‘Plant remedies, yes, but not silver nitrate and mercury and bismuth,’ she said, reading from the list, ‘and copper, zinc oxide and tin. Whatever would he have wanted those for?’
‘We would have to consult another apothecary to find that out,’ Santo said, taking the list from her. ‘Saffron and rhubarb, now those are plants, are they not, but very costly. Gum tragacanth, three kinds of sandalwood, senna and musk...good heavens...that’s expensive, too, and wood of aloes and ambergris. That comes from whales, you know. Difficult to get hold of.’
‘Wales?’
He made a swimming movement with his hand. ‘Whales. Sperm whales.’
‘Oh, yes. But there’s a long list of precious stones there, too...look...there.’
‘Amethyst, topaz, ruby, sapphire, agate and onyx, ebony...now that’s a wood. Very black and hard. Comes from the other side of the world. But what use could that be in a medicine, I wonder?’
‘It seems to me,’ Aphra said, ‘that he’s ordered things more for their rarity value than for mixing into remedies to be swallowed or smeared. No one could possibly eat precious stones, or wood. Could they?’
‘Nor musk and ambergris, either. They’re used in perfumes, like the myrrh and frankincense. So what is the gold for, or the tin and copper?’
‘The three magi, with their gifts, is obviously of a religious importance,’ said Aphra, ‘but perhaps personal, too, otherwise he’d not have worn them all close to his body, would he? And written in blood, too. Surely it would not have been his own?’
‘But magi, in threes or not, were supposed to possess secret information, the gift of second sight, that kind of thing. Magic, in other words. Necromancy.’
‘You say were, signor, but he would still have to have believed it, wouldn’t he, to wear it round his neck? But wait, something has just occurred to me.’
‘Tell me?’
‘Have you ever heard of the Elixir of Life?’
‘Of course. Who hasn’t? But you’re surely not thinking that a man with your Dr Ben’s reputation would chase after that kind of nonsense, are you?’
‘You may call it nonsense,’ she replied, ‘but he told me on more than one occasion that today’s apothecaries are wrong to doubt the accuracy of ancient authorities, as they do.’ My Dr Ben? she thought. Well, let him think what he likes. ‘Like Galen, and others. He believed that theory and practice should go together, not kept in separate compartments. And that’s why I think he may have been exploring the old beliefs, like the Philosopher’s Stone, for instance, that transmutes base metals into gold, or the Elixir of Life that hounds out devils and keeps men young. Perhaps he was simply putting them to the test. Experimenting, like Uncle Paul suggested.’
‘Well, you may have something, but I believe we should keep an open mind about these theories until we’ve taken a good look at whatever else he has here. I know,’ he said, passing the list back to her, ‘that you are not inclined to disturb his things, but if you really want to know more about his unexpected death, then you must know more than you do about his life. It’s not as if we’d leave things in a mess. Any search would be done with respect, methodically and tidily.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘And you’ll be here to help me?’ He had been talking about ‘we’, but she had to make sure that he intended to stay, for she was convinced now that not only his help was needed, but also his company. Even these last few moments with him had shown how important it was for her to discuss ideas together, even if his were no nearer the mark than hers. Somehow, she felt safer with him than without him and, though she had experienced a similar feeling with his brother, this was quite different, laced with a kind of emotional excitement that she could not quite define, except to say that it was most unsettling.
‘If that’s what you wish, mistress. But if your memories of Dr Ben are sacred to you in some way, then I would not want to interfere with that. I understand from both you and your brother that Dr Ben held a special place in your heart.’
It was on the tip of her tongue to say that, yes, he did have a special place in her heart, but not quite the one he imagined. Like a beloved friend, but never like a lover. It had been an easy relationship, but Ben had not thudded his way into her heart the way Santo himself had, troubling her with indiscreet thoughts that conflicted guiltily with her memories of his deceitful brother and her declarations of heartbreak. If the truth be told, her thoughts of Leon were becoming more diluted every day since Santo’s appearance and even then only in respect of the work he did with Dr Ben. It would not do, of course, to let Santo know this, for the picture she presented of being a wronged woman gave her valid reasons for accepting his help in trying to remedy the situation, somewhat. Nor would it do to play down the part Dr Ben had had in her life. Let him think her heart was not her own, if that’s what Edwin had indicated. It suited her well enough.
It did not, however, occur to Aphra that Santo had his own thoughts, based on experience, about where exactly women’s hearts lay and that Aphra’s had not been quite as badly broken by his brother as she had made out. Damaged, perhaps, but not beyond repair.
‘Yes, signor,’ Aphra said, ‘we were close, but I cannot believe my uncle would have left Sandrock to me if he’d believed I would make a poor curator of his works.’ She laid a hand upon the pile of notebooks, still tied up. More unspoken words lay between them concerning the trust Dr Ben had had in Leon and the bitter disappointment he must have felt at what had happened. Had he intended that Sandrock Priory should be the future home of Aphra and her brilliant husband? ‘I think we might go down to the stillroom,’ she said, shaking out the folds of her green linen gown. ‘I sent some of the supplies there this morning and now I’m beginning to wonder what he had intended to do with them. Perhaps the two stillroom maids will know.’
‘You don’t wish to examine the notebooks first, mistress?’
Aphra glanced at the pile, not detecting the note of hope in Santo’s voice. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘we should delay that task until we’ve taken a look at what else he’s been using, then we might get a clue as to what he’s been using them for.’ Taking up the long cord that hung from the girdle at her waist, she selected a silver key from the bunch and, stooping to a cupboard beneath the bench, unlocked it and placed the pile of notes on a shelf inside. ‘There,’ she said, locking the door. ‘They’ll be safe in there until we need them.’
‘Would they not be safe left on the table? Does anyone come in here except you?’
‘There is no lock to this room. Even Master Pearce walked in unannounced, didn’t he? Perhaps I ought to speak to the locksmith about having some locks put in. With these precious things here, I suppose it makes sense to be more careful.’
‘Indeed, mistress,’ Santo said. ‘One cannot be too careful now.’
Chapter Five
The sun had moved over to the other side of the priory by the time they reached the large building that projected well into the herb garden and on into the leafy orchard where beehives stood like upturned baskets. This was where essences were distilled and potions made to Dr Ben’s recipes, where bunches of drying herbs hung from racks, where shelves were covered by dozens of labelled jars and sealed pots, and where two middle-aged ladies continued to work as if Dr Ben were still alive to direct them. On this particular afternoon, the door was wide open to allow a cloud of scented steam to escape, its source a large glass retort gently simmering with a pale pink mush.
‘First batch of rose water,’ said one of the maids, smiling at Aphra and trying to bob a curtsy as she pounded into a stone mortar with an arm-sized pestle. Her own arms were bared to the elbow and thick with muscle. ‘This is last year’s dried mistletoe.’
Aphra smiled back. ‘And this,’ she said, indicating Santo, ‘is Signor Datini. I wanted to show him what came on the wagons. Has it been put away yet?’
‘Not all of it, mistres
s,’ the maid said, leaving the pounding to give her hands a wipe on her apron. ‘It’s over here until we can deal with it, though I cannot think what we’re supposed to do with some of it. All these flasks of theriac, for instance.’ She nodded towards a stack of small barrels. ‘Must have cost a fair bit. Takes twelve years to make and a lot more to mature. This is the finest. From Genoa.’
‘A kind of cure-all, isn’t it?’ said Santo.
The other maid joined in. ‘You could say that, sir, but it’s beyond the reach of most people’s pockets. Dr Ben has it mixed with wine, or ale, or rose water, to be taken as a preventative. Took it himself, he did.’
‘To prevent what?’
The two maids smiled, demurely. ‘Now that, sir, he didn’t share with us except to say it was good stuff. He was never one to recommend anything unless he’d first tried it on himself, you see. He always told his students that.’
‘Really?’ said Aphra. ‘Would that not have been rather dangerous?’
‘It would if you didn’t know what you were doing, mistress,’ said one. ‘But Dr Ben did. We made this one for him just before he went off to London.’ Reaching up to a shelf, she brought down a stone jar, tightly stoppered with a piece of waxed linen bound with string. ‘This is arnica mixed with calendula officinalis. That’s marigold to you and me. He was trying it out on himself.’
‘May I take a sniff, please?’ Something nudged Aphra’s memory.
‘There was a beaker on the table, half-empty. A strange-smelling liquid. Probably a sleeping draught he’d prescribed for himself.’ Uncle Paul’s words at breakfast.
‘Certainly, mistress. It’s an odd smell, but no worse than some we prepare.’
Removing the seal, she gave the contents a little shake, then passed it to Aphra who sniffed, frowned, then passed it to Santo. ‘That’s certainly arnica,’ she said.
‘Mmm...’ he said. ‘I don’t think I’d care to drink it, though. Did Dr Ben tell you what it was meant to prevent? Pain, for instance?’
‘No, sir. He would just give us the recipe and we’d tell him how it behaved in the making-up. Whether it separated or went off too fast. That kind of thing.’
‘So you wouldn’t have any idea what Dr Ben was researching in particular?’
‘He had quite a few students here, sir, studying different ailments for their degrees. We went along with anything they needed. We never enquired what they were for and some were good for a range of ailments. Like feverwort. That’s been used for centuries for just about anything. And like the chamomile, mistress, that you drink, but you also wash your hair with it.’
Aphra had tied her hair up in her scarf, as the maids did. ‘What do you do with the ambergris?’ she asked, catching sight of the label on a dark glass jar.
‘We make it into pills,’ said the elder of the two maids. ‘Mixed with wood of aloes, musk, gum tragacanth and rose water. Dr Ben usually carried those about with him, but he’d used up his supply before we could make more. Very special, they are. Too expensive for ordinary folk,’ she said, replacing the jar, ‘like many other things here.’
They moved on, asking about the other ingredients and finding that the two experienced maids were very well informed about the making of pills and poultices, powders, tinctures, lozenges, ointments and salves, electuaries and potions of every kind for drinking, anointing and inhaling. Many of the plant ingredients were grown at Sandrock, some of them quite rare, studied by the students, their properties recorded: roots, stems, leaves and flowers, seeds, bark and berries. But no matter how many questions they asked, none of the answers seemed to indicate that Dr Ben himself had been making a particular study of insomnia, pain relief or conditions of the heart. And although there were preparations here that dealt with the heart along with every other organ and ailment, the two maids could offer no particular evidence to suggest which way his interest lay, other than in giving his students a comprehensive grounding in herbal remedies. Which, in Aphra’s mind at least, was very much at odds with the things she had found earlier in his belongings.
As they walked away Santo’s attempts to rationalise their findings, if one could call them that, were not appreciated. ‘It doesn’t prove anything,’ he said, ‘except perhaps that he kept his research to himself. Perhaps those two have been preparing ingredients and concoctions that were precisely for pain relief without realising it. Why would he have told them how his recipes were to be used? It was my brother who needed to know about that, under his tutor’s guidance, of course.’
‘Well, I am not entirely ignorant on the subject of herbal remedies,’ Aphra said, blowing a tiny spider off her hand. ‘All women are taught the basics, but that doesn’t explain why I saw nothing there to convince me that my uncle was exploring new ground in that particular subject and I’m sure that those two would have known if he’d had that in mind. After all, it’s probably one of the commonest ailments, isn’t it? Sleeplessness. Pain. His audience of apothecaries in London would certainly have been expecting to hear some new information, if there was any. So where is it?’
‘In his notes, I expect. Well, some of it, anyway,’ he said.
Aphra’s thoughts were racing backwards and forwards, searching for an answer. ‘But when I asked them what Dr Ben might have used the precious stones for, they looked at me blankly and shook their heads. They didn’t know he’d ever ordered any. The elder one said it sounded to her like the kind of nonsense that Dr John Dee dabbled in and that Dr Ben had always been a bit sceptical about charms and such.’
‘Did he know Dr Dee, then?’
‘Oh, yes. We met him at court several times and he stayed with my cousin Etta and her husband at both their houses while I was there. He’s a dear man.’
‘But according to the stillroom maids, he dabbles in nonsense. Do you think he might have persuaded Dr Ben to try out some of those expensive items for his research? Even though he was wary of charms?’
‘The Elixir of Life,’ Aphra said, under her breath.
Santo heard. ‘What? Oh, surely not! Your uncle was an apothecary, not a magician, Aphra.’
They had reached the door that led to her room where, stung by his dismissive tone, she faced him, crossly. ‘Then you suggest an alternative,’ she said. ‘If Dr Dee believed in it, why not Ben, too? I’ve told you, he didn’t close his mind entirely to other ancient theories. He was willing to give them some credit, even if he was wary.’
‘But...the Elixir of Life?’ he said, frowning. ‘Hounds out devils? Keeps men young? That’s a very strange area for an apothecary to venture into. It’s a long way from researching the properties of plants and illustrating new herbals, isn’t it?’
Aphra looked away, unwilling to see the doubts clearly written on his face. A lock of his hair, still uncovered, had slipped over his forehead before he raked it back with his fingers and, as the light began to fade, so too did their arguments. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s time for supper. I’ll meet you in the parlour. And perhaps you might ask Dante and Enrico to join us. Father Vickery and Master Fletcher will be eating with me now, on Saturday nights.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, turning away, wondering whether her invitation to his two deserving men was an attempt to be more hospitable or simply a measure designed to eat up the food that would have been prepared for the departed guests. On the other hand, he thought, more charitably, could this signal an acceptance of his presence at Sandrock after that heartfelt plea for him to stay and help? Not even he could have been unmoved by that, knowing how volatile her emotions were, even to the extent of allowing her guests to leave without too much regret and presumably without the kind of apology she’d offered him. And now, Leon’s notes were revealed at last, albeit under lock and key. Somehow, he would have to find a way around that problem.
* * *
After the heavy rain of the previous night, the blackness beyond Aphra’s workroom
window was clear and still, reflecting the wavering light from two candles in the wobbly glass, like splinters reforming with each movement of her head. Sleep had evaded her after an eventful day in which her passions had run too high for comfort, a day she would rather forget, but could not, for she had done something she had been determined never to do. She had pleaded with him to stay.
If the reasons had been merely the ones she had given, needing his help, that would have been understandable. But there was more to it than that and now she could fool herself no longer about those persistent womanly thoughts that plagued her night and day, for her capricious heart had veered, refusing all her attempts to return it to the place where broken hearts suffer. She was not relieved by this recovery, having always believed that she was the kind of woman who would be constant unto death, so to feel this way about the brother of the man who had cheated her of happiness was beyond all reason.
The problem now would be how to conceal this sudden change of heart from him. For one thing, she knew herself to be relatively new to this kind of happening, unlike her tempestuous cousin Etta whose experience of men’s ways was rather more sophisticated than hers. And for another, she had few doubts that the worldly and good-looking Signor Datini would have had affaires by the score, resulting in some serious understanding of any signs of interest, intended or not. Had he detected any from her, so far? Probably not, she thought, after her behaviour today when he had been quite prepared to leave, more exasperated than physically attracted.
Catching sight of his cap on the bench, she picked it up gingerly, as if he might be watching, running the tips of her fingers around the velvet rim, recalling the indentation on the thick waves of his hair. In a sudden urge to connect with him, she placed the cap on her head. The cap fell down over her eyes so she removed it and placed it on her lap. On the bench in front of her, Ben’s leather satchel lay half-opened with something protruding from the corner. A small knife fell out with a clatter as she tipped it up, then several small balls of a greenish-brown substance rolled after it, each one no larger than a pigeon’s egg. She picked up the knife to examine the woody handle, sure from her own observations that this was the unusual mistletoe wood, close-grained and pale. Then, turning her attention to the balls, she squeezed one until it crumbled, telling her immediately by its greenish grains that this also was mistletoe, pounded and mixed with something sticky, probably honey. Wasn’t that what the stillroom maid had been preparing that same afternoon? Mistletoe? The magical plant that became more potent if it grew on an oak tree? And on the edge of the orchard there were two such oaks. Had Ben been taking it? If so, for what reason? Even she knew of its dangers if the dosage was too great. Concerned and puzzled, and rather afraid of what she might find next, she took the key that she had brought with her and unlocked the cupboard containing the notes. The candle flames bent as the pile slapped the surface of the bench.
The Mistress and the Merchant Page 10
