The Blackthorn Key

A landing at the top of the stairs swung around to Master Benedict’s private rooms. More books lined the walls, making the passage so slight, you had to squeeze against the railing to get to the door. Opposite my master’s quarters, a ladder led up to a hatch in the ceiling. I unbolted it and climbed into the evening chill.

The roof of our home was flat. I liked coming up here on hot summer nights, where the air was cooler and, high above the cobbles, not nearly as rank with the smell of the streets. Tonight, unfortunately, I wasn’t spared; the winds were blowing from the northeast, sending over the stink of boiled fat and urine from the soap maker’s shop four streets away.

We housed our birds up here in a walk-in wood-and-wire coop at the back corner of the balcony. They fluttered their wings noisily as I unlatched the hook to their shelter. A few of the bolder ones poked around my shirtsleeves when I entered, losing interest when they saw the bucket I carried was empty. One pigeon, a plump salt-and-pepper-speckled girl, flapped down from her perch and tapped at my toes.

“Hello, Bridget,” I said.

She cooed. I put the scraper on the dirt and picked her up. She was warm, her feathers soft in my fingers. “I got kicked out,” I complained to her. “Again.”

Bridget nuzzled her head against my thumb in sympathy. I cradled her in the crook of my elbow and pulled a handful of barley from my pocket, watching absently as she pecked the grain from my palm. My mind was still on the conversation I’d been booted out of. Stubb had always been a slimy thing, but after this new murder, the way he’d eyed our shop made my stomach twist. It was no secret that my master’s business did well, and it was equally no secret that Stubb didn’t like the competition. I knew he’d tried to buy our shop several years back. After Master Benedict refused to sell it, Stubb had accused my master of stealing his recipes. No one took him seriously, but tonight it made me wonder: How far would a man like Stubb go to get what he wanted?

And why was he here, taunting Master Benedict about the murders? Did he know something about them? Six men had been butchered now, three of them apothecaries—and the latest victim knew my master. Closer and closer, I thought. Tightening, like a noose.

I shivered, and not from the cold. Important things were being said downstairs. Yet here I was, stuck on the roof! Well, Master Benedict could send me away if he wanted to. But if I finished my duties up here, I’d have to return to the workshop. “And if I happened to overhear something,” I said to Bridget, “that wouldn’t be my fault, would it?”

I took Bridget’s silence for agreement and got to work. The floor of the coop was thick with grayish-white gunk. Bridget, flapping from shoulder to shoulder, nibbled the hair behind my ears as I scraped the top layer of poop off the dirt and slopped it into the bucket. When I was done, I lifted Bridget from my collar and set her in the straw at the back, far from the draft, where she could be warm and snug. “I’ll bring your breakfast in the morning,” I said.

She bobbed her head at me and cooed goodbye.

? ? ?

We didn’t keep birds just for fun. Pigeon poop was valuable. Sometimes we sold a bit of it to the market gardeners—it was particularly good for growing asparagus—but we made something out of it much more precious than fertilizer.

Back in the workshop, I unsealed a cask in the corner. The stink that blasted from the barrel nearly made me pass out. Gagging, I dumped what I’d scraped from the coop into the slop inside, then topped the whole thing up by unbuttoning my fly and peeing into it—another job for the apprentice. Afterward, I resealed the cask. I wouldn’t open it again for three more months, when I’d wash the nasty mix out and put it into trays in the sun, where it would dry into spiky white crystals of saltpeter.

When I’d finally finished, I crept to the door and put my ear to the wood, half expecting the conversation to be over. But whatever they were talking about must have been really important. Stubb was still here. And he was near to shouting.

“Change is coming, Benedict,” he said. “You want to be on the right side this time.”