The Herbalist

by Boyce, Niamh

  Sarah woke with a crick in her neck. It took a second to realize where she was. The morning light showed up all the strands of hair that clung to her coat; she shrugged it off and stood to stretch her aching legs. She shouldn’t have eaten all the biscuits the night before; she was weak with hunger. She glimpsed through the curtains to check the road outside. All quiet.

  There was no sign that the herbalist had been back. She didn’t think he could have come in and left again. Maybe he had gone on one of his trips to Dublin. In that case he had purposely lied about being back in an hour – which meant he had no intention of ever paying her what he owed. He would get some shock when he walked in and saw Sarah sitting in his armchair. He’d have to pay up then, wouldn’t he?

  She guessed it was mid-morning, but, if so, why was the road still so quiet? Finally, after what seemed like hours, a funeral came along. It was a huge procession, slow-moving. A person of some consequence, if the crowds were anything to go by, or the pomp. It was almost beautiful: the hazy blue sky, the black horses with the huge plumes, the shining hearse with the closed velvet curtains, the top hat on the undertaker with his straight back. She eased forward to see the chief mourners, to see if she could work out who had died.

  Mrs Birmingham and the Doctor were first in line behind the hearse. There was no sign of Rose. Mrs Birmingham wore a veil over her face and held a black hankie to her nose. The mourners spread out as they passed, almost touching the window of the herbalist’s house. Sarah couldn’t bear it any longer: she slipped out of the front door and put her hand to the elbow of the nearest woman. It was old Nora.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but whose funeral is this?’

  ‘It’s Miss Rose Birmingham, the poor girl.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What happened to her?’

  A look of recognition crossed the woman’s face; she shook off Sarah’s hand.

  ‘Go back to where you came from, adulteress.’

  Sarah returned to the herbalist’s house. What had happened to Rose? She couldn’t imagine her lying in that hearse. She was so young. Perhaps that was what was keeping the herbalist. Perhaps he was at the funeral paying his respects. In that case it would be some time until he returned. She might as well make herself comfortable. It would seem crass now to demand money from him, but she had no choice, and if she had to tell him her predicament she would.

  What was she thinking? There would be no need to tell him anything; he would be quite well informed by the time he returned.

  She moved away from the window, sat down and pulled her coat around her again. She was nervous that Carmel might turn up. She thought her capable of anything. She might very well report her and have her carted off to the laundry. The important thing was to stay calm and get her money from the herbalist. Just wait it out for now and refuse to leave without her wages. He had plenty to spare: just look at the brand-new motorbike he was flying around in.

  If the worst came to the worst, Sarah could hop on the motorbike and make her escape. That made her smile. She could put Dan on the back.

  Would he come?

  She felt a pain in her heart. No, he wouldn’t have the guts. She wished it were different, but it wasn’t.

  Did she love him?

  No. She had wanted him. And she had wanted to love him. But she didn’t.

  You’re too soft, Sarah. You’re too soft. If loving him can save your skin, love him.

  She didn’t know what to do. She just needed to get away. She shouldn’t have asked the woman about the funeral. Now everyone would know where she was.

  57

  Emily knocked at the door before noon, her eyes red-rimmed and as mad as ever. Carmel was surprised that she felt glad to see her. How strange it was that, of all people, Emily would be the only one she could bear? She had always been queasy around the girl’s neediness, but at least with her Carmel didn’t have to keep up appearances.

  ‘I’ve come from the funeral.’

  Emily rambled on. She was jittery, waved her hands this way and that. Carmel brought her into the back and put a bit of rum in the tea and biscuits on a plate. Once there, Emily’s expression changed. She became still.

  ‘You didn’t go to Rose’s funeral?’

  ‘I couldn’t face the whole town like that.’

  ‘Now, don’t be offended, Mrs Holohan, but there’s more going on than you and your husband’s troubles. Terrible things. You should’ve gone, for Rose’s sake. The whole town showed up. They came in droves. We were elbow to elbow behind the hearse. You should’ve seen the feathered plumes and the young girls carrying white flowers. The horses kicked up so much dust that the chief mourners had to hold handkerchiefs over their mouths. Mrs B’s suit was destroyed.’

  ‘It’s not over yet surely?’ Who was Emily to reprimand Carmel for anything?

  ‘I slipped from the procession before it got to the church. Didn’t want to hear the service. It’s all lies.’

  Emily poured more rum into her mug.

  ‘All lies? Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘Passed away peacefully in the bosom of her family, pah!’

  ‘Emily, stop!’

  ‘I saw her with my own eyes. She died by the river, the poor creature, with blood all over her skirt. That’s why I left the funeral and paid my respects at the place where she really passed.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  The girl was mad.

  ‘I told you already, by the river. When I closed my eyes to say a prayer, I could almost see her walking down the river path the night she died, wearing her blue serge suit, thinking she was on her way to somewhere better.’

  ‘What are you saying, girl? You’re talking nonsense.’

  ‘Do I have to spell it out? I found Rose the night she died. I went to the doctor’s house to tell her family. The maid locked me under the stairs to keep me out of the way. And when I went into the parlour, they already had her there – laid out. Someone had brought her home. At first I thought she’d been set upon by a mad man, but I was wrong. Rose wasn’t sick at all – she died by the river after losing a child and the parents wanted to hush it up.’

  Carmel couldn’t believe her ears. Had Emily finally gone cracked?

  ‘Who else did you tell this to?’

  ‘No one but Charlie. And now you. Sure who’d believe the likes of me against moneyed people?’

  ‘To say such a shabby thing about Rose of all people, Rose who never kept company in her short life with any boy, let alone …’

  ‘I have proof. A letter Rose wrote. And her name was in the herbalist’s surgery book too. Hers is the last entry.’

  ‘The herbalist?’

  ‘I know, it’s hard to believe that it was my fine man who did the deed, my fine man who gave her such an awful time. The rumours are true. He gets rid of children from the bellies of unfortunate women.’

  Emily started to cry then.

  Carmel was stunned into silence. She sat and mulled over what Emily had said. Rumours. The herbalist could get rid of an unwanted baby.

  ‘Have you gone to him with this?’

  ‘His door is shut to me, but I won’t give up.’

  ‘Can I see this letter?’

  ‘Don’t you believe me, Mrs Holohan?’

  ‘I do but …’

  ‘Well, then, you don’t need to see it, do you? Besides it’s personal, shameful. Rose has been through enough.’

  ‘But she’s dead.’

  ‘You’re hard.’

  Emily stood up, and walked past her to leave.

  ‘I have to be,’ Carmel said.

  The shop bell clattered as th
e door shut. Carmel was talking to no one but herself again.

  58

  I sat on the bench in the cold tiled hall, waiting for my turn with the good Doctor. It was straight back to work for Doctor B. Wasn’t he a right Trojan? Wasn’t he a cold one? That Carmel was a cold woman; hadn’t a jot of feeling for Rose. ‘Show me the letter,’ she had ordered, as if I would. Rose deserved to keep some dignity in the end. Carmel was all about herself, not even going to the funeral. I know it wasn’t a great time for her, what with Sarah and Dan falling in love and leaving her to run the shop on her own. She was always complaining about either one or the other of them. You’d think it would be a relief to have both of them gone.

  Maybe older women lacked feeling. I watched Mrs B at the funeral: she was weeping delicately. But I knew the real Mrs B. I knew the woman who had sent her daughter to hell and kept her there. And I knew the real Doctor B. The two of them shuffling in all their glory behind the glossy beast that carried Rose to her place of eternal rest. Did they care? How could they walk straight if they cared?

  I knew the real herbalist too, the one who hurt and took, hurt and took, and could laugh and party and live the good life. Who wanted a car, who wanted gold, who said first impressions were all that mattered. I knew all this. And I was the kind of girl that no one listened to, or believed if they did.

  Charlie wanted to kill. Charlie cared. I didn’t show him the letter; I was afraid he would go out and catch the herbalist – God knows what he would have done to him. So I didn’t tell Charlie the full truth of the matter. I’d think about all that later. For now, I was in Doctor B’s surgery and I was next in line, and this time I wasn’t going to be shoved under the stairs.

  When he popped his head out and saw me, he froze. I walked by him into the surgery. I didn’t have the kind of money seeing him cost and I didn’t care. He tapped his pen, and I told him how I had found his daughter, that I knew she had bled to death. I told him I knew he had hurt her. I was still talking when he interrupted me. He smiled. Had he heard a word I’d said? What he said next made me understand that he had.

  ‘You’re a very disturbed young lady. It’ll be no bother having you committed.’

  I got out of there as fast as my legs could carry me. I was out of my depth. I needed help. I hadn’t thought it through properly. I had forgotten who they were, and I had forgotten who I was.

  59

  So Sarah had fled, and taken her belongings with her. Well might she run – if Carmel ever got her hands on her, she would be beyond conceiving once and for all. Yes, Carmel was tormenting herself, saying aloud again and again, ‘Another woman is carrying my husband’s child. A mere girl, a whipper-snapper whore.’ It wasn’t simple jealousy. The colour of Carmel’s feeling wasn’t green; it was black, it had teeth, and the howl of something ripped from her belly and torn asunder. Her heart roared like the last wolf. She pressed her forehead to the mirror, told it everything.

  ‘I’ll get that Sarah. I’ll get her and take her kicking and screaming into this abyss. “Hell hath no fury”? She doesn’t know the half of it. I don’t care what gets upturned, dashed down or destroyed on the way; she will not have that child.’

  The baby Sarah carried, when Carmel paused long enough to consider it, would be round and beautiful like her son. It would have that little fold of heaven on the back of its neck, those tiny gripping fists, it would smell of love. Just like her baby should have. She could almost feel it then, touch its skin. That rippled through her anger, softening it. Then she heard her mother’s voice.

  Wise up.

  That child in your mind’s eye’s no baby. That child gives form to the adultery committed against you. Stupid woman. Fool. Old fool. And under your own roof. An old, old story, Carmel. There’s nothing new under the sun.

  How long had it been going on? She had shut the shop and it would stay shut for as long as it took. Let them talk; let them speculate. About her, about Sarah and Dan. Their coupling. What had he done to them? And why? She thought about what Emily had said. What that meant.

  She approached the herbalist as he was crossing the market square. She stepped into his path, her purse held up high on her chest. She mentioned corruption, indecent behaviour, murder … all the things that Emily had told her.

  ‘We’re talking hard labour,’ Carmel said to him, after mouthing ‘Rose’ soundlessly.

  He didn’t laugh or wave his hand away. He just nodded. Maybe this kind of thing had come his way before.

  ‘So what can I do for you?’

  At least he understood that there was something she wanted, and it was something that she was going to get.

  ‘Give Sarah Whyte a dose of something, and make sure she loses that child. If she has it, I’ll make sure you hang for Rose.’

  60

  A stone pestle was grinding seeds. Sarah couldn’t move: her arms were bound to her sides; a thin brown rope went twice across her chest, and another tied her ankles. Tears of tiredness ran and she couldn’t rub them away. Her hair stuck to her face. She began to feel more awake, more scared. She tried to remember.

  The herbalist had finally returned. She remembered hearing his bike, the way he unlocked the door. Then he backed in with a cardboard box in his arms. He laid it on the table and turned around to face Sarah. Of course, he wasn’t surprised to see her. He said he had heard what had happened with the Holohans, heard Sarah was in trouble. He said he could help her, make things easier. He poured water into a cup. Sarah didn’t want help, she told him. Told him she wanted her money.

  He paced, started talking about her own good. Then suddenly he locked her head in his arm and jerked her face upwards. After that her memory started to get hazy. She knew a wet rag was clamped over her mouth. Then later – it could’ve been seconds, it could’ve been minutes – someone yanked open her jaw, dropped hard tablets into her mouth and shoved them down. Water was poured down her throat – a slow steady trickle so she couldn’t help but swallow. She was heaving, trying to push the tablets out with her tongue. But she couldn’t do it. There was the smell of Sweet Afton and the sound of a woman’s voice. After that, she had no memory.

  Sarah flexed her feet: the welts stung every time the rope bit. The herbalist had his back to her. He was grubby; she’d never seen him grubby before. He was drinking alcohol from a mug, wiping his forehead with his sleeve; the room felt like it was sealed. That couldn’t be good. He came over to the bed, carrying a tonic of some sort. She smelt aniseed, but there was something else, something cloying underneath.

  ‘What’s this? What will it do?’

  ‘Put an end to your pain.’

  ‘But I’m not unwell.’

  ‘You are, look at you, you were hysterical. You’ve been screaming, breaking things.’

  He pushed her pillow up so she could see the broken crockery on the floor.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘You were out of your mind. Angry, accusing me.’

  ‘I came here for my money.’

  ‘You became hysterical; a danger to yourself. That’s why …’ He pointed to the ropes.

  ‘Let me go – this can’t be good for the baby.’

  ‘It was all in your head – there’s no baby.’

  ‘There is – a woman knows. Who was here earlier? I heard someone talking.’

  ‘No one. My abode is my own. At least for now. It’s nobody’s concern.’

  ‘But I heard a woman.’

  He didn’t care what she had to say. She saw it in his expression.

  ‘Untie me.’

  ‘So you can scratch and scream?’

  ‘I wouldn’t hurt you – you’ve been so
nice to me.’

  She played like a little cat in her voice.

  ‘This is for your own good.’

  ‘I feel sick – let me up. I feel sick.’

  He put a bowl by her face; it already held a trace of vomit. She threw up. Her belly ached. How many times had she been sick, how many times had they had this conversation? Had she said all those things already? Is that why he looked so weary, so weary of her? He wiped her face with the sheet; it was filthy.

  ‘Let me go or I’ll scream the house down.’

  ‘Is that a fact.’

  What are you going to do to me? she thought but didn’t say, for it might remind him, hasten him. She thought of the box he kept under the bed.

  ‘Don’t hurt me, please.’

  ‘You are beyond hurting, you who cause so much trouble for everyone, so much trouble.’

  The room was shuttered, hot, dusty; she smelt the sourness of his body and her own. She must have been there longer than she knew.

  ‘I won’t do anything – just let me lie free of the ropes for a while.’

  ‘I’ve no choice. It’s Mrs Holohan. This is her doing.’

  ‘What can happen? What can she do to you?’

  ‘Hard labour. The end of all this.’ He waved his hand about the room.

  ‘I don’t understand. I won’t come here again – let me go.’

  ‘You can’t go till we are finished.’

  ‘Finished with what?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  She started to shiver.

  ‘You’ll be punished.’