The Poison Garden (2019 Sphere Edition)

by Alex Marwood

  Her first thought, when she sees the stain, is why did it have to happen in winter? She even considers, briefly, hiding it until the spring, but the prospect of another long winter in the Pigshed, waiting to start her life, reading Shakespeare and Dickens and Tennyson to while the hours away while Teachers who are now no more educated than she is concentrate on the little ones – and the danger, of course, of being caught in a lie – are worse than the prospect of the sudden exposure to cold and life in a woollen beanie hat that adulthood represents. So she goes to Ursola and tells her and gets swept immediately into the overwhelming current of adulthood.

  Preparations for her ceremony are hurried, for Lucien likes it done while the girl is still bleeding. And the embarrassment is so profound that she swears, deep inside, that no one will ever know such detail about her again. She shows on Monday, and her ceremony is scheduled for after evening meal on Thursday. The Cooks rustle up a batch of honey cake and the Farmers slaughter a dozen of the chickens that have passed laying so that everyone will have a taste of meat, and three flagons of cider come up from the vaults, for everyone to toast the new adult. The Healers scout the hedgerows and the herb garden for flowers and foliage for her coronet: not such an easy task in November. In the end they find penstemons and campion and pennyroyals, and wind them all up with stems of fragrant evergreen bay. Not the prettiest crown, but she is pleased, for it will dry well, and there’s something pleasingly witchy about bay.

  The women come for her at the Pigshed at four o’clock. At the door, they place the coronet on her head and lead her across the farmyard to the Bath House. Inside is a whole bathful of hot water, dried rose petals floating on the surface. A hot bath all of her own, no recycled water, no one waiting to follow her and cursing her if she lingers and lets the water cool. A roaring fire in the hearth, a bar of special lavender soap that’s usually reserved for sale to the Dead, now her own to keep. A towel warming on a clothes horse in front of the fire and a dress laid out on a chair. She feels like a queen.

  Even more so as she walks through the dining hall with Vita, once Counting Off is done, in her new linen dress. She sees her mother, one hand on her collarbone, gaze at her as though she wants to hold the image in her mind forever. Her little brother lets out a whoop at the children’s table and is hushed by the adult sitting with them; but she manages to throw a shaky smile in his direction and sees him catch it. He’s the thing she’ll miss the most about the Pigshed: the way he still bounds around her like a puppy, the way they often understand each other without the tedium of having to speak.

  Then she looks up at her destination and has to remember to breathe.

  Lucien, seated at the High Table among his children, watches her as she makes her way towards the steps. Leans to his side and says something into his daughter Zaria’s ear. Even from halfway across the hall, Romy sees the colour rise in Zaria’s face. She stands, stalks up the table and throws herself into a chair next to Jaivyn. Then Lucien is standing and waiting for her, smiling, smiling all the time as she walks. She feels his ice-blue eyes run over her, taking in her woman’s body, and blushes to the roots of her hair.

  ‘Sit, my dear,’ says Lucien, and points to the chair beside him. She sits, and Vita places herself on her other side. She wishes she felt more honoured, less conspicuous. Her seat is more throne than chair. It has a padded base, arms, and a back. You can lean back and let the wood take the weight from your spine. After fourteen years of benches, it’s certainly a novelty.

  ‘Welcome, my child,’ he says. ‘And welcome to womanhood.’

  He helps himself to a piece of bread and tears it between his fingers. Romy is too nervous to eat. She picks up her water glass and takes a drink, and her hand is shaking. Vita, sitting on Romy’s other side, puts a hand on her shoulder and smiles into her face. ‘Don’t be nervous,’ she says. ‘It’s a breeze.’

  Romy gives her a wobbly smile.

  ‘I’m very practised,’ says Vita.

  ‘I know. It’s all the people,’ Romy confides.

  ‘That you see every day.’

  ‘They’re not all watching me every day.’

  Vita raises an eyebrow. ‘So you don’t like being the centre of attention, then?’

  ‘Do you?’

  Vita blinks. ‘Sometimes one has to accept things one doesn’t enjoy for the greater good,’ she says. ‘We all do.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Romy.

  ‘You will be surprised by what you can do, when it’s necessary.’

  ‘I hope so,’ says Romy.

  The food arrives on platters, as it does in the main hall. They seem that little bit fuller up here, though. Not by much: an extra inch of potato here, half a dozen pieces of chicken there. Nothing that would be obvious from the tables below. When the platter arrives in front of her, she hesitantly takes a thigh with the fork and spoon laid on top, puts it on her plate and puts her hands into her lap while she waits for everyone else to be served.

  ‘Come on, child,’ says Lucien. ‘Have another.’

  She gapes. Never, ever in her life has there been a second piece of chicken. For the Farmers and the Builders maybe, at times when the work is especially intense, but not for the likes of her.

  ‘Special food for a special occasion,’ he says. Smiles down at her and jerks his chin encouragingly. Lucien has recently grown a close-cropped beard, and there’s a peppering of silver in among the golden hairs. She wonders briefly if this is some sort of test, but then she looks down the table and sees that there are two pieces on most of the plates. And Father doesn’t lie, she tells herself. He hates lying, so why would he do it to me? She takes a drumstick and adds it to her plate. Saliva floods onto her tongue.

  ‘So tell me, Romy, how old are you?’

  ‘Fourteen,’ she says.

  ‘A late bloomer!’ he says. ‘Never mind. Well worth the wait.’

  Romy goes scarlet, stares down at her plate in confusion.

  ‘Lucien … ’ says Vita, and she sounds as though she’s warning him.

  ‘Are you ready for your responsibilities?’

  ‘I hope so,’ she replies again.

  ‘And what will you be, do you think?’

  I want to be a Healer, she thinks. Please let me be a Healer. But she knows the right response, and she uses it. ‘I shall be whatever Vita and Uri say I should be,’ she says. She’ll find out soon enough. Vita and Uri will tell her her assignment in the Council Chamber when the feast is done.

  ‘Good girl,’ he says, ‘good girl,’ and he picks up his cutlery and begins to eat. ‘I should think,’ he says, ‘you can’t wait to grow up.’

  ‘Which is still in four years, Lucien,’ says Vita.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he says. ‘Plenty of time to look forward in.’

  There is butter on the winter cabbage. She never knew how delicious cabbage could be.

  The Guards have taken increasingly to taking their own evening meal together, in the new house they’ve had restored for their use by the reservoir despite Vita’s indignant protests, but Uri has come across to sit with the Family tonight, specifically because of Romy’s feast; there’s a three-line whip for the birth family, where feasts are concerned. He doesn’t look as though he’s relishing the experience. He sits between Eden and Heulwen, the two youngest, and eats without speaking. I wonder, she thinks, what they did that has made him not like them?

  The two girls look a bit cowed, sit with their elbows on the table and their hands supporting their heads as they stab at their food. Eden is toying with her food more than eating it. If she were down in the hall, she would be earning a stiff reproach from the Cooks.

  She looks across the table at Romy, and calls out, ‘So you’ve got your period, then? What’s it like?’

  Romy’s face flames.

  All the way down at the foot of the table, Eilidh shines her sweet smile on her and waggles her fingers in greeting; rolls her eyes to show she knows how she feels. And Romy feels better, because if there’s Eilidh
she will always have support. Eilidh and Ilo will always be on her side, however embarrassed she is.

  And then the apples are eaten and Lucien pushes his chair back and rises to his feet. Romy’s stomach lurches. Childhood is over.

  ‘Today is a day to rejoice,’ says Lucien, and the room erupts. Banging on tables. Spoons on glasses. The Cooks bustle up the aisles dispensing cider and squares of honey cake. Everyone apart from the children gets a glass of cider and everyone will drink. Romy sits with downcast eyes, for even on this special day there will be people watching her for signs of vanity. Especially her, with the mother she has. But she can’t stop a little smile from playing on her lips as she blushes. Me. They’re cheering for me.

  ‘Tonight,’ continues Lucien, ‘we welcome one of our young to the challenges and responsibilities of adulthood. Tonight, she is no longer a child, but stands shoulder to shoulder with us all. Welcome, Romy Blake. Welcome to the future.’

  She stands. The room erupts again. Thunder in her ears, part pulse, part deafening noise. Lucien, all smiles, presses his palms to her cheeks again, then enfolds her in a paternal, masterly hug. He smells of soap and wood smoke. And some rich woody fragrance that she doesn’t think originates among the flora of north Wales. When he lets go, he manoeuvres her round to face the crowd. She sees her friends from the Pigshed, applauding. Her mother’s hands clasped in front of her face, in prayer position.

  Lucien raises a hand. His people sit. It’s funny, thinks Romy, that I don’t have to say anything myself. But I suppose it makes sense. I may feel special, but all I’m really doing is becoming a part of the great totality. I’ve a long way to go before I’m important enough to speak. And part of her feels glad, for she’s not sure that her voice would work. She looks up at Lucien and feels a glow of love. She feels energised, electrified, changed. Ready.

  A chair is placed at the front of the stage by two of the Cooks, in front of the Family. Beside it, a little table. On its surface, the large shears they use for cutting sinew in the kitchen, the clippers, a small blue bag. She steps away from Lucien and takes her new seat, hearing the thud thud thud in her head. And then Vita is there, bending down to her, smiling into her face and planting a light, rose-scented kiss on each of her cheeks. They smell so good, the Leaders. ‘Congratulations, Romy,’ she murmurs. ‘Welcome to the world.’

  Romy sits. Bows her head while Vita removes her coronet and lays it gently on the table. Then Vita takes the shears, brushes Romy’s mane of thick, shiny, waist-length hair off her face, coils it around and around her hand until it is taut, and turns her into an adult.

  She has never felt so naked. She longs to put a hand up and feel the shape of her skull, run her fingers over her moleskin scalp. So this is how my mother felt, she thinks, but without the shame. Her warm blanket of hair, protection against the cold, has been tied with a ribbon and dropped into the blue velvet bag. She will never see it again. Vita replaces the coronet. It itches and prickles, the newly exposed skin tender as a baby’s. She will wear it, nonetheless, until it begins to wilt, and then the Cooks will take it away, hang it on a chimney wall to dry, wrap it in tissue paper and give it to her for her box, a souvenir of her great day.

  She doesn’t know it, but her eyes look huge. Bambi eyes.

  19 | Romy

  2009

  At the end of her Assignment Ceremony in the Council Chamber, Vita stays behind when Uri leaves, with some pretext of Women’s Talk that sends him hurrying for the door. Then she closes it behind him and turns to Romy with the sweet smile they see too rarely these days.

  ‘Are you happy?’

  Would it matter if I weren’t? thinks Romy. But she smiles back and pronounces herself delighted. In a way, she is. She’s not to be a Farmer or a Launderer or a Cook. But nor is she a Healer or an Engineer. She is to live outside the Hierarchies. Attached to the Healers but not of them. Special, and yet not. Medical Horticulturalist: the only one in the compound. Always just on the outside, looking in.

  ‘It’s not the end,’ says Vita. ‘Understand that. We can’t just make you a Healer, not straight away. We made your mother one, after all, and she let us down.’

  ‘I’m not my mother,’ says Romy.

  ‘No,’ says Vita. ‘And you can earn your place.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘How?’

  ‘By proving that the trust we’ve put in you is justified, Romy,’ says Vita. ‘There’s hardly anyone in the compound, especially not one your age, who gets so much trust.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she says, meaning it a little more as she thinks about the estate, the farm, the moorland, the woods. It will all be hers. As long as her work is done, as long as they can see that her work is done, she will be able to go wherever she chooses. Maybe one day she will even get to go out among the Dead and see their world, for she is to apprentice with the Beemaster as well, taking care of the hives that remain when he takes the others out into the world to pollinate orchards and market gardens and great fields of flowers and bring back the foreign honey. Honey is life itself. The Cooks use it in the kitchen and the Healers keep it sealed up in sterile jars, as an antiseptic for dressing wounds.

  My knife will be useful, she thinks. I’m glad I made it. I shall need a sturdy blade, to harvest tough stems. A blade and a spade and an eye for ripeness. I’ve learned the plants already; that’s why they’ve chosen me. All that time I’ve spent in the physic garden, the lessons I learned from Somer, the books I carried with me everywhere: I may not be a Healer yet, but I shall at least be a Someone.

  She is to take charge of the physic garden. But more. Romy is to be both forager and protector. She is to cover the whole of Plas Golau with her observant eye, ripping up Destroying Angels as they sprout, plucking out the hemlock, the ragwort, the henbane, the bryony, the water dropwort, the nightshades: everything poisonous to livestock as well as humans. She is to carry bags for the good, the bad and the in-between, and bring the latter two to Vita for disposal. Vita disposes of all the poisons herself, since the accident when two people collapsed after inhaling the fumes from burning rhododendron.

  She can earn her way into the Infirmary, they have assured her. Do her job well, be diligent, be tireless, bring home the analgesics and the antipyretics, the unbroken cobwebs for clotting wounds, the docks to soothe the rashes, the mints to settle stomachs. The poisons, as well. Many poisons are also medicines, of course. The plants that both cure and kill must come back to the Infirmary with her in a basket, as undamaged as she can manage. And bring them back well enough and one day, one day, Romy, we will trust you to do more.

  ‘I need you to do something for me, Romy,’ says Vita. ‘We’re old friends.’

  Romy glows.

  ‘Lucien is very tired,’ says Vita. ‘Caring for us all, making decisions for us all, worrying for our future – it takes it out of him. Do you see?’

  Romy nods. ‘He is so good to us.’

  ‘I do what I can to ease his burden.’ Vita sighs. ‘He can’t be everywhere, but nor can I. And people – some people – they’re not as loyal as they should be. We need to work together. You know that. We’re only as strong as our weakest link.’

  Romy falls quiet. Sometimes, in the dormitories, in the kitchens and the corridors, she has heard rumbles of discontent. Complaints, contempt, bad words about their peers. It’s the fact that she was still a child, of course. People forget that children have ears.

  ‘I need you to be my eyes, Romy,’ says Vita. ‘You can be anywhere. That’s the great privilege of this position. I need you to be my ears. People see me coming and they change. You, they won’t even notice.’

  Romy gulps, nods. Vita wants her to be a spy. The price of her freedom will be spying on her comrades.

  ‘I don’t want you to denounce,’ says Vita. ‘Not that. I’m not asking you to have people punished. It’s just for me. So I know. So I know when there’s a problem beginning. So I can do something to help. Do you understand? Just pause, when you’re near, and
listen. To the Farmers, the Blacksmiths, the Teachers. To the Guards, down in that house away from all the rest. I can’t be everywhere. Just listen, when you can.’

  The Guards. She’d known that they were going to come up. The unease between Vita and Uri is ever more noticeable: The flow of words that stops when the other comes within earshot, the tiny jerks of the head that indicate offence. She wants me to watch the Guards, she thinks. And she’s not surprised.

  The first hill frost has settled while she’s been indoors. She gasps as she pulls open the door to the Great Hall, begins instantly to shiver in her silly thin dress, her naked scalp exposed to the blasting cold. The dormitory she shares with seven other women – she stopped sleeping in the same quarters as her mother when she was seven years old – is two hundred yards away. It’s an old wooden chalet beyond the courtyard wall that used to be the home of a single counsellor back in the days when Plas Golau was a prison for troubled teens, and she’s privileged to be there rather than in the old potting sheds where Farmers like her mother live. But she is barefoot, and it never occurred to anyone to bring a coat for her from the Bath House, and the air is cold, and once she’s beyond the courtyard wall she will be all alone in the dark.

  She holds on to the banister as she descends the Great House steps, for the stone can be icy on a cold night. And when she hits the gravel she starts to run, eager for the warmth awaiting her.

  A figure steps into the gateway and bars her way. It’s Uri.

  Romy skids to a halt ten feet away, eyes him suspiciously, unsure whether to go back or forward.