The Apothecary

Chapter 36

Escape



The voyage to Norway is, to this day, like a terrible dream, only partly remembered. I was in and out of consciousness, sometimes shaken awake by someone who wanted to feed me or to know that I was still alive. I was dimly aware of being in a smoky hut, wrapped in blankets and warmed by an enormous white dog lying on top of me. There was a round-faced woman who gave me soup. I saw Benjamin’s face, unconscious and pale, cocooned under a second dog. Then I was in the bow of another boat that rode low on the water, hearing the sound of paddling behind me, and feeling rocked by the swells.

I woke when the sun rose, and saw that our rescuer was asleep sitting up, with his paddle resting across the gunwales. He had a round face like the woman who had fed me, although he was taller than she was, and he had dark skin with mottled marks across his cheekbones from frostbite or sunburn. His fur hood was tied tightly under his chin, and his mouth was set in determination, even as he slept. The boat was like a canoe, and one of the white dogs was in the stern behind the man. It lifted its head and whimpered when it saw I was awake, then settled its chin back on its folded paws.

Benjamin slept beside me in the bow, wrapped in blankets. The sea was vast and blue-grey in all directions, and I felt very small and insignificant. No one would notice if a wave swallowed up our little boat, and no one would know if Benjamin slipped away into his fever. He looked terrifyingly grey. I felt his forehead, which was cold, and he didn’t respond to the touch. His eyes stayed closed.

Our rescuer woke up and said something in his language.

“I don’t know what that means,” I said. “Do you think he’ll live?”

The man didn’t understand what I’d said.

I pointed. “Benjamin,” I said. For some reason it seemed important, if Benjamin was going to die with only two witnesses, that both of them knew his name.

“Benjamin,” the man repeated. Then he put a hand on his chest. “Hirra,” he said.

“Hirra,” I said. I touched my coat the same way. “Janie.”

“Janie,” Hirra said. The js in both of our names seemed to give him trouble. He reached forward to feel Benjamin’s forehead, then made a longish statement. I decided he was saying something hopeful, even though his tone wasn’t reassuring.

I pushed Benjamin’s fever-damp hair inside his fur hood, curled up close to him, and slipped back into a hallucinatory sleep.

The next time Hirra shook me awake, I saw a boat towering above us, and voices were shouting from her rail. I struggled to sit up, thinking that the Soviet destroyer had found us, but then I realised that the boat was red, not grey. It was the still-disguised Anniken, and the apothecary and Count Vili were calling to us over her rail. I had a hazy memory of trying to describe the red icebreaker to the Samoyed woman who gave me soup, and trying to draw a map of Kirkenes on the floor, but I hadn’t really thought we would get there. Some kind of hammocklike rig was lowered to the kayak, and I was put into it and lifted up into the boat, still wrapped tightly in blankets. I tried to tell the others that Hirra had saved our lives, and that Benjamin needed medicine, but people kept hushing me.

The last thing I remember was being carried below to my old cabin and put in my sleeping bag, and the apothecary measuring something out of a little bottle in the lamplight. The other bunk was bare.

“Where’s Jin Lo?” I asked.

But the apothecary only gave me something bitter to drink, and then I was asleep.



When I woke, we were on a tiny aeroplane, and the apothecary was sitting beside me. He was grim-faced and remote, and he was writing in a notebook in a tiny, crabbed script that I recognised from the margins of the Pharmacopoeia. Benjamin was bundled in blankets, asleep on the other side of the narrow aisle. My mind felt clear for the first time since I’d fallen to the sea from the crashing helicopter.

“Will he be all right?” I asked.

“The fever has broken,” the apothecary said, as if he had no faith in predictions, only in facts.

“Did you give him something to heal him?”

“I did,” the apothecary said. “But it wasn’t easy. He was very close to death.”

Vili took up two seats in front of us, and he seemed to be asleep, too. Jin Lo wasn’t on the plane, and I feared she had died on Nova Zembla and no one had told me in my vulnerable condition. I looked to the apothecary and he seemed to read my mind.

“She’s fine,” he said. “She’s staying in Norway for now. It’s safer for her there. She’s too recognisable to the authorities in London.”

I breathed again, relieved.

“You understand,” he said, “that we stood no chance against a Soviet destroyer.”

“I know,” I said. “You made the right decision.”

The apothecary shook his head. “Benjamin took the extra avian elixir to go back for you. I should have known he would. I can never forgive myself. I made so many mistakes.”

“But it all worked out.”

The apothecary made a gesture that was both a shrug of assent and a head shake of dismissal. “I’ll do better next time.”

The idea of a next time made me feel tremendously tired. “Can I go sit with Benjamin?” I asked.

The apothecary nodded. I was amazed how weak my arms felt, pushing my body out of the seat.

“Janie,” the apothecary said. “The police will be looking for us in London. Our forged papers identify us as a family. When we arrive at Heathrow, my son’s name is James, and you’re his sister, Victoria.”

I smiled. “I’ll see if we can work up some kind of spat.”

“Good. Oh, and Victoria—”

“Yes?”

The apothecary’s eyes were serious behind his spectacles. “I can never thank you enough for saving my son’s life.”

But I didn’t need any thanks. I slid into the seat beside Benjamin’s sleeping body and slipped my arm under his. After a few minutes, he stirred and interlaced his fingers through mine, and turned to look at me.

“Janie,” he said hoarsely.

I was so happy to hear his voice that tears came to my eyes. “You’re awake!”

He tried to sit up straighter, then winced as if moving hurt. “Ow,” he said, reaching for his forehead.

“Don’t move,” I said. “Just sit.”

He closed his eyes again. “You’re here,” he said. “My father didn’t want to go back for you.”

“He was trying to save you,” I said. “But you did come back.”

“I couldn’t stay a bird. I tried, but I was falling.”

“I know.”

“I keep having dreams about it.”

“Me too.”

“But we’re safe now?”

I nodded.

“And the others?”

“They’re fine. Jin Lo’s in Norway and Vili’s asleep. Your father’s here. He’s so happy to have you back.”

The apothecary handed me something across the aisle in a little brown bottle, for Benjamin to drink. After a few minutes, I could see the colour coming back to his cheeks, and he was able to sit up straight without wincing. By the time the plane shuddered to a stop on the runway, he was able to walk off by himself.

We moved slowly through Heathrow Airport, and through customs, and my heart pounded as an official glanced at our forged papers. I hoped I wouldn’t have to put on an English accent and say my name was Victoria. But the official asked us nothing. He stamped the papers and handed them back, looking bored.

As we left the terminal, we passed the portrait of the young Queen Elizabeth II that my parents and I had seen on our arrival in London, only a month before. I remembered my father saying that things could be worse—I could be queen. But the queen looked very warm and dry and clean, and not wanted by the police. It didn’t look so bad.

“What are we going to tell my parents?” I asked the apothecary.

“What do you want to tell them?”

“Everything,” I said. “But I don’t think they’ll believe it.”

He nodded. “We’re all very tired,” he said. “We’ll take you home, and you can sleep. We’ll meet tomorrow to tell them the whole story. Perhaps your friend Pip could come, too.”