Chapter 11

11

Eliza

February 8, 1791

When Nella opened the door, swinging it toward her small body, she looked frightened out of her wits. “I’m sorry for catching you by surprise,” I offered.

“Oh, do come in,” she breathed, hand on her chest. I stomped my wet feet and stepped inside. The room looked exactly as it had several days ago, but the odor had changed; the air smelled earthy, like moist, healthy dirt. Curious, I peered around the shelves.

“I read the papers yesterday,” Nella said, catching my gaze. The shadows of her sunken cheeks were darker today, and wisps of her charcoal, wiry hair stuck out at odd angles around her face. “About Mr. Amwell, finally succumbing to the drink. Everything went as planned, it seems.”

I nodded, pride blooming inside of me. I could hardly wait to tell her how well the poisoned egg had worked, and I wished that she hadn’t read of it before I had the chance to tell her myself. “He fell ill instantly,” I said, “and he never did improve, not even a bit.”

There was only one problem. My hand found its way to my lower belly, which had ached since the hour of Mr. Amwell’s death. He might have succumbed to the poison as planned, but I had begun bleeding at the very moment his spirit was released into the house. Returning to Nella’s shop seemed my only option; surely one of her tinctures could remove his ghost.

Besides, her vials and potions fascinated me. She might not think them magickal, but I mightily disagreed. I knew that Mr. Amwell had not merely died; something in him had transformed, just like the butterflies in their cocoons. He had taken new form, and I felt sure Nella’s elixirs were the only way to reverse it, the only way to stop the bleeding from my belly.

But I could not share this with Nella, not yet, for she’d denied magick during my first visit. I did not want her to think me tiresome—or downright mad—so I’d come prepared with another tactic.

Nella crossed her arms, looking me up and down. Her knuckles, just inches in front of my face, appeared swollen, round and red as cherries. “I’m very glad the egg worked,” she said, “but given that you accomplished your task, I am curious what brought you back here. Without warning, I should add.” Her tone was not a punishing one, but I sensed she was not pleased with me. “I presume you did not return to issue the same fate to your mistress?”

“Of course not,” I said, shaking my head. “She has been lovely to me, always.” A sudden draft swirled through the air, and I caught a strong whiff of the damp, earthy odor. “What is that smell?”

“Come here,” Nella said, waving me to an earthenware pot on the floor, near the hearth. The pot stood as high as my waist and was filled with loose black dirt. I followed eagerly, but she held out her hand. “No closer,” she said. Then she took a pair of crude leather mitts and, with a small, spade-like instrument, she parted some of the dirt toward the edge of the pot to reveal, hiding within, a hard, whitish object. “Wolfsbane root,” she said.

“Wolfs...bane,” I repeated slowly. The object looked like a rock, but, craning my neck, I could just barely make out a few little knots protruding from it, similar to a potato or carrot. “For killing wolves?”

“At one time, yes. The Greeks used to extract the poison and place it on their arrows while hunting wild dogs. But nothing of that sort will be done here.”

“Because it will kill men, not wolves,” I said, eager to show my understanding.

Nella raised her eyebrows at me. “You are unlike any twelve-year-old I have met,” she said. She turned back to the pot and gently brushed the dirt back over the root. “In a month’s time, I will shred this root into a thousand pieces. A pinch of it, mixed well into an otherwise bitter horseradish sauce, will stop the heart within an hour.” She tilted her head at me. “You still haven’t answered my question. Is there something else you’re needing from me?” She took off her mitts and intertwined her fingers in her lap.

“I do not want to remain at the Amwell house,” I muttered. It was not untruthful, even if it was not the whole truth. I let out a cough and felt the sticky, wet sensation of blood leaking from me. Yesterday, I’d snatched a thin cloth from the laundry and cut it into pieces, just to keep the blood from soiling my undergarments.

Nella cocked her head to one side, confused. “What of your mistress? Your work?”

“She has gone north for a few weeks to be with her family in Norwich. She left this morning, her carriage dressed in black, on account of needing to be with family while she—” I paused, repeating what she had asked me to write in several letters before she left. “While she is in mourning.”

“There must be plenty of household work to keep you busy, then.”

I shook my head. With my mistress gone, her husband dead and Sally returned from her visit with her mother, there was little for me to do. “I only write her letters, so Mrs. Amwell said I did not need to remain at the house while she was gone.”

“You write her letters? That explains your penmanship.”

“She has shaky hands. She cannot write much of anything anymore.”

“I see,” Nella said. “And so she dismissed you for a time.”

“She suggested I visit my parents in the country—in Swindon. She thought perhaps a rest would be good for me.”

Nella raised her eyebrows at this, but it was true; after I fell sobbing to the floor and Mrs. Amwell found my streak of blood on her chair, she took me in her arms. I had been inconsolable about Mr. Amwell’s released spirit, unable to quiet my hiccups, but she seemed unperturbed, even calm. How could she not see the truth? I began bleeding the very same hour that Mr. Amwell died; how could she not see that his spirit had done it to me? His ugly ghost wrapped itself around my belly that night.

No tears over this, my mistress had whispered, for this is as natural as the moon moving across the sky.

But there was nothing natural about this death-blood that still had not stopped, despite the passage of two days. My mistress had been wrong about Johanna—I knew she died in the room next to me—and she was wrong about this, too.

“And yet you did not go to Swindon,” Nella said, bringing my attention back to her.

“It is a long journey.”

Nella crossed her arms, a look of disbelief on her face. She knew I was lying; she knew there was something else, some other reason for not returning home. Nella looked to the clock, then the door. Whether she was waiting for someone to arrive or waiting for me to leave, I did not know—but if I could not tell her about my bleeding, I needed to find another way to stay, and quick.

I clenched my hands, ready to say what I’d practiced on my walk here. My voice trembled; I could not fail, or she would send me away. “I’d like to stay with you and help with your shop.” The words rushed from me in a single breath. “I would like to learn how to shred roots that kill wolves and how to put poison into an egg without cracking it.” I waited, judging Nella’s reaction, but her face remained blank and this gave me a surge of courage. “Like an apprenticeship, only for a short while. Until Mrs. Amwell has returned from Norwich. I promise to be of great help to you.”

Nella smiled at me, her eyes creasing at the edges. Whereas I believed, a moment ago, that she was hardly older than my mistress, now I wondered if perhaps Nella wasn’t forty, or even fifty years old. “I do not need help with my tinctures, child.”

Undeterred, I sat up taller. I’d come prepared with a second idea, in case my first plea did not work. “Then I can help you with your vials,” I said, motioning to one of her shelves. “Some of the labels are faded, and I have seen the way you hold your arm funny. I can darken the ink, so you do not hurt yourself.” I thought of my many hours and days spent with Mrs. Amwell in the drawing room, perfecting my penmanship. “You will not be disappointed with my work,” I added.

“No, little Eliza,” she said. “No, I cannot agree to that.”

My heart almost burst, and I realized I never dreamed she would say no to this, too. “Why not?”

She laughed in disbelief. “You want to be an apprentice, an assistant, and learn to brew poisons so middling women can kill their husbands? Their masters? Their brothers and suitors and drivers and sons? This is not a shop of sweets, girl. These are not vials of chocolate into which we place crushed raspberries.”

I bit my tongue, resisting the urge to remind her that only days ago, I cracked a poisoned egg into a skillet and served it to my master. But I knew from writing Mrs. Amwell’s letters that the things a person mostwanted to say were often the things they should keep tucked away inside. I paused, then said calmly, “I know this is not a shop of sweets.”

Her face was serious now. “What interest do you have in meddling with this business, child? My heart is black, as black as the ash beneath that fire, for reasons you are too young to understand. What has harmed you so, in merely twelve years, that leaves you wanting more of this?” She waved her arms around the room, her gaze falling at last on the pot of soil, with the wolfsbane hidden underneath.

“And have you considered what it might be like to sleep on a cot in a room hardly large enough for one of us, much less two of us? Have you considered that there is not a bit of privacy in here? There is no rest, Eliza—something is always steaming, brewing, stewing, soaking. I wake at all hours of the night to tend the things you see around us. This is no grand house of nighttime quiet and pink papers on the wall. You may be just a servant, but I suspect your quarters are much nicer even than this.” Nella took a breath and placed a gentle hand on mine. “Do not tell me that you dream of working in a place like this, girl. Do you not wish for something more?”

“Oh, yes,” I told her. “I wish to live near the sea. I have seen paintings of Brighton, of castles in the sand. I would like to live there, I think.” I pulled my hand away and ran my fingers over my chin; a small, itchy boil had formed there, hardly larger than the tip of a needle. Out of other ideas, I exhaled, resigned to telling Nella the rest of the story. “Mr. Amwell’s spirit haunts me. I fear that if I remain at the house without Mrs. Amwell, he will harm me more than he has already.”

“Nonsense, child.” Nella vehemently shook her head back and forth.

“I swear it! The house has another spirit, too, of a young girl who was there before me, named Johanna. She died in the room next to mine, and I hear her crying at night.”

Nella’s palms splayed open as though she could not believe my words, like I was mad.

But I went on, resolute. “I very much want to remain in the service of Mrs. Amwell. And I promise, I will return to my post as soon as she has come back to London. I do not mean to inconvenience you. I only thought perhaps you could teach me how to brew something that will remove the spirits from the house, so I mustn’t listen to Johanna’s incessant crying anymore, and so that Mr. Amwell will leave me alone, once and for all. I could learn other things besides, and perhaps help you some while I am here.”

Nella looked me hard in the eye. “You listen here, Eliza. No potion has the power to remove spirits from the empty air we breathe. If one did exist, and if I had been the one to brew and bottle such a tincture, I would be a rich woman, living in a manor somewhere.” She traced a fingernail over a scratch on the table where we sat. “Bravery you have in telling me the truth. But I’m sorry, child. I cannot help you and you cannot stay here.”

Discouragement coursed through me; no matter my pleas, Nella had not offered to help me in any way, not even by offering a place to stay until Mrs. Amwell returned. And yet, I clung to the tremor in her voice. “Do you believe in spirits? Mrs. Amwell does not believe me, not even a bit.”

“I do not believe in ghosts, if that is what you’re asking of me. Little clouds of evil that children, like you, fear in the night. Think of it—if we become a ghost when we die, and if we haunt the places we once lived, would not all of London be in a perpetual fog?” She paused as the fire crackled loudly behind her. “But I do believe that sometimes, we feel remnants of those who lived before. These are not spirits, but rather creations of our own desperate imaginations.”

“So Johanna, who cries in the room next to mine...you think I am imagining her?” It was impossible; I’d never even met the girl.

Nella shrugged. “I cannot say, child. I have not known you long, but you are young, and therefore prone to wild ideas.”

“I am twelve,” I snapped back, my patience finally gone. “I am not so young.”

Meeting my eyes, Nella stood at last, grimacing, and made her way to the large cupboard at the back of the room. She ran her finger along the spines of several books, clicking her tongue against her teeth. Not finding what she wanted, she opened one of the cupboard doors and searched another stack of books, this one more disorderly than the last. Toward the bottom of the pile, she tugged on the spine of a small book and withdrew it.

It was very thin, more a pamphlet than a book, and the soft cover was torn at one corner. “This belonged to my mother,” she said, handing the book to me. “Though I never saw her open it, and I have seen no need myself.”

Peeling open the faded burgundy cover, I gasped at the frontispiece; it was an image of a woman giving birth to a bounty of fresh harvest, turnips and strawberries and mushrooms. Scattered around her bare breasts were several fish and a newborn pig. “What is this?” I asked Nella, my cheeks flushing.

“Someone gave it to my mother long ago, only a year or so before she died. It’s a book claiming to be filled with magick, intended for use by midwives and healers.”

“But she did not believe in magick, either,” I guessed.

Nella shook her head, then walked to her register and turned the pages backward, furrowing her brow as she searched the dates. Skimming her finger along the entries, she nodded. “Ah, yes. Take a look here.” She spun the register around to face me, then pointed at the entry:

6 Apr 1764, Ms Breyley, aus. wild honey, 1/2x pound, topical.

“A half pound of wild honey,” Nella read aloud.

I widened my eyes. “To eat?”

She pointed at the word topical. “No, to spread onto the skin.” She cleared her throat as she explained, “Ms. Breyley was hardly older than me. Hardly older than you. She came to my mother’s shop after midnight. Her cries woke us from sleep. An infant lay in her arms... She said that a few days prior, the little boy had been badly scalded by a kettle of hot water. My mother did not ask how. It did not matter so much as the poor boy’s condition. The wound had begun to fester and pus. Worse still, a rash was forming on other parts of his body, as though the wound had begun to crawl its way through the rest of him.

“My mother took the boy in her arms, felt the heat of him against her breast, then laid him onto this table and stripped off his clothes. She opened the jar of wild honey and slathered it onto his body. The infant began to cry and my mother, too. She knew how much it must have pained his new, delicate skin. It is the most distressing thing, Eliza, to issue pain to someone, even when you know it is for the best.”

Nella dabbed at her eye. “My mother would not let the young woman and her child leave, not for three days. They stayed with us, in the shop, so the honey could be applied every two hours. My mother did not miss a single treatment—she was not so much as a minute late in brushing the honey onto the baby’s skin for three entire days. She treated the boy as though he were her own.” She closed the register. “The pus dried. The spreading rash disappeared. The festering wound healed, with almost no scar.” She motioned to the book of magick she’d just given me. “That is why my mother never opened the book in your hands. Because saving lives with the gifts of the earth, Eliza, is as good as magick.”

I thought of the honey-covered baby that had once lain on the table where I now sat, and suddenly I felt ashamed of having mentioned magick at all.

“But I understand your curiosity about ghosts,” Nella went on, “and this is not about saving lives, anyhow. Inside the back cover is the name of a bookstore, and the street on which it’s located. I forget it now—something like Basing Lane. They have all sorts of books on magick, or so I’ve heard. The shop may not even exist anymore, but seeing as how you’d like a potion to remove spirits from the house, I think it as good a place to start as any.” She closed the cupboard door. “Better than here, anyway.”

I held the book in my hands, feeling the cool heft of it against my damp palms. A book of magick, I thought contentedly, with the address of a shop that sold more. Perhaps my visit to her today had not been as fruitless as I’d feared a moment ago. Anticipation beat inside my chest. I would go at once to this bookshop.

Suddenly, there was a light rapping, four soft clips, on the door. Nella looked again at the clock and groaned. I stood from my chair, ready to leave. But as Nella moved to the door, she placed a light hand on my shoulder and gently pushed me back into my seat.

My heart surged, and Nella lowered her voice to a whisper. “My hand is not steady, and I could not bottle up the powder that I am to sell to the woman who has just arrived. I could use your help, this once, if you would not mind.”

I nodded eagerly—the magick bookshop could wait. Then, her knuckles still swollen and red, Nella opened the door.