The Apprentices

by Leon Garfield

  A pang of envy struck him as he remembered young Turtle sallying forth in the morning, proud as the son of light. Yet even that son of light had met his match—in a daughter of the dark.

  That made one think, and was worth bearing in mind for an aged charmer whose eyes were now like broken eggs. Yet within? . . .

  “Let it be the hidden man of the heart . . . which is not corruptible,” murmured Mr. Delilah, and prayed that he, one day, might be looked at by the eyes of the blind, and be transfigured, as his apprentice, Turtle, had been.

  THE DUMB CAKE

  MIDSUMMER EVE, WHEN herbs and brimstone turn in the dish and show their darker side, when milkmaids prepare to shudder in churchyards and bakers’ daughters gather their friends to make the dumb cake and see the phantoms of their lovers chasing them up the stairs, when spinsters wash their nightgowns and scour the town for hemp seed for a midnight sowing, when linkboys dip their torches in blue-burning sulphur to hunt the fern seed that will make them invisible, and when St. John’s Wort, Vervain, Trefoil, and Rue sell like hot cakes to every lass anxious to avoid the evil eye and encourage the glad one.

  It is eight o’clock in the morning, and Parrot, youth of today but man of tomorrow, the future author of The Chemistry of Thought—perhaps the most profound work on the nature of existence ever to appear in print—takes down the shutters of the apothecary’s shop in Portugal Street and frowns on a world that, one day, will venerate his memory.

  Of this he is entirely convinced, for he has the good fortune to be apprenticed to T. W. Chambers and has been for the past three years. He glances up at the gilded sign as if to reassure himself of the fact before retreating from the Midsummer sunshine into the dispensary at the back of the shop.

  Mr. Chambers is a scientist to his violet-stained fingertips, just like Parrot. Mr. Chambers is a man who believes in nothing that cannot be weighed and measured, and if he were to meet with a Midsummer hobgoblin or any other such nonsense, he would kill it and bottle it in Spirits of Wine. He is a soldier in the small but shining army of Truth, just like Parrot, and together they march forward under the banner of Experiment and Doubt.

  Their patron saint is that Thomas who thrust his scientific fingers into the wounds of Christ; but Parrot and Chambers would not have left it at that: they would have prescribed an ointment.

  “Shop!”

  Parrot thrusts out his lower lip and wipes a spatula on his apron before marking his place in Cheselden’s Human Anatomy; then he goes to see who the devil is interrupting him.

  “If you please, Mr. Parrot, I would like an—an ounce of Syrup of Spearmint and—and an ounce of Orchis in Wine.”

  A female. One Betty Martin, friend to his sister and enemy to science and the thinking man. A remarkably silly cow.

  “Leaf, flower, or root, miss?”

  “Oh—oh! I’ve no idea! Which is best, Mr. Parrot?”

  Sunshine, streaming into the shop, mysteriously explodes into blue, green, yellow, and red as it strikes through the four great flasks in the window. Parrot, pacing behind the counter, becomes, though he does not know it, a Joseph in a coat of many-coloured light—a master of Midsummer dreams. One moment he is bright green, then yellow, then a deeply philosophical blue.

  “Depends what for,” says the master of dreams, regarding his customer with ill-concealed contempt. He halts in the red, like a flame wearing an apron. “Earache, headache, vomitin’, broad worms, long worms, obstruction of the bowel, passin’ blood in the water, stones, neck sores, the bloody flux—or bad breath?”

  “Jesus preserve us! It’s—er—for me ma! Honest, Mr. Parrot! She needs it for a—a salad!”

  You silly cow, thinks Parrot, resting his hands on the counter and leaning forward with a courteous smile. What kind of a fool do you take me for?

  “Cross me heart and hope to have me tongue split if I tell a lie!” swears Betty Martin, crossing her fingers, her toes, and her legs in case some malign spirit has its beady eye on her. “We’re having folk in to dinner. . . .”

  Parrot studies her carefully; sunbeams go clean through her paper-thin dress and show her up like two sticks of celery, deceitfully crossed.

  “Reely?”

  Betty Martin lowers her eyes, and Parrot observes, with scientific detachment, that she has gone red in patches. He ponders the arrangement of vessels under her skin that has produced the phenomenon. She might cut up into something quite interestin’, he thinks, and allots her a footnote in The Chemistry of Thought: “MARTIN, Betty. See the Author’s classic dissection, now preserved in the College of Surgeons.”

  He thrusts out his lower lip again (which is a sure sign with him that he has completed some line of reasoning) and retires to the dispensary, where he fills two vials from jars on a shelf and labels them carefully with both name and date—not that such refinements matter to a fool like Betty Martin. He knows perfectly well what she’s up to, and it ain’t cookery!

  He returns to the shop. “That’ll be a shillin’, miss.”

  “Cheap at the price!” she says, and throwing the money on the counter, rushes off like a mad thing, clutching the vials to her bosom. Parrot cannot help noticing that the fingertips of her pink-gloved hand were sodden from biting and chewing.

  “MARTIN, Betty. See the Author’s famous lecture on Primitive Superstition and Midsummer Madness in the Young Female.”

  Thankfully he returns to the dispensary and Human Anatomy, in which all the secrets of life are laid bare in a hundred and fifty full-page engravings.

  But he cannot rid himself of a certain irritation that distracts his study. “Love potions!” he mutters angrily, staring down at a diagram of the heart—that imaginary seat of mortal folly—in which the great vessels are shown as sprouting everywhere, like rhubarb. “Silly superstitious cow! MARTIN, Betty. See the Author’s justly celebrated account of Orchis and Spearmint, bought by uneducated Females for use as love potions on Midsummer Eve.”

  He can’t help wondering if she’s going to dose the pawnbroker’s boy from Drury Lane whom she goes out with on Saturday nights. He compresses his lips as he thinks of her slipping the mixture into his drink while he’s not looking, and then making cow’s eyes (for which she’s well equipped) at him till he’s either sick from love or, more likely, from what he had drunk. “MARTIN, Betty. See the Author on a Case of Ritual Poisoning.”

  “Shop!”

  This time it’s the other cow: his sister. He serves her with Garlic Root and dried Vervain as if she were a stranger. She goes out and doesn’t bother to shut the door, which is a sign, if ever he needed one, of her bad breeding. He marvels that he can be related to a family as ignorant as his own.

  His pa is a drapery and inn-sign painter in Russell Street who had once nourished hopes of his clever son following in his footsteps, but Parrot’s feet—thank God!—had proved too large for such a mould.

  “Clumsy” and “clodhopping” had been the terms applied at the time, and Parrot had been undeniably offended; but that was a long time ago, and Parrot is no longer distressed at having been once accused of having no talent. The years have taught him that a prophet is not honoured in his own country, so it follows that the country shall not be honoured in the works of the prophet. His family are not even distinguished by a footnote in The Chemistry of Thought.

  “Parrot!”

  “Here, Mr. Chambers! I’m in the dispensary, sir!”

  Parrot’s heart warms with pleasure as his master slops in and perches himself on the high stool before the chemical scales.

  Mr. Chambers is a large, untidy man, reeking of brimstone and cloves. In spite of a rosy complexion and strong appetite, however, he is by no means a well man. He suffers from internal disorders, some of which, he has confided to Parrot, are likely to prove fatal.

  This is a great source of worry to Parrot, who cannot help fearing that one terrible morning he will be left masterless and stark alone in the world.

  “I’m afraid it’s me spleen that’
s playing me up,” says Mr. Chambers mournfully. “You’d better pour me out a drachm and a half of Camomile in White Wine, Parrot, my boy.”

  Anxiously Parrot dispenses the decoction, and Mr. Chambers drinks it off with a grimace that is followed by a pained but courageous smile. Parrot breathes a sigh of relief and hands his master a calf-bound notebook about the size and thickness of a Bible. The apothecary broods for a moment, and Parrot, thrusting his lip out, thinks: “CHAMBERS T. W. See the Author on A Rich Mind in a Poor Body.”

  Mr. Chambers opens the notebook and, heading a new page with the date, inscribes a precise account of his morning’s symptoms, not overlooking the state of his tongue—which he verifies in a small physician’s mirror—and the slight adhesions that often trouble his eyes. This he follows by a record of his pulse and of the remedy he has just taken.

  He sits back against the scales and, moistening his forefinger, leafs back through several closely written pages, murmuring, “Yes . . . yes . . . it’s honest, at least, and true. And what more can I give you?”

  He shuts the book and returns it to Parrot, who replaces it on its shelf with the melancholy reverence due to a bequest, which, in a way, it is—but of a peculiarly precious kind. This stricken giant, this martyr to most of the ills in The English Physician, is actually bequeathing to his apprentice the most vital part of himself. Not only is he doing his ordinary duty in confiding the various mysteries of the trade—the secrets of distillation, sublimation, and fulmination, the arts of simples and compounds, of linctus and tincture, of troche and electuary—he is, day by day, putting into his apprentice’s hands a scientific account of bodily misfortunes unequalled anywhere outside the Book of Job. Every twinge, ache, palpitation, sudden shooting pain, or cloudiness of the water that afflicts him is carefully set down, together with the numerous remedies (usually in wine) that he takes for relief.

  It is a unique heritage, and Parrot vows inwardly that it will have an honourable mention in The Chemistry of Thought.

  Parrot will publish, thinks Mr. Chambers, observing his apprentice’s thrust-out lip, for he also nurses a strong desire to appear in print and would have done so had not ill health held him back. Yes. Parrot will publish. His Name Endureth For Ever: A Life of T. W. Chambers, by his apprentice, Parrot.

  Unfortunately, Parrot is Mr. Chambers’ only hope. He has no children of his own, so it’s only Parrot who stands between him and oblivion, which Mr. Chambers visualizes as a faded shop sign, banging in the wind of Portugal Street.

  He blinks and hastily engrosses himself in a diagram of the liver, having just felt some twinges where he supposes that organ to be.

  “It’s swelled,” he says, unbuttoning his waistcoat and cautiously feeling his side. “Me liver. It’s up by two fingers under me rib. Pour me out an ounce of that fresh Tincture of Aloes and Cinnamon, dear boy.”

  “Shop!”

  Parrot frowns and ignores the call till he has dispensed the tincture, which, he makes sure, has stood for the required nine days in gin.

  He is some little while gone, and when he returns, he finds Mr. Chambers sitting in his place and suffering from a touch of the dropsy, which he has diagnosed from an engraving of the Abdomen with all its Contents.

  The suffering apothecary takes two ounces of Gentian Root and Cochineal in Brandy and feels much better. His eyes brighten, and soon he’s fit enough to take a turn at stirring wax and turpentine into a mortar of ointment, while Parrot keeps off the flies. After a little while, they change about, and so the morning proceeds with the steady compounding of remedies for the ills of a world that really prefers magic to medicine.

  “Shop!”

  But Chambers and Parrot are faithful scientists; as long as they have each other to sustain them, they are content to labour in private for the public good and dream in footnotes to The Chemistry of Thought and Parrot’s Life of Chambers.

  “Shop—shop!”

  The Midsummer madness grows apace, but it will never pass the dispensary door The infected females who buzz and creep in and out of the coloured sunshine for their sprigs of this and that against the coming midnight are of no more account to Chambers and Parrot than the flies who ceaselessly try to get into the ointment. The dispensary remains a sanctuary of sanity that revives Parrot’s soul every time he comes back into it.

  The presiding genius, however, still gives Parrot cause for concern. At about half past eleven, Mr. Chambers is stricken by a sudden obstruction of the upper bowel, for which he has to take three ounces of Devil’s Bit in Rectified Spirits of Wine. Parrot records the transaction in the calf-bound notebook, as Mr. Chambers is afflicted with a tremor of the hands that prevents his writing intelligibly. At present he cannot discover the cause, but does not see that another ounce of Gentian and Cochineal in Brandy can do him any harm.

  “Shop!”

  At one o’clock Mr. Chambers goes out for some food and returns, bringing Parrot an apple and a piece of pie. Parrot eats and Mr. Chambers watches him indulgently.

  “He was more than a father to me. See Parrot’s Life of Chambers.”

  A mood of deep but melancholy affection now overtakes the apothecary as he reflects inwardly on his childless state. Parrot is good, no doubt about that. One glance at his shining, studious face is enough to confirm Parrot’s loyalty and excellence. But . . . but Parrot is not—Chambers. He does not have, in the last resort, Chambers’ blood in his heart. What ought to have been, so to speak, a chamberful, is, ultimately, an alien vessel. He does not even look like Chambers. . . .

  “Your eyes are watering, sir,” says the observant Parrot.

  Mr. Chambers examines them in his physician’s mirror, dragging down the lower lids till they resemble frayed pockets too full of eye.

  “Kidneys,” he says. “Four ounces of Wintergreen in Wine.”

  Parrot pours, and Mr. Chambers rises to reach for the notebook, but is overcome by a sudden giddiness that causes him to sit down again.

  “Shop!”

  Mr. Chambers bravely conceals his new disability until his apprentice has departed.

  He rises again, and, to his relief, all seems well. It was undoubtedly the liver that was to blame, and there exists no more efficacious remedy than brandified Gentian and Cochineal.

  He doses himself liberally, and then moves accurately to the bench on which the mortar of ointment stands. He takes off the cover and pours in another ounce of turpentine, which he proceeds to stir into a slow, greyish white whirlpool.

  A fly, perceiving only one guardian over the feast, rises from a shelf and buzzes reflectively. Mr. Chambers beats it off. Briefly it retires to the brown ceiling; then it returns, and Mr. Chambers is shocked to see how bloated and venomous looking it is. It has a positively goblin aspect and appears to have more than one head.

  Seeking to entrap and destroy it, Mr. Chambers baits a small glass dish with a fingerful of ointment, and then, with pestle concealed behind his back, waits.

  There is a terrible crash, and Parrot, fearing the worst, rushes back into the dispensary. He finds Mr. Chambers seated at the table and breathing heavily. There is a quantity of broken glass on the floor and a large fly twitching in the mortar of ointment.

  “It’s me damned kidneys again,” says the apothecary heavily—and has some more Wintergreen in Rectified Wine.

  “Shop!”

  Parrot hesitates; he does not want to leave his master in his present distressed state. Mr. Chambers also does not want his apprentice to leave him alone. He is desperately worried. He has just begun to see things—things for which he can find no rational explanation. He has seen his apprentice’s phantom, or double; in fact, he is seeing most things double, including a mysterious creature with pointed ears and a potbelly that has slipped in through the dispensary door.

  “Shop—shop!”

  Reluctantly Parrot goes, and Mr. Chambers stares gloomily round the sanctuary of science. They’ve got in all right. Midsummer hobgoblins mock him from the bellied flasks
and swing, like the wraiths of hanged children, on the chemical scales.

  “But I have no children,” mumbles Mr. Chambers desolately. “And there’s the fly in the ointment!”

  Meanwhile, in the shop, Parrot attends the customers: a stubby midwife and her vacant, bag-carrying girl. The shop is sombre, for the sun has long passed its prime. The apprentice is a shade among shades, and the customers are but shadowy figures, touched round the edges with faint coloured light.

  The midwife has a client, a mother down the road, “what is stopped up tighter than a drum.” Already she has tried everything she knows, from Hog’s Fennel to sitting the mother over a bowl of steaming Betony water; she’s opened all the windows and door, but it seems that nothing short of a charge of fulminating powders will shift her and bring her to bed of an heir.

  Parrot frowns and thrusts out his lower lip, when there is a stumbling sound from the dispensary, followed by a strong recommendation.

  “Shyrup—I mean, Syrup of Shage—that is, Sage and Honey, ma’am. Try it. And two pills of Ginger and Spikenard. Try ’em. . . .”

  The midwife listens and nods her fat little head. Chemistry is all very well, she grants, and she’s the last one to leave any stone unturned. But what about the hobgoblins, eh?

  There’s a moment’s silence, then an angry cry of “Don’t you talk of—goblins in this shop, ma’am! I won’t have it!”

  The midwife nods again. She respects Mr. Chambers’ chemical feelings, but surely he must know that it’s Midsummer Eve when queer things are bound to happen? Therefore, ain’t it possible that the invisible ones are as much to blame as chemistry for the stopped-up condition of the mother down the road?

  So, taking all into account, she’ll have six ounces of the Sage and Honey, a dozen of them Ginger pills, and a sprig of St. John’s Wort and Rue to hang round her neck. Many’s the child that’s been born under the strength of such herbs. And who but a fool would take such chances when such happiness was at stake?