The Lost Apothecary(26)
“Oh, yes,” I told her. “I wish to live near the sea. I have seen paintings of Brighton, of castles in the sand. I would like to live there, I think.” I pulled my hand away and ran my fingers over my chin; a small, itchy boil had formed there, hardly larger than the tip of a needle. Out of other ideas, I exhaled, resigned to telling Nella the rest of the story. “Mr. Amwell’s spirit haunts me. I fear that if I remain at the house without Mrs. Amwell, he will harm me more than he has already.”
“Nonsense, child.” Nella vehemently shook her head back and forth.
“I swear it! The house has another spirit, too, of a young girl who was there before me, named Johanna. She died in the room next to mine, and I hear her crying at night.”
Nella’s palms splayed open as though she could not believe my words, like I was mad.
But I went on, resolute. “I very much want to remain in the service of Mrs. Amwell. And I promise, I will return to my post as soon as she has come back to London. I do not mean to inconvenience you. I only thought perhaps you could teach me how to brew something that will remove the spirits from the house, so I mustn’t listen to Johanna’s incessant crying anymore, and so that Mr. Amwell will leave me alone, once and for all. I could learn other things besides, and perhaps help you some while I am here.”
Nella looked me hard in the eye. “You listen here, Eliza. No potion has the power to remove spirits from the empty air we breathe. If one did exist, and if I had been the one to brew and bottle such a tincture, I would be a rich woman, living in a manor somewhere.” She traced a fingernail over a scratch on the table where we sat. “Bravery you have in telling me the truth. But I’m sorry, child. I cannot help you and you cannot stay here.”
Discouragement coursed through me; no matter my pleas, Nella had not offered to help me in any way, not even by offering a place to stay until Mrs. Amwell returned. And yet, I clung to the tremor in her voice. “Do you believe in spirits? Mrs. Amwell does not believe me, not even a bit.”
“I do not believe in ghosts, if that is what you’re asking of me. Little clouds of evil that children, like you, fear in the night. Think of it—if we become a ghost when we die, and if we haunt the places we once lived, would not all of London be in a perpetual fog?” She paused as the fire crackled loudly behind her. “But I do believe that sometimes, we feel remnants of those who lived before. These are not spirits, but rather creations of our own desperate imaginations.”
“So Johanna, who cries in the room next to mine...you think I am imagining her?” It was impossible; I’d never even met the girl.
Nella shrugged. “I cannot say, child. I have not known you long, but you are young, and therefore prone to wild ideas.”
“I am twelve,” I snapped back, my patience finally gone. “I am not so young.”
Meeting my eyes, Nella stood at last, grimacing, and made her way to the large cupboard at the back of the room. She ran her finger along the spines of several books, clicking her tongue against her teeth. Not finding what she wanted, she opened one of the cupboard doors and searched another stack of books, this one more disorderly than the last. Toward the bottom of the pile, she tugged on the spine of a small book and withdrew it.
It was very thin, more a pamphlet than a book, and the soft cover was torn at one corner. “This belonged to my mother,” she said, handing the book to me. “Though I never saw her open it, and I have seen no need myself.”
Peeling open the faded burgundy cover, I gasped at the frontispiece; it was an image of a woman giving birth to a bounty of fresh harvest, turnips and strawberries and mushrooms. Scattered around her bare breasts were several fish and a newborn pig. “What is this?” I asked Nella, my cheeks flushing.
“Someone gave it to my mother long ago, only a year or so before she died. It’s a book claiming to be filled with magick, intended for use by midwives and healers.”
“But she did not believe in magick, either,” I guessed.
Nella shook her head, then walked to her register and turned the pages backward, furrowing her brow as she searched the dates. Skimming her finger along the entries, she nodded. “Ah, yes. Take a look here.” She spun the register around to face me, then pointed at the entry:
6 Apr 1764, Ms Breyley, aus. wild honey, 1/2x pound, topical.
“A half pound of wild honey,” Nella read aloud.
I widened my eyes. “To eat?”
She pointed at the word topical. “No, to spread onto the skin.” She cleared her throat as she explained, “Ms. Breyley was hardly older than me. Hardly older than you. She came to my mother’s shop after midnight. Her cries woke us from sleep. An infant lay in her arms... She said that a few days prior, the little boy had been badly scalded by a kettle of hot water. My mother did not ask how. It did not matter so much as the poor boy’s condition. The wound had begun to fester and pus. Worse still, a rash was forming on other parts of his body, as though the wound had begun to crawl its way through the rest of him.
“My mother took the boy in her arms, felt the heat of him against her breast, then laid him onto this table and stripped off his clothes. She opened the jar of wild honey and slathered it onto his body. The infant began to cry and my mother, too. She knew how much it must have pained his new, delicate skin. It is the most distressing thing, Eliza, to issue pain to someone, even when you know it is for the best.”