Alchemy and Meggy Swann by Karen Cushman Read Free Book Online

cries and moans of the little girls petting Louise: "You cannot cook her! You would never eat her!"
    Louise looked smugly up at Roger, stretched out her long neck, and bit him on the knee.
    "Hellborn goose! Fat-headed pignut! In sooth you should be roasted, you clay-brained louse!" Roger shouted, and he drew back his foot to kick her, but the children seized his leg, crying and calling to Mistress Grimm for help.
    "Enough," said Mistress Grimm, pulling the girls from Roger. "I can easily put this right. Let the goose remain here with us for a time," she said to Meggy, "and find your father's dinner at a cookshop."
    Louise would be saved. It was what Meggy had hoped for, but there was still a difficulty. "I have but a ha'penny," she said.
    "Roger, give her coins. Fourpence, belike."
    Rubbing his knee, Roger scowled and began to protest, but Mistress Grimm reached out a hand as plump as a summer melon and pinched his ear.
    Roger grimaced and grinned at the same time, looking much like the gargoyles adorning the drainpipes. "Certes, with all haste, for I be always obedient to your majesty's will," he said to Mistress Grimm with a bow, and he offered Meggy some coins.
    "Now," Mistress Grimm said, "all is well. Sit you down, girl, and I will fetch a mug of warm, spiced beer. You look as cold as a dead man's nose."
    As Meggy sat, a swarm of little girls flew at her, asking, "For what are those sticks? Why do you walk that way? Are you wife to Roger? Where be you from? Play you games with cards? Primero, trumpit, or gleek?"
    "Here, sweeting, this will warm you," Mistress Grimm said to Meggy as she returned with the mug. And to her girls, "Soft, soft, my dears. Do give the lass a chance to breathe. You remember Roger telling us of Mistress Swann with the black eyes he so admires. Dark as the plums of the blackthorn tree, he said."
    Mistress Grimm and the girls all peered into Meggy's eyes as if to see for themselves. Mistress Grimm nodded, Roger blushed, and Meggy felt herself grow warm, from the beer, the compliment, and the knowledge of Roger's discomfiture.
    "You, girls, move away and cease troubling Mistress Swann," Mistress Grimm said as she busied herself about the room. In her black and yellow she seemed a vast bumblebee buzzing about, straightening a bench here, patting a head there, and dropping kisses on little faces. "Stop," she shouted to the boys on the stairs. "I have told you, no dicing in here! Roger, take them upstairs and set them to learning their lines." She finally landed on a bench across from Meggy and began fanning herself with her wings—nay, her apron.
    Roger herded the boys, shoving and arguing, up the stairs. The girls moved away from Meggy and then crowded around her again as she sipped the beer.
    "Carter Simpson says all crooked people are witches," said a little girl with flaxen hair and dimples.
    "Be you a witch?" asked another little dimpled, flaxen-haired girl.
    Meggy thought to make a horrid face and shake her sticks, but the beer and the fire and the welcome had gentled her, so she simply replied, "Were I a witch, would I not cast a spell to make my legs straight and strong and turn my walking sticks into sausages?"
    There was silence for a moment; then, "Belike you are right," said one.
    "Carter Simpson is a dolt," said the other. "And his breath smells like the backside of a goat."
    "Enough of your chatter, my girls," said Mistress Grimm. "Mistress Swann's ears are spinning."
    There was silence again, but again it did not last. The tallest girl, also flaxen-haired but not dimpled, said, "I am right pleased to present myself to you, Mistress Swann. I am Violet Velvet."
    "Named for Lady Ariana's ball gown in
The Revenge of Lord Gerald.
What a fine costume it was," said Mistress Grimm with a sigh.
    Violet Velvet continued. "These be the twins, Ivory Silk and Silver Damask." The dimpled girls smiled at Meggy.
    Meggy looked at Mistress Grimm, who obliged. "Aphrodite's and Athena's garb from the last