The Apothecary Page 0,18

minute, and the next thing I knew, Benjamin was shaking me awake. It was still dark in the room, and I wasn’t sure where I was. I fought my way out of sleep.

“The symbol on the book!” Benjamin whispered. “I know where I’ve seen it before!”

CHAPTER 9

The Physic Garden

Benjamin came to my study hall at eleven fifteen, saying that the librarian needed another student to help shelve books. The study hall monitor was a tall, sallow young man. “Do you have a note?” he asked.

“The librarian is buried in books,” Benjamin said. “She asked if you’d mind if she didn’t send a note, just this once.”

I raised my hand. “Can I go?” I asked. “I want to be a librarian someday.”

This drew a ripple of laughter from the other students, which got them a frown from the monitor. I knew he felt sorry for me, as the pathetic new girl who stayed in at lunch.

“All right,” he said. “But tell her to send a note next time.”

I gathered my things, and when we were sure the hall was empty, we slipped out the main door and down the steps. Benjamin didn’t remember exactly where the Chelsea Physic Garden was, but he knew it was near the Thames, so we walked along the river.

I know now that the Physic Garden was started in the seventeenth century, as a kind of museum and nursery for medicinal plants. Botanists and ships’ physicians brought specimens back from all over the world, as England expanded its empire, and the specimens were planted in Chelsea. The garden is still there, if you visit. The British Empire may be gone, but the Physic Garden is its green ghost, growing a little bit of India, China, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific islands, right in the middle of London.

“I used to go with my father all the time,” Benjamin said. “He would collect cuttings, and I would skip stones on the little pond, which was really too small for skipping stones, until a gardener would tell me to stop or I’d break a window.”

“Why’d you stop going?”

“I turned ten and thought I was too old for it. I didn’t need to be watched anymore, and I thought I didn’t need to tag along to the stupid garden.”

We found the high iron gate on the embankment and pushed it open. There was a little stone guardhouse, but no one was in it. The garden was lush and thriving and made the phony Sherwood Forest in Riverton look like the papier-mâché that it was. It was almost magically green, and silent, as if the plants somehow absorbed all the city’s sounds. The paths were lined with leafy stalks that grew as high as my head, and trees from which yellow flowers hung, and something that looked like rhubarb, with enormous spreading leaves.

“If my father came here for work,” I said, “I’d go with him all the time.”

We walked down a path where the trees on either side grew together in a canopy, so we were almost in darkness in the middle of the day. Every few feet, a vine hung down, with a single pink flower at the end. There were rustling noises in the undergrowth—birds or little animals. At the end of the path, there was another gate.

“There it is!” Benjamin said, and I followed his eyes to the top of the wrought iron. There was the symbol embossed on the cover of the Pharmacopoeia, with the circles and the star. We peered inside, to a walled inner garden. Across some paths and beds was a small brick house with white trim. Benjamin tried to open the iron gate, but it was locked.

“Should we climb it?” I asked.

But just as I spoke, a figure emerged from the little brick house. It was a man, and he looked as if he had once been tall and imposing, but now he walked with a stoop. He had a grey beard and a wrinkled, kind face. He wore a long brown oilcloth coat and Wellington boots, and carried a basket and a pair of pruning shears.

“Hullo!” Benjamin called. “Sir?”

The figure looked up, surprised in his solitude.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Benjamin said. “My father’s a member of the Society of Apothecaries. I have a Society scholarship, actually. And I . . .”

The man in the oilcloth peered at him. “Is that Benjamin Burrows?”

It was Benjamin’s turn to be surprised. “Yes!”

The man hurried over and opened the gate with an ancient key.