Philip Gooden - Sleep of Death

In Paul’s the business of the day was concluding. Sellers and buyers were withdrawing to do battle again on the following morning. I thought of the young man that Nell and I had seen, fresh from the country and surrounded by coney-catchers like a solitary sheep among a pack of wolves. How much would he have lost in the card-game or whatever it was he had been lured away to, lost not just in money but in his good opinion of himself? Also forfeit would be his innocence about London. Unless he was unusually forgiving, he would never think of the town again except with anger and resentment. For a moment I felt ashamed of our bustling city and sorry for all the sheep that flock here to be shorn.

In the corner of the churchyard was the apothecary, Old Nick’s. It crossed my mind whether I should have asked Nell to accompany me since it was she who had an ‘arrangement’ with the old man. But Old Nick had been precise when he said that he wished to see me alone.

I pushed open the door of the shop. Inside, it was was even darker than on my first visit. The end of the day was overcast and little light penetrated through the squinting slit that passed for a window. After a time I could make out the recumbent shape of the alligator, together with the mermaid’s tail and the unicorn’s horn, all swaying gently overhead in the draught from the ill-fitting door. At the back of the shop on the wall hung the animal and vegetable materials, shrivelled or sagging, of Old Nick’s trade. A glass item on the counter reflected a gleam of light.

I waited.

I cleared my throat.

‘Hello,’ I said, my voice sounding oddly muffled. ‘Nick, Old Nick?’

He would make the same sinister entry as on my and Nell’s previous visit, materialising gradually from the dust and darkness at the rear of the shop. Probably he was watching me at this very moment, his own wrinkled vision accustomed to the dark places where he did his dirty business. Probably he was waiting until my unease and discomfort had reached a level that would satisfy him.

I spoke the apothecary’s name again, more loudly.

Silence. Silence in the shop apart from the odd drip of water and the occasional creak from the objects hanging from the ceiling. From outside, from the street, came the welcome shouts and shuffling sounds of ordinary life. I shivered. I would have left the dark shop if I hadn’t had the feeling that to do so would be to show myself as a coward — and not just in my own eyes. I had a strong sensation now, when there was no one around, of being watched. Also, I reminded myself, I’d come to this place because Old Nick had summoned me and for a reason: to find out from the apothecary whether he’d discovered anything on the sleeve of old Francis’s shirt.

Maybe, if the old man himself was absent, he had left a note, some indication of where he’d gone or what he’d found out. But even as I made up this idea I knew that it was not so. If Old Nick had anything to reveal to me, he would do it in person. Nevertheless, to break the stillness, I began half-heartedly to cast around in the gloom, feeling rather with my hands than finding with my eyes, groping on the counter top, across the warped wooden floor.

To my surprise my search was soon rewarded. Tucked in the angle between the base of the counter and a floor-board was a small square of paper. I unfolded it and could see the marks of writing, but the light was too poor to make out what it said, or even whether it contained words or symbols. The chances were that it was some recipe, made of ants’ tongues and maidens’ tears, to cure the pox or love-sickness. As I was crouching over this little scrap of paper somebody tapped me on the back of my neck! I must have shrieked or shouted. Certainly I jumped several feet back towards the door. My heart was thudding furiously and there was a roaring sound in my ears. I had my hand on the door, ready to pull it open and dive out into the street, when a quieter voice inside, the voice of second thoughts, told me to wait.

The tap wasn’t the tap of a person. Whatever had struck me on the neck was now sliding slowly down my backbone. My first idea was that it was the water which I had heard intermittently dripping in the darkened shop and which I had assumed, without thinking, to be the result of some half-completed experiment or spilled container. But now, even as the idea came clearly in words, I rejected it. Experiments aren’t carried out on the ceiling, and this was where the drip had come from. And water is cold, particularly when it slides down the back of your neck. This little stream was slow-moving and neither warm nor cold. It shared my body heat.

I put my hand up to feel. Then I rubbed my thumb and fingers together. They came away sticky and I knew why. Blood was dropping from the ceiling of the apothecary’s shop. I looked up. My eyes were more used to the darkness now, but it was still hard to make out the objects that swung there. They were simply shapeless, and monstrous. The unicorn’s horn, the mermaid’s tail and the tortoise shells appeared to be implements of torture from hell. The alligator seemed to wink at me with his unmoving eye and I realised with cold horror that the shape suspended from the shop ceiling was no river-beast but a man’s body. As quickly as I had decided that the shape was human came the certainty that, bundled together and trussed up over my head, was all that remained on earth of the wrinkled apothecary. He hung there, the blood in his veins gradually seeping on to the warped wooden floor.

‘And so an end.’

I startled myself with the sound of my own voice. I had time to consider that this was a strange thing to say — even time to reflect that perhaps it was a line from some play. It sounded like a play. It is strange what things will float to the surface of the mind when it scarcely knows itself. Then I had time also to consider that my voice was changed. And then I had further time to wonder whether this was, after all, my own voice or whether it did not belong to one of the shapes that seemed to grow out of the darkness around me. Even as I felt a blow to the back of my neck and others on my head, I was glad to solve this tiny mystery of whose voice it was. It belonged to one of the black shapes that was beating me. It was not my own.

And then everything descended, joltingly, into darkness.

Now, this business was not to be as straightforward as the killing of Francis.

Francis was no more than a simple servant and easily ordered and led, even though at the last moment when he knew that he was going to die he showed unexpected spirit in trying to escape from me.

But Old Nick was a different kettle of fish, a much more slippery customer. I’d had dealings with him before of course. What man past a certain age in London has not needed the potions, lotions and ointments of such a master-mixer, either to stimulate the appetite before love or to cure its ravages afterwards? Also, he prepared much that was useful when slipped into a lady’s cup.

Therefore it was with regret that I decided that Old Nick too would have to go. His absence will be keenly felt among men and women of a particular age and class. Nevertheless, only a fool hesitates between a lesser evil and a greater one — I mean, the loss of another’s life or the loss of one’s own. Because I am afraid that Master Nicholas Revill, in his blundering pursuit of Francis’s shirt and the marks on its sleeve, may be coming a little too close to the truth. One thing may lead to another: a stained sleeve, the means of a secret murder, the identity of the murderer.

I have a less reasonable fear. I have seen for myself that strange facility which Old Nick the apothecary possesses — possessed, I should say. How, often, when he is grasping a fragment of clothing or a personal ornament (ring, brooch), he is able to track down something of the past fortunes or the future fate of its owner. He is like a dog put on the scent. Why, once when I wished to discover whether a certain lady was remaining faithful to me, I brought him an item of apparel which she had worn next to her body. He enjoyed pawing and sniffing at that, and then, tail up and nose to the ground, he was off. I was startled when he spoke in my lady’s voice, and more startled still when the old man began to cry out in the words and accents that she was accustomed to use with me in the privacy of the bed. Even though the words and cries issued from his withered mouth, I felt myself becoming aroused to hear her in him.