Scarlet Widow Read Free

cobbles. Inside, however, the air was stifling and there was no sound at all.
    She drew back her blankets and went across to her parents’ room. Her father was kneeling on the floor beside the bed, his head bowed, holding her mother’s hand. Her mother was lying on the pillow with her eyes closed, perfectly still, not breathing.
    ‘Papa?’ Beatrice whispered.
    Her father turned to her, and she had never seen anybody’s face look so stricken.
    ‘Mama is with God now, Bea,’ he told her. ‘From now on, it’s just you and me, with nobody to care for us but ourselves.’

Four
    The day of Nancy Bannister’s funeral was warm, but gloomy, with low grey cloud. Before the service she lay on view in the parlour, dressed in a white woollen shroud with her head resting on a white woollen pillow, as required by the Burial in Woollens Act.
    Beatrice approached the coffin with her father holding her hand. Without a word he lifted the flannel that covered her mother’s face. Beatrice pressed her hand over her mouth. She could scarcely believe that this figure was her mother. Her face was the colour of ivory, and her eyes were as deep and dark as two inkwells.
    ‘Don’t be alarmed, Bea,’ said her father. ‘Your mother is in heaven now, smiling and laughing. This is nothing more than the body that bore her suffering for her.’
    The coffin was carried from the parlour into the street outside, where a hearse drawn by two black horses was waiting to take it the short distance to St James’s Church in Clerkenwell Close. A silent procession set off, led by the balding young parson, the parson’s mute, and a feather-man with a tray of black ostrich feathers balanced on his head. It began to feel like rain.
    In the church, in a high, sing-song voice the balding young parson extolled Nancy’s virtues as a wife and a mother and then commended her soul to God. The church echoed so that it sounded as if three parsons were all talking at once. The bell was rung six times, as was customary for a woman. Afterwards, the bearers took Nancy’s coffin down to the crypt to join more than two hundred others from St James’s parish who slept together in the darkness.
    The rain didn’t start to patter down until the funeral guests had returned to the house, and then it began to dribble down the windows like tears. Nancy’s sisters, Jane and Felicity, served tea and cinnamon cake, while Clement handed round glasses of port wine. His hand trembled as he did so, and his face was so ashen with grief that he looked ill.
    ‘Now you shall have to be the lady of the house, young Beatrice,’ said her Aunt Felicity. ‘No more schooling at Mrs Tutchin’s, I imagine.’
    ‘Not a bit of it,’ said Clement. ‘Bea shall carry on with her classes, just as before.’
    ‘But, Clement! How on earth will you manage ? You don’t look at all well, if you don’t mind my saying so! I don’t want to be back here before Christmas for another funeral!’
    Clement shook his head. ‘Every young girl needs French, and mathematics, and logic, as well as cookery and plain-work. But Bea shall help me with the business, too. She has always shown a great aptitude for mixing medications, ever since she was old enough to hold a spoon. She preferred it to baking biscuits with her mother. One day, you mark my words, she will be London’s first and most celebrated female apothecary.’
    ‘A female apothecary? I can hardly see that being acceptable! Especially one so young and so pretty! How many gentlemen will feel comfortable coming to a female apothecary, especially if they have any kind of private ailment?’
    ‘I doubt if it will be any fewer than those who ask me every day of the week for calomel lotion. It’s never for themselves, you see. It’s always for a “friend”.’
    Beatrice said, ‘Calomel lotion? That’s for the French disease, isn’t it, papa?’
    ‘Oh! I’m quite shocked!’ Aunt Felicity exclaimed, throwing up her black-gloved hands.