On Sale Date: March 2, 2021
9780778311010, 0778311015
Hardcover
$27.99 USD
320 pages
Nella
February 3, 1791
She would come at daybreak—the woman whose letter I held in
my hands, the woman whose name I did not yet know.
I knew neither her age nor where she lived. I did not know
her rank in society nor the dark things of which she dreamed when night fell.
She could be a victim or a transgressor. A new wife or a vengeful widow. A
nursemaid or a courtesan.
But despite all that I did not know, I understood this: the
woman knew exactly who she wanted dead.
I lifted the blush-colored paper, illuminated by the dying f
lame of a single rush wick candle. I ran my fingers over the ink of her words,
imagining what despair brought the woman to seek out someone like me. Not just
an apothecary, but a murderer. A master of disguise.
Her request was simple and straightforward. For my
mistress’s husband, with his breakfast. Daybreak, 4 Feb. At once, I drew to
mind a middle-aged housemaid, called to do the bidding of her mistress. And
with an instinct perfected over the last two decades, I knew immediately the
remedy most suited to this request: a chicken egg laced with nux vomica.
The preparation would take mere minutes; the poison was
within reach. But for a reason yet unknown to me, something about the letter
left me unsettled. It was not the subtle, woodsy odor of the parchment or the
way the lower left corner curled forward slightly, as though once damp with
tears. Instead, the disquiet brewed inside of me. An intuitive
understanding that something must be avoided.
But what unwritten warning could reside on a single sheet of
parchment, shrouded beneath pen strokes? None at all, I assured myself; this
letter was no omen. My troubling thoughts were merely the result of my
fatigue—the hour was late—and the persistent discomfort in my joints.
I drew my attention to my calfskin register on the table in
front of me. My precious register was a record of life and death; an inventory
of the many women who sought potions from here, the darkest of apothecary
shops.
In the front pages of my register, the ink was soft, written
with a lighter hand, void of grief and resistance. These faded, worn entries
belonged to my mother. This apothecary shop for women’s maladies, situated at 3
Back Alley, was hers long before it was mine.
On occasion I read her entries—23 Mar 1767, Mrs. R.
Ranford, Yarrow Milfoil 15 dr. 3x—and the words evoked memories of her: the
way her hair fell against the back of her neck as she ground the yarrow stem
with the pestle, or the taut, papery skin of her hand as she plucked seeds from
the flower’s head. But my mother had not disguised her shop behind a false
wall, and she had not slipped her remedies into vessels of dark red wine. She’d
had no need to hide. The tinctures she dispensed were meant only for good:
soothing the raw, tender parts of a new mother, or bringing menses upon a
barren wife. Thus, she filled her register pages with the most benign of herbal
remedies. They would raise no suspicion.
On my register pages, I wrote things such as nettle and
hyssop and amaranth, yes, but also remedies more sinister: nightshade and
hellebore and arsenic. Beneath the ink strokes of my register hid betrayal,
anguish…and dark secrets.
Secrets about the vigorous young man who suffered an ailing
heart on the eve of his wedding, or how it came to pass that a healthy new
father fell victim to a sudden fever. My register laid it all bare: these were
not weak hearts and fevers at all, but thorn apple juice and nightshade slipped
into wines and pies by cunning women whose names now stained my register.
Oh, but if only the register told my own secret, the truth
about how this all began. For I had documented every victim in these pages, all
but one: Frederick. The sharp, black lines of his name defaced only my
sullen heart, my scarred womb.
I gently closed the register, for I had no use of it
tonight, and returned my attention to the letter. What worried me so? The edge
of the parchment continued to catch my eye, as though something crawled beneath
it. And the longer I remained at my table, the more my belly ached and my
fingers trembled. In the distance, beyond the walls of the shop, the bells on a
carriage sounded frighteningly similar to the chains on a constable’s belt. But
I assured myself that the bailiffs would not come tonight, just as they had not
come for the last two decades. My shop, like my poisons, was too cleverly
disguised. No man would find this place; it was buried deep behind a cupboard
wall at the base of a twisted alleyway in the darkest depths of London.
I drew my eyes to the soot-stained wall that I had not the
heart, nor the strength, to scrub clean. An empty bottle on a shelf caught my
reflection. My eyes, once bright green like my mother’s, now held little life
within them. My cheeks, too, once flushed with vitality, were sallow and
sunken. I had the appearance of a ghost, much older than my forty-one years of
age.
Tenderly, I began to rub the round bone in my left wrist,
swollen with heat like a stone left in the fire and forgotten. The discomfort
in my joints had crawled through my body for years; it had grown so severe, I
lived not a waking hour without pain. Every poison I dispensed brought a new
wave of it upon me; some evenings, my fingers were so distended and stiff, I
felt sure the skin would split open and expose what lay underneath.
Killing and secret-keeping had done this to me. It had begun
to rot me from the inside out, and something inside meant to tear me open.
At once, the air grew stagnant, and smoke began to curl into
the low stone ceiling of my hidden room. The candle was nearly spent, and soon
the laudanum drops would wrap me in their heavy warmth. Night had long ago
fallen, and she would arrive in just a few hours: the woman whose name I would
add to my register and whose mystery I would begin to unravel, no matter the
unease it brewed inside of me.
Excerpted from The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner, Copyright © 2021
by Sarah Penner. Published by Park Row Books.
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| Photo credit: Laura Foote |
Sarah Penner is the debut author of The Lost Apothecary, to be translated in eleven languages worldwide. She works full-time in finance and is a member of the Historical Novel Society and the Women's Fiction Writers Association. She and her husband live in St. Petersburg, Florida, with their miniature dachshund, Zoe. To learn more, visit slpenner.com.
Author website: https://www.sarahpenner.com/
Facebook: @SarahPennerAuthor
Instagram: @sarah_penner_author
Twitter: @sl_penner
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