The Painter's Apprentice (38 page)

‘Edmund is a good man, isn’t he?’ said Cecily as they watched the others dancing. ‘I couldn’t see it at first but he’s worth
ten, no, a hundred, of Harry de Montford. And did you know,’ she whispered, ‘not only does he have a private income but he’s
the third son of the Earl of Wimbourne?’

‘Cecily?’ laughed Beth. ‘Have you developed a fondness for him?’

‘I’m in no rush,’ Cecily said. ‘But I could do a lot worse, couldn’t I?’ Her eyes sparkled. ‘Perhaps I’ll catch him under
the mistletoe kissing bunch and see what he’s made of?’

John whirled Poor Joan around the floor and then Clarence Smith stood in front of Beth. He held on to his crown as he bowed
and took her hand for the next dance.

Afterwards, retreating to a chair at the back of the hall, Beth sipped a glass of wine, staring contemplatively into its ruby
depths. She pictured Johannes’s kindly face as he sat beside her last Christmas. She had once thought she would never recover
from his loss but her happy memories of him lived on. Of course, he would be deeply disappointed in her now, angry even, that
without Noah she was too miserable to paint.

Finishing her second glass of wine her head began to spin as she watched Susannah and William, Sara and Joseph, Cecily and
Edmund, Emmanuel and Peg; all of them laughing with happiness as they danced together. The music became strident and discordant
to her ears and misery flooded over her as she tormented herself again with a picture of Hannah enfolded in Noah’s arms, under
the mistletoe. At last, unable to bear it any longer, she slipped from the room.

She ran upstairs, away from the smoky warmth of the great yule log and the merry voices, heading blindly for the studio. Once
inside, she opened her sketchbook to look again at the drawing she had made of Noah. She touched the picture of his sleeping
face with a deep longing that pierced her soul. Recalling those happy days sitting under the oak beside the moat, she buried
her face in her hands and broke into racking sobs. She wept for the loss of Noah’s love and companionship, for the disfigurement
of his handsome face and for the artistic gift that she had cherished, that now eluded her. Most of all she wept for the loss
of their future together in the house that Noah would build, each allowing the other the time and space for their particular
creative talents to flourish.

When all the tears had gone, Beth felt as light and hollow as an empty eggshell. Shivering in the bitter cold of the studio,
she faced Johannes’s portrait of her. She could hardly bear to look at it. Her painted face was radiant with the expectation
of happiness, in cruel contrast to her current condition. And Johannes’s tiny portrait reflected in the painted mirror seemed
to glower at her in disappointment.

She reached out a finger to touch him. ‘I’m sorry, Johannes,’ she whispered. ‘After all your training, I have failed you.
I accomplished my best work when I was secure in Noah’s love and the sorrow that has possessed my heart since he left allows
no space for my talent.’

Then a sudden draught on the back of her neck made her turn.

A figure stood in the open doorway.

Beth gasped. She became icy cold, with a rushing noise in her ears
like an ocean coming to carry her away. Shadows crowded in on her vision before a great, whirling vortex snatched hold of
her and her knees buckled.

Strong hands caught her up and she found her face pressed against his shoulder. His coat carried with it the scent of sea
salt and tar and smoke.

‘I thought you were a ghost!’ she said.

‘Do I feel like a ghost?’ He turned his face away so that she could not see the long red scar on his cheek.

She struggled to release herself but he held her firmly. ‘What are you doing here!’ Her voice was sharp but her heart was
fluttering like a song bird trying to escape its cage.

‘Is that any kind of a welcome? I’ve brought you a letter. From Kit.’ He let go of her and reached into his coat. Taking it
from him with shaking hands, she started to read.

She glanced at Noah, who looked back at her with anxious eyes. Was everyone in the world to be happy except herself?

‘Read it,’ he said, his face pale and his jaw tense.

Overcome with shame at her selfish response to Kit’s exciting news, Beth turned back to the letter.

It felt to Beth as if the ground under her feet had shifted and she reached out to her work table to steady herself.

Beth clutched the letter to her breast, hope erupting like a volcano inside her. She risked a glance at Noah.

His face was still half-turned away from her and his amber eyes were apprehensive as he waited for her to speak.

Gently, Beth ran a finger down the scar on his cheek. ‘It makes you look like a pirate,’ she said, smiling.

He captured her hand and kissed her palm. ‘Have you ever heard of a seasick pirate?’

A quiver of desire ran through her as his lips moved slowly over the delicate skin on the inside of her wrist, leaving a trail
of little kisses. ‘Was the journey very terrible?’

‘The greatest proof of my love for you must be that I undertook that sea voyage twice in three months. The ground is still
rolling.’

‘So you do love me?’ Her pulse echoed in her ears and her mouth was dry.

Noah let out his breath. ‘Beth, I loved you from the first day I saw you. I knew you were my soul mate. Of course, since I
was betrothed to Hannah, I fought against it and, in any case, I believed you had vowed to shun all men in order to dedicate
yourself to Art. It was a
torment to love you so and see your sweet face so puzzled and unhappy when I drew away.’

‘What about Hannah?’

‘She’s like a dear sister to me. Our parents always had in mind we’d make a match and there didn’t seem to be any reason not
to marry her. Until I met you.’

‘It tore me apart not knowing if you loved me.’

‘I never wanted to hurt you. When I realised that you loved me, I knew then that I had to return to Virginia to throw myself
upon Hannah’s mercy.’ He cupped her chin in his hands and kissed her gently, his mouth soft and warm. ‘I’ve had long hours
on a storm-tossed sea to plan a speech but seeing you again has made me forget every word of it. The only thing I want to
say is, Beth Ambrose, light of my life and my heart’s desire, will you marry me?’

Joy and peace blossomed in her heart and a smile lit up her face. ‘On one condition,’ she said.

‘Anything!’

‘I have a fancy to live in a little house on the side of a hill covered in wild flowers somewhere in Virginia.’

With a shout of delight Noah hugged her to his chest, covering her face with kisses.

Over his shoulder, Beth caught sight of Johannes’s portrait. She wasn’t sure but she would have sworn that he smiled at her.

The Apothecary’s Daughter
took me nearly four years to write and rewrite. During that time my characters became as familiar to me as those of my own
family and it became a wrench to leave them behind. So I didn’t. I decided to write about Beth, Susannah’s daughter, when
she had grown up.

I began to research historical events some twenty or so years after the Great Fire at the end of
The Apothecary’s Daughter
and discovered the Glorious Revolution of 1688. This important event had passed me by since it wasn’t on my school history
curriculum and I had only the vaguest idea of what had happened. In a nutshell, once Parliamentarian Oliver Cromwell died
and his son was discovered to be a disappointing successor, Charles II had been brought back to England to resume the monarchy.
This was all well and good but Britain was now strongly Anglican and Charles was tainted with Catholicism. He and his brother
James had been brought up in France by their French Catholic mother.

The population of Britain was rabidly opposed to a Catholic ruler and feared that Charles’s links with his cousin, Louis XIV
of France, would lead to a similar despotic reign in Britain and the quashing of
the Church of England. Charles, mindful perhaps of his father’s execution, chose to keep a low profile as far as religion
was concerned. When he died in 1685 he left many children but not one legitimate heir and so, with extreme reluctance, the
country accepted his fervently Catholic brother, James, onto the throne.

James had two daughters, Mary and Anne by his first wife, Anne Hyde, who died whilst the sisters were still young. James’s
second wife was Mary of Modena, a Catholic princess, who appeared to be barren, to the relief of the population and the established
church. Charles had insisted his nieces were brought up in the Anglican faith and passed them into the spiritual care of Bishop
Henry Compton. Mary was groomed to be James’s Anglican heir to the throne and Bishop Compton married her to her Dutch Protestant
cousin, William, Prince of Orange. This gave comfort to the country and the church leaders that it was only a matter of time
before Mary would come to the throne and all the uncertainties of Catholic interference would disappear.

The cat was set amongst the pigeons when Mary of Modena became pregnant and produced a son, a Catholic heir to the throne.
The historical events portrayed in
The Painter’s Apprentice
are all based upon fact with Beth’s story woven carefully around them. I have allowed my imagination to run away with me
with regard to Beth’s friendship with Princess Anne but some of the Princess’s character traits and comments are taken directly
from historical sources. She suffered twelve miscarriages and stillbirths. Of five babies born alive, none survived beyond
eleven years of age. It is known that she often went to stay with friends in the country to recover from these sad events
and if Merryfields had existed she would certainly have found solace there.

Henry Marshal, painter, horticulturalist and entomologist, lived at Fulham Palace for many years as the guest of Bishop Compton.
His
Florilegium
of flower ‘portraits’ is now lodged in the Royal Library. In my story, Beth slips into Marshal’s studio at Fulham Palace
after
his death. This placed her close to Bishop Compton, who was one of the instigators of The Glorious Revolution.

Bishop Henry Compton’s character in the story is as close to the truth as I could make it. He was a soldier before he came
to the church but above all, he was a gardener and plant collector. A visitor to Fulham Palace can still detect his influence
in the grounds.

The critical turning point in the Revolution was Princess Anne’s escape in the night from her apartment at Whitehall. Bishop
Compton and George London, the Palace gardener, did take the Princess and her companion, Sarah Churchill, by coach through
the night to join the Prince of Orange’s troops at Nottingham,
with another servant
. Again, my imagination allowed me to weave Beth’s story around the facts and suppose her to be that servant. Once Princess
Anne and her sister Mary had demonstrated their allegiance to William of Orange, everything fell apart for James. His pitiful
cry of ‘
God help me, my very children have forsaken me!
’ echoes down through the centuries. His only thought then was to flee the country with his wife and baby son since he was
convinced he would be executed like his father before him.

Princess Anne became Queen in 1702 following the death of her sister, Mary, and later, William of Orange.

I read a great number of books whilst researching
The Painter’s Apprentice
but some of the most useful in understanding the Glorious Revolution were:

Monarchy
by David Starkey

1688 The First Modern Revolution
by Steve Pincus

The Glorious Revolution: 1688:
Britain’s fight for Liberty by Edward Vallance

The beauty of Alexander Marshal’s botanical paintings can be seen in
Mr Marshal’s Flower Book
, Royal Collection Publications.

Miranda Poliakof, Curator of the museum at Fulham Palace, answered my queries and sent me photocopies of plans and information
relating to Fulham Palace at that time.

My grateful thanks to Lucy Icke, who calmly wielded a red-hot editing pen, Sian Wilson for the gorgeous cover, Madeleine Feeney
and Andrew Hally for getting the book out there, my family and friends for listening to me and to WordWatchers for encouragement
and cake.

Turn the page
for a sneak peek at
The Apothecary’s Daughter

Inside the apothecary shop Susannah stood by the light of the window, daydreaming and grinding flowers of sulphur into a malodorous
dust as she watched the world go by. Fleet Street, as always, was as busy as an anthill. The morning’s snow was already dusted
with soot from the noxious cloud blown in from the kilns at Limehouse and the frost made icebergs of the surging effluent
in the central drain. Church bells clanged and dogs barked while a ceaseless stream of people flowed past.

Thwack! A snowball smashed against the window pane. Susannah gasped and dropped the pestle, shocked out of her lazy contemplation.
Outside, a street urchin laughed at her through the glass.

‘Little demon!’ Her heart still hammering, she raised a fist at him. She watched him darting away through the horde until
her eye was drawn by the tall figure of a man in a sombre hat and cloak picking his way over the snow.

Something about the way he moved amongst the hubbub of the crowd, like a wolf slipping silently through the forest, captured
her curiosity. As he drew closer Susannah recognised him as a physician, one of her father’s less frequent customers. Stepping
around a
steaming heap of horse droppings and a discarded cabbage, it became apparent that he was making his way towards the shop.

Susannah pulled open the door. ‘Good morning,’ she said, shivering in the icy draught that followed him.

He touched his hat but didn’t return her smile. ‘Is Mr Leyton here?’

‘Not at present. May I help?’

‘I hardly think that you …’

She suppressed her irritation with a sigh. Why did he assume she was incapable, simply because she wore skirts? ‘Do, please,
tell me what you require, sir.’

‘What I require is to discuss my requirements with your father.’

The man’s tone tempted Susannah to make a sharp retort but she reined in a flash of temper and merely said, ‘He’s gone to
read the parson’s urine.’

The doctor’s dark eyebrows drew together in a frown as he took off his gloves and rubbed the warmth back into his hands. ‘This
is a matter of urgency. Please tell him Dr Ambrose came by and ask him to call on me when he returns.’

‘May I tell him what it is you wish to discuss?’

Dr Ambrose hesitated and then shrugged. ‘I have a patient who suffers from a stone in the bladder. Leyton mentioned to me
that he’d had some success with his own prescription in cases of this kind. The patient’s state of health is not so strong
that I can recommend cutting for the stone since he has a chronic shortness of breath. Can you remember all that?’

‘Oh, I should think so.’ Susannah smiled sweetly and vigorously stirred up the ground sulphur with the pestle until it floated
in a choking cloud between them. ‘Father usually recommends spirits of sweet nitre for a stone, mixed with laudanum and oil
of juniper. Your patient should sip a teaspoonful in a cup of linseed tea sweetened with honey.’

Dr Ambrose coughed and pressed a handkerchief to his nose. ‘You are sure of this?’

‘Of course. And you might try milk of gum ammoniac stirred with syrup of squills for the wheezing in the chest.’

Dr Ambrose raised his eyebrows and Susannah did her best not to look smug. ‘Perhaps you would like to warm yourself by the
fire while I prepare the medicines for you?’ she said.

‘Do you know the correct proportions?’

‘I am perfectly used to dispensing my father’s prescriptions.’

She retired to the dispensary, a curtained-off alcove at the rear of the shop, and peeped through the gap in the curtains
while he, apparently thinking he was unobserved, lifted his cloak and warmed his backside by the fire. Stifling a laugh, she
turned to the bench and set to work. As she bottled up the last prescription the shop bell jingled. She pulled aside the curtain
to see an elegantly dressed lady enter.

‘Please, take a seat by the fire and I will help you in just a moment,’ Susannah said.

She handed the two bottles of medicine to Dr Ambrose and, in the interests of repeat business, made the effort to be civil.
‘I hope you are warmer now?’ She wondered whether to tell him he had a sulphurous streak across his nose but decided against
it. ‘They say this bitter wind comes from Russia, which is why the frost has barely lifted since December.’

‘Perhaps that’s as well,’ the doctor said. ‘The cold moderates the severity of the plague.’

‘Except in the parish of St Giles, of course. We must pray that the freeze destroys the pestilence.’

‘Indeed. Put the prescriptions on my account.’ He nodded and left.

Susannah, wondering if he’d been sucking lemons, watched him set off again down Fleet Street. What a shame his darkly handsome
face wasn’t matched by more pleasing manners!

The other customer was a fair-haired woman of about Susannah’s own age and dressed very finely in a fur-tipped cloak with
a crimson
skirt just visible beneath. She stood on tiptoe, examining the preserved crocodile which hung from one of the ceiling beams.
Her small nose wrinkled with distaste. ‘Is it real?’

‘Certainly! It came from Africa. My father bought it from a sailor.’ Susannah still remembered her mixed fear and fascination
when he’d brought it home many years before. She had tentatively touched its hard, scaly body with the tip of her finger,
shuddering as it stared back at her with beady glass eyes. Her younger brother, Tom, had hidden behind the counter until their
mother assured him the creature wasn’t alive.

‘This is Mr Leyton’s apothecary’s shop, at the sign of the Unicorn and the Dragon?’

‘As you see, the sign hangs over the door.’

‘Is Mr Leyton here?’

‘Not at present. May I help you?’

Pursing her lips, she looked Susannah up and down. ‘I would like …’ She glanced around at the bottles and jars that lined
the walls, frowning a little. ‘Yes. A bottle of rosewater will do very well. Tell me,’ she said, running her gloved finger
along the counter, ‘how many hearths do you have in this building?’

‘Why, we have three bedchambers, the parlour and the dining room and then there is the shop, dispensary and kitchen,’ stammered
Susannah, taken aback.

‘The house is narrow and crooked with age.’

‘But it is also deep.’ Susannah stood up very straight, a flare of temper bringing warmth to her face. ‘And the parlour is
panelled and we have a good yard.’

The woman sighed. ‘I suppose it is well enough.’ She put a handful of coins on the counter, picked up the rosewater and waited
until Susannah snatched open the shop door for her.

Relieved to be rid of the woman with her prying questions, Susannah stood shivering in the open doorway for a moment, glancing
up the snowy street beyond the waiting sedan chair. She saw
Ned, the apprentice, hurtling along towards the shop, returning from delivering a packet of liver pills to the Misses Lane.
His head was down against the bitter wind and she realised that he was on course to collide with the departing customer.

‘Ned, look out!’ she called.

At the last second he swerved, narrowly avoiding barrelling into the lady as she climbed into her sedan chair.

She gave Susannah an accusing look, put her nose in the air and motioned for the chair to leave.

‘Take more care, Ned!’ snapped Susannah.

He banged the door behind them and hurried to the fire to warm his hands and stamp the feeling back into his feet.

‘For goodness’ sake!’ Susannah’s repressed irritation with both her recent customers made her voice sharp. ‘Fetch the broom
and clear up all that ice from your boots before it turns into puddles.’

‘Sorry, miss.’

‘And then you can dust the gallypots.’

‘Yes, miss.’ He blew on his fingers, collected the broom from the dispensary and began to sweep the floor.

Susannah relented. Sometimes Ned put her in mind of her brother, Tom, now living far away in Virginia. She reached a large
stone jar down from the shelf, scooped out a spoonful of the sticky substance from inside and smeared it onto a piece of brown
paper. ‘Here!’ she said, handing him the salve. ‘Rub this on your chilblains and it will stop the skin from breaking. And
don’t forget to dust the gallypots!’ She retrieved the sulphurous pestle and mortar from the counter and carried it in to
the dispensary to mix up an ointment for pimples.

She had lived in the apothecary shop for all of her twenty-six years and it held her most precious memories. As she measured
ingredients and mixed the ointment she hummed to herself as she remembered how, when they were children, she and Tom had learned
to add up by counting out pills. She recalled experimenting
with the weighing beam, fascinated that a huge bunch of dried sage weighed exactly the same as a tiny piece of lead. In the
big stone mortar, the same one she was using now, she’d made gloriously sticky mixtures of hog’s lard combined with white
lead and turpentine as a salve for burns. She’d learned to read by studying the letters, in Latin, painted on the gallypots
which lined the walls and then to write by tracing her father’s exquisite handwriting on the labels fixed to the banks of
wooden storage drawers.

Now she busied herself setting a batch of rosemary and honey linctus to boil, sniffing at its sweet, resinous scent. Cold
weather and London’s putrid fog was excellent for business since most of the customers had a perpetual winter cough. Licking
honey off her thumb, she glanced through the gap between the dispensary curtains to see Ned lying over the counter, teasing
the cat with a trailing piece of rag. Suddenly he slid back to the ground and with meticulous care began to dust the majolica
jars. Susannah guessed from this that he’d glimpsed his master returning.

Cornelius Leyton struggled through the door with a large box, which he placed on the counter between a cone of sugar and the
jar of leeches. The frost had nipped his nose cherry red.

‘What have you bought, Father?’

Taking his time, he began to untie the string.

‘Let me!’ she said, snatching a knife from under the counter and slicing through the knot.

‘Always so impatient, Susannah!’ Carefully, Cornelius lifted the lid.

Susannah caught a glimpse of dark fur and gasped. Was it a puppy? But then, as her father lifted aside the tissue paper, she
realised with disappointment that she was mistaken.

Cornelius gathered up the wig and shook out its long and lustrous black curls. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

‘It’s … magnificent. Put it on!’

Eyes gleaming with anticipation, he snatched off his usual wig, a
modest mid-brown affair that he’d had for a number of years, to expose his own cropped grey hair. Then, reverentially, he
placed the new wig over the top.

Susannah stared at him.

‘Susannah?’

Speechless, she continued to stare. Her father was fine-looking; tall, with dark eyes and an air of authority, but she had
never thought of him as a vain man. In fact, she’d always had to chivvy him into buying a new coat or breeches and his hat
was embarrassingly old-fashioned. But this wig was an entirely different affair. It turned him into an elegant stranger and
it made her uneasy.

‘Well?’ His expression was anxious.

‘Astonishing,’ she said, at last. She lifted up one of the silky curls which fell near enough to his waist. ‘It’s very handsome.’
She fumbled for words. ‘I hardly recognise you. It makes you seem so … young.’

A quickly suppressed smile flitted across his face.

Ned said, ‘You look exactly like the King, sir.’

Cornelius threw his apprentice a sharp look. ‘You have time for idle chatter, Ned? Shall I find you something to do? The copper
still in the yard must be scrubbed. Of course the ice must be scraped off it first …’

Ned hastily returned to his dusting. ‘I was talking to my old friend, Richard Berry,’ continued Cornelius, with an amused
glance to Susannah, ‘and he said a more fashionable appearance will be good for business. Perhaps I should have a new hat,
too?’

‘I’ve been suggesting that for months!’

‘Have you?

‘Father!’

‘I have some visits to make. Did you brush my blue coat?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then if there’s nothing that needs my attention here …?’

‘Oh! I forgot. Dr Ambrose asked you to call on him to discuss a patient of his with a kidney stone. I prepared the prescriptions
for him.’

‘Good, good.’ Cornelius picked up his old wig and went upstairs.

Susannah stared after him. What on earth had inspired him to suddenly start taking an interest in his appearance? Shaking
her head, she returned to the dispensary to pot up the sulphur ointment. As always, spooning that particular mixture into
jars evoked the familiar recollection of an afternoon eleven years before when she’d helped her mother to do the same thing.
Her mother’s gentle voice was imprinted on Susannah’s memory and she could recall, as if it were yesterday, how her hand had
rested tenderly upon the swell of her belly. That was two days before she died and there had been the same sulphurous reek
in the air then, mixed with the usual aromas of rosewater and beeswax, liquorice and oil of wormwood, turpentine and drying
herbs. Those were the scents of her father’s trade and they ran in Susannah’s blood.

The shop bell jolted her back to the present and she was pleased to hear Martha’s voice. Until her marriage Martha had lived
in a neighbouring house and been her closest friend for twenty years, despite her Puritan leanings. Pulling back the curtain,
Susannah went to greet her.

Martha, as neat as always in a starched apron and with her dark hair tucked firmly into her cap, recoiled as they kissed.
‘Ugh! What is it this time?’

‘Nothing dangerous! Merely complexion ointment.’

‘It certainly smells dreadful enough to frighten pimples away.’ Martha turned bone white and held her slim fingers over her
mouth while she swallowed convulsively.

‘It’s not that dreadful, surely?’

Martha smiled faintly. ‘The slightest thing turns my stomach, at the moment,’ she said pressing her hands to her apron. ‘I
came to ask for some of that ginger cordial you made for me last time …’