Alchemy and Meggy Swann Page 4

  Laboratorium? More likely stinkatorium, Meggy thought. She took her stick from the man and, shooing Louise before her, left the attic room. As she made her slow and painful way down the stairs, she told the goose, "You have made no little trouble for yourself, Louise. And for me." Louise, indifferent to the tumult she had provoked, merely flapped her wings and honked as she followed Meggy down.

  SIX

  Meggy peeped out the window onto Crooked Lane. She was sore afraid to venture back out into that London where she had been menaced by tradesmen, affrighted most grievously, and nearly dispatched by barbarous villains. But she could not ignore her father's threat to butcher Louise. What was she to do?

  As the goose searched through her feathers for a bug or a flea or some other treat, the girl watched her and smiled. Louise had been her true friend since Meggy had saved her from the ax long ago, when it was discovered that her wings were slipped. Louise had followed Meggy about the inn yard, listened to her stories and songs, shared berries in the summer and apples in the fall. The girl and the goose were companions in their aloneness, their lameness, and their bad temper.

  Meggy would save Louise if she could, but she feared disobeying Master Peevish. She would have to go back into the dust, mud, soot, slime, and smut of London. Roger had spoken of a butcher next to his lodgings on Pudding Lane. That was where they would go.

  "Louise," Meggy said, "you are a flap-mouthed nuisance, but what shall I do without you?" Ripping a strip of cloth from her undersmock, Meggy tied it around Louise's neck for a leash. She put on her cloak, took up her walking sticks, slipped her sack over one arm, and pulled Louise from the house. The goose honked in irritation.

  Could Meggy surrender Louise? She thought again of Master Peevish's anger. "Pray forgive me, Louise," Meggy told her. "It must be, but by my faith, I will miss you most fiercely."

  The rain had lessened, but still the afternoon was wet, with mist rising off the river. Shop signs swung and banged in the wind as Meggy and Louise turned from Crooked Lane to Fish Street Hill. The girl and the goose stood in the fragrant steam rising from an inn. Meggy sniffed deeply for a moment. But might it be the aroma of roast goose she enjoyed? Her shoulders slumped.

  "Pork pie, mistress," said a voice at her side. "Sweet with cinnamon and still hot from the baking." It was a girl, no bigger than Meggy, which meant she was very small indeed. And in the basket she carried were pies, brown of crust and fragrant. Meggy yet had the pennies Roger had given her, so she bought two pies. She ate one right there. The crust crumbled deliciously against her teeth, and meaty juices bespattered her chin.

  The peddler nodded toward Meggy's sticks. "My old gran had such. For whipping me as much as for walking." The girl grinned a friendly grin.

  While putting the other pie in her sack for later, Meggy asked, "Know you Pudding Lane where there be a butcher?"

  The girl nodded. "Down the hill here to St. Magnus Church at Thames Street and then east to Pudding Lane. Likely you will smell it afore you see it." The two girls nodded to each other and walked on, the peddler in search of another penny and Meggy toward the butcher on Pudding Lane.

  Louise hissed and spat and tried to pull away, but Meggy pulled harder. A pack of dogs wrangling over a bit of refuse left off their tussling to follow them, barking and nipping at Louise and at Meggy's walking sticks. They attracted several onlookers, cheering and calling, "Is there to be a show?" and "I wager tuppence on the goose!" It seemed that even more of an entertainment than a crippled girl was a crippled girl leading an angry goose.

  Finally they turned onto Thames Street, where the crowds were more interested in their arguing, drinking, buying, and selling than in following a girl and her goose. Louise, tired of tuggling about London, sat herself down, her mighty wings trembling with outrage. "Come, Louise, cease your drumbling," Meggy said, pulling on the leash. But the goose only sat and squawked.

  "Fie upon you, Louise Goose. 'Pon my honor, you are a true-bred nuisance," the girl said, leaning against a wall to rest.

  A shepherd hurried past with his dogs and a herd of sheep, followed by a woman with a crowd of quarreling children. The woman could use a dog or two to manage that herd of hers, Meggy thought.

  "Come buy a ballad newly made," a passing ballad seller called. "Mayhap 'The Ballad of Good Wives' or 'The Lover and the Bird.' Or come to me for the tale of a monstrous child born this very month to a weaver in Derbyshire. A child with one head but four arms and four legs. Printed at the Sign of the Jolly Lion this morn. Here to me. Come and buy." He waved the broadside about as he moved on. "Or buy a ballad newly writ. God send me a wife that will do as I say," he sang. "Come buy a ballad. Ha'penny, only a ha'penny." A sack holding a great number of the printed ballads hung down his back, and the man's arms passed through two handles, leaving his hands free to grab at passersby.

  Meggy watched the ballad singer go and an idea blossomed. She took the second pork pie from the sack, shared it with Louise, and wiped her hands on her kirtle. Then, while Louise was distracted by the taste of pie, Meggy put the goose into the empty sack and tied the leash around the sack and the goose as if it were a package. Once she understood her predicament, the goose began to wiggle and hiss and try to free herself, but Meggy crouched down, placed the sack on her back over her shoulders, put her arms through the handles, just as the ballad seller had done, and carefully stood up, taking the weight on her shoulders. If she leaned heavily on her sticks and ignored the grumbling of her legs and Louise's frantic hwonk-hwonk-hwonk, she would be able to walk carrying the goose.

  A blue-capped apprentice called out as he passed, "By my master's brick oven, I have never seen an uglier sight than a two-headed—"

  "Cease your bibble-babble, you gleeking goat's bladder!" Meggy shouted at him as she turned onto Pudding Lane.

  Pudding Lane was reeky, sticky with blood that ran red in the rain, and clamorous with the cries of animals on the way to becoming chops and sausages. In front of shop after shop, carcasses of headless beasts hung from great metal hooks through their necks. Treading carefully, Meggy wabbled past the great gobs of pigs' innards that apprentices were heaving into the street. Pudding indeed, she thought.

  Near halfway up Pudding Lane was a nasty, foul, and odorous shed with the simple sign RAGWORT, BUTCHER. A butcher—perhaps Ragwort himself, perhaps not—lolled in the doorway of the shop, flicking flies from his apron all beslubbered with blood. He eyed Louise greedily.

  Louise hissed as if she were aware of the horrors within. "It's right sorry I am, Louise," Meggy told her, "and I shall miss you sorely.

  "Good sir," Meggy called to the butcher, "I am told that the house next your shop is that of the player Cuthbert Grimm." The butcher nodded.

  Roger lodged there, he had told her. Belike he would know how to save Louise. Despite Master Peevish, Meggy would not see her turned into roast goose.

  SEVEN

  Master Grimm's house leaned into the street, supported by half-rotted timbers and crumbling plaster. Broken windows were patched with oiled paper, and gargoyles grinned from rusted drainpipes. Players might be paid wages for pretending, Meggy thought, but it was plain they were not paid much.

  She lifted the door knocker, shaped like the paw of a great iron bear, and let it drop. The door opened with a creak that startled Louise into a clamorous honking. She struggled against her restraints once more, loosed her wings from the sack, and flapped them in triumph.

  "Master Grimm, Master Grimm!" shouted the woman who opened the door. "Come hither and see. There be an angel here!" Footsteps thundered, and faces popped up behind her. The woman peered closely at Meggy. "Nay, 'tis but a girl with the face of an angel, and a goose."

  Meggy was surprised by the remark. Face of an angel? Had she such? No one had remarked upon it ere now. The idea pleased her, and she felt a little more assured, but still she hid her sticks in the folds of her skirt. "Is this where I might find Roger Oldham?" she asked.

  "Indeed you might. You be Mistr
ess Swann, I do expect. Come in from the rain." The faces moved back, and Meggy moved forward.

  The house was crowded with people and things, sweet and sour from the smells of stewing meat, baking bread, babies' nappies, and herbs strewn on the floor.

  The woman cuffed a boy aside his head. "Make haste, you, and fetch Roger," she ordered. Another boy came and helped Meggy untie Louise and put her down. A horde of children gathered and clamored about the goose.

  "I be Mistress Grimm," the woman said. She was small and round, dressed in black with sleeves slashed in yellow. Her face was brown and plain as a pot but open and warm. "And here be Master Grimm and Master Merryman."

  Two gentlemen stood either side of a blazing fireplace. One was round and roly-poly with a merry-looking face and several chins. The other was the bent and bony scar-faced man who had rescued Meggy in the alley. Her heart stopped its beating for a moment, alarmed again by his grotesque appearance.

  The man's eyebrows rose in recognition, but he said naught about the encounter in the alley, nor did Meggy. She nodded to him and said, "Pleased to meet you, Master Grimm," for he looked grim indeed.

  "Nay, nay," said Mistress Grimm. "He is Master Merryman. This gentleman be Master Grimm."

  The smiling and nodding Master Grimm was stuffed into a doublet so tight that Meggy thought his belly might burst forth and fire buttons like cannon-shot about the room. Sparse yellow hair peeped from beneath his cap. "'Tis Dick's 'Grimm' face that has deceived you," the man said. He barked a harsh and jangly sort of laugh at his own jest and poked the other man with his elbow. "I be Cuthbert Grimm, master player. You will come to know me. All of London knows me." He pulled at his hair again and smiled a smile of self-satisfaction. Master Merryman sneered a sad sort of sneer—if, Meggy thought, a sneer might be called sad.

  "Ah, Mistress Margret," Roger said, appearing at her side. "You have come to see me. Did I just see a pig fly by?"

  "No nonsense, Oldmeat," Meggy said. "I am not in a sportive humor. I have come for your assistance. My father demands my goose roasted for dinner—"

  Her speech was interrupted by the cries and moans of the little girls petting Louise: "You cannot cook her! You would never eat her!"

  Louise looked smugly up at Roger, stretched out her long neck, and bit him on the knee.

  "Hellborn goose! Fat-headed pignut! In sooth you should be roasted, you clay-brained louse!" Roger shouted, and he drew back his foot to kick her, but the children seized his leg, crying and calling to Mistress Grimm for help.

  "Enough," said Mistress Grimm, pulling the girls from Roger. "I can easily put this right. Let the goose remain here with us for a time," she said to Meggy, "and find your father's dinner at a cookshop."

  Louise would be saved. It was what Meggy had hoped for, but there was still a difficulty. "I have but a ha'penny," she said.

  "Roger, give her coins. Fourpence, belike."

  Rubbing his knee, Roger scowled and began to protest, but Mistress Grimm reached out a hand as plump as a summer melon and pinched his ear.

  Roger grimaced and grinned at the same time, looking much like the gargoyles adorning the drainpipes. "Certes, with all haste, for I be always obedient to your majesty's will," he said to Mistress Grimm with a bow, and he offered Meggy some coins.

  "Now," Mistress Grimm said, "all is well. Sit you down, girl, and I will fetch a mug of warm, spiced beer. You look as cold as a dead man's nose."

  As Meggy sat, a swarm of little girls flew at her, asking, "For what are those sticks? Why do you walk that way? Are you wife to Roger? Where be you from? Play you games with cards? Primero, trumpit, or gleek?"

  "Here, sweeting, this will warm you," Mistress Grimm said to Meggy as she returned with the mug. And to her girls, "Soft, soft, my dears. Do give the lass a chance to breathe. You remember Roger telling us of Mistress Swann with the black eyes he so admires. Dark as the plums of the blackthorn tree, he said."

  Mistress Grimm and the girls all peered into Meggy's eyes as if to see for themselves. Mistress Grimm nodded, Roger blushed, and Meggy felt herself grow warm, from the beer, the compliment, and the knowledge of Roger's discomfiture.

  "You, girls, move away and cease troubling Mistress Swann," Mistress Grimm said as she busied herself about the room. In her black and yellow she seemed a vast bumblebee buzzing about, straightening a bench here, patting a head there, and dropping kisses on little faces. "Stop," she shouted to the boys on the stairs. "I have told you, no dicing in here! Roger, take them upstairs and set them to learning their lines." She finally landed on a bench across from Meggy and began fanning herself with her wings—nay, her apron.

  Roger herded the boys, shoving and arguing, up the stairs. The girls moved away from Meggy and then crowded around her again as she sipped the beer.

  "Carter Simpson says all crooked people are witches," said a little girl with flaxen hair and dimples.

  "Be you a witch?" asked another little dimpled, flaxen-haired girl.

  Meggy thought to make a horrid face and shake her sticks, but the beer and the fire and the welcome had gentled her, so she simply replied, "Were I a witch, would I not cast a spell to make my legs straight and strong and turn my walking sticks into sausages?"

  There was silence for a moment; then, "Belike you are right," said one.

  "Carter Simpson is a dolt," said the other. "And his breath smells like the backside of a goat."

  "Enough of your chatter, my girls," said Mistress Grimm. "Mistress Swann's ears are spinning."

  There was silence again, but again it did not last. The tallest girl, also flaxen-haired but not dimpled, said, "I am right pleased to present myself to you, Mistress Swann. I am Violet Velvet."

  "Named for Lady Ariana's ball gown in The Revenge of Lord Gerald. What a fine costume it was," said Mistress Grimm with a sigh.

  Violet Velvet continued. "These be the twins, Ivory Silk and Silver Damask." The dimpled girls smiled at Meggy.

  Meggy looked at Mistress Grimm, who obliged. "Aphrodite's and Athena's garb from the last act of The Judgement of Paris."

  "And the boys?"

  "Roger you know. The other boys are apprentices, and rascals all," she said, lifting a crawling babe onto her lap, "but this little fellow is mine. Master Grimm wanted him to be Chestnut Fustian, but I said, 'Master Grimm, if you think I will call a helpless babe Chestnut Fustian, you may think again. He will be Russet Wool.' And so he is, be you not, Russet, my love?" She cooed at him, and Meggy felt a pang, remembering long-ago cooing and cuddling. Her gran, soft and warm and smelling of meadow grasses and ale, had cooed at her so and sung her to sleep. Meggy let the little girls snuggle up against her, which eased her spirit just as the drink eased her bones.

  In the sudden quiet of the room, Meggy could hear bits of conversation from the two gentlemen at the fireplace: "How know you these things ... Thomas Bacon has left the stage and will ... a license to play ... noble patronage..."

  Now the voices grew louder. "But a bribe, Cuthbert?" asked Master Merryman. "How have we the money for a bribe, even if we knew who and how?"

  "We must do something bold," Master Grimm said.

  "But will it serve us? The authorities are ever anxious to catch players in misdeeds and missteps, even when there are none."

  Meggy looked quizzically at Mistress Grimm. "Another law has of late been passed against 'masterless men,'" she explained. "All players must now be licensed and attached to some noble person, lest they be taken as vagabonds, dragged before justice, whipped, stocked, burned, and packed out of the parish." She shook her head. "Fie upon it! Players, hooligans and scoundrels, discharged prisoners and landless peasants, jugglers and tinkers and horse thieves—all be treated alike."

  Just then Master Grimm slammed his fist against the wall and shouted, "To treat me so—me, Cuthbert Grimm, the finest player in London. Nay, in all England! You may bow and kiss their feet if you like, you chicken-hearted coward, but I will not!"

  Mistress Grimm stood, sending
Russet Wool tumbling to the floor. "I will see the gentlemen calmed. Roger," she called up the stairs, "come see your Mistress Swann home."

  Roger bounced into the room. He winked at Meggy and touched his cap in agreement.

  Meggy looked at Roger and then at Mistress Grimm. "You, mistress," she said, "may call me Meggy, as my gran did, if you will." Mistress Grimm nodded.

  Meggy leaned down to Louise and stroked the soft whiteness of her. "Farewell, Louise. Keep out of mischief," the girl said, and then added, in a whisper, "Oh, I shall sorely feel the want of you, Louise Goose. Now I be truly alone."

  Smothered with attention as she was by the little Grimms, Louise did not appear to mind being left. She blinked and preened and snapped at Roger's woolen-clad knee as he passed.

  EIGHT

  "I am not your Mistress Swann, you tottering wretch," Meggy said to Roger as they started down Pudding Lane. She had to struggle to keep up with him, for, being straight and strong, he was not compelled to stick-swing-drag as she was.

  "Fortunate that is for me, you mewling, flap-mouthed flax wench," he responded, slowing down a bit.

  "Gleeking swag-bellied maggot," said Meggy.

  "Knoddy-pated whey face."

  "Fly-bitten—" The girl paused. "You have yet to say cripple-some or crookleg or leaden foot. Why do you not?"

  He grinned. "When I look at you, I see not your crooked legs but your black eyes that blaze and snap and those cheeks like apples ripened in the sun," he said, which irritated but also oddly pleased the girl, which irritated her the more.

  "Go to!" she snapped. "I am right surprised that you required bellows to tend your master's fire, you bloviating windbag."

  Roger laughed, and Meggy found herself laughing, too. They stopped for a moment and let their laughter overtake them. Holding his side, Roger said, "You, Mistress Margret, are passing skilled at this matter of insults, you milk-livered minnow."