The Alchemist's Daughter (2 page)

C
HAPTER
3

No sign marked her door. Only the odor of a simmering concoction hinted at what lay on the other side. Passing pedestrians would scrunch up their noses and hurry on, being sure to detour her rent on their return. Sometimes even
she
couldn’t bear the smells and she’d run out into the lane, gasping for air, preferring the stink of Southwark to those of her own making.

Bianca Goddard observed the lethargic drip of a distillation as it collected in a vesicle. A labyrinth of coiled copper spanned the length of a table. She studied the remnants of crushed herbs, mashed frog bones, and pulverized chalk; her blue eyes were tinged nearly purple with fatigue. An idea had roused her out of sleep, and she could not rest until she had begun to pursue it. She was nothing if not obsessed.

Wedges of apple and a hunk of cheese from Eastcheap market lay untouched on the plate while John licked his fingers from his portion. He eyed the browning fruit. “The fruit is going off, Bianca,” he said. “You should take the time and eat.” He looked at Bianca, annoyed she had ignored his offering. “Because if you aren’t going to have it . . .” Then, rueful for wanting the food for himself, he said, “Can I at least steep you some tea?”

Bianca shrugged and, with eyes still fixed on her latest experiment, pointed toward a shelf lined with crockery. “It’s next to the jars of herbs.”

John retied the leather strip gathering his hair into a wheaten tail that reached between his shoulder blades. He crammed several wedges of fruit in his mouth, then wandered over to the shelves of Bianca’s room of Medicinals and Physickes, as she preferred to call it. She was riled if anyone called it a room of alchemy. She’d been here for less than a year, having spent her childhood running errands for her father in his quest to discover the philosopher’s stone. Eventually Bianca had come to reject her father’s line of inquiry for one of her own. She combined the parts of alchemy she found useful with the knowledge of herbs she’d gleaned from her mother. To this combination she added a healthy dose of curiosity, and the result was a salve to tame the French pox. Its popularity afforded her this room off Gull Hole in the undesirable but, for her, affordable area of Southwark.

John squinted at the array of jars and cracked bowls, some labeled with torn bits of precious paper scribbled on in charcoal and stuck on with snail ooze. But the mucilage had dried and several labels had floated to the floor, though some had been rescued and hurriedly stuffed inside the jars. He found a container labeled “ceylon,” but he couldn’t be sure if it wasn’t cayenne. Either way, they’d soon find out.

“So, what is this latest madness?” he asked, gesturing to Bianca’s experiment. He set a pan of water to boil on top of a cal-cinating stove. The stove belched a steady plume of blue smoke, to which Bianca had provided an escape through a cracked window. Despite her effort, John’s eyes still watered, and he thought he’d never get used to the smells and fumes that accompanied Bianca’s dabbling.

Bianca brushed the hair from her eyes. The linen cap that usually hid her mussed locks hung on a hook by the door. She didn’t wear the troublesome coif in the privacy of her rent, and John appreciated seeing her hair—as black as the knocker at Newgate—frame her pale face.

“I’m distilling,” she said, running her hand along the expanse of coils. “I’m trying to separate this mash of barley and throatwort into a liquid.” She pointed to the mixture boiling on a tripod, then swirled a flask at the end of a tube that was shaped like a pig’s snout. “I’ll combine its purified essence with my salves.”

John stirred the leaves in his own experiment and watched them bleed brown into the water. “Seems like a mountain of effort for a pebble of worth.” He stood back, then looked around the room for two mugs, or anything clean that could hold their drink.

“These will do,” said Bianca, emptying the ground powders from a couple of bowls, then wiping the insides with a corner of her woolen kirtle. Her skirt was a record of ingredients and chemistries. Hopefully none were combustible—as they certainly were potent, both in staining and devouring the fabric. The smell alone was enough to stop a boar at twenty feet. But Bianca didn’t seem to notice, much less care. She handed over the bowls.

“People depend on me for remedies to ease their boils and ague. I’m not so quick of hand as when I picked pockets.” She spied a mouse beneath a pile of rush covering the floor and, with some effort, cornered it with her foot, then snatched it up by the tail. “Perhaps I’m more conspicuous than when I was twelve. I haven’t a license to beg. How else am I to survive?” She carried the creature to the door and flung it into the alley.

John set the bowls on the table and found a thick cloth to handle the pan. “I can think of a way,” he said, simply.

Bianca’s ears pinked. Her affection for John rivaled her irritation. She knew he wanted to marry her or at least become a greater part of her life. Marriage, with all its demands—not least of which were children—would put an end to her chemistries. To Bianca, it was not a desirable offer. She could no more abandon her love of experimenting than move back home with her parents. So for now she avoided the subject and, instead, posed a matter for John to consider.

“John, first you must finish your apprenticeship with Boisvert. Then you face years as a journeyman in silversmithing. After that, you must set up shop somewhere, and you know Boisvert will not take kindly to competition. I expect you’ll have to move.”

“I could move here,” offered John, handing Bianca her bowl of brew.

“John, this is not a home.”

“But you live here.”

Bianca set her tea down, exasperated. “I have no choice. I’ll not move back with my parents. Besides, you could never bear living here. I’d rather not listen to you complain about the smell.”

John couldn’t argue. The smells did bother him. It would never do for them to live where she practiced her art. As for moving back with her parents, Bianca’s father, Albern Goddard, was an alchemist with a dubious past. He’d been accused of plotting to poison the king in an attempt to subvert Henry’s religious “Reformation.” A devout Catholic, Goddard still ascribed to the authority of the pope even though it was dangerous to do so. Bianca had risked her own life to prove he had been wrongly accused, and for that peril, she had yet to forgive him.

Though, to be honest, Bianca owed much of her success and present circumstance to what she had learned from her father. From the time she had been able to fetch water without spilling it, she had assisted him in his “noble art.” He was disciplined, if not a bit disorganized, and she followed his methods, having never witnessed a more orderly approach. And, like her father, she was devoted to her science. Sometimes excessively so. Especially to John’s eyes.

Bianca took a sip and suddenly blew it out, spraying her new still. “Phaa! What
is
this?”

John leapt back, patting her spittle from his front. He stuck his finger in his bowl and tasted. “So it was pepper after all.”

Bianca stalked to the door and threw it open. She cocked her arm to catapult the offensive liquid into the lane, where standing opposite, with her fist poised to knock, stood her friend Jolyn.

“Another fouled concoction?” she asked, eyeing the bowl in Bianca’s hand.

“This one is of John’s making.” Bianca tossed the contents.

“John, I didn’t know anything but metals amused you,” said Jolyn, cautiously stepping into Bianca’s room. One never knew what one might find there. Once, she’d nearly been trampled by a goat wishing to escape. “Boisvert would be disappointed if you switched allegiance and joined the brotherhood of puffers.”

“I think he was trying to poison me,” said Bianca, shutting the door. She hated to be compared with alchemists, but she ignored her friend’s tease. Instead, she noted Jolyn’s new cloak and doeskin gloves. “What’s this?” she said, touching her friend’s garb. “I should quit my experiments and sweep floors at Barke House.”

Jolyn smiled. “My wages consist of a roof over my head and board for my belly.”

John dispensed of his pepper tea more discreetly. He set it by a stack of crockery and covered it with a plate. “More gifts from your suitor then?” he asked.

“Aye.” Jolyn shrugged off her cloak and draped it on a chair, well away from Bianca’s chemistries, then pulled off her gloves and set them by.

“For such gloves I can’t say your hands have benefitted.” John added another dung patty to the furnace to ward off the chill. “They look raw and red from the cold.”

Jolyn stood next to the furnace, stretching her fingers over the heat. “It’s not the cold. Mrs. Beldam has me sweep out the rush and scrub the floors with lye. But my hands look better than when I was picking through the flats.” She examined her blisters, turning her fingers over. “Mrs. Beldam believes in spring cleaning. She doesn’t want the neighbors thinkin’ we’s a clutch of clapperdudgeons.”

“But you
are
a bunch of beggar-born,” said John, poking the fire.

“I’ll have you not speak poor of Barke House. It
used
to be a stew of ill repute, but not anymore. Women come to Barke House hoping to escape the streets and start a better life.”

“It’s hard to shake a spider out of its web.” John leaned the poke against the furnace, observing Jolyn’s cheeks beginning to flush. Her skin had been protected by river clay for so long that now, with it scrubbed, her complexion was usually as pale as a baby’s bottom. “I’m simply saying, reputations are difficult to lose,” he said.

“True, but we must put a good face forward, eh?” said Jolyn. She sat at a bench opposite Bianca and the contraption of copper. “Last week I spent the only warm day toting bed linens to the fields of Horsleydown to wash and spread dry. My hands have yet to recover from the cold and soap.”

“Mrs. Beldam is getting her use of you,” said Bianca.

“I earn my keep. But if Mrs. Beldam hadn’t been so caring, I’d still be sloshing through sewage.”

Bianca checked her mash and gave it a stir. “I don’t know how she affords to run such a place. She must have a charitable heart—or a patron with a bigger one.”

“Or a bigger purse,” added John.

“The girls and I give her what we can. You don’t run a place like Barke House hoping to grow wealthy.”

Bianca agreed, then, settling on her stool, traced the course of a trickle of fluid and tightened a juncture in her apparatus. “So, what does Mrs. Beldam say of your suitor?”

“She doesn’t like him. But if I should marry him, it is one less mouth for her to feed.” Jolyn sniffed a bowl of rendered suet and rubbed a dab on her cracked hands. “One of the girls suggested that he probably reminds Mrs. Beldam of someone she once loved. The rumor is she was abandoned in her youth and had to raise a daughter alone.”

“Is it true?”

Jolyn worked the oil into her skin. “She’s never spoken of a daughter.”

“So, when will you see him?” asked Bianca.

“Soon. His ship is in. He has matters to attend.”

“He’s a captain?” John pricked up his ears.

“John should join a crew,” said Bianca. “All those years living in a barrel behind the Tern’s Tempest and being seduced by sailors’ wild stories of adventure and swag.”

“He’s not a captain,” said Jolyn. “But his business involves ships. He does well by it. He brings me sweetmeats and oranges, stuffed figs . . . all manner of exotical foods.” She pressed her hand to her stomach. “It doesn’t always suit my constitution. I’m used to tavern scraps and ends from market.”

“Perhaps you might save some for Bianca to try. She doesn’t care for the fare I bring.”

Jolyn studied her friend’s neglected platter. “You’re as thin as a sparrow. You should eat.”

“I forget.”

“To eat?” Jolyn looked over at John and shook her head. “John, remind her there is more to life than this . . .” She waved her hand at the display of coils. “This . . .”

Bianca watched her friend struggle to find the right words. “This room of Medicinals and Physickes?” she finished, lifting her brow.

Jolyn rolled her eyes. “It’s frightening, Bianca, how absorbed you become in your chemistries.”

Bianca shoved an apple wedge in her mouth. “There is nothing else I’d rather do. Discovering medicinals is more worthy than searching for the philosopher’s stone.”

“So your father’s work is of no merit?” Jolyn thought anyone who worked indoors and was able to support himself must be cleverer than she.

“None I’ve seen.” Bianca swallowed. “He has spent a lifetime trying to transmute gold from worthless metals and mole brains. He’s nothing to show for it.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “At least what I do benefits the sick and ailing, so it has some purpose.”

“True. But some would argue that in aiding the shadier side of Southwark, you are in fact perpetuating it.”

“If someone is in need, I help,” said Bianca. “It is not for me to decide who merits aid.”

“You sound like a nun,” said Jolyn.

“I do a respectable business with the gentler side of London. Merchants and earls buy my balms, too. And Meddybemps takes my salves to Smithfield and Newmarket.”

Jolyn pulled her eyelids back and rolled her eyes around in her best imitation of the storied streetseller. Meddybemps had a roving eye that could make a person seasick just talking to him.

Bianca couldn’t resist reciting one of Meddybemps’s rhymes—

She bit into the wedge of cheese while her friends snickered.

But Jolyn’s smile faded, and with a wince, she gripped her side. “Do you have a tonic to settle my stomach? I ate at the Dim Dragon Inn last night.”