The Lost Apothecary(21)

Two hours passed. It would have been suspicious if Mrs. Amwell continued to hide at her writing desk downstairs, the two of us working on letters that didn’t need writing, acting as though nothing was awry.

Everyone knew that Mr. Amwell was fond of the drink and had suffered many a period of days and nights with his head shoved deep into the chamber pot. But the truth was that he had never moaned in agony like this; this was something different, and I thought a few others of the household must realize it. The mistress and I went to see him together and, when she realized her husband had lost his ability to speak, she directed one of the staff to fetch the physician.

Immediately, the physician declared Mr. Amwell’s condition to be dire, noting that his patient’s abdomen swelled and convulsed in a way he had never before seen. The doctor attempted to explain this to my mistress in strange medical words I did not understand, but anyone could see the convulsions, like an animal writhed inside of Mr. Amwell’s belly. His eyes were bloodshot, and he could not even keep his gaze on the candlelight.

As the physician and my mistress stood together in hushed conversation, Mr. Amwell turned his head and those hollow black holes looked right at me, right into my soul, and I swear in that moment he knew. Biting back a scream, I rushed out of the room just as the physician palpated his patient’s groin, drawing from him a howl so deep and primal that I feared Mr. Amwell’s spirit had just released.

Only his raspy, stuttering breaths—audible from the corridor, where I stood trembling—told me it had not.

“His bladder is near rupture,” the physician told Mrs. Amwell as I left the room. “This type of episode has happened before, you say?”

“Many times,” my mistress said. It was not a lie, and yet she was lying. I leaned against the wall of the hallway, just outside the door in the cool, inky darkness, listening closely to the words of my mistress and the haggard breaths of her dying husband. “The drink is his vice.”

“The swelling in his abdomen is unusual, though...” The doctor trailed off, and I imagined him considering the strange case before him and whether to call for the bailiff. The dying man, his pretty wife. Had the physician seen the empty bourbon bottles we scattered about downstairs in an effort to fool him?

I took a step forward, unable to restrain my curiosity, and peeked around the open door. The doctor crossed his arms, drummed his finger and stifled a yawn. I wondered if he had his own pretty wife waiting for him at home with supper nearly ready. The doctor hesitated, then said, “You ought to send for a pastor, Mrs. Amwell. Straightaway. He will not survive the night.”

My mistress covered her mouth with her hand. “Heavens,” she breathed, true surprise in her voice.

At my mistress’s command, I showed the doctor the exit. Afterward, as I shut the door at the front of the house and turned around, she stood waiting for me.

“Let’s sit by the fire together,” she whispered, and we went to the place we had always gone. She wrapped a blanket around our legs, withdrew a notebook and began to dictate a letter to her mother, in Norwich. “Mother,” she began, “my husband has fallen terribly ill...”

I wrote each word exactly as she said, even though I knew they were not all true. And even when the letter was finished—for I wrote six pages, and then eight, and it was all a repetition of things she had already said—she continued speaking, and I continued writing. Neither of us wanted to move; neither of us wanted to go upstairs. The clock showed nearly midnight. Daylight had left long ago.

But we did not go on forever, for all at once, I felt something strange: something sticky and wet between my legs. At the same time, a servant descended the stairs, taking them two by two, his eyes wide and damp. “Mrs. Amwell,” he cried, “I am s-sorry to say it, but he has stopped breathing.”

Mrs. Amwell threw the blanket off her lap and stood, and I took her lead and did the same. But to my great horror, the warm and concave spot upon which I’d been sitting was now streaked with a band of crimson, bright as a fresh-picked apple. My mouth dropped open; was death about to find me, too? I sucked in each breath of air, willing it not to leave me.

Mrs. Amwell began to make her way to the staircase, but I cried out. “Wait—” I pleaded, “p-please don’t leave me here, alone.”

There could be no doubt about it: some terrible magick had found me again. Mr. Amwell’s spirit may have exited his body upstairs, but like that of Johanna’s, it had not gone entirely. What else could draw blood from my body at his moment of death?

I crumbled to the floor on my knees, fat tears falling down my face. “Don’t leave me,” I begged her again.

My mistress looked strangely at me, for she had left me alone in the room a thousand times before, but I could feel the wet warmth leaking from me even at that moment. From my place on the floor, I pointed to the sofa where we’d been seated together. My eyes settled on the blood-stained cushion upon which we’d been sitting, and all around us, the shadows of the candlelight danced closer, taunting me, Mr. Amwell hiding in every one of them.



10

Nella


February 7, 1791

On the seventh day of February, yet another note was left in the barrel of pearl barley.

Before I read it, I lifted the fine parchment—thin as the skin on my tired hands—and inhaled the scent of perfume. Cherries, with undertones of lavender and rose water.