Outside, the brightness of late summer took me by surprise: I had expected darkness. I leaned against the warm brick, closed my eyes, and saw a network of tiny lines, a delicate tracery of life. I thought of Sir Thomas Overbury and wondered whether he too saw blood-red lace when he closed his eyes. I prayed fervently that he would die from the illnesses that assailed him and spare us the need to quicken his end.

20

I recognized James Franklin at once as the feculent character I had encountered in the backstreet apothecary shop who had behaved with too great familiarity toward me. In one hand he held a long, thin branch, wielding it like a staff of office. He lurched into a bow, revealing the single lock of reddish-gray hair that lay down his back. I stood quickly, the better to move away, for his was the rankest compound of villainous smells ever to reach my nostrils.

I led Weston into a corner. “How can you bring him to my house? He is … unsteady,” I said.

Weston clicked his tongue in irritation. “How much choice do you think I had?”

“There must be a person of better character.”

“You cannot choose a poisoner like you can a maid. Have you no stomach for this?” He appeared relieved and ready to leave.

I studied Franklin. He was on one knee, stroking George’s cat. The two youngest children huddled around him, asking questions I could not hear. Mary was sitting by the fire, feverish and bored, humming tunelessly. We were gathered in the kitchen because the day was cold, although it was early September.

“I never thought you should take this path, you know that,” said Weston, eyeing Franklin among the children. “But now you are so far along, it is better to keep going. He’s a strange man, but who of sound mind will do what you request?”

“Mary, please stop humming,” I said. Weston looked askance at my sharp tone but since agreeing to help Frankie murder a man, I found myself always with an ear half-cocked for the constable at the door and snapping more often at my children.

The apothecary gave the cat a final stroke and rose unsteadily with the help of his stick, which he then poked into corners around the range as if afeared mice might be hiding there.

“Tell him to get something that will lie in the belly a few days before it … is effective,” I said.

Weston nodded and immediately summoned Franklin to follow him.

“I hope Mistress will be pleased with my work,” he leered, bowing to me. There were liver spots on his balding scalp.

“What’s your stick for?” asked Mary, wide-eyed at his strange behavior.

“It’s cut from a hazel tree at midnight on Good Friday and charmed in the name of the Holy Trinity to find silver and gold.”

“Do you find silver and gold?”

“Often.”