by Sarah Penner
I looked to the ground and quickened my pace, but as I reached the bottom step of the bridge, I felt a light hand on my shoulder.
“Miss?” I turned, and there they stood, the three of them in perfect formation: father, mother, child. “Are you quite well?” The man pushed his hat away from his face and pulled down the scarf wrapped around his neck.
“I—I am all right, yes,” I stammered. The handrail was like ice underneath my fingers, but I did not loosen my grip.
He sighed in relief. “My God, we saw you o’er there, coughing. You oughta get off this cold road and get in by a fire.” He looked up the staircase, where I was headed. “Not really thinking of crossing this bridge over to Southwark, are you? The exertion in this cold...”
I tried to keep my eyes off the dimpled, tightly swaddled infant. “It is no issue, I assure you.”
The woman tilted her head in pity. “Oh, do come with us, we’ll hire a boatman. This little one is far too heavy for walking.” She looked down at her baby, then nodded to one of the several men waiting along the nearby riverbank.
“Thank you, but I’m perfectly well, really,” I insisted, lifting my foot to ascend the staircase. I smiled at the nice couple, wishing they’d take their leave, but another cough tugged at my throat and my effort to stifle it was futile. I could not help but turn my head to cough again and, as I did so, I felt another grip on my shoulder—firmer this time.
It was the woman, and her look was fierce. “If you must be out, I insist you come with us on the boat. You won’t make it up this staircase, I assure you, much less across the bridge. Come on, just this way.” She tugged me along, one hand on the head of her infant and the other hand on my back, and led me to one of the waiting boatmen by the river.
I relented, and once we were settled into the boat with thick, woolen blankets on our laps, I felt instantly grateful for the respite.
The baby began to fuss the moment the boat pushed away from the riverbank. The mother pulled out her breast, and the boat began to bump and roll in the icy waters. I leaned over slightly, hoping I would not lose my stomach on the ride across the river to Southwark. For a moment, I forgot altogether my reason for being in the boat, on the river, with this beautiful family. And then I remembered: the beetles. The gatehouse. The footman. Something to incite lust.
“You feel sick?” the man asked. “The water is a bit rough today, but I assure you, it is still better than walking.”
I nodded in agreement with him. Besides, the feeling was not foreign to me; it felt much like morning sickness, which I still remembered despite the passage of two decades. The rolling waves of nausea had struck me early, even before I missed my monthly course, and the fatigue came soon after. But I had known it was not just any fatigue; as well as I could hold two seeds side by side and declare which was borne of a yellow lily and which of a white, I knew without doubt that I carried a child inside of me. Despite the sickness and fatigue, one would think I had discovered the secret to all happiness, for never in my life had I been more gleeful than I was in those early days, carrying Frederick’s child.
The mother smiled at me and pulled the sleeping baby off her nipple. “You would like to hold her?” she asked. I flushed, having not realized that I was staring at the child.
“Yes,” I whispered before I knew what I was saying. “Yes.”
She handed me the child, telling me that her name was Beatrice. “Bringer of joy,” she said.
But as the weight of the child filled my arms and her warmth carried through the layers of fabric to my skin, I felt anything but joy. The bundle of peach skin and tiny breath settled in my arms like a gravestone, a marker of loss, of having had something special ripped away. A knot formed in my throat, and I instantly regretted this means of passage to Southwark.
To die in the arms of a lover as I lie alone, waiting, the corridors silent. The words in the letter that brought me here seemed a curse already.
The baby must have sensed my discontent, for she startled awake and looked around, disoriented. Even with her full belly, her brow crumbled as though she was about to wail.
Instinct told me to bounce her up and down, up and down, and hold her tighter. “Shhh,” I whispered to her, aware of the mother and father watching me. “Shhh, little one, there now, nothing to fuss over.” Beatrice calmed and locked her gaze on mine like she meant to see into the depths of me, to peek at my secrets and all that made me ache.
If only she could see what rotted within. If only her little heart could understand the heaviness that had plagued me for two decades, kindling the trail of vengeance that now blazed across London and burdened me with a lifetime of other people’s secrets.
It was on this that I dwelt as our boat rolled over the waves and we crossed to the other side. And yet, even with beautiful baby Beatrice, the bringer of joy, in my arms, I could not help but turn my gaze to Blackfriars Bridge. Looking up at the stone arches that supported the structure and lifted it high above the water, I allowed myself to dream for a moment about the release and freedom that could be so easily seized with a single step off the bridge.
A moment of free fall, a blast of frigid water. Just a moment to be done with this curse, and all the others—to seal the secrets inside and protect what had been entrusted to me. Just a moment to suck the loss and rot out of my bones. Just a moment to join my own little one, wherever she was.
I continued to bounce Beatrice up and down in my arms, and I made a silent plea that she would never think thoughts as dark and terrible as my own. And I felt sure if my own baby had lived—she would then be nineteen years old, a young woman—I would not have entertained such things. I certainly would not look so longingly to the black shadow of the bridge a short distance away.
I pulled my gaze down to Beatrice’s face. There was not a flaw on her, not so much as a birth blemish. I tugged the cream-colored blanket away slightly so that I might better see the little folds of skin around her chin and neck. By the softness of the wool against my thumb, I believed the blanket swaddling the child cost more than the clothes on both the mother and father put together. Beatrice, I said silently, hoping to somehow communicate the meaning to her with only my eyes, your mother and father love you very much.
As I said it, I could have cried out; my womb had never felt so hollow, so void. I wished I could have said the same thing to my own lost child—that her mother and father loved her very much—but I could not have said it, because it would only have been half true.
Trembling, I handed Beatrice back to her mother as the boatman began to navigate us to shore.
* * *
Early the next morning, after harvesting the beetles from the field and roasting them over the hearth, I could hardly lift myself from my place on the floor. The frigid air of the day prior had left my knees stiff, and the long walk after the boat journey made my ankles swell. My fingers, too, were raw and bloodied, but that was expected; I’d dug more than a hundred blister beetles out of the fields near Walworth, plucking each one from its nest, removing each one from its beloved kin.
Amid this discomfort, relief was provided by the low flame and the opium-laced water boiling over it. I had an hour to rest until the wealthy customer—whose imminent visit still left me with a palpable sense of unease—arrived.
And yet, I was made a fool of; just as I leaned my head back against the hearth, there came a knock on the hidden door, so sudden, so startling, I almost cried out. Quickly, quickly, I scoured my thoughts. Was I so exhausted that I had forgotten an appointment? Had I missed a letter? It was too early for the lady arriving at ten; too early to be blamed on mismatched clocks.
God be damned, it must be a woman needing wormwood or feverfew, the everyday remedies. I groaned and began to heave myself from the floor, but my own weight was like quicksand, sucking me down. Then came another knock, louder this time. Silently, I cursed the intruder, the person bring
ing more pain upon me.
I went to the door and peered through the narrow cleft in order to view my visitor.
It was Eliza.
11
Eliza
February 8, 1791
When Nella opened the door, swinging it toward her small body, she looked frightened out of her wits. “I’m sorry for catching you by surprise,” I offered.
“Oh, do come in,” she breathed, hand on her chest. I stomped my wet feet and stepped inside. The room looked exactly as it had several days ago, but the odor had changed; the air smelled earthy, like moist, healthy dirt. Curious, I peered around the shelves.
“I read the papers yesterday,” Nella said, catching my gaze. The shadows of her sunken cheeks were darker today, and wisps of her charcoal, wiry hair stuck out at odd angles around her face. “About Mr. Amwell, finally succumbing to the drink. Everything went as planned, it seems.”
I nodded, pride blooming inside of me. I could hardly wait to tell her how well the poisoned egg had worked, and I wished that she hadn’t read of it before I had the chance to tell her myself. “He fell ill instantly,” I said, “and he never did improve, not even a bit.”
There was only one problem. My hand found its way to my lower belly, which had ached since the hour of Mr. Amwell’s death. He might have succumbed to the poison as planned, but I had begun bleeding at the very moment his spirit was released into the house. Returning to Nella’s shop seemed my only option; surely one of her tinctures could remove his ghost.
Besides, her vials and potions fascinated me. She might not think them magickal, but I mightily disagreed. I knew that Mr. Amwell had not merely died; something in him had transformed, just like the butterflies in their cocoons. He had taken new form, and I felt sure Nella’s elixirs were the only way to reverse it, the only way to stop the bleeding from my belly.
But I could not share this with Nella, not yet, for she’d denied magick during my first visit. I did not want her to think me tiresome—or downright mad—so I’d come prepared with another tactic.
Nella crossed her arms, looking me up and down. Her knuckles, just inches in front of my face, appeared swollen, round and red as cherries. “I’m very glad the egg worked,” she said, “but given that you accomplished your task, I am curious what brought you back here. Without warning, I should add.” Her tone was not a punishing one, but I sensed she was not pleased with me. “I presume you did not return to issue the same fate to your mistress?”
“Of course not,” I said, shaking my head. “She has been lovely to me, always.” A sudden draft swirled through the air, and I caught a strong whiff of the damp, earthy odor. “What is that smell?”
“Come here,” Nella said, waving me to an earthenware pot on the floor, near the hearth. The pot stood as high as my waist and was filled with loose black dirt. I followed eagerly, but she held out her hand. “No closer,” she said. Then she took a pair of crude leather mitts and, with a small, spade-like instrument, she parted some of the dirt toward the edge of the pot to reveal, hiding within, a hard, whitish object. “Wolfsbane root,” she said.
“Wolfs...bane,” I repeated slowly. The object looked like a rock, but, craning my neck, I could just barely make out a few little knots protruding from it, similar to a potato or carrot. “For killing wolves?”
“At one time, yes. The Greeks used to extract the poison and place it on their arrows while hunting wild dogs. But nothing of that sort will be done here.”
“Because it will kill men, not wolves,” I said, eager to show my understanding.
Nella raised her eyebrows at me. “You are unlike any twelve-year-old I have met,” she said. She turned back to the pot and gently brushed the dirt back over the root. “In a month’s time, I will shred this root into a thousand pieces. A pinch of it, mixed well into an otherwise bitter horseradish sauce, will stop the heart within an hour.” She tilted her head at me. “You still haven’t answered my question. Is there something else you’re needing from me?” She took off her mitts and intertwined her fingers in her lap.
“I do not want to remain at the Amwell house,” I muttered. It was not untruthful, even if it was not the whole truth. I let out a cough and felt the sticky, wet sensation of blood leaking from me. Yesterday, I’d snatched a thin cloth from the laundry and cut it into pieces, just to keep the blood from soiling my undergarments.
Nella cocked her head to one side, confused. “What of your mistress? Your work?”
“She has gone north for a few weeks to be with her family in Norwich. She left this morning, her carriage dressed in black, on account of needing to be with family while she—” I paused, repeating what she had asked me to write in several letters before she left. “While she is in mourning.”
“There must be plenty of household work to keep you busy, then.”
I shook my head. With my mistress gone, her husband dead and Sally returned from her visit with her mother, there was little for me to do. “I only write her letters, so Mrs. Amwell said I did not need to remain at the house while she was gone.”
“You write her letters? That explains your penmanship.”
“She has shaky hands. She cannot write much of anything anymore.”
“I see,” Nella said. “And so she dismissed you for a time.”
“She suggested I visit my parents in the country—in Swindon. She thought perhaps a rest would be good for me.”
Nella raised her eyebrows at this, but it was true; after I fell sobbing to the floor and Mrs. Amwell found my streak of blood on her chair, she took me in her arms. I had been inconsolable about Mr. Amwell’s released spirit, unable to quiet my hiccups, but she seemed unperturbed, even calm. How could she not see the truth? I began bleeding the very same hour that Mr. Amwell died; how could she not see that his spirit had done it to me? His ugly ghost wrapped itself around my belly that night.
No tears over this, my mistress had whispered, for this is as natural as the moon moving across the sky.
But there was nothing natural about this death-blood that still had not stopped, despite the passage of two days. My mistress had been wrong about Johanna—I knew she died in the room next to me—and she was wrong about this, too.
“And yet you did not go to Swindon,” Nella said, bringing my attention back to her.
“It is a long journey.”
Nella crossed her arms, a look of disbelief on her face. She knew I was lying; she knew there was something else, some other reason for not returning home. Nella looked to the clock, then the door. Whether she was waiting for someone to arrive or waiting for me to leave, I did not know—but if I could not tell her about my bleeding, I needed to find another way to stay, and quick.
I clenched my hands, ready to say what I’d practiced on my walk here. My voice trembled; I could not fail, or she would send me away. “I’d like to stay with you and help with your shop.” The words rushed from me in a single breath. “I would like to learn how to shred roots that kill wolves and how to put poison into an egg without cracking it.” I waited, judging Nella’s reaction, but her face remained blank and this gave me a surge of courage. “Like an apprenticeship, only for a short while. Until Mrs. Amwell has returned from Norwich. I promise to be of great help to you.”
Nella smiled at me, her eyes creasing at the edges. Whereas I believed, a moment ago, that she was hardly older than my mistress, now I wondered if perhaps Nella wasn’t forty, or even fifty years old. “I do not need help with my tinctures, child.”
Undeterred, I sat up taller. I’d come prepared with a second idea, in case my first plea did not work. “Then I can help you with your vials,” I said, motioning to one of her shelves. “Some of the labels are faded, and I have seen the way you hold your arm funny. I can darken the ink, so you do not hurt yourself.” I thought of my many hours and days spent with Mrs. Amwell in the drawing room, perfecting my penmanship. “You will
not be disappointed with my work,” I added.
“No, little Eliza,” she said. “No, I cannot agree to that.”
My heart almost burst, and I realized I never dreamed she would say no to this, too. “Why not?”
She laughed in disbelief. “You want to be an apprentice, an assistant, and learn to brew poisons so middling women can kill their husbands? Their masters? Their brothers and suitors and drivers and sons? This is not a shop of sweets, girl. These are not vials of chocolate into which we place crushed raspberries.”
I bit my tongue, resisting the urge to remind her that only days ago, I cracked a poisoned egg into a skillet and served it to my master. But I knew from writing Mrs. Amwell’s letters that the things a person most wanted to say were often the things they should keep tucked away inside. I paused, then said calmly, “I know this is not a shop of sweets.”
Her face was serious now. “What interest do you have in meddling with this business, child? My heart is black, as black as the ash beneath that fire, for reasons you are too young to understand. What has harmed you so, in merely twelve years, that leaves you wanting more of this?” She waved her arms around the room, her gaze falling at last on the pot of soil, with the wolfsbane hidden underneath.
“And have you considered what it might be like to sleep on a cot in a room hardly large enough for one of us, much less two of us? Have you considered that there is not a bit of privacy in here? There is no rest, Eliza—something is always steaming, brewing, stewing, soaking. I wake at all hours of the night to tend the things you see around us. This is no grand house of nighttime quiet and pink papers on the wall. You may be just a servant, but I suspect your quarters are much nicer even than this.” Nella took a breath and placed a gentle hand on mine. “Do not tell me that you dream of working in a place like this, girl. Do you not wish for something more?”