I miss you, Bee, and I worry for you. Do you remember when we talked of Rousseau, and the dim view he takes of marriage? I was inclined to agree with him, if you’ll recall, and you were not. But being so easily parted from you has given me another, more practical view of the matter. Your mother could not have claimed you and sent me away if we were bound by marriage. I could have severed the chains of motherhood she binds you with by chains of my own. I wish there were a way to free you from her without binding you to anything else, Bee. You deserve to be free, truly free. But even more than that, I wish I didn’t have to leave you there with her. I can well imagine how she is treating you, now that you have dared to have your own desires and goals. Don’t believe the things she says about you. You are more brilliant, more beautiful, and more full of life than she ever was or ever will be.
I read it again, and then again, searching against my will for any signs the letter was a lie. I saw none. We had no hopes of seeing each other again soon. What did he have to gain from writing to me at all, except the continuation of our friendship? Surely he could not think I would send him secrets through the mail. Still, my heart seized at the thought. I scanned the letters for hints, questions, anything that might suggest he was probing for alchemical information.
But no. There was nothing like that. I let out a sigh of relief and read the letter once more, this time letting myself believe it.
Don’t believe the things she says about you.
He had known this would happen, or something like it. And he was right. I breathed steadier. The tightness in my chest loosened. I took out my pen and yet another fresh sheet of paper, and started again.
Evening wore into night as I filled page after page with words I knew I would not send. I detailed all the cruel things she had done and said, just as he had worried she would. I poured out all the pain of the last year, of her growing hostility and his absence. I allowed myself to feel the messy, undignified self-pity I could not afford to show in front of her and refused to show to anyone else. It was a relief, but only at first. Like scratching an itch, only to find it came back worse a few moments later. This was not the sort of thing that could be made better by weeping over it. I needed some kind of plan. Some way to make my mother let me back into the work again. A way to prove myself to her, beyond any possibility of denial. But nothing came to me, and I lost myself again in recrimination.
It was late when I stood, spent, and began to drop each page of my letter into the fireplace.
And then my mother screamed. Not as she had earlier, in anger. This was a scream of terror. I stopped in alarm.
Silence followed. She had suffered nightmares in the last few weeks—part of her illness, perhaps?—and woken screaming more than once. I turned back to the fire, nothing more than embers in my marble hearth, and pushed the remaining pages into the glowing ashes where they caught and burned away quickly.
Then she screamed again, and this time she didn’t stop. It was her, and yet it wasn’t. It was a shrill, hysterical sound of agony I could not imagine her making. I threw on my dressing gown and ran barefoot through the halls, nearly slipping on the spiraling stone stairway. The screams had stopped when I arrived outside her room. The Comte was there already, pounding on her door and pleading for her to let him in. There was no response. He held a candle in one hand, and I could see from the disarray of his night clothes that he had jumped from his bed with as much haste as I had. His eyes caught mine in panic. I motioned him quiet, and put my ear against the door.
At first I heard nothing, and then a creaking sound of the bed sinking under a weight.
“Mother?” I called. “What’s happened? Why were you screaming?”
“It was a sudden pain,” came my mother’s voice. “But I am well enough now. Go back to sleep.”
“Marguerite, please,” the Comte objected. “You are unwell, chérie, you have been unwell for weeks. Let me call a doctor. I cannot bear you to suffer so.”
“I am not suffering at all, except from your girlish whimpering, Adrien.”
That sounded enough like her usual self to set me more at ease. The Comte’s shoulders loosened as well, and he began murmuring endearments to her in a low voice. I backed away. They had fought, no doubt, after I left them at dinner, and now he wished to make amends. Well. I would let him try.
I went back to my room and sat on the bed again, beside the still-open window. It was cold now, and the apple blossoms had closed up, withdrawing their scent. I reached to close it and caught a whiff of something else, something alchemical. Not the usual burnt-sulfur smell of an alchemist’s furnace, but sharp and energizing, and somehow rather pleasant. I did not recognize it, though it surely came from the laboratory. But I did know this: it wasn’t the smell of a failed, broken composition.
I dressed hastily, ignoring the elaborate green for a serviceable gray round dress, and went back down the stairs and out the back door of the house. I crossed the garden, and the new spring grass felt soft and wet under my slippers. I walked toward the cottage beside the woods. A bright half-moon hung over it.
A small, steady plume of yellow smoke rose from the chimney. I stared at it for a moment. The laboratory’s fire had been burning yellow for over a week now. At first it had been only a slight tinge of gold, but now the smoke had a deep mustard color, and the new scent came with it. Undoubtedly, it meant progress after all. Progress my mother had made without me.
A rush of anger prodded me forward. I peered into the soot-fogged window and saw the fire burning a sparkling silver, a crucible pushed into the ashes. On the broad table in the center of the cottage were the remains of several glass crucibles, with their ruined contents sorted into small piles. There was a hint of red behind a fat, open book. I changed angles and squinted as hard as I could, but made out nothing else.
I rattled the handle of the door angrily, looking around for something to beat it down. Then, to my utter shock, the door opened.
Impossible. She would never be so careless as to leave the laboratory unlocked. Every alchemist kept their work protected, and Marguerite Hope was the most accomplished alchemist in France. While we were still in Paris, we had suffered countless attacks by thieves, especially after her great success with the King’s armory contract. True, we were hidden in the country now, but she had told me often enough that we could be found by a determined seeker. It was unthinkable that she would leave the laboratory unlocked—especially if she was truly as close to making the White Elixir as I had begun to suspect.
I caught sight of the exploded crucibles on the table again, and my heart stopped. There, behind the book, was a glass dish full of a distinctly red substance.
I picked my way across the cottage, stepping carefully over broken glass and other discarded implements. Mother had left the place in shocking disarray. Broken glass was a common hazard of an alchemist’s work, since sealed crucibles had to be heated, and frequent explosions were the inevitable result. But my mother was orderly, and never left her work such a mess. Though she usually had me to do the tidying.
I lifted the bowl into the firelight. It was just as Jābir had described the transmuting agent, a fine powder of a deep red, like ground rubies. Next to it, a page had been copied from the book in my mother’s hand. There was a picture of a winged man, the sun under one foot and the moon under another, holding scepters of snakes in each hand. I remembered this page. His eyes were disturbingly wide, and his tongue lolled out of his mouth. The back of the page was thick with Mother’s cramped writing, in code. At the top of both sides was an inscription in Latin. CAVE MALEDICTIONEM ALCHEMISTAE. Beware the Alchemist’s Curse.