The Apothecary

Chapter 26

At Lady Sarah’s



We left school without being stopped, and Sarah Pennington led us to her house to look for warm clothes. It was as if Pip had his own spell, a love potion that made her agreeable to whatever he wanted. He caught my eye when Sarah wasn’t looking and mimed money crossing his hand—five bob. I mimed putting on a warm coat to indicate that he’d get his money when we had everything we needed. Pip laughed and walked ahead with Sarah.

“I don’t even know what five bob is,” I said to Benjamin. “How much am I in for?”

“About a hundred dollars,” he said.

I stopped walking. “What?”

It was Benjamin’s turn to laugh. “No,” he said. “Maybe a dollar. Come on.”

I caught up to him. “I believed you!”

Benjamin looked pleased.

“Keep an eye out for truant officers,” Pip called back to us.

“Oh, they won’t bother us,” Sarah said.

The Pennington house, when we got there, was the biggest house I’d ever seen. It was in Knightsbridge, and it took up much of a city block. A butler let us in, looking Benjamin and Pip over suspiciously.

“These are my friends,” Sarah said. “They need some warm clothes to go out on a boat. We’ll just go look in the old wardrobes.”

The butler nodded. “Don’t you have school?”

“We were excused,” Sarah said.

“Ah,” the butler said. “Shall I take your things?”

I felt Benjamin, beside me, tighten his grip on the strap of his satchel.

“No, thank you,” Sarah said. “We won’t be long.”

We started up a grand staircase, past old portraits of pink-cheeked young men in tailcoats and willowy maidens in long dresses: generations of Penningtons who had been the richest and most attractive students at their schools. At the top of the stairs was a small painting of a little girl in a blue dress who crossed her ankles and gazed at the artist with a bearing that was already regal.

Pip stopped in front of it. “That’s you.”

“Oh,” Sarah said. “I was so bored, sitting for that.”

“You looked lonely,” he said.

“Lonely? I had a nurse or a governess with me every second!”

Pip said nothing, and raised his eyebrows at her.

“It was a perfectly ordinary childhood,” she snapped.

I bit my tongue to keep from reminding her that she had a butler and a nurse and a governess, which wasn’t very ordinary. I reminded myself we needed the clothes.

She led us down the hall to a bedroom done all in flowered upholstery, with a canopied bed and an enormous window seat. The room seemed unused and in perfect order. I went to the window and pushed the curtain aside to look outside. There were two men in suits standing on the other side of Knightsbridge, and I wondered if they were watching the house. But after a moment, they shook hands and walked in different directions without looking up at the windows. I let the curtain fall.

“This was my aunt Margaret’s room,” Sarah said, opening a wardrobe that ran along one wall. “She went off to America in the twenties, to Vassar or someplace, and brought back all kinds of shocking clothes.”

“Is she dead?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” Sarah said. “She’s just married. She lives in Scotland and she’s old and dull. But she used to be so glamorous.” She pulled out what looked like a diaphanous white silk handkerchief with spaghetti straps, embroidered with silver thread. “That’s one of her dresses. I don’t think she could get one arm in it now.”

“But we need warm things,” I said.

Sarah dropped the silver dress to the floor. “Where are you going again?”

“My uncle’s a fisherman,” Pip said. “He’s taking us on his boat.”

“Ugh,” Sarah said. “I get seasick in the bath. It’s tragic for my father, who’s terribly yachty.” She pulled out a long, dark fur. “That’s a raccoon coat. Everyone wore them in the twenties. I think it’s for a man.”

She handed the coat to Benjamin, who put it on and stood in front of a long oval mirror beside the wardrobe. He looked like a bear escaped from the zoo, and raised his arms as if to lumber forward in attack. Pip convulsed with laughter.

“Now this might be suitable for a boat,” Sarah said, pulling out a lined wool peacoat. “Here, Janie, try it.”

I shrugged the peacoat onto my shoulders, and it fit me. I put my hands in the pockets and came out with a navy blue watch cap, which I pulled over my hair. It was a good feeling, to be enshrouded in thick military wool like that—I felt oddly safer.

Sarah tilted her head to consider me. “That’s not terrible, actually,” she said. “It’s rather chic.”

Against my will, my eyes went to Benjamin in the mirror, to gauge his reaction. He stood with his arms hanging at his sides in the raccoon coat.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“Looks warm.”

“But your legs will be cold,” Sarah said. She pulled out some silk long underwear and a few pairs of heavy wool pants, and she added them to the growing pile on the floor.

“Try those on,” she said. “I’ll take the boys to my brother’s room.”

They left, and I tried the warmest-looking pants on under my skirt. They fit fine, and I folded the warm clothes and sat on the end of the bed. The mattress was soft and inviting, and the room was quiet, and I had an overwhelming urge to lie down. It felt so luxurious just to be alone. I lay back and let my body relax into the bed’s silk coverlet, and looked up at the flowered patterns in the canopy overhead.

I thought it would be very restful to be Sarah Pennington for a little while. There would be no worries, no running naked through the cold, no fear of what would happen if the apothecary caught us and wouldn’t let us on the boat. I could feel myself sinking into the soft bed, as if I were falling very slowly, floating into oblivion.

Then I heard a slight cough, and I shot upright to see the long-faced butler standing in the door. I felt that my hair was askew and tried to smooth it with my hand.

“Did you find what you need, miss?” the butler asked.

“I think so.”

“May I ask, will Miss Pennington accompany you on this boat trip?”

“Oh, no. She gets seasick.”

“That’s a relief,” he said. “I answer to her father, you see.”

Sarah came back down the hall with the boys, who looked like Eskimos in heavy trousers and ski coats with fur-lined hoods. They were carrying warm boots. “We’ll need a trunk,” Sarah said.

“Of course,” the butler said. “I can have it delivered to the boat.”

I looked at Benjamin and Pip. It might actually work. The others would have luggage, too, and the crew wouldn’t know which trunks were coming from where.

“The boat’s called the Kong Olav,” I said. “It’s at the Port of London.”

“It’s Norwegian?” the butler said, frowning thoughtfully. “Then I daresay they’ll have dried codfish aboard, but have you arranged for proper things to eat?”