A Golden Fury

is France.”
“You don’t have an accent,” said Dominic.
“I learned English from my mother,” I said. “French, too.”
Thinking of her was as painful as thinking of my father. I frowned.
For a moment I thought Dominic might say more. He looked as though he wanted to, but instead he turned left onto a wider and busier street. The buildings were fronted with shops here, and in a few yards Dominic stopped in front of a bookseller’s. We passed through an archway into a very narrow, covered alley. I followed Dominic up two flights of stone stairs and watched him set down the trunk and try the door at the top.
“It’s locked,” he said, and frowned. “I should have thought to ask for the key.”
“He should have thought to give it,” I said.
Dominic glared at the doorknob. “You could come down to the tavern until he gets back. I imagine you’d like supper.”
I was on the verge of denying it, out of habit. My mother always forgot to eat, too absorbed in her work, and found it disappointing when I preferred regular meals. But I was hungry, in fact, and there was a pleasant smell of bread coming from across the alley.
“I would, yes.” The words came out sounding defiant, and I glanced at Dominic in case he found it strange. He could have no idea whom I was defying by admitting a strong preference for food over hunger.
He lugged the trunk down the stairs again and down another set under the first floor. The tavern, it turned out, was a spacious vaulted cellar, sparsely inhabited, dotted with tables between the stone arches. Dominic pulled out a chair for me at one of them, then went to the bar in the back. I looked around while I waited and quickly noticed that I was the only woman here, as well. The few patrons were men, gentlemanly in appearance, but not in manners. They stared at me openly. I assumed my most forbidding expression, one I had practiced often on my mother’s last patron before the Comte. It was a mixture of contempt and boredom that had usually frozen him quite effectively. I was still wearing it when Dominic came back, which perhaps explained why he left an empty chair between us and didn’t try to make conversation.
A boy brought us a platter of food, some roast beef and boiled potatoes. After a few moments of attentive eating, I started to feel more warmly toward Dominic, despite the ill-mannered way he hunched over his plate.
“Thank you for supper,” I said. He nodded, mouth too full to reply.
“So you aren’t a student,” I continued. “But you work with my—with Mr. Vellacott?”
Dominic looked up. He had caught my slip. However unpolished his manners, he had a sharp mind. He swallowed his food.
“I do,” he said.
“Are you an alchemist, then?”
“Not really. Just a useful hand in the laboratory,” he said. “How do you know about—about that?”
“Is it a secret?” I asked. Traditionally, alchemy wasn’t considered a respectable science within the academy, but I thought Vellacott had made a place for his work here.
“Not exactly,” said Dominic. “It’s just not very well known. Most of the undergraduates think Mr. Vellacott only does chymistry. That’s what he teaches them.”
“Where is his laboratory, then?” I asked.
Dominic had another bite of beef, and he took his time chewing it. “I reckon you better ask him that,” he said.
I sat back and regarded him. I was beginning to feel irrationally irritated.
“Is that why he employs you? Because you’re so good at keeping your mouth shut you hardly know how to open it?”
“That’s part of it.” He looked at me steadily for a moment, unsmiling. “Mr. Vellacott does like his secrets.”
I could hardly miss the challenge. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that it was no fault of mine that no one here knew about me, when my father came in.
“There you are, Miss Hope,” he said. “I wasn’t sure where you’d got to.”
“The door was locked,” I said. “Dominic was kind enough to buy me dinner.”
“Ah, yes,” said Vellacott. “Thank you, Dominic. Why don’t we go—upstairs—”
Vellacott looked around the cellar, obviously nervous. I thanked Dominic, then left with my father.
Vellacott’s rooms were rather spare—two bedrooms adjoining a parlor, where I sat while he paced around. There were two plush chairs around a small tea table and a window that looked out over the street. It was clear that he hadn’t lived here long. There were few possessions in the room, no pictures or other such attempts to make the place a home. There was, however, a less faded square on the moss-colored wallpaper. So it seemed his attempts at decorating had extended just as far as removing a frame.
“I ordered tea,” he explained, looking out the window. “It should be here any moment.”
The professor’s obvious discomfort had a strangely calming effect on me. He was afraid of me, and that meant I had some kind of power. I tried to put aside the disappointment nagging at the back of my mind and taking the form of the knowing voice of my mother. Never pin your hopes on a man, she always said, though she never took her own advice.
The tea arrived, and Vellacott set down the tray on the table.
“Sugar?” he asked.
“No, thank you,” I said without thinking. I rather liked sugar in my tea, but we never took it that way at home.
Vellacott made a production of pouring the tea, stirring his own with more than the necessary attention. The silence stretched on long enough that I wanted badly to break it, to make conversation and put him at ease. But I didn’t. I needed to know what he would say.
He sat back, his nervous glances at me becoming more frequent and obvious.
“I didn’t catch your first name, Miss Hope,” he said, finally.
“Theosebeia,” I said.
His eyes widened.
“She—she named you that?”
Theosebeia was a pupil of the famous Egyptian alchemist Zosimos. My father would know that.
“Everyone calls me