The Apothecary Page 0,64

coverlet, and looked up at the flowered patterns in the canopy overhead.

I thought it would be very restful to be Sarah Pennington for a little while. There would be no worries, no running naked through the cold, no fear of what would happen if the apothecary caught us and wouldn’t let us on the boat. I could feel myself sinking into the soft bed, as if I were falling very slowly, floating into oblivion.

Then I heard a slight cough, and I shot upright to see the long-faced butler standing in the door. I felt that my hair was askew and tried to smooth it with my hand.

“Did you find what you need, miss?” the butler asked.

“I think so.”

“May I ask, will Miss Pennington accompany you on this boat trip?”

“Oh, no. She gets seasick.”

“That’s a relief,” he said. “I answer to her father, you see.”

Sarah came back down the hall with the boys, who looked like Eskimos in heavy trousers and ski coats with fur-lined hoods. They were carrying warm boots. “We’ll need a trunk,” Sarah said.

“Of course,” the butler said. “I can have it delivered to the boat.”

I looked at Benjamin and Pip. It might actually work. The others would have luggage, too, and the crew wouldn’t know which trunks were coming from where.

“The boat’s called the Kong Olav,” I said. “It’s at the Port of London.”

“It’s Norwegian?” the butler said, frowning thoughtfully. “Then I daresay they’ll have dried codfish aboard, but have you arranged for proper things to eat?”

CHAPTER 27

The Port of London

The trunk was sent ahead, and the chauffeured Daimler waited for us in Sarah Pennington’s drive. We crowded into the backseat, with Benjamin on my left, the side of his leg pressed against mine. Pip was on my right, with Sarah squeezed between him and the door.

“One of you can sit in front,” the driver said. He had clearly met a few charming pickpockets in his time, and he wasn’t amused by Sarah’s slumming.

“We have plenty of room,” Sarah said imperiously.

The driver sighed and pulled out into the street.

At St Beden’s, Pip stole a kiss while the driver wasn’t looking, and Sarah blushed crimson as she climbed out of the car. “Have fun!” she said, and she waved good-bye and skipped up the steps.

Pip looked at me. “What?” he said.

“Nothing,” I said, trying not to laugh. “I owe you a dollar.”

Benjamin did laugh, and I felt it in his body, through the leg that rested against mine. We didn’t need to sit quite so close together anymore, but it didn’t seem urgent to move away.

“To the port?” the driver asked.

“To the port,” Benjamin said, and the car swung away towards the river.

There was a guard at the gate, but he took one look at the shiny chauffeured Daimler and waved us through. We drove slowly past the docks, past the hulking boats and barges and cranes. There were little sailboats in one section and big industrial-looking cargo steamers in another.

Then we saw a steel boat about a hundred feet long, tucked in against the dock. It was painted bright blue, with a long white deckhouse on top. In crisp white letters on the blue hull, it said KONG OLAV. The bow was rounded and sledlike, I guessed for breaking the ice, but the boat itself was long and narrow, and looked like it might go fast.

Two crewmen were carrying Sarah Pennington’s trunk, with its mahogany leather sides, up the gangway. I guessed they were used to nice luggage, with Count Vili aboard, and no one stopped them. So that was progress at least: Our warm clothes were on the boat. We thanked the driver and walked down the dock as the Daimler purred away.

A longshoreman carrying a coil of rope over his shoulder bumped into Pip, knocking him forward a few steps.

“No bloody nippers on the docks,” he growled. “’Less you fancy a swim.”

Pip called the man something shocking.

The longshoreman grinned and called, “Same t’you, mate!”

I looked down into the murky water of the Thames and remembered my father telling me that the river had always been the city’s sewer system and that London’s toilets still flowed, ultimately, into it. I definitely didn’t fancy a swim.

There was a man standing beside the short gangway for climbing aboard the Kong Olav, and we walked over to him. His hair was sun-bleached white, and his skin weathered, and his lips so thin he seemed not to have any.

“We’re meeting my father on board,” Benjamin said. “Marcus Burrows. I’m supposed