The Alchemist's Daughter (7 page)

C
HAPTER
11

Robert Wynders stared at the sign outside Chudderly Shipping before taking a breath and heaving open the door. The shipping company had been founded by his wife’s grandfather during Henry VII’s reign when the king amassed a fortune in illicitly traded alum. Philip Chudderly had made enough money fattening the king’s coffers that he was afforded some latitude and had continued to profit his company in commodities benefiting the king and other nobility.

Robert Wynders had not been born of this trade but came to Chudderly Shipping by way of his late father’s employment there. His father had a special acumen for keeping the books. Not only was he expert in reducing the taxes owed the king’s Exchequer of Receipt, but he also smoothed the way for any additional deals that could weight the pockets of both parties.

Philip Chudderly held the Wynderses in such high regard that when his granddaughter came of age, there proved no more propitious endeavor than to join the two families in wedlock. Twenty years ago, Robert Wynders had the looks and charm for such a position and he held much promise. Now he possessed neither. The same could be said of his wife. The bloom was off the rose, and she’d lost those petals within their first year of marriage.

Wynders climbed the long flight of stairs to the second level, where the Chudderly offices looked out over the river Thames. Only the most moneyed businesses had such an address on London Bridge. Yet their only advantage, thought Wynders as he labored up the stairs, was their privies emptied directly into the water below.

He reached the landing and paused to catch his breath before entering to speak with Sarah’s father. He so hoped his wife had busied herself elsewhere this morning. Couldn’t she visit the dressmaker’s or run the help ragged like other women of her position?

With a resigned sigh, Wynders opened the varnished oak door and stepped into the office.

He sought to have a private word with Thomas, apart from the employed minions who kept the shipping company running smoothly. However, not only was the office charged with a feeling of alarm, but when he stepped into the room, the collective agitation focused on him. The accountant looked up from his ledger, his ink-stained fingers frozen round his pen in midair. A merchant whose cargo had just arrived in port glared at him, and a messenger tipped his cap to Mr. Chudderly and quickly sidled past Wynders and out the door.

Thomas Chudderly stiffened at the sight of him. He hurriedly ushered the merchant out, appeasing him with promises he could not keep. When he’d closed the door and had listened to the man’s final footfall on the stairs, he turned and faced his son-in-law. “Robert,” he said, “what is this matter of our ship?”

“Sir, I’ve spoken to the customs authority—”

“So have I,” said Thomas. “The
Cristofur
has been moved to quarantine.”

“A matter of protocol, sir.”

“Protocol is an inspection. A requisite quarantine might happen; however, the
Cristofur
has been moved there indefinitely. I’ve no information for how long.”

“Sir, it is not unprecedented for a ship’s crew to take ill during a journey.”

“Do not speak to me as if I know nothing.” Thomas Chudderly’s eyes bored through Wynders so that he felt the wall behind him must be smoking.

“Sir, if I may explain—”

“Oh, you will explain,” said his father-in-law. “Of that you may be certain.” Thomas Chudderly motioned Wynders to his office, then glared round at the wide-eyed vassals of his employ, who dived back into their respective tasks. Chudderly pulled the door firmly closed.

Robert Wynders did not sit because his wife had the only other chair. Sarah had her eyebrow cocked and a haughty look on her face. She did not greet him. Her fingernails garnered more concern than his entrance.

Thomas Chudderly walked round his table and sat. He rested his hands on the armrests and waited.

“Apparently the ship took on unexpected stowaways,” said Wynders evenly.

Chudderly gave a little snort. “Apparently.”

“We have had dealings with the port of Genoa before. The area is heavily populated, and the clime stays relatively warm year round. Any pestilence or bad air will fester in such conditions. But it is company policy to have our captains inspect the ships before they depart.”

“It is our policy, yes. But explain how it did not prevent our current predicament.”

“I can question the captain.”

“Questioning after the fact does not rid us of the problem now.”

“I understand, sir. However, I may impress upon the captain that we are not pleased and that his dismissal may be imminent.”

“Imminent?” Thomas Chudderly slapped his hand on the desk. “It is certain.”

Wynders nodded.

“It is your responsibility to oversee these matters. Why was no skiff dispatched?”

“Per protocol, a skiff was sent on her arrival.” Wynders cleared his throat. “It is just that . . .” He glanced at Sarah. “We were caught off guard. It was nearly morning when the ship arrived.”

Thomas Chudderly’s nostrils flared. “This has not been the first time our ships have sat in port while products rot in their holds. Not only have I tradesmen and workers ready to off-load, but I have the king’s exchequer watching. Movement of goods during quarantine warrants steep penalties, as you well know.” Thomas Chudderly rose to his feet. Rather than berate his son-in-law in front of his daughter, like he wanted, like Robert deserved, Chudderly stalked to the window and glared out at the Thames.

It was not the first time Wynders had suffered his father-in-law’s scorn in front of Sarah. By now, he should have been more resilient. By now, he should have had ample time to prove his worth to the company. But it wasn’t for lack of trying that he was unable to please Thomas. Wynders simply lacked the brilliance of his father, and it plagued him like a disease. Thomas always found fault with Wynders’s method—be it trivial or imagined.

Wynders dared not interject. Instead, he gazed at the family crest hanging on the carved walnut wall in front of him. It wasn’t so much a family crest as a conceit commissioned by Sarah’s grandfather. To the uninformed, it appeared the family was descended from nobility. But Wynders knew otherwise.

The crest was a shield edged in gilt and painted in bold scarlet and black, divided into thirds. One third of the crest held three tridents, symbolizing each generation of Chudderly. Though, thought Wynders as he glanced at his barren wife, the heir to the shipping magnate had not been produced.

Opposite the tridents was a cockatrice, a beast with the body of a dragon and the head of a rooster. Such a hideous creature for a family crest, though he could not think of a more appropriate mascot to represent the likes of the Chudderlys.

“How shall you proceed?” asked Thomas, startling Wynders from his thoughts.

For the first time since he’d walked in, Sarah stopped admiring her cuticles and looked up.

“I shall take care of the problem, sir. I shall speak to the customs authority and dispatch the . . . er . . . stowaways.”

“And how shall you dispatch them?” asked Sarah.

Wynders flinched at the sound of his wife’s voice. He would have preferred her to continue studying her fingernails rather than remind him of her presence. Without looking at her, he explained that he would procure a measure of rat poison for the
Cristofur
.

“But what of the sailors’ bodies?” she persisted.

Did she think she was capable of running Chudderly Shipping herself? Wynders blamed her father for indulging her in this notion. She had the wiles of a spoiled child and the competitiveness of a noticeably absent male sibling.

“I shall have them removed and given proper burial.”

Thomas Chudderly continued to stare out the window. “Expensive, considering it should not have happened.” He was silent a moment, then added, “You shall incur the cost since it is a result of your negligence.”

Wynders knew it would not serve him to argue. Quarrelling in front of his wife would only make for a more miserable existence at home.

Sarah’s expression conveyed what she did not say. Yet again her husband had proved a disappointment. It was of no consequence to her that Robert’s wages would be docked. Her father took care that she had everything she needed and wanted. So why hadn’t she divorced him? Divorce was something the king did. Besides, Robert did serve a purpose. She could heap a lifetime of petulance upon his shoulders, and he would let her. On the occasions that they appeared in public, he presented as a caring husband and competent provider—even as an asset to the family business. It was a code of conduct to which Robert subscribed, and as long as he did not publically humiliate her or Chudderly Shipping, she saw no reason to change any of it.

Wynders resented paying the burial expenses for a bunch of dead sailors. But he had expected as much. Shouldn’t sickness and disease be an implicit cost of doing business? After all, the shipping trade was fraught with liability. Storms capsized ships, ships ran aground, crews mutinied. If Sarah weren’t presiding over their meeting, he would have pointed this out to his father-in-law. But she
was
there, and so he remained composed and respectful—though inside, he could scarce tolerate the humiliation.

“If that is all, sir, I have much to take care of,” he said.

Thomas Chudderly dismissed him, and just as Wynders’s hand gripped the door, Sarah called him back.

Wynders yielded to her appeal. “Sarah?” He swaddled her name with as much temperance and feigned accord as he could muster. He even met her eyes.

“Bear in mind that the Chudderly reputation and good name must be preserved. Do not embarrass us.”

C
HAPTER
12

Bianca shook the remnants of Jolyn’s concoction clinging to the sides of the jar. She knew she must brew the leftover tea and test it, but in truth, she feared the results. What if she
had
poisoned Jolyn? How would she prove it was an accident? The constable was certain of her guilt and as immovable as the Tower of London.

Bianca set the jar on the table and recalled the people who had attended Jolyn’s burial. She remembered one face in particular. Jolyn had mentioned that a muckraker had accused her of stealing and that he had hoped to shame her into returning whatever he believed she had stolen. Bianca didn’t know the fellow whom Mrs. Beldam had confronted at Cross Bones, but their exchange had been heated. If he was that muckraker, she didn’t expect him to be forthcoming, especially if he had any business with Jolyn, but she would gauge for herself if he was hiding anything.

With his face still fresh in her mind, Bianca grabbed her coif and plopped it on her head as she headed for the door. Just as she lifted the latch, a hand held the handle on the opposite side.

“Bianca, my dainty dove. Where might you be to?”

“Meddybemps,” said Bianca, surprised and more than a little annoyed. “I haven’t got time. What do you want?”

The streetseller removed his cap, ignoring her desire to leave. “I’ve done an able way of selling your salves, my pet. I have your monies, and I’ve come for more liniments.” He stepped inside her room of Medicinals and Physickes and immediately sneezed. “I prefer the chicken feathers of Cheapside to whatever it is you diddle with here. I won’t be longer than you can stand me.”

He loped over to the large table and pushed aside crockery to clear a space. “What say you to this?” Making sure she was watching, he dumped the contents of a purse onto the board and whisked away the leather bag with a flourish. His itinerant eye rolled with satisfaction.

Bianca had never seen so many coins fall from his purse. She came and stood over the table, her eyes wide. She would have money for new ingredients, food, and rent for another month, maybe more. Her mind ran with possibilities; then a sudden grim reality set in. What good was money if she was hanging from a noose?

“It’s . . .” Bianca stepped back.

“Breathtaking?” finished Meddybemps. He saw her dark mood and sought to cheer her. His features full of animation and drama, he began to patter—

Meddybemps danced a jig, his lanky frame and elbows jutting and thin legs bending like a nattily dressed skeleton.

She smiled, though she tried not to. After she tired of his performance, she announced gravely, “I’ve been accused of poisoning Jolyn.”

Meddybemps straightened, and his face grew serious. “So I’ve heard.”

“What? Is it common knowledge?”

“No. At least not yet. I saw John and he told me.”

Bianca grumbled, and her pale complexion grew even more ashen. “What did he say?” Then, she quickly added, “Don’t answer that,” and looked away. “Constable Patch would have dragged me off if it hadn’t been for the muckrakers attending the burial.”

“Constable Patch is a yammering lob. He has been after me to show him my license to vend. Such utter cack. No one cares but him.” Meddybemps wiped his eyes with the palm of his hand. He was used to foul smells, but sometimes Bianca’s room rivaled the worst London had to offer.

“Well, he and the tax collector.” Bianca smirked.

Meddybemps picked up a bowl and dipped a finger in and tasted. He grimaced, then set it down. “In all the years we’ve been friends, I’ve never seen a murderous streak about you. Patch is misguided, if not a little daft.”

“If I don’t prove my innocence and find out how she died, then I’ll be thrown in the cage, then hanged.”

“Nah, I won’t let that happen to you.”

“I doubt you could stop it.”

Meddybemps’s eye rolled into the back of his head as if an answer lurked behind his brain. “I know plenty of stews that would be willing to hide you for a few days. Patch hates to deal with some of the more randy ones.” He snickered. “His genitories are fodder for ardent mocking.” Meddybemps’s eye quivered with amusement.

“I’ll take my chances.” Bianca wasn’t keen on spending time in such a place.

Meddybemps shook out his cap and returned it to his nearly bald scalp. “Much as I rue saying it, I suppose you could leave these parts.”

Bianca had only been as far as Spitalfields to the north and Horsleydown to the south. While her sense of adventure and taste for the exotic perpetually called her, a fear of robbers and other highwaymen outside the limits of London prevented her from venturing far. She’d heard tales of counterfeit cranks, rufflers, and other lowlifes preying on unsuspecting travelers. Surviving a trek on the roads beyond took a good deal of wiliness and knowledge of deceptive sorts if you hoped to arrive unscathed at your destination. While she’d had plenty of education on the streets of London, the surrounding countryside was a different matter. “Where would I go? Where
could
I go?”

“My plum, don’t worry yourself over such matters. I’m sure you’ll find a way out of this.” Meddybemps flashed a broad smile. “If all fails, you have a young man who’d see to your safety.”

John. They had parted on bad terms, and Bianca knew she shouldn’t have ignored, then disparaged him. She hoped he understood her preoccupation and would eventually forgive her—if she lived long enough. “I’m not so sure he’d help me.”

“Don’t spout such rot! Why you put him off is still a mystery to me. Love should not be taken for granted.” Meddybemps grabbed a flask and waved it at her. “It isn’t something you can easily concoct, like your potions.”

Bianca had known John since she was twelve and cutting purses at Cheapside. She’d been caught snatching an old woman’s purse, and if John hadn’t distracted the ward by kicking him in the shin, she could have had a finger lopped off. As the ward gripped his painful leg, John had grabbed Bianca’s arm, and the two of them ran past crates of squawking chickens and carts heaped with turnips. They ran through the streets and back alleys until they reached safety in a soggy graveyard. At the time, she had feigned indifference, but if he hadn’t rescued her, she would have ended in a bad way. She knew that, and while it wasn’t her nature to heap thanks and kisses on him, eventually his persistence and cunning had won her admiration. And as they grew older, she had to admit, he had won her heart.

Meddybemps had given his sermon about her inability to trust too many times for her to suffer through yet another. But she
did
trust John. What she wasn’t so sure of—what she couldn’t trust—was love. Love was fickle.

King Henry was no doubt already courting his sixth wife. If love had been so enduring, would he have divorced two and beheaded another couple? Not that she took cues from their swollen sovereign. She just needed to be sure. But even more than that, a commitment to John would mean giving up her chemistries. If she couldn’t pursue her passion, she knew she would grow resentful and sullen. Chemistries fascinated her and kept her cheered. Even John couldn’t engage her mind the way experimentation could. Until she felt otherwise, she knew she had to pursue this first.

She looked at Meddybemps waving the flask of liquid and assuming a pose of authority. Meddybemps had a reputation that stretched from the brothels in London to the ones in Southwark. He’d even seduced her mother. She thought of this, and her resentment surfaced. “Who are you to lecture me in love?”

Meddybemps frowned and set down the flask. “I admit constancy is not my best trait, but I do have some years of wisdom. I have avoided marriage’s anchor of responsibility by loving whom I please and committing to no one. Am I happier? I have no one to nurse me when I ail and no meal to greet me at the end of the day, no one to share my bed on cold nights. But the only mouth I have to feed is my own. It is like your measure scales.” He picked the rusty balance off the table and tapped one side to send it tottering. “Which is better? You must consider what is more valuable to you. John is on one side, and your obsession with medicinals is on the other. Only you can weigh which is more important.” He set the scale down on the table. “Maybe you can find a balance. But only you can measure what you need.”

Bianca headed for the door. “Before I can think on such matters, I need to make sure that I’ll be around to even try. If I don’t find out who killed Jolyn and why, then I will hang at Newgate and you can spend all the time you want shaking your head and telling me how I’ve wasted my life. Unfortunately, though, I won’t be around to hear.”

Meddybemps was used to Bianca’s occasional outbursts. He let her rail and kick until she had spent her anger. She was learning what it was to be a woman, and he was glad to see it. “Well, can I at least collect some more salves and balms to fill my cart?”

Bianca petulantly threw open the door. “Take what you want.”

She took a step and bounced off a figure standing there, much like a wall and about as solid. She stumbled back and looked at the man blocking her exit.

“Is this the room of Medicinals and Physickes?” he asked, peering down his nose.

Bianca stared up at him. She couldn’t be sure this man wasn’t some sort of king’s minion or guard. He was dressed in finery, wearing a doublet of maroon velvet decorated in gold braid, the collar reaching halfway up his neck and trimmed with a modest ruff. An épée swung at his side, hung from leather crossing his chest. She gulped but did not respond.

“Are you Bianca?”

Bianca glanced over her shoulder at Meddybemps, who ticked his head reassuringly. She faced the man. “I am.”

He removed a pheasant-plumed hat and entered Bianca’s room with a proprietary air.

From behind, Bianca peeked out at Meddybemps and mouthed a silent “Who is this?” to which Meddybemps shrugged and made a face.

The man gazed around the room. “You sell rat poisons?”

Bianca followed him back inside and closed the door. “I do.”

“I’m in need of a fair quantity.”

Relieved that the man was a customer and not someone enlisted by Constable Patch to haul her away, she asked, “What would you call ‘fair’?”

He fixed his gaze on Meddybemps, sizing up the scraggly streetseller and deciding the knave peculiar but not a threat. Still looking at Meddybemps, he turned his head toward Bianca. “I need enough to rid a ship of vermin.”

Bianca received the request for rat poison regularly. She did not think it particularly unusual, and if she could hurry up and take care of him, she could get to the Dim Dragon Inn before any more time elapsed. She’d never met the man before, and usually when a new customer arrived, she was curious enough to ask how he’d found her. But all she could think of was getting to the Dim Dragon Inn. She ignored Meddybemps’s ogling and emptied the rat poison into a pouch and cinched it closed.

The man accepted the poison and instructions with a polite tip of his head and paid her generously. Without further offering or questions from Bianca, the man left as briskly as he had come.

Meddybemps raised his brows as the door closed. “You should have asked his business.”

“I doubt he would have answered.” Bianca stuffed the coins into her purse and jammed it deep into a pocket on her skirt. She then helped herself to several coins Meddybemps had brought and stashed the rest in a jar on a shelf. She had enough for a pottle pot and pie in case she had to spend any amount of time waiting for the muckraker to turn up at the tavern.

Before she could collect her scarf, Meddybemps was out the door.

She hollered after him as he shoved his cart into an alcove next to her rent. “Don’t you want to stock your cart with more medicines?”

Meddybemps shook his head, waving her off. “Later, my dove.”

If she wasn’t going to find out about this puffed-up prillywig, then he would.