The Blackthorn Key

I prepared the shop for opening, sweeping the floors of yesterday’s now-dried mud. I checked the stocks and made a note of what we needed from Monday’s market. Then I went up to the roof to feed the pigeons. While coming back down, it struck me: With all of London outside for yesterday’s holiday, the cobblestone streets had been thick with mud. But there were no new tracks on the stairs.

The door to Master Benedict’s quarters was closed. “Master?” I called.

No answer.

I knocked, lightly. “Master? It’s morning.”

Still no answer.

Normally, I would have left him alone. But there was nothing normal about Master Benedict sleeping in on a workday. I went inside. His room was empty, his bed still made.

He hadn’t returned.

I knocked next door, at Sinclair the confectioner’s, and on the other side, at Grobham the tailor’s, but neither master nor apprentice had seen him. The servers in the Missing Finger, the tavern across the street, where we sometimes ate supper, hadn’t seen him either.

Worry fluttered in my stomach. I thought about the body Tom and I had seen yesterday, burned and buried beneath the angel in the private garden, and it wasn’t until I got hold of myself that I remembered I’d seen my master well after that poor man had been murdered.

A voice pulled me from terrible thoughts. “Boy. Boy!”

Outside our shuttered shop, a pudgy woman in a faded green dress waved a ceramic jar at me. I recognized her: Margaret Wills, one of Baron Cobley’s servants.

“I need a refill,” she hollered.

Syrup of ipecac, an emetic. I crossed the street, grumbling inside. I had bigger worries than Baron Cobley’s vomit.

I let her into the shop, then donned my blue apron and refilled her jar. I made a note of it in the ledger, adding the cost to the baron’s tab, which was already the size of a whale. I’d planned to lock up and go look for my master again, but as Margaret left, Francis the publican came in with a nasty bottom rash. I took care of him—the prescription, anyway; he’d have to put the ointment on himself—and then Jonathan Tanner arrived, and before I knew it the shop was packed.

And then finally, finally, finally, Master Benedict stepped in from the workshop.

I felt like a sack of lead had been lifted from my back. He was all right. In fact, other than the bags under his eyes, he looked very pleased indeed. I didn’t get the chance to speak to him; he barely got a pace inside before he was swarmed. He sent a weary smile in my direction and got to work.

By lunchtime, we’d whittled the horde down to five; me with William Fitz and his seeping earlobe, Master Benedict with Lady Brent’s swollen hand, and three more waiting before we could break. I’d just finished writing up Mr. Fitz’s account in the ledger when Lady Brent said, “Are you listening to me, Mr. Blackthorn?”

My master, standing behind the counter, stared past her out the front of the shop. I tried to see what he was looking at, but there was a customer blocking the window: a stocky boy of around sixteen, wearing his own blue apron, smirking at the still-unrepaired bear in the corner.

“Mr. Blackthorn?” she said again.

He blinked. “One moment, madam. I need to check our stock.”

When he returned, a minute later, he looked pale.

“Well?” Lady Brent said. “Can you make it?”

Master Benedict wiped his forehead. “Yes. Yes, of course. It will be ready Monday.”

He really didn’t look well. I tried to catch his eye, but he barely glanced at me. He turned away, scanning the shelves, then went to the ledger on the counter.

“Christopher!” he barked.

I jumped.

“Come here,” he said.

I went around the counter. My master no longer looked ill. He looked furious.

He stabbed a bony finger at the ledger. “Did you serve Baron Cobley this morning?”

“Yes, Master,” I stammered. “His maidservant.”

“And did I not ask you—twice—to collect his account the next time she came?”

Had he? “I . . . I’m sorry, Master, I don’t remember—”

He hit me.

He smacked me on the side of my jaw, an open-handed blow that cracked like a thunderclap. I stumbled into the shelf hard enough to make the jars rattle.