The Lost Apothecary(20)

I stood from the bed and began to pace by the window, checking the sky every few minutes, searching desperately for the first early rays of light.

The sun could not rise soon enough.



9

Eliza


February 5, 1791

As a minute passed, then another, with no change in Mr. Amwell’s demeanor at the breakfast table, my bravery began to wane. I wished badly for another warm cup of Nella’s valerian hot brew, which had left me so relaxed at her little shop with the secret room.

The deed itself had not been so bad—the cracking of the eggs, dropping them into the sizzling pan. I did not even fear the angry words Mr. Amwell might spout at me as the poisoned eggs churned in his belly, nor the rigid, bent form that his body might take, which Nella warned might cause a lifetime of nightmares.

But while I was brave about some things, I was not brave about all things. What I feared was his ghost, his unharnessed spirit after death. The unseen movement of it through walls, through skin.

My fear of spirits was recent, beginning a few months ago when Sally pulled me into the cold, dark cellar and told me a story about a girl named Johanna.

I was not so brave after that day, knowing that magick could sour and go bad.

According to Sally, Johanna worked at the Amwell estate just a short time before I arrived. Only a year or two older than me, Johanna had fallen ill—so ill that she could not leave her room. And during her isolation, whispers flew through the corridors: rumors that she was not ill at all, but carrying a little baby and soon to give birth.

Sally said that on a cold morning in November, one of the upstairs maids sat with Johanna while she strained a whole day with the baby. Pushing and pushing, all of that effort but never a cry. The baby never did come out, and Johanna fell into a sleep from which she never woke.

The attic room where I slept—with its cobwebbed, drafty corners—was next to the one where Johanna and her baby had died. And after Sally told me this story, I began to hear Johanna cry out through the walls, late at night. It sounded like she was crying for me, crying my name. On occasion, I heard what sounded like rushing water, and a thumping, like the baby inside her belly was trying to break his way out with his little balled-up fists.

“Who was the father?” I had asked Sally in the cellar.

She looked hard at me, like I should already know.

Eventually, I worked up the courage to reveal to Mrs. Amwell some of what Sally had told me of Johanna, but my mistress insisted no girl was pregnant in the house, and certainly no girl had died. She tried to tell me that Sally was envious of my place in the house, and the thumping was my own terrified heart—little more than bad dreams.

I did not argue with Mrs. Amwell. But I knew what I heard late at night. How can one mistake the cry of their own name?

Now, as I waited in the dining room with my back to the wall, watching Mr. Amwell chew away at his eggs, it was this set of events that left me unsteady—so much so that I had to place my palms against the wall to balance myself. I did not regret what I’d done; I only hoped the poisonous eggs would kill Mr. Amwell quickly, and in daylight, for I could not bear the idea of another voice calling my name through the walls. I prayed Mr. Amwell’s wretched spirit would not release in this very room, or if it did, that it would not dwell long.

I didn’t understand this kind of magick. I didn’t understand why Johanna’s spirit was still stuck or why she haunted me as she did, and I feared Mr. Amwell’s spirit might soon accompany her in the hallways.

I was brave about some things, yes, and poisons didn’t scare me. But unchained, angry spirits could bring me to my knees.

He clutched his throat halfway through the second egg. “My God,” he cried. “What is in the gravy? I’ve a furious thirst.” He downed half the pitcher of water while I remained at the edge of the dining room, waiting to remove the plates.

The mistress’s eyes grew wide. She touched the pale yellow ribbing of her bodice; did I imagine the tremble in her wrist? “Dear, are you quite all right?” she asked him.

“Do I look it?” Mr. Amwell snapped. He tugged at his bottom lip, which had begun to swell and redden. “My mouth is so hot, did you use a pepper?” He dabbed at a bead of gravy stuck to his chin, and his napkin fell to the floor as if he had lost his grip on it. I could see it, then, so clearly: his fury curdling into something like fear.

“No, sir,” I said. “I made it just the same as I always have. The milk was to go bad soon.”

“I believe it’s bloody gone bad already.” He began to cough and clutched his throat again.

The mistress picked at her own gravy and eggs, then took a cautious bite.

“Damn this!” He pushed the plate away and stood, his chair tumbling to the floor behind him, rustling the pristine, daisy-print curtains. “I’m to be sick, girl! Take this away!”

I rushed forward and grabbed the plate, pleased to find that he had, indeed, finished the entire first egg and much of the second. Nella had promised one would do, if it must.

Mr. Amwell ascended the staircase, his footsteps echoing through the dining room. The mistress and I looked at one another in silence, and I must admit a part of me was surprised the plan had worked at all. I made my way to the kitchen, quickly wiping the plate, which I then thrust into murky old water.

In the dining room, my mistress still picked at her food. She seemed perfectly well, thank God, but Mr. Amwell’s retching from the floor above was so loud, I wondered if the effort of it would kill him before the poison itself. I had never heard such vomiting, such groaning. How long might it take? Nella did not tell me that, and I had not thought to ask.