The Lost Apothecary(10)
But while I needed time and distance, I had been reminded of James’s absence at every turn. The airport check-in attendant looked strangely at me, clicking her bright orange nails against the desk while asking the whereabouts of Mr. Parcewell, the second individual on the reservation. The lady at the hotel desk frowned when I stated that only one room key would be necessary. And now, of course, I found myself in a place I never expected: a muddy riverbed, searching for artifacts and, as Alf had said, inconsistencies.
“You must trust your instinct more than your eyes,” Bachelor Alf went on.
As I considered his words, I caught the sulfuric odor of sewage from somewhere downriver, and an unexpected wave of nausea rolled over me. Apparently I wasn’t the only one bothered by the smell, as a few others let out an audible groan.
“That’s another reason we don’t dig with shovels,” Bachelor Alf explained. “The odors down here, they’re none too pleasant.”
As I continued to make my way along the edge of the water, searching for an area undisturbed by the others, I took a misstep and ended up ankle-deep in a murky puddle. Gasping at the sudden shock of cold water inside my shoe, I considered what Bachelor Alf might say if I bailed early on the tour. Unpleasant smells aside, the adventure had done little to lift my mood.
I checked my phone and decided to give it twelve more minutes, until 3:00 p.m. If things hadn’t perked up by then—a small find, even mildly interesting—I’d kindly excuse myself.
Twelve minutes. A fraction of a lifetime, yet enough to alter the course of it.
5
Nella
February 4, 1791
I walked to the shelf behind Eliza and retrieved the small, milk-colored dish. Resting inside were the four brown hen’s eggs, two of them slightly larger than the others. I set the dish of eggs onto the table.
Leaning forward as though badly wanting to reach for the dish, Eliza set her hands on the table, her palms leaving a damp residue.
In truth, I saw much of my own childhood self in her—the wide-eyed curiosity about something novel, something that most other children don’t get to experience—though that part of me felt a thousand years dead. The difference was that I had first seen the contents of this shop—the vials and scales and stone weights—at a much younger age than twelve. My mother introduced them to me as soon as I had the ability to lift and sort objects, to distinguish one from another, to order and rearrange.
When I was only six or seven and my attention span was fleeting, my mother taught me simple, easy things, like colors: the vials of blue and black oil must stay on this shelf, and the red and yellow on that shelf. As I entered adolescence and became more skilled, more discerning, the tasks grew in difficulty. She might, for instance, dump an entire jar of hops onto the table, spread out the dry, bitter cones and ask me to rearrange them according to complexion. As I worked, my mother would toil beside me with her tinctures and brews, explaining to me the difference between scruples and drachms, gallipots and cauldrons.
These were my playthings. Whereas other children amused themselves with blocks and sticks and cards in muddy alleyways, I spent my entire childhood in this very room. I came to know the color, consistency and flavor of hundreds of ingredients. I studied the great herbalists and memorized the Latin names within the pharmacopoeias. Indeed, there existed little doubt that someday, I would preserve my mother’s shop and carry on her legacy of goodwill to women.
I never intended to stain that legacy—to leave it twisted and tarnished.
“Eggs,” Eliza whispered, jolting me from my reverie. She looked up at me, confused. “You have a chicken that lays poisonous eggs?”
Despite the seriousness of my meeting with Eliza, I could not help but laugh. It was a perfectly logical thing for a child to say, and I leaned back in my chair. “No, not quite.” I lifted one of the eggs, showed it to her and returned it to the dish. “You see here, if we look at these four eggs together, can you tell me which two are the largest?”
Eliza furrowed her brow, bent down until the table was level with her eyes and studied the eggs for several seconds. Then abruptly she sat up, a proud look on her face, and pointed. “These two,” she declared.
“Good.” I nodded. “The larger two. You must remember that. The larger two, they are the poisonous ones.”
“The large ones,” she repeated. She took a sip of her tea. “But how?”
I put three of the eggs back in the dish, but kept one of the larger ones out. I turned it in my hand so that my palm cupped the fat base of the egg. “What you can’t see, Eliza, is a tiny hole here at the top of the egg. It is covered, now, with a matching wax, but if you’d been here yesterday, you would have seen a tiny black dot where I inserted the poison with a needle.”
“It did not break!” she exclaimed, as though I had demonstrated a magick trick. “And I cannot even see the wax.”
“Precisely. And yet, there is poison inside—enough to kill someone.”
Eliza nodded, gazing at the egg. “What kind of poison is it?”
“Nux vomica, rat poison. An egg is the ideal place for the crushed seed, as the yolk—viscous and cool—preserves it, no different than if there were a baby chicken inside.” I returned the egg to the dish with the others. “You’ll be using the eggs soon?”
“Tomorrow morning,” Eliza said. “When he is home, my mistress and her husband eat together.” She paused, as though imagining the breakfast table laid out before her. “I will give my mistress the two smaller eggs.”