The copper, set on the stove top, was boiling at last, and Will shared the water between the two baths. I dragged up the screen from the back of the shop.
‘What d’you need the screen for?’ said Gabriel.
‘Privacy,’ I said.
‘Why?’ said Gabriel. ‘I never get the screen.’
‘And the draught,’ I said.
‘What draught? It’s boiling in here.’ The two of them stood side by side in their brown apothecary aprons. Gabriel put his hands on his hips. Pestle Jenny did the same.
‘Why don’t you go to Sorley’s with Jenny,’ I said. I handed him a few coins. ‘Get some food – a pheasant pie, some cheese, apples. Some beer, too. And get a cake on your way home. Bring it all straight back, mind. I don’t want you eating it on the way home.’
Will watched me in silence as I pulled the screen forward, positioning it between the two baths. I locked the apothecary door, and fetched some clean clothes for myself. ‘Well?’ I said. ‘Are you going to take a bath? Your water’ll get cold if you just sit staring at it.’
While he went to fetch his clothes I added some lavender oil to the water – it was good for cuts and bruises, and would aid healing – some comfrey leaves, and a muslin bag full of oatmeal to soften the skin. Will seemed to be taking an age – he was so vain sometimes. I knew he would be deciding which shirt was the crispest, which waistcoat he might wear, which of his under things was the least darned and patched. By the time he came down I was in the water up to my neck, my shoulders pressing against the cold enamel rim, my knees two tall pale islands in the milky water. Behind the screen I heard Will undress, and climb in. He sighed, as I had, as the warm water lapped over his limbs. For a while we lay there in silence, looking up at the ceiling, its lime-washed plaster and dark wooden beams hung with bunches of herbs – feverfew, rosemary, cleavers, fennel. A basket of oranges on the table glowed as a beam of sunlight filtered through the window, lighting up the bottles on the walls like the luminous panels in a church window. Behind us, the stove crackled and glowed. I had set a bowl of water upon it, swimming with a few drops of geranium, camomile and rose oil, and the warm and steamy air was now heavy with the smell of the hothouse, of high summer and warm sunny afternoons in the physic garden. I closed my eyes.
Into my mind came Eliza, as she so often did, for not a day went by when I did not think of her. I wondered again where she was and what had become of her. But that day she was joined, in my thoughts, by someone else; someone tall and dark, her eyes black and furious, her head proud and confident on her long slender neck.
‘What are you thinking?’ said Will suddenly. ‘Is it about Miss Proudlove?’ He laughed as I tried to splutter out a reply. ‘You were, weren’t you? I could see you were taken with her. In awe, one might say.’
‘I am not.’
‘Yes you are. I think you have never met a woman who is quite so forthright. A single woman, at least, for I dare say there are a thousand old battle-scarred widow women out there who aren’t afraid to speak their mind. Look at Mrs Speedicut—’
‘No thank you.’
‘It is unusual to meet with so outspoken a woman—’
‘I was thinking I might ask Miss Proudlove about Eliza,’ I said.
Will was silent. I could sense him growing cold in his bath water, measuring his words carefully before he spoke. He had never known Eliza, not really, though he said he understood my feelings. It caused him pain, I knew, for me to love someone who was so lost. ‘Eliza might not wish to be found,’ he said at last.
‘I have to try.’
‘Do you, Jem? And what will you do if you find her?’
It was my turn to be silent.
‘Perhaps the way things turned out – perhaps it was for the best.’
‘For whom? My father is dead. Eliza is missing—’
‘I didn’t mean that. You know I didn’t.’
‘I don’t know what you meant. I wish I had never mentioned it.’ I plunged my head under the water, my eyes closed, my ears deaf, so that all I heard was the sound of the water slapping against the sides of the bath, and the beating of my own heart. But the truth was that I did not know what I would say to Eliza, that I could not understand the decisions she had made. I only knew that I was suddenly afraid for her. I had been so thankful that neither of the two corpses were hers that I had almost wept with relief.
I had to find her, whether it hurt Will or not.
It was late in the afternoon for a visit to the physic garden, but there was light enough, and I had promised Gabriel and Jenny that we might have a bonfire to chase away the autumn shades. Will walked slowly. He had bruised his shoulder and his knee quite badly when he fell. I had rubbed both joints with comfrey oil and arnica to soothe the swelling and reduce bruising, and he should probably have rested in front of the apothecary stove, but I wanted him to have some air, and I was sure the weather wasn’t going to last.
The summer had been long, and with my commitments at the apothecary I had been obliged to engage a gardener and a boy to keep the physic garden manageable, for it was too much for Gabriel and me, even if we had Will to help us. Over the last few months the place had become unruly, though I could see where the gardener had cut back dead twigs and swept up leaves. A basket of apples stood beside the wall, waiting to be taken up to the apothecary, along with another filled with pears and a smaller one half full of crab apples. All had grown in abundance and I had watched with pleasure as their hard fruits swelled in the sunshine against the garden’s south-facing wall, the branches stretching along the warmed stones like a great network of arteries. There were many more still to be picked, and the boughs hung low, laden with dull green pears and shiny blushing apples.
Jenny stood on the threshold, staring at the garden with her mouth open and her eyes wide. She put out a hand and ran her fingers through the great bank of lavender that grew beside the path. She touched the gleaming belly of an apple that hung low and ripe before her eye. Gabriel reached up and picked it for her. She looked at Gabriel, and then at the apple, in wonder. It was a good one, I had to admit. Some of them were afflicted with the blight, for the London air did not suit them well, but this one was flawless and rosy and plump.
‘Shake it,’ said Gabriel. ‘If the pips rattle, then it’s ripe. Go on.’
Jenny shook the apple against her ear, and her face lit up.
‘Eat it,’ I said. ‘It’s yours.’
I sent the two of them off to gather blackberries, for we were troubled by brambles where they had burst through from the unkempt grounds next door. Soon afterwards she came up from the bottom of the garden with a barrow full of leaves and sticks. She put them where I instructed. Her cheeks were pink with pleasure, her lips stained with berry juice, her eyes bright beneath the brim of her hat.
I dug the earth, pulling out weeds and lifting the soil to expose the rich dark loam. A robin appeared, to beadily survey my handiwork, waiting for the glistening sight of a worm or grub in the newly turned dirt. I sent Will to gather sloes. It was an easy enough job and I thought it would relax him. He’d once told me how he’d gathered the hard black fruits from the hedgerows of Wiltshire when he was a child. I forgot the name of his village – some place in the middle of nowhere with a curious double-barrelled name. He would make sloe gin for Christmas – Mrs Speedicut loved the stuff, though as Will said she would drink any kind of gin, even if he flavoured it with his own socks. He seemed to have recovered his spirits somewhat, and he whistled as he picked.
I sighed. It had been a long day. I thought back to the post-mortem I had carried out that morning on John Aberlady, and all we had seen and done since, and it felt like the longest day I had ever lived. Could I not just lie down and go to sleep?
I closed my eyes and let my mind relax, lifting my face to what remained of the sun. It was low in the sky, blood red, and filtered by the tall trees that grew in the garden of the house on the other side of the wall. Eliza had lived there with her f
ather and mother. She had loved the physic garden, had known almost as much about it as I. Times had changed, however, and although those I had once loved were gone, there were others I had come to love just as well. Gabriel, my friends at Angel Meadow Asylum – even Mrs Speedicut, in my own way – but especially Will. I watched him amongst the sloe bushes, bare headed, his tall hat half-full now with berries. His dark hair was rumpled, his cheeks tanned from his afternoons spent in the physic garden. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, exposing strong, lean forearms, though I had cautioned him against this for the thorns were fierce. Here and there a thin line of blood beaded his skin, or blotted his shirt in a spray of tiny red stains. I could hear him humming as he worked. He must have sensed my gaze upon his back, for he stopped what he was doing and looked back at me and grinned.
I heard laughing, and I saw Gabriel racing down the slope of the garden with Jenny in a wheelbarrow, tumbling her into a mound of leaves and grass cuttings that were piled beside the compost heap. These people were my family. Without them my life was an empty corridor echoing with my own lonely footsteps.
I felt something thwack against my head, and a sloe dropped down the neck of my shirt. ‘Penny for them?’ said Will.
Gabriel bounded up. ‘Can we light the bonfire now?’ he said. ‘It’s getting cold.’
Gabriel and Jenny sat beside the fire, toasting bits of cheese on sticks, and eating pie and apples. Will and I sat on the wrought iron bench some distance away – we had had our fill of smoke and fire for that day – and drank Sorley’s ale. I was not hungry, and Will seemed to have little appetite.
‘You’ll go back to the Blood tonight?’ he said, slicing into his apple with his pocket knife. I could tell by his voice that he wanted me to say ‘no’. He hated the place, though he had not said as much.
‘Yes,’ I said. I did not relish the prospect either.
‘You must let me come with you.’
‘There’s no need.’
‘Of course there is.’
I turned to face him. ‘Look at you, Will.’ I put my hand to his cheek gently. ‘Your poor face is battered, your nose is bruised, your black eye is coming up nicely. To add to that you probably have concussion, as well as damaged lungs from inhaling all that smoke. I can hear you wheezing even now! You need rest, not a night on board the Blood and Fleas; dry air and warmth, not the damp vapours of the river—’
‘I cannot let you go there alone,’ he said. ‘I just – I cannot. I cannot lose you.’ Suddenly, he took my hand. ‘What would I do if something happened? To you, Jem? There are four people dead. One of them an apothecary, a man you expected to be clever enough to stay ahead of his adversaries – whoever they might be. I cannot let you go to that place alone. And certainly not to stay the night! You do see that?’ He squeezed my hand, wrapping it between his as if it were the most precious thing he owned. His eyes were dark now, downcast. Afraid. ‘You must . . . You must know how I—’ He glanced up and saw the expression on my face – sorrow, pity, horror – and he flinched, as if I had struck him. ‘Don’t look at me,’ he whispered. ‘Not like that. Not you.’
I put my arms around him. ‘Then let us not look at each other,’ I said against his ear. ‘For I am not worth any man’s gaze.’
‘I know you cannot love me as I love you,’ he said.
‘But I do love you,’ I said.
‘Like a brother.’ His voice was muffled.
‘It is the best kind of love,’ I replied. ‘For it never fades, never grows tired, or stale, or old. I will always be your friend, always be your companion, I can be everything to you, but I cannot be . . . I cannot be . . . ’
‘You cannot even bear to say it,’ he muttered.
‘You should be glad of it,’ I cried. ‘For I would make a very bad one.’
‘Indeed you would,’ he answered. He pushed me away, wiping his face with his hands. ‘But I am coming tonight, and I am staying. I will help you in the apothecary – I can go up to Deadman’s Basin tomorrow to evaluate the fire damage and to decide the best way to proceed. The men’ll have less work than they expected, now that we’ve burned the place down.’
‘But where will you sleep? There’s only Aberlady’s room, and you would hate to sleep surrounded by poisonous frogs and flexing serpents.’
‘There are frogs and serpents?’
‘There are.’
‘Then I will definitely sleep amongst them, for I imagine they will be more affable companions than any of the gentlemen on board.’
I sent Will and Gabriel out into the street to look for a carter, for I wanted to take some plants I had potted up to the Blood, and we could not carry them there ourselves. I sat with Pestle Jenny by the glowing embers of the fire while the sun vanished behind the branches of the peach tree. It was unusual to have a girl about the place – I checked myself. I was a girl – a woman – of course I was. And yet there was nothing that was girlish or womanly, or ladylike, about me. I had never worn stays, or petticoats; I had never sat in silence while men talked, had never modified my words or behaviour so as to guard against showing any man up as a fool or to preserve his self-worth. I walked the streets without fear of having my virtue threatened, I went wherever I wished, and I might smoke and spit as I pleased. It was my father who had first dressed me as a boy; he had passed me off as his son from the moment of my birth to all at St Saviour’s, condemning me to a life of disguise. All I knew was that I was one half of a twin, that my brother had lain dead beside me as I grew in the womb, and my mother was killed by us both as we emerged into the world. Had my father been punishing me for being a poor substitute for the wife and son he had lost? Was he helping me to achieve things that most women could never even dream of? I would never know, for he had never explained his actions. He had wanted an heir to run the apothecary, and that was what he had got. It was the only life I knew, and I lived it as best I could.
I thought of what Will had said to me, how tightly he had held my hand, how my heart had seized in my chest when I had found him crumpled at the foot of the stairs inside the villa at Deadman’s Basin, and my heart was torn. Was I right in what I had said to him, or was I simply too afraid to admit how I felt? I could never submit to the subservient position that women seemed obliged occupy, though I knew in my heart that he was not asking that of me. He loved me as an equal, as a man, for that was how he saw me. Did he know I was a woman? I was sure he did, and yet neither of us had ever mentioned it outright.
I sighed, and rubbed my eyes. But the thoughts still swirled in my head, and my heart. Surely if I dressed as a man and acted as a man, then I was a man? What was there, apart from uterus and breasts, that was woman? Why should I be defined solely by parts of my body, neither of which affected my intellect, or my reason, and neither of which I had any use for? I closed my eyes. How tired I was! I tried to think about Eliza, but instead Will’s face, bruised and sorrowful, came into my mind. He would never let me down, would never run away and hide from me until I was demented with worry the way Eliza had. I thought then of Miss Proudlove – her dark eyes, her burnished skin, the dull sheen of her hair. If my father had not dressed me as a boy, if he had not schooled me in the selfish, confident ways of his own sex, would I have become the woman I was expected to be? I would not. I knew it in my heart and my soul, I would not.
Jenny was staring at me, her hat pulled low over her eyes. That day she had demonstrated her aptitude in the apothecary with greater skill and competence than Gabriel ever had. I had watched the lad to see whether he was jealous, whether he would resent her being amongst us, never mind the fact that she could set up the condenser in half the time it took him to do it. But instead he seemed impressed, proud almost. She sat at my side, small and erect, watching me. A cloud of fragrant dust hung about her wherever she went; that afternoon I recognised the sweet spiciness of nigella seeds and the warm soothing smell of cloves. A linen bag hung from her shoulder. It looked heavy, as if weighted down with a boulder, and I noticed she had
not let the thing out of her sight.
‘What’s this?’ I said.
She reached into it, and pulled out a pestle and mortar. She cradled it lovingly, her fingers caressing the cool smooth stone. She took a small bag of cloves and cinnamon bark from her coat pocket, tipped them into the heavy white bowl and began to grind.
I laid my hand on her shoulder, soothed, as she was, by the sound and motion of the tools of our trade. ‘Well, Jenny,’ I said. ‘What are we to do with you? Your master, Mr Aberlady, is dead. Did you know that?’
She nodded as she worked, her shoulders hunched, the hand that wielded the pestle moving faster and faster.
‘Henbane,’ I said. ‘Someone broke the seeds and put them on a raging stove so that they smoked like incense and turned him mad.’
I could see that her whole body had tensed, though she had not stopped her work.
‘I think we’ve stumbled upon something that is both wicked and cruel, Jenny. Did Mr Aberlady know of it, d’you think?’ All at once the girl’s grinding stopped, and I sensed that she was about to fling the mortar to the ground and dash away. I knew she was from the streets – if she chose to return there then we would never find her. And one day, soon, she was sure to speak again. I squeezed her shoulder. ‘You’re safe now,’ I said. ‘No one will hurt you here.’ She looked up at me. I could see from her eyes that she had heard those words before. Perhaps she had believed them then. I doubted whether she believed them now.
Chapter Fourteen
In the event Will and I did not return to the Blood that night but went back home to Fishbait Lane. We were exhausted, and both of us were feeling the effects of the smoke we had inhaled. A night spent asleep in the damp river air seemed unwise, and so I took my own advice and stayed away from the place. Will lit fires in our rooms to keep us warm, and I prepared a cold infusion of elm bark and mulberry leaves – a vile-tasting but highly effective respiratory demulcent. A tincture of lobelia would help to relax the respiratory tract, and I put a flagon of water containing the required dose next to Will’s bed, and mine, and bade him drink it during the night.
The Blood: What secrets lie aboard? (Jem Flockhart Book 3) Page 16
