The Apothecary's Daughter (42 page)

‘They were screaming and crying something terrible when I
slipped out of the back door. You could hear the hullabaloo half way up Fleet Street. Either they’ve gone or they’ve fallen
ill all of a sudden.’

‘What about Ned?’

‘He took to his bed with a rattling cough this morning.’

‘So Father and Ned may be on their own with no one to nurse them?’

Jennet nodded, her face stricken.

Susannah lifted her skirts out of the mud and started back to Fleet Street with Jennet trailing behind her.

The watchman leaned on his halberd, his coat collar pulled up against the hammering rain.

‘Let me pass,’ said Susannah.

‘You want to die, do you? You and your babe?’ Water ran down his cheeks and dripped off his chin in a continual stream.

Susannah hesitated, torn between risking her baby’s life and the yearning to comfort her father.

‘Pray to the good Lord and hope he will be merciful. Go along home now, madam, before you drown.’

How
could
she abandon her father? She made up her mind. ‘I’ll pay you to let me in!’

‘Trying to bribe me now, is it?’ Lightning flashed again and a second later thunder cracked and echoed around the sky. ‘How
much?’ shouted the watchman over the clamour of the drumming rain.

Susannah looked into his greedy eyes. Would it be so terrible to die and leave behind all her fears? William and Henry had
both betrayed her. Who else loved her now but her father?

‘How much?’ shouted the watchman, again.

She took a deep breath and tried to still her shaking hands. ‘Everything I have,’ she said.

Another gigantic clap of thunder made her gasp.

‘Let’s see your money, then,’ said the watchman.

‘I’ll have to fetch it.’

‘Well, I’m not going anywhere.’ He folded his arms.

Susannah had gone only a few steps when she saw a tall man hurrying towards the shop. His cloak flapped wetly around his knees
and water funnelled off his hat onto the beaked mask below. Her heart began to race again. William. Only the day before she
would have run to him but now she simply stood with legs as heavy as lead and watched him approach.

‘Susannah. I came as soon as I heard.’

‘Father has the pestilence,’ she said, unable to meet his eyes. ‘And Ned is sickening.’

‘Arabella and the children?’

She shrugged, dashing the streaming water off her face with the back of her hand. ‘She ran away before the house was shut
up. I saw Father …’ She broke down then, the memory of his white face at the window too much to bear.

William caught her by the shoulders. ‘How bad is he?’

‘Very weak.’

‘My poor master has the black boils and a fever, sir,’ said Jennet, through chattering teeth.

Susannah shook herself free of William’s hands. ‘I must help him!’

‘You cannot.’ His black eyes flashed above the white mask.

‘I can and I will. But first I have to go home and collect my savings.’

‘Your savings?’

‘I haven’t much but the watchman will let me in if—’

‘Susannah! What are you thinking of?’ He pulled off his mask. ‘You cannot put yourself at such risk!’

‘What does that matter any more?’ She was too exhausted to argue about it. ‘All I want is to be with Father.’ Rain thudded
down on Susannah’s head and her hair, escaped from its pins, clung like seaweed to her shoulders.

Lightning forked across the sky, illuminating the street with brilliant intensity.

‘And you are prepared to risk your baby’s life, too?’ William’s voice was cold. ‘I had not thought you so selfish.’

A sudden flash of anger made her hold her head up high and stare him down. ‘And I suppose you are a model of perfection?’

Thunder exploded and reverberated around the rooftops, louder than a thousand cannons.

‘Your father would not wish you and his grandchild to die in vain,’ shouted William as the heavens tore apart above them.
‘
I
shall go into the house.’

‘No!’

‘Who better?’

‘Sir?’ Jennet caught hold of his sleeve, her chin trembling and her eyes wide with terror. ‘Let me come with you.’

‘You? Why would you want to return to a house of sickness?’

‘Where else can I go?’ Her voice quavered. ‘I have no family and this has been my home for more years than I can remember.
Mr Leyton has always been so good to me and I can help to nurse him.’

‘You may sicken.’

‘Perhaps I am already infected.’ She stood up and braced her shoulders. ‘God will decide what becomes of me.

‘Then so be it. I shall be glad of your assistance. We must put a poultice on the boils and draw out the evil humours. Let
us waste no more time.’

‘You cannot, William!’ cried Susannah, clutching at his sleeve.

Ignoring her, he strode back to the watchman. ‘Stand aside!’

The watchman barred the door with his halberd. ‘No one comes out. No one goes in. Those are my orders.’

‘And do your orders include taking bribes to allow people to leave the premises?’ William caught the watchman by his collar
and roughly pushed him back against the wall. ‘Where is the lady of the house and her children? If they have been allowed
to escape, possibly carrying infection with them, I can assure you the authorities will take such a matter very seriously.’

The watchman shuffled his feet. ‘I can’t help it if madam escaped out of a bedroom window and across the rooftops, can I?’

‘This maid came from the house. She may already carry the sickness and I am sure you will agree that it is better for her
to be confined inside? And as a doctor, I shall tend to the sick myself.’

‘If you go in and you don’t come out on the dead-cart, you’ll be quarantined,’ warned the watchman.

William released him.

‘And I won’t take no bribes to let you out earlier, seeing as the authorities are so strict.’ The watchman grinned, showing
the black stumps of his teeth.

Susannah caught hold of Jennet’s arm, her sleeve sodden under her hand. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’

‘I’m afraid of dying but I’m more afraid of being alone in the world.’ The maid struggled to find a smile. ‘Look after yourself
and your babe, Miss Susannah, and I will help the doctor to tend your dear father.’

Speechless, Susannah gathered Jennet into her arms and hugged her fiercely.

‘We have no time to waste,’ said William.

The watchman unlocked the door. ‘Go on with you, then.’

As lightning fizzled and spat, ripping across the leaden sky, Jennet bolted through the doorway glancing back white-faced
over her shoulder before she disappeared.

William wiped his dripping face. ‘I’ll do my very best for your father,’ he said. ‘Come at noon tomorrow and I’ll let you
know how he fares.’

Susannah fought to find the words to express her tumultuous thoughts. In the end, she only said, ‘You will do this, risk your
life, for him?’

‘I will do this for you, Susannah.’ He looked at her for a long moment before he, too, went into the house.

The watchman slammed the door shut and turned the key in the lock.

Thunder cracked again, the violence of the storm only matched by the desolation in Susannah’s heart. Soaked to the skin, she
stared at the red cross on the door and then at the words painted below.
Lord have mercy on us
, she read.

‘Dammit, Susannah!’ Agnes dropped her pipe upon her lap, heedless of the tobacco stains upon her skirt. ‘He’s all I have left.
How could you let him?’

‘You know better than I that William will always do as he pleases,’ she said bitterly.

‘I thought you had more influence over him.’

‘As you can see, I have not,’ said Susannah. But guilt and dread pricked her. Agnes was right; she should have tried harder
to dissuade William from entering the house. But Father had been so alone and frightened.

Agnes’s dark eyes glittered with unshed tears. ‘How will we manage without him, Susannah?’ she whispered. ‘I had not thought
he would leave the world before me.’

‘Don’t!’ Sudden panic made Susannah shout, her voice echoing round the chapel’s high ceiling. She clasped her hands together
to still their trembling. ‘All is not yet lost. He has worked amongst the sick and remained well during this past terrible
year.’

‘But never before shut up in a house with the dying.’ Agnes’s bent and knobbled hands twisted around the head of her cane.
‘William is the son I never had.’

‘I know.’

They sat in silence for the rest of the afternoon, each absorbed in their own fearful thoughts, while outside the rain cascaded
down the windows.

At suppertime Phoebe brought in a tray of cold gammon and bread. She avoided looking at Susannah and left the chapel as quietly
as she had entered it.

Susannah could barely swallow since nausea brought on by fright made her stomach heave at the sight of the thick pink and
white slabs of meat.

Agnes ate little and retired to her bedchamber shortly afterwards.

The downpour stopped at last and Susannah slipped outside to take the evening air. The flowers were rain-drenched and her
herbs had been flattened. She walked through the cloisters, perfumed with honeysuckle mixed with the warm, woody scent of
moist earth.

Sitting on the bench while the light faded, she watched the bats flitter in the gloaming. She tortured herself by imagining
her father’s agonies as William laid on steaming poultices to draw out the evil humours from the buboes. Unable to cry, she
rocked herself backwards and forwards, her pain and loneliness as sharp as if she had swallowed broken glass. Each minute
seemed like an hour and she still had to endure the night before she could discover her father’s fate. Her baby stirred inside
her and she hugged her stomach, wondering if her father would survive to see his grandchild.

Despair descended then and at last she gave herself up to a storm of weeping. The events of the past few days had tossed her
from sublime happiness to the utmost misery. She cried for what might have been: the death of her child’s father and her disappointing
marriage, the love she thought had grown between herself and William that had turned out to be so hollow, her father’s love
that she had taken for granted until he snatched it away and gave it to Arabella. Most of all she cried out from the fear
of living in a world without either her father or William there to love her.

The morning was a long time coming. At dawn Susannah gave up trying to sleep. She dressed and went down to the kitchen where
Mistress Oliver was putting the bread into the oven.

‘Needn’t ask what kind of a night you’ve had,’ said the cook. ‘And I don’t suppose the mistress fared much better.’

‘It’s the waiting and the wondering that’s so dreadful.’

‘I’ll make you a pot of coffee to take up to the mistress. No doubt she’s been lying awake and a-wondering, too.’

The sound of the pestle grinding coffee beans in the mortar raised a vision in Susannah’s mind of her father standing behind
the counter in the apothecary shop mixing medicines over the years. She swallowed back the lump in her throat. It was too
terrible to contemplate that he might not continue his work for years to come. She stared into the fire, willing herself to
empty her mind of such thoughts.

Before long the scent of freshly baked bread began to vie with the aroma of the coffee simmering on the fire. Mistress Oliver
strained the coffee through a piece of muslin, sawed some slices off the new loaf and slapped them down on the table.

Susannah, suddenly overwhelmed by hunger, bit into the warm bread and washed it down with a gulp of hot coffee. ‘I’ll put
the rest on a tray and take it up to Mistress Fygge,’ she said, brushing crumbs off her skirt.

A wall of heat and smoke hit her as she opened the bedchamber door. Agnes was already sitting up in bed and Phoebe was kneeling
in front of the grate sweeping up the ashes.

‘Shall I open the window?’ asked Susannah. She took care not to acknowledge Phoebe’s presence.

‘No!’ Agnes shuddered. ‘The very air is dangerous. We can’t know what sickness is carried on the breeze.’

Surreptitiously, Susannah wiped the perspiration off her forehead.

Dwarfed by the four-poster, Agnes looked somehow shrunken, with her hands clasped to her chest and her thin plait lying over
her shoulder. ‘I shall stay in bed today,’ she said.

‘Would you like me to read to you, to help pass the time?’

‘Maybe later. But come and give me the news as soon as you return.’

Susannah attempted to make herself busy but she couldn’t settle and all the while the weight of dread pressed down upon her
like a
flat iron. She finished sewing another tiny vest for her baby and placed it in the chest in her bedchamber along with the
others. Watching the sun climb higher in the sky, she listened out for the church bells, counting the hours as they passed.

Eventually it was time to go. Mistress Oliver packed a basket with provisions and Susannah put it over her arm. At the last
moment she decided to pick some herbs; the fresh rosemary would make a soothing infusion to ease Ned’s cough.

Water still swirled in the drains and detritus washed up against the walls had been left high and dry by the previous day’s
torrents. The gulls from the river wheeled and cried overhead, swooping down to snatch at the debris. Susannah’s advanced
state of pregnancy made her balance unsteady and she had to take care not to lose her footing on the cobbles.

She was hot and out of breath by the time she arrived at the sign of the Unicorn and the Dragon. The watchman lounged on the
step, barring the door.

‘What news?’ she asked.

He stood up straighter but his eyes slid away from hers, causing cold fingers of apprehension to run down her back. ‘Best
call your friends,’ he said. He banged on the door with his fist. ‘Oi! Come to the window!’

The casement opened and Jennet looked out, her face swollen with weeping.

‘Oh, Jennet!’ Susannah clutched her hands together over her breast in fear.

The maid choked back a sob. ‘They took him away last night!’