The Apothecary's Daughter

by Betts, Charlotte

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 978-0-748-12495-4

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Charlotte Betts

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  Hachette Digital

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Copyright

  The Fading of the Light

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Into Darkness

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  House of Shadows

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Ghosts and Shadows

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  The Valley of the Shadow of Death

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Into the Light

  Chapter 32

  Acknowledgements

  For my mother and father, Dorothy

  and Michael Spooner

  The Fading of the Light

  January

  1665

  Chapter 1

  Inside the apothecary shop Susannah stood by the light of the window, daydreaming and grinding flowers of sulphur into a malodorous dust as she watched the world go by. Fleet Street, as always, was as busy as an anthill. The morning’s snow was already dusted with soot from the noxious cloud blown in from the kilns at Limehouse and the frost made icebergs of the surging effluent in the central drain. Church bells clanged and dogs barked while a ceaseless stream of people flowed past.

  Thwack! A snowball smashed against the window pane. Susannah gasped and dropped the pestle, shocked out of her lazy con -templation. Outside, a street urchin laughed at her through the glass.

  ‘Little demon!’ Her heart still hammering, she raised a fist at him. She watched him darting away through the horde until her eye was drawn by the tall figure of a man in a sombre hat and cloak picking his way over the snow.

  Something about the way he moved amongst the hubbub of the crowd, like a wolf slipping silently through the forest, captured her curiosity. As he drew closer Susannah recognised him as a physician, one of her father’s less frequent customers. Stepping around a steaming heap of horse droppings and a discarded cabbage, it became apparent that he was making his way towards the shop.

  Susannah pulled open the door. ‘Good morning,’ she said, shivering in the icy draught that followed him.

  He touched his hat but didn’t return her smile. ‘Is Mr Leyton here?’

  ‘Not at present. May I help?’

  ‘I hardly think that you …’

  She suppressed her irritation with a sigh. Why did he assume she was incapable, simply because she wore skirts? ‘Do, please, tell me what you require, sir.’

  ‘What I require is to discuss my requirements with your father.’

  The man’s tone tempted Susannah to make a sharp retort but she reined in a flash of temper and merely said, ‘He’s gone to read the parson’s urine.’

  The doctor’s dark eyebrows drew together in a frown as he took off his gloves and rubbed the warmth back into his hands. ‘This is a matter of urgency. Please tell him Dr Ambrose came by and ask him to call on me when he returns.’

  ‘May I tell him what it is you wish to discuss?’

  Dr Ambrose hesitated and then shrugged. ‘I have a patient who suffers from a stone in the bladder. Leyton mentioned to me that he’d had some success with his own prescription in cases of this kind. The patient’s state of health is not so strong that I can recommend cutting for the stone since he has a chronic shortness of breath. Can you remember all that?’

  ‘Oh, I should think so.’ Susannah smiled sweetly and vigorously stirred up the ground sulphur with the pestle until it floated in a choking cloud between them. ‘Father usually recommends spirits of sweet nitre for a stone, mixed with laudanum and oil of juniper. Your patient should sip a teaspoonful in a cup of linseed tea sweetened with honey.’

  Dr Ambrose coughed and pressed a handkerchief to his nose. ‘You are sure of this?’

  ‘Of course. And you might try milk of gum ammoniac stirred with syrup of squills for the wheezing in the chest.’

  Dr Ambrose raised his eyebrows and Susannah did her best not to look smug. ‘Perhaps you would like to warm yourself by the fire while I prepare the medicines for you?’ she said.

  ‘Do you know the correct proportions?’

  ‘I am perfectly used to dispensing my father’s prescriptions.’

  She retired to the dispensary, a curtained-off alcove at the rear of the shop, and peeped through the gap in the curtains while he, apparently thinking he was unobserved, lifted his cloak and warmed his backside by the fire. Stifling a laugh, she turned to the bench and set to work. As she bottled up the last prescription the shop bell jingled. She pulled aside the curtain to see an elegantly dressed lady enter.

  ‘Please, take a seat by the fire and I will help you in just a moment,’ Susannah said.

  She handed the two bottles of medicine to Dr Ambrose and, in the interests of repeat business, made the effort to be civil. ‘I hope you are warmer now?’ She wondered whether to tell him he had a sulphurous streak across his nose but decided against it. ‘They say this bitter wind comes from Russia, which is why the frost has barely lifted since December.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s as well,’ the doctor said. ‘The cold moderates the severity of the plague.’

  ‘Except in the parish of St Giles, of course. We must pray that the freeze destroys the pestilence.’

  ‘Indeed. Put the prescriptions on my account.’ He nodded and left.

  Susannah, wondering if he’d been sucking lemons, watched him set off again down Fleet Street. What a shame his darkly handsome face wasn’t matched by more pleasing manners!

  The other customer was a fair-haired woman of about Susannah’s own age and dressed very finely in a fur-tipped cloak with a crimson skirt just visible beneath. She stood on tiptoe, examining the preserved crocodile which hung from one of the ceiling beams. Her small nose wrinkled with distaste. ‘Is it real?’

  ‘Certainly! It came from Africa. My father bought it from a sailor.’ Susannah still remembered her mixed fear and fascination when he’d brought it home many years before. She had tentatively touched its hard, scaly body with the tip of her finger, shuddering as it stared back at her with beady glass eyes. Her younger brother, Tom, had hidden behind the counter until their mother assured him the creature wasn’t alive.

  ‘This is Mr Leyton’s apothecary’s shop, at the sign of the Unicorn and the Dragon?’

  ‘As you see, the sign hangs over the door.’

  ‘Is Mr Leyton here?’

  ‘Not at present. May I help you?’

  Pursing her lips, she looked S
usannah up and down. ‘I would like …’ She glanced around at the bottles and jars that lined the walls, frowning a little. ‘Yes. A bottle of rosewater will do very well. Tell me,’ she said, running her gloved finger along the counter, ‘how many hearths do you have in this building?’

  ‘Why, we have three bedchambers, the parlour and the dining room and then there is the shop, dispensary and kitchen,’ stammered Susannah, taken aback.

  ‘The house is narrow and crooked with age.’

  ‘But it is also deep.’ Susannah stood up very straight, a flare of temper bringing warmth to her face. ‘And the parlour is panelled and we have a good yard.’

  The woman sighed. ‘I suppose it is well enough.’ She put a handful of coins on the counter, picked up the rosewater and waited until Susannah snatched open the shop door for her.

  Relieved to be rid of the woman with her prying questions, Susannah stood shivering in the open doorway for a moment, glancing up the snowy street beyond the waiting sedan chair. She saw Ned, the apprentice, hurtling along towards the shop, returning from delivering a packet of liver pills to the Misses Lane. His head was down against the bitter wind and she realised that he was on course to collide with the departing customer.

  ‘Ned, look out!’ she called.

  At the last second he swerved, narrowly avoiding barrelling into the lady as she climbed into her sedan chair.

  She gave Susannah an accusing look, put her nose in the air and motioned for the chair to leave.

  ‘Take more care, Ned!’ snapped Susannah.

  He banged the door behind them and hurried to the fire to warm his hands and stamp the feeling back into his feet.

  ‘For goodness’ sake!’ Susannah’s repressed irritation with both her recent customers made her voice sharp. ‘Fetch the broom and clear up all that ice from your boots before it turns into puddles.’

  ‘Sorry, miss.’

  ‘And then you can dust the gallypots.’

  ‘Yes, miss.’ He blew on his fingers, collected the broom from the dispensary and began to sweep the floor.

  Susannah relented. Sometimes Ned put her in mind of her brother, Tom, now living far away in Virginia. She reached a large stone jar down from the shelf, scooped out a spoonful of the sticky substance from inside and smeared it onto a piece of brown paper. ‘Here!’ she said, handing him the salve. ‘Rub this on your chilblains and it will stop the skin from breaking. And don’t forget to dust the gallypots!’ She retrieved the sulphurous pestle and mortar from the counter and carried it in to the dispensary to mix up an ointment for pimples.

  She had lived in the apothecary shop for all of her twenty-six years and it held her most precious memories. As she measured ingredients and mixed the ointment she hummed to herself as she remembered how, when they were children, she and Tom had learned to add up by counting out pills. She recalled experimenting with the weighing beam, fascinated that a huge bunch of dried sage weighed exactly the same as a tiny piece of lead. In the big stone mortar, the same one she was using now, she’d made gloriously sticky mixtures of hog’s lard combined with white lead and turpentine as a salve for burns. She’d learned to read by studying the letters, in Latin, painted on the gallypots which lined the walls and then to write by tracing her father’s exquisite handwriting on the labels fixed to the banks of wooden storage drawers.

  Now she busied herself setting a batch of rosemary and honey linctus to boil, sniffing at its sweet, resinous scent. Cold weather and London’s putrid fog was excellent for business since most of the customers had a perpetual winter cough. Licking honey off her thumb, she glanced through the gap between the dispensary curtains to see Ned lying over the counter, teasing the cat with a trailing piece of rag. Suddenly he slid back to the ground and with meticulous care began to dust the majolica jars. Susannah guessed from this that he’d glimpsed his master returning.

  Cornelius Leyton struggled through the door with a large box, which he placed on the counter between a cone of sugar and the jar of leeches. The frost had nipped his nose cherry red.

  ‘What have you bought, Father?’

  Taking his time, he began to untie the string.

  ‘Let me!’ she said, snatching a knife from under the counter and slicing through the knot.

  ‘Always so impatient, Susannah!’ Carefully, Cornelius lifted the lid.

  Susannah caught a glimpse of dark fur and gasped. Was it a puppy? But then, as her father lifted aside the tissue paper, she realised with disappointment that she was mistaken.

  Cornelius gathered up the wig and shook out its long and lustrous black curls. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s … magnificent. Put it on!’

  Eyes gleaming with anticipation, he snatched off his usual wig, a modest mid-brown affair that he’d had for a number of years, to expose his own cropped grey hair. Then, reverentially, he placed the new wig over the top.

  Susannah stared at him.

  ‘Susannah?’

  Speechless, she continued to stare. Her father was fine-looking; tall, with dark eyes and an air of authority, but she had never thought of him as a vain man. In fact, she’d always had to chivvy him into buying a new coat or breeches and his hat was embarrassingly old-fashioned. But this wig was an entirely different affair. It turned him into an elegant stranger and it made her uneasy.

  ‘Well?’ His expression was anxious.

  ‘Astonishing,’ she said, at last. She lifted up one of the silky curls which fell near enough to his waist. ‘It’s very handsome.’ She fumbled for words. ‘I hardly recognise you. It makes you seem so … young.’

  A quickly suppressed smile flitted across his face.

  Ned said, ‘You look exactly like the King, sir.’

  Cornelius threw his apprentice a sharp look. ‘You have time for idle chatter, Ned? Shall I find you something to do? The copper still in the yard must be scrubbed. Of course the ice must be scraped off it first …’

  Ned hastily returned to his dusting. ‘I was talking to my old friend, Richard Berry,’ continued Cornelius, with an amused glance to Susannah, ‘and he said a more fashionable appearance will be good for business. Perhaps I should have a new hat, too?’

  ‘I’ve been suggesting that for months!’

  ‘Have you?

  ‘Father!’

  ‘I have some visits to make. Did you brush my blue coat?’

  ‘Of course.’ ‘Then if there’s nothing that needs my attention here …?’ ‘Oh! I forgot. Dr Ambrose asked you to call on him to discuss a patient of his with a kidney stone. I prepared the prescriptions for him.’

  ‘Good, good.’ Cornelius picked up his old wig and went upstairs.

  Susannah stared after him. What on earth had inspired him to suddenly start taking an interest in his appearance? Shaking her head, she returned to the dispensary to pot up the sulphur ointment. As always, spooning that particular mixture into jars evoked the familiar recollection of an afternoon eleven years before when she’d helped her mother to do the same thing. Her mother’s gentle voice was imprinted on Susannah’s memory and she could recall, as if it were yesterday, how her hand had rested tenderly upon the swell of her belly. That was two days before she died and there had been the same sulphurous reek in the air then, mixed with the usual aromas of rosewater and beeswax, liquorice and oil of wormwood, turpentine and drying herbs. Those were the scents of her father’s trade and they ran in Susannah’s blood.

  The shop bell jolted her back to the present and she was pleased to hear Martha’s voice. Until her marriage Martha had lived in a neighbouring house and been her closest friend for twenty years, despite her Puritan leanings. Pulling back the curtain, Susannah went to greet her.

  Martha, as neat as always in a starched apron and with her dark hair tucked firmly into her cap, recoiled as they kissed. ‘Ugh! What is it this time?’

  ‘Nothing dangerous! Merely complexion ointment.’

  ‘It certainly smells dreadful enough to frighten pimples away.’ M
artha turned bone white and held her slim fingers over her mouth while she swallowed convulsively.

  ‘It’s not that dreadful, surely?’

  Martha smiled faintly. ‘The slightest thing turns my stomach, at the moment,’ she said pressing her hands to her apron. ‘I came to ask for some of that ginger cordial you made for me last time …’

  ‘Last time? Oh Martha! Not another one? Little Alys isn’t even weaned.’

  ‘I know.’ Martha sighed, the shadows under her hazel eyes dark against her pale face. ‘I did warn Robert that if he insisted Alys went to a wet nurse it was likely I’d fall again but you know how stubborn men can be.’

  ‘Stubborn and peculiar,’ Susannah added, thinking of her father’s latest purchase. She pulled the joint stool from under the counter and stretched up to the top shelf for the ginger cordial, then decanted some of the golden liquid into a bottle and stopped it with a cork.

  The narrow door to the staircase creaked open and Cornelius appeared, wearing the new acquisition and his best blue coat. He showed more lace than usual at his throat and new blue ribands on his shoes. The air around him carried the distinct aroma of lavender water and self-conscious pride.

  ‘Martha. Are you keeping well?’

  Martha’s freckled face turned from white to red as she bobbed a curtsy. ‘Mr Leyton. Thank you, I am very well.’

  Cornelius’s eyes flickered to the bottle of cordial and then to Martha’s waist. ‘And all your little ones?’

  ‘Well, too.’

  ‘Good, good. I shall not detain you.’ He picked up his cane with the silver head. ‘Susannah, do not wait up for me; I shall not be home for supper.’ He launched himself into the hurly burly of Fleet Street, raising his cane to attract a passing hackney carriage.

  Martha stared at her friend with wide eyes. ‘Your father looks so different. I never realised before what a handsome man he is.’

  After Martha had left, Susannah began to wonder where her father had gone, all dressed up in such finery.

  Two weeks later Susannah was baking sugar jumbals with the maid, Jennet, when Cornelius came into the kitchen. He stood by the fire, shifting from foot to foot and watching as Susannah pounded the sugar and Jennet washed the salt from the butter. His dead wife’s recipe book lay open on the table, a sprig of dried lavender marking the place.