CHAPTER
3
HUGH CLOSED THE BOOK HE’D been reading, his fingers still between the pages. Master Benedict laid the rag carefully on the counter and slowly straightened its corners.
“Who was it?” he said.
Another apothecary, I thought, and my heart began to thump. But it was someone else this time.
“A lecturer, from Cambridge.” Stubb poked each word at Master Benedict like a needle. “Rented a house in Riverdale for the summer. Pembroke, his name was.”
Hugh’s eyes flicked to my master.
“The laundry girl found him,” Stubb said. “Guts sliced open, just like the others. You knew the man, didn’t you?”
Stubb looked like a cat who’d cornered a mouse. I thought he might start purring.
Master Benedict regarded him calmly. “Christopher.”
Me?
“Go clean the pigeon coop,” he said.
Of course. Why would I want to stay? It’s not as if I cared that a man who knew my master had just been murdered. But an apprentice wasn’t allowed to argue. So I just left, grumbling under my breath.
• • •
The ground floor of our house had two rooms, both set aside for my master’s business. The store was in the front. The back held our workshop. It was here, three years ago, that I’d first learned what it meant to be an apprentice.
I hadn’t known what to expect that day. In Cripplegate, the older boys loved to taunt the younger ones with stories of the cruelties masters inflicted on their apprentices. It’s like being a prisoner in the Tower dungeon. They only let you sleep two hours a night. All you get to eat is half a slice of moldy bread. They beat you if you dare to look them in the eye.
Seeing Master Benedict for the first time didn’t ease my mind in the slightest. When he plucked me from the huddle of boys in the back of the Apothecaries’ Guild Great Hall, I wondered if I’d drawn the worst master of all. His face didn’t seem unkind, but he was so absurdly tall. The way he towered over eleven-year-old me made me feel like I’d just met a talking birch tree.
The orphan boys’ tales replayed in my mind as I followed Master Benedict to my new home, making my stomach flutter. My new home. My whole life, I’d wanted nothing more than to leave the orphanage. Now that my wish was coming true, I was more scared than ever.
It was swelteringly hot in the noonday sun, and the piles of animal dung clogging the drains let off the worst stench London had smelled in years. I barely paid attention to it, lost as I was in my head. Master Benedict, seemingly lost in his own world, barely paid attention to anything at all. What had to be at least three pints of urine, dumped from a chamber pot out of a second-floor window, splashed inches from his feet, yet he didn’t even flinch. A hackney coach nearly ran him over, the iron-shod wheels clattering over the cobbles, the horses passing so close, I could smell their musk. Master Benedict just paused for a moment, then continued on toward the shop like he was strolling through Clerkenwell Green. Maybe he really was a tree. Nothing seemed to faze him.
I couldn’t say the same. My guts twisted as Master Benedict unlocked the front door to the shop. Above the entryway hung a weathered oaken sign, swinging on a pair of silver chains.
BLACKTHORN
RELIEFS FOR ALL MANNER OF MALIGNANT HUMORS
Carved leaves of ivy, filled in with a deep mossy green, ringed the bright red letters. Underneath, painted in broad gold brushstrokes, was a unicorn horn, the universal symbol for apothecaries.
Master Benedict ushered me through the front door and toward the workshop in the back. I craned my neck to see the store: the stuffed animals, the curios, the neatly stocked shelves. But it was the workshop that really made me stop dead and stare. Covering every inch of the workbenches, jammed on the shelves, and tucked underneath rickety stools were hundreds of apothecary jars, filled with leaves and powders, waters and creams. Around them were endless tools and equipment: molded glassware, heated by oil-fueled flames; liquids bubbling with alien smells; pots and cauldrons, large and small, iron and copper and tin. In the corner, the furnace huffed skin-scalding waves of heat from its gaping mouth, twelve feet wide and four feet high. Dozens of experiments cooked on its three racks, glowing coals at one end and a blazing fire at the other. Shaped like a flattened onion, the smooth black curves of the furnace rose to the flue, where a pipe bent away, pumping fumes out the back wall to mix with the stink of garbage, waste, and manure that wafted over from the London streets.
I’d stood there, open mouthed, until Master Benedict dropped a cast-iron pot in my hands. “Set the water to boil,” he said. Then he waved me onto a stool at the end of the center workbench, near the back door, which led to a small herb patch in the alley behind the house. In front of me sat three empty pewter mugs and a small glass jar filled with hundreds of tiny, black, kidney-shaped seeds. Each one was about half the size of a ladybug.
“This is madapple,” he said. “Examine it and tell me what you discover.”
Nervously, I plucked one of the seeds from the jar and rolled it between my fingers. It smelled faintly of rotten tomatoes. I touched it to the tip of my tongue. It didn’t taste any better than it smelled: bitter and oily, with a hint of spice. My mouth dried almost instantly.
I told Master Benedict what I’d experienced. He nodded. “Good. Now take three of those seeds, crush them, and place them in the first mug. Place six in the second, and ten in the third. Then pour the boiling water over them and let them steep.”
I did as he ordered. While the infusion brewed, he asked, “Do you know what asthma is?”
“Yes, Master,” I said. Several children in the orphanage had had it. One summer, when the air had been soaked in smoke and stink, two boys had died of it on a single day, their own lungs choking the life out of them as the masters stood by helplessly, unable to assist.
“In small doses,” Master Benedict said, “madapple is effective for treating asthma.” He pushed the first cup toward me. The three crushed seeds swirled at the bottom of the darkening water. It smelled rank. “This is the correct dose for a man of ordinary size.”
He pushed the second cup toward me. “This amount of madapple will cause terrible hallucinations, true waking nightmares. Once those are gone, the patient’s body will be racked with pain for days.”
Finally, he handed me the last cup. “This will kill you. Drink it, and in five minutes you’ll be dead.”
I stared at the mug. I’d just made poison. Stunned, I looked up at Master Benedict to find him watching me intently.
“Tell me,” he said. “What have you just learned?”
I shook off my surprise and tried to think. The obvious answer was the properties of the madapple, and the recipes I could make from the seeds. But the way Master Benedict was watching me made me feel like he was looking for something more.
“I’m the one who’s responsible,” I said.
Master Benedict’s eyebrows shot up. “Yes,” he said, sounding pleased. He waved at the herbs, oils, and minerals that surrounded us. “These ingredients are the gifts the Lord has given us. They are the tools of our trade. What you must always remember is that they are only that: tools. They can heal, or they can kill. It’s never the tool itself that decides. It’s the hands—and the heart—of the one who wields it. Of all the things I’ll teach you, Christopher, there’s no lesson more important than this. Do you understand?”
I nodded, a little awed—and scared—of the trust he’d just placed in me.
“Good,” he’d said. “Then let’s go for a walk, and you’ll get your final lesson for the day.”
Master Benedict thrust a heavy leather satchel into my hands and tied his sash with all the glass vials in it around his waist. I kept looking at the sash, fascinated, as he led me back into the streets, the satchel’s strap digging into my shoulder.
He took me to a mansion at the north end of the city. To a boy from Cripplegate, it may as well have been the king’s own palace. A liveried servant let us into its vast entryway and asked us to wait. I tried not to gawk at the riches that surrounded us: the satin damask on the walls, edged with golden trim; the chandelier overhead, cut glass glittering in sunlight from crystal windows; the ceiling above it, where painted horses galloped through trees under a cloudless, azure sky.
Eventually, a round-faced chambermaid led us up a curved marble staircase to the parlor. A middle-aged woman waited for us there, wearing a low-cut yellow bodice over a bright orange lutestring dress brocaded with flowers. Her dress opened at the bottom to reveal a frilled, emerald petticoat. She lay draped over a purple velvet daybed, eating cherries from a silver bowl.
The woman’s high forehead furrowed as she spat out a cherry pit. “Mr. Blackthorn, you are cruel. I have waited for you in torment.”
Master Benedict bowed slightly. Then he made me jump as he shouted at her, as if she was hard of hearing. “I apologize for the delay, Lady Lucy. Allow me to introduce Christopher.”
He stepped aside. Lady Lucy assessed me with a critical eye. “Bit young to be an apothecary, aren’t you?” she said.
“Uh, no, my lady. I mean, yes, my lady,” I stammered. “I’m the apprentice.”
She frowned. “Find me a necklace? What in the world do you mean, boy?”
I glanced over at Master Benedict, but his face was blank. I tried again, shouting this time, as Master Benedict had. “I’m the apprentice.”
“Well, why didn’t you just say that? Get to it, then. My back is the Devil’s torture.” The chambermaid began to untie the laces of Lady Lucy’s bodice. Shocked, I looked away.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lady Lucy said. She turned away from me, holding the silk to her chest as her maid pulled open her bodice in the back. The skin all along her spine was red and raw. It looked unbearably itchy.
I glanced over at Master Benedict again, unsure of what I was supposed to do. This time, he motioned toward the satchel I carried. I looked inside to find a thick ceramic jar, its wide mouth stopped with cork. I pulled out the stopper, then recoiled in horror. Inside was a chunky, dark brown cream that looked like the back of a baby’s diaper. It smelled like it, too.
“Spread a layer over the rash,” Master Benedict said quietly. “Thick enough to cover it, but no thicker.”
I shuddered as I slid my fingers into the slime, praying it wasn’t what it felt like. Then I smeared a handful of it over Lady Lucy’s back. To my surprise, not only did she not complain about the smell, she sagged visibly in relief as the goo slid over her skin.
“Much better,” she sighed. “Thank you, Mr. Blackthorn.”
“We shall return tomorrow, madam,” he shouted, and the chambermaid showed us out.
I put the apothecary jar back in the satchel. As I did, I saw a woollen rag inside, folded at the bottom. I pulled it out on the street, trying to wipe away as much of the foul brown gunk from my fingers as I could.
“So?” Master Benedict said. “What did you learn from that?”
I answered without thinking. “Always bring cotton to stuff your nose.”
Suddenly, I realized how that sounded. I cringed, expecting Master Benedict to beat me for insolence, like the masters at Cripplegate would have.
Instead, he blinked at me. Then he threw his head back and laughed, a warm, rich sound. It was the first time I remembered thinking I’d be all right.
“Indeed,” Master Benedict had said. “Well, if you think that was bad, wait until you see what I’ll teach you tomorrow.” He chuckled. “Come then, Christopher. Let’s go home.”
• • •
He did teach me more that next day, and every day after that. When I’d imagined what being an apothecary would be like, I’d thought working in the store was where I’d end up. But the workshop in the back became my true home. Here, Master Benedict showed me how to mix an electuary of marshmallow root and honey to soothe the throat; how to grind willow bark and infuse it into a tea that lessened pain; how to combine sixty-four ingredients over four months to make the Venice treacle, an antidote for snake venom. He taught me his own secret recipes as well, and the codes to decipher them. In this room I found my future, making miracles that came from God’s own creation.
Some days, anyway. Today all I got was some grain, a bucket, and a poop scraper.
With my master and Stubb talking in the next room, I grabbed what I needed and left. The door opposite the giant oven led to the upper floors, with steep stairs so old, the lightest step made them squeal like a frightened donkey. On the second floor was the kitchen, small but functional, and the pantry, which kept the occasional loaf of bread or wheel of cheese, some smoked fish, and a cask or two of ale. The rest of the rooms were stuffed with supplies for the workshop.
Part of the third floor was kept for storage, too, but for Master Benedict’s other passion: books. The only thing that compared with my master’s obsession with discovering new recipes was his obsession with discovering new books. He passed that on to me, too. Besides our daily lessons, Master Benedict expected me to study on my own, not just recipes and how raw materials reacted, but from his endlessly growing collection of tomes. From these, I learned philosophy, history, theology, languages, the natural sciences, and whatever else sparked my master’s imagination during his weekly trips to see his friend Isaac the bookseller.
A landing at the top of the stairs swung around to Master Benedict’s private rooms. More books lined the walls, making the passage so slight, you had to squeeze against the railing to get to the door. Opposite my master’s quarters, a ladder led up to a hatch in the ceiling. I unbolted it and climbed into the evening chill.
The roof of our home was flat. I liked coming up here on hot summer nights, where the air was cooler and, high above the cobbles, not nearly as rank with the smell of the streets. Tonight, unfortunately, I wasn’t spared; the winds were blowing from the northeast, sending over the stink of boiled fat and urine from the soap maker’s shop four streets away.
We housed our birds up here in a walk-in wood-and-wire coop at the back corner of the balcony. They fluttered their wings noisily as I unlatched the hook to their shelter. A few of the bolder ones poked around my shirtsleeves when I entered, losing interest when they saw the bucket I carried was empty. One pigeon, a plump salt-and-pepper-speckled girl, flapped down from her perch and tapped at my toes.
“Hello, Bridget,” I said.
She cooed. I put the scraper on the dirt and picked her up. She was warm, her feathers soft in my fingers. “I got kicked out,” I complained to her. “Again.”
Bridget nuzzled her head against my thumb in sympathy. I cradled her in the crook of my elbow and pulled a handful of barley from my pocket, watching absently as she pecked the grain from my palm. My mind was still on the conversation I’d been booted out of. Stubb had always been a slimy thing, but after this new murder, the way he’d eyed our shop made my stomach twist. It was no secret that my master’s business did well, and it was equally no secret that Stubb didn’t like the competition. I knew he’d tried to buy our shop several years back. After Master Benedict refused to sell it, Stubb had accused my master of stealing his recipes. No one took him seriously, but tonight it made me wonder: How far would a man like Stubb go to get what he wanted?
And why was he here, taunting Master Benedict about the murders? Did he know something about them? Six men had been butchered now, three of them apothecaries—and the latest victim knew my master. Closer and closer, I thought. Tightening, like a noose.
I shivered, and not from the cold. Important things were being said downstairs. Yet here I was, stuck on the roof! Well, Master Benedict could send me away if he wanted to. But if I finished my duties up here, I’d have to return to the workshop. “And if I happened to overhear something,” I said to Bridget, “that wouldn’t be my fault, would it?”
I took Bridget’s silence for agreement and got to work. The floor of the coop was thick with grayish-white gunk. Bridget, flapping from shoulder to shoulder, nibbled the hair behind my ears as I scraped the top layer of poop off the dirt and slopped it into the bucket. When I was done, I lifted Bridget from my collar and set her in the straw at the back, far from the draft, where she could be warm and snug. “I’ll bring your breakfast in the morning,” I said.
She bobbed her head at me and cooed goodbye.
• • •
We didn’t keep birds just for fun. Pigeon poop was valuable. Sometimes we sold a bit of it to the market gardeners—it was particularly good for growing asparagus—but we made something out of it much more precious than fertilizer.
Back in the workshop, I unsealed a cask in the corner. The stink that blasted from the barrel nearly made me pass out. Gagging, I dumped what I’d scraped from the coop into the slop inside, then topped the whole thing up by unbuttoning my fly and peeing into it—another job for the apprentice. Afterward, I resealed the cask. I wouldn’t open it again for three more months, when I’d wash the nasty mix out and put it into trays in the sun, where it would dry into spiky white crystals of saltpeter.
When I’d finally finished, I crept to the door and put my ear to the wood, half expecting the conversation to be over. But whatever they were talking about must have been really important. Stubb was still here. And he was near to shouting.
“Change is coming, Benedict,” he said. “You want to be on the right side this time.”
“I don’t have a side, Nathaniel,” my master said. “These squabbles don’t involve me.”
“Perhaps gold will, then. With the right connections, the right backing, we could make a fortune—”
“Money is not the issue,” Master Benedict said. “I have no part in any of this. You have the wrong man.”
Stubb snorted. “Pretend all you like. You’ll choose, one way or the other.”
There was a pause. “Is that a threat?” my master said.
Stubb’s voice became as smooth as oil. “Of course not, Benedict. After all, what do I have to do with this sordid business? Nothing. Nothing at all.”
I heard Stubb’s heavy footsteps, then the creak and slam of the front door. For a moment, there was silence. Then Hugh spoke to my master, so quietly that I had to squash my ear against the wood to hear him. “What do we do now?”
“We be careful,” Master Benedict said.
“And if Pembroke talked?”
“He wouldn’t.”
“Not everyone can stand under torture,” Hugh said.
“No, but Nathaniel wouldn’t know that, anyway. He’s just guessing.”
“A bloody good guess.”
“Stubb’s not a problem,” Master Benedict said. “It’s that apprentice we need to watch out for.”
I frowned. What apprentice? What did he mean?
“Three of the six were right, Benedict,” Hugh said. “We can no longer tell ourselves this is a coincidence. If Stubb can figure us out, it’s only a matter of time before the others do. Simon’s already fled the city.”
“To where?”
“France. Paris, I think. He’ll have nothing to do with us anymore.”
There was a pause. “Do you want to leave, too?”
“You know I don’t,” Hugh said. “But we can’t keep this up forever. Stubb was right about that. We have to make a choice, and soon.”
My master sighed. “I know.”
• • •
When Master Benedict opened the door to the workshop, I pretended I’d just finished with the cask.
“I’m afraid I can’t eat with you tonight,” he said. “I have to go out.”
That wasn’t unusual. Master Benedict often left home in the evening, not returning until well after I’d gone to sleep. “Yes, Master.”
He heard the catch in my voice. “What’s wrong?” he said. “Are you upset about before? Come here.”
He put his arm around my shoulders. “I’m sorry I was cross with you,” he said. “But God’s breath, Christopher, sometimes you make me wonder if Blackthorn will still be standing when I come home. You must think before you act.”
“I know, Master. You were right. I’m not upset about that.” Though I still didn’t want to scrub the floors.
“Then what’s the matter?”
“What did Stubb want?” I said.
“Master Stubb,” he chided gently, “wanted the same thing he always wants. A quick path to riches.”
“Then why was he talking about the murders?”
“Ah. So that’s what’s troubling you.”
Now that I’d finally said it aloud, the rest rushed out like the Thames after the spring thaw. “There’s a gang of assassins on the loose and no one can stop them and Tom thinks it’s the Catholics but his mother thinks it’s the Puritans but I think it’s worse than either and even the king is scared and you knew the last man they murdered and they’re killing apothecaries.” I took a breath.
“So?” Master Benedict said.
“Well . . . we’re apothecaries.”
“We are?” He looked surprised. “So we are! How nice for us.”
“Master.”
He laughed affectionately. “Never mind the murders, boy; your imagination will stop your heart. There is no ‘gang of assassins.’ No one is hunting apothecaries. And Nathaniel Stubb is harmless.”
But he threatened you! I almost cried out, before I realized that would reveal I’d been eavesdropping. I floundered for something to say and finally settled on, “So we’ll be safe?”
“As the king’s breeches,” he said. “Now, settle down. I’m in no danger. And as long as you don’t build any more firearms, neither are you. There’s nothing to worry about.” Master Benedict patted my shoulder. “I promise.”
• • •
I wanted to believe him, but I wasn’t sure I did. I mean, someone was murdering these poor people. And it had sounded like Hugh felt the same.
Three of the six were right, he’d said. We can no longer tell ourselves this is a coincidence. What did that mean? Nothing good, I was sure. Whatever it was, they clearly weren’t going to tell me. If I wanted to find out, I’d have to do some more eavesdropping.
Either way, I couldn’t do anything about it tonight. Hungry, I sliced a hunk of cheese from the wheel in the larder for my supper and downed it with a mug of beer. Then I did my punishment. I wrote out the cannon recipe in English and Latin until my hand cramped, then scoured the floors and the steps, all the way up to the roof. When I finally finished, three hours past nightfall, I barred the front door, shuttered the windows, then crawled under the shop counter to my palliasse and fell fast asleep.
A noise woke me. At first, I thought it came from the street. Then I heard it again, from the other side of the counter. A ceramic jar clinked against the shelf.
I’d sealed up the shop before I’d gone to sleep. I hadn’t barred the back door to the workshop so Master Benedict could return, but it was locked, and only my master and I knew where the key was hidden. And Master Benedict always entered the house through the workshop and went straight upstairs. He never came to the front.
But there it was again. A footfall, the gentle creak of the floorboards.
Someone was here.