The Poison Garden (2019 Sphere Edition)

by Alex Marwood

  Romy freezes.

  ‘Don’t you look?’ asks Somer. ‘Have I taught you nothing at all?’

  She looks down. The mushroom, now that she’s looking properly, barely resembles the ones they’ve been picking. It has a sturdy white base, yes, and a generous cap. But it’s greenish, and its gills are white.

  ‘It’s a Death Cap, you twit.’

  Romy drops the fungus as though it were scalding. They are taught about the Death Cap, and the Destroying Angel and the Dapperlings, long before they learn to forage. Like yew trees and foxgloves and deadly nightshade, like adders and hemlock and unwashed wounds, they are the stuff of schoolroom legend, drummed into them as soon as they can talk. The land is lovely and will be their salvation, but there are things that grow there that will kill you.

  ‘No, don’t throw it away.’ Somer gets out the black bag and scoops it up. ‘Where did you find it? We need to mark the place, so we can keep coming back and picking them till they’re all gone.’

  Romy points. Now she’s looking she sees half a dozen, near-phosphorescent against the forest floor. ‘Don’t put your hands near your mouth,’ says Somer. ‘Literally just one of those can kill a dozen people. You’re not to touch anything until you’ve washed your hands, do you hear?’ She quickly scoops the remaining fungi up with the bag. ‘Come on. We’re going to have to go back now. Take them to Vita so she can dispose of them. Oh, honestly, Romy, and it was all going so well.’

  ‘Sorry,’ says Romy. Her fingers itch and she longs to wipe them on something. She feels as though the poison is seeping through her pores, will start at any moment to stop her liver. A long, slow death, hallucinating and bleeding from her orifices. She’s heard the stories.

  ‘It’s okay,’ says Somer. ‘Just … be more careful, eh? If this had got in with the others we’d have had to throw the lot away, and then we’d have to confess. It’ll be all right. It’s good we found them. A good scrub with the scrubbing brush and you’ll be fine. And it’s getting on. We don’t want to be late for drill. What is it tonight, anyway?’

  ‘Toxic gas,’ says Romy.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ says Somer. ‘We’ve not had that for a while. Good to keep your hand in, eh?’

  8 | Romy

  September 2001

  Everybody is a nobody. Everyone is a someone.

  The Blacksmiths beat the letters out in the smithy and fixed them into an arch above the courtyard gate. You pass in, you pass out, you are reminded. They repeat it to each other constantly – as compliment, as negation – for it is a phrase that will work as either. Romy will be well into her teens before she notices the blandness of the words, the shallowness of the sentiment, of so many of the adages by which they live their lives. But their purpose is so high that it won’t matter, even then. Daily life depends on a shorthand of proverb and platitude, of automatic response that keeps them on the straight and narrow. And the Ark is working towards a noble goal.

  Romy is on her knees in the physic garden behind the old chapel, in prayer position, plucking weeds from the soil around the black cohosh plants. ‘A garden,’ says Father, ‘is like a society. Weeds, unchecked, will choke the useful plants, and steal the nutrients they need to live. We must be vigilant. Bad thoughts, bad ideas, bad people – all of them threaten our survival.’

  She’s so caught up in her task, reciting the Latin and common English names for the plants around her, that she doesn’t at first notice the tall, handsome figure sweeping towards her from the graveyard gate. But then Vita calls her name, and she leaps to her feet. Vita knows all of their names, of course, but it’s rare to be addressed by her, so when it happens you feel privileged. And today is special. Her mother went into labour in the dark dormitory in the small hours, and today Romy will become a sister.

  Or an orphan, for childbirth is a serious business.

  ‘Hello,’ she says. ‘Is it over?’

  Vita flashes her glorious smile. ‘Yes,’ she replies. ‘You have a sister. Are you ready to come and meet her?’

  Romy gulps, and nods. A sister! Imagine! But excitement doesn’t stop her from carefully cleaning off her tools in the water bucket by the pump, drying them with a cloth and putting them back on their proper hooks before she follows.

  The chapel graveyard, where the Llewellyn family sleep beneath weathered headstones and the honourable dead of Plas Golau lie unmarked and unremembered, is empty of people, but the courtyard is full. Harvest is in full swing and the Cooks have spilled out of the kitchens to use the space, simmering great vats of fruit butters, those little vitamin shots on a teaspoon. But they pause in their work as Romy and Vita sweep through the yard, to offer congratulations. A birth is a rare event, and today Romy has become sister to one of Lucien’s children. Which practically makes her Lucien’s family herself. Of course, Lucien is Father to all of them, but this is different.

  Romy has to trot to keep up with Vita’s long strides. She waves to people as they pass through, calls out in her soft American accent. Yes! It’s a girl! They’re doing great! I should think she’ll be back at work in a couple of days. I surely will. No, tomorrow, maybe. We’ve got her Naming Ceremony later, and I think they’ll both need rest after that.

  Everyone smiles when they see Vita. Vita and Lucien. Whenever they appear, everyone smiles. Today, though, the smiles feel different, spontaneous. As though they’re pleased, genuinely pleased, for Romy’s mother.

  As they walk, the second of two airliners is plunging into the shining façade of a tower in Manhattan and the world outside is holding its collective breath. A day when the world really is changing. By evening the compound will be abuzz as they race to prepare. It’s happened. It’s happened. It’s begun. There is nothing like spectacular mass murder to warm the heart and gird the loins. The 11th of September will gift them their anticipation fix for literally years.

  The Infirmary is on the first floor of the Great House, the only sleeping quarters in the building apart from Vita’s and Lucien’s own. There will be a toast tonight, in the Great Hall, all the adults sinking down a full glass of cider in the baby’s honour, becoming silly and garrulous once they’ve done it. They drink alcohol so rarely that it goes straight to their heads.

  On the steps of the Great House stands a man she’s never seen. To Romy’s eyes he looks old – though not as old as Vita – but still magnificent among the humble bodies she’s used to. He’s tall and muscular, a strong nose in a suntanned face, his hair unusually short, for the compound style. He holds himself like a god: head up, shoulders back, alert and hawkish. And there’s something about his mouth. It’s resolute.

  ‘Who’s that?’ she asks. She’s panting a little now, from hurrying. Curious, not worried, because nobody ever comes here without Lucien or Vita’s permission.

  ‘Who?’ asks Vita, then, seeing the direction of her gaze, ‘Oh, him? You don’t know who that is? No, I suppose you wouldn’t. You weren’t even here when he went away. That’s Uri.’

  Uri … Romy scans her memory. Then she remembers. ‘Father’s first son?’ she asks. ‘That Uri?’ Though obviously there is no other. Although they all share Father’s surname, Blake, everyone here has their own unique first name.

  ‘That’s right,’ says Vita. ‘He’s been away, and now he’s twenty-three and he’s come back. He came home yesterday.’

  They’re getting closer. He turns his blue eyes in their direction, having overheard the exchange, and she sees the lips clamp a little tighter. ‘I’ve been in the army, little girl,’ he calls. ‘Learning how to keep you safe.’

  Vita’s smile tightens. ‘Yes. Uri is going to train a squad of Guards, to protect us,’ she says. ‘Father sent him into the army to learn how to fight, and he’s been at the Cairngorm property for a while, getting it set up. Now he’s here to learn our ways while he teaches us how to fight.’

  ‘And it will come down to fighting in the end, Vita,’ says Uri, and hits them both with his Father’s smile. ‘I’m only doing what’ll keep us
alive. It’s not going to be a nice world when the End comes.’

  ‘And in the long term we will be more than our fists,’ says Vita, and her face twists with something that Romy doesn’t understand.

  Uri’s face is suddenly serious. ‘But we can’t be anything at all if we don’t survive,’ he says. ‘Surviving is everything, in the end. I wish you’d see that, Vita. We can’t have any sort of civilisation if we don’t survive. That’s all I’m here for. To keep us safe.’

  Vita is suddenly serious too. ‘I understand that, Uri. I do. Father trusts you, so I must trust you too. Anyway. We’re on our way to visit your new sister.’

  ‘Half-sister,’ replies Uri, as though the correction is automatic. ‘Why’s she going?’ He peers at Romy closely, at her dark hair and her olive skin and her green eyes, as though he’s never seen such colouring before. Romy wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t. She’s never seen anyone who looks like her. Or met anyone who still has the Dead name they were born with. Lucien never gave her a new one, said that Romy was ‘good enough’. Romy can never decide if this makes her more special, or less. Different, certainly. Always the odd one out.

  ‘Romy is your half-sister’s half-sister,’ replies Vita evenly.

  ‘I guess she was born Outside,’ he says.

  ‘Among the Dead? Yes. But we don’t hold that against people, do we?’ she says, pointedly.

  Romy knows her history. Uri himself was born before the Ark was established. He must have been. Because that was only twenty years ago.

  Romy eyes this man with an assessing eye. He believes he’s the One already, she thinks. He believes he’s come back to take his rightful place.

  Uri shrugs. ‘Don’t suppose it’ll do any harm,’ he says. ‘Keep a spot of diversity in the gene pool.’ And he turns away and walks off down the steps.

  In the Infirmary, Ursola, Vita’s head nurse, is sterilising the birthing chair while Somer lies among soft white sheets. The only white cloth Romy has ever seen. She sneaks a feel of the sheet as she gets used to this new mother – the weary, smiling woman with a baby in her arms. It’s as smooth and as crisp as it looks.

  ‘Come and say hello, Romy,’ says Somer.

  ‘Your new sister,’ calls Ursola from the corner. ‘She came out easy as you like, as though she couldn’t wait to be here.’

  Romy steps forward and cranes over the swaddling to see the baby’s face. A little thing made of beetroot, eyes closed, wrinkles everywhere. Not what she’d been expecting at all. She can’t see a single thing about her that’s special, any sign that she – not strapping Uri or any of the other eleven – might some day lead them. She seems tiny, too. The way her mother’s belly looked yesterday, she’d been half-expecting to get a calf, not a baby. And she feels – nothing. Just a faint envy at the sight of her mother’s arms around another child.

  ‘Yuk,’ she says.

  Somer laughs out loud. ‘She’ll get better,’ she says. ‘You looked like a frog!’

  Romy laughs too. ‘A frog? No, I didn’t!’

  ‘You did, you know. All googly eyes and a mouth that took up half your face.’

  She’s not sure what to ask next. This mother seems like a stranger. Romy knows all about the reproductive process, of course. They all learn, just part of Nature and her routines, the rhythms of life on a farm. The sow goes to the boar and the cow goes to the bull, and the sheep get turned out with the ram when the orders are given, and every solstice Lucien names two women to bring new life to Plas Golau, and chooses a mate for them. They have to keep the numbers down, for survival’s sake. Too many infants when the End comes and the burden will destroy them all.

  It’s been several years since Lucien chose to be the mate himself. His next child up, Heulwen, is almost five. Somer is truly honoured.

  ‘Look, Romy!’ she says, and waves her left hand, craning her arm around the baby. On her third finger, a thick gold band.

  Romy gazes. This is a much more beautiful thing than the skinned rabbit in the blanket. Adornment is rare among the women of the Ark, but there are two exceptions: the rings that Father gives to all the women who have had his babies, and the medallions, engraved with their name and date of birth, that those babies will wear for the rest of their lives. Her best friend Eilidh wears one, and fingers it whenever she’s uncertain. A reminder of who she is; a comfort.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she says. ‘Now everyone will know he chose you, always.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Somer. ‘It’s like my medal for valour.’

  Romy has no idea what she’s on about, and covers it by looking down at the baby again. She’s bald. A bit of fuzz on her head, but nothing anywhere else. I hope she’ll get eyebrows one day, she thinks. I can’t imagine I’ll ever want to look at her if she’s got no eyebrows.

  ‘What’s her name?’ she asks.

  ‘We can’t be sure,’ says Somer. ‘Until the ceremony. You know Lucien doesn’t actually make the final choice until he’s seen you face to face.’

  Yes, it needs to be the right name, Romy thinks. The right name, for the One who will guide them in a new world.

  And then the old world changes. One moment it’s just the three of them, and then there are footsteps and chatter in the corridor and the door bursts open and the room fills with golden people. Lucien’s brood, the Family: bigger than her, blonder than anyone, and confident in a way she can never imagine. Uri, Zaria, Rohan, Jaivyn, Fai, Leana, Inara, Lesedi, Roshin, Farial, Eilidh, Heulwen. All twelve of them, now Uri’s back – she knows their names the way she knows her catechism – and the baby makes thirteen. They’ve come to name their sister, and Lucien will be along in a minute. Somer greets them with a complacent smile, a member of their extended family now, and peels the blanket back from the baby’s face, so they can see. Romy gives them all a big grin too.

  ‘Okay, you can hop it now,’ says Zaria, and jerks a thumb towards the door.

  Something drops, inside her.

  ‘No,’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ says Rohan, thirteen and stocky.

  ‘Come on, Romy,’ says Ursola, on guard respectfully in the corner. ‘It’s the Family’s time now. You can come back and see them later.’

  She stares around the faces, those imperious faces. Alights on Eilidh, her best friend down in the Pigshed. The friend she’s known since she was eight months old. Eilidh’s mouth is open, her little white teeth showing. She looks up at Uri as though she’s seen a ghost. And Romy is filled with rage as she realises that despite it all she will never be one of them.

  ‘It’s only the proper siblings,’ says Zaria. Zaria is fifteen and has unexpected red hair. She stands out in the compound like a flaming torch.

  ‘I am a proper sibling!’ she cries. ‘My mum—’

  Eilidh stares at her, mouths, I’m sorry, and Romy explodes with anger. ‘I’m not leaving!’ she snarls. ‘She’s my sister too.’

  And then Jaivyn, twelve and always horrid, a bully wherever he goes, always arrogant, always taking the best titbits and the most comfortable spots, grabs her by the arm and starts to drag.

  Romy fights back. The Teachers have had words and words with her about her temper, about the rage that can swell through her like an ocean wave. ‘NO! No! I’m not going!’ She kicks out, catches Uri by the ankle. He’s wearing mountain boots and glances down as though he’s been bitten by a flea. His upper lip curls and his eyes smile. It’s all a big bloody joke to you, she thinks, and she spits in Jaivyn’s face.

  Jaivyn looks startled, then disgusted, and then he turns purple. His big meaty hand flies off her arm and sinks into her hair. Her beautiful, long black hair, all the way down to her waist and a perfect anchor for a big boy’s hand. There’s nothing she can do. He’s twice her age, and twice her size. The pain is vicious and her scalp burns as though it’s about to tear right off her skull with every jerk of her body. She’s crying now. Hot, angry, acid tears. Her eyes plead with her mother, but she’s just sitting there, holding her baby, lookin
g sad. Doing nothing.

  She’s taken my mother away, she thinks. My mother belongs to her, now.

  9 | Romy

  September 2001

  No one comes to her aid. Crying children are always left to cry it out, unless there’s actual blood. Manipulative behaviour, Father says, wastes time and undermines. After five minutes, in which the Cooks in the Great Hall carry on laying the tables and sweeping the floor as though she were a piece of sculpture, she wipes her eyes and stands up. Takes herself back to the physic garden and applies herself to the weeds with vengeful ferocity.

  She has harvested a full trug and is taking it to the compost heap when Eilidh appears through the arched gate from the graveyard. Romy raises her chin and walks past, leaves her standing by the bitter melon vines. ‘Romy,’ she says, but Romy walks on. Eilidh follows. Romy knows she’ll have to speak to her eventually, but she’s not ready yet. It used not to matter, the difference between us, she thinks. But it does now, and it hurts.

  ‘I’m sorry, Romy,’ says Eilidh, and Romy feels another stab of anger. Whirls round to glare at her old friend and sees big blue eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Crying is manipulation,’ she says. ‘Or is it okay for Father’s children?’

  She’ll never be the One, Romy thinks, spitefully, as she watches Eilidh try to gulp back her tears. She’s too soft. Whoever the One is, they’ll need to be ruthless. Not bully-ruthless like Jaivyn, but not soppy like Eilidh, either.

  But that’s why I like her. I can’t be mean to Eilidh. She’s never been mean to anyone, until today, and that was only by going along.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ her friend says again. ‘What was I meant to do? I’m the littlest of all, apart from Heulwen.’

  ‘And my sister,’ Romy corrects.

  ‘Yes,’ says Eilidh. ‘But it’s the rules. You know it’s the rules. I can’t just ignore the rules. None of us can. It doesn’t mean we’re not friends, Romy. We are. We’ll always be friends. We’ll survive the End together. But there are rules.’