Crispin looked at Jack, and as one, they both grabbed their cloaks and bolted after her.
She ran through the gently falling snow, her footsteps disappearing as she fled over the whitened streets. They ran after her, and when she stopped at a corner, pointing at the carvings in the wood, Crispin knew he had been right. It was possible she had tried to get him to understand her last night, tried to make him go out to show him, but she had distracted him, as a pretty face was wont to do. Careless, to be so distracted when a woman’s life was at stake.
When the preacher Robert Pickthorn pointed out the sigils as the Devil’s work and looked directly at Crispin and described a man hanging by his heel, that’s when he had made the tenuous leap that the symbols might be related to the apprentice’s death and to Madam Flamel’s disappearance. But was it warranted?
Avelyn kept prodding the carvings with her finger until he drew nearer, examining them. They did not look like any writing he understood. How many of these were there? And what did they mean?
Before he had a chance to speculate, she grabbed his hand and ran with him down the lane, with Jack close on their heels.
Down lane after lane they trotted, until finally she pointed ahead to a stone archway and pulled Crispin up to it. His fingers traced the etchings. Different from the ones before. And someone had tried to scratch these out.
She tried to grab him and pull him again, but Crispin stopped her, turned her to him. “Avelyn, do you know what these mean? Do they have to do with Madam Perenelle?”
She didn’t seem certain but insisted he follow. “Wait, wait, Avelyn. Please.” She stopped and looked at him questioningly, blinking the snow from her pale lashes. “I need a way to decipher these. Can you help me?”
She thought a moment, gnawing on one of her red-chapped knuckles. Her eyes brightened and she grabbed his sleeve again, pulling him along. He took her hand from his sleeve and smiled. “I can follow, you know.”
She laughed that rough, alien laugh and hurried forward, looking back from time to time to make certain that he was there.
Jack came up beside him, eyes on Avelyn. “She’s a ball of fire, isn’t she?”
“Indeed,” he said with more passion than he meant to reveal.
Tucker laughed. “You do find them, don’t you, Master? Or they manage to find you. Ah me. You expend your energies teaching me languages and how to read and write. But surely you can spare the time to tutor me in this, sir.”
“You’re a knave, Tucker. I have no wish to be your whoremaster.”
Jack laughed again. Avelyn frowned when she turned back to look at them. Impatiently, she tapped her foot.
She proceeded on and they grew quiet as they moved through the streets full of citizens at their daily tasks. A man moved his oxcart by tapping the beasts with a stick on the oxen’s rumps. Under an ale stake jutting into the street, servants shouted the praises of their master’s alehouse. A pelt merchant held aloft his wares hanging from racks on poles and he walked up and down the avenue, carrying it like a banner into battle. The food merchants, the water carriers, the servants hauling fuel upon braces on their backs. Through all of that, Crispin still noticed them. The shadowy figures trailing along the edges, slipping into the alleys, standing in the closes. Shadows that followed them no matter what street they turned down. He elbowed Jack and gave a flick of his head. The boy was quick to get his meaning and take notice. Surreptitiously, they both watched the figures follow. Crispin counted three and opened that number of fingers in his hand at his flank on the side facing Jack, tapping them until the boy saw and barely nodded.
Three, then. Crispin allowed Avelyn to lead him. He hoped it wasn’t to a trap.
They wove through the people down a narrow lane, and Avelyn finally stopped before a door. Above the lintel hung a wooden sign covered with snow. A symbol was painted on both sides of its worn surface:
Crispin moved toward the door, but Jack held him back. “Master Crispin,” he whispered. He eyed the sign fearfully, almost afraid to take his eyes from it. “You’re not going in there, are you? That … that’s the Devil’s sign.”
“Don’t be a fool, Tucker. That is the symbol for Mercury, a well-known alchemical sign. She has brought us to another alchemist.”
He stepped forward under the creaking wooden sign, feeling a chill as he passed under it, and pushed open the door. A small shop. A curtain covered another doorway. Barring the way stood a sturdy table. More small tables and shelves lined the walls, with canisters and ceramic pots on shelves. A tripod was pushed as far into the hearth as it could go next to the blackened plaster of the wall. On the tripod hung a cauldron on a chain. The contents bubbled with chunks of unidentifiable objects roiling to the surface, only to sink below the shivering liquid. The stench coming from it made him wince. A crucible with dried yellowish matter that smelled of rotten eggs sat on a trivet near a raised hearth that looked more like a forge. Crispin knew it was called an alchemist’s athanor, and beside it, a ceramic retort sat on another trivet.
“Is anyone here?” he asked, standing as far from the fire as possible. Jack stood beside him, eyes wide as they scanned the shelves.
Avelyn seemed at home and poked around at the canisters, opening lids or pulling off their canvas drapes to peer inside, sniffing experimentally.
There was a rustle at the curtained doorway. Steps scraped across the floor. The drapes parted and a man, older than Crispin, peered at them. His dark, greasy hair was covered by a felt cap with ear flaps. A dark beard hung from his jaw, and his nose was noticeably uneven and enlarged by carbuncles. His heavy robes were stained and seemed to weigh him down, or perhaps his stooped shoulders and dragging shuffle came from years bent over a workbench, devising his alchemy.
“Yes?” He eyed them with tiny brown eyes set close together under bushy black brows. He never raised his chin fully, perhaps more interested in his compounds than in faces, and clutched the table, which served as a barrier between him and his customers. “What is it you want?” Then his gaze fell on Avelyn. “You! What are you doing here?” He cast about for something and found it in a corner: a broom. He took it up and brandished it. “Get out before I chase you out.”
Crispin stepped in front of her and frowned down at the crooked man. “There’s no call for that. She led me here to you. For information.”
He scowled at Crispin and rumbled in his gruff voice, “If you know her, then I can scarce trust you.”
“Come, man. If you know her, then you must know her master, Nicholas Flamel.”
“Nicholas Flamel? That is her master?” He stared at her anew. Admiration bloomed on his features, and the broom lowered.
Alarmed, Avelyn looked from one man to the other and rushed to Crispin, covering his lips with her fingers.
“No, Avelyn. Stop. Yes, you’ve heard of Master Flamel, then?”
“Of course! What alchemist of any worth will not have heard of Nicholas Flamel! But I did not know he was in England.” He almost smiled at Avelyn, though it seemed as if his mouth were unused to such an expression. Avelyn was beside herself, trying to get their attention. She banged on the man’s table with the flat of her hand.
Crispin grabbed her and handed her off to Jack. The boy wrapped his large freckled hands around her arms, and though she tried to flail in his grip, he held firm.
“Quit fighting me,” he cried. “Or I shall throw you into that foul pot!”
“Foul pot?” said the alchemist.
“Aye, sir,” said Jack, motioning to the bubbling cauldron with his head. “That. What manner of alchemy are you making there?”
The alchemist raised his bulbous nose indignantly. “My dinner!”