The Apothecary's Daughter (13 page)

Henry climbed on top of her and pushed her legs apart with his knee. He began to move his hips, trying unsuccessfully to enter
her.

Opening her eyes, she was confused to see his teeth were bared in a grimace as he stared at some point over her shoulder.

‘Henry?’ she whispered.

‘Shh!’ he hissed. All tenderness for her seemed to have disappeared and his breathing was ragged as he scrabbled between her
legs, probing her with impatient fingers and attempting to push himself into her. He had a torn fingernail and it scraped
repeatedly against her soft flesh, making her whimper.

He was heavy and the movement of his hips grating against her own became increasingly uncomfortable until Susannah wondered
how much longer she could bear it. At last, close to tears, she whispered, ‘Henry?’

He froze. ‘What?’ His voice was hoarse.

‘You’re hurting me.’

‘Don’t talk!’

‘I’m sorry but you’re hurting—’

‘Shut up! Don’t talk to me
now
!’

He ground his hips against hers again and she let out a sob of distress.

‘Damnation!’ He became still and sank down heavily on top of her, his breath rasping in her ear.

She felt him begin to soften against her thigh.

‘It’s no good,’ he muttered. ‘I must have been mad to think I could do this.’

Shocked, Susannah lay motionless, waiting to see what would happen next.

Henry rolled off her, yanked the sheet from the foot of the bed and wrapped it around his shoulders. He turned his back and
lay, unspeaking, in a rigid mound.

Outside the church clock tolled the hour.

Susannah stayed quite still, not daring to wipe away the tears that ran down her cheeks and soaked the pillow. What had she
done wrong? She didn’t know anything about a wife’s duties in the bedroom but surely this wasn’t right?

Henry was silent for a long time and Susannah suspected that he was as wide awake as she was.

After an eternity, the church clock rang again and then Henry let out a muffled snore.

In the morning she was woken by the sound of a cart clattering over the cobbles. Light seeped through the cracks in the shutters
and cast a pale luminosity over the walls. It took her a moment to recognise the unfamiliar room. Abruptly she turned her
head on the pillow. Beside her, Henry still slept, his mouth open and his breath sour.

As the events of the previous night flooded back she relived the
embarrassment and failure of the marital act. She had disappointed her new husband in some way and she had no idea how to
rectify the situation. She felt gingerly between her legs. She was sore and bruised but there didn’t seem to be any lasting
damage. She glanced again at Henry, fearful he would wake and she would have to face him. It was a peculiar thing, an act
of such intimacy between two people who were not much more than strangers. But in time they would be strangers no longer and
perhaps all would be comfortable and easy between them. Meanwhile she was lying there naked and wanting only to rectify that
before Henry awoke.

She slipped out of bed, retrieved her nightshift from the floor and quickly pulled it over her head before splashing her hands
and face in the bowl on the washstand. Glancing at Henry’s still sleeping form, she tiptoed over to her trunk. Taking out
the little marquetry box and the pearl pendant, she put them on the dressing table next to her comb, together with a pot of
toothpowder that she had made herself, her Turkish toothbrush and a bottle of lavender water. Since Henry still slept, she
dressed quietly and crept downstairs.

Peg waited for her in the kitchen. Though willing, she was small and undernourished for her fourteen years, with a freckled
face and earnest grey eyes. She wore a vulgar, ruffled and beribboned blue dress with a cheap lace petticoat, which displayed
too much of her bony little chest and was entirely unsuitable for a kitchen maid. What had Henry been thinking of to hire
such a child as sole servant in a large house, wondered Susannah. ‘Does your family live nearby?’ she asked.

‘They all died, you see,’ said Peg, her face crumpling. ‘The pestilence, it was. Mam, and Dad and six little ones.’

‘When was this?’ asked Susannah, taking an involuntary step back.

‘Six weeks gone, so it’s quite safe, madam.’

‘How very terrible for you!’

‘Oh, yes, it was! Dad had it first. We’d only come up from the country last year. “To seek our fortune,” he said. Terrible
sick he was
with the purple spots on his legs.’ Her fair hair hung in greasy rat’s tails around her woebegone face. ‘Gone in two hours,
would you believe and then the baby and little Georgie.’

Somehow Susannah had the weeping girl in her arms and was patting her knobbly back but there was no stopping her tale of misery.

‘Mam was mad with crying and it were a blessing for her when she went, too. The dead-cart took them away by night and the
watchmen shut the rest of us up in the house. One by one all my brothers and sisters went and I could only watch and wonder
when it would be my turn.’

‘But you survived.’

‘And, oh madam, I do wish I hadn’t!’

It took some minutes before Peg’s tears abated sufficiently for her to continue her story. ‘Four weeks I was in that house
on my own after they took the others away. Four weeks of just the rats scratching in the walls and remembering my brothers
and sisters crying and moaning before they died. The watchmen threw me a bit of bread in through the window sometimes and
told me to pray. But I’d prayed every day while my whole family died so what was the use of that?’

It was hard for Susannah to find any comfort for the poor girl and it quite took her mind off her troubles with Henry.

‘After the quarantine was over the watchmen unlocked the door and I went outside.’ Peg wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
‘None of the neighbours would come near me and I sat on the step while they smoked the house to cleanse it. But where was
I to go? I had no money for the rent and no family.’

‘Is that when you met Mr Savage?’

‘Not then. A fine lady came by and I told her what had happened. She said she’d take me home to Cock Lane in Moor Fields to
meet her daughters.’

‘How kind of her!’

‘That’s what I thought at first but it wasn’t, see! Mistress McGregor had six daughters and they made a fuss of me. Then she
gave me a good dinner and a bath and put me in a new dress.’ She
held out her skirts to display her petticoat. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ she breathed.

‘But too fancy for work, Peg. I’ll find you something more suitable and you can save this one for best. And then what happened?’

‘The next day she said I’d have to earn my keep. I said I’d scrub the floors or anything but she said her brother was coming
to visit and I was to be nice to him.’

Susannah had an idea now of where the girl’s story was leading. ‘And did her brother come?’

Peg nodded. ‘Mistress McGregor called me down to meet him. We had a glass of wine which made my head spin and then she said
she had business to attend to and I was to stay and entertain the gentleman. She’d only been gone a minute when he put his
hand up my petticoat. I screamed but no one came.’

‘Oh Peg!’

‘But I wasn’t having no gentleman putting his hand on my honour and I snatched up the candlestick and whacked him over the
head with it. He went straight to sleep I can tell you!’ She smiled with grim satisfaction.

‘So what did you do then?’

‘Cleared off out the window. I jumped down and landed on Mr Savage who was walking by.’

‘What fortune!’

‘Wasn’t it?’ said a voice behind her.

Susannah’s heart began to hammer and she spun round to see her husband standing in the kitchen doorway.

‘I couldn’t leave her there, could I?’ he said.

Unable to meet his eyes, Susannah shook her head.

‘And then I thought; my wife can train her to be our maid. And you’ve promised you’ll work hard for us, haven’t you, Peg?’

‘Yes, indeed, sir!’

‘Perhaps then we could start with some breakfast?’

Peg dropped a curtsy and set about collecting the plates and cutting the bread.

‘What else was I to do?’ asked Henry as they sat down at the
dining-room table. ‘She looked so forlorn I hadn’t the heart to leave her in the gutter.’

He appeared his usual cheerful self and if it hadn’t been for her lingering soreness, Susannah would have wondered if she’d
imagined their unsatisfactory wedding night.

‘You have a kind heart, Henry, but you must see that Peg has no experience of managing a house as large as this?’

‘But I have every faith in
you
, Mistress Savage! And you can be sure she will be faithful to us since we saved her from a life of shame.’

Henry didn’t appear to be bearing any grudges towards her and Susannah felt a sudden, surprising rush of affection for her
new husband. ‘Still, I hope you will be patient with us if your dinner is late or your shirts imperfectly ironed.’

‘You will find that I am a patient man, Susannah.’

‘There is very little in the larder. Peg and I must visit the market after breakfast if we are to have any dinner. I shall
need some housekeeping money.’

‘Yes.’ Henry pursed his lips and looked thoughtful. ‘Let us have only a little bread and cheese for our dinner today. I could
hardly eat another thing after all the delicacies at our wedding breakfast.’

Susannah raised her eyebrows since Henry had demolished most of the breakfast loaf single-handedly. She didn’t, however, feel
she knew him quite well enough yet to pass comment.

‘Besides,’ said Henry, ‘your father is to call this morning and you will wish to see him. You can go to the market this afternoon
and find something tasty for our supper.’

‘Father didn’t tell me he was coming.’

‘It’s a matter of business.’

After breakfast Henry retired to his study, leaving Susannah to acquaint herself with her new home.

She examined the tapestries which hung on the dining-room walls and wondered if the previous mistress of the house had worked
them or if they had been ordered from the Low Countries. They fitted the walls so perfectly that she could only conclude they
had
been designed expressly for the room, even though the bloodthirsty depiction of a boar hunt was an unpleasant reminder of
the origins of the roast pork that might be served there.

In the parlour Susannah ran her fingers over the large stone fireplace and the carved oak panel above it. There had been
a fall of soot into the hearth and she made a mental note to ask Peg to clear it away. And although the girl had removed the
sheets from the furniture everything was covered with a fine film of sea-coal dust.

Trying out a chair with velvet upholstery, Susannah leaned her head back to look up at the ceiling high above her. Intricate
plasterwork formed a geometric pattern of squares and circles, some of which had paintings in the middle. It was an impressive
building but somehow it didn’t have the charm of her cramped old home over the apothecary shop. She couldn’t help laughing
aloud at the irony of it; Arabella would be green with envy when she saw this house.

The remainder of the morning was spent with Peg, instructing her in her duties. In the afternoons Susannah would teach her
the rudiments of cooking. But really, she thought, if Henry could afford to buy this large and luxurious property, surely
he could afford at least one other servant?

After Susannah and Henry had eaten their meagre dinner of bread and cheese, Susannah dusted the parlour and then sat by the
window mending a tear in one of the cushions while she waited for her father to arrive. The tree-lined courtyard outside was
peaceful and most unlike the hurly-burly of Fleet Street. But of course, even Fleet Street was quieter now since so many people
had fled the city.

It wasn’t long before Susannah spied her father. Ned accompanied him and they carried a strongbox between them. When Peg opened
the door to their knock Susannah leaned over the banisters and called out to them.

The door to Henry’s study opened and he ran down the stairs to relieve Cornelius of his burden. ‘Good afternoon, sir, and
welcome. Susannah, take your father into the parlour and I will join you in a moment.’

Susannah kissed Cornelius and drew him by the hand into the parlour.

‘Well, this is all mighty fine, Susannah. You have done well for yourself.’

‘The house is so large that it is a little daunting. I shall be kept very busy.’

‘That’s no bad thing, in my opinion.’ He lifted her chin with his finger. ‘But are you happy, Susannah?’

She dropped her eyelashes, her cheeks flaming under her father’s enquiring gaze.

‘As you can see, I will be very comfortable here.’

Cornelius kissed her forehead and released her. ‘I am glad of it.’ Henry joined them and poured the wine that Susannah had
drawn from the barrel she’d found in the cellar.

‘Henry, shall we complete our business?’ said Cornelius. ‘I have some papers for you to sign.’

Later that afternoon, after her father had left, Susannah heard a chinking noise as she passed Henry’s study. The door was
ajar; inside she saw him sitting at his desk counting coins into little towers.