I have been careful, so careful these past months to quietly pick the lock on the library door, then close it after me, pull the curtains over so no light might be seen in the windows, before I kindle one finger-candle for each inhabitant of the house, then lay out my quills and books, the pounce pot, and open the special volume Mater Friðuswith gave me for this specific duty. Generations of St Florian’s abbesses have asked many, many times for permission to copy The Compendium of Contaminants—rumoured to be the work of the first of us—yet time and again the Misses have refused access.
They guard their secrets jealously and this book is alone of all its kind. Their ownership of the only extant copy is an advantage they will not surrender, even though the Murcianii, the Blessed Wanderers, seek only to record and keep the information. There are to be found fragments of this greatest of poisoners’ bibles, yes; copies with pages missing, edges burned, ink run or faded—but none virgo intacto like this one. None so perfect, so filled with recipes and instructions, magical and medicinal properties and warnings, maps of every manner of plant and where it might be found, how it might best be harvested and then propagated elsewhere, how it might best be used for good or ill, how it might be preserved or destroyed. Without it our Archives are embarrassingly bereft, and with only one single copy in existence, the possibility of its destruction is too great for us to bear.
And this is why I am here; this is my initiation task to earn my place among St Florian’s secret sisters, the Murcianii, the collectors, the recorders, the travelling scribes who gather all manner of esoteric and eldritch knowledge so it might not pass out of the world. Folktales and legends, magic and spells, bestiaries of creatures once here and now long-gone, histories and snippets of lives that have intersected with our efforts, our recordings . . . and books like these, the dark books, the dangerous books, the books that some would burn but which we save because knowledge, all knowledge, is too important to be lost.
If I bring a copy of this book back to Mater Friðuswith then my position will be assured. I will belong.
But all that will be moot if I am discovered; if my betrayal of two of the most dangerous women of the day—indeed other days, long ago—is found out.
The door opens and Gwern stands there, clothes crumpled from his long sleep, hair askew, the marks of a folded blanket obvious along his jaw line. He sways, still weak from the bloodletting, but his eyes are bright.
“What are you doing?” The low voice runs through me. Part of me notes that he seems careful to whisper. He takes in the Compendium, propped on the bookstand, all the tools of my trade neatly lined up on the desk (as untidy as my person may be, I am a conscientious craftswoman), and the hands of glory by whose merrily flickering light I have been working.
And I cannot answer; fear stops my throat and all I can think of is Fidelma and Orla and their lethal ornaments, the choking length of a rosary about my neck, a meal infused with tincture of Gwern’s lifeblood, a down-stuffed pillow over my face as I sleep. He steps into the room, closes the door behind him then paces over to lift me up by the scruff of the neck as if I am a kitten who’s peed in his shoes. Not so weak as he seems, then. He shakes me till I think my head will roll off, until he realises I cannot explain myself if I cannot breathe. He lets me go, pushing me back until I sit on top of the desk and draw in great gasps of air, and he asks me again in that threatening tone, “What are you doing?”
And I, in fear of what might happen if two Quiet Women should find out what I’ve been doing, how I’ve been taking from them what they’ve refused—and hoping, perhaps, after what I’d witnessed this morning that he might not have much love for the Misses—I tell him almost everything.
And when I am finished, he does not call out and rouse the Meyrick sisters. He does not bend forward and blow out the glory candles, but rather smiles. He leans so close that I can smell his breath, earthy as freshly mown grass, as he speaks, “I knew it. I knew when I saw you that night.”
“Knew what?” I demand, momentarily brave.
“That you were different to them; different to the others who have come here year upon tiresome year. When I saw you in the moonlight, I knew—none of the others ever venture out past the walls at night, certainly don’t wander to the well and drink its contents down so sure and so fast. They don’t make brave girls here—they make cowardly little bits who like blades in the dark, poison in the soup, pillows over faces.” He straightens, rolls his uneven shoulders. “I knew you could help me.”
“Help you do what?” I ask, mesmerised by his black gaze.
Instead of answering, he goes to one of the shelves and rummages, finds a slim yellow volume and hands it to me. A Brief History of the Alder Well. He says nothing more, but runs a hand down the side of my face, then leaves, the door closing with a gentle click behind him. I feel his fingers on me long after he’s gone.
The alchemy laboratory is situated on the ground floor; it has large windows to let in light and equally large shutters to keep out the selfsame when we work with compounds that prefer the darkness. We each have a workbench, honeycombed with drawers filled with plants, powders, poisons, equipment, mortars, pestles, vials, and the like. On mine this morning, I found a rose, red as blood, its stem neatly sheared on an angle, the thorns thoughtfully removed; my heart beats faster to see it, that kindness. Indeed there’s been a floral offering every day for the past three weeks, roses, peonies, lily of the valley, snowdrops, bluebells, daffodils, all waiting for me in various spots: windowsills, shelves, under my pillow, on the kitchen bench, in the top drawer of my bedside table, hidden among the clothes in my chest. As if I needed anything to keep their giver in my thoughts; as if my dreams have not been haunted. Nothing huge, nothing spectacular, no grand bouquets, but something sweet and singular and strange; something to catch my eye alone—no one else seems to notice them. Not even Serafine with her cruel hawk’s gaze.
We have a new teacher for this sennight, who arrived with many boxes and trunks, cases and carpet bags, and a rectangular item neatly wrapped around with black velvet. When her driver seemed careless with it, she became sharp with him. It must be delicate, perhaps made of glass—a mirror? A painting? A portrait?
The poisoner is fascinated by Serafine. In fact, we others may as well not be here. She hovers over the sleek blond girl’s work-table, helping her to measure powders, cut toxic plants, heat solutions, giving her hints that we may or may not hear and take advantage of. My copying of the Compendium means my cognizance of poisons and their uses is greater than my companions but I cannot show off; cannot appear to have knowledge I should not possess.
We are not working with killing venin today, merely things to cause discomfort—a powder sprinkled over clothing or a few drops of liquid added to someone’s jar of night cream will bring up a rash, afflict the victim with itches and aches that appear to have no logical source. One must be careful, Hepsibah Ballantyne tells us in a rare address to the whole class, not to do things that disrupt a person’s ordinary routine—that is what they will remember, the disruptions: the tinker come to a door selling perfumes, the offer of a special new blend of tea from a recent acquaintance. When you wish to injure someone, do something that rubs along with their habits, their everyday lives—blend into the ordinary flow and simply corrupt one of their accustomed patterns. No fanfare, no drawing of attention to yourself or your acts. Do nothing that someone might later recall as out of the ordinary—it will bring the authorities to you faster than you please.
Mistress Ballantyne arrives once a year to stay with the Misses and impart her venomous wisdom, although Alys tells me this is not her profession proper. She is a coffin-maker and most successful—she travelled here in her own carriage and four (the driver currently making himself at home in Alys’s bed). Years and experience have made her a talented poisoner, although few know it and that’s as it should be. I think she is older than she seems, rather like the Misses; in certain lights her face is as lined as a piece of badly prepared
parchment, in others it seems smooth. She has short blond curls, and brown eyes that watched peachy-pink Serafine too closely from the moment she was introduced.
I take the apple seeds and crush them under the blade of my knife.
“How did you know to do that?” Hepsibah’s voice is at my shoulder and I suppress the urge to jump guiltily. The recipe in front of us says to grind the seeds in the mortar and pestle, but the Compendium warns against that as weakening the poison—crush the seeds just once with a sharp hit to crack the carapace and release the toxin. I look into her dark eyes and the lie comes quickly to my lips.
“My mother. She learned herbcraft to support us after my father died.” Which is true to some extent: Wulfwyn did learn herblore at St Florian’s after Mater Friðuswith offered her refuge, but our father had been well and truly gone for many years before that—or rather, my sisters’ father. Mine hung around on moonlit nights, watching from the shadows as I grew. “She wasn’t a poison-woman, but she knew some things, just enough to help get by.”
Her gaze softens. I’ve touched a nerve; she’s another motherless girl, I suspect. We are legion. She nods and moves away, telling me my labours are good and I show promise. Hepsibah gives Adia and Veronica’s work a quick once-over and shifts her attention back to Serafine, resting a calloused and stained hand in the small of the other’s back. I notice Serafine leans into the touch rather than away, and feel an unaccustomed wave of sympathy for her, to know she longs for something she will not be allowed to have.
Standing outside the library door, one hand balancing a platter of sweetmeats, the other preparing to knock and offer the Misses and their guest an evening treat to go with the decanter of winterplum brandy I delivered earlier along with three fine crystal snifters. A terse voice from inside the room stops me. I slow my breathing to almost nothing, stand utterly still; if I’ve learned nothing else here it’s to be undetectable when required.
“Sweet Jesu, Hepsibah, control yourself!” Orla’s voice, strangely harsh and raised in an anger none of us have yet witnessed in the classroom no matter how egregious our trespasses.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Mistress Ballantyne answers, her tone airy.
“I saw you in the garden this afternoon, busy fingers, busy lips, busy teeth,” hisses Orla.
“Jealous?” laughs Hepsibah.
Fidelma breaks in, “We have told you that you cannot touch any student in our care.”
“That one was thoroughly touched and not complaining, besides,” retorts Hepsibah and I imagine a wolfish grin crossing her lips.
“Scandals! They follow you! It’s your own fault—one then another, ruined girls, angry families and you must leave a city yet again.” Orla pauses, and I hear the sound of a decanter hitting the rim of a glass a little too hard. “Lord, just find someone who wants your attention, who isn’t already spoken for, and be content.”
Mistress Ballantyne snorts and I imagine she shrugs, raising her thin shoulders, tossing her neat, compact head with its pixie features and upturned nose. She might fidget, too, with those stained fingers and her small square hands; she asks belligerently, “Where’s the fun in a willing victim?”
Fidelma fairly shouts, “He has been seen. Not two counties away.”
And silence falls as if a sudden winter has breathed over the library and frozen its inhabitants. It lasts until Mistress Ballantyne breaks it, all swagger, all arrogance gone, her voice rises to a shriek, “Has he been here? Have you betrayed me?”
Fidelma shushes her. “Of course not, you silly bint, but people talk, rumours have wings. Those who live long and do not change as much as others become the target of gossip. Those who do not hide, who do not take care not to draw attention—they are the ones who stand out, Hepsibah.”
Orla sighs. “And you know he’s been searching for something, something other than you—in addition to you. We do not live in a large city, Hepsibah, we do not live in a grand house and parade along boulevards in an open-topped landau, begging folk to stare and take note. Few people know who we truly are, fewer still that the wars our father fought ended a hundred years ago.”
Fidelma: “It’s a wonder you survived in the days before you knew he was hunting you. You’ve never learned the art of hiding yourself—of putting your safety ahead of your baser desires.”
“You’ve had good service of me. I’ve shared my secrets with you, helped keep you young, taught your murderous little slatterns who think they’re better than me.” There’s a pause, perhaps she worries at a thumbnail. “But if he’s been seen, then I’m off.”
“But you’ve still got classes to teach!” protests Orla.
Hepsibah shrugged. “Well, consider that I’m thinking of my own safety before my baser desires,” she sneers. “Get Magnus, she’s a good poisons woman if you can find her. Last I heard she’d berthed in Breakwater.”
There are quick footsteps and the door is wrenched open. I’m almost bowled over by Mistress Ballantyne, who shouts “Out of my way, halfwit” and charges off towards her room. The Misses stare at me and I hold up the tray of sweetmeats, miraculously not thrown to the floor as Hepsibah passed. Orla gestures for me to come in, then turns to her sister. “You see if you can talk sense to her. I’m not teaching poisons.”
“You’re the one who mentioned him. If it comes down to it, sister, you will.”
Fidelma sweeps out, taking a handful of sweetmeats with her. Orla slumps in a chair and, when I ask if there’s anything else she needs, she waves me away, not bothering to answer. On the small table beside her are three discarded vials, red-brown stains in the bottom.
I will not make my nest in the library tonight. Mistress Ballantyne will take a while to pack her trunks and rouse her coachman from the warmth of Alys’s blankets. The household will be in uproar this night and I shall take the chance to have a sleep uninterrupted by late-night forgery at least; there will be no guarantee that I will not dream of Gwern. One night without copying the Compendium will not make much difference.
Orla’s grace has deserted her.
All the patience and fine humour she’s displayed in the past is gone, replaced by an uncertain and somewhat foul temper, as if she’s been tainted by the subject she’s forced to teach. The Misses, wedded to their schedule, decided not to try for the woman Magnus, and it is as Fidelma threatened: Orla, having caused the difficulty, must now deal with the consequences.
Open on the desk in front of her is the Compendium as if it might solve all of her problems. I wonder if Mistress Alys with her fondness for herbs wouldn’t have been a better choice. I keep looking at the book, suppressing shudders each time Orla’s hands—filled with a toxic powder, wilted stalk, or simple spring water—pass anywhere near it. It is unique, alone in the world and I feel it must be protected. Coiled, I wait to leap forward and save it from whatever careless fate Orla might bestow upon it.
The ingenuity and patience, which is so fully in evidence when teaching us how to kill using unthought-of weapons, has left no trace as Orla makes us mix concoctions, elixirs, and philtres to cause subtle death. She forgets ingredients, tells us to stir when we should shake, to grind when we should slice, to chop when we should grate. We are not halfway through the first lesson when our tutor swears loudly and knocks over a potion, which pours into an alabaster mortar and mates with the crushed roots there. The reaction is spectacular, a fizz and a crack and smoke of green then purple fills the alchemy room like a sudden, vitriolic fog.
I throw open the windows, shielding my mouth and nose with the bottom of my skirt, then I find the door and thrust it to—the smoke begins to clear but all I can hear are the rasping coughs of my fellow students and teacher. Squinting against the tears the smoke causes, I find them one by one and herd them out into the corridor, where Mistress Alys and Fidelma, drawn by the noise, are in a flurry. When Orla is the last one out, I dive back into the room and rescue the book—it tore at me not to save it before any mortal, but common sense prevailed and
no suspicions are aroused. I hold it tightly to my chest as we are all hustled outside into the fresh air.
“Well done, Mercia,” says Fidelma, bending down to pat her sister’s heaving back. Orla vomits on the grass, just a little.
“There’s no fire, Miss, just the smoke. It should clear out soon—there’s a good enough breeze,” I say.
“Indeed.” She stands and surveys the lilac-tinged vapour gently wafting through the door behind us. “We are nothing if not adaptable. I think we shall leave the rest of our poisons classes until such time as Mother Magnus or a suitable substitute might be found—lest my sister kill us all.”
Orla makes an unladylike gesture and continues coughing. Mistress Alys, having braved the smog, reappears with a syrupy cordial of black horehound, to soothe our throats and lungs. We swig from the bottle.
Some time later, order has been restored: the house has been cleared of the foul smelling fumes; pleural barks have been reduced to occasional rattles; Orla’s dignity has been stitched together for the most part; and I have (with concealed reluctance) handed back the Compendium and been given by Fidelma a letter for Mother Magnus and instructed to deliver it to the coachman who resides in Alder’s Well, begging him to deliver it to the poisons woman and wait for her reply—and hopefully her agreement to return with him.
I walk slowly there and even more slowly back, enjoying the air, the quiet that is not interrupted by the prattle of girls too silly to know they will be going to their deaths sooner than they should—too silly to know that now is the time they should begin mourning their lost futures. Or planning to run away, to fade from their lives. Gods know we are taught enough means to hide, to provide for ourselves, to change our appearances, to earn a living in different ways, to disappear. Sometimes I am tempted to tell Veronica about Cwen’s Reach and the Citadel, about the Little Sisters of St Florian and how they offered my family refuge, and how, for a long time, no one found us, not even Cenred’s ghost. How she could just as easily come with me and become one of the sisters or live in the city at the Citadel’s foot as Delling and Halle do, working as jewel-smiths. But I know better. I know she would not want to lose her soft life even for the advantage of longevity; she will play princess while she may, then give it all up not for a lesser lifestyle, but for death. Because she thinks with death, everything stops.
A Feast of Sorrows, Stories Page 13