HUMBERT LEADS US OUT OF the dining room, back into the checkered entrance hall. He walks straight to the largest of the portraits, the one of Venus and Cupid I admired on the way in. At the bottom of the painting is a pair of masks, their empty, hollow eyes staring blankly in the distance. He reaches out and pokes his finger inside the eyehole, and I gasp—Is there really a hole in the canvas of this priceless painting?—then hear a tiny click. On the other side of the hall, a door swings open, just a crack. I’m impressed. The door is tiny, narrow; the seams so well disguised by the intricately carved walls as to be nearly invisible. That, or I’m losing my touch.
Humbert crosses the hall and pushes the door open, silent on its well-oiled hinges.
“Come on, then.” He motions for us to enter. Fifer slips through the door first, followed by George. I go next. But what I see on the other side makes me stop. A narrow stairway leading down, into darkness. John slides through the door, glances at the staircase, then at me.
“Humbert, maybe Elizabeth and I will wait up here—”
“No, it’s okay,” I tell him.
“Are you sure?”
I nod. I’m a little curious to see Humbert’s collection. And more than a little curious to see what Fifer’s up to. My guess is she’s going to try to steal one of Humbert’s weapons. She can’t hurt me, of course, but I worry about her getting her hands on something anyway. The last thing I need is for her to hurt John, or George, or even herself in some foolish attempt to protect them against me.
I look at John. “Walk with me?”
He nods, and together we start down the tiny staircase. Humbert squeezes through the door then, bolting it shut behind him. Immediately, my hands start sweating.
“Feel free to start singing any time you like,” John whispers. I attempt a laugh, but it comes out sounding more like a groan.
When we reach the bottom of the stairs, I immediately see why Humbert calls it the cathedral. It’s a large, circular room with arched, vaulted ceilings taller than the room is wide. One curve of the wall is made entirely from stained glass; another curve holds a large cabinet. The remaining wall space is lined with shelves, crammed with objects, all alive with movement. Jars that bubble and hiss. Clocks that tick and hum. Globes that whirl and spin. Books stacked upon one another; some leather-bound, others loose-leaf and tied together with string. The tools he mentioned are scattered everywhere: bowls, mortars and pestles, scales, bags of herbs, and jars of various animal parts floating in solution like grotesque fish in a bowl. In the center of it all is a brick furnace, a tiny blue fire dancing inside.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Humbert says. “Have a look around.”
George walks off to examine the spinning globes, while Fifer and Humbert head straight for the cabinet. That must be where the weapons are. I start to follow, but John guides me toward the furnace instead. There are several glass flasks set on stands over the fire, brightly colored liquids bubbling inside.
“What is that?” I ask.
John examines the largest flask, dark red liquid boiling within.
“Aqua vitae, by the looks of it.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Humbert’s an alchemist?”
He smiles. “Well, he’s not trying to turn lead into gold or anything. He’s just making wine. Rather, he’s making wine stronger. This flask over here”—he points to a smaller one filled with orange liquid—“is brandy. It’ll be strong enough to melt paint off walls when he’s done with it.” He watches the liquid boil, then reaches over and lowers the flame. “No sense in his melting his insides, though.”
I laugh, then remember the book he was reading the night he fell asleep in my room.
“You’re an alchemist, too?”
“Not quite,” he says. “I thought about studying it at university next year, though.”
“Where?” Alchemy is far too close to magic for that to be allowed in Anglia.
“Probably Iberia. Or maybe Umbria. I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.”
“So, no pirate apprenticeship for you, then?”
He laughs. “No, though my father would love that. He’s been trying to talk me into it since before I could walk.”
“No good?”
“No. I mean, it’s fine. I just prefer healing.”
“Better wenching in the pirate trade,” I point out.
He snorts. “Yes. Because I am all about the wenching.” I laugh again. John motions to the shelf holding all the animal parts. “Want to take a look?”
I nod, and we both rush over and start pulling jars off the shelves.
I read the label on a jar that holds what look like tiny gray raisins. “Mouse brains!”
“Oh, that’s good.” He peers at it closely, then holds out a jar for me to see. “Look at this one.”
“Frog eyes,” I say. “Look at them all. Staring at us. They’re so…”
“Judgmental?”
I start giggling. He puts it back and reaches for a bigger jar, this one filled with something yellow and soft.
“Cow pancreas.” I wrinkle my nose.
“Ugh, it looks like cheese.”
“Trust me, you do not want that melted on top of anything,” I say. And then we’re both laughing, and he looks at me and I look at him, and suddenly the space between us seems very small and I feel a little thrill… until I remember what George told me. About his mother, his sister. Then that thrill turns into something else entirely and I take a step back.
John doesn’t seem to notice. He just keeps pulling jars off shelves and examining them, completely engrossed. I should probably leave. Go see what Fifer is up to. I glance at her, standing with Humbert at the weapons cabinet—Look at all those weapons!—deep in conversation. George is still over by the globes, carefully not watching me, which only tells me he is. I should definitely leave.
“How did you become a healer?” I say instead.
John carefully sets the jar he’s holding—sheep intestines—on the shelf and turns to me. “My mother was a healer,” he says. “She ran an apothecary near our house in Harrow. When my father wasn’t dragging me out to sea, I would help her. Sometimes my sister would help, too, but she was usually too busy getting into trouble with Fifer to be of much use.” He smiles a little at that.
“Anyway, when I was about nine, she suspected I had the magic to be a healer, too. So one day she took me to her shop, told me to make potions for two of her patients. One had green fever, the other pemphigus. A very unpleasant skin disease,” he adds in response to my raised eyebrow. “And then she left.”
“She left?” I feel my eyes go round. “What did you do?”
“Panicked, of course.” He smiles. “I’d been helping her for years, but I’d never made a potion on my own before, and never anything that complicated. I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t reach the upper shelves without a ladder. I didn’t even know how to light the furnace. I thought for sure I’d burn the shop down, or, failing that, I’d turn a potion into poison and kill her patients and I’d have to live with that forever. But then…” He trails off, glancing at the ceiling for a moment as if lost in thought.
“I just knew what to do.” He looks down at me again, his eyes bright. “It’s hard to explain. But there was something about the shop, the smell of the herbs, the way the light filtered in through the windows, all dusty, all the jars and books and the tools.” He gestures at the shelves in front of us. “The magic took over then, and it told me what I needed to do.”
I’m quiet for a moment, enchanted by the idea of something stealing over you, settling into you, and telling you, with absolute certainty, who you are and what you’re meant to do.
“That sounds lovely,” I say, and I’m surprised to find I mean it.
“I don’t think it looked lovely, though.” He laughs a little. “The shop was a disaster. There were herbs and roots and powders on the counter, the floor; I broke at least three flasks, so there was glass everywhere, too.… My sleeve caught fire when I lit the furnace, so I doused myself with rosewater. I was covered in wet petals.… I must have looked like a lunatic.”
I start to laugh, too.
“And now it’s just me,” he says, and I stop laughing. “I thought about quitting, but magic isn’t something you can just quit. Besides, someone had to carry on after she…” He turns away then, busying himself with the jars again.
I’m quiet for a minute, unsure of what to say.
“George told me what happened,” I finally manage. “I’m so sorry. I know how you feel.” And I do. I wish there were something I could say to make him feel better. But there’s really nothing. I could tell him what’s done is done, but I know that would never be enough for someone like him. John’s a healer. He knows the difference between a bandage and a cure.
John turns back to me and nods, as if he knew what I was thinking. For a minute we look at each other, neither of us saying a word. The thrill I felt earlier comes rushing back. I should move. George would want me to. I should want to, too.
Except I don’t.
I hear someone clear his throat and I turn around. Humbert is smiling at us, but Fifer is glaring and George just shakes his head.
“I need a drink,” he mutters.
Humbert steps over to the flask with the orange liquid and unhooks it from the stand. “I’ve got just the thing.”