I, Coriander (14 page)

‘I thought they had killed you,’ sobbed Hester, ‘and I could do nothing.’

‘What have I told you, you half-witted girl! Quiet!’ snapped Maud, raising a hand to slap her.

I got out of the chest. I looked at Hester and felt weighted down and tied back into this world. I knew I could not leave her like this.

The minute Maud saw me coming towards her she moved away and tried to hide behind Arise, who held his hands out in front of him. His voice wavered as he said, ‘This is proof of witchcraft. You are surely the Devil’s child.’

I bent down to Hester. She put her arms round my neck and said, ‘I am so sorry I could not help you sooner. May God be my witness, I truly tried.’

Master Thankless gently helped Hester to stand. I could see it caused her pain.

‘I do not know what has been going on in this house,’ said Master Thankless, turning to Arise, ‘but I can tell you that the only devil in this room, sir, is yourself. Come, Miss Coriander, you and Miss Hester are not staying here a moment longer.’

‘I cannot, sir,’ said Hester, feebly pulling her hand away. ‘I am sorry, sir. I am sick. Best leave me here.’ And she slid down the wall and sat slumped on the floor like my old doll Beth.

‘Hester,’ I said, ‘what have they done to you?’

The sea captain picked her up as if she were no heavier than a bag of feathers. He turned to Arise. ‘How can you call yourself a godly man?’

I followed Captain Bailey and Master Thankless out into the street where a carriage stood waiting.

When we were seated, Master Thankless looked at me with a mystified expression.

‘Oddsfish, I can hardly believe my eyes, Coriander,’ he said.

‘How did you know where to find me?’ I asked.

‘My apprentice Gabriel Appleby has been keeping a watch on the house, and Hester found the courage to tell him,’ said Master Thankless. ‘But I can hardly fathom what has been happening here. By all the laws of nature you should be dead.’

He tucked a blanket about Hester and we rattled and rocked through Thames Street and up on to the bridge.

Outside the tailor’s shop a young man was pacing up and down. All I could think was that Master Thankless had found himself another apprentice. I wondered why Gabriel was not there to meet us.

‘You were not too late? She is not dead?’ said the young man in much agitation as he helped Master Thankless lift Hester from the carriage.

‘Not yet,’ said Captain Bailey.

‘Go, Gabriel, fetch the doctor,’ said Master Thankless. ‘Quick, lad.’ And Gabriel ran off as if his life depended on it.

I watched him, bewildered. When I had last seen Gabriel he was but a lad, a little older than Hester, certainly not yet a man. I am like a sailor, I said to myself, one who has returned from a distant voyage, not knowing how long I have been gone, unsure of the season, uncertain of the year. I must have been looking lost, for Master Thankless took my arm and said kindly, ‘Come, Coriander, help me get Hester inside.’

We got Hester up the stairs where Nell, the maid, helped me undress her. We were both shocked to see the whip marks on her back, as was the doctor when he came. He feared she might not make it through the night and said angrily that he would not treat his dog in such a manner and that London was full of charlatans and crooks who hid under the disguise of righteous men, preachers and prophets.

After the doctor had applied a poultice to Hester’s bruises and given her some medicine, we washed her and put her to bed. I sat with her, holding her hand and trying in my head to make a straight line of all that had happened.

I must have fallen asleep for I woke with a start as if someone had shaken me. I looked round and caught a glimpse of a face reflected in the window. For a moment I thought my mother was in the room and my heart started to beat faster. I was sure I could hear her voice telling me what to do. Then I realised that the face staring back at me was mine and mine alone.

I called for Gabriel to sit with Hester while I went downstairs, where I found Master Thankless and Captain Bailey deep in conversation.

‘I have seen many strange things in my life,’ the captain was saying, ‘but by the saints’ bells this is the strangest. If you ask me, there is some odd magic going on here.’

‘Ah, Coriander,’ said the tailor, seeing me, ‘can I be of service? ’

‘I wondered if you still have my mother’s remedies here.’

‘Yes, indeed I have. They are kept safe in the cellar.’

‘I believe there is one that could help Hester.’

‘Then let me show them to you,’ said Master Thankless, and he led me down the stairs.

The little bottles were packed in baskets with straw and all looked very much the same.

‘This is a pickle and no mistake,’ said Master Thankless. ‘The bottles have no labels. There is no way of knowing what they are for, and Mistress Danes is not here to help us.’

‘I must look for a bottle with a purple flower in it,’ I said. ‘I do not think Hester will live unless we find it.’

‘I fear I have left this too late,’ said the tailor. ‘I should have gone to the house when Gabriel first told me how Hester was being treated. Well, you do one basket and I will do another. If there is such a bottle, we will find it.’

We carefully examined each bottle but it was no use. None of them had a purple flower in it.

I stood there at a loss. Then I thought that maybe the best thing was just to trust. I closed my eyes and picked out a bottle.

‘If you are wrong,’ said Master Thankless, trying to comfort me, ‘I doubt it will make any difference.’

‘Master!’ shouted Gabriel. ‘You should come! I think she’s going.’

My heart was pounding as I rushed up the stairs, followed by Master Thankless.

Hester looked deathly white and she was making awful gurgling noises as she breathed. Captain Bailey said he had heard such sounds many times before from those who were about to meet their Maker.

Without a second thought I broke open the seal to the bottle and gently dripped the potion into her mouth, being careful not to spill a drop, just as I had seen my mother and Danes do. Then I sat holding one of Hester’s hands while Gabriel held her other.

The moon had come to watch over her and shone in a pool of light on the bedroom floor. That night we all stayed with Hester and somewhere towards morning I remember falling asleep, to be woken by the cry of seagulls.

Gabriel too was asleep with his head resting on her bed, and Master Thankless was dozing in a chair by the door. Captain Bailey had left. He had told us that his ship was sailing on the morning tide.

Hester was breathing peacefully. As I let go of her hand to close the shutters she said faintly, ‘Coriander?’

‘Oh Hester,’ I said, seeing her eyes open, and I burst into tears. ‘You are still with us.’

‘Where else would I be?’ she said softly.

Gabriel, hearing her voice, raised his head.

‘By the Good Lord, it is a miracle!’ And he kissed her hand and was smiling and crying all at the same time.

As I watched Gabriel and Hester I thought indeed I must have been gone a long time, for when I left Hester did not even know Gabriel Appleby.

Master Thankless got up. He walked over to the table on which I had placed the empty bottle. He picked it up and held it towards the light.

‘See, Coriander. There in it lies a purple flower.’

19

Stitches in Time

U
p to that moment, I had tried to ignore the fact that something about me was different. However, in the slow days that followed Hester’s recovery, it dawned on me that I had been gone for all of three years, and if that were so I must now be fifteen summers old; though how such strangeness had come about I dared not ask. It was not just that my hair was longer or that I was taller, or that my old gown fitted me ill. My body too had changed. It was as if I had moved into a new house whose chambers I still felt too frightened to explore. Yet I found great comfort in the thought, for I had worked out that I had only been gone a short time in my mother’s world, and maybe I had more time than I thought to take back the shadow.

Master Thankless said that it was beyond any rational explanation, though he was wise enough to keep this from his customers. Instead, he stitched together a story of my disappearance that held up well to the endless questioning from everyone who came into his shop. This is what he told them: I had run away from my house to try to find Mistress Danes. When that proved impossible, I had gone to Hertfordshire where I had been taken in by a good Puritan family. I worked for them for three years before returning to London to see what had become of my father. In the hope of finding him I had stolen back into the house, but on hearing Arise Fell’s voice I had hidden in the chest, and that was where I was found.

‘I have heard that she was locked in there for six months,’ one would say.

‘No, longer,’ another would reply. ‘I have been told it was at least a year.’

Master Thankless would silence them all by saying firmly, ‘I can assure you it was but a matter of hours, if that.’

He would give no more away, no matter how hard they pressed him. I thought Danes would be proud of her friend the tailor.

I
t soon became clear that Gabriel could hardly bear to be away from Hester, and Hester, for her part, fretted if he was not around. This meant that Gabriel had little time for his work.

‘I am sorry, master,’ said Gabriel, looking crestfallen. ‘The trouble is that I am much fond of Hester.’

Master Thankless laughed. ‘I would never have thought so, lad.’

Gabriel lowered his voice. ‘Also, I worry in case those two villains come back for her.’

‘Why would they?’ I asked.

‘Because Hester is the only witness to what they have been up to,’ said Master Thankless.

‘No, she is not,’ I said. ‘There is Joan, the cook. She must have seen it all.’

Master Thankless put his hand on my arm. ‘Coriander, Joan is dead.’

‘How? Of what?’ I asked.

‘She fell down the stairs,’ said Master Thankless.

‘Pushed, more likely,’ said Gabriel. ‘That’s what I mean. I think they would kill Hester if they thought they could get away with it.’

It was hard to take in what he was saying. I was still shocked at hearing of Joan’s death.

After that Gabriel was allowed to keep Hester company while I took his place in the shop. Soon Hester began to eat again and the colour came back to her cheeks.

Gabriel took great delight in bringing Hester all sorts of gifts and little oddments he had found. Hester kept them by her bed and treasured even the smallest. I think she had never been given a present in her life before.

‘Was it Hester who told you what had happened to me?’ I asked Master Thankless one evening as we worked late getting a gown ready for one of his customers.

‘Yes, in the end, but to begin with it was Mistress Danes,’ said the tailor. ‘She came straight to me after Arise had thrown her out of the house. She was in a terrible state and I could make neither head nor tail of what she was telling me, other than that she was worried sick for you and intended to find Master Hobie to tell him what was going on. I did my best to persuade her to stay, and told her she could live here, but she said that was impossible: there was not a moment to be lost. To my eternal sorrow, I never saw her again.’

This was as much as Master Thankless would say. He seemed reluctant to talk of what had happened in my absence, as if he too found it hard to believe that I truly had been gone for so long. I made matters no better, for I would tell him nothing of my adventure, feeling that it was wise to hold my peace. So it was that we bobbed and curtsied around one another, until at last I was able to make sense of the missing years, and pieced together from bits of information given to me by Gabriel and the tailor a patchwork of the past.

After Danes had left, Master Thankless had become so concerned by all that he had heard that he had taken matters into his own hands and gone to Thames Street to enquire after me, only to be sent away again with a flea in his ear and one of Arise’s sermons ringing in his head. Poor man, he was desperate for news of me, but what could he do? He had no proof that anything was amiss, other than customers’ tittle-tattle, and that didn’t make a bobbin’s worth of thread.

Then Joan fell and died. It was then that all sorts of dreadful rumours began to go around and he became most fretful, for only Hester had ever been seen going to market, and neither hide nor hair had been seen of me. He was on the verge of reporting Maud to the authorities when the good ladies from Arise’s meeting house in Ludgate put it about that I was alive and well and had been brought to the ways of the Lord by Arise Fell himself, for I had had a fair devil in me that needed taming. A little while later Arise with great piety let it be known that, alas, all his hard work had been for naught, for I had run away in search of Danes. According to Master Fell, she was an evil woman, a witch, and I as her apprentice no better.

That would have been the sum total of Master Thankless’s knowledge if it had not been for Gabriel. As Master Thankless said, ‘Young Appleby is many things, but a tailor he will never be. A spy, now, that is a very different matter. There you have a brave one and no mistake. He set to the task of watching the house in Thames Street with more enthusiasm than he has ever shown for stitches.’

This was in August. It was hot, according to the tailor, and the Thames smelt none too sweet when two bodies were dragged from the river near Twickenham, the reeds having held them under for months. There was much talk as to who these two dead people could be, until Maud claimed it was me and Danes. It was a bleak day, said Master Thankless, who in his heart believed none of their nonsense, and gave Gabriel his blessing to find out what he could.

Gabriel, in borrowed cloak and tall hat, had gone to the meeting house in Ludgate, where he had been most surprised to find so much handsome furniture that seemed oddly out of place. He felt certain that this must be my father’s property, though why it should be here and not sold for good coin he did not know.