The Lost Apothecary(5)

The mudlarking tour group stood a short distance away, listening attentively to their guide—the man I’d met on the street earlier. Steeling myself, I stepped forward, moving carefully amid the loose stones and muddy puddles. As I approached the group, I willed myself to leave all thoughts of home behind: James, the secret I’d uncovered, our unfulfilled desire for a baby. I needed a break from the grief suffocating me, the thorns of fury so sharp and unexpected they took my breath away. No matter how I decided to spend the next ten days, there was no use remembering and reliving what I’d learned about James forty-eight hours ago.

Here in London on this “celebratory” anniversary trip, I needed to discover what I truly wanted, and whether the life I desired still included James and the children we’d hoped to raise together.

But to do that, I needed to unbury a few truths of my own.



3

Nella


February 4, 1791

When 3 Back Alley was a reputable women’s apothecary shop belonging to my mother, it consisted of a single room. Alight with the flame of countless candles and often teeming with customers and their babies, the little shop gave a sense of warmth and safety. In those days, it seemed everyone in London knew of the shop for women’s maladies, and the heavy oak door at the front of the shop rarely stayed shut for long.

But many years ago—after my mother’s death, after Frederick’s betrayal and after I began dispensing poisons to women across London—it became necessary to divide the space into two separate, distinct sections. This was easily accomplished with the installation of a wall of shelves, which split the room in two.

The first room, situated in the front, remained directly accessible from Back Alley. Anyone could open the front door—it was nearly always unlocked—but most would assume they had arrived at the wrong destination. I now kept nothing in the room except an old grain barrel, and who had any interest in a bin of half-rotted pearl barley? Sometimes, if I was lucky, a nest of rats toiled away at one corner of the room, and this gave further impression of disuse and neglect. This room was my first disguise.

Indeed, many customers ceased coming. They had heard of my mother’s death, and after seeing this empty room, they merely assumed the shop had closed for good.

The more curious or nefarious sort—like young boys with sticky fingers—were not deterred by the emptiness. Seeking something to snatch, they’d push deeper into the room, inspecting the shelves for wares or books. But they would find nothing, because I left nothing to steal, nothing of interest at all. And so onward they would go. Onward they always went.

What fools they were—all of them but the women who’d been told where to look by their friends, their sisters, their mothers. Only they knew that the bin of pearl barley served a very important function: it was a means of communication, a hiding place for letters whose contents dared not be uttered aloud. Only they knew that hidden within the wall of shelves, invisible, stood a door leading to my apothecary shop for women’s maladies. Only they knew that I waited silently behind the wall, my fingers stained with the residue of poison.

It was where I now waited for the woman, my new patron, at daybreak.

Hearing the slow creak of the storage room door, I knew she had arrived. I peered through the nearly imperceptible cleft in the column of shelves, aiming to get my first dim look at her.

Taken aback, I covered my mouth with trembling fingers. Was it some mistake? This was no woman at all; it was a mere girl, not more than twelve or thirteen, dressed in a gray woolen gown with a threadbare navy cloak draped over her shoulders. Had she come to the wrong place? Perhaps she was one of those little thieves who was not fooled by my storage room, and she sought something to steal. If that were the case, she’d be better suited at a baker’s shop, stealing cherry buns so she could fatten up a bit.

But the girl, for her youth, arrived at exactly daybreak. She stood still and sure of herself in the storage room, her gaze directed at the false wall of shelves behind which I stood.

No, this was no accidental visitor.

At once, I prepared to send her away on account of her age, but I stopped myself. In her note, she had said she needed something for her mistress’s husband. What might become of my legacy if this mistress was well-known about town, and word got out that I sent a child away? Besides, as I continued to peek at the young girl through the cleft, she held high her head of thick black hair. Her eyes were round and bright, but she did not look down at her feet or back at the front door to the alley. She shivered slightly, but I felt sure it was on account of the cool air rather than her nerves. The girl stood too tall, too proud, for me to think her fearful.

With what did she brew her courage? The strict command of her mistress, or something more sinister?

I maneuvered the latch out of its hold, swung the column of shelves inward and motioned for the girl to come inside. Her eyes took in the tiny space in an instant, without need to even blink; the room was so small that if the girl and I stood together and spread our arms wide, we could nearly touch the opposite sides of it.

I followed her gaze across the shelves at the back wall, littered with glass vials and tin funnels, gallipots and grinding stones. On a second wall, as far as possible from the fire, my mother’s oaken cupboard held an assortment of earthenware and porcelain jars, meant for the tinctures and herbs that frayed and decayed in even the faintest light. On the wall nearest the door stood a long narrow counter as tall as the girl’s shoulders; on it rested a collection of metal scales, glass and stone weights, and a few bound reference guides on women’s maladies. And if the girl were to pry inside the drawers beneath the counter, she would find spoons, corks, candlesticks, pewter plates and dozens of sheets of parchment, many of them spoiled with hurried notes and calculations.