Alchemy and Meggy Swann by Karen Cushman Page B

dressed in the colors of the sunrise leapt and fluttered as they were twirled and tossed by gentlemen in bright doublets and silk hose. Meggy pressed her face against the window. If I had sound legs, she thought, I would dress in such colors and wear silk hose and dance everywhere instead of walking, I would.
    "Pardon, sir," she said to a gentleman in padded yellow doublet and grass green shoes who approached the house. "What is this place?"
    "Ahh, Mistress Crookleg, naught to interest you here," he said. "It is a dancing house where people who are sound of body come to learn the fashionable dances." He pulled a silken handkerchief from his sleeve and waved it. "Take your tottery self away."
    Another young man joined him and, with a twirl and a jump, cried, "Let us haste, Robert, to the frisks and flyings, galliards and galops!"
    The young men slapped each other's backs and, laughing, entered the dancing house.
    Fie on them, Meggy thought as she wabbled toward Crooked Lane once more. Fie on them, with their strong legs that could leap and dance. Fie on them who had no care for those who could not, those who would need magic to—ye toads and vipers! Suppose her father indeed found the elixir he sought, and it could transform her. Make her legs straight so she could walk without wabbling and without pain. So she could dance! Would that not be wondrous?
    Meggy shook her head. Roger and Master Allyn thought her father's work possible, and the cooper had spoken of magic and marvels. She wished to believe it, but she had yet seen no sign of transformation or perfection or gold. She could imagine bears and angels and cream cakes in the clouds, but that did not make them real. Likely her father was just Sir Boastful, all cock-a-hoop about naught. And in sooth she could not think it worth doing murder for.
    "Sir, here is the volume you require," Meggy said as she entered the laboratorium. The air was heavy, thick with smoke, and as hot as she imagined Hell might be.
    He said nothing but continued stirring a silver-colored mixture in a crucible. "Work the bellows, girl," he said. "This must be kept hot." After a time he strained the mixture from the crucible, rinsed it in water, and took the particles that washed out and put them back into the crucible.
    "Give me the
aqua fortis,
" he said, pointing to a large bottle, and Meggy did. He poured the liquid into the crucible. An acrid vapor arose. He poured off the liquid, and she saw that fewer of the particles remained. Again and again he poured the
aqua fortis
into the crucible and poured it off again. Again and again he rinsed and strained the mixture. Fewer and fewer of the particles remained, but they shone brighter and brighter.
    Meggy's heart thumped. Was that gold she saw forming in the bottom of the crucible? Was it growing from base metal into gold? Had her father done it?
    "Sir," she began, but he hushed her with a wave.
    "No prattle," he said. She continued pumping in silence.
    Darkness fell, and still they labored in the hot, smoky laboratorium. Meggy did not heed the aching of her legs or the complaining of her belly as she worked.
    "Enough," Master Ambrose said at last. Meggy put down the bellows, picked up a candle, and peered into the crucible. What she saw near took her breath away. There in the bottom was a tiny coil of what even the wary Meggy might call gold.
    "Is it gold?" Meggy asked the alchemist in a whisper. "Truly gold?"
    He nodded.
    "Then you have done it! You have made gold." It was a tiny amount, to be sure, but he had transformed common metal into gold. There it was in the crucible. Now he could make all the gold he needed. He would no longer need to plot murder but could continue his Great Work until he succeeded in finding the elixir of life.
    Mayhap he would let her use it, just as she had imagined. She was overcome with wondering. Would he? Would it be powder, liquid, solid, vapor? Would it smell sweet or sting her nose as she breathed? How would it heal