‘Are they?’ asked Gyseburne. ‘I have always found your Gonville colleagues quite pleasant.’
‘Now there is a question,’ said Meryfeld, ladling pitch into the bowl. He missed, and some oozed down the outside. ‘Are eels fish or worms? We should debate that some time.’
‘We are debating it now,’ Gyseburne pointed out.
‘Stop!’ cried Bartholomew, horrified when he saw the quantity of saltpetre Rougham planned to use. ‘That is far too much, and it will–’
‘Take as much as you want, Rougham,’ countered Meryfeld. ‘We are all rich, and can afford expensive ingredients in the name of science. Well, you are not wealthy, Bartholomew, but you could be, if you were to dispense with your poor patients.’
‘Yes, but then they would come to us,’ Rougham pointed out. ‘And I do not want them. I like things the way they are, with him taking the dross and me compiling horoscopes for the affluent.’
‘Well, that is honest,’ said Bartholomew, taken aback by the baldness of the remark. ‘But the poor often have more interesting ailments. Just last week, one had a sickness that looked like leprosy, but I managed to cure it with a decoction of–’
‘You have a remedy for leprosy?’ asked Meryfeld eagerly. ‘Now we shall be rich.’
‘He said it looked like leprosy,’ corrected Gyseburne. He staggered, and the rock oil in the bottle he was holding glugged into the bowl. ‘That means it was actually something else. Perhaps we should name it after him. It will bring him the fame he will never have from being affluent.’
‘What a dreadful notion,’ said Rougham, shuddering in distaste. ‘Who wants to be remembered for a disease? I would rather have a stained-glass window in my College chapel. Then people will see my handsome face for centuries to come.’
‘Not if it is smashed by rioting students,’ said Gyseburne. ‘The glass, I mean. What is in this jug, Rougham? I cannot read the label. Oh, well. In it goes. Stir it around a bit, Meryfeld.’
‘I would not mind this light being named after me,’ said Meryfeld, giving the concoction a prod.
‘The Meryfeld Lamp,’ mused Rougham. Then he shook his head. ‘No – it sounds like a tavern.’
‘The ingredients are mixed now,’ said Gyseburne, peering into the cauldron. ‘What shall we do next? Shove some in a lantern and see what happens?’
‘Good idea,’ said Meryfeld, making a lunge for the torch.
Bartholomew reached it first. ‘We will take a small amount of your potion, and touch a flame to it. But we are wasting our time, because even if it works, you did not keep a record of the ingredients you used so we will never be able to replicate the result.’
‘You are too cautious,’ said Meryfeld disdainfully. ‘And timidity in science is not a virtue. We shall set the lot alight, and see what happens.’
He snatched the lamp from Bartholomew and tossed it into the bowl.
Bartholomew hurled himself backwards, and managed to pull Gyseburne with him, while Rougham had been bending over to retrieve a bottle he had dropped. There was muffled boom, and for a moment the dusky garden was lit up as bright as a summer day. Meryfeld shrieked as flames shot towards him, so Bartholomew scrambled to his feet and dashed a bucket of water over him before he could ignite, leaving him coughing and spluttering.
‘That was dazzling,’ said Gyseburne, in something of an understatement as he picked himself up. ‘And it was steady, too, but it did not last very long. Perhaps there was too much pitch.’
‘Are you all right?’ asked Bartholomew, peering at Meryfeld in concern. Flames licked across the table, and their light showed Meryfeld’s round face to be bright pink, like a bad case of sunburn.
‘The smell!’ exclaimed Rougham, waving a hand in front of his face. ‘It is awful!’
‘Do not inhale it,’ warned Bartholomew. ‘I imagine it is poisonous.’
‘What in God’s name is going on?’ It was Dick Tulyet, who had scrambled over the wall that divided his home from Meryfeld’s. Dickon was with him, eyes alight at the prospect of mischief. ‘We heard a lot of drunken revelry, followed by a huge bang and screams.’
‘I told you they were doing something bad,’ said Dickon smugly. ‘I saw them leave Celia’s–’
‘What have you done to that table?’ demanded Tulyet, watching Bartholomew struggle to smother the flames that still danced across it. Nothing was working. Water hissed and had no effect, his cloak simply ignited, and the flames even burned through the handfuls of soil he piled over them. ‘What devilry have you invented?’
‘Not devilry,’ said Bartholomew, uncomfortably aware of how it must look. ‘Simple alchemy. I suspect these flames will burn as long as there is air to feed them. So we must deprive them of it.’
‘But you have deprived them of it,’ Tulyet pointed out. ‘You have heaped a great stack of earth on them, and they are still going strong. I can see the smoke.’
‘They must be drawing it through the wood. They will burn out eventually.’
‘You cannot leave them,’ cried Tulyet, appalled. ‘They might grow hungry for more fuel, and incinerate the whole town.’
‘We can bury the tabletop,’ suggested Bartholomew. ‘That should make it safe.’
‘I will fetch a spade,’ offered Gyseburne, sheepish in the face of Tulyet’s growing horror. ‘The Sheriff is right: there is something of Satan in these flames.’
While they waited for him to come back, Tulyet poked the bench with a stick. Some of the substance adhered to it, and it burst into flames. He hurled it from him in revulsion.
‘Dig,’ he ordered, when Gyseburne returned. ‘And let us make an end of this mischief.’
Gyseburne made an enthusiastic but ineffectual assault on the ground and, unwilling to be there all night, Bartholomew took the shovel from him. It was hard going, because the soil was clayey.
‘I liked the bit where Doctor Bartholomew threw the pail of water in Meryfeld’s face,’ said Dickon gleefully, watching him work. ‘Can I have a go? He is still pink.’
‘Put that bucket down,’ ordered Tulyet sharply. He turned back to the table. ‘God preserve us! The flames seem to be getting fiercer!’
‘Because the pitch is heating up, I imagine,’ said Bartholomew, stopping his labours to watch. ‘We must have precipitated some sort of chain reaction.’
‘I do not care what it is,’ said Tulyet angrily. ‘Just stop it.’
‘This would make an incredible weapon,’ mused Meryfeld, picking up the stick Tulyet had dropped and inspecting it minutely. ‘Imagine if you were in a castle, being attacked. You could drop this on your enemies, and they would never be able to extinguish it. And, as an added bonus, its fumes are toxic.’
Bartholomew felt sick, appalled that a physician should suggest such a terrible thing.
‘How did you make it again?’ asked Dickon.
‘Actually, I cannot remember,’ said Meryfeld. ‘And that is a pity, because I am sure the King would pay handsomely for such a device. It would be devastating in battle.’
‘Quite,’ said Rougham, suddenly sober. ‘And we are physicians. We do not invent methods to kill people, so I recommend we dispense with the pitch next time.’
‘Pitch?’ asked Dickon keenly.
‘Among other ingredients,’ said Rougham coolly. ‘Many other ingredients. You cannot possibly hope to replicate what we did here this evening.’
Dickon pulled a face at him, then turned to his father. ‘If I make some, I could take it to school. That would teach my classmates for not wanting to sit next to me.’
‘It is not a joke, Dickon,’ said Bartholomew quietly. ‘This compound could subject someone to a very slow and painful death.’