The Apothecary Page 0,22

each other. There were steps leading up to it. Benjamin said, “So now what?”

“Well,” I said. “We’ll say we’re here to see Sergei. Maybe I have a Latin question.”

“You don’t know enough Latin to have a question!”

“So it’s a social visit. We want to show him this wonderful tea we’ve discovered.”

“As if that doesn’t sound suspicious.”

“You have a better idea, Mr Super-spy?”

“No.”

“All right,” I said, and I strode up the steps and rang the bell, thinking he would rather be with Sarah Pennington anyway, so why was I doing this?

“Janie, wait!” he said.

“Are you coming or not?”

Benjamin looked up and down the empty street, as if someone with a better plan might be coming along, then ran up the steps after me. “This is daft,” he said.

Sergei opened the door. He had changed out of his school uniform, and wore a jumper and grey wool pants, with house slippers. His broad shoulders seemed slightly less rounded and protective of his soft middle than they did at school. He was surprised to see us, and tossed his hair out of his eyes. Loneliness came off him like steam rising, so I tried to summon some confidence that whatever crazy thing I proposed, he would want to join in.

“Hi, Sergei!” I said. “We wondered if you were busy.”

“For what?” he asked.

“We’re thinking of entering the science competition at school,” I said. “But we need a third person on our team.”

“Science competition?” Sergei said. “There is a science competition?”

“We want to do botany as our subject,” I said, willing myself not to blush. “Right now we’re exploring the properties of this one particular herb.”

“A remarkable herb,” Benjamin put in, pronouncing the h, as if to clarify. “May we please come in?”

Sergei stood back from the door, and we walked into a small anteroom hung with coats, with a staircase that led up to a second floor. I wondered if his father was up there, the Soviet agent.

“We have to brew it, like tea,” I said. “Can we use your kitchen?”

“You want the samovar?”

We must have looked at him blankly.

“It’s a Russian teapot.”

“Perfect!” Benjamin said.

I heard uneven footsteps upstairs as Sergei led us into the kitchen. I remembered Mr Shiskin’s wooden leg. So he was home, and we could try the herb on him. The kitchen clearly belonged to two men living alone: It was full of unwashed dishes and smelled of onions.

“My mother is in Russia with my sister,” Sergei said, in apology. “Here is the samovar.”

It was a large silver urn, elaborately decorated in relief with leaves and vines, with a teapot on top. It looked out of place in the shabby kitchen.

“It was my grandmother’s,” he said. “We just had tea, so it’s hot.”

“Terrific,” Benjamin said.

I heard a thump upstairs, and then another, and then the careful sound of Mr Shiskin’s wooden leg coming all the way down the stairs. I tried to act natural, bustling around in the kitchen, but my heart felt like it would leap out of my chest.

Then Mr Shiskin was standing in the kitchen doorway. “What are you doing with the samovar?” he asked. His accent was more Russian than Sergei’s, less British, and he was even bigger up close. His body filled the door frame and his hands looked the size of baseball mitts.

“Making tea, sir,” Benjamin said. “Sorry to intrude.”

“You are Sergei’s friends?”

“Yes,” I said.

He gazed past us to the dirty dishes in the sink. “My wife is in Russia,” he explained. “I am not a good housekeeper.”

“We don’t mind, sir,” Benjamin said. “If you and Sergei want to sit in the parlour, we’re about to do an experiment.”

Mr Shiskin’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What experiment?”

“We’ll show you,” Benjamin said, with the air of a magician about to do a trick. “It’s science. Please, have a seat in there.”

The two Shiskins removed themselves reluctantly to the little front parlour, and Benjamin and I stuffed the crushed leaves into the samovar’s teapot and filled it with boiling water from the urn. We could hear the Shiskins talking together, and I heard the words “science competition” mixed in with the Russian.

“You think it’ll work in the samovar?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Benjamin said. “We’ll have to pour it into something else.”

I handed him the only clean teacup from a row of hooks, and we filled it with the pale greenish brew. “Just don’t smell it yourself,” I said. “Or we’ll start confessing everything.”

Benjamin took the cup in one hand, held a tea towel over his face