“Madam Flamel! Are you here?”
A muffled cry sounded from the room beyond the archway. He stepped over the dead man and tried the door. Locked. With the flat of his foot, he kicked hard at the feeble lock and it caved in as the door slammed open.
The room was dark and cold. A figure seated on a chair moaned and moved its head from side to side, blowing out a cloud of breath. Crispin approached and saw a woman, hair disheveled, face weary and dirty, and mouth stretched taut with a gag. He grabbed the gag first and stripped it away from her. She spit on the floor, away from him.
“Madam Flamel?”
She nodded, tears glistening in her eyes. “And you must be Crispin Guest,” she said in a dry voice. He was surprised she knew of him. Her mouth was cracked and chapped. She laid her head back and licked her lips as Crispin worked his dagger through her bindings.
He tried to lift her, but she resisted, shaking her head. “Please. I thirst.”
He hurried back into the outer room and found an untouched flagon of wine. He sniffed it, making sure it was what he thought it was, and then found a goblet on the floor. He returned, pouring it for her.
Her trembling hands came up to hold it, but he could see she had no strength. He cradled her head and fed the goblet to her lips. She drank greedily, slurping it. It dribbled down her chin to her dirty gown.
She breathed when the empty cup was taken away. “I am weak. I haven’t used my legs in days. They are feeble. Please help me up.”
He took her by the shoulders and lifted her, and she cried out. Had she been tied to the chair all this time, for five days?
“I’ve got you,” he said. “But we must leave. It isn’t safe.”
“Have you killed him?”
“No.”
She said nothing to that. He helped her cross the threshold of the room. Her gown was soiled and she stank of urine. His anger boiled and he wished he had killed him, killed him slowly.
They headed toward the door when she stopped him. “The Stone. You must find it.”
“We haven’t time.”
“He mustn’t keep it. He mustn’t make the Elixir.”
“It won’t do him any good when I kill him.”
“You don’t understand. He won’t be able to be killed.”
“I don’t believe in that nonsense. I must get you out of here.”
But when he tried to pull her through the front door, her clawed hands held on to the jamb. “I won’t leave without the Stone!”
“God’s blood, woman! Bah! Very well.” He propped her against the door and she leaned down and kneaded her legs through her soiled gown.
Crispin looked about the room. In their fight, tables had overturned and chairs had been smashed. The detritus of broken crockery and instruments were everywhere. “Malemeyns might have kept it on his person,” he said to her as he looked. “He might not have-”
“No, he couldn’t. He had to … had to keep it in a crucible in order to make the Elixir. If he knew even that much, it will be here.”
“If he knew that much?”
She looked down at the bodies on the floor, one that would move no more, covered in his own blood, and the other that still breathed shallowly, though through a gurgle of red. His jaw might be broken or dislocated. He might die anyway. Crispin didn’t mourn it.
“Piers was skilled in the alchemical sciences,” she went on, unmoved by the plight of the bodies lying at her feet. “But he could not master the Stone. And if one could not master that, then he could not master the Elixir. But it has been a long time. He had time to learn. And if he had notions to bring Nicholas here to help him, he hadn’t realized that it was me instead, all along.”
He said nothing as he searched.
Slowly, using the jamb, she straightened, wincing. “Do you think women are only for softness and bearing children? We have many other skills. And mine was in alchemy. It’s what drew Nicholas to me and, I am afraid, Piers. Can we stop him?”
“We will. This I vow to you. But first we must flee this place.”
“Not without the Stone.”
“Women are also considerably more stubborn,” he muttered. Yet he admired her. For she had truly suffered much in the past week, and even as safety was nigh, she would not turn her course. He envied Flamel.
With his dagger, he carefully turned over broken beakers, their contents hissing and bubbling on the wooden floor. What at first he thought was a shard of glass, he recognized as the Stone Flamel had shown him before. Crouching, he pushed it with his blade out of the mess and tipped it into the stained tablecloth lying on the floor. He wiped it off and straightened. Returning to her, he handed her the crystallized Stone.
“You knew what it looked like,” she said, her voice, even as scratchy as it was, filled with awe. She clasped it tight in her hand. “Nicholas showed you.”
“Yes. I made him show me once we discerned what Malemeyns wanted.” He unbuttoned his cloak, took it off, and threw it over her quivering shoulders.
“He wanted more than that,” she said, leaning into him as he led her out the door. “He told me the terrible things he was doing, Maître. He was brought over from France in order to poison the cisterns, and make it look as if it were a French plot, turning against his own people.”
“I see.”
“But more. He was also to discredit the duke of Lancaster in the process. When he discovered the duke was in Spain, he turned his attention to his son.”
“So I also suspected.”
“Did you? Nicholas was wise to find you. But what this English lord who hired him did not know was Piers’s great hatred for Lancaster. For killing his son. He wanted to do his own justice and kill Lancaster’s son in return. But when he found Nicholas here…”
“He hatched many plots indeed. But tell me. Did he tell you which English lord hired him?”
“Oxford was the name he used. I do not know if it is a name or a place.”
“Oxford?” Not Suffolk. “It is both,” he said absently. So. Robert de Vere was playing his hand. And was he not recently appointed the justice of Chester, in direct control of Henry’s lands? Did Richard know about all this? He’d like to know the answer to that.
They moved through the streets. Crispin kept the pace slow for Perenelle’s sake. He kept looking back over his shoulder, but no one pursued them.
“The many plots seemed to have collapsed,” he said. “For one, those men were sent to dispatch Malemeyns. Perhaps Oxford’s patronage had expired.”
“Assassins,” she said. “But they did not get him.”
“I’m afraid I arrived at an inopportune moment.”
They shouldered past a man burdened with bundled sticks over his back. “A pity you could not have been delayed a few moments more.”
“I fear if I had, they might have gotten to you.”
“Me? How could I be a threat?”
“You were a witness. You knew it was Oxford. And even if you did not, they could not take that chance. They would certainly have killed you.”
She snorted. “I had the protection of the Holy Virgin. She kept me safe and I am alive and unhurt.”
“So you are.”
“And she sent you. I am most grateful. I will light many candles for you, Maître.”
He felt his cheeks warming, even in the cold and without his cloak. He said nothing.
“Piers discovered that Nicholas and I were here. And he changed his strategies. You see, when his house burned and took the life of his son, it also destroyed his work. He claims he was close to creating the Stone. But that, I doubt.”
“Yet it seems as if Master Flamel is famed for creating the Stone, at least among alchemists. How did Malemeyns dare steal it and call it his own invention?”
“He is mad. Mad with vengeance and envy. And hatred. It was an accident, but long ago, Nicholas was responsible for his wife’s death. He mixed a potion to heal her, but she reacted very badly to it. She died, painfully. I am certain that was part of the reason he stole me and treated me so abominably.”