by Sarah Penner
Within the book, the pages of parchment were thin as tissue and I handled them as delicately as I could, cursing when the corner of one page fell away completely. I flipped to the back of the book and took a few more pictures, then I closed it, pushed it aside and grabbed another book. I opened the cover of this one, pressed the shutter button on my phone’s camera, and—dammit. Three percent.
I groaned, maddeningly frustrated at this unbelievable discovery and the short amount of time I’d had to explore it. But given how quickly the flashlight and camera had drained my battery, I gave myself sixty seconds to get out, maybe less. I flipped the flashlight on again, backed my way out of the room and swung the hidden door closed as best I could. Then I backtracked, quickly crossing the first room and stepping once again into the corridor. Ahead, the subtle glow of moonlight crept inside from the third and final door.
As expected, my phone died within seconds of stepping outside. Still hidden behind the thorny shrub, I did my best to blindly set the exterior door back into position, but I felt sure I did a terrible job of it. I scooped up some dirt and leaves with my hands and tossed them haphazardly around the base of the door to give it the appearance of being undisturbed. Then I pushed my way past the shrub and turned around to look at my work; the door certainly didn’t look as snug as when I first discovered it, but it was still quite inconspicuous. I could only hope that no one had been paying as close attention to the area as I had.
I rushed back to the locked gate and heaved myself onto one of the pillars, though not without a great deal of straining and heavy breathing. Pulling my legs over the pillar, I jumped to the other side. I wiped my hands on my pants and looked up to the glass windows above me. Still, nothing moved; as far as I could tell, no one knew I was here, much less what I’d done.
It was no wonder the apothecary had remained a mystery; her door was well hidden by the wall of shelves, and only the passage of two centuries had deteriorated things enough for me to find it. That, and a little bit of recklessness and lawbreaking on my part. But if there was any doubt about her existence, it was gone now.
I walked out of Bear Alley aware that I’d just committed a crime for the very first time in my life. I had dirt underneath my fingernails and a dead cell phone full of incriminating photos to prove it. Yet guilt eluded me. Instead, I was so anxious to plug my phone into a charger and review the photos that I had to resist running back to the hotel.
But James. As I slipped quietly into the hotel room, hoping not to wake him, my heart sank. He was awake on the sofa with a book.
We didn’t speak to one another as I crawled into bed and plugged in my phone. I yawned, my adrenaline having melted into an aching fatigue, and peeked over at him. He seemed entirely engrossed in his book, as alert as I’d been at bedtime last night.
The curse of jet lag.
Frustrated, I turned my body away from him. The pictures would have to wait until morning.
* * *
I woke to the sound of the shower running and a narrow strip of daylight searing its way through the curtains and onto my face. The bathroom door stood slightly ajar, steam rushing out of it, and on the sofa, James had folded up his blanket and set it neatly beside the spare pillow.
I picked up my phone—fully charged—and resisted the urge to dive immediately into the photos. Instead, I pushed my face against the pillow, trying to ignore my full bladder, counting the minutes until James left the hotel so I could begin my day in peace.
At last, he walked out of the bathroom, wearing nothing but a beige towel around his waist. It was so normal, the sight of my husband half-naked, and yet something inside me grew tense. I wasn’t ready, not now or anytime soon, for “normal.” I turned my face away.
“Late dinner last night,” he said from across the room. “Anything good?”
I shook my head. “Just grabbed a sandwich, took a walk.” It wasn’t like me to tell little white lies, but I wasn’t about to tell him—or anyone—what I’d really done last night. Besides, he’d lied to me for months about something much worse.
Behind me, James let out a raspy cough. He walked over to the couch, leaned down and grabbed a box of tissues from the floor. I hadn’t seen them earlier, but he must have had them next to him all night. “Not feeling a hundred percent,” he said, putting the tissue against his mouth and coughing again. “Throat hurts, too. Dry air on the plane, I guess.” He opened his suitcase and pulled out a T-shirt and jeans, then dropped his towel to the floor as he began to dress.
I kept my eyes off his naked body by looking at the vase of flowers on the table near the door, a few of which had begun to wilt slightly. With my hands on top of the duvet, I noticed last night’s dirt under my fingernails, and I shoved my hands under the covers. “What’s your plan for the day, then?” I pleaded silently that he planned to explore the city or go to a museum or just...leave. I wanted nothing more than to be here alone with my phone, the Do Not Disturb sign hanging from the door.
“The Tower of London,” he said, threading his belt around his waist. The Tower of London. The ancient castle was one of the sites I’d been most excited about—it was the home of the Crown Jewels—and yet it now seemed a mere children’s museum compared to what I found last night hiding behind Bear Alley.
James let out another cough, patting his chest with the palm of his hand. “Got any DayQuil, by chance?” he asked.
In the bathroom was my bag of toiletries, filled with makeup, floss sticks, deodorant and a few essential oils. I knew I had a few spare Tylenol, but I hadn’t thought it worth the added space to bring every possible medicine for any given ailment. “Sorry,” I said. “I’ve got eucalyptus oil?” It had long been my go-to remedy anytime I felt a cold coming on; as one of the ingredients in Vicks VapoRub, eucalyptus worked wonders on congestion and coughs. “In the white bag on the counter,” I said, pointing to the bathroom.
As James went in, a small chirp caught my attention: my phone, beeping about something trivial, an unnecessary reminder that last night’s discovery sat inches from my face. My heart began to thump hard in my chest while James rustled about in the bathroom.
He came out with a grimace on his face. “Strong stuff.”
I nodded in agreement; even from a few feet away, I could smell the pungent, medicinal odor of it.
Since he was dressed and looked ready to go, I did my best to avoid any chance of further conversation. “I’m gonna try to lie back down for a bit,” I said, kicking my feet around in the sheets. “Enjoy your sightseeing.”
He nodded slowly, a sad look on his face, and hesitated as though wanting to say something. But he didn’t, and after grabbing his wallet and cell phone, he made his way out of the room.
The moment the door clicked shut, I lunged for my cell phone.
I typed in my password and navigated to my photos. There they were, about two dozen of them. I opened the first couple; they were shots of the room—the table, the hearth—but I was disappointed to see that the photos were blurry. I cursed, fearing the entire set may be the same. But once I got to the close-up shots of the book, I breathed a sigh of relief; these photos were sharp. The air in the room had been dusty, and I supposed the camera flash had been unable to cut through the minuscule particles to focus on anything except the foreground.
I bolted upright at a noise just outside the hotel room door. I clicked off the phone and rushed to the peephole, just in time to see a hotel employee with a clipboard walking past. He wasn’t coming to my room, but it reminded me to put up the Do Not Disturb sign.
Once back on the bed, I opened the pictures again and studied the first photo of the book. Holding my breath, I used two fingers to zoom into the picture and move around the screen. I sat in utter disbelief at what lay before me.
The words in the book were, in fact, handwritten, with fat ink spots scattered and smeared on the page. The text was neatly lined in rows a
nd each entry was written in a similar format, with what appeared to be names and dates. A log or register of some kind, then? I flipped to the next picture. It was similar in nature, though the ink was darker, heavier, like a different person wrote this page. I flipped to the next, and the next, my hands shaking harder with each swipe. I wasn’t entirely sure what the book was, but I felt confident that its historical value was immeasurable.
Most of the photos of the book were clear, although the edges of some were overexposed and so the borders were white and indecipherable. And yet, despite the clarity of the pictures, I was faced with another maddening frustration: I couldn’t understand much of the text. Not only did it seem to be written in shorthand, but the cursive handwriting was at such a slant—and so hastily written in places—that parts of it may as well have been in a foreign language. In one photo, I could understand only a portion of one row toward the top:
Garr t Chadw k. Marl bone. Op um, Prep. lozenge. 17 Aug 1789. On acc nt of Ms. Ch wick, wife.
As my brain struggled to fill in letters and make sense of the text, I felt like I was playing one of those missing-letter word games. But after a few minutes, I realized that the v’s and s’s and d’s—which were indistinguishable at first—were looped in a certain way, and my brain began to recognize them so that I was better able to make out the subsequent pages:
Mr. Frere. S uthwark. Tobacco leav s, prep. oil. 3 May 1790. On acct of Ms. Am er, sister, friend of Ms. M nsfield.
Ms. B. Bell. Raspb rry leav, crush’d plaster. 12 May 1790.
Charlie Turner, May air, NV tincture. 6 Jun 1790. On acc of Ms. Apple, servant-cook.
I set my chin in my hand, reading certain entries again, discontent welling inside of me. Raspberry leaves? Tobacco? There was nothing dangerous about these, though I had once heard that nicotine was toxic in large amounts. Perhaps it was the quantity of a non-poison that proved deadly? And as for some other references in the book—like NV tincture—well, I had no idea what they even meant.
I tried to decipher the way the entries were formatted, too. Each one began with a name, then listed an ingredient—dangerous or not—followed by a date. Some entries included a second name at the end with the designation, on account of. I assumed this meant the first name was the intended recipient of the ingredient, and the second name was the person who actually bought it. So Charlie Turner, for example, was meant to ingest NV tincture—whatever that was—and it was likely purchased by Ms. Apple.
I grabbed a pen and my notebook from the nightstand and jotted down a few things to research later:
Quantities of non-poisons needed to kill
Opium—lozenge?
Tobacco—oil?
NV tincture—what is NV?
I spent the next fifteen or so minutes cross-legged on the bed, furiously writing down questions and words, some familiar, some not. Nightshade. Wasn’t that a plant? Thorn apple. Never heard of it. Wolfsbane. No idea. Drachm, bolus, cerate, yew, elix. I wrote all of it down.
I flipped to another photo and gasped as my eyes fell on a word that I knew, without doubt, to be deadly: arsenic. I wrote it down in my notebook, putting an asterisk next to it. I zoomed farther into the photo, hoping to decipher the rest of the words in the row, when I heard another noise outside.
I froze. It sounded like someone had stopped just in front of the door. I silently cursed whoever it was; didn’t they see the Do Not Disturb sign? But then I heard the keycard slide into the door. Had James returned already? I shoved the phone underneath my pillow.
A moment later, James walked in—and I knew immediately that something was very, very wrong. His face was pale and clammy, his forehead dripping wet, and his hands shook badly.
Instinctively, I stood from the bed and rushed toward him. “Oh, my God,” I said as I approached him; I could smell his sweat and something else, sweet and acidic. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine,” he said, rushing for the bathroom. He leaned over the sink, taking deep breaths. “Must be yesterday’s Italian food.” He looked up to the mirror in front of the sink, making eye contact with me even though I stood behind him. “I’m such a fucking mess, Caroline. First you, and now this. I got sick outside, on the sidewalk,” he said. “I think I just need to get all this out. Would it be okay if—” He paused, swallowing something down. “Would it be okay if I have the room to myself for a bit until this is out of my system?”
I didn’t hesitate for a second. “Of course, yes.” I’d known for years that James hated being sick in front of other people. And, truthfully, I wanted the privacy, too. “You sure you’re okay, though? Do you need juice or anything?”
He shook his head, starting to close the bathroom door. “I’ll be fine, I promise. Just give me a bit.”
I nodded, put my shoes on and grabbed my bag, tossing my notebook inside. I set a water bottle just outside the bathroom door and told James I’d be back soon to check on him.
I remembered there being a café a block down the road so I headed that way, intending to finish looking at the photos on my phone. But as soon as I stepped outside, my phone started to ring. I didn’t recognize the number, and thinking it might be James calling from the hotel, I answered it quickly. “Hello?”
“Caroline, it’s Gaynor!”
“Oh, oh, my gosh, hi, Gaynor.” I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and a pedestrian threw me an irritated glance.
“I’m sorry for calling so early, but the manuscripts I texted you about last night came in. Are you able to meet me at the library, like, ASAP? I’m not technically working today, but I stopped in a few minutes ago to check out the documents. You’re not going to believe it.”
I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to remember what she’d said yesterday about the documents. So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours and her text messages had, admittedly, been relegated to the back of my brain, given last night’s adventure—and now James’s illness.
“I’m so sorry, Gaynor. I can’t come now, I need to stay in this part of town in case—” I paused. Despite our long research session together, I still didn’t know Gaynor well enough to start on about my unfaithful husband who was now vomiting in my hotel room. In fact, I hadn’t even told her I had a husband—we hadn’t discussed our personal lives at all. “I just can’t make it over there right now. But I’m about to grab coffee, if you want to join? You could bring the documents with you?”
I heard her laugh on the other end of the line. “Taking them out of the building is a hell of a way to lose my job, but I can make copies. Plus, I could use a coffee.”
We agreed to meet in a half hour at the café near my hotel, and I passed the time at a small table in the corner of the café, eating a raspberry croissant and analyzing the photos of the apothecary’s book as best I could.
When Gaynor walked through the glass door at the front of the café, I flicked off my phone and closed my notebook, shoving it safely inside my bag. I reminded myself to play it cool; I couldn’t let it slip that I knew anything more about the apothecary than I did yesterday while at the library. I hardly knew Gaynor, and sharing this information would reveal that I not only broke the law, but that I infringed upon what might be a valuable historical site. As an employee at the British Library, it was possible she’d be bound by a professional commitment to report me.
I nibbled on the final bite of my croissant, the irony not lost on me; while I came to London because I was hurt by someone else’s secrets, now I was the one hiding things.
Gaynor slid into the chair next to me and leaned in excitedly. “This is...unbelievable,” she began, pulling a folder from her large purse. She withdrew two sheets of paper, black-and-white copies of what looked very much like old newspaper articles, divided into several columns with a header toward the top. “The bulletins are dated only a couple of days apart.” She pointed toward the top of one page. “The first one is
February 10, 1791, and the second one is February 12, 1791.” She set the earlier bulletin, from February 10, on top, and leaned back in her chair to look at me.
I looked closer at the bulletin and gasped.
“Remember yesterday,” Gaynor explained, “when I texted you that one of the documents contained an image? That’s the image.” She pointed toward the center of the printout, though it was unnecessary; my eyes were locked on the page. There was a drawing of an animal, so rudimentary it looked like something a toddler scribbled in sand, but there was absolutely zero doubt in my mind that I’d seen the image before.
The image was a bear—identical to the tiny bear etched on the light blue vial I’d plucked from the mud of the Thames.
22
Eliza
February 10, 1791
It was after eight o’clock in the evening, and though Nella had worked ceaselessly over the last few hours, she would not let me help. Instead, she strained under the effort of pushing corks as far into their bottles as they would go, nesting the empty boxes as tightly as they would fit and scrubbing a few of her gallipots with all her might. She tidied and organized as though she meant to leave—if not permanently, then at least for a long while—and it was due entirely to my careless mistake.
Of all the errors, great and small, I had made in my twelve years of life, I believed that taking the jar from the lower cabinet was my greatest offense of all. How could I have overlooked the address etched into the jar? I’d never before made such a mess of things, never in my life.