Opening
Two timelines tighten like a knot. In the present, Caroline Parcewell confronts her husband, stumbles into a hidden passage, and pries open a long-sealed door—straight into the lost apothecary. In 1791, a painstaking poison is prepared “one by one,” only for a single, engraved jar to undo everything.
What Happens
Chapter 16: An Unwelcome Reunion
Caroline returns to her hotel to hydrangeas and a note from James Parcewell. He arrives moments later, all apology and exhaustion. She lays ground rules—he sleeps on the sofa; she needs time—and begrudgingly agrees to lunch.
In a dim Italian restaurant, civility dissolves. James calls the affair a “screwup…over and done with,” then admits he felt trapped in their “safe, so fucking predictable” life. Caroline fires back: he pushed safety—urging her away from Cambridge, toward a secure job on her parents’ farm. The rift predates infidelity. She sees him as an adversary to her long-buried ambitions and demands days alone. After he leaves, a text from Gaynor at the library reports two 1791 bulletins—one with an image—about the apothecary. Caroline sits with this jolt of purpose and realizes her hunger for a baby masked her own dissatisfaction and the abandonment of her academic dreams.
Chapter 17: One by One
Back in February 1791, Eliza Fanning and Nella Clavinger return from harvesting blister beetles and begin roasting and grinding cantharides for Lady Clarence. The work is exacting—drying to a crisp, then reducing each beetle “one by one.” The tedium teaches Eliza what she carelessly destroyed when she tossed a previous batch into the fire, and what it costs Nella to protect women.
Lady Clarence arrives taut with nerves, collects the earthenware jar, and confirms the party is that night. She prays the mistress, Miss Berkwell, will drink quickly. Nella is visibly sickened. After the lady leaves, Nella records the purchase with a trembling hand and admits a terrible premonition: something is about to go “terribly, terribly wrong.” She then breaks Eliza’s heart—sending her away for good to keep her unspoiled, an act of protection that embodies Female Solidarity and Empowerment.
Chapter 18: The Hidden Door
That night, Caroline silently slips past sleeping James and returns to Bear Alley. She scales a locked gate despite a NO TRESPASSING sign and forces a wooden door through thornbush. Inside: a narrow, earthen corridor that matches old maps of the city’s vanished “Back Alley.”
Farther in, a second door—absent from any map. Her phone battery bleeds down as she reaches a room lined with shelves, half-collapsed along the left wall. Remembering the mudlarking rule—hunt the inconsistency—Caroline studies the damage and sees the outline of a concealed doorway. It clicks with the archivist’s riddle: “To men, a maze.” She gropes beneath the intact shelf, finds a lever, pulls—and a hidden door swings open. In the fading beam of her phone, an entire apothecary lies preserved, sealed in darkness for centuries.
Chapter 19: The Curse of Magick
On February 10, Eliza wakes in an alley, too afraid to return to the haunted Amwell house. She hunts a bookshop Nella once mentioned and finds the Shoppe of Books and Baubles off Basing Lane. Inside, a boy named Tom Pepper watches her drift to a tiny “Magickal Arts” shelf and a volume titled Spells for the Modern Household.
She reads a spell—“Elixir for Restoring Breath to the Deceased Infant’s Lungs”—and jumps when Tom says his mother used it on him; he was born dead and revived, but his mother died soon after. He calls it the “curse of magick”: every reward exacts a loss. He gives Eliza his mother’s book and asks her to return if anything works. Eliza, dazed by hope and a warm, nameless pull toward Tom, settles by St. Paul’s churchyard to hunt a spell to banish Mr. Amwell’s ghost—and to justify seeing Tom again.
Chapter 20: 3 Back Alley
Nella’s dread proves prophetic. Lady Clarence bursts in, frantic: the poisoning has gone wrong. At the party, Miss Berkwell sipped the doctored liqueur; Lord Clarence escorted her away, then finished the glass himself—and died almost instantly. His brother, a physician, is already involved.
A detail freezes Nella: the poison jar bore “jagged letters,” not only the bear mark. Eliza must have chosen from Nella’s late mother’s collection—some engraved with the shop’s address. Nella races out, finds Eliza reading peacefully near St. Paul’s, and drags her back. Eliza crawls into the low cupboard, points to the very back, and pulls a twin jar into the light: 3 Back Alley, hand-carved and faded. Eliza crumples, blaming herself for exposing them. Nella holds her and whispers, “All will be well,” even as she knows they may not escape what’s coming.
Character Development
The section redraws alliances and identities: Caroline refuses to be managed, Nella chooses maternal protection over caution, and Eliza steps toward desire and danger at once, while James reveals his own dissatisfaction without relinquishing control.
- Caroline: Sets firm boundaries with James; recognizes how she buried ambition beneath domestic plans; breaks into the alley and the apothecary as an act of self-assertion.
- Eliza: Yearns to belong to Nella’s world; develops a tender curiosity about Tom; seeks magick as a solution; makes a catastrophic but innocent mistake with the engraved jar.
- Nella: Breaks her rule and feels it in her bones; sends Eliza away to save her; when crisis hits, immediately protects the girl rather than herself.
- James: Confesses his discontent; still centers his terms by chasing Caroline to London; remorseful but out of step with Caroline’s need for autonomy.
Themes & Symbols
These chapters braid Self-Discovery and Identity with The Power of the Past and History. Caroline’s literal excavation of the apothecary mirrors her internal excavation, while a jar from Nella’s mother pierces the present with the past’s blade. Secrets engineered to preserve women’s safety become snares, amplifying Secrets and Deception: a hidden shop, a concealed mechanism, a mislabeled jar—each secrecy contains its own risk. The aftershocks of Betrayal ripple across time: James’s infidelity exposes a hollow marriage; Lady Clarence’s scheme betrays a moral order and destroys her husband; Eliza’s trust in small, safe choices falters.
Symbols sharpen these ideas. The hidden door stands for locked-away potential; opening it grants Caroline access to both history and herself. The marked jar—engraved “3 Back Alley”—embodies consequence: a relic meant for continuity turns into evidence, proof that the past is never inert. Together, they suggest that what we conceal eventually shapes what we become—and how we are found.
Key Quotes
“Safe, so fucking predictable.” James’s blunt assessment punctures the couple’s myth of contentment and catalyzes Caroline’s refusal to keep living small. It reframes their conflict as a clash of values, not a single act of cheating.
“A feeling that something is about to go terribly, terribly wrong.” Nella’s trembling foresight primes the tragic reversal to come. It functions as moral recoil—the body’s knowledge that breaking a rule costs more than the mind admits.
“To men, a maze.” The archivist’s riddle becomes both a key to the mechanism and a commentary on navigation: what confounds men opens for Caroline. It affirms her competence in a space historically barred to her.
“3 Back Alley.” This engraving collapses secrecy into evidence. It names the hidden shop, ties the murder to Nella, and transforms a tool of healing into a signature that authorities can follow.
“All will be well.” Spoken as comfort, it lands as a protective lie. Nella chooses care over truth, deepening her maternal bond with Eliza even as doom gathers.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
- Plot escalation: The clandestine trade in poisons explodes into public crisis with a nobleman’s death, shifting the past timeline into a survival thriller rooted in Revenge and Justice.
- Convergence of timelines: Caroline physically enters the apothecary, turning her from researcher to discoverer; the novel’s mysteries migrate from archives to artifacts.
- Solidified motivations: Caroline pivots from reacting to acting, choosing her own path; Nella’s priority crystallizes as saving Eliza; Eliza balances hope (Tom, magick) against guilt and fear.
- Consequence as engine: One jar, one sip, one choice—each detail shows how tiny actions steer fates, stitching the past’s hidden seams to the present’s unraveling.