The Poison Diaries

by Wood, Maryrose

  We follow Father from plant to plant. “Bittersweet,”he points out, “and adder’s root, and mandrake. And this potent specimen is called oleander—”

  Suddenly Weed clutches his head in pain. “No!” he cries. “These are not plants to heal the sick. These are poison! All of them … poison …”

  Something twists inside my chest. Is it true? I knew these plants were dangerous if misused, Father always told me that—but is Father’s private, closely guarded collection of plants really nothing more than a poison garden? A locked armory of deadly, living weapons? For what purpose would he, or anyone, create such a wicked place?

  “You must know it is not as simple as that, Weed,” Father says smoothly. “The plant that can kill can also cure, if only one has the knowledge to use it properly. That is why it is so important—so very important—that you tell me what you know.”

  Weed shakes his head violently back and forth, as if he would cast out some deeply embedded pain.

  “Are you all right?” I cry out, but as I reach toward him I lose my balance and stumble into a nearby garden bed. My arm brushes against what looks like a nettle. It feels like a thousand pins plunging into my flesh. Within seconds, a tiger’s striping of scarlet welts begins to rise and scroll around my skin.

  Father does not even turn around. “Do be careful, Jessamine,” he says casually, walking on. “I paid a great deal of money for some of these plants.”

  I cradle my wounded arm. The burning sensation forces tears into my eyes. Vivid, puffy stripes rise and spread with shocking speed. “A dock leaf will take way the sting,” I tell Weed with forced calm, though I feel suddenly light-headed. “I’m sure we will find one on the walk home.”

  “A dock leaf might, if that were an ordinary nettle.” Weed closes his eyes, then walks in staggering zigzags until he reaches a small group of plants near the southern fence. Dizzily I scurry after him.

  “Weed,” I whisper hoarsely. “please, do not touch anything. Father will be furious—”

  Ignoring my objections, he bends down and tears a leaf from a low, inconspicuous shrub, then stands and rubs it on my skin. The worst of the pain subsides at once, and the sharp pinpricks turn to a dull throbbing.

  Father has wandered far ahead of us; now he turns. “Come along, you two, what is holding you back?” A glance from Weed instructs me to say nothing. I draw my shawl close around my arm to cover the welts, which are already starting to recede.

  Father calls again: “Make haste, Jessamine. I want you to see this.”

  I glance behind me. Weed’s lips are pale and moving rapidly, as if he were reciting some desperate prayer. Please, let Father not see him acting so oddly, I think.

  Ahead, Father beckons. Obediently I go to him. He steps aside with a smile.

  “Look—here are some old friends of yours.”

  Before me are the belladonna sprouts. Each one is nearly a foot tall now, delicate and lanky. They sway in unison with the breeze, like a company of dancers.

  The sight of them makes me forget everything else: the fading throb in my arm, Weed’s bizarre behavior behind me on the path, Father’s strange, cool indifference—

  “My belladonna seeds!” I exclaim. “Look how well they are growing. Weed, come see.”

  I kneel down to get a better look at the infant shoots. Truly, it is a miracle, the way a tiny nubbin of a seed can so quickly transform into lush green growth.

  “Isn’t it amazing?” I say to Weed, who now stands next to me. He looks ashen and preoccupied. I keep my voice merry and my arm hidden beneath my shawl, so Father will not suspect anything is amiss. “Before the season is over these plants will be nearly as tall as I am.”

  Playfully, I tease the little plants with the tip of a stick I find on the ground. “Hello, lovely girls. I wonder if you remember me? Jessamine, who bathed you so tenderly, and cared for you every day before you were born?”

  With sudden violence Weed seizes the stick and snaps it in two. He looks at me, as if astonished by his own act. Then he groans and collapses to the ground.

  Father and I carry a half-conscious Weed back to the cottage. He feels impossibly heavy; with each step it is as if we are pulling him from the earth.

  “Did you see him touch any of the plants?” Father grunts. “Did he taste anything? Smell anything?”

  We will be banned forever from the garden now, I think, but for Weed’s sake I tell the truth. “He did, Father, but only to help me. When I fell into that nettle plant, he tore a leaf from something to ease the burning.” I drop my shawl and hold up my arm to show him. The red welts have already faded, and the skin is cool and flat, with only faint pink streaks to show where I was hurt.

  “Which plant? Which plant did he touch?”

  “I don’t know!” The look on Father’s face is terrifying; for an awful moment I cannot tell if he is upset because Weed is ill, or because he had the nerve to tear a leaf from one of Father’s precious plants—or because Father himself did not know which plant cured the nettle sting.

  With Weed slung over his shoulder, Father opens the cottage door with a violent kick and marches straight up the stairs to my bedchamber.

  “Can you help him?” I plead.

  Father lets Weed slide off his shoulder and onto the bed, then walks around the room and opens all the windows fully. “If he did not ingest any of the leaves, the fresh air will revive him soon enough. And if he did, he is worse than a fool, for he must have known exactly what would happen.”

  He turns and looks down at his patient. Weed’s breaths come evenly, and his eyes flutter back and forth beneath closed lids.

  “He dreams. That is a good sign.” Father takes a light blanket and places it over Weed’s frame. “If only I could look through some enchanted lens that would let me observe those dreams,” he murmurs. “They might reveal much.”

  I too long for such an enchanted lens. Do you dream of me, Weed? I wonder. Do you dream of our kiss, as I do? Or was it only a moment’s fancy, already forgotten?

  Father’s penetrating gaze finds me and pins me to the spot. “I am more sure of it than ever, Jessamine. Somehow this silent, unschooled boy knows more than I do about the very plants I have made my life’s work. But how? Has he revealed anything to you? You must not keep it from me if so.”

  “I do not know what Weed knows, or how,” I say earnestly. “I wish I did.”

  Father stares at me until I have to look away.

  I do not think he believes me.

  I spend the night dozing in a chair I drag up to my bedchamber from the parlor. My sleep is so light and broken that I dream all night long. They are strange dreams of icy water, swirling about my ears—

  I am a mere speck tossed about in a turbulent sea, while a smiling giantess empties and refills the ocean beds with rushing, foam-flecked tides, again and again and again—

  It is nearly dawn before Weed begins to stir. At once I am at his bedside. His eyes do not open, but he breathes a single word:

  “Jessamine.”

  My heart swells until it hurts. What is this feeling, this deep ache that contains both pain and joy? Is it some leftover poison from that strange nettle? Is it love?

  “I am here, Weed.” I lift his hair back off his forehead. “I was so frightened! What happened to you in the garden? Was it anything to do with that leaf you picked?”

  He shakes his head. “The voices are strong there. So strong, so cruel. So beautiful. They want me to stay.”

  “What voices? Who wants you to stay?”

  He looks at me with those fathomless green eyes. “Jessamine,” he whispers, so softly his words seem to enter my ears like the sound of a breeze in the meadow. “I am not like other people. I ought not to speak of these things.”

  My mind whirls—there is so much about Weed I do not know. So much I could ask, and should ask—but I am afraid.

  Surely it would be better not to know….

  But I must be braver than that. “I touched the b
elladonna plants with a stick,” I say, in a trembling voice. “And then you cried out.”

  His eyes widen into two green marbles, swirls of liquid emerald enclosed within perfect spheres. The early morning sun renders their color translucent, like the licorice-scented absinthe Father drips into his water glass, one intoxicating spoonful at a time.

  I take Weed’s hand in both of my own. “Can you at least tell me why you collapsed in the apothecary garden?” I plead. “These voices of yours—to whom do they belong?”

  The curtains billow inward from the window. The fragrant spring air caresses us both. I lean forward until my face is a handsbreadth from his. I close my eyes and imagine brushing my lips against his, again and again.

  “Tell me what you know,” I whisper. “Show me what you see.”

  “I wish I could.” He turns his face away. “But I cannot.”

  The kiss dies on my lips.

  10

  15th May

  No work is permitted today. It is a holiday! I have declared it to be Weed’s birthday.

  He is still puzzled by the notion, so I suppose I will have to explain it to him. In any case, it is a pleasant excuse to skip chores and have a picnic.

  WEED IS SEVENTEEN NOW, more or less.

  After the incident with the dandelion I know better than to weave daisy chains and drape them around his neck in honor of the day (or the week, or the month—birthday calculations are no more than a guess, in Weed’s case).

  I ask him if I may give him a small gift. I do not wish to embarrass him or be intrusive, but I know he is not likely to have received many birthday presents in his life. I would like to remedy that a little, if I could.

  “You may, if you like” is his shrugged reply. “If it would make you happy.”

  “It would, but it is more important that it make you happy. That is the whole point of a present. Is there something in particular you would enjoy?”

  He smiles and says only, “Good soil, sun, and rain. What more does one need in the spring?”

  Not willing to take dirt, sun, and rain for an answer, I secretly begin to knit him a scarf, in shades of green and brown, interwoven with flecks of daffodil yellow. Since it will not be finished for a few days yet, I also choose a book I think Weed might find interesting, from among some of Father’s recent purchases in London.

  I bake a tray of small seedcakes with a honey glaze. I wrap them in linen napkins and place them in a basket to take with us on our afternoon ramble, along with a bottle of cider, the book I plan to give as a gift, and some paper and charcoal pencils for sketching in case the mood strikes us.

  Father is gone for the day on some explorations of his own. I am glad of his absence, to be truthful—he watches Weed too carefully now, ever since our trip to the walled garden and Weed’s subsequent brief illness. He hovers too close, asks too many questions. Certainly that is no way to spend a birthday!

  Weed waits, somewhat bemused, as I prepare the basket. Finally we head off. Together we walk a long way, until we find a pleasant grassy knoll where we can sit and unpack our lunch. The air is sweet and buzzes with the hum of insect wings.

  “Don’t you envy the bees—the way they can crawl right inside the flower?” I say, swatting some of the eager intruders away from the sticky glaze on the cakes. “It must be so soft and sweet smelling in there among the petals. I wonder if it tickles?”

  “I have reason to think it does,” Weed replies contentedly, gazing up at the sky. “The bees have a very close knowledge of the blossom.”

  “More so than even the greatest botanists.” I pour two small glasses of cider and hand one to Weed, who murmurs his customary words of grace. “I used to think I would like to be a botanist someday, but Father forbids me to study. Luckily he always leaves stacks of books by his chair in the parlor. I often sneak one or two when he is not looking.”

  “That is dishonest,” Weed says, not sounding particularly disturbed.

  I take a nibble of seedcake, still warm from the hearth. “I have no choice. Father says, ‘Anyone who thinks botany is a fit profession for a lady does not know much about plants.’”

  Weed rolls on his side and smiles. “It sounds as if he believes there is something sinful about horticulture.”

  “Oh, but there is!” I remove the book from the bottom of the basket and open it. “This volume describes the classification system of the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, whom Father mentioned when we walked together in the apothecary garden. If it pleases you, you may have it as a birthday present.”

  “Thank you,” Weed says. “I may not understand it, but thank you.”

  I cannot help but laugh. “I hope you will understand it! Linnaeus says the plants get married and make new plant families, and then those families intermarry and create the species, and then the species intermarry and produce the varieties. You can see why Father would object.”

  “I suppose,” says Weed. “But at least they were all legally wed.” He rolls over then and asks me quite bluntly, “Will you marry someday, Jessamine?”

  “Of course,” I blurt, suddenly flustered. “Or—I don’t know. I suppose I will, but one must first—that is to say, a suitable person would have to propose to me, and I would have to accept, and my father would have to approve, also.” Does he not even remember how we kissed? I think, bewildered. Surely it is not my place to remind him!

  “What is suitable?” he asks, all innocence.

  “Weed, your questions are so bold today!” I make myself sound cross to conceal how confused I feel. “A suitable person would be someone whom I cared for, who cared for me, and was kind and understanding and able to make a good home with me.”

  “Was I wrong to kiss you if I am not suitable, then?”

  His words have the impact of a blow. “You were certainly wrong to kiss me,” I exclaim, “if you meant nothing by it!”

  “Jessamine! I am sorry. Please—don’t cry!”

  But it is too late; my feelings spill out in a rain of tears. “What does that mean, that you are not suitable?” I gasp out between sobs. “Do you not care for me at all, then?”

  “Of course I care for you!” he exclaims. Even through my own tears I can see there is real pain in his eyes, and surprise as well. “And do you care for me also?”

  “Yes,” I confess. “Yes, I do.”

  But I cannot speak more, because he kisses me again, differently this time—this kiss is no tender question, but the luxurious, entitled kiss of one who now knows his feelings are returned. The sweet taste of seedcakes and cider mingles on our lips. My quickening heart fills my ears with a rushing sound, like the wind in the grass, like the sea.

  After what seems a blissful aeon, he pulls away and gazes upon me. His look is so full of innocence, like a wild thing—utterly guileless and full of mystery at the same time.

  “Weed,” I say, now smiling through my tears. “You are really not like anyone else I have ever met.”

  “I know,” he says darkly. “I know.”

  The next morning brings a fresh surprise: Father needs us to run an errand in Alnwick—not just in the town, but at the castle itself. I am excited, as I have only been inside the castle gates a few times in my life.

  Weed is unimpressed by all that but is content to escort me on the journey. I briefly wonder if Father had considered sending Weed alone, but perhaps Father does not fully trust Weed with his precious medicines just yet—for that is our errand, to deliver a packet of fever remedy to one of the duke’s servants.

  It is a little more than an hour’s walk to Alnwick, a modest distance to experienced wanderers like Weed and myself. But there is a storm brewing low in the eastern sky, blowing in from the sea. We set off early at a brisk pace, in the hopes of returning home before it breaks. When we arrive at the crossroads, Weed stops.

  “North, south, east, west,” he says quietly. “Four directions in which to run away. But now all I feel is how much I would like to stay at Hulne Abbey, with you.”
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  “I am glad,” I say. The depth of my joy is almost too much to express.

  “It seems I have put down roots,” Weed adds as we turn down the southern road.

  The closer we get to Alnwick, the more fellow travelers we encounter.

  “It must be market day,” I observe, pulling my cloak around my head. “Too bad we cannot stay.”

  “Why not?”

  I shrug. “Father always taught me to avoid mingling with the townspeople. When I was young, he worried that they might trick me into revealing some of his hard-earned knowledge. Now I suppose he worries that they might think me a witch.”

  We cut quickly through the crowds, picking our way over cobblestone streets to Bailiffgate, through which the road to the castle passes.

  “Father took me into the keep once or twice, many years ago, not long after Mama died and there was no one to watch me at Hulne Abbey,” I explain. “He comes to use the duke’s library.”

  “Why is he permitted to do that?”

  “It is in payment for his services. Years ago the duke offered him the old chapel to live in and a yearly income, if the people of Alnwick might have free use of his medical skills. Father replied that, since the chapel was only a ruin, he had no qualms about taking it off the duke’s hands, as long as he would be permitted to plant gardens all around, but he would rather have the run of the library than a salary. Oh, Weed, there it is—look.”

  The road has led us to the bottom of a wildflowerstrewn hill. Above and before us is the ancient, terrifying grandeur of Alnwick Castle.

  “Yes,” Weed murmurs, his eyes still fixed on the ground. “It is beautiful—very beautiful indeed.”

  According to Father’s instructions, the fever remedy is to be delivered to “Mrs. S. Flume, Cook.” We gain entry by showing the guard the parcel and our letter of introduction from Father, which has the duke’s seal on it. Nodding, the guard directs us to the kitchen entrance, which is to the left and down a steep stone stairway.