The Blackthorn Key

Or maybe not. Master Benedict jabbed a bony finger into my ribs. “Since you’re feeling so creative, I’d like you to write out your recipe for today’s little adventure—thirty times. Then write it another thirty times—in Latin. But first you will tidy this room. You will put everything back where it belongs. And then you will scrub the floor. The store, the workshop, and every step in this house. Tonight. All the way up to the roof.”


The roof? Now I really wanted to cry. I knew I hadn’t exactly been on the side of the angels this evening, but apprentices were already worked to exhaustion. Master Benedict may have been kinder than any master I knew, but my duties didn’t change. My days started before the cry of six. I had to wake first and get the shop ready, help customers, assist my master in the workshop, practice on my own, study, and so on, until well after the sun had fallen. Then I had to put everything away, prepare the day’s last meal, and clean the shop for tomorrow before I finally got to sleep on my palliasse, the straw mattress that served as my bed. The only rest I got came on Sundays and the rare holidays. And we were right in the middle of a once-in-a-decade double holiday: today, Ascension Day, and tomorrow, Oak Apple Day. I’d been dreaming of this break all year.

According to the papers of apprenticeship, Master Benedict wasn’t allowed to make me work on a holiday. Then again, according to the papers of apprenticeship, I wasn’t allowed to steal his goods, make gunpowder, or shoot stuffed bears. Any bears, really. So I just slumped my shoulders and said, “Yes, Master.”

? ? ?

I returned the pots and ingredients to the shelves. My master took our cannon and hid it somewhere in the workshop in the back. I then spent the next several minutes gathering soot-stained lead pellets, which had rolled to every corner of the store. That left me wondering what to do about the poor bear.

Master Benedict had hung up his apothecary’s sash with the vials of ingredients and remedies behind the counter before he’d disappeared into the back. I looked from the sash to the bear in the corner. If we stitched some pockets into a blanket and wrapped it around the beast’s hips—

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Hugh was slouched in the chair beside the fire, flipping through pages in my master’s new herbal. He hadn’t even looked up to speak.

“I wasn’t going to use that sash,” I said. “But I can’t just leave him like this.” I thought about it. “What if we gave him some breeches?”

Hugh shook his head. “You’re an odd sort of boy.”

Before I could respond, the front door creaked open. I smelled the man before I saw him, a nose-curling stink of rose-water perfume and body odor.

It was Nathaniel Stubb. An apothecary who owned a shop two streets over, Stubb waddled in to foul our air once a week. He came to spy on his closest competition, if “competition” was the right word. We sold actual remedies. He made his money selling Stubb’s Oriental Cure-All Pills, which, according to the handbills he slapped on every street corner, fixed every ailment from pox to plague. As far as I could tell, the only real effect Stubb’s Pills had was to reduce weight in the coin purse.

Still, his customers bought them by the handful. Stubb wore his profit for all to see: heavy, jeweled rings squeezing his fat fingers, a silver snake-head walking cane in his hand, a brocade doublet strained over a shiny silk shirt. The bottom of the shirt was puffed ridiculously through his open fly, supposedly the new fashion. I thought it made him look like he’d stuffed his drawers with meringue.

Stubb waved his cane curtly at Hugh. “Coggshall.”

Hugh nodded back.

“Where is he?” Stubb said.

Hugh answered before I could. “Benedict’s busy.”

Stubb straightened his doublet and eyed our shop. His gaze lingered, as usual, on the shelves behind the counter, where we kept our most valuable ingredients, like diamond dust and powdered gold. Finally, he seemed to notice me standing beside him. “Are you the apprentice?”

It being a holiday, I wasn’t wearing the blue apron that every apprentice was required to wear. I could see how that had confused him, since I’d only lived here for three years.

I nodded. “Yes, Master Stubb.”