Nightshade

by Maryrose Wood

  I know how to cure. And I know how to kill.

  I have tried for so long to be good, but there is no need to fight my destiny anymore.

  I am my father’s daughter, after all.

  3

  A STAND OF HEMLOCK water dropwort grows in a sturdy group near the edge of a stream, deep in the old forest of Northumberland. The plants have straight, thick, hollow stems, topped with lacy flowers. One of their fleshy roots would kill me, if I were fool enough to eat it.

  “Such delicious roots,” the plant hums. “Sweet and rich and filling, Master Weed. Are you sure you do not want a taste?”

  “Have you any shame?” I roll to my side on this soggy bed of moss. “Look at you. Your leaves masquerade as parsley. Your stalks as celery. Your roots as parsnip. How many men have you killed with your trickery?”

  “Not just men. Women. Children. Cattle, too.” The lace-caps of blooms flutter, all innocence. “You seem angry, fleshbody. Perhaps living in the forest does not suit you after all.”

  I shift my position, trying to find a dry spot. After a night of wild storms, everything is wet: the ground, the trees, the rocks. Mushrooms sprout in every crevice. Some of them, too, are killers, but they know better than to boast about it.

  “It is not the forest that irks me. It is your pride in your own wickedness. You gain nothing from killing. You take no nourishment from your prey, as the hawks and foxes do. Yet you do it with enjoyment.”

  “We act as it is in our nature to act. Just as you do, Human Who Hears.”

  This is what they call me in the forest. The fleshbody. The Human Who Hears. Even here I am made to feel like a freak.

  “After all, you too, have killed,” the dropwort adds. “And there was no nourishment involved. Was there?”

  I do not answer. For yes, I have killed. Shamefully I have taken innocent life. And I would kill again, right now, if I had the means.

  My victims would be two in number: Thomas Luxton, father of my beloved Jessamine. And Oleander, the Prince of Poisons.

  It is for Jessamine’s sake alone that I stay away.

  Of its own will, my hand strays to the book of evil I carry with me day and night. Thomas Luxton’s book of poisons. It is wrapped safe and dry in a square of oilcloth I stole from a farm wife’s washing line.

  Every day I swear I will burn it. It is like that wicked garden of his: something unnatural that should never have been created. But I cannot bring myself to do it. It is the one link I have to the past – to all that was stolen from me. To happiness. To Jessamine.

  “Answer, fleshbody. Do not ignore, like an ordinary half-sensed human. We know you can hear us.”

  “Yes, I can.” I rake pebbles into my hand with my fingers and toss them one by one against a large out-cropping of rock. They bounce off the stone, narrowly missing my delicate, deadly accuser. “Alone among my kind, I can hear you. But that does not mean I am interested in what you have to say.”

  The notched leaves flare in outrage. I feel pleasure at their hurt. This is the sort of creature I have become. Bitter. Angry. With too little respect for others, and far too much pity for myself.

  I rise to leave. It makes the plants angry that I can do that. Walk away.

  “Listen to the fleshbody,” the dropwort retorts. “A mere seventeen turns of the seasons on this ancient earth of ours, and yet he dismisses us. What is your answer, coward? Have you killed, or have you not killed?”

  Through a canopy of alder leaves I glance up at the sky. It is grey, and thick with clouds. I half expect to see a shadow in the shape of wings, blotting out what little light is left. A gash of nothingness inked across the heavens.

  “Yes. I have,” I snarl. “We are killers both. Do not make me prove it.”

  With the poison diary under my arm, I turn and run.

  “What do you hope to find in the forest, fleshbody? She is not here, you know!”

  I plug my ears and run faster, deeper into the woods.

  Jessamine once told me that humans go for walks in the forest to be alone and “collect their thoughts.” At the time I did not understand what she meant. Why would human thoughts be scattered among the trees?

  For me, being in the forest is like going to market day at Alnwick, but instead of people’s elbows jostling me, it is the low branches whipping across my face, leaves sticking to my hair, roots rising up to trip me.

  There is no place to hide from the trees. They know everything I do – every grouse I kill to eat, every sip I take from the stream, every shelter I build for myself of leaves and moss. I cannot move behind a laurel to make water but they are there.

  Most often they speak according to their kind – the deep rumble of oak, the whisper of the birch, or the singsong chant of the alder. The evergreen stands of pine have voices sharp as needles.

  But the forest can speak as one, when it must. When the trees so choose, they think with one mind. When there is danger, especially, they speak in one voice of a thousand echoes.

  I hate it when they do this. For the forest mind is always right, and will hear no argument.

  I climb uphill, following the path of a stream. Its trickle soothes me. When I am thirsty, I stop and kneel to drink.

  You have spent half a season with us, Weed. And you are still unhappy. Filled with rage. We do not know how to help you.

  “You cannot help me.” I splash water on my face, again and again, but I cannot cool off. “My love has been taken from me. I have promised to stay away, and I can never be happy again.”

  Seasons change, Weed, the forest says. Seasons change.

  I find my way to where the stream opens up to a quiet pool. Stripping myself of my stolen clothes, I gulp a breath and dive in. It feels good to use my muscles and to feel the cool water against my skin, but even that does little to soothe my temper.

  I have the body of a man now, but of what use is my strength? I have already failed at being human. That I go on, hiding in this deep forest like an outcast, belonging nowhere, banished and alone, is a mystery even to me.

  After I climb out I sit on the bank and stare at my reflection. It is the only human face I have looked at since fleeing to the forest. My hair is long and tangled, and my cheeks are covered with a rough growth of beard. My skin is brown from the sun and the dirt. In my eyes there is loneliness and a cold glint of fury.

  I toss in a stone, and the image shatters. When I was a child, taunted for my oddness and scorned by other people, I often thought that if I could only live among the plants, I would be happy. Now I am here, and all I feel is rage.

  Do not deceive yourself, Weed. Your anger is not for us. It lives within you.

  Enough. I shake the water drops from my wild hair like a dog, and head for the clearing at the highest point of the woods. At least there I can see the sky and get away from this chattering canopy of leaves. But the lecture follows me as I stumble and climb.

  Your ears have the power to hear us, but your heart is bitter as a rhubarb leaf. This bitterness makes you deaf to the truth…

  “Leave me be,” I growl, kicking at a root.

  You have erred, Weed. That is why you suffer. You chose one being and elevated her above the others, as if all life did not have the same worth. You did terrible things for her sake – for the sake of the human girl, the one with the golden hair, yellow as a flower –

  Jessamine. The leaves flutter her name. The air shimmers with the sound. It pierces me like a thorn.

  Remember, Weed: The good of one tree is not important. The good of the forest is what matters.

  “Enough!” I press my hands to my ears; will they ever let me be? “Humans do not think as you think. They – we – do not feel the way you feel.”

  We know.

  “And not all plants are so selfless and noble as you describe. There is evil in the human world, and evil in the plant world, too.”

  Throughout the forest, the leaves go perfectly still. It is a silence that is most unnatural.

  W
e know, says the mind of the forest. All too well, we know.

  On bruised hands and raw knees I continue my climb, to the flattened ridge that rises past the edge of the wood. The clearing on the hilltop is small, compared to the rolling meadows of Hulne Park. It is an open field of high moorland, with clumps of rough grass surrounding a low growth of heath and a blanket bog of peat.

  The grey clouds hang heavy and low. Still, it is a relief to be at least a little distance from the trees, and to see the open sky.

  The cloudberries are ripe. The crowberries are, too. I help myself to the amber and purple fruits. The plants do not mind that I harvest from them, for it is how they spread their seed. They hum with pride when I choose the plumpest berries from each and praise their sweetness.

  I follow the stream as it cuts through the centre of the clearing. Soon I hear a familiar chant.

  Touch me, touch me not. Touch me, touch me not.

  If I were not in such a bad temper, the tune would make me smile. At the damp edge of the far side of the clearing, near where the stream disappears back into the forest, grow those whom I call, for lack of a better word, my friends. These simple flowers are my only pleasant companions. Their talk has the power to soothe my unhappiness, the same way the sap from their stems soothes the itch from a nettle scratch.

  They grow in a tidy cluster, with upright stems. Even now, in late summer, when darkness falls earlier every night, the touch-me-nots are covered with blooms. The bell-shaped orange-yellow blossoms droop under the broad leaves, like ladies shading themselves beneath green parasols.

  On calmer days, the reddish spots on their petals have made me think of the golden freckles that would bloom on Jessamine’s skin after a walk in the sun. Right now they remind me of other things: scarlet pinpricks left by a hungry bite. A spatter of fresh blood on dry earth. The mottled flush of a killing fever, dappled across a pale, beloved cheek.

  I step around the prickly heath and stretch out on the soft peat. I watch the speckled blossoms bob and dance, and feel my clenched fists loosen.

  “The forest is angry with me,” I say. “Everywhere I go, I am scolded.”

  The touch-me-nots murmur sympathy, then fall silent. They were made to offer balm. It is why I seek them out.

  “Tell me,” I say after a while. “Tell me what is happening at Hulne Abbey.” Not often, but sometimes, the touch-me-nots have news for me. From Jessamine’s kitchen garden at the cottage, the potted lilies on the altar at her church, the sheep meadows that cover the slopes of Hulne Park where she walks, the morning glories that twine around the shutters of her bedchamber window – now and then they send word, whispered from one plant to another, until it arrives at my ear.

  Each time the news has been the same. She is well. There is a changed hue to her eyes – they were once a soft, trusting blue, but now they are the colour of ice. There is something unyielding in the carriage of her spine. But she is alive, and strong.

  If she were not, Thomas Luxton would be a dead man. But as long as she thrives, I will accept my fate. I will obey Oleander’s command and stay away. I will live like an animal, or a beggar. I will spend my life among the plants, or alone. It does not matter. As long as she is safe.

  “Any news at all?” I ask again. With less murder in my voice, this time.

  The touch-me-nots do not answer.

  “How is Jessamine?” I demand to know. “Where is she?”

  “If you wish to know, why not go and see for yourself?” They say it without ire. I shake my head.

  “I cannot go back among the humans again.”

  “Because of the girl?”

  “I am ruined by what I did for her sake. I killed a man, a foolish man who wished me no harm, and the change of seasons will not bring him back. The humans will never forgive me for that.”

  “Death is final among them.” They say it as if understanding, but they cannot understand, really.

  “It has not been easy for you, living in the forest,” they add, after a while.

  “No.”

  “It is not easy for the forest, either.”

  “I ask nothing of the forest, except to be left alone.”

  The light is fading. A scatter of leaves blows across the moor, red and yellow and brown.

  “It is time for you to go back, Weed.”

  I do not wish to hear this.

  “The forest marches slowly, in step with the seasons. All is rhythm, patience, stillness…”

  Their true meaning remains unspoken. But I hear it, plain as the chilling wind that even now rushes across this hilltop moor: It is better to be like the plants than like me. For I am rootless. Angry. Abrupt. Alone.

  “You are a disturbance to the world of the forest,” they say, in that gentle, tinkling voice. “You are unsettled, and filled with passions we do not understand. You must return to your own kind. Go back to the humans. Settle your affairs with them, in whatever way they do. Pay the price for your deeds.”

  “I came to you for comfort. Instead – more banishment.” I stand, but where can I run to this time? From this high outlook I can see across the forest canopy to the turrets of Alnwick Castle in the distance, perched on the embankment, overlooking the twisting river Aln. The stone battlements blend into the grey sky. Torches burn in the watchtowers, glowing like red-hot coals.

  “I cannot go back,” I say, my voice cracking. “Oleander made me swear I would not go back. On Jessamine’s life, I swore.”

  “Oleander!” The touch-me-nots tremble in rage. “The human apothecary has done this! He brought the wicked plants together. He gave them a home where they should not have a home. He let them twine together in a way nature would never have permitted. Oleander was one of us, once. Now he is a great danger to you. To you. To all of us.”

  A gust of wind whirls across the flattened hill, making all the plants quake. After it passes, the touch-me-nots continue to shiver – now, it seems, in fear. “You must go back. Go back to the place you call Hulne Abbey. To that doomed place, where the dreadful garden grows.”

  “Is it Jessamine? Has she been harmed?”

  The flowers sound panicked. “Go. Go see for yourself.”

  4

  30th August

  I have made an early start today. I have already packed a satchel with lunch and water, for I am off to go collecting, in the distant fields and along the woodland edges. I expect I will find everything I need there.

  It seems odd that I must walk for miles in search of the specimens I need, when so many of their kind grow in abundance close by. But to take what I need from Father’s garden is too dangerous; he keeps the key on his belt, and the theft would never go unnoticed. I will not risk detection now.

  I am not afraid. I am, to be honest, excited. Tonight at supper, I will do what I have sworn to do.

  Then my mother’s death will be avenged. And – if Oleander keeps his word – my own life can truly begin.

  IT IS LATE AFTERNOON when I return, though the sky is so grey with clouds it seems more like dusk. I bathe the filth of the day from me, for I am as covered in earth as a grave-digger, and change into a fresh gown. Everything I do is ordinary, yet extraordinary at the same time. Never have I gone about these everyday tasks knowing what I now know, or planning what I now plan.

  Once dressed, I prepare to do the most ordinary task of all, one I have done all my life: make dinner for my father.

  I take my time, for it is a special pleasure to cook during the harvest season, when every ingredient is at its peak. I prepare small game hens, poached in a seasoned consommé of my own devising. Herbed new potatoes, creamed spinach, and a clove-scented pudding. I set the table as if for an honoured guest.

  When everything is ready, I cover the food and retreat to my kitchen garden to pray. I know there is no god who would condone what I am about to do. But the spirits of the dead might feel otherwise.

  “Was it for love of him that you did it, Mother?” I murmur into my folded hands. “Did it blind
you to the truth, and make you willing to endanger yourself, and your unborn child, just to please him?”

  The breeze blows but bears no answer. None is needed. I already know how passion can drive one to do the unthinkable. I myself am proof enough of that.

  “Forgive me,” I whisper. “I know vengeance cannot bring back the dead. If you loved him, you must despise me for what I now do. But the living need justice, too.”

  I brush the dirt from my knees and return inside. There is a man in the parlour.

  “Miss Luxton, is it? I remember you. My, you’ve grown up a bit over the summer, haven’t you?”

  He turns, and my heart freezes. I could never forget that face. It is Tobias Pratt, proprietor of a nearby asylum. The horrible man who first delivered Weed to our door, as if he were nothing more than a bundle of rags.

  “My father is not at home,” I say quickly. “I cannot receive you, Mr. Pratt. Come back another day.”

  “Not so fast, miss. I’m here for my payment. If my sources tell me right, your father owes me a bit of money.” He laughs. “A fair bit, I’d say.”

  Could this idiot have come at a worse possible time? “Money?” I say, feigning casualness. “As payment for what?”

  “For that green-eyed wretch Weed, of course! Didn’t the brat turn out to be useful? Him and his strange witch-boy ways, always talking to himself and creating strange concoctions. When I left him here I told your father I’d be back, and then he could decide what the lad was worth to him and pay up accordingly.” Pratt pulls a chair from the table and sits down. “That’s how honourable men do business, see? No need for a contract, a simple handshake will do.”

  He belches and licks his fingers. “Pardon me. I confess, Miss Luxton, this dinner you had set out on the table smelled so good, I took a fork and plate from the kitchen and helped myself to a taste while I was waiting. It’s a long, hungry ride from the asylum, and a man has to keep up his strength. Don’t worry, there’s still plenty left for you and your pa.” He pats his belly contentedly. “I could surely go for a pint of ale, though.”