When Gaynor walked through the glass door at the front of the café, I flicked off my phone and closed my notebook, shoving it safely inside my bag. I reminded myself to play it cool; I couldn’t let it slip that I knew anything more about the apothecary than I did yesterday while at the library. I hardly knew Gaynor, and sharing this information would reveal that I not only broke the law, but that I infringed upon what might be a valuable historical site. As an employee at the British Library, it was possible she’d be bound by a professional commitment to report me.

I nibbled on the final bite of my croissant, the irony not lost on me; while I came to London because I was hurt by someone else’s secrets, now I was the one hiding things.

Gaynor slid into the chair next to me and leaned in excitedly. “This is...unbelievable,” she began, pulling a folder from her large purse. She withdrew two sheets of paper, black-and-white copies of what looked very much like old newspaper articles, divided into several columns with a header toward the top. “The bulletins are dated only a couple of days apart.” She pointed toward the top of one page. “The first one is February 10, 1791, and the second one is February 12, 1791.” She set the earlier bulletin, from February 10, on top, and leaned back in her chair to look at me.

I looked closer at the bulletin and gasped.

“Remember yesterday,” Gaynor explained, “when I texted you that one of the documents contained an image? That’s the image.” She pointed toward the center of the printout, though it was unnecessary; my eyes were locked on the page. There was a drawing of an animal, so rudimentary it looked like something a toddler scribbled in sand, but there was absolutely zero doubt in my mind that I’d seen the image before.

The image was a bear—identical to the tiny bear etched on the light blue vial I’d plucked from the mud of the Thames.

22

Eliza

February 10, 1791

It was after eight o’clock in the evening, and though Nella had worked ceaselessly over the last few hours, she would not let me help. Instead, she strained under the effort of pushing corks as far into their bottles as they would go, nesting the empty boxes as tightly as they would fit and scrubbing a few of her gallipots with all her might. She tidied and organized as though she meant to leave—if not permanently, then at least for a long while—and it was due entirely to my careless mistake.