The Alchemist's Daughter (22 page)

C
HAPTER
36

“John, have you forgotten what sense there is in patience?”

“Would you have me complacently watch a pot boil while she hangs for a murder she did not commit?”

“My lad, you misunderstand me.” Meddybemps whisked a pan of boiling water off the furnace and dipped a square of linen into it. He cleaned the gash on John’s arm, then dabbed on a healing ointment from Bianca’s shelves. John had been wholly brave and, in Meddybemps’s opinion, too brash defending Bianca from arrest. “I do not expect you to stand idly by, but I do caution you to consider your choices rather than act with heedless abandon.”

“What would you have me consider?”

Meddybemps rinsed the linen cloth, then ripped it apart and wrapped it several times around John’s wound. “Firstly, consider the culture of said Clink.”

“How so?”

“You are but one lad. Granted, you are a strapping one by all counts. But one lad against a three-hundred-year-old citadel does not a successful venture make. Do not presume you should win against her stone walls.”

“What would you have me do?”

“You cannot enter into this with no forethought. Chiseling a hole or tunneling your way to Bianca’s cell will not work.”

“I haven’t the time.”

“Nor does blade or brute strength work unless you have an army behind you.” Meddybemps uncorked his wineskin and took a swig. “Bianca is kept by men much like me who care not a piss for public duty. These men speak the language of coin. Moral standard is mere pretense. But to play a bribe . . .” Meddybemps’s errant eye quivered with import. “To play is not only typical—it is expected.”

“But I have nothing with which to bribe.”

Meddybemps smiled, offering John his flask. “Do you not work for a silversmith?”

John took a long drink and handed back the wine. “Are you asking me to filch coin from Boisvert?”

Meddybemps looked disappointed. “Is Bianca not worth the risk?”

“Meddy, if I should end in the Clink, who should come and rescue me?” He shooed the red cat off the table. “You?”

Meddybemps dropped onto a stool and rubbed his eyes. “That would be difficult since I plan to accompany you.” He peered up at John. “And since I intend to partake in this madness, I have no intention of standing behind bars.” Meddybemps scanned the room. “John, Bianca is the daughter of an alchemist. And while she denounces his maniacal methods, she is still curious enough to consider them.” His gaze settled on the shelves of crockery, and his face brightened. “If I know Bianca,” he said, standing, “and I believe that I do, she will have a stash of ingredients that delight the smattering of alchemist blood that I am sure courses through her veins. She cannot deny that from which she is wrought.”

John gazed around the room. “What would she have of any value?” He pointed to the row of dissected vermin. “Rats?” he asked, cynically. “Or this maze of copper tubing? How about this stack of crockery?” He pulled a human skull off the wall and held it up. “I’m sure a guard from the Clink would want this.”

Meddybemps ignored John and started going through the jars on the shelves, lifting lids and peering inside. “Puffers love metals. Surely you know the theory behind their obsessive search? The philosopher’s stone and such?”

“Of course I know something about it. I am a silversmith’s apprentice and in love with an alchemist’s daughter.” John sniffed that Meddybemps should think him thick.

Meddybemps pulled out a box and lifted its lid, then put it back on the shelf. “I also gave her a bag of coins from selling her balms at market. Mayhaps we shall find it.”

Resignedly, John followed suit and started looking through the paraphernalia on the abutting wall, an area mostly blocked with discarded cucurbits and stills. Probably she had pinched them from her father’s room of alchemy when he was unawares. After examining every bowl of desiccated plant parts, he started pulling down plugged bottles of a selection of powders, the labels for which fluttered to the floor. He hoped Bianca would remember what they were when and if she ever returned.

Meddybemps chattered to himself, and John ignored his rhymes and patters flowing as easily as ale at the Dim Dragon Inn. Between the two of them, they exhausted every piece of crockery and had nothing but raw noses to show for it.

John stepped down from a stool and sat. “Nothing. Not even her stash of coins.” He watched Meddybemps continue the search, undeterred. “Truly, Meddybemps, don’t you think if she had anything of value, we would have found it by now?”

Meddybemps hopped off the chest he’d been standing on. “Bianca is not so easy to figure. She is at once predictable and confounding.” With hands on hips, he gazed about the room, puzzled. “I am certain she would not be entirely without something.” He rubbed his temple in thought. “Did you see any stone chips or rocks?”

“Nothing of merit.” John’s patience was wearing thin. “Meddy, I’ll not spend another minute searching through her belongings. She’s sitting in the Clink, and I’ll not abandon her there.” He stood, roused by his own words. If he had to rescue her by himself, he would.

Meddybemps scratched under his red beret, his eyes rolling like goose eggs. “Hey non,” he said after a moment, as if the most wondrous idea had sprouted in his head. He turned and looked down at the chest he had been shoving about and standing on. “What’s this?” He crouched and tried to open the hasp, but a rusted padlock held it closed.

“You know anything about locks?” he said.

“Only how to spring them,” mumbled John.

“So obvious as to be ignored . . .” Meddybemps hefted the wooden chest to the table and studied its hinges. “If we pry these off, perhaps we can lift the lid.”

John grumbled. “She wouldn’t stash valuables in that decrepit old box.”

Meddybemps searched the shelves for an iron rod or bar that he could shim beneath the hinges. With a yelp of triumph, he found a metal stirring spoon with a sturdy handle and wedged it under the hinge. A solid yank later, he had prized the rusty device from the wood and was searching through the contents. “What say you?” Meddybemps lifted a pouch of silver for John to admire. “Enough for a bribe, I’d say.”

John snatched the pouch from the streetseller and stuffed it in his breeches.

“And who knows Bianca better than anyone?” gibed Meddybemps as John headed for the door with a grudging scowl.

 

They hoped that with nightfall the turnkey might be more easily plied by crooked method. The prison was as Meddybemps presumed, a wholly corrupt system, and what was one more illicit deal among many?

John was careful to extract just enough silver to entice and convince, while leaving some to pad for any unforeseen glitch in their plan. Neither of them relished being anywhere near the Clink, and the idea of entering it set them ill at ease. They hurried along in silence, each harboring thoughts of what Bianca might suffer if they should fail, but neither one daring to mention it.

The Clink was well known for the brutality of its guards and its unwholesome conditions. One might avoid the rack and wall shackles for a stint at a gristmill. But that was only marginally better as the inmates there were whipped and starved and forced to keep moving until they dropped. Either way, there was no shortage of cruelty at the Clink, and they sorely hoped they could rescue Bianca from any such fate.

When they were within sight of the infamous prison, Meddybemps seized John’s arm and pulled him to a stop. “Let me do the speech making, lad. Your eyes are as wild as a scared rabbit’s. You’ll do best to take a long breath and count to ten first.” Meddybemps tightened his grip. “Go on, now. Do as I say.”

If he looked like a scared rabbit, what did that say for Meddybemps, with those errant eyes skittering around? John sighed, then took a breath, but didn’t feel any better afterward. “Come on now,” John said, exasperated. “We haven’t got all night.”

It appeared the inmates had been shut away for the evening; no one begged at the windows, and the edifice stood black and silent. Meddybemps adjusted the angle of his cap, and they tentatively stepped up to the massive arched entry and looming oak door.

John lifted his fist and knocked.

“Lad, a polite rapping will not do,” said Meddybemps, staring up at the stolid stone façade, imagining the disturbing din of prisoners beyond. “I doubt they heard you.”

John complied, and in a moment a hulk of a turnkey stood before them, clutching a roasted leg of mutton. He chewed openmouthed and peered down at them. John stared up at the chomping, grinding teeth, stupefied. He’d never witnessed mastication so explicit. From grinding flesh and the overproduction of saliva, to the man’s lips, glossy from fat, John followed the life of that one bite to the swallow. Stymied, John took a step back and pushed Meddybemps forward. Meddybemps was unimpressed; he’d seen worse at the Mad Cow near Butcher Row.

“Good night, sir,” he said, sweeping off his cap in a grandiose gesture. “How might you fare this evening?”

“I fare as well this night as any other. What’s your mischief?”

Meddybemps smiled. “Mischief? Sir, do I look as though I would misdemeanor?” Meddybemps glanced at John, well placed behind his back.

“Nay, a stringy lad as you would not hazard here unless it be for purpose. You come for pleasure? I’ve a few bawds worth your coin.”

Meddybemps seized on an idea. “Aye, well. You are a shrewd businessman, I can tell. As well as a worthy sentry.” A little bootlicking never hurt.

“Dispense with the bloat and say you what you mean. I’ve no mind for exchanging pleasantries.”

“I shall not delay, but instead with lightning speed shall I waggle my tongue and say to you what it is that I would say if given more time than this in which to say it . . .” Meddybemps felt a jab to his spine and sputtered, though he regretted having to stoop so low, “We would like to sample the affections of a girl who was taken in this day.”

The turnkey squinted down the acreage of his nose and snorted. “The twos of yous,” he said, scrutinizing them. The corner of his mouth turned up conspiratorially. “At once?”

Even Meddybemps couldn’t sustain such a notion. “Nay, no,” he answered, shaking his head. “Naw, we are mannerly.” He glanced at John, and though it pained him, said, “First one and then the other. We are not greedy.” He wondered if John might carve out his kidney with the dagger in his boot later.

John was riled. He wouldn’t mind being intimate with Bianca, alone, but the thought of Meddybemps . . . with Bianca . . . Well, even if it was just a ploy to gain entrance, the idea of it made him seethe.

“Well, there is no free pleasure. An’ then I have to take her down.”

John stepped out from behind Meddybemps. “What say you—‘take her down’?”

The turnkey scratched an armpit as he studied John. “Aye. Take her down. An’ after I just gots her up.” He turned his cheek, indicating a long scratch of newly clotted blood. “She’s as mean as a badger.”

John’s heart sank. He could hardly bear the thought of Bianca in manacles suspended on some wall; much less waste another minute dickering with this fellow. He pushed Meddybemps aside and thrust out a hand of silver. “Sir, take this and show me the way.”

The turnkey noted John’s haste and grew thoughtful. He knew that where there was some, there was sure to be more. “That is hardly enough for her worth, or mine.”

John dug into his pouch and offered more filings, to which the gaoler lifted an eyebrow, still unimpressed.

Finally, John emptied the pouch into his palm, shaking out every scrap, crumb, and particle of silver, then tossed the purse on the ground.

This interested the ward. He held out his mammoth hand.

Meddybemps looked on in horror as John conveyed the precious metal into the gaoler’s massive paw. “You fool,” he muttered to John under his breath.

The ward pocketed his swag and grinned. “You have entrance,” he said to John, sweeping his arm in a gesture of welcome. “But,” he said to Meddybemps, poking his chest, preventing him from following, “you shall wait your turn.”

John stood motionless in the gaol’s chill, waiting for the turnkey to take him to Bianca. He stood expectantly, gazing at the man, who tore another bite from his snack of mutton.

“What?” said the ward, irritably.

“Would you lead me to her?”

“I haven’t the time.” He picked a piece of meat from a tooth, then waved the leg past John’s shoulder. “That ways,” he said. “You’ll find her.”

“But you must unlock the cell,” said John.

“The guard below will do that.”

John started down the hall, glancing back to see the gaoler swilling from a wineskin, unconcerned. He thought if he had the means, he could have freed every prisoner along the way without the turnkey even noticing. As it was, those not asleep in their cells called after him, some pleading, some taunting. John tried muffling their disquieting chorus with thoughts of Bianca and forced himself to focus on a rushlight blazing at the end of the corridor. It lit a stone stairwell twisting away into darkness below. He followed the stairs down as they turned ever tighter, like the shell of a snail.

At the bottom, the reek of human sweat and waste hit him like a mallet. He hesitated, girding himself for what might lie ahead, and continued on. The dimly lit corridor hindered his vision, and he called for Bianca, hoping she would hear and perhaps answer. But the only response was a din of moans and appeals from inmates hoping he’d find them a suitable replacement.

He reached the end of the corridor and, not finding Bianca or a guard, retraced his steps. His eyes had adjusted to the dark, and he peered more carefully into each cell. The thought of Bianca shackled to a wall or beaten unconscious followed his every step. When he came to where he had started, he noticed a second corridor intersecting with the first. He called out for Bianca and received a chorus of replies even more desperate than before, until one voice sang out above the others.