The Apothecary's Daughter (26 page)

‘He’s very angry, ma’am,’ said Peg. ‘He says he won’t leave until you’ve paid him off.’

Susannah, with sinking heart, went to talk to the caller, a shoemaker, who claimed that he was owed for a pair of shoes with
silver buckles.

‘It’s all very well you claiming you can’t pay me what your husband owes but that doesn’t put food in my children’s bellies,
does it?’ He stood with his hands on his hips, waiting.

‘I have said I will pay you a little each month until the debt is discharged,’ said Susannah, wrong-footed because she knew
he had every right to expect to be paid. ‘Truly, I can do no more.’

‘I’ll wager
you’ll
eat dinner tonight but my Bess and Jem must starve until next month!’

‘If I could pay you now, I would.’ She could feel the pulse beating in her throat as he glowered at her.

‘I’ll have my money now and I’m not moving until I get it!’

Agnes heard the raised voices and came to see what was causing
the commotion. She banged her stick on the floor with such authority that both Susannah and the shoemaker fell silent.

‘You may render my nephew’s account to me,’ she said.

She counted out the requisite number of coins into the shoemaker’s outstretched hand and then called for Emmanuel and instructed
him to accompany the tradesman to the door. ‘I shall rest in my room for a while,’ she said, in response to Susannah’s heartfelt
thanks. ‘You may attend me at dinner.’

‘Thank you so much, Agnes.’

‘But where will it end?’ muttered Agnes as she hobbled away.

Susannah was glad to escape into the garden.

Pacing up and down in the spring sunshine, she wondered if the rest of Henry’s creditors would find her and cause more unpleasant
scenes. She had devoted a great deal of her waking thoughts over the past weeks to dreaming up ways of paying them off.

After a while she felt calmer and sat on the bench in the arbour of clipped yew. Drifting over the rooftops were the sounds
of wheels on cobbles and the cry of the oyster seller but they were far enough away not to intrude upon the peace as she contemplated
her new life.

She had found a rhythm to her days and discovered that she liked Agnes Fygge, despite the old woman’s acid tongue; she determined
to do all she could to make herself indispensable. During the nights, however, Susannah tossed and turned while she worried
about the burden of debt she carried and how she would provide for a child, assuming she survived the birth. Exhausted from
restless nights and lulled by the drowsy cooing of the pigeons in the loft, she turned her face up to the warmth of the pale
sunshine and fell into a doze.

A little later, quick footsteps on the path woke her and she saw Peg trotting towards her, wiping her hands upon her apron.
‘There’s a messenger here,’ she said. ‘He came looking for Mr Savage.’

‘Oh no, not another one! What does he want?’

‘He’s a sailor. Quite a rough sort of person.’

By the time they reached the kitchen Mistress Oliver had settled
the messenger by the kitchen fire and the two of them were enjoying a spot of flirtation over a glass of ale.

‘I believe you are looking for my husband?’ said Susannah.

The sailor wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘Aye. Is he here?’

‘No. My husband passed away.’

He sucked his teeth. ‘The
Mary Jane
is in. Mr Savage’s goods are waiting to be collected.’

‘Oh!’ It had never occurred to Susannah that Henry’s business interests would continue even though he was dead. ‘I shall have
to make arrangements,’ she said. A glimmer of hope lifted her spirits.

‘Best not leave it too long or the consignment will walk right off the quay by itself.’

‘Very good. I shall see to it.’ She tipped him a halfpenny and then went and knocked on the study door.

William Ambrose sat at his desk making notes.

‘I’ve had a visitor,’ she said. ‘The
Mary Jane
has docked and Henry’s consignment of rum and sugar is sitting on the quayside.’

William frowned but then his face cleared. ‘But this is good news.’

‘I’ve been so anxious about Henry’s debts.’ Relief made her forget her usual reserve with him. ‘I had no idea how I’d ever
be able to pay off all Henry’s creditors but now I’m hoping this might be the answer. I wondered if you might accompany me
to the docks?’

They took a hackney carriage although, as William said, it would have been as quick to walk since the volume of traffic was
so great. An endless stream of carts and drays, carriages and horses, all with business at the wharves and warehouses, threaded
their way along Thames Street. The noise was tremendous; shouting and banging, the creaking of the ropes as crates and barrels
were thumped to the ground, running footsteps and voices raised in a myriad of tongues.

The
Mary Jane
towered above them as sailors and merchants flowed across the gangplank. There was a strong smell of decaying fish in the
air, which made Susannah wrinkle her nose. William took her arm and led her aboard. They found the captain’s cabin and
explained to him that Susannah was Henry’s widow. After some discussion, Susannah signed a sheaf of documents and took ownership
of the consignment.

‘I shall send a cart to collect the goods tomorrow,’ said William.

‘I’d as soon you took the black cargo away now,’ said the captain. ‘They don’t travel well and I’ll not be responsible for
any more wastage. You can come back for the barrels and crates later.’

Susannah watched William’s expression turn thunderous.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘How many?’ William asked the captain, ignoring Susannah entirely.

‘Two remaining.’

‘Where are they?’

‘I’ll have ’em brought up from the hold. I’ll do you a favour and ask my men to put a bucket of water over ’em first, shall
I? Several weeks at sea doesn’t make ’em smell of roses.’ The captain laughed raucously, mightily pleased with his joke.

‘William?’ Susannah put a hand on his arm. ‘What is it?’

‘My dear cousin seems to have left us with a problem. There are two slaves to be collected.’

‘Slaves? But …’

‘I believe you said you argued with Henry when he told you he’d sent to Barbados for some slaves?’

‘I did. I completely forgot about it until now. You don’t mean …?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

Susannah turned cold. ‘Can’t he take them back again?’

‘I doubt they’d survive a second journey straight after this one. One of them has already died.’

‘William, what are we to do? I can’t possibly keep them!’

Susannah and William waited on deck until the captain came up through the hatch from below. One of his men followed, dragging
a chain behind him. On the end of the chain stumbled a black woman, her thin cotton dress soaked and clinging to her skin.
A scrawny child of about five and clad only in filthy rags clutched her hand but in any case he wouldn’t have been easily
separated from his mother
since their ankles were chained together. Shivering violently, they stood bowed and blinking in the daylight.

Susannah gagged at the reek that emanated from the couple and lifted a corner of her cloak to cover her nose.

‘Phoebe?’ William advanced to more closely examine the woman. ‘Phoebe, is it you?’ His face was taut with shock.

Slowly she turned and looked at him, a tiny flame of hope in her dull eyes. When she opened her mouth to speak William gave
a barely imperceptible shake of his head.

‘Phoebe, this is Mistress Savage, my cousin’s wife and your new mistress,’ he said.

Phoebe licked her lips, cracked and bleeding. ‘Massa Savage wife?’

‘And I am very sorry to tell you that Mr Savage is dead.’

She began to sway, her eyelids fluttering, and the child let out a small cry of distress.

William hurried to catch her before she fell to the ground and supported her until the fainting fit passed.

Susannah watched, made uneasy by his close attention to the slave woman.

After a moment or two Phoebe’s eyes flickered open and William released her. She looked wildly about her until she saw the
boy. Clutching for his hand, she whispered, ‘Erasmus dead, too.’

‘I’m truly sorry to hear it. And is this little Joseph?’

Phoebe nodded and pushed him forward.

William tipped up the child’s tear-stained little face and studied it for some moments. Then he ruffled the child’s curly
hair and said, ‘You will be safe now, Joseph.’

‘You know these people?’ asked Susannah, drawing William away. Nose wrinkling, she noticed that the front of his cloak was
soiled from the filth caked over the woman’s clothing.

‘Phoebe and her brother, Erasmus, were the children of Henry’s nursemaid and just before I returned to England I assisted
at Joseph’s birth. I came to know Phoebe and Erasmus very well during my year on Uncle’s plantation. But I hardly recognised
Phoebe since she has grown so thin and sickly.’

‘And Phoebe’s brother died on the journey?’

William’s mouth tightened. ‘Conditions in the hold of a ship are barely fit for animals, never mind a child.’

‘What about her husband?’

‘She has no husband,’ said William shortly.

Susannah glanced at the woman again to find that she was looking intently back at her. The boy, lighter-skinned than his mother,
clung to her hand and stared at the ground, as if he had given up expecting anything at all from life. Something about his
skinny legs and knobbly knees suddenly made Susannah want to cry. ‘The boy will catch a chill,’ she said. ‘It’s inhuman to
keep them outside in this cold wind when they’re soaked through. And they have no shoes.’

The driver of the hackney carriage refused to allow the woman and her child in his carriage. ‘I’d never be able to pick up
another fare until I’d scrubbed the stink away,’ he said, not unreasonably.

‘We’ll walk home,’ said William. He unlocked the slaves from their chains with the key the captain had given him.

‘Won’t they run away?’ asked Susannah.

‘Where do you think they’d run to?’

Susannah was close enough to smell sweat, vomit and worse upon them. Nevertheless, she took off her shawl and wrapped it round
the boy’s shoulders, tying it in a knot at the front. Feeling rather pleased with her selfless act of charity, she said, ‘There,
that’s better, isn’t it?’

Phoebe glanced up at her with a hostile stare then dropped her gaze to the ground.

Susannah took a hasty step back. Had she imagined it, or did the other woman’s eyes burn with something that looked like hatred?
Flustered, she turned and bumped into William.

‘Let’s get on,’ he said.

Mistress Oliver wasn’t happy about the new members of the household. ‘What use will they be? Look at them! More mouths to
feed, that’s all.’

William soon put a stop to her complaining with a few sharp words and sent her off to seek out some cast-off shoes and clothing
for them.

Peg was instructed to carry jugs of water out to the scullery to fill the washtub.

Avoiding looking directly at Phoebe, Susannah gave her a piece of soap and a scrubbing brush and stood over her while she
stripped and scrubbed herself and her child clean.

Susannah couldn’t help looking at the woman’s naked body, so strangely different from her own. She was so thin that her dark
skin was wrinkled and her breasts lay like empty purses against her ribcage. The boy had skin the colour of milky coffee;
he was neither black nor white and she wondered if this variety in colour was normal. She knew so little about Africans but
perhaps he would turn darker as he grew older?

Once the slaves had dried themselves, Susannah held out a small shirt, breeches and coat to Joseph. Still trembling, he kept
his gaze fixed firmly on the floor. Susannah looked at Phoebe.

Slowly she reached out her hand and took the clothes from her. She dressed the boy, who stood like a dummy while his mother
stuffed his arms into the coat sleeves. Then she turned and waited, eyes downcast, until Susannah gave her a patched old gown
and a shawl for herself.

Susannah herded the couple back into the kitchen and braved Mistress Oliver’s temper by asking her to feed the new arrivals.
The cook banged down a loaf of bread and a bowl of dripping, together with a jug of ale, and went off to the pantry, muttering
under her breath.

Susannah watched the boy look at the bread and then at his mother with enormous brown eyes.

Phoebe nodded almost imperceptibly at him and he fell upon his dinner, cramming it into his mouth so that his cheeks bulged,
while tears rolled down his face. She reached out and gently lifted a tear away with her thumb, a muscle trembling in her
jaw.

Susannah noticed that she didn’t eat herself until the boy had
finished. All at once Susannah felt ashamed to be watching them and quietly withdrew. As she went upstairs she passed the
chapel and heard Agnes’s angry voice coming from within.

‘I’m not taking in any
more
waifs and strays, Will. Of
course
you must get rid of them!’

‘I cannot!’