The Blackthorn Key

I still didn’t feel safe. On the one hand, empty streets made it easier to keep an eye out for Stubb or Wat, either of whom might be hunting me. On the other hand, there were fewer witnesses to scare off potential kidnappers. The best I could do was stay far away from any streets near Stubb’s apothecary. I hoped that spending all night ransacking our shop meant they would need the morning to get some sleep.

I took my master’s sash with me, tied underneath my shirt so no one could see it. I also took the ledger page, and my puzzle cube, which made a bulge in my pocket. What I really wished I could take was Tom. Bridget, too. I’d had to let her go before we’d gone to bed, since if Tom’s father found a bird in his house, he’d bake her in a pie. She’d flapped away into the night, toward the shining moon, before disappearing behind a distant roof. I scanned the skies for her as I walked, wishing she’d come back.

It took some time to get where I was going. I knew the house I was looking for was on Cornhill, but I wasn’t sure which one it was. I asked directions from a passing rag-and-bone man with a greasy sack slung over his shoulder. He sent me to the corner, where I called on the home of Grand Master Apothecary Sir Edward Thorpe.

“He’s not available,” said the gangly servant girl who answered the door.

“When can I speak to him?” I said.

She looked me up and down. Never, her eyes said. I hadn’t had the chance to clean up after last night. I must have looked like a beggar.

“Please, miss. It’s urgent Guild business. I’m an apprentice.”

She pinched her lips but gave me an answer. “He’s gone to the Hall.”

I was surprised. “On a Sunday?”

She shrugged. “Not my place to ask.” I stepped back before she introduced the door to my nose.

? ? ?

I hadn’t returned to Apothecaries’ Hall in three years. After passing my entrance exam, Master Benedict had taken me to my new home, and neither one of us had ever gone back. That wasn’t unusual for someone like me. Technically, apprentices weren’t yet Guild members, so unless facing discipline or assigned to the Guild laboratory, there wasn’t anything for an apprentice at the Hall. Sometimes, though, I’d wondered about my master. He hadn’t had many friends. Only Hugh ever came to the house. There was Isaac the bookseller, of course, but I’d never met him. I wouldn’t even have known he existed if it wasn’t for the book stacks growing like cornstalks in my home. Once, I’d asked Master Benedict why he never went to the Hall. “Politics bore me,” was all he said.

As I walked there, I wondered if it was actually the stench that kept him away. The Hall was near the Thames, down on Blackfriars Lane. The river stank something awful, especially during low tide, when the mud on the banks smelled like rotting . . . well, everything. The streets were no better, choked as they were by the patrons of the nearby Playhouse, where actors, writers, and other low persons spilled drunkenly from shadowed doorways to relieve themselves, clogging the gutters with filth.

But the Hall itself was impressive. It had once been a monastery—the home of the Black Friars, which gave its name to the street—and it showed, with dark brick walls three stories high. The first time I’d come here, I’d stood outside, peering into the tall, narrow windows. I’d watched the men coming and going, imagining what their life—soon to be mine, I’d hoped—was like. I’d studied their faces, wondering who would be my new master, hoping for this one, hoping against that one, for no real reason other than whether I liked the look of them. I remembered meeting Master Benedict for the first time, still flushed from passing my test. He’d held out his hand and said, “Pleased to meet you, Christopher Rowe.” As if I were a real person.