The Apothecary Page 0,65

to bring him something.”

The man called up to the deck, “Ask the count if he wants a delivery!”

The plump, elegant man we had seen in Hyde Park appeared at the rail. He was as well-dressed as before: His three-piece suit was dark green, and over it he wore a long trench coat, unbuttoned, lined with dark silky fur. His eyes were friendly, and he didn’t have the manner of someone who was sought by both the British and the Soviet authorities.

“Ah, the children!” he said. “Thank you, Ludvik, send them up. Tell me, have you ever seen such a marvellous boat?” His voice reminded me of expensive furniture, something that belonged in Sarah Pennington’s house: rich and soft-textured.

Ludvik the guard stepped aside, and we climbed aboard the blue icebreaker, our footsteps ringing hollowly on the metal gangway. I made a mental note that we would have to step quietly when we were invisible.

The apothecary met us on deck, his face looking anxious beside the happy, complacent count. “Were you followed?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” Benjamin said.

“You have the book?”

Benjamin nodded.

“Jin Lo is still collecting provisions,” his father said. “I hope she’s all right.”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” I said, just because he seemed so nervous and agitated.

The Kong Olav wasn’t fancy, but it was orderly and clean, the steel deck painted and scrubbed, and the chrome metalwork polished. The skipper’s name was Captain Norberg, and he had a cragged face that looked as if it had spent years squinting into the wind. Aside from him, I counted five crewmen, including the guard at the bottom of the gangway, who all seemed to speak English. The bridge was at the foreward end of the deckhouse, with a tiny galley behind it. Next was a little sitting area Vili called the “saloon,” with built-in couches and a square table.

Beyond the saloon was a corridor with doors to the cabins on either side, and the apothecary led us back towards his cabin. Everything was small and crowded, and smelled of things that had been damp once. But Count Vili clearly loved the boat, and rhapsodised about its usefulness and efficiency, pointing with his knobby walking stick. As he gushed, Pip touched my arm and pointed to an open cabin door.

The cabin was piled with duffel bags and suitcases, including Sarah Pennington’s mahogany leather trunk. They were using the room for storage. I nodded. That was where we would hide and recover our warm clothes when we got on board.

“We can talk freely here,” Count Vili said. “The crew knows of our plan. They come from northern Norway, which will suffer from the effects of radiation if the test proceeds. The reindeer will be affected, and the fish, not to mention the children.”

We crowded into the apothecary’s cabin, which had twin bunks and a small washstand. There was barely room for all of us to stand. Benjamin pulled the worn leather Pharmacopoeia from his knapsack.

Count Vili reached for it with awe. “May I?” he asked. “I haven’t seen it since I was an undergraduate. I was far too stupid to appreciate it then.”

“You were very young,” the apothecary said.

“So were you,” Count Vili said, sitting on the bunk and crossing one plump leg over the other to prop up the book. “But you weren’t a fool.”

“You’d lost your parents,” the apothecary said.

“What did Oscar Wilde say? ‘To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.’”

“How did they die?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine not having any parents to care deeply what happened to me. I thought I would feel unmoored, like a boat allowed to drift free.

Count Vili opened the book and scanned a page. “My mother was carried off by the Spanish flu,” he said, as if he had told the story many times, “in the epidemic of nineteen eighteen. She was a bit inbred, in the way of the aristocracy, I’m afraid, and had never been terribly strong. My father was executed without a trial by the Communists who came to power in Hungary after the first war.”

“The Communists executed people?” I said.

“Of course,” Vili said. “But then they themselves were executed, by the counter-revolutionaries who called themselves the Whites. It was a dreadful time in Hungary. We have not yet recovered. I love telling the story to Americans. You are so sweetly innocent, always aghast.” He turned a page of the book. “Ah, the avian elixir! I always wondered, in my dissolute youth, if