Quill and the Quandary of Grafton Square
Keith Parker
In Grafton Square dwelt Mr. Ambrose Quill, an alchemist whose tinctures and powders drew whispered condemnations behind lace-curtained windows. Eyes heavy, Quill paused from his calculations and peered through smoke-stained glass at an unusually young lamplighter polishing his brass snuffer twice before trimming the wick. The boy’s sleeves hung past his wrists like manacles of cloth—a uniform borrowed from some elder tradesman.
Quill pursed his lips. His heart went out to the lad; respectability here demanded perfection even from fire. He turned back to his crooked table, where a liquid of singular hue awaited its phial.
The Square, bricked and cobbled in geometric precision, was overseen by a magistrate whose unibrow cast a shadow longer than the vestry hall. He endured Quill only because the alchemist’s lease had been inherited from a family of unimpeachable standing. Moreover, certain gentlemen at the club, though outwardly censorious of his pursuits, were quietly perplexed by the steadiness of Quill’s receipts, which seemed to flow as reliably as any solicitor’s fees.
The townsfolk prided themselves upon their uprightness, quoting Psalms as readily as they recited the market prices of coal, and they viewed even mild frivolity as a trespass against His divine order. In his narrow shop—its tables crooked and shelves overflowing— Quill devised powders that could make a rooster crow at midnight. The lamplighter lad, whenever his duties allowed, lingered at the doorway, wide-eyed at the jars and fumes, as if Quill’s oddities were a carnival staged for him alone.
Quill put a finger to his lips. A year ago, the lamplighter had been publicly and corporally punished for removing the nails from a barrister’s banister. A kindred spirit, that youngster, but it was the boy’s own fault for getting caught.
***
One chill evening later that week, when fog clung to the bricks, Quill prepared a draught he labeled the Elixir of Unmasking.
With a crooked grin he poured it into the punch bowl at the Assembly Hall, where aldermen in stiff collars and their porcelain-cheeked wives gathered for a lecture on temperance, prefaced, as all such lectures were, by a reading from Leviticus:
“Do not drink wine, or strong drink thee; nor thy brothers with thee; lest ye die.”
As the clock tolled eight, the elixir stirred to life: rouge melted, wigs slipped off. As the starched facades dropped away, blemishes, scars, and hungers long concealed were revealed. The magistrate’s unibrow turned to ash.
Shouts ensued. As did screams. And many a gloved hand was put over a mouth.
Quill, lurking in a gallery above, smiled with teeth as white as spilled lime. He folded his arms across his chest.
“I am the conjurer of truths, liberator of secret appetites,” he said to no one.
Nearby, the lamplighter boy was heard to say, “Beg pardon, sir, but there’s a booger on your nose. Fear not, though, for I’ve a draught that might cure it.”
Quill smiled and then ushered the youngster out a rear exit.
***
By morning, a committee in mourning-black coats marched to Quill’s door, brandishing ordinances and sermon-quotations like torches. One alderman, his voice hoarse with fury, declared:
“For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.”
The words struck the smoky air, yet they found not the alchemist but only the remnants of his craft: phials shattered in deliberate ruin, manuscripts scorched into ash, and a single note pinned with a scalpel to the workbench.
“Your order,” it read, “is a mask I will always unmake.”
At high tea, a woman swore she had witnessed Quill slipping into the fog that morning.
A gentleman smoking a cigar imported from Havana claimed that Quill evaporated as would the Devil himself, leaving but the acrid tang of brimstone behind. The gentleman flicked ashes as he said this.
In the weeks and months that followed, whenever roses bloomed black or pastors stuttered due to their Sunday morning hangovers, whispers of Quill returned like a contagion, for though Grafton Square quickly rebuilt its walls of propriety, the memory of his mischief gnawed on, proving that laughter itself bears fangs.
And across town, in a Somers Town lodging house, the lamplighter lad began to receive, quite unexpectedly, a monthly stipend from an unknown benefactor, accompanied by whispers from amongst his betters that, when grown, he intended to open a shop of his own in Grafton Square.
Keith Parker
Keith Parker writes speculative fiction that ranges from zany to creepy. In 2024-25, his stories have appeared in Four Tulips, Illustrated Worlds, Flash Phantoms, Suddenly & Without Warning, 4lph4num3ric, the Freedom Fiction Journal, SciFanSat.com, Six Sentences, 10x10 Flash, and Bruiser Magazine. He’s been publishing fiction since the 1990s, which means he's old. Keith is married to his college sweetheart; together they studied physics, history, and beer. He has no plans to stop writing, no matter how bad he gets.