The Blackthorn Key (3 page)

Stubb hit me.

He thwacked me on the side of my head with the end of his cane. I felt a sharp spike of pain as the snake's silver fangs bit into the top of my earlobe. I fell against the curio cabinet and clasped my hand to my ear, crying out in surprise as much as hurt.

Stubb brushed his cane on the sleeve of his doublet, as if touching me had fouled it. “Go get him, I said.”

Hugh's expression darkened. “I told you, Benedict is busy. And the boy isn't yours. So keep your hands to yourself.”

Stubb just looked bored. “The boy isn't yours, either, Coggshall. So keep your words to yourself.”

Master Benedict appeared in the doorway behind the counter, wiping his hands on a rag. He took in the scene, frowning. “What do you want, Nathaniel?” he said.

“Did you hear?” Stubb said. “There's been another murder.” He smiled. “But perhaps you already knew that.”

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.