Serpents in the Garden (15 page)

Chapter 17

London in late March was a fine place to be, Jacob reflected as he strolled down Bread Street in the direction of Mistress Wythe’s shop. Helen, he corrected himself; she was Helen to him now. He gripped his posy of daffodils tighter, and polished off the top of his shoe against his stocking. He inspected his hands, frowning down at his fingers. No matter how hard he scrubbed, his fingertips were a permanent greenish brown, courtesy of days spent digging and planting in the garden that was his workplace four days out of six, the other two spent in the master’s shop.

Master Castain kept him hard at work, from early in the morning to well into the twilight of the spring evenings, and then there were lessons to study, huge tomes of plant lore to memorise, and long calculations to be made of how to mix up different tonics. At times, Jacob’s brain felt about to burst, but he’d never been so certain of something as he was of this. He was meant to do this.

Occasionally, the master threatened to use the switch on him, like the time when he’d forgotten to cover the rosemary plants before the frost came. Mostly, he was a good and generous teacher, and, with each day, Jacob’s admiration for him grew, because what this little man didn’t know about herbs was probably not worth knowing.

Mistress Wythe – Helen – opened the door to him with a pleased expression on her face. Recently widowed again after her husband had the misfortune of falling off one of the river boats at full tide, she had decided she wasn’t going to marry again – at all.

“Why should I? I’m better off on my own, controlling my own purse strings.”

“But don’t you want bairns?”

Helen shrugged, telling him that she’d had eight years with two men, and not once had she quickened. Hmm, Jacob had sharp eyes, and he’d noted already on one of his first visits that Helen had a sizeable supply of tansy and rue in her kitchen. Not his concern. Mayhap with this second scoundrel, she hadn’t desired a wean.

Helen arranged the daffodils in a chipped stone bottle and set them on the table before offering Jacob something to drink.

“And Peggy?” he said, referring to Helen’s maid.

“I gave her the afternoon off. Her mother is ill.”

“Again?” Jacob asked, thinking that Peggy’s mother had to be as old as Methuselah, given that Peggy herself was a grandmother several times over.

“Yes.” Helen sipped at her cider. She frowned at a dash of flour on her bodice, wet her finger, and rubbed it off.

“It doesn’t become you,” he said, waving his hand at her dark clothes. “I liked you better in that green you had before.”

“Jacob Graham,” she huffed. “I’m a grieving widow!” She grinned broadly, making him laugh.

In Mistress Wythe’s – Helen’s – company, Jacob felt strangely adult. It might have had something to do with the way she looked at him when she didn’t think he noticed, or how her cheeks coloured when he paid her a compliment. She was very bonny, for all that she had once attacked him with a broom. He smiled at the memory of that incident, and went on to wonder how long her hair would be if it was unbound from that heavy bun that hung a dark honey at the back of her head, very little of it covered by the elegant lace cap she wore. Very long, he thought, well down to her arse. And her arse… He assumed it was a nice arse, but he didn’t really know, but he knew for a fact that her breasts were high and round. They peeked most invitingly at him from above her bodice, even if the linen of her chemise covered most of them.

Since Jacob’s unfortunate experience down at Trig Lane, he’d kept well away from the whores, and Master Castain’s colourful depiction of the pox had but strengthened his resolve to go nowhere near any of the stews. His weeks were spent in an almost entirely male environment – with the exception of Mrs Castain and nine-year-old Miss Castain – and the few hours of leisure he had, he spent wandering the surroundings of Whitehall Palace in pursuit of his other little plan, so far disappointingly fruitless. He took another gulp of the beer Helen had served him. He enjoyed his visits here, to sit and talk for some few hours with a woman who appreciated his company, to pay court to her, if somewhat clumsily, and to now and then feel his face heat from the way she looked at him.

“Have you tried the school?” Helen asked after he bemoaned his lack of progress in his other matter. She was the only person to whom Jacob had confided his intentions.

“What school?”

Helen blew out loudly through her nose and shook her head at him.

“Westminster: that’s where all court lads go.” She was very taken with this tale of sundered families, brothers who had torn each other apart on account of their love for the same woman, and now one of their sons hoped to mend the rift. Jacob had given up on trying to clarify that Da had stopped loving Margaret years ago, allowing her to embroider his story however it pleased her.

He looked at her from under his heavy fringe. She was sitting very close, close enough that, when he extended his legs, his calf brushed against her skirts. She moved even closer, a hand resting on his arm as she stretched across the table for the pitcher of cider. For an instant, the soft swells of her breasts pressed against his forearm. Jacob swallowed, crossing his legs in a futile effort to keep his member from stirring.

“Pie?” She smiled at him.

“Aye, please,” he croaked.

Helen stood, fetched a piece of pie and sat down, watching him as he ate.

“Crumbs,” she said, using her apron to wipe at his mouth. So close. Jacob shifted on his stool, not quite sure if he minded or liked it. “There.” She smiled and, just like that, kissed him.

Jacob sat very still, holding his breath. She shouldn’t be doing this, he shouldn’t be doing this, but he leaned forward and kissed her back.

“Wait, wait,” she gasped, “not like that. I don’t want to drown or choke.” He felt himself flush and pulled back. Her hands cupped his cheeks and she kissed him again. Her mouth opened, and he opened his and… Jacob stood up abruptly.

“I—”

“Shh,” she replied, standing up as well. “I know. And her name is Betty, and you love her very much.”

He nodded, because he wasn’t sure he could speak, and he swallowed in an effort to clear his throat of this unfamiliar tightness. Then her hand was on his breeches and to his great shame, that was it.

Helen laughed in a nice way. “You’re young; young men are like that at times. Over-ardent.” She bolted her door, shuttered the window, and took his hand. He didn’t attempt to protest – he didn’t want to.

She did have hair down to her arse, and a very nice arse it was, but it was the breasts he liked the best, heavy and warm in his big hands. Not at all like Betty’s small, pointed breasts, he thought, feeling a flash of shame at his disloyalty. Betty was a lass, Helen was a woman, and now he was on his way to being a man – a real man. His cock stood upright in anticipation, and Helen chuckled.

“See? A young man…always so easy to rouse.” But she opened herself to him and helped him inside, smiling when he whispered that he thought he might love her too, aye?

*

“Westminster School? What would you be wanting there?” The man on the horse looked Jacob up and down with evident disdain.

“I just wanted to see it,” Jacob mumbled, “on account of my grandfather having been a pupil there.”

The man raised one eloquent, incredulous brow. “Over there,” the man waved with his riding crop. “Behind the Abbey.”

Jacob bowed and walked off unhurriedly in the indicated direction. Only a daftie would rush to see the school his grandda had attended.

The place was teeming with lads. The eldest were of an age with Daniel, and the youngest somewhere around seven or eight. Some of them looked forlorn, standing to one side and trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, while others demanded attention in the way they moved and spoke, their manner indicating these were lads that knew their worth – and it was high.

Jacob grimaced when one big lout boxed a laddie over the ear, screaming at him to get his arse off the ground and into class before he had to report him again. The laddie fled, crying, and his tormentor laughed, nudging a tall lad beside him in the ribs. The nudged lad shoved back, in the process dislodging his hat, and at the sight of that fiery red hair, Jacob was convinced he had finally found his cousin.

*

Over the coming weeks, Jacob spent a substantial amount of his leisure time in the environs of the Westminster School. He charted the red-haired boy’s days, from the morning when he rode in with a manservant beside him, to the late afternoon when he set off back home. He discovered where the boy lived – a house less than a quarter of a mile from Whitehall proper that had him gawking at the iron railings, the elegant brickwork and the impeccable knot garden. But from one day to the other, the time he could invest in this little pastime shrank dramatically, because his workload doubled, with Master Castain saying that the whole garden had to be completed by the end of August.

“All?” Jacob shook his head in disbelief. “But we haven’t even opened the new beds yet!” He gave his master a despairing look. “No matter how hard I work, that can’t be done, not unless you bring in some more lads to help with the digging.”

Ned, the head gardener, muttered an agreement: impossible, absolutely impossible – even with more lads.

“Hmm,” Master Castain said. “Well, your period of service has just been extended – until the garden is finished.”

“That will take another year,” Jacob moaned.

“Oh, stop whingeing, boy! Start using your spade instead. You have all the seedlings to plant, and the hyacinths have to be dug up and moved to wither in the shade, and I want you to replant the artemisia, cut the lavender all the way down, and then there’s the monk’s hood, and where have you settled the hyssop, and—”

Jacob held up a hand. “I know what I have to do, aye? Just leave me the time to do it.” He stomped off in his heavy pattens.

*

Later that day, Master Castain came to find him, looking pleased. Somewhat rushed, he told Jacob that he’d had a meeting with his fellow guildsmen, and even if it was all most unorthodox, they’d finally agreed.

“Agreed to what?”

“It’s not as you came untutored to begin with,” Master Castain went on, further confusing Jacob, “so here.” He held out a formal-looking document.

Jacob read it through – twice – and looked at him. “Truly?” he said.

“Truly,” Master Castain said, “but it will be fifteen hard months, young Graham, and you’ll be subjected to a formal and most extensive examination at the end of it.”

Jacob swept his thumb over the deed. He’d be worked to the bone, he reckoned, but at the end of it he would be able to call himself an apothecary – a most junior apothecary, to be sure, but still.

“Starting September, you’ll work in my shop over on Watling Street,” Master Castain continued, “and I expect you out here two days a week to work in the garden. Of course, your evenings will be taken up with study, so there will be very little time for any other pursuits.” He gave Jacob a prim look, making Jacob squirm. His master had on several occasions asked pointed questions as to his relationship with Helen, while now and then reminding Jacob in a casual tone that marriage vows were there to be kept.

“One day a month off,” Master Castain went on, “and every other Friday evening.”

“Starting when?” Jacob asked, feeling trapped.

“Today is Thursday, so let’s say Monday and you can have three days off.” He extended his quill to Jacob, who took it and signed his name.

*

With so little time at his disposal, Jacob decided to act, spending most of his precious free Friday loitering outside Whitehall. Just as the red-haired lad showed up, Jacob threw himself before the horse, screaming like a gutted pig. Quite a competent rider, he concluded between his shouts of pretend pain. The lad dismounted and kneeled beside him.

“Are you alright?”

“Aaaagh,” Jacob said, attempting a weak wave of his hand. “I don’t think so.” He allowed the manservant to help him to sit up, and clenched his arms hard around his waist. “I think the horse trod on me.”

“No, he didn’t,” the lad told him, green eyes flashing into his.

“Nay? Well, that’s good.” Jacob grinned, before allowing that expression to convert itself into a grimace of pain.

“What happened?” the lad asked.

“I don’t know. It all began to spin, and my head throbbed something terrible. It still does.” Jacob eyed the lad curiously: eyes very like his own – except that these were mostly green – magnificent red hair, and a nose that somehow reminded him of Ian. “Jacob Graham, at your service.”

“Graham? You said Graham?” The lad began to laugh. “But that can’t be! I’m Charles Graham.”

Now it was Jacob’s turn to look confused, which he seemed to manage quite well. “Charles Graham? Wee Charlie?”

The lad sat back on his heels and regarded him cautiously. “You know me?”

“I’ve never seen you in my life, but I suspect we may be cousins.”

Charles stood up. “My cousins live in the colonies somewhere.”

“In Maryland, and your da’s Luke Graham, and my da is Matthew Graham. And you have a wee brother called James and a sister called Marie, and then there is a fourth one as well, right?”

“James is dead,” Charles informed him in a stilted voice. “And my sisters live out in the country.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Jacob got to his feet. Charles regarded him in silence, chewing his lip in a way that made him look very much like Ruth.

“You must meet Father,” he finally said and turned on his heel, motioning for Jacob to follow.

If Luke Graham was surprised by finding himself face to face with a nephew he had last seen as a lad of four, he didn’t show it. Instead, he sat back and allowed his eyes to travel up and down Jacob’s worn clothes.

“Hard life?” he asked, crossing legs sheathed in dark silk stockings and blue velvet breeches.

“It would make no sense to dress up when one works in a physics garden,” Jacob replied, forcing himself not to stare at the opulence that surrounded him. His uncle must be a wealthy man, he reflected, feeling a stab of anger at the fact that his own parents should live without any of the comforts this man had: books, an exquisite wooden cabinet with intarsia, upholstered chairs, cut-glass goblets… It almost made him uncomfortable. As did his uncle’s silver nose, glinting dully in the sunlight from the windows.