Free Death at St. James's Palace by Deryn Lake Page A

pitiable state and too weak to leave her bed.”
    “Call me a chair, Nicholas. I’d best get there straight away.”
    “They are all hoping you can work a miracle, Sir, for tomorrow is the day of the investiture.”
    The Apothecary groaned. “Oh dear God, I hate this sort of thing. A bad purging will not cure itself fast, as you well know, Nick. Whatever has caused it must pass from the system and though physick can ease the suffering it is not guaranteed to do so at once.”
    His apprentice, nicknamed the Muscovite because of an exotic ancestry linking him with the court of Tsar Peter the Great, nodded.
    “What you say is completely true. I wish you luck, Sir. Anyway, let me find you some chairmen.”
    “Thanks,” answered John, and began to pack his bag methodically, uneasily aware that a great deal depended on him.

    Elizabeth Fielding looked terrible, pale as a cloud, her skin drawn so tightly over the bones of her face that she had an almost skeletal air.
    “How long has she been like this?” John asked over his shoulder.
    Mary Ann who, to give the silly flap her due, looked genuinely anxious and upset, said, “Since yesterday afternoon, Mr. Rawlings.”
    “Did she eat anything that upset her?”
    “No, Sir, just what we all had.”
    “Then it is an evil disposition of the body caught from another. Infections tend to breed and fester in the warm weather. Mary Ann, you must hold your adopted mother up while I spoon some physick into her.”
    “Will she be better by tomorrow, Mr. Rawlings?”
    “Realistically, no. Not unless there’s a miracle.”
    “But my uncle is to receive his knighthood. It would break her heart to miss it.”
    “It would break her heart even more to be caught short before the King.”
    “Oh God’s life!” said Mary Ann, and giggled despite the awfulness of the occasion.
    John administered three different concoctions; the outer bark of black alder to bind the laxes, stalks of bumet in claret to staunch the castings, and the seeds of quince tree in boiling water. This mixture produced a soft mucilaginous substance similar to white of egg which he painstakingly fed to the patient on a spoon.
    “What does that do?” Mary Ann whispered.
    “There is nothing finer for soothing the intestines. Now, my girl, these doses are to be repeated every four hours without fail. I will call again this evening to see how the patient progresses and during the day I will send my apprentice, Nicholas, whom I am sure you remember well.”
    He looked at her beadily, recalling the time when she had driven the young man to his wits’ end with love for her.
    The girl had the good grace to blush, but then said slyly, “Don’t worry that incident is closed. Besides, I have been replaced in his affections I believe.”
    John stared at her. “What do you mean?”
    Mary Ann made much of sponging her aunt’s fevered brow, looking at John over the top of Elizabeth Fielding’s head. Then she whispered pointedly, “Nicholas has a new sweetheart. I have seen him walking out with her.”
    John, despite the fact he had long ago waived the strict rules regarding apprentices in view of the Muscovite’s age, was interested. “Really? Who is she?”
    “I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before. But very pretty though.”
    A warning bell went off in the Apothecary’s mind. “Small, bright headed, with eyes the colour of wisteria?”
    “Yes, that’s her. Who is she?”
    “A new servant. Nicholas was probably showing her the way to a shop. She does not know this area.”
    Mary Ann’s face went from sly to foxy. “Oh no doubt he was, but strange that they should be handfast as they walked.”
    Inwardly, John groaned as he wondered just what bundle of trouble he had let into his house. However, he put on his sweetest smile for the benefit of the inquisitive imp regarding him.
    “She may well have felt nervous when she walked. I’m sure that Nicholas was doing no more than guide her along.”
    “Oh for