The Painter's Apprentice Read Online Free Page A

the book carefully on the shelf. ‘Shall we go and see the rest?’
    She led him into the garden courtyard and from there to the summer and winter parlours where the guests were able to paint
     or work on their embroidery; they poked their noses into William’s study, the rear hall leading to the kitchen offices and
     the laundry room, game larder and still room.
    ‘What’s in here?’ asked Noah. He stood on tiptoe and squinted through a peephole in a heavy door at the dark end of the passage.
    ‘Oh! Nothing.’ Beth repressed a shiver. ‘It’s just an empty room.’
    But Noah had already turned the big key in the lock.
    The room was empty of furniture, about seven feet square, the walls padded and lined with leather. A set of manacles were
     chained to the wall. A small barred window set high up on the walls allowed a little light to penetrate.
    ‘A cell?’ asked Noah.
    As a child the cell had given Beth nightmares. Even now, after all these years, the skin on her neck crawled when she came
     near to it. It was bad enough that Noah knew the shameful secret of Joseph’sbirth but now he was insisting on poking his nose into the restraining room.
    ‘Beth? What’s the matter?’
    ‘I hate this place. When I was five or six my uncle Joshua, he’s only a year older than I, locked me in here. It wasn’t until
     supper-time that his brother Samuel came to find me.’
    ‘What a horrid trick!’
    ‘Father thrashed him for it.’
    ‘I should think so, the little devil! And do you use this room often now?’
    ‘Sometimes we have guests who need to be restrained for their own good,’ she said. ‘Occasionally someone becomes overwrought
     and is a danger to himself or to others. It’s rare because we don’t take guests who are violent and we have far fewer guests
     now than we used to. Of course, that brings problems of its own. Father cannot bear to turn away any guest whose family stop
     sending his upkeep.’
    ‘I see.’
    ‘It wasn’t always so. As a child I remember that the dormitories were full of guests at Merryfields, all of whom paid well.
     But over time Father has lost his London connections and there isn’t the same supply of people wishing to come and stay here
     to recover their spirits.’ Beth sighed. ‘I shouldn’t talk of such things.’
    Noah looked as if he was about to speak but then simply said, ‘Shall we move on?’
    They walked back across the courtyard and Beth opened another door. She stood in the entrance for a moment, inhaling the familiar
     scent of the apothecary, a heady mix of lavender and sulphur, camphor, beeswax and turpentine. Bunches of dried herbs hung
     from the beams and light slanting through the casement illuminated a row of potion-filled bottles, making them as colourful
     as a church window.
    Susannah stood before a large table, an apron tied around her slimwaist as she ground dried parsley roots in a great pestle and mortar. She glanced up and flashed a brief smile. Beth noticed
     that she was unusually pale.
    ‘Good morning!’ said Susannah. ‘I hope you slept well, Noah?’
    ‘Very well, thank you. It’s so quiet here in the country after London.’
    He looked around, unashamedly staring at the walls lined with gallypots and neatly labelled wooden drawers, the set of balance
     scales and the glass dome of leeches on the counter and the stuffed crocodile hanging from the ceiling. ‘Oh!’ he said, his
     face breaking into a smile. ‘My father told me about the crocodile!’
    ‘Sadly, it isn’t the same one that Tom knew,’ said Susannah. ‘That burned in the Great Fire. William searched high and low
     for a replacement because he said I would never feel like a real apothecary without one. But this pestle and mortar was your
     grandfather’s.’
    ‘I do wish my father could see all this!’ Noah reached up to pinch a bunch of dried rosemary suspended from the ceiling, sniffing
     the clean, resinous scent upon his fingers.
    ‘Oh, what have you