The Apothecary's Daughter (34 page)

As Susannah turned to face William again she felt her baby kick and placed a hand against the tiny foot pressing inside her.

William’s gaze dropped to the swell of her belly and he stepped back.

‘William?’

‘I must go to see my aunt,’ he said. Abruptly he turned, strode across the garden and disappeared inside.

Tears blurred Susannah’s vision. The parsley lay scattered upon the ground, and she bent to gather it up. The fresh green
sprigs were bruised and flattened, crushed under William’s foot as he had hurried to escape from her.

Susannah combed Agnes’s hair and braided it into a thin plait, tying the end with a ribbon, all the while reliving her meeting
in the garden with William. Her pulse fluttered at the memory. ‘Will you wear your nightcap?’ she asked.

‘It’s too hot. I never have liked the heat of summer in the city. The stench breeds fevers and the plague is never far away.
We’ve been lucky.’

‘Except for Henry.’

Agnes shrugged. ‘He should have known better than to go to taverns and alehouses; it was tempting the Devil to visit him with
some vile sickness.’

‘What else could he have done? He had to meet people to seek new business.’

‘And look where it got him! And now Will is out day after day visiting the sick and putting himself at risk.’ Agnes picked
fretfully at the cuff of her nightgown.

Susannah gripped the comb so tightly that the ivory teeth bit into her palm. It was her constant fear that William would sicken.

‘I never cared very much for Henry,’ continued Agnes. ‘He was too like his mother, seeking only pleasant diversions and unable
to bear life’s disappointments. Will, however is altogether different from his cousin.’

‘He takes very great care of his patients.’

Agnes sighed. ‘Close the curtains, will you? Help me into bed and read me something soothing.’

Susannah slowly pulled the curtains across the tightly closed window, reluctant to shut out the beauty of the fiery sunset.
The bedchamber was claustrophobic from the warmth of the day but Agnes feared the noxious humours rising from the city even
more than she disliked an overheated bedchamber.

Picking up a book from the bedside table, Susannah pulled the stool close to the candle. She forced her turbulent thoughts
to the back of her mind as she began to read.

‘Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove,

That valleys, groves, hills and fields,

Woods or steepy mountains yields.’

She glanced at Agnes and saw that her eyes were closed. Just for a moment she let her thoughts drift to William and her visit
to Merryfields. How peaceful it was there and how free from the cares of the world he had seemed then!

‘And we will sit upon the rocks

Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks

By shallow rivers, to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals.’

Agnes’s mouth had fallen open and her breathing was even but Christopher Marlowe’s words had no power to quieten Susannah’s
own confused frame of mind today.

In the garden that morning, how could she have imagined, even for a moment, that William cared for her? Her pregnancy revolted
him and, as Arabella had pointed out, he could not possibly find her attractive while she was bloated and ugly with another
man’s child.

Taking care not to disturb her mistress, Susannah placed the book back on the bedside table and left the room.

Her thoughts were still so caught up with William that she didn’t hear Joseph as he ran along the corridor behind her until
he raced past. She put out her hand and caught him. ‘Where are you off to in such a hurry, little man?’

‘Doan want to go to bed!’

‘But it’s late.’ She looked up as she heard footsteps and saw Phoebe. ‘There’s your mama. Be a good boy and do as she bids
you.’

Phoebe took the child’s hand. ‘Come, Joseph!’

‘I’m not tired!’

‘But you will be tired tomorrow if you don’t rest now,’ said Susannah. ‘I don’t want to see you falling asleep while I’m teaching
you your letters. Your mama will be very proud of you when you can read and write, won’t you, Phoebe?’

The black woman stuck out her bottom lip. ‘A slave don’t need letters,’ she said. ‘A slave needs freedom.’

‘Perhaps …’ Susannah hesitated, trying to ignore her antagonism, ‘perhaps when Joseph is grown up, if he can read and learn
how to make his own way in the world, perhaps then he might be free.’

‘If
you
say he can be free? Why do
you
have the power for his life, or mine? What makes
you
better than Joseph and me?’ Phoebe almost spat the words out and her eyes glittered with a dangerous light.

Susannah took a step back. ‘I would like to see Joseph have opportunities but for that he needs education.’

‘Education? Ha! A white man’s word. You think my son need education because he is white man’s son?’

‘It’s not just because Joseph is Dr Ambrose’s son!’

Phoebe stared at her. Then a slow smile spread across her face. ‘You know Joseph is doctor’s son? And you want help Joseph?’

‘Dr Ambrose has asked me to teach Joseph his letters.’

Slowly Phoebe nodded. ‘I seen you looking at Dr Ambrose. You think if you teach Joseph, the doctor love you.’

‘How dare you!’

‘Joseph is
my
son. And the doctor his father. Don’t
you
forget it! Your husband die only a few months ago and already you look for a new man, even before baby come. My people have
a name for women like dat.’ Phoebe took a firm grip on Joseph’s hand and pulled him away.

Susannah watched them disappear round the corner, her fingers twitching as she itched to slap the triumphant smile off the
other woman’s face.
How dare she!
She went into the chapel, slamming the door behind her to give vent to her feelings.

The dying sunset had painted the chapel walls a rich gold and Susannah curled up on the window seat to watch the orange disc
of the sun drop behind the rooftops. After a while, the beauty of the sunset began to ease the agitation of her mind. The
street below was already cast in shadow and a few people hurried by on their way home. A rat streaked along the ground, stopping
to investigate a mound of kitchen waste, and then sat there, as bold as brass, gnawing a bone. One by one, candles appeared
in the windows of the houses opposite as the light faded.

A familiar figure strode along the street, deftly sidestepping the rubbish.

William was early tonight, thought Susannah, her heart thudding. She smoothed her curls and pinched her cheeks, desperately
hoping he would seek her out and continue their interrupted conversation.

The front door clanged shut and footsteps mounted the stairs and echoed along the corridor, stopping outside the door to the
chapel.

Susannah held her breath.

After a moment the footsteps continued.

Involuntarily, she called his name. ‘William!’

The door creaked open and William’s head appeared.

‘Susannah, what are you doing here, sitting all alone in the gloom?’

‘Agnes went early to bed and I’ve been watching the sunset.’

‘Did you want something?’

Her blossoming hope died. ‘No, I merely wondered if you’d had a good day.’

‘In so far as there were no deaths, I suppose you could say I’d had a good day. And your health? It remains good?’

‘Apart from a little backache and some bad dreams I am well, thank you.’

‘I am pleased to hear it.’

‘I saw Goody Joan the other day. She told me that vivid dreams are quite normal for a woman in my condition.’

‘She is a fine midwife with a good record of successful births.’ He stopped, as if he’d run out of commonplace conversation
at last. ‘I’ll bid you goodnight, then.’

‘Goodnight.’

Susannah turned her gaze back to the darkening street below, disappointment making her eyes smart. Had she imagined it then,
that William had looked upon her with affection, no,
more
than affection in his eyes? Or was her present condition inflaming her imagination? But she had been so sure that he had
been about to tell her that he cared for her.

It was no good sitting in the half-dark mooning like a lovesick calf over a man who simply thought of her as a patient. And
a charity case, at that. As she uncurled herself from the window seat she saw the door of the house opposite flung wide. A
young woman tumbled out whom Susannah recognised as Jane Quick. Her fair hair was uncovered and loose upon her shoulders.
She ran across the street, heedless of the mire as she splashed through the stinking drain.

A second or so later Susannah started at the sound of hammering upon the knocker. By the time she had made her way down the
stairs Peg had opened the door and Jane stood there wringing her hands and sobbing.

‘The physician! Is he here? Please, he must come now! It’s
Edwin. He’s been sniffing and sneezing with a summer cold but this evening he fell into a swoon and I can’t wake him. He’s
burning with fever and I don’t know what to do!’

Peg flattened herself against the wall. ‘The plague? Go away! We don’t want the plague here!’

‘Peg!’ said Susannah sharply. ‘You forget yourself! Go upstairs and call Dr Ambrose. At once!’

‘Yes, miss.’ Peg scurried up the stairs.

Susannah swallowed back her own fear at the terror in Jane Quick’s eyes. ‘Go and sit with Edwin now,’ she said. ‘Dr Ambrose
will come over to you. And I’ll send you a bottle of a very good medicine that I have in the still room.’

Jane Quick had only been gone a moment when William hastened down the stairs, his beaked mask in his hand.

Susannah caught at his sleeve. ‘William, be careful, won’t you? What if it is the plague?’

‘Then it is in the hands of God and there is little I can do except ease the child’s suffering and wait.’

‘But what if he sneezes over you?’

William gave a half-smile. ‘I have long learned to dodge a sneeze. And in any case I have a theory that the plague isn’t spread
by sneezes and noxious air at all.’

‘A theory! What good is that?’

‘The best hope I have at present.’

‘Wait, just a moment! I promised Mistress Quick a bottle of my Plague Prevention Syrup.’ She rushed off to the still room
and returned to thrust the bottle into William’s hand. ‘Take a dose yourself, too.’

He nodded and closed the door behind him.

It was dawn when Susannah was jolted awake. She had kept vigil on the chapel window seat, waiting for William to emerge from
the house opposite, and finally dozed off just before dawn until the spine-chilling scream reverberated through the houses.

In the street below Jane Quick fought and twisted in her
husband’s arms as he attempted to quieten her shrieks. A horse and cart had stopped outside their house, its grim cargo of
corpses half-covered with sacking. The driver jumped down and held the horse’s head as it whinnied and kicked up its heels,
frightened by the commotion.

The small crowd fell back like the waters of the Red Sea as one of the buriers came out of the house carrying the body of
a small boy.

Gasping in horror, Susannah hastened down the stairs in time to see William running out of the door in front of her.

‘I didn’t hear you come home!’

‘I returned an hour ago, after I alerted the watchers that the boy was gravely ill.’

As the burier covered the boy with the sacking, Jane Quick began to thrash and scream again. ‘Francis! Francis, don’t let
them take our baby! Can’t you see? He’s only sleeping. Just a little summer cold, that’s all it is!’

‘Jane, he’s gone! Edwin has gone.’ Francis Quick held his wife tightly to his chest, his face buried in her loosened hair.

All at once Jane gave up the fight and collapsed against him, weeping piteously.

The driver climbed back onto the cart, flicked the horse with his whip and trundled away.

Susannah bit her knuckles at the sight of Jane’s distress, tears of pity on her face.