The Apothecary

Chapter 8

The Pharmacopoeia



Benjamin and his father lived in a flat above the shop, and we decided that it would surely be watched. So we went to my flat, where my parents were sitting at the card table we’d set up near the tiny kitchen. I could tell I was interrupting some serious conversation, but I didn’t have time to wonder what it was. We had decided not to tell them what had happened, because they would want to call the police, and the apothecary had told us not to.

My father turned in his chair and smiled. “How was the rematch?” he asked.

“It was . . . fine,” I said. I’d forgotten all about chess.

“Who won?”

Benjamin and I glanced at each other. “The game got interrupted,” I said. “His father had to go to Scotland to visit his aunt. She’s sick.”

“I’m so sorry,” my mother said, all concern. “I hope she’s all right.”

I felt suddenly and sadly grown up—not because I had brought a boy to meet my parents, but because I had told them a lie. “I wondered if he could stay here tonight,” I said. “I mean, his father asked if he could.”

My parents glanced at each other. “I don’t see why not,” my father said, after a pause that suggested that he did see why not.

My mother made scrambled eggs again for dinner, and we ate at the little card table, where we all had to sit too close together. Benjamin was formal and polite, and everyone seemed uncomfortable.

“We haven’t really figured out shopping yet,” my mother said. “So we’re relying heavily on our landlady’s eggs.”

“They’re delicious,” Benjamin said. “It’s hard to get eggs.”

There was an awkward silence.

“So what do your parents do, Benjamin?” my father asked.

“My father is the apothecary down the street.”

My father pushed back his chair with a screech of wood. “No kidding!” he said. “The source of all our heat. And your mother?”

Because my mother worked, my parents always made a point of inquiring about other kids’ mothers. Nowadays it seems a perfectly normal thing to ask, but in 1952, most kids’ mothers stayed home, and the question was sometimes embarrassing.

“She died when I was little,” Benjamin said.

I stared at him. I’d never thought to ask about his mother, but he hadn’t said anything about her dying.

“I’m so sorry,” my mother said. “How did it happen?”

“In a bombing raid,” he said. “In the war.”

“Oh, Benjamin, how terrible.”

“I was just a baby,” he said. “I don’t really remember her.”

There was another long silence. My parents, who were usually so warm and friendly, had no idea what to do with this tragic news and this stiff, formal boy. I wished they could have seen him during the bomb drill, defiant and strong, when they would have admired him. I saw now why he couldn’t take the drill seriously—or why he took it so seriously that he wouldn’t take part in it, if it wouldn’t do any good.

Benjamin’s leather satchel was leaning against our little couch, with the Pharmacopoeia sticking out of it because the buckle wouldn’t close over the big book. My father nodded towards it, to change the subject.

“What’s the great tome?” he asked. “Is that for chemistry?”

“Sort of,” Benjamin said.

“Can I see it? I’d like to see what they teach in England.”

“I’m very tired, sir,” Benjamin said, too quickly. “And have an essay to finish. Do you mind if I just work on that?”

“Of course not,” my father said. He gave Benjamin the wide smile he used in friendly arguments, or when he knew someone was lying to him. “If you’ll stop calling me ‘sir’.”



When I was sure my parents were asleep, I crept out to the living room, where my mother had made a bed for Benjamin on the couch. He had the Pharmacopoeia open on his lap.

“You didn’t tell me your mother was dead!” I whispered.

“Where’d you think she was?” he asked. “Timbuktu?”

“I didn’t have time to think about it.”

“Well, I don’t have time to talk about it,” he said. “I’ve been looking at the book. It’s mostly in Latin.”

He made room for me on the couch. I felt shaken by his father’s disappearance, and curious about the book, but none of that dispelled my nervousness about sitting with him in the middle of the night on my parents’ couch. It was impossible to imagine any boy from Hollywood High sleeping in my parents’ living room in Los Angeles, and there was no one back home who had made me feel so unsettled and strange.

I looked at the book—in the excitement, I hadn’t really taken it in before. Pages were slipped in between the bound pages, which seemed to be hand-lettered, in an old calligraphic style. The paper was ivory inside, brown around the edges, and scarred with burn marks. It looked like a very old, important version of my mother’s overstuffed Joy of Cooking.

“I think the Latin’s really old,” Benjamin said. “Or some of it is, anyway. I’m supposed to be able to read Latin, to be an apothecary, but I’m no good at it.”

“What language is that?” I asked, pointing to some words made up of letters I didn’t recognise.

“I think it’s Greek.”

He flipped another page. There were symbols and little drawings interspersed with the text. One looked like a snake inside a circle. “Maybe that one’s a cure for snakebite,” I said.

“Why would he need to hide that from those Germans?”

“Because the book’s valuable?”

“They weren’t ordinary thieves.”

“I guess not.” I shuddered, remembering the man with the scar. “Where do you think they took him?”

“I don’t know. I wish I understood German.”

“And Latin.”

“And Latin.”

“Or Greek.”



He closed the book and we studied the embossed symbol on the cover. It had a circle at its centre, with an upside-down triangle in it. Around that circle was a star with seven points, inside another larger circle, with smaller circles between the points of the star.

I ran my hand over it, feeling the ridges and indentations in the smooth, worn leather.

“That symbol looks familiar,” Benjamin said. “But I don’t know why.”

“We could ask Mr Danby to translate some of the Latin.”

“We can’t just go showing it to people.”

“Mr Danby’s a war hero.”

“I don’t recall my father saying we could show it to war heroes. He said we had to keep it from anyone who wanted to see it.”

“Well, Mr Danby doesn’t want to see it,” I said. My eyes were starting to itch with tiredness, and my eyelids threatened to close. “It’s too bad your father had to get kidnapped for you to start doing what he asks you to do.”

“You’re not taking the seriousness of this, Janie.”

“I really am,” I said. “I’m just so tired.”

I laid my head against the arm of the couch, just to rest it for a minute, and the next thing I knew, Benjamin was shaking me awake. It was still dark in the room, and I wasn’t sure where I was. I fought my way out of sleep.

“The symbol on the book!” Benjamin whispered. “I know where I’ve seen it before!”