The Apothecary

Chapter 10

The Smell of Truth



We left the Physic Garden and walked back down the Chelsea Embankment with the veritas herb and something like a plan—or at least I thought we had a plan. But Benjamin was having none of it.

“It’s all rubbish!” he said. “Invisibility spells. Herbs that make you tell the truth if you cut them at noon. If the gardener told you he was king of the fairies, would you believe him?”

“No,” I said. “But it’s possible that the herb affects the brain somehow, like alcohol does, or coffee.”

“So you want to just waltz into Shiskin’s house and get him to smell a pot of leaves. Do you know how a Soviet agent is trained?”

“Do you?” I asked.

“I know we’re no match for it.”

I wasn’t sure what had made me so brave—possibly being in another country that was so different from my own, possibly trying to match what I thought was Benjamin’s courage. But I felt determined to move forward in the only way we could. “You said you wanted to live a life of adventure,” I said. “Let’s just test the herb and see if it works.”

Benjamin rolled his eyes but had no argument, so we went to my flat, which was eerily quiet with my parents at work. I filled a pot with water, according to the gardener’s instructions, and boiled the crushed herb on the tiny kitchen-closet stove. Benjamin sat stubbornly at the card table with his arms crossed. The leaves turned dark green in the hot water, and the steam from the pot was sharp and minty. I stood over the pot, breathing it in for a few long seconds, then turned to him.

“Now you do it,” I said, feeling strange and a little giddy.

Benjamin eyed me. “D’you feel all right?”

“A little strange,” I admitted. “But go ahead. You’re the one who thinks nothing will happen.”

“And how do you propose to test it, Madame Curie?”

“We have to think of a question that we wouldn’t otherwise want to answer.”

He stood over the pot, looking down at the leaves. “Something like, ‘Who do you fancy?’”

“That might work,” I said, even though it was the last question I wanted to answer. But it was impossible, suddenly, to tell a lie.

Benjamin took a deep sniff over the steam and turned to me. “All right,” he said. “So who do you fancy?”

I hesitated. “Fancy means like, right?” I asked, stalling.

“Of course.”

I gritted my teeth against the answer coming out, but I couldn’t stop myself. “You,” I said helplessly.

“Me?” Benjamin flushed crimson. I was sure I was doing the same. His freckles darkened when he blushed.

“Oh, that’s embarrassing,” I said. “I hate this. Quick, before it wears off, who do you fancy?”

“I don’t want to answer.”

“You’ll have to.”

I could see him struggling with the effort. “Aargh,” he said. “I hate this, too! All right! I like Sarah Pennington!”

I was too shocked, briefly, to be mortified that it wasn’t me. “Sarah Pennington?” I said. “She’s awful! She’s mean and pretentious!”

“I know.” He seemed genuinely sorry about it. “But she’s also beautiful. I don’t want to like her. But I can’t help it! She sits in front of me in maths, and the curve of her neck, under that braid, drives me completely mad.”

“Stop!” I said. “Enough! It works.”

We glared at each other in silence.

“Anyway, she has a crush on Mr Danby,” I said before I could stop myself.

Benjamin was aghast. “Mr Danby?”

“She thinks he’s dreamy. And she’s right! He’s also smart, and nice!”

Benjamin looked pained, and there was another long, sullen silence. I didn’t know if I was happy to have hurt him or not, so I crossed my arms and looked out the window at St. George’s Street below. The sad haberdasher across the street was standing in his doorway as usual, waiting for customers who never came.

“How do we tell when this thing wears off?” Benjamin asked.

“I don’t like you,” I said, experimentally. “But that’s not a good test. At the moment it’s kind of true. Say you don’t fancy Sarah Pennington.”

“I don’t fancy Sarah Pennington.”

“There we go,” I said, with a pang in my heart. “You can lie. It’s worn off.”

“Let’s pretend that never happened,” he said.

“Do you still think it’s rubbish?”

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “It works.”