The Apothecary's Daughter (25 page)

‘The captain?’

‘Missus Agnes’s husband. Missus Oliver says you unpack and then come down to kitchen. Double quick.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘When
she say “double quick” she
mean
double quick.’

‘I shall come as soon as I’m ready.’

Emmanuel laughed, his shoulders heaving at the joke. He held out his hand to Aphra, who ran up his arm and settled herself
into her accustomed place on his shoulder.

It didn’t take long for Susannah to stow her few clothes into the linen press. Her books found a home on the window seat and
her comb on the washstand. Finally she placed the candelabra on the small table beside the bed. With one last glance at the
garden below, she made her way down to the kitchen.

Later, Agnes Fygge woke up tetchy.‘Where have you been?’ she asked.

‘Mistress Oliver found some jobs for me to do in the pantry.’

Agnes craned her neck. ‘Where’s that dratted boy Emmanuel?’

‘Hardly a boy.’

‘He’s just turned fourteen.’

Susannah raised her eyebrows. ‘He’s well grown for fourteen. Is that usual for Africans?’

‘Good food and bad blood have made him big. He was only a tot of five or so when he came here. My brother ought to take him
back and put him to work on the plantation. Heaven knows, he’s too big to have around here any more. Keep tripping over him.
Open the door and shout for him, will you?’

Emmanuel and his simian companion scurried up the stairs at the sound of Susannah’s voice.

‘You’ve kept me waiting, Emmanuel,’ said Agnes Fygge. ‘You know I don’t like to be kept waiting.’

‘Sorry, missus.’ He went to an elaborately carved cupboard and took out a clay pipe and a bag of tobacco. Lighting a taper
in the fire, he handed the pipe to Mistress Fygge and held the taper while she sucked at the pipe.

The old woman closed her eyes and sighed. ‘That’s better. I always like tobacco in the afternoon. You can read to me for a
while, Susannah.
The Merchant of Venice
, I think.’

Emmanuel drew a footstool up to the fire and stared into the flames while Aphra searched his woolly hair.

Reading aloud, Susannah recalled the times she had sat beside the fire reading it with her father, taking turns to play the
different characters.

Gradually the light faded and Peg crept in to light the candles and prepare the table for supper.

Susannah noticed that the companion to her candelabra was placed upon the table. She slipped away to bring her own down from
her bedchamber and arranged the two of them, one at each end. ‘Back in its rightful place,’ she said and saw a small smile
pass over Agnes’s face.

William returned from visiting his patients in time to take supper with Susannah and his aunt. He ate in silence, listening
to his aunt’s comments and only replying when it was absolutely necessary. At the end of the meal he rinsed his fingers and
wiped them on a napkin.

‘I’ll bid you both goodnight,’ he said. ‘I shall be in the study and expect you will have retired by the time I have finished
my reading.’

‘I had hoped you’d join us for a game of cards, Will.’

‘Not tonight, Aunt.’ He kissed her cheek, nodded at Susannah and left the room.

Agnes sighed. ‘He used to be such a happy boy. My husband doted on him. You see, Will was the son we never had.’

‘Was he very young when his parents died?’

‘Ten years old. He had a baby sister too but she perished from the same typhoid outbreak that killed their father.’

‘And their mother?’

An expression of pain passed across her face. ‘My sister Constance died of a broken heart.’

‘And so you raised him as your own?’

‘My husband was captain of the
The Adventurer
and took him to sea with him. Plucky little lad he was. Happy to climb up to the top of the rigging but never got his sea
legs. Sick as a dog every time they sailed. Eventually Richard had to give up the idea of keeping the boy by his side. In
any case, Will was always determined to be a doctor.’

‘He seems to be a good one.’

‘The best.’

‘I wondered if you have any errands you’d like me to run tomorrow? I’d like to visit my father and let him know where I am
living now, if I may?’

‘Of course you may!’ said Agnes crossly. ‘And you can bring me back a bottle of rosewater. Just because I’m old and wrinkled
doesn’t mean I don’t like to look after myself.’

After Susannah had helped Agnes to bed that evening she went down to the kitchen to find Peg sitting at the table next to
Emmanuel, both of them eating bread and dripping. Mistress Oliver sat beside them with a glass of ale.

‘Going to eat us out of hearth and home,’ she said gloomily. ‘Like that plague of locusts in the Bible.’

‘I came to see how Peg has settled in.’

‘Doing all right by herself, as you can see.’

Emmanuel nudged Peg and then looked innocently at his supper when she giggled.

Susannah smiled; it seemed she had made a friend already.

‘Goodnight, then.’

‘Take a candle with you. This old house is full of shadows.’

The fire in Susannah’s bedchamber had died down. She stirred the embers until they glowed before climbing into bed. Dust showered
down onto the counterpane as she drew the bed curtains around her. It must have been very much longer than the month that
Mistress Oliver mentioned since the room had had anything more than a cursory dust and she determined to clean the room to
her own standards the following day.

The strange bed was lumpy and Susannah could not sleep. She stared into the dark, listening to the old house creak as the
timbers settled and thinking about the chilling prospect of the child growing within her, like a maggot in an oak apple. Part
of her still expected, and hoped, to find blood between her thighs.

All at once fright erupted and she leaped out of bed and paced backwards and forwards in front of the dying fire while she
tried to catch her breath. Gripped by terror, she was haunted by memories of her mother’s terrible death and she knew that
this child, Henry’s, would kill her, too. She had to do something! The night was long but at the end of it she had come to
a decision.

The following day Susannah began to learn her duties and wrote several letters for Agnes since her poor crippled hands could
no longer hold a quill. She read a little more of
The Merchant of Venice
and cut up her meat for her at dinner. In the afternoon, once Agnes had settled down for a rest, she set off for the apothecary
shop.

When she arrived she was relieved that her father was out visiting a customer and Ned was minding the shop. She drew the dispensary
curtain behind her and hastily took down Culpeper’s
Complete Herbal and English Physician
from the shelf. She flicked through the pages until she found what she was looking for and then measured out two ounces of
grains of paradise with trembling hands. She spilled the iron filings as she weighed them out and had to sweep them up and
start again. Hurriedly she gathered together an ounce of turmeric and the same of long pepper and some pennyroyal. She twisted
each
one into a scrap of brown paper, all the while listening for her father’s return. Just as she put the items in the bottom
of her basket she heard the shop bell and then her father’s voice. Hastily, she covered the basket with a cloth and waited
until she heard Cornelius’s steps upon the stairs before hurriedly lifting down the storage jars that contained the remaining
herbs she sought. She measured out dog mercury gathered from the village of Brookland in Romney Marsh and a generous handful
of wormwood, some garden rue, horehound and powdered nettles. A bottle of rosewater followed the other items into the basket,
which she placed under the counter before going upstairs to greet her father.

Later she returned to the Captain’s House and looked round the kitchen door. It was deserted; presumably Mistress Oliver was
off duty until it was time to prepare the supper. Relieved, Susannah put her basket on the table and hurried to the pantry.
She took out the pot of honey she’d seen at breakfast and scooped a spoonful into a small basin. Then she unwrapped the ingredients
from her basket and mixed them together. Rolling the resulting electuary into sticky little balls the size of a walnut, she
placed them upon a small plate before quickly washing up the basin and putting it away. One each night and morning should
have the desired result. Picking up one of the balls, she was about to pop it in her mouth when she heard Mistress Oliver’s
heavy footfalls approaching along the passage.

Glancing wildly around for a hiding place, she shoved the plate of medicine onto the top shelf of the larder, pushing it right
to the back.

The kitchen door opened.

‘You’re back, then?’ Mistress Oliver said.

Susannah palmed the medicine ball, her stomach clenching in guilt. ‘Is Mistress Fygge awake yet?’

‘She’s calling for you. You can take her a glass of ale.’

The medicine ball in Susannah’s hand had disintegrated into a sticky mess and she surreptitiously wiped it onto a cloth before
taking the ale upstairs to her mistress. It would have to wait until later.

The rest of the afternoon passed pleasantly enough but she couldn’t concentrate for thinking of the medicine balls hidden
in the larder.

After supper, Susannah waited until she judged that the dishes would be washed and put away before she poked her nose into
the kitchen.

Mistress Oliver sat at the table regaling Peg and Emmanuel with amusing stories of her youth and Susannah retreated.

At last, Agnes went to bed. Susannah stood at the top of the stairs but she could still hear voices and laughter in the kitchen
below. Nearly crying with frustration, she took herself off to her bedchamber.

She read for a while but couldn’t concentrate and lay thinking about her mother and the baby that had died.

After what seemed like an aeon, the house became quiet.

Susannah slipped from her warm bed. Shivering with more than the cold, she crept down to the kitchen where she lit a candle
with a taper from the fire, then climbed up on a stool to reach the top shelf of the larder. She took the plate and looked
at the little medicine balls glistening in the flickering light. Picking one up, she stared at it in the palm of her hand.
She had never made such a powerful medicine before and would have refused to do so if asked by any of the customers in the
shop. Slowly she opened her mouth and put it on her tongue. Her heart began to beat very fast. This terrible medicine could
change the course of her life. And take that of the child she carried.
Yes, and damn your soul!
Susannah started; it was as if she could hear Martha’s voice in her head.

The honey in her mouth began to melt and she scrambled down from the stool in a sudden panic. She spat the medicine into the
kitchen fire from where it spat back at her with a little shower of sparks.

The long freeze finally broke at the end of March and soon the gutters and drains were running with melted snow. April came,
bringing the sun, but one fine spring morning was disturbed by a banging on the front door.