‘She must go and get an education, Elizabeth. I regret her departure as well but I would not like her growing up an ignoramus.’
‘No more would I.’
‘Madam…’
‘Yes?’
‘You wouldn’t come as well, just for a short time? I would so like to show my sons to my friends in London.’
She turned to look out of the carriage window. ‘I think they are too young to face the journey, don’t you?’
A small clutch of hope departed from the Apothecary’s heart. ‘Perhaps at the moment. But one day in the future…’ He left the statement hanging in the air.
Elizabeth placed her gloved hand over his and said quietly into the darkness, ‘One day, John, it will all turn out as you wish.’
Fifteen
It was Rose’s cries that woke John up. For a moment he wondered where he was, dreaming that he was still in Elizabeth’s great house and that he was lying beside her. Then as he hastily struck a tinder and lit a candle, he saw that it was his bedroom in Nassau Street and remembered that he and his daughter had travelled back to London a few days before. The swift feeling of reassurance that he was back in town was instantly dissipated by the shouts of terror coming from her bedroom. Then as he leapt out of bed he heard another pair of feet running towards her door and flinging it open. Unable to gather his thoughts, John hurried to Rose.
Jacquetta Fortune was sitting on the bed holding his daughter in her arms but the child was looking toward the door and sobbing, ‘Papa, Papa. Oh where is he? Is he safe?’
‘I’m here, dearest girl,’ he said from the doorway.
‘Oh thank goodness you are alive! Oh Papa, I had such a terrible dream.’
Jacquetta released the child into his custody and stood up. John smiled at her and just for a moment thought how beautiful she looked with her lovely hair loose around her shoulders and that awful, frightening thinness disappearing and a shapely body starting to emerge. Then he turned his full attention to Rose.
He had never seen her so frightened; his spirited daughter, who was afraid of nothing, who had strange and rare abilities, whose very exuberance was a pleasure to behold, lay like a crumpled doll in his arms, her small frame raked with sobs.
‘Shush, sweetheart. It was only a dream. It’s all gone now. You’re safe in your bed and I’m here with you. Tell me what it was that frightened you so much.’
She pressed close to him and he could feel her trembling. ‘It was that wicked old brown woman. The one who wears the big bonnet. She came in my dream and said she was going to kill everyone. And you were there, Papa. I saw you.’
‘Where? Where was this?’
‘I’m not sure, that’s the trouble. But there were a whole lot of people all in one place. And then this terrible… Papa, be sure to lie flat when you see her. It is vital that you do.’
‘But why, darling? What is it you see about her?’
Rose wept again but this time with frustration. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know. It’s just that something tells me you will be safer lying down.’
‘I swear I will go flat if ever I see this old apparition.’
‘But you will see her, Papa. I am certain of it.’
‘I promise you that I shall be on my guard,’ replied John solemnly.
She relaxed a little but remained in the protection of his arms. ‘Do you have to return to Devon, Pappy?’
‘I do, my sweetheart. I promised Mrs Elizabeth and the twins that I would return next month. So I am duty bound to go.’
‘I wish you didn’t have to. I shall feel so far apart from you when I am at school and you are miles away.’
‘I promise to write often.’
Rose suddenly sat up and John could feel that her body had gone rigid. ‘She is waiting for you,’ she said, and her voice sounded tired and old.
The Apothecary was too wise to try and shake her out of whatever vision she could see. ‘Where?’ he asked again.
‘In Devon,’ she answered, and fell back on to her pillows.
Two days later John escorted Rose to her new school. Irish Tom had cleaned the coach till it shone and had retouched the initials of its owner, gracefully entwined on the door. John, going to inspect Tom’s handiwork in Dolphin Yard, had walked round the equipage with a look of great satisfaction.
‘Is it to your liking, Sorrh?’
‘You’ve done a grand job, Tom. It almost looks new.’
‘Oh, it’s taken a bit of punishment in its time, the old coach. But I hope it will be grand enough for our Miss Rose to set foot in.’
Sir Gabriel would have been irritated that a servant spoke in this familiar manner but John and Tom had built up a special and, in a way, very close relationship over the years and the Apothecary would have wondered what was wrong if the coachman had addressed him in any other way.
So with her newly bought trunk and a couple of hat boxes stowed on the top, John and his daughter set off down Gerrard Street, waved to by all the servants, the nursery maid in floods of tears, and by Jacquetta Fortune, who had come out of the office she had now established in the house in Nassau Street, to wave farewell. Gideon was, of course, at Shug Lane.
The destination was Kensington Gore but the carriage diverted to Sir Gabriel’s residence so that he, too, might see his granddaughter into her first school. In a sea of stiff satin, black as always, the only colour being the white lining of his cloak and what one could glimpse of his shirt, Sir Gabriel emerged from his front door like the leader of fashion he had always been. Round his neck he had a bow at the centre of which glinted a diamond.
‘Oh Grandpa, you do look fine,’ Rose called excitedly through the window, then, as Tom lowered the step, hopped out and curtseyed as Sir Gabriel made his way within.
‘Dear child,’ said Sir Gabriel, fondling the strands of flame-coloured hair that shone beneath her new hat. ‘I shall come and visit you often.’
‘Yes, please do,’ she answered.
John looked at her, thinking to himself that the effects of her terrible dream had completely gone. He wondered, in fact, when she was in that sort of state if she had no memory of it afterwards. For today she seemed radiantly happy, glad to be entering into the adult world, proud to be bowling along in the newly restored carriage with her handsome father and his imposing adopted parent, who was leaning on his great stick and looking out of the window from time to time.
But as they arrived at the school, amongst many other carriages and fine looking modes of transport, she suddenly turned pale. ‘Oh, Pappy, will I be able to cope?’ she asked anxiously.
John was about to answer when Sir Gabriel rose from his seat and got out of the carriage on to the step, holding out a hand for Rose to join him. It had occurred to John that over the years his father might have lost some of his ability to attract attention — a faculty that at one time had meant he could enter a room and stop the conversation — but not so. As he stood on the step, his great height raised even taller, his old-fashioned three storey wig with its cockaded hat atop glinting in the sunshine, he took Rose and motioned her in front of him so that she was in full view of the passing parade. Much to John’s astonishment, Irish Tom let out a hearty cheer and a far tinier child than Rose stopped its howling and instead dropped a curtsey. Seeing this, several of the other children did the same.
‘You see, my girl,’ said Sir Gabriel, ‘everything hinges on how one presents oneself. If you go in weeping and ashen-faced they will think you a sad creature from a wretched home and will treat you accordingly. But if you go in
