The Lost Apothecary(77)

Was this a trick? Or were my eyes deceiving me, perhaps under attack by the demon inside me, ravaging me of this valuable sense in my final moments? I heaved my weight forward to grab her, but she slid away from me along the railing, my efforts no match for her nimble movements. This left me furious, as her little game had taken precious seconds from me. Somehow, I must find the strength to lift my own bones over the metal railing before the officer seized me.

One hand on the railing, Eliza’s other hand clutched the tiny blue vial that she had just offered me. She lifted it to her lips, sucked the liquid from it like a starving infant and tossed it into the water below.

“It will save me,” she whispered. Then her fingers, one by one, slid from the railing like ribbons.

Everything placed unto the body removes something from it, calls it forth or represses it.

My mother taught me this simple lesson, the power of earth-borne remedies, when I was a child. They were the words of the great philosopher Aulus, of whom little was known. Some, in fact, doubted his very existence, much less the veracity of this claim.

His words flooded over me as I watched Eliza’s body fall. I had never before experienced the strangeness of this vantage point, to watch someone fall directly below me. Her hair pulled upward as though I had an invisible hold on it. Her arms crossed over her chest as though she meant to protect something inside. She looked directly ahead, her gaze on the river outstretched before her.

I clung to the promise of Aulus’s words. I knew that, placed unto the body, oils and tinctures and draughts could remove—indeed, unweave and destroy—the creation of one’s womb. They could remove the thing one most desired.

I knew, too, that they could call forth pain and hatred and revenge. They could call forth evil within oneself, the rotting of bones, the splitting of joints.

Yet placed unto the body, these things could repress...what? Could they repress death?

By the time my fearful, racing heart understood what had happened, Eliza had disappeared into the water, the death I had dreamed of as my own. But animal instinct begged me away to the more urgent crisis before me: the constable mere inches away, his arms reaching, as though he, too, wanted to grab hold of the falling girl—for by jumping from the bridge, she had implicated herself, and the constable must have surely believed that only she could solve the mystery of who slipped the poison into the liqueur that killed Lord Clarence.

All around us, movement: a distraught-looking woman carrying a basket of oysters; a man herding a small flock of sheep south; several young children scattered about like rats. They all closed in, dressed in dark, morbidly curious.

The constable turned his gaze on me. “Were you in it together?” He motioned to the water.

I could not respond, so shattered was my still-beating heart. Below me the river toiled, as though angry with its newly claimed victim. It should not have been her. It should have been me. My desire to die was what brought us to the peak of this bridge, anyhow.

The constable spat at my feet. “Bloody mute, are we?”

I leaned onto the railing, my knees no longer serving me, and gripped the iron.

The second officer, brawnier than the first, came up behind him, his cheeks red and his chest heaving. “She jumped?” He peered around in disbelief before finally turning to appraise me. “This can’t be the second one, Putnam,” he shouted. “She can hardly stand. The two we saw running, they were dressed like anyone else.” He looked over the crowd, presumably searching for another cloaked figure with more vigor in her face than me.

“Damn you, Craw, it is, though!” Putnam yelled back, like a fisherman about to lose a valuable catch. “She can stand fine, she’s only shocked at the loss of her friend.”

I was, indeed. And I felt as though he meant to dig the fishhook as far into my flesh as it would go.

Craw stepped closer and leaned into his partner, lowering his voice. “You sure she’s not just one of the crowd, then?” He motioned around him. The mob of bodies, all dressed in similar dark coats as my own, had grown around us. By mere appearances, I blended in with them. “You’re sure enough to let her swing? The poisoner’s dead, sir.” He glanced over the edge of the bridge. “Buried in muck by now.”

A flash of doubt crossed Putnam’s face, and Craw seized it like a dropped coin. “We chased the rat out of her hole and we both saw her jump. It ends here. This is enough to satisfy the papers.”

“And the dead Lord Clarence?” Putnam screamed, his face red. He turned on me. “Do you know anything about him? Who bought the poison that killed him?”

I shook my head and heaved out the words like vomit. “I don’t know who that is, or of any poison that killed him.”

A sudden commotion silenced the men as another officer ran up the bridge. I recognized him as the third constable from the alley. “There’s nothing there, sirs,” he said.

“What the hell do you mean?” Putnam asked.

“I broke through the door where the women came out. Not a thing inside. A dry storage bin full of rotted grain.”

Amid the distress of the moment, I felt a singular sense of pride. The register, and the countless names within, were safe. All of those women, safe.

Putnam jerked his hand at me. “Does this woman look familiar? Was she one of the two we saw?”

The third constable hesitated. “Hard to tell, sir. We were quite the distance.”