The Apothecary's Curse (8 page)

“I crave my garden, Simon. One last time, I wish to walk its paths, sit amongst my roses. Who knows if I shall ever . . . ? Winter shall be upon us soon and I—” She turned back to the window, her shoulders slumped with the weight of impending death.

Simon swallowed hard past the knot in his throat as he crossed the room, drawing her into an embrace. “My . . . my darling,” he began, the tremble in his voice belying the smile he only barely managed. “My . . . my heart is light as
air
to see you awake and alert.” He was not persuasive, even to himself.

She was frailer than the last time he'd held her only the week before, her skin ghostly, her cheeks hollow. Her eyes were sunken and bruised. But the fire had returned to them. He brushed his lips across her forehead, breathing in the rosewater and honey of her bath soap. “You must be patient, my love. Indeed, it seems, yes, the fever is at last broken! But the November chill is the last thing you need right now, my darling.”

She appeared so much more herself, but he refused to be deluded. He only need pull down her gown for the truth to stare him in the face. “You shouldn't be about, my dear. Not yet.” After escorting her to the bed, he sat beside her, taking her hand in both of his, pressing a kiss into each finger before gathering her into his arms.

Breaking free, she protested. “My darling! I am much improved. If not the garden, then perhaps something else; I cannot stay abed forever—unless you stay with me,” she added with a sudden playfulness that caught him off guard.

Pressing him back against the pillows, she held him down with openmouthed kisses, her tongue gliding across the inside of his lower lip. “You see?” She pouted, holding his gaze.

Simon fought the wildfire of his desire, which surged like a tempest. “I do, my love, but you are yet too infirm to . . .” The beads of sweat on her brow evidenced her fatigue from just this small exertion. “It . . . it is nearly time for luncheon.”

Sophie wobbled to her feet. Perhaps the dining room was not so keen an idea. “Look, darling, rather than the both of us taking a tumble down those steep stairs, let's take luncheon out on the gallery. You love it there this time of day, and best of all, no stairs needed! I shall even carry you there, like a new bride!”

“No. I wish to walk, on my own,” she snapped, gently swatting away Simon's hands as she led the way down the hall toward the second-floor gallery.

“It is all arranged, my love. Mrs. McRory shall bring up our luncheon shortly.” Breathless, Simon dragged a heavy leather chair across thick carpet to sit beside his wife.

Miniature rainbows refracted from the chandelier's crystal prisms to every surface, and Sophie studied the two-story gallery as if to commit it to memory. “I have always loved sitting up here,” she said with regret. “It reminds me, especially at this hour, of fairy stories and enchanted castles, and soon I shall no longer be able to . . .”

Erceldoune's elixir weighed heavily in Simon's waistcoat pocket. The immediate crisis had passed; there would be no better time to confess the plan, and beg her to understand.

“My darling, since you are faring so much better, I wish to broach . . .”

She waved him off. “I wish only to sit peaceably with you. I know you are desperate for the means to help me, but my dear—”

Her protestations would do no good. Not now. “Before you utter a word in opposition, I ask you please to listen.” She would take it as James had: not well. But he would not keep it secret from her. “You recall the apothecary in Smithfield, of whom I have so often spoken, yes?”

“But not for months have I heard you mention him. What of it?”

“I have been to see him, and he has prepared for me . . . something—” With trembling fingers, Simon withdrew the phial. “I have acquired, my darling, a . . . medicine, powerful enough to treat . . . to vanquish . . . the tumors.”

Sophie rolled her eyes, holding up a hand. “Simon!”

They had been in this place too many times. He strode to the railing and gripped the wood with both hands, looking out over the central foyer, turned away from Sophie's gaze. “Please, love, hear me out at least.”

“Oh, Simon. Don't be nonsensical,” she said, an indulgent mother admonishing a little boy bearing a gift of flowers stolen from her own garden.

He pivoted to face her just as she stood, stumbling in the attempt. Two steps and he was kneeling by her side, setting her in the chair. She cradled his face in both her hands, lifting his face to hers.

“I have, my love, made peace with my death, as I beseech you to make yours. I would rather my life end now than for you to continue this futile search for something that exists only in some misguided fantasy realm.”

“Do
not
say this! If anything remains at my disposal to forestall . . . I must at least consider it, as outlandish as it may seem to you! Or to James! Please allow me this occupation, lest I go completely mad.” Her willingness to leave him was too much to bear.

“Stop,” she said, tender but resolute. “My love, hear me! False hope does me little good, and you less. I know you feel impotent to save me. Simon Bell of the celebrated medical family, honored and knighted, peerages for service to the Crown since the Tudors reigned. This I know! But an apothecary's tonic? Can you not comprehend how profoundly ridiculous the idea?”

He had no desire to row, to waste what little time they yet had. But she failed to comprehend the elixir was for
his
sake, not hers. Yes, it was selfish, but what if it worked? They would then have years, not days, or weeks, but a lifetime!

“Simon, my darling,” she whispered, her strength waning. “It is my time; acknowledge it, so when it finally comes to pass, be it tomorrow or next month, you
shall
be prepared.”

He refused to hear her. Cupping her cheek with a trembling hand, he drew a thumb down the arch of her cheek, confessing now to her the earnest truth. “When I beheld you lying in your bed this week, so still, so weak, my mind could only evince the end, an end I am with little power to forestall. If you die I shall be lost, and my only and most ardent desire shall be to join you in the grave.”

Sophie dropped her head into clenched hands. “Do not
dare
say this to me, Simon Bell. You—” She rose, her rebuke dripping with indignation. Tripping on her gown, she swooned into Simon's arms.

He carried her back to the boudoir. “My God, love, you're light as a feather,” he whispered into her hair.

She must take the elixir—and soon. It was the only chance remaining to save her. Yet, in the end, could he trust Erceldoune? Indeed, the apothecary had changed; he was so very bitter and angry. Perhaps due to the deaths of his wife and young son. Or had it been something harbored through the ten years they'd known each other, only now come to the surface?

Simon withdrew the cobalt phial, studying the label, its small, neat script, his thumb coming to rest upon the scarlet skull. Simon pushed from his mind the notion that Erceldoune would determine to get his revenge on the whole of medicine by harming an innocent woman, yet suspicion gnawed at the edges of Simon's thoughts.
No, Erceldoune is honorable amongst his fellow tradesmen. Surely, he would not . . .

Yet . . . the cobalt phial and its elaborate label obscured the contents. Why? What did Erceldoune not want him to see? Simon bounded the stairs from the gallery to his laboratory to examine the thing more carefully—before giving it to Sophie.

More than the library and even his study, the laboratory was Simon's private retreat. So many years as a boy, he would follow at his uncle's elbow like an obedient pup, as Dr. Samuel Bell, lion of medicine, tinkered and mixed, much to Simon's fascination. “One day, Simon, this laboratory, this home, this
legacy
shall be yours to preserve,” Uncle Samuel had promised. “Your brother shall inherit your father's lands, but this is for you, Simon.”

And now the remote and unadorned space in this grand home was both sanctuary and shrine for Simon, a place to reflect on the course of a patient's illness—and consider the great Bell legacy bequeathed to him. When a case was particularly thorny, Simon would pace the aisles between long, polished basalt benches and ask his long-deceased uncle for inspiration. And there were times, though rare, when Uncle Samuel obliged: the glimpse of a caliper, the label on a chemical jar neglected since Samuel Bell's days would enkindle an idea, illuminate a course of action. Samuel would surely disapprove of Simon's most recent pursuit. Or would he? Simon clutched the small phial.

What is this tiny powerful miracle, the ink-blue bottle no taller than my palm, not the width of two fingers?
Had Simon spoken the question aloud, or had that been Samuel's voice echoing in his ear?

Simon rested the phial on the bench, and the instruction scroll fell away from the glass, unfurling before him, almost of its own volition. The writing was in a clear but ornate Latin, in a hand more suited to another, bygone, time: “
Caveat actor
: All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; only the dose permits something not to be poisonous—and respectful handling of the substance of it.”

Simon could not drive from his head gnawing doubts about Erceldoune, which wove through every thought, every glimpse of the phial. And what was this warning about poison?
Caveat actor
, indeed. He took hold of the small bottle again, rolling it between his fingers, turning it this way and that as the wax seal holding in place the stopper turned soft from the heat of his hand. Half flaked away in his palm. He should set it down before the stopper came away entirely, read the instructions carefully, and carry them out to the letter.

The mullions rattled with a gust of wind. Simon jumped at the unexpected noise, and his grip on the phial slipped; he barely managed to rescue it from shattering on the floor. But then, a flash of pain seared through his left palm as the glass suddenly turned hot as a smithy's iron.

Somehow, he managed to set down the blazing vessel, staggering away from the bench, stunned, confused. But where had the top gotten to? How had it come undone? Squinting through tears of agony, he saw the stopper—or what remained of it—useless shards scattered at his feet.
Damnation!

Blistered and raw, Simon's hand burned like the flames of hell.
What manner of poison is this, which transforms its container to a boiling cauldron?
And how could he give this to Sophie? Would it not burn down her gullet, consume her from within?

He wrapped his hand in bandages made from his blouse, soaked in witch hazel found on a high shelf. It would be days until the sting abated.

Simon searched the long benches and drawers for a ground glass stopper that would fit the small phial, locating one that would do for the moment. He turned his attention again to the small scroll. There it was inked in red: “Handle only with gloved hands or toweling. Rapid oxidation upon exposure to the air will cause phial to heat quickly. Allow elixir to rest for exactly one minute and twenty seconds, then administer within five minutes after that. Discard remains.”

So that was it, a simple chemical reaction. The phial had already begun to cool as the reaction stabilized to equilibrium. But had the oxidation altered it? Rendered it useless? He read the balance of the instructions with care, finding in them nothing else but the dosage.

Perhaps he should return to Erceldoune forthwith, beg from him a second container of the stuff, explain what happened. But Erceldoune had been reluctant in the first place, and Simon doubted the apothecary would be at all sympathetic to his plight. Perhaps it was a sign, and he should simply abandon the plan entirely. The idea gnawed at his intestines.
No. I cannot give this up. Not yet.

As he descended the stairs, phial safely in his waistcoat pocket, Simon paused at the Cluny hanging from the third story down to the gallery floor. He'd always felt a kinship with this ancient tapestry, an incongruous piece of art among the portraits of his forbears, just as he fit equally ill among the distinguished generations of Drs. Bell. Simon knew he was no brilliant physician, able to distinguish one disease from the other with a single glance as they had ever been. And he was no James, politically astute, supremely confident, and socially skilled. But, preferring literature to anatomy, philosophy to chemistry, the breadth of Simon's interests forged within him an open mind, not contemptuous to possibilities unimaginable by more conventional peers, James included.

The Cluny was a metaphor for perfect synergy between myth and science. Uncle Samuel had long ago revealed the mysteries of the intricate needlework: “
Mon seul desir
.” The unicorn, the lion, the grand lady poised in front of her star-splashed pavilion—the master controlling the elements through science, yet unwilling to wholly surrender the magic of legend.

“The design signifies ‘understanding,'” Samuel had explained. “We have come so very far from the days of sorcerers and alchemists, magic and its like. But we cannot afford to dismiss their legacy. Who can know for certain what might have been in the mind of antiquity's alchemist and wherefrom his craft derived? What scientific secrets were held in journals and experiments between the lines of a capricious quest for the Philosopher's Stone and elixirs of life? This is why the tapestry hangs here, guiding the way, seemingly so out of place alongside a stairway—to honor the past, but not dwell within its confines.”

Why might it not be that an ancient manuscript enshrouded within its pages inestimable knowledge long ago dismissed by modern medicine?

And then he heard the scream.

CHAPTER 9

Sophie's scream ricocheted through the three stories of the central foyer. Simon leapt down the remaining steps to the gallery in a single bound, flying down the corridor to the boudoir.