Paul Lawrence - Hearts of Darkness

I poked the rancid beef about my plate, suppressing a desire to run from this place, dancing and singing, all the way to the Mermaid. For that afternoon I made a momentous decision, the most important decision a man makes, for I decided what to do with the rest of my life. I was going to become an apothecary. I wanted to celebrate, tell the whole world, and drink a toast to myself. Instead I withered beneath the stony glare of Mrs Collis, who stared like she suspected me of a great crime, her face glowing a shade of pale green in the candlelight.

The cesspit overflowed. We had sidestepped a shallow pool of thin, brown soup on the way to the dining room, seeping from beneath the cellar door. It stank so foul I could taste it at the back of my throat. It coated my tongue. Every morsel of food on the table, every mouthful,

tasted the same as the air smelt: rank and putrid.

You could tell who were the butchers sat around the table. They were the ones munching slowly with the monotonous rhythm of contented cows, happily oblivious. Of them all, Dowling was the largest and seemingly most satisfied. Square-shouldered as a dray mare, his head resembled a boulder on a beach, grey and craggy, coated with a thin layer of spiky, white bristle.

John Collis sat at the end of the table, he whose wedding it was. His ruddy, blotched face stared out unhappily from beneath a stiff, tangled mess of brown goat hair, a stray lump of periwig fallen precarious over his right eye. I never saw a butcher in a wig before. I had met him but two or three times, for he was Dowling’s friend, not mine. I was surprised he invited me to his wedding dinner.

Fourteen of us sat round the long table, the backs of our chairs pressed up against the plaster walls. Bride and groom sat next to each other at the head, flanked by a bridesman and two bridesmaids. Collis sat with shoulders petrified, only his jowls hanging loose and floppy, while his bride scrutinised the rest of us like we were strangers, peering beady-eyed through the darkening gloom.

The pile of cakes and biscuits at the centre of the table stood modest, for the butchers all brought meat instead. The taller the pile, the brighter the prospect of the couple, which signified a life of hardship for these two.

The church ceremony had passed cheerfully enough. Though a second marriage, Mr and Mrs Collis nevertheless chose to marry in public, an option neglected by many for fear of mockery and sabotage. The vulgar guardians of social sensibilities made special effort to attend such occasions, to whistle and jeer at the reading of the banns, then to follow the newly wedded couple back to their house, to make

uproarious din as they prepared to consummate their union. Today’s congregation participated with sombre respect, for everyone knew these two suffered grievous loss during the plague. Collis lost his wife and all three children; Mrs Collis lost a husband and two sons. Collis managed a smile or two, but the bride scowled, with a permanently wrinkled nose.

The last of the daylight slipped away, leaving us to the mercy of the long thin candles lined up down the centre of the table. The pocks upon Collis’s face turned black.

‘I am thinking of becoming an apothecary,’ I said to Dowling, louder than I intended.

Dowling stopped chewing, and regarded me like I was drunk. ‘Making drugs and selling them in bottles? You have no training as an apothecary.’

I stuck out my chin, determined he would not dishearten me. ‘I will learn.’

Dowling sighed like I was his errant son. Few men had taken as many wrong turns as I. First my father sent me to Cambridge to study theology, where I learnt only that I would never be a religious man. Then I endured years of abject misery as a clerk at the Wakefield Tower, sorting an endless stream of old documents and records, feeling my soul leak steadily from my fingertips into cracked, yellow parchment. Finally I accepted a post in Lord Arlington’s intelligence service. Anticipating a life of derring-do and glorious adventure, instead I found myself performing more tedious, clerical duties, until Dowling and I were finally instructed to investigate the death of Thomas Wharton, Earl of St Albans.

‘I have nightmares, Davy,’ I whispered, staring out the window into the dusk. Of the night I led one of Wharton’s violent accomplices

into the churchyard at St Vedast’s. In the dream, I sat alone upon the stone bench beneath the giant oak, staring into the pitch-black night, listening to the screams of a man being tortured to death somewhere betwixt the gravestones. Then the screaming stopped and all fell silent. My heart beat loud against my ribs, drumming out a deafening rhythm for the murderer to hear. I didn’t move, terrified, unable to tell whether anyone approached. Then a vicious, young face appeared before me, looming from the darkness, lips curled in hungry satisfaction.

‘God help me!’ I slapped my palm against my chest, for the same face suddenly appeared framed in the window afore me before disappearing just as quick.

Dowling shifted his weight and thrust his face next to mine.

‘I thought I saw Withypoll,’ I gasped.

‘Withypoll is dead, Harry.’

So he was; he died a year ago. I left him lain upon the floor of the King’s wardrobe tied to the corpse of a dead woman, a woman killed by plague. It was not me who bound him, but I who left him, for fear he would kill me if released.

‘My nightmares are impatient.’ I tried to laugh. ‘Now they don’t wait for me to fall asleep.’

‘Too much ale,’ Dowling muttered. ‘Now, tell me how you plan to become an apothecary.’

I bowed my head, afraid to look again out of the window. I regarded my hand instead, flat against the thick grain of the sturdy oak table. ‘When I was at Cambridge I attended some lectures about plants, and the healing properties of several sorts. Don’t you remember I prepared your thumb with fleabane?’

‘You bought some powdered fleabane at the market and bandaged

my thumb,’ Dowling said, gently. ‘Which ability doesn’t make you an apothecary.’

‘No,’ I agreed. ‘But I know an old man who owns a shop on Walbrook Street. His son died of plague, as did his wife. I spoke to him today about buying his business, upon condition he teaches me first.’

Dowling grunted. ‘Do you have any money left?’

I snorted. ‘Barely.’ For Arlington never paid us, and my hard-earned savings were dwindling fast. ‘But yes, I do have enough, and once I am established I will earn a good living.’ My heart surged with new conviction. ‘Now is the time,’ I declared, ‘before it’s too late.’

‘My wife died of plague as well,’ piped up the stringy fellow to my right, leaning over, eager to engage in conversation. ‘With some it was quick and painless. I saw a man walk down the street, swinging his arms and tipping his hat, all smiles and “how-do-you-do’s”. Then he stopped and clasped a hand to his chest, like you just did.’ He stared, eyes wide as soup bowls. ‘Then he fell forwards, dead. When they rolled him over they found tokens on his chest.’

I nodded, thinking of a medic I watched fall face forwards into his dinner. ‘I once beheld a similar thing.’

‘Aye, well, he was lucky.’ The man stuck out his lower lip and banged his small fist upon the table. ‘My wife suffered six days afore she died. Awful to behold, the agony she endured. The night before Death took her, I had to fetch her from the river. She leapt from the window and ran naked down Creed Lane and on towards the river. She jumped in and I had to leap in after to fetch her out.’