What fools they were—all of them but the women who’d been told where to look by their friends, their sisters, their mothers. Only they knew that the bin of pearl barley served a very important function: it was a means of communication, a hiding place for letters whose contents dared not be uttered aloud. Only they knew that hidden within the wall of shelves, invisible, stood a door leading to my apothecary shop for women’s maladies. Only they knew that I waited silently behind the wall, my fingers stained with the residue of poison.

It was where I now waited for the woman, my new patron, at daybreak.

Hearing the slow creak of the storage room door, I knew she had arrived. I peered through the nearly imperceptible cleft in the column of shelves, aiming to get my first dim look at her.

Taken aback, I covered my mouth with trembling fingers. Was it some mistake? This was no woman at all; it was a mere girl, not more than twelve or thirteen, dressed in a gray woolen gown with a threadbare navy cloak draped over her shoulders. Had she come to the wrong place? Perhaps she was one of those little thieves who was not fooled by my storage room, and she sought something to steal. If that were the case, she’d be better suited at a baker’s shop, stealing cherry buns so she could fatten up a bit.

But the girl, for her youth, arrived at exactly daybreak. She stood still and sure of herself in the storage room, her gaze directed at the false wall of shelves behind which I stood.

No, this was no accidental visitor.

At once, I prepared to send her away on account of her age, but I stopped myself. In her note, she had said she needed something for her mistress’s husband. What might become of my legacy if this mistress was well-known about town, and word got out that I sent a child away? Besides, as I continued to peek at the young girl through the cleft, she held high her head of thick black hair. Her eyes were round and bright, but she did not look down at her feet or back at the front door to the alley. She shivered slightly, but I felt sure it was on account of the cool air rather than her nerves. The girl stood too tall, too proud, for me to think her fearful.

With what did she brew her courage? The strict command of her mistress, or something more sinister?

I maneuvered the latch out of its hold, swung the column of shelves inward and motioned for the girl to come inside. Her eyes took in the tiny space in an instant, without need to even blink; the room was so small that if the girl and I stood together and spread our arms wide, we could nearly touch the opposite sides of it.