The Lost Apothecary(25)

“I do not want to remain at the Amwell house,” I muttered. It was not untruthful, even if it was not the whole truth. I let out a cough and felt the sticky, wet sensation of blood leaking from me. Yesterday, I’d snatched a thin cloth from the laundry and cut it into pieces, just to keep the blood from soiling my undergarments.

Nella cocked her head to one side, confused. “What of your mistress? Your work?”

“She has gone north for a few weeks to be with her family in Norwich. She left this morning, her carriage dressed in black, on account of needing to be with family while she—” I paused, repeating what she had asked me to write in several letters before she left. “While she is in mourning.”

“There must be plenty of household work to keep you busy, then.”

I shook my head. With my mistress gone, her husband dead and Sally returned from her visit with her mother, there was little for me to do. “I only write her letters, so Mrs. Amwell said I did not need to remain at the house while she was gone.”

“You write her letters? That explains your penmanship.”

“She has shaky hands. She cannot write much of anything anymore.”

“I see,” Nella said. “And so she dismissed you for a time.”

“She suggested I visit my parents in the country—in Swindon. She thought perhaps a rest would be good for me.”

Nella raised her eyebrows at this, but it was true; after I fell sobbing to the floor and Mrs. Amwell found my streak of blood on her chair, she took me in her arms. I had been inconsolable about Mr. Amwell’s released spirit, unable to quiet my hiccups, but she seemed unperturbed, even calm. How could she not see the truth? I began bleeding the very same hour that Mr. Amwell died; how could she not see that his spirit had done it to me? His ugly ghost wrapped itself around my belly that night.

No tears over this, my mistress had whispered, for this is as natural as the moon moving across the sky.

But there was nothing natural about this death-blood that still had not stopped, despite the passage of two days. My mistress had been wrong about Johanna—I knew she died in the room next to me—and she was wrong about this, too.

“And yet you did not go to Swindon,” Nella said, bringing my attention back to her.

“It is a long journey.”

Nella crossed her arms, a look of disbelief on her face. She knew I was lying; she knew there was something else, some other reason for not returning home. Nella looked to the clock, then the door. Whether she was waiting for someone to arrive or waiting for me to leave, I did not know—but if I could not tell her about my bleeding, I needed to find another way to stay, and quick.

I clenched my hands, ready to say what I’d practiced on my walk here. My voice trembled; I could not fail, or she would send me away. “I’d like to stay with you and help with your shop.” The words rushed from me in a single breath. “I would like to learn how to shred roots that kill wolves and how to put poison into an egg without cracking it.” I waited, judging Nella’s reaction, but her face remained blank and this gave me a surge of courage. “Like an apprenticeship, only for a short while. Until Mrs. Amwell has returned from Norwich. I promise to be of great help to you.”

Nella smiled at me, her eyes creasing at the edges. Whereas I believed, a moment ago, that she was hardly older than my mistress, now I wondered if perhaps Nella wasn’t forty, or even fifty years old. “I do not need help with my tinctures, child.”

Undeterred, I sat up taller. I’d come prepared with a second idea, in case my first plea did not work. “Then I can help you with your vials,” I said, motioning to one of her shelves. “Some of the labels are faded, and I have seen the way you hold your arm funny. I can darken the ink, so you do not hurt yourself.” I thought of my many hours and days spent with Mrs. Amwell in the drawing room, perfecting my penmanship. “You will not be disappointed with my work,” I added.

“No, little Eliza,” she said. “No, I cannot agree to that.”

My heart almost burst, and I realized I never dreamed she would say no to this, too. “Why not?”

She laughed in disbelief. “You want to be an apprentice, an assistant, and learn to brew poisons so middling women can kill their husbands? Their masters? Their brothers and suitors and drivers and sons? This is not a shop of sweets, girl. These are not vials of chocolate into which we place crushed raspberries.”

I bit my tongue, resisting the urge to remind her that only days ago, I cracked a poisoned egg into a skillet and served it to my master. But I knew from writing Mrs. Amwell’s letters that the things a person most wanted to say were often the things they should keep tucked away inside. I paused, then said calmly, “I know this is not a shop of sweets.”

Her face was serious now. “What interest do you have in meddling with this business, child? My heart is black, as black as the ash beneath that fire, for reasons you are too young to understand. What has harmed you so, in merely twelve years, that leaves you wanting more of this?” She waved her arms around the room, her gaze falling at last on the pot of soil, with the wolfsbane hidden underneath.

“And have you considered what it might be like to sleep on a cot in a room hardly large enough for one of us, much less two of us? Have you considered that there is not a bit of privacy in here? There is no rest, Eliza—something is always steaming, brewing, stewing, soaking. I wake at all hours of the night to tend the things you see around us. This is no grand house of nighttime quiet and pink papers on the wall. You may be just a servant, but I suspect your quarters are much nicer even than this.” Nella took a breath and placed a gentle hand on mine. “Do not tell me that you dream of working in a place like this, girl. Do you not wish for something more?”