Beside the old monastery.'

Gregory stared at him long and hard. At last he said, ‘I believe you, though many wouldn't.' He stood up and moved out from behind the desk. ‘Come here with me, and let me show you my collection.'

He led the way to the first of a row of glass-topped cases. ‘All these things here are relics of the Roman occupation,' he said. ‘Do you know about the Roman occupation?'

Jack shook his head. The case looked a bit like Nancy's stall. Inside it was a scattering of things that were not immediately recognisable but which looked as though they might be of some use to somebody. There were knives and spoons and buckles; strange coins with ugly faces on them, little figurines of bronze and white marble. In one corner there were fragments of broken crockery.

‘You'll never fix that,' said Jack.

Gregory laughed. ‘I'm sure you're right.' he said. ‘Do you know how old these things are?'

‘Pretty old,' said Jack. There was plenty of evidence of rust, but then there was on Nancy's stall as well.

‘How high can you count?' asked Gregory.

Jack was proud of his counting. It was a new skill, one of the things that William had been teaching him, with great condescension.

‘I can count nails in a horseshoe, sir,' he said. ‘Six altogether, three on the inside and three on the outside, or sometimes eight if it's a very big shoe.'

‘Ah,' said Gregory.

‘And I can count farthings in a penny. And pennies in a shilling.'

‘Very good. But not much more than that, eh?'

Jack shook his head. He knew that he was fourteen and William was seventeen and his mother had been more than fifty. He knew that the year was 1720 as well, but he had no idea how it had got there.

‘Well,' said Master Gregory. ‘Let me think of another way of explaining how old these things are.' He paused for a moment and twisted his moustache, then went on. ‘Think of your father, then think of your father's father, and his father before him, and then his father, and his father …'

Gregory went on, but he had lost Jack.

He was stuck fast at the first father; his own. He had been a sailor who spent most of his life aboard merchant ships which traded between England and Europe. Jack had rarely seen him, but when he did come home he infected the whole family with the passionate intensity of his life; the excitement and miseries of his work, the stories and shanties. He was a man of many moods, sometimes humorous and lively, sometimes withdrawn, sometimes explosive with rage and frustration. He never earned enough to relieve the constant hunger of his family or, if he did, he drank it. But he enriched their lives in other ways, bringing rare treats; fistfuls of sweet raisins and dates, strange little figures of people or animals, the occasional precious stone for his wife.

‘… and his father, and his father …'

But there came a time when he didn't return. Perhaps someone told Jack that the ship had gone down in a storm, or perhaps he just decided it for himself. Since his mother's bitter comments about his father made no sense to him, he ignored them. But a year before, his one surviving sister Alice had told him the truth, just a few days before she entered into service for a merchant near Reading and disappeared from Jack's life forever. Their father wasn't in Davy Jones' Locker at all, but had taken a second wife in Portsmouth and was living there still. Since then, Jack had successfully avoided thinking about him. Until now.

‘… his father, and his father again. “When that man was a boy, Jack, Britain was occupied by the Romans. And that was when these things were made. Can you imagine how old they are?'

But Jack was wondering what kind of a man would abandon his family like that. Two of his sisters had died since then, too weak to withstand an attack of scarlet fever.

‘More than fifteen hundred years old.'

Jack felt weak with grief and anger. He didn't care for himself, but little Jenny had bounced on his knee and smiled at him and tried out her first words … He should have gone to find him. He should have hounded him down, confronted him with the truth of what he had done. Perhaps he still could? Walk away from the mad collector and his useless, decaying treasures …

‘Jack?'

‘Yes, sir?'

‘Do you see how old these things are?'

‘Yes, sir.'

Gregory moved on to another case, similar to the first. Inside, all the pieces were made of stone.

‘These things are even older. There's no way of knowing just how old they are, but they came from a time before mankind had discovered how to use metal.'

‘Are they relics?'

‘Yes, they are. Look.' Gregory opened the case and picked up a piece of glinting stone shaped a bit like a woodcutter's wedge. ‘If you take a piece of flint from the ground, it's not a relic, it's just a piece of flint. But if someone in the past has taken another piece of stone and shaped the flint into an axe-head like this one, that makes it a relic. A relic is something that someone has made.'

Jack nodded. ‘Is my thing a relic?'

Gregory looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, ‘Not exactly, no. But it is interesting.'

Jack had forgotten his father again. His heart was racing with hope. But. Gregory clearly wasn't ready to discuss business yet. He took Jack around the entire room, pointing out swords and shields and spears, pieces of mouldering harness, gold and silver jewellery, pots and jugs, some whole, some broken. Several cases were filled with religious relics, and Jack found himself listening to the history of Christianity in England.

Sometimes he was fascinated, and sometimes bored. He was longing to ask why Gregory wanted all those things, but he didn't dare in case he should think about it and decide that he didn't. When they finally finished the inspection, Jack was a little wiser but not much. None of the names or facts or figures had stayed with him; he didn't have that kind of mind. But he had learned two things. One was that everything in that room was old, and that old meant valuable. The other was that in the whole collection there was not a single item like his own. He could not, however, decide whether this was a good or a bad thing.

Master Gregory sat down at his desk. The rain had stopped and, through a gap in the clouds, the sun sent a pool of brilliance to show Jack's little pot in the best possible light. Since Gregory seemed reluctant to say anything, Jack felt compelled to open the negotiations.

‘Do you know what it is?'

‘Yes, I do,' said Gregory. ‘It is perhaps most commonly known as a “philosopher's egg”.'

Jack disliked big words and, as for eggs, he preferred not to think about them. His concern, in any case, was more immediate. ‘Is it very old?' he said.

‘No. It's not old at all.'

Jack's spirits sank. His mind, suddenly empty, conjured up an image of old Dobbs. His eyes were full of scorn, reminding Jack that he deserved no better.

‘It's not valuable, then?'

‘I don't know,' said Gregory. ‘I just don't know.' He picked up the pot and shook it beside his ear as Nancy had done. A faint flush passed over his pale cheeks and he put it down again. Valuable or not, the object seemed to exert a kind of attraction over Gregory that made Jack's skin crawl. He remembered the farm boy and realised he was probably right. Gregory must be mad to spend his life indoors, surrounded by ancient, useless things.

Silence fell and stretched on. The sun withdrew behind the clouds again. Jack noticed that his clothes were nearly dry. He pulled at a loose thread and rolled it into a ball. Then he picked his nose and scratched at the lice in his mop of dust-brown hair. Eventually Gregory straightened up in his chair.

‘I need some time to think about this,' he said. ‘It's not an easy decision.'

Jack nodded eagerly. Anything was better than a rejection.

‘Do you mind waiting for a while?'

Jack was baffled by being asked. All his life he had been told where to go and what to do. He wasn't even sure of how to answer the question.

‘Mrs Brown will take care of you in the meantime,' Gregory went on, ‘and I will let you know as soon as I make up my mind.'

M
RS BROWN WAS EVIDENTLY
displeased by her additional duties. She took Jack to the washroom in the servants' quarters, handed him a bar of strong-smelling brown soap and refused to allow him out until he promised that he had scrubbed himself from head to toe. She ordered the maid to wash his clothes and gave him an old shirt of Master Gregory's to wear in the meantime. It fitted him like a night-gown, the tails hanging down to his ankles. Finally, he was permitted to come and sit quietly in the corner of the kitchen.

Mrs Brown carried on with her work and ignored him. The maid returned with his clothes and hung them on a rail above the hob, where they were soon steaming as heartily as the kettle. Outside the sky darkened and the rain began again, with angry thunder and lightning. Mrs Brown closed the shutters and sat in semi-darkness, running a string of beads through her fingers and muttering strange invocations. Jack wondered if the whole household might not be mad. He rocked and fidgeted on his stool and wished that Gregory would come to some decision. But the storm passed and Mrs Brown opened the shutters again, and still there was no word.

Supper was prepared; cold cuts of ham with fresh bread, butter and radishes. Mrs Brown prepared a tray and took it up to the master in his room. When she came down again she glared at Jack as though she was trying to melt him where he sat and then, begrudgingly, set a plate for him at the table.