The Apothecary's Daughter (3 page)

She wiped her eyes and knew that she could delay no longer. She peered into the looking glass. Would she do? She bit her lips
to
bring the colour back. The steamy kitchen, as always, had caused her hair to spiral into ringlets and she only had time to
smooth them into place and pin on her lace cap before running down to the parlour.

Cornelius, dressed in his new wig and best coat, was peering down the street. ‘Mistress Poynter should be here any minute,’
he said. ‘You look very well, my dear. I always liked you in that shade of green; it matches your eyes.’

Susannah admitted to herself that jealousy probably made her eyes greener than usual. ‘All is in readiness,’ she said. ‘Jennet
burned the carp a little but I removed the skin and smothered it in a butter sauce with herbs.’

A sedan chair stopped in front of the house and Cornelius stood back from the window. Susannah wasn’t so well mannered and
stared, heart galloping in her chest as she waited to catch a glimpse of her future stepmother. She was disappointed though,
since the woman was swathed in a dark cloak with a hood. Daintily she picked her way through the slush and snow to the front
door.

Downstairs Jennet’s clogs clattered across the hall.

Susannah swallowed back a sudden surge of queasiness and hoped Jennet had remembered to put on a clean cap and apron.

Cornelius took up a carefully nonchalant position leaning against the mantelpiece and adjusted the lace at his cuffs again.

Waiting with her shaking hands gripped together, Susannah listened to the footsteps coming up the stairs.

The door opened.

Susannah caught her breath. It was the inquisitive young woman who had visited the shop a few days previously. She stared
at her, frowning. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you,’ she said. ‘Are you Harriet? Could your mother not come, after all?’ She
felt a flicker of annoyance for all the time she and Jennet had spent preparing the house and the dinner, only to find that
Father’s intended had not appeared.

The woman raised her finely plucked eyebrows. ‘My mother has been dead these past five years, may the Lord keep her.’

Cornelius held out his hands to her and she offered her powdered cheek to be kissed. ‘Arabella, what a delight it is to have
you join us,’ he said.

‘And for me to be here, my dear Cornelius.’

‘Let me present my daughter, Susannah.’

Bemused, Susannah took the small, cold hand and struggled to reconcile her expectations of a forty- or even fifty-something
widow with the girlish creature dressed in forget-me-not blue silk that stood before her. Had her father taken leave of his
senses?

‘We have already met, Father,’ she said.

‘How so?’

Arabella flushed rosily and fluttered her eyelashes. ‘I confess curiosity had the better of me, dear Cornelius. I came to
make a trifling purchase the other day.’

‘But why did you not call for me?’

‘You were not at home and since it was before you proposed to me I hardly liked to introduce myself. Besides, what could I
have said to dear Susannah without appearing too forward?’

The yearning way Father looked at Arabella made Susannah deeply uncomfortable. ‘Father tells me that you have a daughter?’
she said, to break the spell between them.

Smiling, Arabella turned to Susannah as if she’d just noticed her. ‘Harriet is my eldest; eight years old and a sweet child,
as you will find out. And then there are my two sons, Mathew, six and John, four.’

‘But …’ Shock ran through Susannah like an icy river. It had simply never occurred to her that her future stepmother’s children
were still young and would likely need to live under her father’s roof. ‘But where on earth will we put them all?’

‘I am sure we shall manage, shan’t we, Cornelius?’ Arabella gave him a radiant smile.

‘Of course we shall!’

‘And you, dear Susannah,’ she said, ‘will have the pleasure of a little sister and two new brothers.’

Susannah watched her father pat Arabella’s arm. This woman had
bewitched him! Suddenly, she couldn’t bear to be in the same room with them both. ‘I shall go and see if dinner is ready,’
she said.

In the kitchen, Jennet gave her a wide-eyed look. ‘She’s not at all what I expected,’ she said.

‘No, she isn’t,’ said Susannah, still barely able to comprehend this turn of events. It was bad enough that Father wanted
a wife but this girl was hardly a suitable companion for him.

She returned upstairs, carrying the roasted chickens on a platter. She hesitated in the doorway as she caught a glimpse of
Arabella encircled in her father’s arms, toying with the buttons on his waistcoat.

Cornelius let Arabella go but he didn’t look at his daughter as she set the platter on the table.

The dinner made an excellent show. There was the stewed carp, the famous beef and oyster pudding, boiled mutton with turnips
and carrots, apple pie, candied quinces and a splendid cheese. Hardly any of it was eaten. Cornelius was too lovesick, his
eyes never leaving Arabella’s simpering face, and Susannah was too sick with apprehension as she began to appreciate just
how much the household was likely to change.

‘Holy matrimony is an honourable estate not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly or wantonly
…’

The parson’s voice rang out clearly but Susannah let her mind drift. She sat at the front of the church of St Mary-le-Bow
in a new hat, listening to the silken rustle of a congregation uncomfortably dressed in their best clothes, all there to witness
her father’s marriage. Most of their friends and the doctors, apothecaries and several grateful patients of their acquaintance
had come. Those of a nervous disposition had stayed away, anxious to avoid large gatherings for fear of pestilential infection.
The pews on the bride’s side of the church were sparsely populated.

Arabella stood at the altar rail with her father and there was nothing Susannah could, or would, do now to change the course
of events. She had used every reasoned argument she could to make her father reconsider but in the end she’d had to accept
that he had fallen in love with Arabella and would be miserable without her.

During the weeks that the banns were being read, Arabella had joined them for dinner twice and on one occasion they were invited
to the house she rented in Wood Street. There they met her children. Harriet’s fair hair and delicate features made her a
diminutive
replica of her mother, while Susannah wondered if the two boys, stocky and dark, resembled their late father.

‘First it was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord …’

The parson’s words made Susannah blink. The indecent thought that Father and Arabella might have children together hadn’t
occurred to her. Surely Father was too old, even though his bride was young? It was shock enough to gain three new step-siblings
without the awful prospect of any more children to come.

‘Secondly, it was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication …’

She shut her ears to this and silently sang a psalm very loudly inside her head. The thought of Arabella in her nightshift,
in her father’s bed, was impossible to contemplate without toe-curling embarrassment.

‘Thirdly, it was ordained for the mutual society, help and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity
and adversity …’

Susannah freely admitted to herself that she was jealous of Arabella for coming between herself and Father but perhaps, in
time, they would learn to like each other. After all, there was no reason why she and her father should discontinue their
comfortable evenings reading aloud together; the only change would be that Arabella would be sitting on the other side of
the hearth.

‘Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?’

Arabella’s brother stepped back. The parson placed her hand in Cornelius’s palm.

And so it was done.

The wedding breakfast was held at the Crown and Cushion in Thames Street and once the chattering guests were seated Richard
Berry, who had officiated as Cornelius’s best man, banged his knife on the table.

‘Pray silence for the pie!’ he shouted. He turned his ruddy face to
Cornelius, barely able to contain his mirth. ‘This is my gift to you,’ he said. ‘I hope it will amuse you.’

The fiddler scraped a merry tune on his violin as two serving maids carried in a vast pie on a tray balanced between their
shoulders. Richard Berry danced a little jig as the pie was placed with much ceremony on the table before the groom.

Cornelius sliced into the pastry and everyone gasped and then laughed as a flock of doves burst through the crust. Frightened
by the noise, the birds fluttered about scattering crumbs, and worse, over the gathering.

Chaos ensued. Mathew screamed himself into hysterics when he saw how his mother took fright, flapping her handkerchief at
the birds and emitting piercing shrieks. One of the guests came forward with a flask of sal volatile but Arabella was apparently
enjoying herself far too much being the centre of attention to be calmed and threw herself sobbing onto her husband’s shoulder.

Susannah recognised Dr Ambrose, dressed rather too soberly for a wedding, as the guest who had tried to minister to Arabella.

‘How is your patient with the stone in his bladder?’ she asked.

‘Your father’s prescription is effective.’

‘More effective than sal volatile is in aiding my new stepmother?’

‘So it would appear.’ Dr Ambrose turned away but not before she noticed a surprising spark of amusement in his dark eyes.

Arabella had subsided somewhat by then and was being comforted by her new husband, who carefully dabbed at a splatter of bird
droppings which had landed amongst her golden curls. Although Cornelius told her that this was a good omen, she refused to
be persuaded.

The Crown and Cushion was famed for the quality of its wine and ale and the party became very merry. Susannah retreated to
an ante-room and sat on a high-sided settle by the fire, closing her eyes in an attempt to ignore recent events.

She woke a little later to hear voices and glared round the corner of the settle to see her father enter the room, followed
by Richard Berry.

‘Saving all your energy for your wedding night, old man?’ asked Richard, poking his friend in the ribs.

‘God knows, Arabella has awakened my senses in a way I thought could never happen again,’ said Cornelius. ‘I don’t want to
spend the next eleven years as celibate as the past eleven. And I’m too old now to want to risk the pox caught off some light-skirt
in Smithfield.’

Susannah clasped a hand over her mouth and shrank back into her hiding place.

‘And the new Mistress Leyton with her cream-fed complexion has really caught your fancy, hasn’t she? Can’t blame you for that.’
Richard sighed. ‘Ah, young flesh! I dream of it sometimes. But I’m happy enough with my old Bridie, even if she’s lost a few
teeth and her waist has thickened. She still snuggles up to me nice and warm on a cold winter’s night.’

‘Bridie is a good woman. My Elizabeth was very fond of her.’

‘Ah well! But now we must all make merry while we may,’ said Richard. ‘Who knows when the Spectre of Pestilence might snatch
us away? One sneeze and a day later you could be dead. Live for today, I say!’

It was dark by the time the wedding party left the Crown and Cushion. Headed by Richard Berry’s capering figure, it processed
along Fleet Street, several of the group distinctly unsteady and singing more raucously than was mannerly. Once the procession
reached the apothecary shop it took some time to send the well-wishers on their noisy way and by then Arabella’s children
were tired and fretful.

Susannah had prepared her brother Tom’s bedchamber in readiness for them. She had always hoped that he would return from Virginia,
whence he had been apprenticed at fourteen. It had saddened her, as she put fresh linen on the bed, to finally accept this
was unlikely to happen and that these new children were to inhabit his room instead.