I woke cold and alone in the ruins of Hulne Abbey. I know not how long I have lain here, sheltered from the elements by the few remaining joists of the old chapel roof, thin ribs that somehow survived the fire Jessamine kindled here so long ago. My shoulder is matted with blood. The Duke’s great sword lies discarded on the cold stone floor. In front of it, gnarled in rigor mortis, spread the twisted wings of Oleander, like the denuded branches of some ghastly dead tree. I stare at my awful trophies unceasingly. I dare them to evaporate into thin air, but they stubbornly remain. So the preposterous battle was real and I am not yet a lunatic. Can I be a mortal man to fight with spirits and twist the growing world to my will? Or perhaps I am a bad dream made flesh, for I bring nightmares where I tread.
The poisonous throbbing ache in my shoulder is searing. I sweat and tremble in a fever. The wound needs treatment or it will fester and worsen. I carefully remove the tattered remnants of my linen shirt and stand unsteadily to my feet. I am delirious but I must search to see if anything remains of Luxton’s old medicine garden. He was an evil man obsessed with poison and power but he kept a small corner of the grounds hereabouts for healing plants and herbs.
Outside there is a strange stillness in the air. A great bright firmament seems to blot out the sun and hangs ponderously over the ruins of the chapel. I do not feel the cold but I hunger for the soft touch of sunlight on my body. After the strain of battle I know that I will need its kiss if I am to be made whole again. I avoid even looking at the poison garden and instead I hunt for treasures: bright Houseleek to heal and Yarrow to bind the wound. Soon I hear their call.
‘Weed… Break my casing and use my sap.’ The voice of ancient Houseleek whispers, barely carried by the still wind.
‘Yes yes, Weed! Yes. Peel my leaves, peel them right off! And I will hold all your bits inside your stem and I won’t let go of you until you’re fixed right up.’ Yarrow can’t help being cheerful. It’s naturally exuberant.
‘Weed… What have you done? The poison garden is fading.’ Another whisper.
‘Don’t bother good Weed about that. Can’t you see his juice is leaking? He needs healing. That’s right. Less talking, more healing.’
I cut a stem from Houseleek and proceed to squeeze the unguent liquid from its living green stalk into my wound. The vibration of pain in my shoulder begins to calm itself.
‘Weed… You cannot let the garden die. You are of nature and yet you have committed a crime against nature.’
From Yarrow I peel a fibrous stalk on which three leaves grow. I feel the plant flutter at my touch, taking pleasure in being used and appreciated. ‘Houseleek. I was forced to defend myself against a great threat: an army of poisonous plants grew up around me, intent on my death.’ I lay the Yarrow leaves upon my bare shoulder and bind them in place with its stem.
‘Weed… to defeat the garden you forced them to spend their seed and make barren the soil from which they sprang. A great enormity. You bring them unknown death. A final end such as is unnatural to us… You must return them to the sun and earth. Make amends now or you will find the Green world closed to you. You will be alone. Sap-abandoned. Red blood and men will be your only companions.’ A cold rod of steel burns down my back in the shiftless air. I am no friend to men. To live without the roar and rumble of the living earth in my ears? I feel dread merely contemplating that dire state of loneliness. It is a curious sensation and a terrible one. Oleander said that I had killed my brothers and sisters. In my forgetfulness, in my fugue of rage can I have closed the door on the natural world? I look up into the sky for comfort, but even the sun has forsaken me.
‘What must I do?’
‘Weed… Re-plant the garden.’
I look towards the dreadful dead remains of the poison garden: last night’s battlefield. ‘But the ground is rotted here.’
I feel nothing but a chilling absence from Houseleek, but from Yarrow there is precious pity. ‘Sorry, Weed? Can I say something? I have a suggestion. Yes I do. A suggestion for you and a good one. There is a garden in the north. I can feel it there on the deep veins that run beneath us. It vibrates like a leaf in the rain. Not far away; it has always been there, or for a very long time at least. Air-breathers came there and seeded their young. I feel Yarrow there, and Houseleek, and all the good herbs you have hereabouts.’
‘Weed…’ Houseleek’s voice is thin and dour. ‘Listen to Yarrow. There is strong soil at old Soutra Aisle.’
The plants are my dearest allies in this world. I distorted a hundred seasons of regeneration and decline into an atrocity of seconds. I forced on them cannibalism and death and they will not germinate here again. I resolve to redeem myself if it is not too late. I will salvage what can be saved. I look to the dead silence of the poison garden. If Soutra Aisle is a medicine bed then it may heal these poisons as well as Yarrow and Houseleek will heal my wound. But I will need to sustain them in seed or sprout for the journey and I am still too weak. Today I must rest in the ruins of the chapel. If I am able, tomorrow, I will leave this place and let forgetfulness take it from my memory.