Beloved Poison Read Online Free PDF Page B

hundred years ago we were surrounded by gardens and small holdings,’ I said, as if talking about it might somehow invoke the fresh scents of the countryside. ‘Originally we were a part of the Priory of St Saviour’s. London was miles away, though it’s hard to imagine as we are suffocated by it now. There’s little left of the medieval religious house other than the crypt of the old church – which now does office as a mortuary – and the chapel. No one uses the chapel now; they go to St Saviour’s parish church, which is just beyond that wall.’ I pointed. ‘Your work lies that-a-way too. You can see the place more clearly from the herb drying room, upstairs.’
    The door of the chapel swung closed behind us. It had not been used for prayer for decades, and was now little more than a store room, filled with the accumulated lumber – chairs, bed frames, old account books – of St Saviour’s long existence. A battered human skeleton minus its arms stood in one corner, a wooden coat-stand in another. The place was no more than thirty feet by forty, its ceiling curved in a barrel-shaped vault.
    ‘We have a ghost, you know,’ I said.
    Will dusted a veil of cobweb off the brim of his hat and peered into the gloom. ‘A ghost? I’m surprised you give such tales credence, Jem.’
    ‘But St Saviour’s is ancient. It was here during the Black Death, the Reformation, the Civil War. Can you not imagine a Protestant martyr burned alive, who cannot rest? A medieval prior done to death by drowning in mead? Did you never read the penny bloods when you were younger?’
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘I read
Richmond’s Elements of Surveying
.’
    ‘Much more edifying, though not half as exciting.’
    He sat down on a dusty pew and held his arms wide. ‘Go on then. Entertain me!’
    In fact, I had not thought about it since I was a child – my father always dismissed such stories as the idle chatter of credulous simpletons. I had to agree, though there was some amusement to be found in the tale. I lowered my voice, so that it caught the chapel’s echoes in a conspiracy of whispers. ‘So, you have never heard of the Abbot?’
    Will shook his head. I saw him shiver as a draught blew under the door. ‘You see?’ I said. ‘You feel him pass this way!’
    He laughed. ‘Get on, Jem. Who was the fellow?’
    ‘No one knows. They say—’
    ‘They?’
    ‘Mrs Speedicut for one. And the man at the pie shop on Fishbait Lane, Mr Sorley from the chop house, the nurses – all the most rational and reliable of witnesses . . . They say the Abbot is only abroad when it’s dark and foggy – a shadow in a hood striding down St Saviour’s Street. No one knows who he was – perhaps one of the medieval monks of St Saviour’s who sold his soul to the Devil. They say he wanders the streets around the infirmary. If you see the Abbot, you don’t have long to live. Mrs Speedicut’s husband saw him—’
    ‘And died soon after?’
    ‘Apparently. But I would doubt the existence of “dear Mr Speedicut”, as much as I would doubt the existence of a ghostly abbot.’
    ‘Where did he see it?’
    ‘Heading into Wicke Street.’
    ‘Wicke Street!’ Will grinned. Wicke Street was infamous, even to an incomer like Will. ‘Perhaps he was looking for a trollop.’
    ‘The Abbot or Mr Speedicut?’
    ‘Both!’
    We laughed. ‘I’m afraid I’m not much of a storyteller,’ I said. ‘There’s little call for ghostly tales at the apothecary – so my father says at any rate. He used to throw my penny bloods onto the fire. He does the same to Gabriel’s – that’s until I told the lad where to hide them.’
    ‘You just need to learn how to embellish,’ said Will. ‘That’s all.’
    He climbed onto a tea chest and smoothed the building’s great pale stones with his hands. Painted corbels studded the seam between walls and ceiling, onto which were carved the wings and faces of angels.
    ‘This one is sad,’ said Will. He put up a