The Lost Apothecary(27)
Nella dabbed at her eye. “My mother would not let the young woman and her child leave, not for three days. They stayed with us, in the shop, so the honey could be applied every two hours. My mother did not miss a single treatment—she was not so much as a minute late in brushing the honey onto the baby’s skin for three entire days. She treated the boy as though he were her own.” She closed the register. “The pus dried. The spreading rash disappeared. The festering wound healed, with almost no scar.” She motioned to the book of magick she’d just given me. “That is why my mother never opened the book in your hands. Because saving lives with the gifts of the earth, Eliza, is as good as magick.”
I thought of the honey-covered baby that had once lain on the table where I now sat, and suddenly I felt ashamed of having mentioned magick at all.
“But I understand your curiosity about ghosts,” Nella went on, “and this is not about saving lives, anyhow. Inside the back cover is the name of a bookstore, and the street on which it’s located. I forget it now—something like Basing Lane. They have all sorts of books on magick, or so I’ve heard. The shop may not even exist anymore, but seeing as how you’d like a potion to remove spirits from the house, I think it as good a place to start as any.” She closed the cupboard door. “Better than here, anyway.”
I held the book in my hands, feeling the cool heft of it against my damp palms. A book of magick, I thought contentedly, with the address of a shop that sold more. Perhaps my visit to her today had not been as fruitless as I’d feared a moment ago. Anticipation beat inside my chest. I would go at once to this bookshop.
Suddenly, there was a light rapping, four soft clips, on the door. Nella looked again at the clock and groaned. I stood from my chair, ready to leave. But as Nella moved to the door, she placed a light hand on my shoulder and gently pushed me back into my seat.
My heart surged, and Nella lowered her voice to a whisper. “My hand is not steady, and I could not bottle up the powder that I am to sell to the woman who has just arrived. I could use your help, this once, if you would not mind.”
I nodded eagerly—the magick bookshop could wait. Then, her knuckles still swollen and red, Nella opened the door.
12
Caroline
Present day, Tuesday
Just after six o’clock, with a coffee in hand and enough early sunlight to see by, I left the hotel and made my way toward Bear Alley. I sucked in deep, cleansing breaths and considered how best to handle James’s impending arrival. I could ask him to book a room at a different hotel, preferably in another city, or print out our vows and tell me what, exactly, he didn’t understand about the words I will remain faithful. Whatever I asked him to do, one thing remained very clear: when I finally saw him, he wouldn’t much like what I had to say.
Distracted by my thoughts, I missed the crosswalk light and a taxi nearly ran me over as I crossed Farringdon Street. I waved my hand to the driver in a futile apology and silently cursed James for almost getting me killed.
On either side of Farringdon Street, imposing concrete-and-glass buildings rose high into the sky; as I’d feared, most of the area around Bear Alley looked to be taken up by mega corporations, and it seemed unlikely that anything existing two hundred years ago would remain today. With my destination only half a block ahead, I resigned myself to the fact that Bear Alley might be little more than a driveway.
At last, I came upon a small white-and-black placard marking an alleyway hidden between high-rise buildings: Bear Alley, EC4. The alley did indeed appear to be a service route for delivery trucks. Overfilled garbage cans cluttered one side of the alley while a mess of cigarette butts and fast-food containers littered the blackened pavement. Disappointment settled heavy on my chest; though I didn’t expect a sign reading Apothecary Killer Was Here, I’d hoped there would be a bit more intrigue than this.
As I walked deeper into the alley, the street noise fading quickly behind me, I realized that behind the street-front concrete-and-steel buildings were older brick structures. Ahead of me, the alley stretched on for a couple hundred meters. I scanned the area to see a man leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette and checking his phone—but other than him, the lane was empty. Despite this, I felt no fear; my adrenaline was high in anticipation of James’s arrival.
I walked slowly between the brick buildings, searching for anything interesting as I made my way to the end of the alley, but I only found more trash. I asked myself what I was searching for. It wasn’t as though I needed proof that the vial, or the unnamed apothecary, had a connection to this alley. After all, I wasn’t even convinced she existed; the hospital note could have been written by a deranged, hallucinating woman in the hours before her death.
But the possibility of the apothecary’s existence, the mystery of it, drew me deeper. The youthful, adventurous Caroline had begun to come alive again. I thought of my unused history degree, my diploma shoved away in a desk drawer. As a student, I’d been fascinated by the lives of ordinary people, those whose names weren’t acknowledged and recorded in textbooks. And now, I’d stumbled on the mystery of one of those nameless, forgotten people—and a woman, no less.
If I was honest with myself, this adventure drew me in for another reason: I sought distraction from the message sitting in my inbox. Like the final day of a vacation, I longed for something, anything, to delay the inevitable confrontation to come. Placing my hand over my belly, I sighed. I also sought a distraction from the fact that my period still hadn’t shown.