The Blackthorn Key

“Master!” I said. “There’s been another mur—”

I broke off. Master Benedict was kneeling beside the counter, trying to gather cream-covered pieces of pottery from a shattered jar with his bandaged hands. A second, smaller jar, fallen beside the first, had cracked a chunk off at the bottom and was pumping out the last of the boar’s blood. The scarlet liquid ran in rivulets down the seams of the floorboards and stained the knees of his breeches.

I went to him. “Are you all right?”

He held up his hands, fingertips poking through bulky cloth. “These bandages are decidedly inconvenient.”

I knelt beside him. “I’ll take care of this, Master. You should be resting.”

“I’m fine.” He continued to collect the slippery shards until I placed my hands on his. He sighed, then nodded. “We’ll need more burn cream.”

“I’ll make it tonight,” I said.

I began to collect pieces of the broken jars. Tom came to help, dodging the boar’s blood that tracked across the floor as if it hunted his shoes.

“I’ll get some sand,” Tom said.

“Bring the sawdust instead,” I said. “It’s in a tub next to the oven in the workshop.”

Tom hauled the heavy tub from the back a lot more easily than I could have. We scooped up handfuls of sawdust and dumped them on the floor. The sawdust clumped, turning red, soaking the blood up quickly.

Master Benedict watched us, curious. “This is why you collect sawdust?”

I nodded. “The masters at the orphanage used it. It’s better for spills than sand. Gets rid of the smell, too,” which was a blessing when fifty sick children were squirting fluids from every end.

It was funny how fascinated Master Benedict seemed by the sawdust. Cleaning spills was the apprentice’s job, so it’s not something he’d given any thought to since I’d joined him. Still, using sawdust instead of sand was so ordinary; it hardly seemed to deserve my master’s interest. It was just a simple technique I’d grown up with. And I thought he knew everything.

He stared out the window, lost in thought. Then his eyes widened. He grabbed my shoulders.

“Master?” I said, startled.

He shook me. “Magnificent, boy. Well done. So very well done.”

Without even stopping to clean the cream off his shirt, he grabbed his coat from its hook and threw it on. Then he ran into the street.

“Wait! Master! I need to change your dressing!” I shouted after him, but he’d already darted behind a rattling carriage and vanished into the holiday crowd. He hadn’t even taken his sash of ingredients with him; it still hung on the hook behind the counter.

Tom gave me a sidelong glance. “Madmen everywhere today,” he muttered. For once, I couldn’t disagree.





SATURDAY, MAY 30, 1665


The Feast of the Burning of Joan of Arc, Heretic





CHAPTER


8


I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO do.

After cleaning up the spill, I’d made a new batch of Blackthorn’s Soothing Burn Cream as promised. Then Tom and I went up to the roof, where we sat, legs dangling over the edge, with fistfuls of corn. Half of it we fed to Bridget, who hopped between our shoulders. The rest we dropped over the side, trying to catch the kernels in the wigs of gentlemen passing below. When Tom finally had to go home, I curled up by the fire in the shop with Master Galileo’s book, waiting for my own master to return.

I must have drifted off, because I awoke with the cry of six, still in the chair. The fire long dead, the chill had settled into my bones, and my back ached like I’d spent the night shackled to the Tower of London’s least comfortable rack.