But no such thing existed; it never had. Hurting others had only injured me further. I took the letter, traced the words with my finger and stood from my chair. Bending forward, I stretched one weak leg in front of the other, my breath raspy, and approached the hearth. A low flame ate away at a single scrap of wood. Gently, I set the letter into the dancing peak of the light, watching as the paper ignited in an instant.

No, I would not grant this woman what she wanted.

No more death would go forth from this room.

And with that, my shop of poisons existed no longer. The single flame in the hearth sputtered out, the final letter crumbled to ash. No balms left to simmer, no tonics left to blend, no tinctures to agitate, no plants to uproot.

I leaned forward and began to cough, a clot of blood making its way out of my lungs and onto my tongue. I’d been coughing up blood since yesterday afternoon—since running from the bailiffs, falling over the back wall of the horse stable and watching my young friend fall to her death. I’d expended a year’s worth of effort in mere minutes; the bailiffs, by way of chase, drove me closer to death than I’d realized.

I spit the blood clot into the ash, without even a desire to take a drink and wash the sticky residue from my tongue. I felt no thirst, nor hunger, and I had not urinated in nearly a day. I knew this did not bode well; when the throat ceases to beg, when the bladder ceases to fill, it is nearly over. I knew this because I had experienced it—I had watched it happen—once before.

The day my mother died.

I knew I must go to the Amwell estate, and soon. I would leave the letter and tincture with a servant, for Eliza said the mistress may be gone some weeks, and I did not expect her to be in. Then I would go to the river, sit along its silent banks and wait for a certain death. I did not expect the wait to be a long one.

But before I left my shop for good, a single task remained.

I lifted my quill, pulled the open register toward me and diligently began to record my final entry. Though I did not dispense the potion and I knew not what ingredients it contained, I could not leave without confessing the life of her, the loss of her.

Eliza Fanning, London. Ingr. unknown. 12 Feb 1791.

As the nib scratched along the paper, my hand shook terribly, and the words were so sullied that the handwriting appeared not even my own.

Indeed, it was as though some unknown spirit refused to let me write the words—refused to let me record the death of little Eliza.

34

Caroline

Present day, Wednesday