The Apothecary's Daughter (46 page)

Phoebe propped the child up in her arms while Susannah dripped the willow tea into his mouth from a spoon.

All day they sat beside Joseph, taking it in turns to sponge him. The buboes grew larger, the skin around them blotched and
angry.
Susannah laid on hot cloths and poultices in an attempt to draw the poison to the surface.

Barely conscious, Joseph coughed and struggled for breath.

Susannah listened out for the church bells and every four hours spooned a little more of the willow bark tea into the child’s
mouth.

The light began to fade and Phoebe fell asleep with her head on the pillow beside her son.

Susannah lit the candles and sat watching Joseph’s chest rise and fall. She could feel the heat radiating off him. She bathed
him again, wiping the sweat off his face and neck. By now she knew every curve of his face and body; the usually smooth coffee-coloured
skin so horribly blotched and empurpled. Propping him up on the pillow to ease his breathing, she went to fetch more hot cloths
to lay on the buboes. He moaned and stirred as she pressed the linen down but the fever continued to rage.

Phoebe slept and Susannah let her be. She would wake soon enough if Joseph took a sudden turn for the worse.

There was nothing in the world that mattered any more outside this room lit only by flickering candles; not her dead father
or her lost hopes of finding love, only this child, William’s child, fighting to live.

Shortly after three in the morning, over the harsh sound of Joseph’s coughing, Susannah heard the bellman in the distance
and then the dead-cart’s wheels rolling over the cobbles. She shivered and gathered the boy into her arms, resting his hot
little head against her chest, willing him to breathe.

As the first rosy light of dawn filtered through the attic window Susannah opened her eyes and lifted her chin off the top
of Joseph’s woolly head to find Phoebe staring at her. Stretching her legs, Susannah grimaced as pins and needles pricked
at her feet. The room was cooler now; at least until the merciless heat of the midday sun began to beat down upon the roof
again.

Phoebe took the child from her, kissing his face and rocking him. Susannah brewed more willow tea and tore the crust off the
loaf that
Agnes had left for them. ‘You must eat,’ she said, handing a piece to Phoebe.

The corners of Phoebe’s mouth turned down and she turned her head away.

‘If you don’t eat you’ll not be strong enough to fight the infection.’

‘Why d’you care? Why you help us? We are only your slaves.’

Susannah pushed her hair off her face. ‘Why are you always so hostile to me?’ she said, too exhausted to be polite. ‘You are
never so rude to any of the others in this household.’

Phoebe shrugged, her bottom lip pushed out. ‘You think you’re better than me.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Joseph and me are your slaves. We have no life.’ Phoebe smiled slyly. ‘But William love me. You jealous of me?’

All at once Susannah’s patience snapped. Of course she was jealous that William had gone to Phoebe’s bed but she was not prepared
to be taunted about it. ‘I’m not jealous,’ she lied, ‘just not prepared to accept your impertinence. You’ve been sullen and
ungrateful ever since you came here. Well, I’m sick of it and I’m sick of you! I don’t want you to be my slave; I never asked
for you to be sent here and you should be thankful that you weren’t thrown out into the streets to fend for yourself. I don’t
care
that Joseph is Dr Ambrose’s son. All I’m trying to do is to help him and I have no intention of wasting my time discussing
your insolence. Now move out of my way and let me give the child his medicine!’

Phoebe stared at her for a moment, amazement on her face.

That’s shaken her, thought Susannah with some satisfaction.

Phoebe slowly retreated and stood in the corner, watching Susannah administer the willow tea.

‘If you want to do something useful, go and heat up the poultice mixture in the pan and bring it to me,’ she instructed. She
breathed out slowly, letting the tension drain away. Surprisingly, succumbing to bad manners and saying exactly what she felt
made her feel a great deal better.

The remainder of that day passed with no more than a few
essential words exchanged between them but Susannah was conscious of Phoebe’s covert glances all day long.

That night it was Susannah’s turn to fall into a doze. Her back ached and she curled up on the end of the bed and closed her
eyes.

Phoebe shook her awake, snatching at her arm. ‘Missus! Missus!’

‘Joseph?’ Susannah sat up so suddenly that she went dizzy. After all her efforts she couldn’t bear to lose him now!

‘See!’ said Phoebe. She peeled up a corner of the poultice on Joseph’s neck.

Susannah hastily put a hand over her mouth and nose. The bubo had burst and foul-smelling matter had erupted through the poultice
cloth and oozed down the child’s neck.

Holding her breath, she peered at the crater left behind. ‘We must clean this wound straight away. Fetch me some water and
a cloth.’ She moved the candle closer and examined the boy’s chest. Some of the blotching had faded from his skin and his
struggle for breath was less tortured.

The wound continued to suppurate through the night and by first light the swelling under his arm had grown.

‘He’s still very hot,’ said Susannah, feeling his forehead. ‘I wonder …’

Phoebe looked at her, a question in her eyes.

‘Yes.’ Decisively, Susannah opened the apothecary box and took out a sharp little knife. She tested the blade on her finger
and Phoebe made a small sound under her breath. ‘Hold him still!’ said Susannah.

The bubo was the size of a gull’s egg. Susannah studied it for a moment, then pushed the point of the blade into the swelling
and stepped back as the poison spurted from the wound.

Joseph’s eyes opened wide and he let out a cry.

Phoebe murmured to him as Susannah made a cut an inch long and watched as the remaining poison seeped out. She bathed the
wound and set a fresh poultice upon it. ‘All we can do now is to wait,’ she said.

They sat together watching the sleeping child while Susannah
fretted about William and Jennet. They would be anxious because she hadn’t come to bring them provisions. She worried about
this all afternoon until eventually she went to the top of the stairs and rang the little bell Agnes had given her.

When Agnes came to the landing below, fear and expectation written upon her face, Susannah quickly brought her up to date
with Joseph’s progress. ‘But I haven’t taken food to William and Jennet,’ she said.

‘I sent one of the street children to pass on the news and take them some of our beans,’ said Agnes. ‘Our storeroom is still
full of emergency rations. Plain food, maybe, but we won’t starve. So who’s laughing now, miss?’

‘We’re lucky that you’re a woman of such sound sense, Agnes.’

‘We’re short of meat, though. Our watchman tells me the butcher’s shop is shut up. Two of their children carried off on the
cart, already.’

‘So Joseph must have caught the infection from the butcher’s boys. Let us pray he is stronger than they were.’

By six o’clock that evening Joseph’s temperature had dropped a little. He still had a rattling cough but his breathing had
eased. He turned from side to side and cried; pitiful weak cries but he was at least conscious of his surroundings.

Phoebe and Susannah drank the bean soup which Mistress Oliver left for them, sitting in silence on each side of the sickbed.

Joseph whimpered quietly and Phoebe put down her bowl and stroked his forehead. She began to sing to him, her husky voice
crooning a strange little song so full of suppressed emotion that Susannah felt the tears spring to her eyes. In her weariness
she put her head down on her arms lest the slave see her cry. Then Phoebe began to sing something that sounded like a lullaby
and after a while Joseph quietened.

Susannah listened to the child’s steady breathing and the rise and fall of Phoebe’s singing and, try as she might, was unable
to open her eyes.

Susannah stood by the attic window watching the seagulls swooping and wheeling over the river. It was hard to breathe in the
heat of the attic so it made her feel easier when she could look outside. She rubbed her aching back and envied the gulls
their freedom of movement, longing to feel light and energetic again herself. But, of course, it wasn’t only pregnancy that
weighed her down but the burden of grief and fear.

She spread her hands out over her ripe belly, pressing her fingers into the taut skin and feeling the shape of her baby. He
had little room to move now and when she was naked she would watch his elbows and heels pushing up peaks of skin as he stretched.
In a month, God willing, he would be here. She smiled a little and tried hard not to think of her labours to come. At least
they would all be out of quarantine by then, assuming none of them sickened.

‘Missus?’ Phoebe stood in the doorway.

‘Joseph?’ Susannah’s mouth went dry.

‘Come!’

The boy lay back on the pillow, his eyes closed.

Susannah felt his forehead and his eyes opened. ‘The fever has broken!’ she said. She lifted up the wrappings to examine the
wounds on his neck and in his armpit. ‘Look, Phoebe! I do believe this is weeping less than before.’

Phoebe nodded, her brown eyes round with hope.

‘Mammy?’

‘Yes, baby?’ Phoebe stroked his cheek.

‘Mammy, I’m hungry.’

Susannah and Phoebe looked at each other in wonder.

‘I’ll ask Mistress Oliver to send up some of her bean soup,’ said Susannah.

Phoebe fed Joseph the soup little by little from a spoon until the bowl was empty. He rubbed his tummy and rolled his eyes,
making his audience laugh.

Phoebe’s too-loud laughter turned into tears of relief, great gulping sobs that were unstoppable.

Susannah took her in her arms and patted her back, murmuring soothing words while Joseph watched his mother with frightened
eyes.

Something had shifted in the way Phoebe behaved towards Susannah. Reprieved from her terror that Joseph would die, euphoria
made her animated. In the long, hot hours that they sat by the child’s bedside over the following days while he gradually
recovered, Phoebe talked about the plantation where she had spent most of her life.

‘My mammy came to the plantation when it still new but Massa Savage, Massa Henry’s father that is, picked Mammy out of the
fields and made her a house slave. My brother Erasmus was newborn then and Mammy was nurse to Massa Henry, too.’

‘Henry told me that his nurse was like a mother to him.’

‘The missus,’ Phoebe pursed her lips and shook her head, ‘the missus was a cold lady.’

‘So was Henry like his father, then?’

‘No! Henry was …’ Phoebe licked her lips and Susannah stared at them, fascinated by how different they were to her own. They
resembled plump pink cushions on her chocolate-coloured face and she could begin to see what might have made Phoebe attractive
to William.

‘Massa Savage is a bad man. Henry and Erasmus like brothers. They always in trouble and the massa beat Erasmus if Henry do
a bad thing and say he will send him to work in the fields.’

‘How unfair!’ Susannah thought again about Emmanuel, banished to the plantation. ‘Phoebe, what about Emmanuel? Will Henry’s
father have put him to work in the fields?’

‘Emmanuel is mos’ likely still house slave. I know this in here.’ She clasped her hand to her heart. ‘He too valuable to work
in fields. He die in the sun.’

‘I hope you’re right. I felt so bad that he was sent away, I pleaded with William but I couldn’t stop it happening.’ Susannah
sighed. ‘Poor Henry! He was so homesick for Barbados. He hated it here but he said he’d argued with his father and couldn’t
return.’

‘Bad, bad words between Massa Henry and Massa Savage.’

Susannah shifted on her chair and rubbed her abdomen. The skin was so tight that it itched all the time.

‘When your baby coming?’ asked Phoebe.