The Painter's Apprentice (3 page)

‘But your Johannes seems well now?’

‘Yes, he is.’

Downstairs, the kitchen was busy. On either side of a cauldron, sizzling on the fire, sat a black woman with her hair tied
up in a colourful turban and a stout, elderly maid, each plucking a chicken. A large tabby cat patted at the cloud of feathers
drifting to the floor. Peg, her fair hair already escaping from her cap, was making pastry at the table and her daughter,
Sara, a pretty girl with skin neither as black as her father’s nor as pale as her mother’s, worked at the table peeling a
mountain of carrots and potatoes.

‘Are we too early for breakfast, Peg?’ asked Beth.

‘The fire in the hall hasn’t taken yet. It’s warmer here.’

‘Do you mind eating in the kitchen, Noah?’

‘Not at all, if we won’t be in the way?’

‘Always room at my table, sir,’ said Peg, a smile on her freckled face.

Sara cut bread for them and brought cheese, ale and cold meat.

‘I think you have already met Emmanuel, Sara’s father, in the courtyard last night?’

‘I certainly did,’ said Noah, smiling at Sara, who dimpled and curtsyed.

‘Emmanuel has been with the family since he was a boy. And this is Phoebe and Jennet who are plucking chickens for our dinner.
Phoebe was our nurse and Jennet has been with our family for ever.’

‘Jennet?’ said Noah. ‘My father talks about a Jennet who used to make delicious little sugar cakes for him.’

A smile broke across Jennet’s broad pock-marked face. ‘You’re the dead spit of Master Tom!’ she said.

‘He remembers that you were kind to him after his mother died.’

The door to the garden opened and a young man soberly dressed in a dark brown coat came in with a swirl of wind.

‘Close that door, Joseph!’ said Phoebe. ‘You’re bringing in the cold.’

‘Yes, Mammy,’ said Joseph. He winked at Sara, who blushed, and then he gave Noah a wide smile, his teeth very white in his
nut-brown face. ‘Good morning, sir.’

‘Joseph is our steward,’ said Beth. ‘I believe you also met him last night, Noah?’

‘Indeed.’ Noah nodded his head curtly but was then unable to resist responding to Joseph’s infectious smile.

Once the servants had turned back to their tasks, Noah said in an undertone, ‘That must be the Joseph my father mentioned
to me? Your birth father’s son?’

‘He told you about that?’ said Beth, her cheeks flushing.

‘He thought I should know, as I was coming to England, in case I unwittingly said anything to cause your family embarrassment.’

‘My birth father, Henry Savage,’ said Beth, her colour still high, ‘was Father’s cousin. He grew up with Phoebe on his family’s
plantation and they fell in love. Joseph was born some five years before Henry married Mama. After Henry died, Father was
determined that his cousin’s child would have an education.’

‘He has a great sense of responsibility.’

‘Indeed he has. But when Mama first told me about Joseph some years ago it upset me a great deal.’

‘These things happen in the best of houses.’

‘I know but I thought …’ She bit her lip. ‘I thought it meant that Father, William that is, didn’t really love me as I’d always
believed but was simply doing his Christian duty by me in the same way that he took on the responsibility for Joseph.’

‘
Is
there a difference in the way he treats you and your siblings?’

‘He’s too much of a gentleman for that. But it’s what he feels in his heart that matters to me. And I’ve never been able to
find the
answer to that question. In any case, Johannes arrived at Merryfields at the time I was so very unhappy and he cares for me
now as if I were the daughter he never had.’ She was suddenly conscious that she’d voiced aloud to a near-stranger the doubts
about Father that still troubled her. Mortified, she stood up. ‘Let me show you the rest of Merryfields.’

‘I’d like that.’

Beth took Noah to the library first. She took down a collection of Donne’s poetry and showed it to him. ‘This was one of Grandfather
Cornelius’s books,’ she said. ‘Father saved them from Grandfather’s apothecary shop just before it burned down in the Great
Fire.’

Noah took the book and reverently ran his finger over it, smoothing the blackened corner of the calfskin cover. ‘It’s strange
to touch a book that once upon a time my grandfather held in his own hand.’

Beth replaced the book carefully on the shelf. ‘Shall we go and see the rest?’

She led him into the garden courtyard and from there to the summer and winter parlours where the guests were able to paint
or work on their embroidery; they poked their noses into William’s study, the rear hall leading to the kitchen offices and
the laundry room, game larder and still room.

‘What’s in here?’ asked Noah. He stood on tiptoe and squinted through a peephole in a heavy door at the dark end of the passage.

‘Oh! Nothing.’ Beth repressed a shiver. ‘It’s just an empty room.’

But Noah had already turned the big key in the lock.

The room was empty of furniture, about seven feet square, the walls padded and lined with leather. A set of manacles were
chained to the wall. A small barred window set high up on the walls allowed a little light to penetrate.

‘A cell?’ asked Noah.

As a child the cell had given Beth nightmares. Even now, after all these years, the skin on her neck crawled when she came
near to it. It was bad enough that Noah knew the shameful secret of Joseph’s
birth but now he was insisting on poking his nose into the restraining room.

‘Beth? What’s the matter?’

‘I hate this place. When I was five or six my uncle Joshua, he’s only a year older than I, locked me in here. It wasn’t until
supper-time that his brother Samuel came to find me.’

‘What a horrid trick!’

‘Father thrashed him for it.’

‘I should think so, the little devil! And do you use this room often now?’

‘Sometimes we have guests who need to be restrained for their own good,’ she said. ‘Occasionally someone becomes overwrought
and is a danger to himself or to others. It’s rare because we don’t take guests who are violent and we have far fewer guests
now than we used to. Of course, that brings problems of its own. Father cannot bear to turn away any guest whose family stop
sending his upkeep.’

‘I see.’

‘It wasn’t always so. As a child I remember that the dormitories were full of guests at Merryfields, all of whom paid well.
But over time Father has lost his London connections and there isn’t the same supply of people wishing to come and stay here
to recover their spirits.’ Beth sighed. ‘I shouldn’t talk of such things.’

Noah looked as if he was about to speak but then simply said, ‘Shall we move on?’

They walked back across the courtyard and Beth opened another door. She stood in the entrance for a moment, inhaling the familiar
scent of the apothecary, a heady mix of lavender and sulphur, camphor, beeswax and turpentine. Bunches of dried herbs hung
from the beams and light slanting through the casement illuminated a row of potion-filled bottles, making them as colourful
as a church window.

Susannah stood before a large table, an apron tied around her slim
waist as she ground dried parsley roots in a great pestle and mortar. She glanced up and flashed a brief smile. Beth noticed
that she was unusually pale.

‘Good morning!’ said Susannah. ‘I hope you slept well, Noah?’

‘Very well, thank you. It’s so quiet here in the country after London.’

He looked around, unashamedly staring at the walls lined with gallypots and neatly labelled wooden drawers, the set of balance
scales and the glass dome of leeches on the counter and the stuffed crocodile hanging from the ceiling. ‘Oh!’ he said, his
face breaking into a smile. ‘My father told me about the crocodile!’

‘Sadly, it isn’t the same one that Tom knew,’ said Susannah. ‘That burned in the Great Fire. William searched high and low
for a replacement because he said I would never feel like a real apothecary without one. But this pestle and mortar was your
grandfather’s.’

‘I do wish my father could see all this!’ Noah reached up to pinch a bunch of dried rosemary suspended from the ceiling, sniffing
the clean, resinous scent upon his fingers.

‘Oh, what have you done?’ exclaimed Beth. She took Noah’s hand and pulled back the lace from his wrist, exposing a purple
bruise.

Noah gave a wry smile. ‘Emmanuel doesn’t know his own strength. He and Joseph lifted me clear of the ground when they found
me climbing over the gates last night.’

Susannah took an earthenware pot off a shelf. ‘Try this,’ she said. ‘Comfrey and neat’s-foot oil with elder. It’s good for
bruises.’

He sniffed at the pot. ‘Thank you,’ he said, rubbing a little of the salve on to his wrist.

‘Mama, Johannes needs some more linseed oil and pigments. Shall I help myself?’

Susannah hesitated. ‘Some of the gallypots are empty. You may need to wait until we can buy more supplies.’

‘But …’ Suddenly Beth remembered that the supplier had said he wouldn’t deliver more goods until his account had been settled.

‘Aunt Susannah,’ said Noah, ‘I wondered if you’ve had time to consider my father’s letter?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘The contents kept me awake for half the night.’

‘I suspected they might.’

Beth raised an enquiring eyebrow at her mother.

Susannah pushed away the pestle and mortar and wearily smoothed back a loose strand of hair. ‘I almost wish you’d never come
to see us, Noah.’

‘Mama!’ Beth was shocked to hear her mother speak in such a way to a guest.

‘It’s all right, Beth,’ said Noah. ‘I perfectly understand Aunt Susannah’s meaning.’

‘Tom’s letter asks if one of your brothers would like to go to Virginia. Since Noah doesn’t wish to step into his father’s
shoes, Tom thought one of my sons might do so instead.’

‘Kit or John go to Virginia?’ Beth faltered. ‘But they can’t! We’d never see them again.’

‘Hence my sleepless night,’ said Susannah. She sighed. ‘But have I the right to deny them such an opportunity?

Beth was lost for words. The thought of one of her brothers sailing away to Virginia and never setting eyes on him again was
too painful to imagine. ‘Why, it would be as if they were dead to us!’

Susannah’s chin trembled. Too moved to speak, she bent over the pestle and mortar again, grinding the parsley roots vigorously,
as if to obliterate her unhappy thoughts.

‘Beth, it’s not for me to bring any pressure to bear on either of your brothers,’ said Noah. ‘I am merely the messenger.’

‘But you cannot deny that it would assuage your own guilt at forsaking your father’s dreams!’

A muscle flickered in Noah’s jaw and he reddened. ‘No, I cannot deny it.’

There was a sudden pounding of footsteps along the corridor and
Cecily, Kit and John tumbled through the doorway, breathless with laughter.

‘There you are, Beth!’ said Kit. ‘We’ve been looking all over for you.’

‘How could you be so mean,’ pouted Cecily. ‘You knew I wanted to come with you when you showed Noah around Merryfields.’ She
gave Noah a beatific smile.

‘Beth didn’t want to watch you m-m-mooning over Noah,’ teased John.

Beth looked at her siblings and her heart ached with love for them. It would be unbearable if any one of them left Merryfields.
She turned to Noah. ‘Mama is right,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘I wish you’d never come!’ She saw John’s eyes widen with
astonishment as she pushed past Cecily and ran from the room.

The only sounds to be heard in the studio were the creaking of Johannes’s shoes as he shifted his weight from one foot to
the other in front of his easel and the faint cawing of the rooks outside as they wheeled through a pale sky above the frosted
elms.

Beth touched the vellum twice with the tip of the brush as lightly as a butterfly settling on a leaf. Slowly, she let out
her breath and studied her watercolour through half-closed eyes. Should she add a few more tiny brush strokes to the sprig
of holly? Perhaps the leaves needed a little more shadow to make the glistening frost appear to sparkle more brightly in contrast?
She dipped the brush into the paint again, wiping surplus pigment against the rim of the pot. Brush poised, she leaned forward.

‘Stop!’ A large hand appeared over her shoulder and grasped her wrist. ‘Think very carefully!’

Beth turned her head. ‘You startled me, Johannes!’

‘How many times must I tell you to consider each brush stroke
before you make it? When will you learn to listen to me?’ He snatched the brush from her fingers and threw it on to the table.

‘I
was
thinking!’

‘An apprentice does not argue with her master!’

She took one look at his broad face, grey with fatigue, and knew there was no point in discussing the matter. Standing up,
she stretched the stiffness out of her shoulders. Watery light filtered through the stone-mullioned windows into the rapidly
darkening studio. Outside in the garden, frost tipped the clipped yews with silver and a blush of rose pink along the horizon
warmed the pearly sky.

‘The light is fading,’ she said. ‘I’d no idea I’d been sitting here for so long.’

Johannes stood beside her, his expression pensive. ‘Time passes quickly when the muse takes you.’

Covertly, she studied his face. ‘Did the day go well for you?’ she asked.

He let out a deep sigh. ‘Well enough. It is finished.’

‘Johannes, that’s wonderful!’ She had respected his desire to keep this work hidden from her until he was happy with it but
it had been hard to resist lifting a corner of the muslin to take a peep. ‘May I see it now?’

The oil painting, worked on an oversized canvas, was propped up on the easel. Johannes turned it to face the room and waited,
watching her face.

The painting depicted an exuberant seascape of military vessels, trading ships, rowing boats and yachts jostling for position
in the mouth of the river, their sails billowing. Bright sunlight cast strong shadows and the brisk wind stirred the surface
of the water into choppy waves. The decks of the ships were crowded with sailors and passengers, some waving and some climbing
up the masts. Beth could smell the salt of the sea in the air and hear the sailors shouting as the sails snapped back and
forth in the wind.

‘It’s magnificent,’ she said quietly.

‘I think so,’ he said, with no trace of conceit in his voice, ‘but I will study it tomorrow in the daylight.’

‘You should rest now.’

He nodded. ‘And your watercolour, that is finished too. A good artist judges when it is well to stop.’

‘Yes, Master.’

A smile flitted across Johannes’s face. Beth turned to look at his canvas again. ‘This is the most ambitious painting you
have undertaken and it lifts your talent to a higher plane, Johannes.’

‘Neither of us knows yet of what we are capable. We must always strive to do better.’ Briefly, he touched her shoulder before
turning to the door. As he lifted the latch he looked back at her. ‘Your holly watercolour …’

‘Yes?’

‘It looks so real that if I touch its spiny leaves I might draw blood. For one so young you show much promise.’

The latch clicked behind him and Beth stared at the closed door. A slow smile spread over her face.

Later, after she’d cleaned the brushes and covered the paints, she made her way downstairs. Orpheus appeared from nowhere
and padded along beside her.

Preparations were being made for supper. Poor Joan and old Nelly Byrne sat together at the big kitchen table, peeling turnips
and potatoes. Peg, misted in a cloud of steam, stirred a vast copper vat of hambones.

‘What’s for supper?’ asked Beth.

‘Same as yesterday.’ Peg peered into the depths of the cauldron. ‘I’ll have to add extra turnips to the soup again. I’ve already
used these bones twice and there’s no flavour left in them.’

‘Can’t we get some new bones?’

‘The butcher won’t let me have anything else until we settle his bill.’

Beth didn’t answer. The financial situation was worse than she thought if the butcher begrudged them a few bones.

Orpheus peered down into the cauldron, his nose twitching.

‘Shall I fetch some herbs from the garden?’ asked Beth.

‘You can try,’ said Peg, pushing Orpheus away, ‘but there’s hardly anything at this time of year. Your mother’s stripped the
rosemary bush almost bare for cough medicine. Take the dratted dog away, will you? I daren’t turn my back or he’ll have his
nose in the soup.’

Removing herself and Orpheus from the kitchen, Beth went to find Kit, who was in the library with his head in his hands, books
spread out in front of him.

‘Am I interrupting?’ whispered Beth. He looked up at her and she was taken aback by the bleakness of the expression in his
hazel eyes.

‘I’m glad of an interruption,’ he said. ‘I promised Father I’d study this afternoon but the words dance on the page so that
I can’t read them.’

Beth picked up one of the books. William Harvey’s
Essay on the Motion of the Heart and the Blood
. ‘Isn’t this interesting?’

‘Not noticeably.’ Kit sighed. ‘It’s bad enough that I have to read about scrofulous diseases and study drawings of dissected
bodies and aborted babies but once I arrive at Oxford I’ll be expected to take all the exams in Latin. What is the point of
learning in a language different to our own that is used in no country one can visit?’

‘Latin has always been used for medical matters.’

‘But the common man doesn’t speak in Latin!’

‘You must have Latin if you’re to be a doctor.’

‘And there’s the problem.’

Kit rubbed his eyes with his fists and Beth was reminded of him when he was a little boy struggling with his letters. ‘Perhaps
I could test you on your Latin vocabulary?’

‘You always kissed the grazes on my knees when I fell over, didn’t you, Beth? But I have to do this myself.’

Beth replaced the book on the table, afraid to ask the question. ‘Don’t you want to be a doctor, then?’

‘What does it matter what I want?’ asked Kit, his voice bitter. ‘Father has always told me I shall be a doctor. You know he
expects me to take his place at Merryfields when he’s gone. I’ve tried to be a dutiful son. God knows, I love Father and Mother
with every ounce of my being. That’s what makes it so hard; I can’t bear to disappoint them. But Merryfields is their dream,
not mine.’

The earth seemed to shift slightly under Beth’s feet. It had always been understood that Kit would join the medical profession.
‘But … if you don’t become a doctor, what will you do?’

‘I’ve spent hours thinking about that. It’s not that I have a pressing desire to do anything else in particular but I
know
I don’t want to be a doctor. I can’t bear the sight, or smell, of blood. Of course, Father promises me I’ll grow out of that,
once I’ve seen a few amputations.’ Kit swallowed, his face taking on a peculiar greenish tinge.

Beth paced over to the fireplace and vigorously raked the embers with the poker. ‘This is Noah’s fault, isn’t it? If he’d
never come to visit us you’d have gone on being perfectly happy.’

‘I haven’t been happy for a long while. Noah makes me feel like a coward for not owning up to Father before. Oh, I’ve tried!
But he always turns the conversation as if he knows what I’m attempting to say. Noah at least had the courage to stand up
for what he believes.’

‘Kit, please don’t leave us!’ Suddenly afraid, Beth caught hold of his hand.

‘Little chance of me going to Virginia, is there? I could never find the funds for my passage. Father’s struggling hard enough
already to make ends meet to keep Merryfields going.’

A knot under Beth’s breastbone, a knot that she’d barely realised was there, loosened in relief. Momentarily, she was thankful
for their impoverished state.

‘Beth, don’t you ever have
any
desire to visit the outside world?’
Kit asked. ‘Sometimes I feel as much a prisoner behind these walls as any of the guests.’

‘Why would I want to leave? I love it here! There is my painting and Johannes, the gardens and the servants and guests, who
are almost family anyway. Merryfields is a whole world of its own.’

‘But there’s a whole
new
world outside these walls.’ Wild-eyed, Kit paced across the floor. ‘I’m suffocating here. I don’t care where I go, Virginia,
Babylon or, or …’ he floundered, ‘or Billingsgate, but I
have
to leave Merryfields.’

Beth stared at him, a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. ‘I’d no idea you were so miserable.’

‘Why should you, when you walk around in a glow of self-satisfied happiness, spending every minute possible closeted away
with Johannes? You
know
what you want to do with your life.’ He went to the window and stared out at the gardens, bounded by the high brick wall.
‘I’ll have to face Father,’ he said. ‘He’ll be angry but even that is better than spending the rest of my life in a lunatic
asylum.’

‘I hate to see you so miserable.’

Kit gave his sister a tight little smile. ‘I can’t put it off any longer. I must speak to him. If I haven’t reappeared in
an hour or two you’d better come and save me.’

Sometime later, Beth passed the half open door to William’s study and heard raised voices from within.

‘Even if I had the money, which I do not, I wouldn’t give it to you so that you could sail off on a hare-brained scheme to
Virginia. You know nothing about growing tobacco …’

‘But I could
learn
, Father!’

‘You will
learn
how to be a doctor at Oxford.’

‘You must have realised by now that I will make a poor doctor. I don’t
like
sick people.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous! The sick are the same as you or I.’

‘But they bleed and purge and sweat. I can’t stand it; it makes me ill. And I’m frightened when one of the guests starts rocking
or weeping or banging his head against the wall. I lie awake at night with my heart pounding if I hear a disturbance, terrified
you’ll call me to help. I may not know what I want to do but I do know this.
I will not stay trapped behind the walls of Merryfields with a pack of lunatics!
’

The study door flung back, nearly knocking Beth off her feet, and Kit sprinted out, slamming the front door behind him.

Shocked, Beth looked into the study to see her father at his desk with his head in his hands. She went in and sat down before
him.

William looked up, his face creased with worry. ‘I don’t know what to do for the best. All these years your mother and I have
spent in making Merryfields a model for the care of the melancholic will be wasted if Kit doesn’t take my place.’

Beth experienced a tiny stab of jealousy, wondering if her own absence would cause William as much distress as Kit’s. ‘Perhaps
you need another doctor to come and work with you?’ she said. ‘One who will share your ideals for Merryfields?’

‘It isn’t as simple as that.’

‘Why not?’

William frowned. ‘It’s no concern of yours. Young women need not trouble themselves …’

‘Not my concern? Of course it is! Whatever happens at Merryfields concerns me, even if I am only a woman.’

‘Sometimes you are as hot-headed as your mother.’ He sighed. ‘I’m too worn down with it all to argue with you. The income
Merryfields produces is barely enough to support us. Certainly I cannot pay a decent wage to employ another doctor.’ William
pulled the ledger towards him and opened it, running his finger down the page. ‘You wouldn’t believe the price of coal. Then
there are the servants’ wages and the housekeeping bill. So many mouths to feed!’

‘Mama says you have too many charity cases.’

William shrugged. ‘She’s right. But take Clarence Smith and Old Silas, for example. Their families gave up paying our fees
years ago but if I send them home, they will either march them off to Bedlam or put them out in the streets to fend for themselves.
They’d be dead within a few weeks!’

‘What can we do?’

‘I wish I knew. But if things don’t change I shall have to sell Merryfields.’

A cold finger of apprehension ran down her spine as the absolute misery in his voice brought home to her the very real threat
to them all.