Chapter 10

10

Nella

February 7, 1791

On the seventh day of February, yet another note was left in the barrel of pearl barley.

Before I read it, I lifted the fine parchment—thin as the skin on my tired hands—and inhaled the scent of perfume. Cherries, with undertones of lavender and rose water.

Like Eliza’s letter, I knew immediately, by the steady curls and even loops of the ink, that the author was well mannered, literate. I drew to mind a woman of my own age: the mistress of her own household, the wife of a merchant. I imagined a warm and loyal friend, but not a socialite, one who fancied pleasure gardens and the theaters, but not in the way of a courtesan. I imagined a full bosom, broad hips. Amother.

But as I set aside my own imagination and proceeded to read the words carefully penned onto the paper, my tongue grew dry. The note was very curious. As though the author were hesitant to state what she wanted and preferred instead subtle intimation. I let the note fall onto the table. I lifted the candle above the parchment and read it yet again:

The footman found them together, in the gatehouse.

We’ve a gathering in two days, and she will be in attendance. Perchance you’ve something to incite lust? I will come to your shop, tomorrow at ten.

Oh, to die in the arms of a lover as I lie alone, waiting, the corridors silent.

I dissected each verse like the entrails of a rat, looking for some clue buried deep within. The woman’s household entailed a footman and a gatehouse, so I presumed her well-off. This concerned me, for I had no interest in meddling in the motives of the wealthy, who I had found over the years to be unpredictable and unstable. And the woman wanted something to incite lust, so that he—presumably her husband—might die in the arms of his lover—presumably his mistress. The arrangement struck me as a bit perverted, and the letter did not sit well with me.

And the preparation must be ready in two days. It was hardly enough time.

But Eliza’s letter had not settled well with me, either, and all had turned out perfectly well. I felt sure that my unease about this letter, too, could be explained by my ailing body and my weary spirit. Perhaps every letter, from this point forward, would raise alarm. I might as well grow used to it, just as I’d grown used to the absence of light inside my shop.

Besides, this woman’s letter implied betrayal, and betrayal was why I began to dispense poisons in the first place—why I began to carry the secrets of these women, to record them in my register, to protect and aid them. The best apothecary was one who knows intimately the despair felt by her patient, whether in body or heart. And though I could not relate to this woman’s place in society—for there were no gatehouses or footmen to be seen in Back Alley—I knew, firsthand, her inner turmoil. Heartache is shared by all, and favors no rank.

So, in spite of myself, I readied my things to leave for the day. I threw on my heaviest coat and packed an extra pair of socks. Although the fields where I meant to go were damp and uninviting, it was the place I would find the blister beetles—the remedy most suited to this woman’s peculiar request.

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I made my way quickly, expertly, through the winding alleys of my city, avoiding the sedan chairs and horse dung, pushing against the oppressive mass of bodies moving in and out of shops and homes on my way to the fields near Walworth, in Southwark, where I would find the beetles. I paid visits to the river often and could walk to Blackfriars Bridge with my eyes closed, but on this day the loose stones underfoot posed a hazard. I watched my step, avoiding such nuisances as a mongrel gnawing on something dead, and a half-wrapped parcel of smelly, fly-covered fish.

As I rushed down Water Street, the open river just ahead, women on either side of me brushed the debris and filth from their doorsteps, forming a cloud of ash and dust. I let out a little cough and was seized, all at once, with a hacking fit. I doubled over, placing my hands on my knees.

No one paid me any attention, thank God; the last thing I needed were questions of my destination, my name. No, everyone else was too busy minding their own chores, merchandise and children.

My lungs continued to suck in air until at last I felt the heat in my throat subsiding. I wiped the moisture from my lips, horrified by the plug of greenish mucus that came away on my palm, like I had just plunged my hand into the river and come away with a slither of algae attached to my skin. I flung the mucus onto the ground, stomped it into nothingness with my shoe and straightened my shoulders, moving ahead to the river.

Coming to the steps at the base of Blackfriars Bridge, I noticed a man and woman approaching from across the road. His eyes were narrow and determined as he looked in my direction, and I prayed that he had recognized someone directly behind me. The woman next to him struggled under the weight of an infant slung to her bosom, and from my distance I could just make out the baby’s soft, egg-shaped head. A beautiful, cream-colored blanket was tucked neatly around the child.

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 momentto 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.

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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 bringing more pain upon me.

I went to the door and peered through the narrow cleft in order to view my visitor.

It was Eliza.