The Lost Apothecary

Twelve-year-old Eliza Fanning is a housemaid at the Amwell estate and belongs to the novel’s 18th-century timeline. Originally from Swindon, she is quickly taken under the employ and tutelage of Mrs. Amwell, who has a fondness for the girl. Eliza is clever and determined, eventually becoming Mrs. Amwell’s letter-writer after a childhood spent illiterate. Eliza composes the letter in which Mrs. Amwell requests poison for her husband, and Nella is impressed by her own resolve in her plan to serve the poison at breakfast on behalf of her mistress. She stands as a daughter figure for many of the older female characters (from Nella to Mrs. Amwell to Lady Clarence), and though portrayed as emotionally mature beyond her years, her constant need for validation from these older figures shows her extant childishness. But Eliza is, in fact, a child (even by Gregorian standards), and the sexual molestation she experiences at the hands of Mr. Amwell turns the Amwell estate into an unnerving locale for her long before she believes his spirit is haunting it.

It is perhaps this same youthfulness that allows Eliza to see the world in terms of magic, to believe that the mystical holds transformative power. Because of this, she sometimes acts as a foil to Nella, who sees the world in terms of its natural, tangible attributes, telling Eliza that her brews are “earthly things” (44). Though Eliza has the capacity to experience the deeper, darker emotions that run through the novel, particularly guilt when she finds out she sent out a jar of poison engraved with the address of Nella’s shop, she is able to rally her hope much quicker than Nella. She becomes attached to the idea that the magical Tincture to Reverse Bad Fortune will mend the danger that Lord Clarence’s unintended death places them in (as well as dispel Mr. Amwell’s ghost). She is Nella’s dove, suffusing the older woman’s life with a hope and humor that she thought lost, but Eliza is also the story’s phoenix, suffering a supposed death only to emerge from the cinders of the police investigation as she once was, her eyes “bright [and] youthful” (292). Ultimately, Eliza becomes a mother to twins and inherits her husband Tom Pepper’s magic shop after his death, implying in her Brighton Press interview that Nella is still very much a part of her life.

Caroline Parcewell is the 32-year-old protagonist of the present-day timeline. A farm administrator from Ohio, she is in London on what was supposed to be the celebratory trip for her 10th wedding anniversary. Caroline is disillusioned about her marriage after discovering her husband James’s infidelity, and her worries over her future are compounded by her suspicion that she is pregnant. Though she wanted to pursue a master’s degree in history, she decided to focus on her marriage to James and the development of his career instead, rendering clear her supportive nature. Her decision to take an anniversary trip by herself to a country she has never visited highlights her ability to take initiative, confirming that her life with James was a conscious choice she made, and that her current physical separation is yet another deliberate decision. Caroline, like Nella, is also very aware of a woman’s precarious position in a world made dangerous by the patriarchy that dominates it; she proves this by lying to the workman who finds her in Back Alley as she’s investigating the clearing, telling him that her husband James is just around the corner in a bid to protect herself from this potential male threat.

Caroline’s story intersects with that of Nella and Eliza when she discovers one of Nella’s blue vials while mudlarking at the River Thames. Just as Caroline uncovers this element of Nella and Eliza’s past, their story births a fascination in Caroline that firms her audacity, pushing her to run through the city under cover of night and to breach strange, unfamiliar rooms, things she would not do back in Ohio. Her involvement in this mystery also leads her to Gaynor, whose presence unveils that, though Caroline was egregiously hurt by James’s cheating, she can still trust others. When Gaynor calls Caroline while she is being detained by the police on suspicion of poisoning James, Caroline does not technically have to ask her for help. Yet she does, and despite the newness of their friendship, Gaynor comes to her rescue. James’s manipulative self-poisoning allows Caroline to see him for who he really is, and as she puts to rest her marriage, she also puts to rest the apothecary killer mystery, deciding to keep the truth of the story to herself.

Lady Beatrice Clarence is the mistress of the wealthy Clarence estate. She is accustomed to getting what she wants, but her desire to have a child remains unfulfilled. She blames this on her husband’s young cousin and mistress, Miss Berkwell, believing that his sexual affair with her is dampening his virility. Lady Clarence is not respected by her husband, but it is Miss Berkwell who nearly suffers for it. Lady Clarence’s financial privilege and sense of entitlement drive her to force Nella into making the powder that accidentally kills Lord Clarence, an event that drives the 18th-century narrative toward its climax at Blackfriars’ Bridge. Once Lord Clarence ingests the poisoned fig liqueur and dies, Lady Clarence has her maid hide the jar the poison came in, then later returns the jar to Nella.

But Lady Clarence proves instrumental to the plot yet again, as her returning of the jar is a red herring meant to falsely settle the reader’s, and Nella’s, anxiety before the truth emerges that the maid took a wax impression of the addressed jar to the authorities, making its return entirely moot. Lady Clarence is a character full of contradictions, sympathetic for the infidelity she endures from her husband but also antagonistic for her blackmailing of Nella and attempted murder of Miss Berkwell. She takes the power of the rich Gregorian mistress to a logical extreme, where privilege and scorn, left unchecked, harm those in her orbit who are more socially disenfranchised than she is. Although she eventually expresses regret over forcing Nella to make the powder, the damage is done. It is her recorded deathbed confession at St. Thomas’s hospital that gives Caroline some of her first crucial clues about the apothecary mystery, as it mentions Bear Alley, her botched attempt on Miss Berkwell’s life, and the apothecary’s kindness toward women.

When Caroline first married her husband James, she saw him as a sensible man whose practicality seemed ideal for a familial future with children. His apparently risk-averse nature encouraged Caroline to settle for a steady administrative job at her family farm rather than pursue a less-stable career in academia. His affair with a work colleague devastates Caroline and drives her to take their 10-year anniversary trip to London alone, but it also dredges to the surface his own unhappiness. His decision to let this unhappiness manifest in unfaithfulness constitutes an absence of the logic that Caroline once admired him for, as it is risky behavior that undermines both his marriage and Caroline’s trust while doing nothing to permanently quell his discontent. The unraveling of James’s practicality continues as he spontaneously, and selfishly, follows Caroline to London, hoping he can win her back. When this fails, his reckless, deceitful behavior peaks when he deliberately poisons himself by ingesting her eucalyptus oil. Once he is out of dire straits health-wise, Caroline decides to file for a legal separation from him, and he returns home alone.

Gaynor is a “thirtysomething woman with wavy auburn hair” (55) who works at the Maps Enquiry Desk at the British Library. Bachelor Alf, the leader of the Thames mudlarking expedition, is her father. He encourages Caroline to seek Gaynor out to learn more about the apothecary vial she finds in the river. Though Gaynor is initially unable to help Caroline research the vial, due to its lack of an address or other identifying characteristics, she greets Caroline with a friendliness and warmth that carries through the rest of their interactions. Gaynor’s aid is essential to Caroline’s research on the apothecary, and the manuscript documents she provides Caroline allow her to learn about the events on Blackfriars’ Bridge. Gaynor also leverages her position at the library to vouch for Caroline when she is accused of poisoning James, creating one of the only moments in the novel where a character uses their social position for good rather than bad. At the end of Caroline’s story arc, Gaynor encourages her friend to prioritize her graduate education and the new life it promises over her crumbling marriage to James. Since Caroline hopes to attend graduate school at Cambridge, they agree to keep in touch.

Mrs. Amwell is the kind, nervous mistress of the Amwell estate. She is characterized by Eliza as gentle and patient for the gracious way she tutors the girl, and she gains Eliza’s affection so absolutely that Eliza cites the moments where she was learning to read and write from Mrs. Amwell as “some of [her] best memories” (63). Mrs. Amwell experiences a chronic tremor in her hands that makes it difficult for her to write her own letters, a task that Eliza takes over for her. Mrs. Amwell’s protective impulse presents itself in her desire to murder her own husband after learning that the man incapacitated Eliza with liquor and attempted to sexually assault her. It is also clear that, like Lady Clarence, Mrs. Amwell is a woman accustomed to having other people do her bidding; she not only has Eliza retrieve the nux vomica from Nella, but she also has the girl administer it to Mr. Amwell. Mrs. Amwell has technically kept her hands clean of her husband’s murder, somewhat eschewing culpability. Additionally, Mrs. Amwell’s benevolent personality grows murky when one considers the speed with which she denies the existence of Johanna, a young girl who was allegedly raped and impregnated by Mr. Amwell. In the wake of her husband’s murder, she leaves the Amwell estate to visit her family in Norwich “while she is in mourning” (92), though it is implied that she is both disturbed by what has happened and anxious to avoid direct questioning.

Mr. Amwell is the middle-aged master of the Amwell estate. He is a known sexual predator who preys on the young women under his employ, and he stands as a flat character granted no dynamism or complexity before his death early on in the novel. He is so incorrigibly exploitative that in the presence of his wife, he strokes the back of Eliza’s thigh as the she sets down his final breakfast. Mr. Amwell represents a domestic predation that constitutes a daily horror for Eliza, and his poisoning helps paint Nella as less of an unscrupulous murderer and more of an antihero who eliminates degenerates.

Lord Clarence is the philandering master of the Clarence estate, married to Lady Beatrice Clarence. His affair with Miss Berkwell drives his wife to seek Nella out for a toxic aphrodisiac that will murder Miss Berkwell while they are sleeping together. He dies when he drinks the spiked fig liqueur meant for his young mistress during a tryst in the estate library. His brazen infidelity devalues him so much in Lady Clarence’s eyes that she only cares about his usefulness in conceiving a child. It is an ironic inversion of the way 18th-century English women were often primarily valued for their ability to conceive.

Miss Berkwell is Lord Clarence’s cousin and mistress. Described by Lady Clarence as a petite young woman, she quickly earns Lady Clarence’s ire. She is the only one present when Lord Clarence dies after drinking the fig liqueur. It is a macabre twist of fate that she is forever linked to Lord Clarence in a way that Lady Clarence can never be, as she is the one beside Lord Clarence in his final moments.

Frederick is a young, dark-haired meat merchant whom Nella encounters soon after her mother’s death. They first meet when Frederick comes to her shop seeking motherwort, an herb capable of ending pregnancies by encouraging the uterus to “shed what’s inside” (137), to aid his sister Rissa with menstrual pain. Frederick keeps secret the fact that Rissa is actually his wife and enters into a romantic relationship with Nella. He offers Nella a reprieve from her grief, teaching her the “release between two bodies” (45). Nella becomes pregnant with his child, and though Frederick is externally excited by the news and vows to marry her, Nella believes that he uses motherwort to terminate her pregnancy without her knowledge. Frederick’s use of the motherwort ends the possibility of their shared biological child and irreparably scars Nella’s womb and stops her periods, making it impossible for her to have biological children at all, something she once wanted very much. It is a sinister bodily violence that exerts control over Nella’s person even after Fredrick is dead. When Rissa, already familiar with both Nella’s shop and her husband’s philandering ways, goes to Nella to ask after his latest activities, a shocked Nella confesses that they’d been intimate. Rissa asks Nella for nux vomica, which Nella gives to her for free. It is implied at the beginning of the novel that Frederick is dead, as he is, according to Nella, the very first victim whose name is recorded in her register.

Johanna, according to the story an Amwell estate servant tells Eliza, was a housemaid on the property just before Eliza arrived. Only a couple years older than Eliza, she was allegedly impregnated by Mr. Amwell. She and her baby died during childbirth. After Eliza hears the story, she believes she can hear Johanna crying out to her, as well as a thumping sound, which Eliza believes is Johanna’s baby attempting to escape her belly. Johanna’s story establishes Mr. Amwell as a repeat offender, solidifying his characterization as a child abuser. It also makes Eliza extremely conscious of potential futures and twists of fate, offering her both a spiritual and material fear to fight against.

Tom Pepper is the teenaged shopkeeper at the magic bookstore owned by his father. He tells Eliza that he came out of the womb stillborn, but his breath was returned by a spell in one of the store’s books, cementing Eliza’s belief in magic. He takes a liking to Eliza, giving her one of the store’s books for free. Eliza reciprocates his feelings and experiences her first romantic crush, humanizing and grounding her as a young character. Years down the road, the two marry and have mixed-gender twins. Tom dies, leaving the store, which has become highly successful, to Eliza and their children.