The Apothecary's Curse (14 page)

He'd avoided Sophie's boudoir, the one place he feared more than any other on earth. Now he was pulled there as if tethered to it by an invisible strand of twine embedded beneath his ribs.

Simon opened the door and stood at the threshold, holding onto the frame to steady himself. Her wardrobe was open, and he wanted nothing more than to lose himself in the folds of her gowns. Two steps and he fell upon them, holding his face to the velvets and satins, brocades and silks. He breathed in her scent, her bath salts, her perfume, which lingered on the fine fabrics. She was almost there, so very close, caressing his hair, whispering to him that all would be well.

“Simon . . .”

An airy voice wound through his mind, calling out to him. He turned in its direction, heart pounding, knowing it was only the voice of his own despair calling out from the depths of the abyss. But there she was.

“Oh my God, Sophie! How . . . how is it possible?” Staggering to the bed, Simon beheld her standing before him, corporeal, more than a vision; he reached out to touch her, exquisite in sapphire velvet, dark hair cascading about her shoulders. Was he mad or was this a ghost come to haunt him? He was terrified and elated.

“The apothecary should not die, Simon. And certainly not because you refuse to speak up on his behalf.”

“It is not for my silence that he hangs, but for the murder of that girl.” In truth, Simon could not imagine the apothecary murdering anyone, much less that particular girl. Yet he was little disposed to get involved despite three letters from Erceldoune's lawyer begging his assistance. He'd watched them burn on the hearth, ignored.

“It was his poison, after all, that killed you, Sophie. He hates physicians, all of us; he blames us for his wife's death. Perhaps he was taking his revenge upon me as proxy for my brother physicians!”

“You don't really believe that!”
She sat beside him on her bed, so near Simon could smell her lavender bath salts. He massaged the bridge of his nose. He was so bloody exhausted and had little inclination to argue with a figment of his imagination, ghost, or whatever this specter of his wife might be, however pleasing her countenance, how demurely she glanced at him. . . .

“Are you so certain it was Erceldoune's elixir that killed me? Perhaps it was simply my time or your error. A relapse of fever or a hundred other things?”

Simon had thought of all those things, especially after the accident with the bottle. “I know poison's footprints, Sophie.” But the argument was weak, and he knew it. “The doubt shall always live in my mind, love. I am certain there are plenty of others in Smithfield will speak up on his behalf—those that know him and can give real testimony, not the eavesdropping of a conversation. And what if I should be questioned about your death? Would that not go worse for him? As for me, I've nothing left to live for. Now you're gone, I shall drink down the remainder of the terrible elixir and end it!”

Sophie stood and stalked across the room to her escritoire, arms crossed, tapping her foot. Simon was well acquainted with this pose.

“Suicide is against God's laws, Simon, as well you know.”

Simon tried to will her away. “Go. Please?” It could not be normal to be speaking thus to an apparition.

“You then shall be condemned to burn for eternity and never be with me.”

“It is not suicide, Sophie; it is judgment. And it is just. What I did—”

“Was out of love for me. I would have died soon enough anyway. Listen to me, Simon!”
She propelled herself from the desk, coming to light in front of him as he sat, head in his hands.
“Yes, love, you hastened my death—perhaps—but do you not see what a slow and dreadful ending it might have been for me? I thank God Almighty that my suffering is at an end!”

He felt in his pocket for the smooth lines of the apothecary bottle, which he'd kept close at hand since that dreadful night.

“Dr. Bell!” Mrs. McRory pounded her fist on the door. Simon jumped at the unexpected sound. Sophie had vanished. He went to the door, opening it a crack.

“Are you all right, sir? I've been knocking for minutes, and your cousin has arrived to join you and Lady Bell for luncheon. And you know your mother, if I may be so bold; she grows impatient at your absence.”

“Tell James . . .” What? Just what should he tell his cousin that would not send him bounding up the stairs two at a time in panic? “Tell them I shall be down presently . . . and leave me be. And please serve; do not wait upon me.” Simon listened as Mrs. McRory's footfalls grew more distant. He withdrew the phial, clasping it in his palm.

Now my love, it is time for me to join you.
Simon searched the room, but Sophie had not returned. He settled into her bed, breathing in the scent of her that now had nearly faded away.

Simon considered the cobalt phial, turning it in his hand. Carefully, he slid away the glass stopper and placed the bottle to his lips, spilling the entire contents down his throat. A metallic taste lingered on his tongue.
Mercury? Silver, perhaps.
The bitterness of bloodroot and the anesthetic numb of opium and clove . . . garlic.
Arsenic?

Simon waited for death to take him as his thoughts decayed into chaos, fragmenting and rearranging themselves into random particles. He observed them caught in the sunbeams that played across the ceiling, radiant dust motes as the drug worked through him. He followed them from his place on her bed, enraptured; colors he had never before experienced swirled before him, then shattered on the floor.

He sensed the poison working through his organs, an evil imp sliding astride the twists and turns of his blood vessels and organs—alive and hungry. How long would it be? Arsenic worked fast, but what of this oxidized elixir? Would it course through to his liver and lungs? Or would it set its sights on his heart and brain?

“Dr. Bell!” Someone was jostling him, shouting his name. “Dr. Bell! Waken up! Waken up!”
Mrs. McRory?
The yelling echoed distantly, yet she must have been nearby. The shaking stopped, and then the soft sound of a closing door. Peace at last.

Simon awoke into darkness. When had that happened? It had been light when . . . so very bright. Halos of color now traced in an ellipse around the periphery of vision in the dark, evaporating as he emerged into painful clarity. The door opened.

A sharp pain lanced through his head before traversing to his stomach, where it pawed and clawed until he retched. He attempted to move his hand, the one that didn't feel like a bar of lead, flexing his fingers.

“Simon, thank God. What the devil happened?”

“James?” he groaned, his parched throat refusing to cooperate. When he ventured to sit up, his head pounded, forcing him back.

“Easy there, Simon. We've been trying for hours to rouse you. Your poor mother is beside herself—”

James helped him to sit. Still, the room swam as he forced himself to focus on the steady horizon of the window frame until another round of nausea passed.

“What is this? Is this what you drank, Simon?” James retrieved the elixir bottle from the floor where it had fallen, holding it up for Simon to explain. “Tell me what it is, so I might understand what in damnation you were attempting here!”

“It is of no matter, James, I—” Simon swung his legs over the mattress, testing them; they were rubber. The room again spun, and Simon fell through the cool, dark chasm of nothingness.

CHAPTER 17

Gaelan scoured the half-empty courtroom, searching the noisy crowd in the heated haze. Two weeks, and finally the travesty of a trial would be over. It would be but the start, Gaelan knew, of an uncharted journey into purgatory. Tremayne, leaning against a wall, glowered at the jury, his arms folded as he stood guard lest anyone might come forward to plead on his behalf.

None but one man might do him some good before the black cap appeared upon the judge's wig. Bell was invulnerable to Lyle Tremayne, but nowhere to be seen. And why should he be? Sophie Bell was dead, and, from what he'd heard, by poisoning. Gaelan would not have been surprised to see Bell himself standing in the dock shouting, “Murderer!”

Again, and again, Gaelan replayed it in his mind, recounting each step taken to create the elixir. He'd made no obvious mistake, yet Sophie Bell was dead. What slight askew turn of his pestle or half second too long in the crucible might have turned this healing elixir into a deadly poison? Or had Bell corrupted the elixir some way? Had he failed to follow the directions? There was no way to know.

Gaelan glanced up toward Sally Mills, handkerchief in her hand, dabbing at tears as she stood in the front row of the gallery. He'd fought her silly notion of speaking for him at trial until finally she agreed to hold her silence. Tremayne would destroy her in a trice, and that inn had been part of her family for generations. He could not allow it.

Tremayne stepped up to the dock, his hand on a Bible. Gaelan forced himself to stay calm, hands clamped on the railing, biting his lip through the blackguard's lies until he tasted the salt of his own blood.

“The man deals in the black arts, was what my sweet Lil said to me as she lay dying from one of Erceldoune's special potions. Poisoned her, he did. Told her it was going to make her better. Well if dead is
better
, I suppose it's what he did.” Tremayne laughed, a low growl. “He should be burnt, but we're too
civilized
for that nowadays. Well, I suppose the hangman's noose is just as effective!”

Able to stomach no more, Gaelan leapt from his chair. Two hands took hold of his arms, shoving him down hard onto the wooden bench.

“Perjurer!” he cried before his lawyer stopped him with a hand to his shoulder.

“You do yourself no favors, Mr. Erceldoune,” he whispered. “Hush now, else—”

Every muscle in Gaelan's body twisted and clenched; he felt like a trussed pig. He glared at Tremayne as the man passed but inches away, walking from the dock back to his post near the door. The jury was dismissed, only to return a moment later, faces set and sour.

“Stand, Gaelan Erceldoune,” pronounced the judge, the black silk cap fluttering on his head.

Gaelan stood coiled and silent. He would accord Tremayne no sort of victory, never let him witness the panic that pulsed through his veins.

“Mr. Gaelan Erceldoune, apothecary of Smithfield in London, you shall be returned to Newgate Prison, where you were last confined, and from there you shall be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and thereafter your body buried within the precincts of the prison. May the Lord—”

The hangman's knot would secure around his neck, and he would stand unafraid, unbowed, like his father. Would the gallows surgeon be apathetic, declaring him dead the moment he'd lost consciousness, or would he be clever and wait for a death that would never come? Gaelan prayed for the former. Onto a barrow he'd be thrown for transport to the prison graveyard. Night would fall, and he would make his escape into the woods, running hard, not stopping until he'd reached the shore—a corpse misplaced or stolen, one among the many. Who would notice?

But luck had not been with him of late. What if his body refused to surrender as he dangled, the heavy, coarse rope slicing, burning into his neck as he struggled for air, praying for a death that refused to take him? Led from the courtroom through the mob of spectators, Gaelan could not purge from his mind the vision of such a spectacle, nor its aftermath.

A clang of iron gates echoed behind Gaelan with ominous finality, the world receding with every shuffle of his bound feet. Deeper and deeper within the old fortress walls he trudged, turnkeys at each elbow, through a labyrinth of passageways and yards, gates and gratings, until they descended to his cell. Finally, he was alone.

A stingy ray of bleak light filtered through a single filthy barred window. Dimmer and dimmer it grew, until gray day turned to black night. Rats skittered through the straw, keeping him vigilant. They awaited his sleep with waning patience, for then they would feast—he would provide a better meal than spiders and cockroaches. But he would resist as long as he could.

The darkness mingled with his exhaustion to conjure menacing phantoms of straw and insects, yet he refused to submit.
Concentrate, Gaelan! Do not fall to sleep!

A fixed point might settle his nerves. Imagining Stella Polaris, his mind's eye drew from it, the outline of the Starry Plough, neighboring groups of stars and their constellations. The entire night sky unfolded in the confines of his small cell. Reciting their familiar names aloud in Greek, then Latin, soothed him, but the sedate music of the languages became a lullaby, blotting out the yells of the condemned and the turnkeys, propelling him to float further and further from wakefulness. . . .