The Taker (25 page)

The scene in the great hall was not what he’d expected. The count and his vassals seemed to be merely intoxicated, lolling in their seats or fallen to the floor, eyes closed, childish smiles on their faces, ropy muscles gone slack. They paid little notice as the physic made his farewells, leading Adair through the courtyard. In the gray predawn, they picked their way over the drawbridge and through the forest. Adair trudged behind the old man’s horse, and exhausted as he was, was grateful not to be carrying the urn.

The mystery of the physic’s ways slowly began to coalesce in Adair’s mind. On one hand, Adair was grateful for the warm, dry place to sleep and not to be working himself to daily exhaustion and an early grave as a field hand. Unlike his family, he had three meals a day, nearly all he could eat: stew, eggs, the occasional strip of roasted meat. He had sexual companionship, so he would not go insane with unsatisfied desire. On the other hand, Adair could not help but see it as a deal with the devil, even if it had been made against his will: there was a price to pay for a life of relative ease, and he sensed he would be given the bill eventually.

He received the first hint of the payment due one evening, when the physic took Adair and Marguerite to the woods. They walked for a long time, and since they were engaged in nothing more than putting one foot in front of the other, Adair saw the opportunity to ask a few questions of the old man.

“May I ask, master, why it is that you do all your work at night?” he asked, careful to sound as timid and guileless as possible.

At first the old man harrumphed, as though he wouldn’t dignify the question with an answer. But after a few moments—for who doesn’t like to talk about himself, no matter how trivial the questions—he cleared his throat to answer. “It is a habit, I suppose … It is the sort of work best done away from the prying eyes of others.” The physic breathed heavily as they went up a slight incline, and it wasn’t until they reached a level path that he continued. “The fact of the matter is, Adair, that this work is best done at night, for there is a power in the darkness, you know. It is from the darkness that these potions draw their strength.” He said this so matter-of-factly that Adair felt it would only reveal his ignorance to ask the old man to explain, and so he resumed his silence.

Eventually, they came to a place so wild and overgrown that it looked as if it had never been seen by human eyes. Around the roots of the poplars and larches was a proliferation of a strange plant, the broad and fan-shaped leaves standing on willowy stems high above the ground cover, waving to the trio of visitors.

The physic motioned for Marguerite to follow him. He led her to one of the plants, wrapped her hands around it, and then signaled for her to wait. Then he walked away from her, calling Adair to come with him. They walked until the maidservant had almost disappeared in the dimness, her white smock glowing in the moonlight.

“Cover your ears and be sharp about it, or you will be the worse for it,” he instructed Adair. Then he pantomimed for Marguerite to pull, which she did, throwing all her weight into one jerking movement. Despite having his hands clasped tight over his ears, Adair swore he heard a muffled noise erupt from the plant as it was ripped from the ground. Adair looked at the physic and lowered his hands, feeling conspicuous.

Marguerite trotted up like a dog following its master, carrying the plant in her hands. The physic took it from her, brushing away the dirt clinging to the hair roots. “Do you know what this is?” he asked Adair as he inspected the thick, five-pointed knob, bigger than the span of a
man’s hand. “This is a mandrake root. See how it’s shaped like a man? Here are the arms, the legs, the head. Did you hear it scream just now, as it was pulled from the ground? The sound will kill any man who hears it.” The physic shook the root at Adair. It did look like a stubby, misshapen man. “This is what you need to do to gather more mandrake root—remember this well when I send you out for more. Some physics use a pure black dog to pull up the root, but the dog will die when he hears the scream, like any man. We don’t have to bother with killing dogs since we have Marguerite, do we?”

Adair didn’t like that the physic had included him in his comment about Marguerite. He wondered, ashamed, if the old man knew about their trysts and condoned Adair’s casual treatment of her. Indeed, the physic might liken it to his own brusque treatment of the housekeeper, using her like an ox to pull a stump from a field, and, though she was deaf and dumb, he clearly had so little regard for human life that it didn’t matter to him if she lived or died by pulling out the root. Of course, it was possible that the mandrake’s shriek wouldn’t really kill her even if she had been able to hear it, and that the old man had only told Adair the story to frighten him. But Adair filed the tidbit of knowledge about the mandrake away in his memory, with the other morsels of wisdom the physic had shared with him, for use another day.

What little enjoyment Adair took from his new life began to fade as he grew increasingly unhappy with his solitary routine. Boredom gave way to curiosity. He made a thorough inspection of the bottles and jars in the physic’s study, then took inventory of the wider room, until he knew every inch of the upper floor of the keep. He had enough common sense not to venture into the cellar.

Without asking the physic’s permission, Adair started taking the horse on afternoon rides into the countryside. He reasoned that it was good for the horse to be exercised between the physic’s infrequent rides. But sometimes, when he’d put many miles between him and the keep, a voice would tempt him to flee, to keep riding and never
return. After all, how would that old man find Adair without a horse to carry him? However, Adair also knew that with the time that had elapsed since he’d arrived at the keep, he wouldn’t be able to find his family, and without a family to return to, there was no point in leaving. Here he had food and shelter. If he ran away, he’d have nothing and would be a fugitive for the time he still owed the physic. After a long moment looking at any road that led away from his prison, he would reluctantly turn the horse around and ride back to the keep.

Over time, Adair thought the physic was beginning to warm to him. At night as they worked on a potion, he’d catch the old man staring at him less harshly than usual. The physic started to tell Adair a little bit about the things in the jars as he crushed dried seeds or separated the herbs for storage, such as the names of the more obscure plants and how they might be put to use. There was to be a second visit to the castle over which the old man was practically ebullient, rubbing his hands as he paced around the keep.

“We have a new order from the count, for which we shall start preparations tonight,” he chortled, as Adair hung up the old man’s cloak on a peg by the door.

“Start what, master?” Adair asked.

“A special request from the count. A very difficult task, but one I have performed before.” He scurried back and forth across the timber floor, gathering jars of ingredients on the worktable. “Fetch the large cauldron, and build up the fire—it has almost gone out.”

Adair watched from the hearth. First, the physic selected a sheet from his handwritten recipes and read it over quickly before propping it against a jar to consult. He glanced at the paper from time to time as he measured ingredients into the warming pot. He took down things from the shelves that he’d never troubled with before: mysterious bits of animals—snouts, leathery pieces of skin, mummified nubs of flesh. Powders, shiny crystals of white and copper. He poured in an exact amount of water, and then had Adair hang the heavy pot from the spit. As the water began to boil, the physic took a handful of
yellow powder from a vial and threw it on the fire: it flamed in a puff of smoke, emitting the unmistakable stench of brimstone.

“I’ve never seen this mixture before, have I, master?” Adair asked.

“No, you have not.” He paused. “It is a potion that makes anyone who drinks it invisible.” He searched Adair’s face for a reaction. “What do you think of that, boy? Do you believe that can truly happen?”

“I have never heard of such a thing.” He knew better than to disagree with the old man.

“Perhaps you will get to see it with your own eyes. The count will have some of his best men drink this potion, and they will become invisible for one night. Can you imagine what an army can do when it cannot be seen?”

“Yes, master,” Adair replied, and from that moment, he began to think of the physic’s spells and potions in a different way.

“Now, you must watch this cauldron, and let the water boil down, as you have done before. When it has boiled down, you must take it off the fire and let it cool. When you’ve done that, you may go to sleep, but not before. These ingredients are rare, and that is the last of a few of them, so we cannot afford to ruin this batch. Watch the pot carefully,” he said over his shoulder as he descended the staircase. “I will see how well you’ve done at dusk tonight.”

Adair had no trouble staying awake that night. He sat bolt upright against the hard stone wall, realizing that the old man had lied to him and his father. The old man was not a physic, but an alchemist, maybe a necromancer. No wonder the people in the village avoided him. It wasn’t just because of the turncoat noble. They were frightened of the old man, and with good reason: he was very likely in league with the devil. God knew what they suspected of Adair.

This potion was not like the previous ones and took forever to shed its moisture. Dawn started to break before an appreciable amount had evaporated. But through the last hours of the night, as he watched a slow vapor rise from the cauldron’s depths, Adair’s gaze kept wandering back to the stack of handwritten papers on the desk. Surely there
were formulas in that pile more intriguing—and more profitable—than the ability to turn men invisible for one night. The old man probably knew how to make fail-safe love potions and talismans to bring great wealth and power to the owner. And surely any alchemist should know how to turn base metal into gold. Even though Adair couldn’t read the recipes, he didn’t doubt that he could find someone who would, for a piece of the profits.

The longer he thought about it, the more restless he became. He could hide the papers in the sleeve of his tunic and sneak past Marguerite, who would rise at any minute. Then he’d walk all day and get as far from the keep as he could. He thought fleetingly about taking the horse, but there his courage failed. To steal property as valuable as a horse was a death offense. The old man could justifiably seek Adair’s life. But the recipes … even if the old man could track his servant down, he probably wouldn’t dare take Adair before the count. The physic wouldn’t want the villagers to know how powerful he really was, or that his mystical knowledge was written down where it could be stolen or destroyed.

Adair’s heart pounded, until he could no longer ignore its wild exhortation. It was almost a relief, giving in to this desire.

Adair tightly rolled as many papers as he dared take at once and slid them up his sleeve just as Marguerite began stirring. Before leaving, he hoisted the cauldron off the spit and left it to cool on the hearth. Once outside, he chose a path he knew, one that would take him to Hungarian territory, to a stronghold where Romanian sympathizers would hesitate to go. He walked for hours, cursing his impetuousness, for he hadn’t thought to bring provisions. When he started to get light-headed, and the sun had started to slip on the horizon, Adair figured he’d traveled far enough and took refuge in a barn in the middle of a hayfield. It was a desolate place with nothing about, not even livestock, so Adair felt he’d traveled a safe distance and no one would search for him here. He fell asleep in the hay a free man.

He was jarred awake by a hand at his throat, jerking him to his feet
and then, inexplicably, off the ground. Adair couldn’t see at first who had him, the air thick with night, but as his eyes adjusted, he refused to believe them. The figure holding him was slight … wizened … but in less than a minute Adair knew it was the old man by the smell of him, the stink of brimstone and decay.

“Thief! This is how you reward my patronage and trust?” the physic roared with outrage, and threw Adair to the ground with such force that he skidded all the way to the back of the barn. Before he could regain his breath, the old man was on him again, clutching him by the shoulder and again lifting him off the ground. Adair was aflame with pain and confusion: the physic was ancient, how could a weak old man lift him so easily? It had to be an illusion, or a fantasy induced by a blow to the head. Adair had only a minute to ponder this before the old man threw him to the ground a second time, then began hitting and kicking him. The blows were tremendously powerful. Adair’s head chattered in pain, and he was sure he would black out. He felt himself carried, felt the movement of air all around. They were traveling at a great rate of speed, by horseback, but it seemed unlikely that the old charger would be capable of such speed. Surely it must all be a delusion, he told himself, produced by some elixir the old man had forced on him in his sleep. It was too magical and frightening to be real.