Weed: The Poison Diaries

by Jane Northumberland

  An urgent desire for more seizes me. I delve deeper. The whisper at the back of my mind urges caution. The first lesson of the Green world is balance: what can heal in measure can kill if glutted upon. I do not heed the instruction and a moment later I find myself knocked to the ground, winded and gasping for air. I cry out as lines of pain are tapped from my nerves into the soil. The quiet voice issues a white-hot warning, but it’s too late to stop. Agony rings through me as the earth seems to open up and I fall. The sound of rushing wind bellows in my ears and I can’t breathe. In horror I see the deep, old heart of the earth surging up to meet me. A frenzy of beating life made and unmade, veins, sap and blood dissected.

  The temptation to feel more is irresistible. I push to the limits of my frayed synapses until I am beyond sensation. I am being shown something. I perceive a symbiosis of all life of animal and plant resonating together, powerful in perfect harmony. A lens bends and flexes. My mind refracts in sweet silence, expanding vastly outwards. I see myself as a mote floating still at a junction of a shining web of light. A network that criss-crosses the land beneath the earth like veins beneath skin. Peering in the darkness I see other motes and specks travelling the gossamer threads.

  The lens flexes once more as a hidden consciousness sharpens its focus, pointing to a corruption on the glowing filaments. I am driven at the speed of thought towards that fetid presence. I see a vision of a horned face pulsing towards Soutra Aisle. Its bony jaw is drenched in blood and from its eyes shine terrible cold stars. Innocence is corrupted there. A white maw gapes open and I hear an awful guttural sound smeared over with a honey-sweet voice lap at my ear: ‘WEED.’

  I awake from my vision on the soft ground once again, weeping and panting for breath. My body is covered in sweat and my chest drinks in the cool air. I hug the earth beneath me, glorying in its solidness. Yet I know that there is no solidness beneath me. There is a great chasm beneath the world that waits to swallow us. I bless the sun as my eyes are drawn up towards it and yet as my senses return I feel a despair of loss. I have never been closer to the heart of the earth that bore me. I have never before felt so powerful. Now I am simply Weed.

  The garden is strangely silent; even impetuous Narcissus holds its noise. The plants are my only friends and I want to show them that I am still normal and foolish like them. I reach out but when I do I see myself through every root in the garden. A strange, shining beacon of energy. There is fear in the air and I can feel through the earth an unease at what has been witnessed. However, not every plant waits reverently for my permission to speak and I hear a rasping, menacing laugh.

  ‘Ha ha ha. You poor meat sack. You’ve gone a-roving where you shouldn’t.’ The garden around me shudders and the tension grows thicker.

  ‘What do you know of it, Strychnine?’ I choke the words.

  ‘Little boy Weed got his fingers burned. Best to keep your feet above ground. You don’t want to know what lurks beneath. Ho no!’

  ‘I’ll go where I like!’ As I rise to my feet my legs tremble. Quietly I meditate on Green. I plug into the ground and let myself be calmed by the voices of growing life. Yet this time I feel more than just voices. I feel overlapping networks and systems. Many of them are at play within the garden and beyond it.

  ‘You have felt the power of the Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun. And it has shown you the deep veins that run beneath the earth, the great network of Mab’s roots. Something’s coming. Did you feel it calling to you, Sweet Pea? Something’s gathering power to itself. Something’s coming. Oh yes. Something big.’

  ‘Keep silent or I’ll punish you.’ I try to command Strychnine but really I am afraid of his warning. In an eye blink I see the delicate circuits that prop up life in the garden. I put out my hands and see how easy it would be to break the connection. To end Strychnine and all the other plants in a single moment. Such dark thoughts disturb me. I have changed. I have bought something back from the brink.

  The rest of that sunny afternoon I spend planting the poison garden in silence. The ease and pleasure in the physical task I enjoyed before have gone. By afternoon I have finished and retrieving my now dry shirt from Rose’s leaves; I notice that its buds have closed to me. A bruise of dark clouds rolls in from the west and I return to the chapel of Soutra Aisle as the rains finally come.

  Chapter 7

  April, Beltane Eve

  The poison garden is planted and from within the Soutra Aisle chapel I can feel every bud, root and filament is bedding down well. My perception of the living world around me is heightened. The leaves in the garden quiver at my will without effort. I am deeply disquieted by my vision and my dreams are filled with that ecstatic agony I felt in the lens of the sun. Under the power of those seductive rays I felt the chain that links every root beneath the earth. To my shame my first temptation was to break that chain and bring destruction. I feel stronger, but this strength terrifies me. I will not allow it to happen again. And what of the horned creature with cold eyes that jigged towards me? The door I opened in the garden yesterday will remain closed. Tomorrow Beltane comes, as is called Mayday, when we celebrate the half of the year when sun and day reign supreme.

  There has been no cease in the rain since yesterday and I am pleased, as the water will nourish the newly planted seedlings. The rain nourishes me too and I sit naked just outside the door of my Soutra Aisle home bathing in the cool clean wetness of the spring shower. I am altered and I do not wish to be among the gardens. What is more I do not think the plants wish to be in my company. So recently I feared the loneliness of being cut off from the green world and now I fear that I am connected too deeply to it.

  There is a sense of excitement in the air with the coming of Beltane. It is the time of year when the world spins out the day and the glory of growth rules. There have always been feasts at this time; the Romans called it Flora and the Christians call it Mayday. It is a time when men admit nature into their hearts and celebrate for one day what I celebrate daily. In spite of their mean blindness they are not so insensible to forget the marvellous taste of spring on the wind. And I have a strange wish to go abroad among men today.

  The mushroom-picker I met in the woods these two days past spoke of a town nearby named Fala. I will go there and see what preparations are made for this holy day. As afternoon becomes early evening, the rain eases and then stops. I retrieve my shirt, boots and trousers from the dry stone chapel and set out on the Deere Street road. The clouds have passed and the scent of growing earth is thick in the air. Tonight the sky will be clear. When darkness falls the stars shine in pale chorus to the full moon.

  Before I reach Fala I can hear the bustle of music playing on the wind and when I arrive, a fete of laughter rings through the town. Oil-lamps and wood-fires burn in the streets and squares. They illuminate men and women as they lay out rich decorations of Queen Anne’s Lace, colourful Hyacinth and Marigolds. The shining white light of the moon and stars mingles with the smoky orange glow of men’s fires to cast the town in a haunting glimmer. Though they ape the beauty of the natural world, there is artfulness in the hands that arrange flowers in men’s towns. I approach the decorations of Larkspur and Love-In-The-Mist with admiration. My admiration fails as I touch the delicate petals and hear no voices singing within. They are dead now, a deceit of growing things.

  Amid the gaiety of celebration there still nestles tokens of the old festival we celebrate. On each house’s door hangs a corn dolly, votive offerings saved over-winter since the last harvest at Holy Samhain. Constructed from straw and corn, they are fashioned to look like little men and women and passing through the town I inspect them, their individual designs and flourishes. Tonight they will be gifted by lovers to one another but they used to be burned as offerings to the spring. In the town square the throne for the May Queen is built, a virgin bride for the Gods of growing. Today she is a symbol but she used to be burned also. In front of the May Queen’s throne there stands an enormously tall Maypole, an ancient sign of f
ertility erected in front of the church, a traditional blasphemy. The gospels of Beltane are preached from no Christian pulpits. There are no man-made churches dedicated to the spirits of growing, but whatever Gods you believe in, they all give way to the one true God that makes manifest yearly at springtime.

  I must cut a curious figure in my ragged shirt and trousers but the folk who see me stare only a little and often smile. Young women pass me in groups and nervously giggle and blush as I pass. If I glance back then I am met with more blushing stares and more giggles. The town is alive and there is an arresting sense that anything can happen tonight. Nearing the margins of Fala, I see a wide open door at the end of a short row of houses, spilling light onto the road outside. People are passing freely into and out of the house and as I approach I hear a loud voice.

  ‘Ho. Stranger to our town. Don’t pass my house without a word or two. Not today.’ It is a ruddy-faced mother who waves from the door.

  ‘Lady,’ I say, and bow.

  ‘Lady? Do you mean me?’ The rotund woman, plainly dressed, does a twirl and returns my bow with a mocking smile. ‘No airs an’ graces suffer we here. Agatha is my name, though Agie will do. Come inside and warm your feet and take a mug of ale. Tonight I make my own a public house.’

  ‘I should not impose upon you.’

  ‘I welcome you, Sir. I offer clean and honest hospitality according to tradition. It’s bad luck to deny me. On Beltane Eve more than any other. Come. If you’re causing no harm then you’re alright with me and there’ll be no mischief committed against you here.’ The offer and acceptance of hospitality is a simple and ancient custom. That and curiosity persuade me to enter the warm house from the street. There are a handful of people inside and dozens of children all busy at their own business. Hardly anyone notices or cares as a pale stranger in shoddy dress enters their world. The lady thrusts a frothing brew of home-made ale into my hands.

  ‘Thank you, Lady Agatha.’

  ‘You are welcome. You could do with a bevvy to bring some colour to your cheeks. My but you are pale for a farm hand.’ My rough shirt is a better disguise in these rural parts than any fine suit. She must mistake me for a passing labourer.

  ‘Nonsense, Agie. He has a bearing that’s not used to stooping and the pale smooth skin of a true Celt. White as alabaster.’ A young woman with wavy flame-red hair curtsies before me smiling a broad smile. She takes my hand and places a corn dolly in my fingers. ‘You’ll forgive me if I seem forward. Perhaps at midnight when the dancing begins you will jink a step with me around the Maypole.’

  ‘It would honour me,’ I say, while tasting the good sweet beer.

  ‘And delight me. Your hands are hard yet smooth. You are no farmer. Let me see your face. My God your eyes. So green and deep. Eyes that are used to contemplation. A poet, no? A philosopher perhaps.’ She raises her hand to her blood red lips and giggles. She is very beautiful.

  ‘Leave the young gent alone, Hannah. He came in for a drain of pale and nothing more. And if you want to see more of his eyes, hands, Celtic skin or anything else it’ll not be in this house.’ Agatha laughs and refills my glass. ‘It’s Mayday, go and play in the field with everyone else if you’ve a mind to. Where have you come from, stranger?’

  I feel the rough corn dolly in my hand and look at Hannah as her hair glows under the fire. There’s something captivating about her boldness, her flirtatious innocence. ‘Soutra Aisle.’ I take another big gulp of beer.

  ‘That old haunt. What are you doing there? Resting on your way up north I’d wager.’ I nod as the flush-faced proprietress writes her own narrative of my life.

  ‘And why would you bide in that horrible old place when you could stay in glorious Fala?’ Hannah asks.

  Agie turns to her, soppy-stern. ‘And will he be staying with you? What would your father have to say about that?’

  Hannah waves her hand dismissively. ‘He’ll be drunk on mead before the May Queen’s done her rounds of the town.’

  A heavily pregnant woman has been sitting by the fire and listening to our conversation. She stands and interjects, laughing, ‘Perhaps you would go back with the young man to Soutra Aisle? And if you don’t, there’s others that might.’ She winks at me.

  ‘Polly! You’ll make my guest blush – although he’s that pale he could do with it. Sir, have another bevvy and don’t mind her.’ Agatha refills my mug and I drink again. ‘It’s going back with young men as got you to the state you’re in.’

  ‘And what do you mean by that Mammie Agie? I was married in June and am ready to drop any time soon. May bairns is lucky bairns. You told me that yourself,’ Polly declares proudly, huge in firelight.

  Hannah turns back to me. ‘Well I’d follow those red lips and green eyes to Edinburgh but I don’t like it much over by Soutra Aisle. Hum! You can hear strange sounds on the wind. It makes me shiver thinking about it.’ I’m at the centre of attention. Perhaps it is the beer but it is not an unwelcome feeling.

  ‘Give over, you young fool. You’ll come off like a superstitious bumpkin. That’s no way to impress your philosophising poetical young man.’ Agatha refills me. ‘Besides, Soutra Aisle is a good place and an honest place. It always has been that way since my grandmother’s grandmother’s days. Healing plants still grow there and wisewomen and cunningmen pass through from time to time on their way up north or down south to mind them. I’d wager that’s what our fellow here is up to. Do you tend the medicine gardens at Soutra Aisle?’

  ‘Something of that.’ The beer is going to my head. If I am to remain untroubled at my new home I should be wary of speaking too freely.

  ‘Good for you. It’s a rare art to heal body and soul. I am the midwife of this town and I will be delivering lovely Polly of her wee bairn any day. Here have another drink.’ The smoke from the fire is beginning to make my eyes water. ‘Still it must be powerfully cold down there of a night and wet as winter. And you with hardly a dress of linen to keep the elements at bay.’

  ‘The air and earth are kind to me.’

  ‘To be sure there’s goodness in the soil. But it’s a strange thing to bide outside the fellowship of men in that place. Let me see those eyes. Well, you do have the look of a thinker, but you lack the philosopher’s hunchback.’ Agatha turns to Hannah with a wink.

  ‘Perhaps he is a holy man like the healer monks of Soutra Aisle when it was a proper working hospital.’

  ‘I should cry if I learn that he’s a monk. Healing hands or none.’

  ‘You should pass the night here in my home. It’s no bother to me. Although the Mayday celebrations start at midnight and I don’t expect they’ll be over before the cock crows. The pole is set and the May Queen’s throne is up and ready.’

  ‘And I shall be the May Queen.’ Polly whirls on the spot, the hem of her long dress ballooning over her belly.

  ‘Ha! I doubt that! It ought to be a maid up on the rostrum, Polly. And that’s not you.’

  ‘La! You should gab!’ It may be the flowing ale or the chatter but before long I feel my head start to spin. The banter among country folk is sweet to hear but confusing to me. The clarity of Green words is so much easier to decipher than these jokes and teasing words. With musty alcohol cloying in my throat, I feel the need to escape these women and this house.

  ‘Good ladies, I must take my leave of you.’ I bow to leave but before I reach the door Hannah bars my way.

  ‘Sir, by all means take your leave but first, in honour of this sacred day, let me twine you with May-Blossoms so you may remember me next time we meet.’ She takes a thread of Hawthorne and wreaths my forehead in a crown of leaves and tiny white blooms. Then, lightly as spring rain, she kisses me softly. It has been many seasons since I last tasted a woman’s lips and I feel a spark of tinder light within my heart. The kiss lingers. I let it last until decency forces the lady from me. She puts her hands to her mouth coyly before running her wavy hair behind her ears. The way she looks at me with her open, honest face brings a flush to
my cheeks. I want to say something to her, but in this public house, surrounded by strange smells and sounds, words fail me. Abashed, I turn and stumble foolishly for the door. I can feel her eyes burn at my back and I pause in hope. ‘And what shall I call you when we do meet again?’

  I speak over my shoulder. ‘My name is Weed.’ I want to reach out to her, to thank her for her kiss at least, but I don’t. I turn my face. I feel foolish among these people, but for a moment I yearn to be accepted by them and their simplicity of love and loss of love. I step back onto Deere Street and cast the corn dolly away.

  Hurrying out of town I feel once more the cold embrace of the green world. Its cool sap and sober harmony is my natural environment but briefly I have tasted softness and heat. My neglected animal nature raises its head and thirsts for more just as roots thirst for rain. I can never be lonely among the plants, so what is this strange feeling of emptiness that seizes me as I walk out into the fields?

  ‘We don’t know.’ I’m walking through a field of Heather.

  ‘Sorry, Weed.’ The voices of brothers and sisters.

  ‘Did you have a nice time in the man place?’ Familial and bothersome.

  ‘Tell us all about it.’ Mundane.

  ‘I wasn’t talking to you, Heather.’

  ‘The Land Walkers are enjoying themselves. Normally they can’t stop digging and cutting and churning the earth. They’re leaving us alone. That’s good. To be alone and at peace in the cool earth. Don’t you think so, Weed?’ I’m sick of them all.

  ‘Weed?’ Boring and predictable.

  ‘You’re going the wrong way.’ I blank out the voices of the plants around me. I just want to be left alone and strike out blindly into the night.

  My head is still foggy from the beer. I have lost the Deere Street road but I can tell by the full moon that I am heading in the right direction for Soutra Aisle. I don’t even care to get back to that cold and empty stone room. Stinking of old mud and dead dust. What is waiting for me there? I gaze up at the pale distant moon; that faraway body has the power to draw the seas and oceans to it and yet can never touch the living earth. I see myself reflected in its lonely, hard light.