The Apothecary

Chapter 7

The Message



When we got to Hyde Park on Sunday, Mr Shiskin was already on his bench with his back to us, in his grey overcoat. Benjamin set up the chess pieces, giving me the white ones again, while I kept an eye on Mr Shiskin over his shoulder.

I moved my king’s pawn out, and Benjamin, as I knew he would, slid out the pawn in front of his bishop. I brought out my king’s knight, as my father had told me to, and was rewarded by one of Benjamin’s approving smiles.

“Very good!” he said. He brought out his queen’s pawn.

I brought out my queen’s pawn and Benjamin took it, and I took his pawn with my knight. Benjamin nodded with pleasure and moved his king’s knight out. I looked over his shoulder at Mr Shiskin. Another man was sitting next to him. I’d completely missed his arrival.

“Someone’s there!” I said. “A man.”

“What kind of man?”

“I can only see the back of his head. He’s wearing a hat.”

Benjamin watched my face, as if to read there what I was seeing. “What’s he doing?”

“Nothing. Just sitting there.” The newcomer, even from behind, seemed oddly familiar.

Benjamin glanced over his shoulder to look at the man, then put his head in his hands. “Oh, no,” he said.

Then I realised. I hadn’t recognised him, out of context. “It’s the apothecary!” I said. “It’s your father!”

Benjamin pretended to study the chessboard. “He’s going to muck it up,” he moaned. “Why’d he have to choose that bench? If he’s there, Shiskin can’t make his drop.”

“Maybe he is the drop.”

“He’s not the drop.”

But as I watched, Benjamin’s father took a section of the newspaper from the bench, without looking at Shiskin. I felt goose bumps rise on my arms. “Your father just picked up the newspaper,” I said.

Benjamin stared at me. “No he didn’t.”

“He did! He’s walking away now. You can look.”

Benjamin turned, and we watched his father pause to unfold the newspaper and read whatever was there. Then the apothecary’s whole manner changed. He tore up a small piece of paper, threw it with the newspaper into a rubbish bin, and hurried off down the street. Shiskin had already disappeared in the other direction, walking unevenly on his wooden leg.

“Come on,” Benjamin said. “We need that message.”

We ran to the rubbish bin his father had used.

“Watch where he goes,” Benjamin said, and he reached into the rubbish and came up with the folded newspaper and some shreds of paper. He pieced the scraps together on the ground as I looked over his shoulder. The note was in scrawled capitals:



I felt dizzy and wondered if someone was playing a game with us—or if Benjamin and his father were playing a game with me. “Is this real?” I demanded. “Are you making this up?”

The desperate look on Benjamin’s face told me he wasn’t. “Which way did he go?” he asked.

“Across that street. Who’s Jin Lo?”

“I don’t know.”

As we followed his father, I looked to my left, instead of to my right where the cars were coming, and heard the blare of a horn. Benjamin pulled me back and kept me from being run over by a taxi. The driver leaned out the window and swore at me. Benjamin’s father ducked into a red phone booth on the other side of the street.

“Did you know your father knew Shiskin?” I asked.

“How would I know that?”

We crossed the intersection at an angle and stood in line with people waiting for a bus, trying to blend in. I had never felt so conspicuous. The apothecary came out of the phone booth without seeing us.

“Give him fifty paces,” Benjamin said.

“Is he working for the Russians?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think he knows that viscount? Or earl?”

“Stop asking me questions!”

We trailed his father through the streets. The apothecary moved surprisingly quickly, and seemed to be headed for his shop. By the time we’d reached Regent’s Park Road, we’d lost sight of him. We stood in a recessed doorway, watching, but no one went in or out of the shop.

“Let’s go in,” I said. “Just ask him what’s going on.”

“I can’t,” Benjamin said. He was pale and had lost all his courage.

“You have to.”

“What if he’s a spy for the Soviets?”

“Then at least you’ll know.” I stepped out into the street, looking to my right this time.

Benjamin gave in and we moved uncertainly towards the shop. He looked over his shoulder to see if we’d been followed. The door was locked, and he opened it with his key.

The shop was silent, but smelled oddly of smoke. Benjamin locked the door behind us, and we moved through the silent aisles towards a light in a back room. I tried walking on tiptoe, but that made my legs shake. I had to put my heels down to stop the trembling.

In the back office, the apothecary was burning papers in a small metal wastepaper basket, feeding them into the fire.

“Benjamin!” he said. “You can’t be here! They’re coming!”

“Who’s coming?”

“I’m not certain. But you mustn’t be here!”

“Are you a spy for the Russians?”

His father peered at him through his spectacles. “Of course not!”

“But I saw you in the park! Shiskin passed you a message. He works for the Soviet embassy.”

The apothecary shook his head. “I don’t have time to explain, Benjamin. I have to hide the book.”

“What book?”

The apothecary answered by pulling a large leather-bound volume from a cupboard. Then we heard the locked door rattling in the front of the shop. “They’re here!” he said. “You both have to hide.” He set down the book to lift an iron grate in the floor, revealing stairs leading down to a cellar.

“I’m not going down there!” Benjamin said.

“You’ll go now,” his father said, with a sharpness I hadn’t imagined he was capable of. As if he had just had the desperate thought, he thrust the book into Benjamin’s hands.

“We can stay and help you fight them!” Benjamin said.

“Go!” his father said.

“We’ll go get the police,” I said.

“No police! I need you to protect the Pharmacopoeia and keep it safe. Please do this thing for me.”

“Protect it from what?” Benjamin asked.

“Anyone who comes looking for it.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be all right. Just take care of the book. It’s been in our family for seven hundred years.”

“Dad, wait!”

“I have a plan. I’ll be fine. Just go.” The apothecary lowered the grate after us. Someone was pounding at the front door.

The cellar smelled like damp earth, and we found ourselves at the bottom of the stairs in a concrete-floored room. Enough light came down through the iron grate that we could see a little of what was around us. There were shelves lined with dusty jars, and there was a heavy iron door in one of the walls. Benjamin tried the door handle, but it was locked.

I heard a violent explosion upstairs, and it made us both crouch behind the shelves. There were footsteps and voices, speaking what sounded like German.

“Do you understand them?” I asked.

Benjamin shook his head.

We listened while the men searched the office. I could hear Benjamin’s breathing in the dark, and my own, which was unsteady. He looked at the heavy book on his knees, and I knew he was wondering if it was worth more than his father’s life. I could tell he wanted to go upstairs and fight.

“There are too many of them,” I whispered. “Your father said to keep the book safe.”

We waited what seemed a long time, then heard a scraping of metal above us, and Benjamin pulled me back further into the dusty shadows behind the shelves. The grate was pulled away, and a man’s head peered into the cellar. He had a long scar across one cheek, and the hideousness of a face hanging upside down. He seemed to be grinning, or gritting his teeth: They were bared in the dim light as he looked around. Then we heard the clang of a police car’s bell on the street, and someone shouted in German. It was clear that the voice was urging the others to leave. The horrible upside-down face disappeared, and the grate was lowered again.

Benjamin and I crouched in the darkness, barely daring to breathe. As the immediate terror faded, I realised that his arm was across my shoulders, and the side of my body against his. He seemed to become aware of it, too, and he relaxed his grip on my arm. We moved an inch apart and my arm tingled where his fingers had been. The police bell had faded into the distance: They must have been after someone else.

When the shop was silent above us, Benjamin and I crept back out, pushing the heavy grate open. The place had been ransacked. Papers were thrown on the floor, drawers opened, chairs toppled. Broken jars of herbs filled the air with sharp, strange smells. Things had been pulled off the shelves in the front of the shop: bottles of pills, boxes of bandages, bags of cotton wool.

The apothecary was gone.