“The secrets of the apothecary”, the opening words of Sarah Penner’s novel

Hidden in the alleys of eighteenth-century London, the small shop of an apothecary is frequented by an unusual clientele. Women all over town whisper to each other the name of the mysterious Nella, who sells poisons that are hard to track down and that can be used against the men who oppress them. The rules are few but strict: poison must never be used against another woman; the names of the victims and murderers will be kept forever in the shop’s records. The secret of the apothecary, in bookstores for HarperCollins from October 7, is the first novel by Sarah penner, which has already climbed the rankings of the New York Times. It tells of mysteries, poisons and revenge, but also of how women can save each other despite the barriers of time.

We publish the incipit here.

February 3, 1791

That woman would arrive at dawn. I was holding her letter in my hands, but I still didn’t know what it was called. How old was? Where did he live? What social class did he belong to? I did not know him, just as I did not know what malice inhabited his dreams at nightfall. He could be a victim, or an executioner, who knows. A new bride or a vengeful widow. A nanny or a courtesan. Despite everything I didn’t know, I was sure of one thing at least: that woman knew exactly who she wanted to die. I held up the powder-colored paper, lit by the dying flame of a candle. I ran my fingers over the ink of her words and tried to imagine how desperate she must be to come and find someone like me.

Not a simple apothecary, rather a killer. A master of deception. His request was clear and direct. For my lady’s husband, at breakfast. 4 Feb, at dawn. Instantly I saw a middle-aged maid, called to follow the orders of the landlady. And thanks to my instinct, perfected in twenty years of activity, I immediately understood what would be the most suitable remedy: a chicken egg full of nux vomica.

I had the poison close at hand, so the preparation, based on strychnine, would take a few minutes. But for some reason still unknown to me, something in that letter troubled me. Not the faint woody scent of the parchment, nor the fact that the lower left corner was slightly curled, as if it had previously been wet with tears. Rather, I felt uneasiness boiling inside me. I had the feeling that I had to stay away from it. But what unspoken warning could ever be hidden among the marks left by the nib on that single sheet? No one, I assured myself: the letter was by no means an ominous omen. These distressing thoughts were only the result of my exhaustion – the hour was late now – and my persistent discomfort in my joints. I turned my attention to the leather-bound register on the opposite table. Oh, my precious register! An archive of life and death, an inventory of the many women who came to me, in my shop, the darkest of all, in search of potions.

On the opening pages the handwriting was soft and the hand light, not burdened by pain and dilemmas. Those faded and worn notes, in fact, had been written by my mother. This shop, at number 3 of Back Alley and specializing in the treatment of female ailments, belonged to her long before it belonged to me. From time to time I read his notes – 23 Mar 1767, Mrs. R. Ranford, achillea millefoglie 15 dramme x3 – and those words recalled the memory: the hair that fell on the back of her neck as she chopped the yarrow stem with the pestle, and then her hand, skin as thin as paper, as she extracted the seeds from the corolla of the flower. But my mother had never hidden her shop behind a false wall, nor had she stolen her remedies into containers filled with dark wine. No, she really had nothing to hide. She dispensed tinctures for the sole purpose of healing, to soothe the tender inflamed parts of a puerpera or to stimulate the menstrual cycle in a sterile woman. And for this reason he filled the pages of his register only with the most beneficial herbal remedies, which in no one would arouse the slightest suspicion.

I too, on my pages, wrote names of plants, such as nettle and hyssop and amaranth, yes, but alongside more sinister remedies, such as belladonna and hellebore and arsenic. Those ink strokes concealed betrayals, anguish and… dark secrets. Secrets about the vigorous young man who suffered a heart attack on the eve of his wedding or about a new father in perfect health who fell victim to a sudden fever. My register put everything in black and white: other than weak hearts or strange influences, it was more like thorn juice and belladonna poured into wine or hidden in meat pies by cunning women, whose name now muddied those pages. Oh, wish they even told my secret, the truth about how it all began! Because every single victim had been documented, in those pages, except one: Frederick. The sharp black outline of his name marred only my broken heart and my scarred belly.

I closed the book gently, that night would not have helped me, and returned to concentrate on the letter. What worried me so much? My eye kept falling on the edge of the parchment, as if something might crawl out of it. And the longer I sat at the table, the more my belly ached and my fingers trembled. In the distance, outside the shop, the bells of a carriage sounded terrifying, like the sound of chains hanging from the belt of a guard. I reassured myself: that night no bailiff would come to visit me. After all, I hadn’t seen any for at least twenty years. I had disguised my business, as I did with my poisons, with extreme cunning. No man would ever find this place, carefully hidden behind a false wall at the end of a twisted alley in the far reaches of London. I looked at the soot-soiled wall that I didn’t have the heart or the strength to clean. My reflection was captured by an empty bottle resting on a shelf. My eyes, once bright green like my mother’s, now held very little life. My cheeks, once suffused with rosy exuberance, also looked yellow and sunken. I looked like a ghost; I looked many years older than my forty-one. I began to gently massage the round bone of my left wrist, swollen and hot like a forgotten stone on the fire. The joint discomfort had been radiating throughout my body for years now, and now it had become so intense that I could no longer stay awake for even an hour without suffering. Each time I dispensed a poison, a new wave of pain washed over me; sometimes, in the evening, my fingers were so stiff that I thought my skin would tear, revealing my bones.

I was so reduced to killing and keeping secrets, yes. I had begun to rot from within, and now that thing inside of me was threatening to tear me apart. Suddenly the air became stagnant, and puffs of smoke began to rise towards the low stone ceiling of my hidden room. The candle was almost completely consumed, and soon the drops of laudanum would envelop me in their heavy numbness. Night had long since fallen, and in a few hours that woman would be arriving. I would add his name to my register and begin to unravel the mystery, no matter how unwell I felt inside me.

(…)

Ancient oath of pharmacists

I solemnly swear before God,
author and creator of all things …
Not to instruct fools or ungrateful people
about the secrets and mysteries of this art …
Not to divulge the confidences of others….
Not to administer poisons or deadly drugs …
To disregard the scandalous and evil practices
of impostors, charlatans and alchemists
and avoid them as the worst of plagues …
And not to keep medicines in my pharmacy
damaged or altered.
In fulfillment of these precepts,
God’s blessing be granted to me

* Sarah Penner lives in St. Petersburg, Florida with her husband and their dog, Zoe. The secret of the apothecary, his first book, will be published in over thirty countries around the world.

Original title of the English edition: The Lost Apothecary
Park Row Books
© 2021 Sarah Penner
© 2021 HarperCollins Italia SpA, Milan
Translation by Valeria Bastia