The Healer's Secret

by Helen Pryke

  “Damn it,” she cried out, and threw the book against the wall, where it landed with a thud on the floor, pages askew. What she was doing went against everything she’d ever been taught. She was a healer, the last in a long line of women who had fought against death all their lives. She felt tainted, an abomination to her family; she could almost hear the faint, ghostly cries of the women who had come before her, pleading with her to stop what she was doing. She grabbed her hair with both hands and pulled hard, desperate to make the voices stop. Her scalp stung but they were still there, louder now, clamouring to know why she was doing this. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and put her hands over her ears, trying to block them out.

  Suddenly there was a terrific crash from downstairs. The voices in her head shut up instantly. Luisa slowly took her hands away from her ears and opened her eyes. She listened carefully but there was no sound from below. She felt strangely calm, as if this moment in her life was meant to be. She went over and picked up the discarded book, smoothing the pages, and put it back on her bedside table. She ran her hands over her hair, patting it back into place, and straightened her dress.

  “Now hush,” she said to the voices, putting her finger to her lips. “It’s over. You know it had to be done.” There was a hum of protest, then she felt a strong presence she’d never noticed before and the voices faded. She felt a calm come over her, as if she’d received a blessing, and she knew she’d done the right thing.

  Walking down the stairs, the first thing she noticed was the strong smell of alcohol. It permeated the whole house with its nauseating odour. Then she saw the bottle, lying smashed on the floor, the puddle of wine still spreading across the tiles, soaking Ernesto’s slippered feet. His immobile slippered feet. This time she didn’t try to be silent, but made her way over to the armchair, careful not to step in the spilled wine. His hand drooped over the armrest, fingers splayed, the wine glass smashed on the floor below. She forced herself to raise her head and look at her husband’s face. His expression was fixed in a painful snarl, and his glassy eyes seemed to bore right through her as if he were searching for her soul. His whole body was locked in a rigid caricature of a statue, the veins standing out as if a sculptor had chiselled them into a block of marble. She stood and stared at her dead husband, completely numb, as if trapped in a bubble of time.

  She didn’t know how long she stood there, but she realised that she had to go for help if she was to keep up the charade. She pulled her shoes on and grabbed her coat, then ran out of the cottage to her mother’s house down in the village.

  She thought there would be an investigation, considering the mysterious circumstances in which Ernesto had died, but she was wrong. The doctor, well acquainted with her husband’s habits, diagnosed death from a stroke, brought on by drinking and eating too much. The police, satisfied with the doctor’s verdict, closed the case. To them it was just another drink-related incident, all too common in the area since work had dried up; they had more important things to do.

  The village gossips weren’t as lenient, however. Luisa knew they were talking about her, whispering together in the shops and doorways, nudging each other as she passed by. As always, she held her head up high and ignored them, but each comment she overheard cut into her soul like a knife. Before, she had been better than them, innocent while they had been guilty, and she had felt no shame. This time it was different. This time their barbed observations were horribly accurate, and she carried the weight of her guilt inside of her.

  The day of the funeral the church was packed. All the villagers turned up to pay their last respects to Ernesto. Luisa sat stiffly in the front pew next to Mario, her mother, Teresa and her family. She concentrated on the priest’s sermon, barely audible over the sounds of all the women sniffing and sobbing, trying to find solace in his words.

  She threw a single white rose onto Ernesto’s coffin before they covered it; only she knew that it was entwined with a cutting of belladonna, its purple flower nestled among the leaves of the rose. Her face grim, she watched as other women from the village threw flowers into the grave, trying to maintain her dignity as the grieving widow in the face of their effrontery.

  “Now it’s just you and me, Mario,” Luisa said when the ordeal was finally over, hugging her son tightly. He wriggled, trying to get away. “You won’t leave me, will you?” she pleaded.

  “Of course not, Mamma. But can you stop hugging me in front of all these people?” he whispered, his face reddening.

  She let go of him, smiling. “I forgot you’re the man of the house now,” she whispered back, winking.

  Mario did his best for her, but wondered why he often heard her pacing around her room late at night, muttering to herself, or sobbing her heart out when she thought he was asleep. He noticed that she looked exhausted, and he was sure she was losing weight. He tried talking to her, but she reassured him that everything was all right, she was just missing Ernesto and the girls. He wasn’t convinced.

  He knew he had to do something to help her and had an idea that could work. He waited until she went down to the village to do some shopping one afternoon as he knew she would be gone for a couple of hours at least. He knew where she kept the recipe book because he’d seen her take it out of the cupboard hundreds of times. He now took out the book and sat down at the kitchen table to carefully open it. He was rarely allowed to look at the book, his mother had never let him touch it, and he had to stifle his sense of wrong-doing as he gently turned the pages.

  There were recipes for every kind of ailment, from simple complaints to more serious diseases, written over the years by women in the family and amended or added to as they perfected the concoctions. The old parchment was worn in places and tissue-paper thin, and his eyes opened in wonder as he imagined his great-great-great-great-grandmother bent over a rough wooden table, scratching her notes with a feathered quill. Centuries of history were contained in that one, leather-bound book, and it made him feel dizzy to think how many women had contributed to it, including his mother. He occasionally found notes she must have written, her slanted handwriting easily recognisable.

  He searched each page for something that would help his mother sleep, and calm her down during the day, but couldn’t find anything suitable. Then he turned a page and saw some pencilled notes underneath some old-fashioned writing. He flicked the page back over and looked at the heading. Belladonna. He frowned, and returned to the pencilled notes. He knew what belladonna was; his mother had drummed it into him from an early age that he was never to touch the plant at the bottom of the Grove, just touching its leaves with his bare hands could make him very sick. No-one but his mother tended the plant, and she was always careful to cover herself before getting close to it. Once he’d asked why she kept it, if it was so dangerous.

  “Because, in very small doses, it can actually be very beneficial,” she’d explained. “It is essential for some of the medicines, but I must always weigh it out very precisely. That’s not for you to worry about, Mario… Bruna will learn how to use it, just as I did from my mother.”

  But Bruna’s no longer here, Mario thought. And these notes were written by Mamma. He bent closer, trying to see what was written. He bit his lip as he read the first sentence: Used in higher doses, the berries of the banewort plant will cause a quick, painless death. He skimmed over the recipe, not wanting to read it but feeling himself drawn to it against his will. Then he arrived at his mother’s pencilled notes. At first, he couldn’t make sense of them; a series of numbers, some calculations, times… he took a deep breath and tried to clear his head and understand what she had written.

  He arose from the table and stared out of the window, racking his brain for an answer to the puzzle. Something was nagging at him, hidden away in some dark corner of his mind. He paced backwards and forwards, glancing at the book every time he walked past the table, willing it to speak to him and reveal its secret. Then something clicked in his mind and he found the answer. He wished he hadn’t. />
  He ran over to the sink and vomited, his whole body shaking as his stomach spasmed, over and over again until he had nothing left. His legs were weak and trembling as he gripped the edge of the counter, his knees barely supporting him. He used all his strength to pull himself up. Coughing, he cleaned the sink thoroughly and opened the window to get rid of the smell. He shook as he went back to the book and sat down, staring at it. He didn’t want to touch it, his whole body trembled as the shock of what his mother had done hit him. Why? Why had she killed his father? He hadn’t been the nicest person in the world, but he had worked hard for his family and had given them everything they needed. An unpleasant thought tried to push its way out, reminding him of the beatings he’d suffered at the hands of his father, and a flashing image of Bruna, heavily pregnant, crossed his mind, but he pushed them back down. Out of sight, out of mind.

  He reached out with trembling hands and closed the book. He stumbled over to the cupboard and put it back where he’d found it, vowing never to touch it again. Crying bitterly, he knew it was a secret he would have to take to his grave if he wanted to protect his mother. No-one must know, not ever; he could never trust anyone with a secret like this.

  Chapter Eighteen

  2014

  Working in the garden was harder for her now. Luisa felt her bones creak and muscles complain every time she bent down to pull out a weed or cut off a shoot. She stood up and looked around, taking in the Grove and all the plants she’d lovingly tended over the years. Her glance passed over the grave; poor Malva had been dead fifty-four years and Luisa had been reminded of what she’d done every day since then.

  She’d never seen Bruna again, although she’d met her daughter, Angela, when she had come over for a holiday. Snorting, she took off her gardening gloves and threw them in the basket next to her. Bruna was dead now, she would never come back. Angela and her daughter were settled in England and there was no hope of either of them taking over the healer’s duties. That left Teresa’s daughter, Liliana. She was all right in her own way, but showed no healing abilities whatsoever. The few times she’d helped Luisa in the Grove many years before had been a disaster; she’d had to stop her digging up precious plants, until she’d shouted at her in frustration. The poor girl had never helped her again. Liliana’s daughter Agnese showed promise, but Luisa was too old to teach her. Lately she felt every one of her ninety-four years in her creaking bones.

  Thank goodness for Mario, she thought. He’d been her backbone for all these years, standing by her side when everyone else had left her. He’d stuck with her through thick and thin, even during those months after Ernesto’s death when certain people in the village had spread those evil lies about her.

  Mopping her brow, she sat down in the chair Mario had placed underneath the plum tree for her, sinking thankfully into the padded fabric, and leant her head back. She stared tiredly into the distance, her heart skipping a beat every now and then as she recovered her breath. She couldn’t tolerate the sun so much nowadays and was thankful for the shade the branches of the plum tree offered.

  She must have fallen asleep, as she had the strangest dream. A dragonfly appeared before her, hovering just a few inches from her nose. She jumped, startled, but it merely continued to flutter in front of her. Mesmerised, she watched the whirr of its brightly-coloured wings, beating so fast they were just a blur of colour. Then it suddenly flitted up into the branches of the plum tree and landed on a ripe plum. Her eyes followed its path as it flew to the next tree, an apple tree, and landed on top of an apple. It repeated this over and over again, flying from one tree to the next, going faster and faster, its wings shimmering in the bright afternoon sun, hypnotising her with their silvery flashes, until it came back to the plum tree. This time, when it landed on the plum, the fruit fell off and landed in Luisa’s lap with a soft plop. She picked it up and rolled it around in her bony hand, wondering what it could mean. The dragonfly hovered in the air, then flew to the ancient bush and circled around it. Luisa frowned; the bush yielded little fruit each year, which was used sparingly in all the remedies. But she saw that the delicate plant was now filled with tiny berries, so many that its branches drooped towards the earth.

  The dragonfly returned, and she slowly held out her free hand, palm up. It seemed to scrutinise her, its black, bulbous eyes staring deep into hers. If she concentrated just a little harder, she believed she’d be able to hear its voice telling her what it wanted her to do. The dragonfly settled on her outstretched palm, its legs tickling her, its wings finally at rest by its side.

  “What do I have to do?” she whispered, looking at the plum in her other hand. “Tell me, please.”

  She saw the tiny veins in its transparent wings and the different sections of its body in minute detail, and those black eyes dragged her into its mind, calling her… she felt as if she were drowning, floundering in a sea of red liquid, gasping as it entered her mouth, filled her lungs… juice, it was juice, the sweet nectar of her fruit trees, the ones she had tended all her life… after all these years, now she understood…

  She suddenly jerked, her eyes wide open, as the dragonfly flew away. There was a strange mist around her, but that was impossible, it was midday. She almost screamed as three figures stepped out of the mist towards her. The shadowy figures began to take shape, and she saw that they were her children. Bruna, young and fresh-skinned, as she’d been before Ernesto had started molesting her, before the pregnancy that had taken its toll on her body and mind; Teresa, once more with her long, dark hair flowing in the breeze, full of vitality, not the skeletal shell ravaged by cancer, lying in a hospital bed she’d last seen; and Antonio, no longer covered in red spots and pale as a sheet, his face once again as brown as a walnut from the summer sun, his curly hair as unruly as ever. She covered her mouth with her hand as they moved forwards, smiling at her, forgiveness in their eyes. Tears streamed down her face as she gazed for one last time upon them, knowing that her time was almost over and hoping that she would be reunited with them soon. They forgave her; she could feel their love emanating from them, washing over her like a calming breeze, reassuring her that she’d done nothing wrong. Then the mist stirred; they glanced over their shoulders and when they turned back to her, she saw the terror in their eyes.

  “What?” she whispered. They started to fade, and she struggled to get up out of the chair. “No,” she called as they disappeared. Her legs suddenly collapsed beneath her as she saw the reason why.

  Ernesto stood before her, his black shape unmistakable even in the swirling mist, and she saw that he was holding something. She sank back in her chair and peered through the mist. He held out the bundle in his arms, grinning at her, and she saw that it was a baby. Its pale, lifeless body hung limply in his huge hands, and she started screaming hysterically as she realised it was her granddaughter.

  “Mamma, are you all right?” Mario stood over her, shaking her shoulder, his face full of worry.

  She tried to wake up, to climb out of the black hole she’d fallen into, and it took all her strength to return to the land of the living.

  “Mamma? Do I need to call the doctor?”

  “No, no, I’m all right,” she gasped, her breath rasping in her throat. “I-I just had a nasty dream, that’s all. Teach me to work too hard, won’t it?” She looked up at Mario’s worried face. “Honestly, I’m feeling better already.”

  “Well, if you’re sure.”

  “Positive,” she replied, smiling. “See, much better now. What about you go and put some coffee on?”

  “All right. If you’re not up at the house in five minutes, I’ll come and get you,” he said, squeezing her hand.

  She watched him walk up the garden, noticing that he was limping. Time hadn’t been kind to Mario, he’d aged so much and she knew that his arthritis caused him a lot of pain. She wished that things could have been different for him, that he’d found a wife who could take care of him when she was gone. The rest of the family said he was strange
and avoided him. She could hardly blame them; he’d taken to muttering to himself as he went about his business, and didn’t care what people thought. She felt sad. She now knew that she had little time left in this world, and she didn’t want to leave him all alone.

  Getting up, she thought about the dream she’d had. A shiver ran through her body as she remembered the last part, of Ernesto holding Malva, lifeless. She tried to decipher the message she knew her children had tried to send her, but her brain was too tired. She would go and have a coffee and think about it afterwards.

  Mario was waiting for her in the kitchen, the wonderful aroma of coffee hitting her senses and making her feel more alive.

  “I need you to help me, Mario,” she said as she sipped her espresso.

  “Anything, Mamma, just tell me what you need.”

  “Tomorrow, I want you to collect all the fruit off the trees and bushes,” she said. “Plums, apples, all the berries, grapes.”

  He looked at her questioningly.

  “We’re going to make fruit juice, Mario, bottles and bottles of juice. But not just any old juice… Grove juice. And call Agnese, she can help us. Otherwise we’ll never get it done in time.”

  He knew better than to try to get any more information out of her when she was in one of her moods, and kept silent. But he wondered.

  That night, Luisa woke with a start as the church bell struck midnight. She knew what she had to do to save Malva. She could almost hear Bruna voicing her approval. She went downstairs to the kitchen and took a notepad and pen out of the drawer.

  “I will confess everything,” she murmured, smoothing the paper beneath her hands. “Purge my sins, cleanse my soul, prepare myself for the next step by unburdening my heart here and now.” She grasped the pen in her twisted, rheumatic fingers, and started to write.

  In the early hours of the morning, she lay down her pen and reread what she’d written. She blew gently across the paper to dry the ink, then carefully folded it in four. She took the recipe book out of the cupboard and slipped the paper inside the back cover.