Where the Dead Slept

CHAPTER ONE: THE APOTHECARY’S DAUGHTER

(London, 1382 – One Month Later)

The dead were cheaper than the living.

Nell Hawkwood knew this as she counted the coins in the shop’s strongbox—three silver pennies, a handful of clipped farthings, and a promise of payment from the baker’s widow in the form of a loaf every other Sunday. The ledger beside it was a graveyard of crossed-out names. Dead. Dead. Fled the city. Dead.

She shoved the box aside, the wood scraping like a coffin lid. Her father’s shop smelled of dried rosemary and mildew, the shelves half-empty since the guild had begun withholding supplies. "A woman’s hands are too clumsy for compounding," the Barbers-Surgeons sneered.

A knock at the door.

Nell expected another debtor or a nosy neighbor come to gawk at the apothecary’s orphan. Instead, a girl no older than eight stood shivering in the rain, her arms clutched around a bundle of sodden wool.

"Please, mistress," the child whispered. "It’s my gran. She’s gone all wrong."

Nell grabbed her satchel without asking questions. Bad news traveled fast in the parish of St. Michael-le-Querne, and she’d learned the hard way that "gone wrong" could mean anything from a fever to a knife in the gut.

The girl led her through alleys that narrowed like a throat, past beggars who coughed into their sleeves and eyed Nell’s satchel with desperate hunger. The tenement they stopped at leaned against its neighbor like a drunkard, its timbers black with rot.

Inside, the air was thick with the scent of piss and something sweetly putrid. The old woman lay on a pallet, her body curled like a dead spider. At first glance, it seemed a common ague—but then Nell saw the hands.

The fingers had lengthened, the knuckles swollen into knotted growths, the nails hardened into yellowed claws. The skin around them was peeling, revealing patches of something that glistened like wet bark.

Nell’s breath caught. She’d seen this before—in her father’s journal.

"Patient exhibits lignification of the extremities," he’d scrawled in his frantic script. "Claims to have touched the ‘green stone’ near All-Hallows-the-Less. The change spreads."

The old woman’s eyes snapped open, milky with pain. "The Crow," she rasped. "He blessed me. Said I’d be strong as the oaks."

Nell’s pulse hammered. She reached for the woman’s wrist—

The door burst open.

A man stood silhouetted against the rain, his cloak dripping onto the threshold. Not the Crow—this one wore no mask, only a face sharp as a blade and twice as cold.

"Elinor Hawkwood," he said. "You’ll come with me."

Behind him, two more figures loomed, their hands resting on sword hilts.

Nell’s satchel slipped to the floor, vials clinking. "Who are you?"

The man smiled. "Sir Roland Devereux’s regards."