In the early morning light I observe the true expanse of what must have once been an impressive chain of structures. There are five or six jagged outlines that suggest imposing edifices consigned to ruin. The remains of two courtyards to the north are simpler and separated from the rest. They are both large, rectangular and joined on the short side; those crumbling walls once guarded the medicine gardens of Soutra Aisle where I slept the night. I write this in haste because today I must redeem myself. The earth hereabouts is strong and resonates with life. I hope it will accept my charges.
The stone shell of the last building to stand at Soutra Aisle is old and poor. It smells of the earth and its roughly worked walls seem long abandoned by the hands of men. There is a bare entranceway that leads inside and above it, a cross and lintel with the name of Pringle carved upon it. This structure must have been an old chapel. As such the masons who came to pilfer good stone from the rest of the site spared it from their thieving. All to the good for me.
I retrieve my grow sack from the chapel and pause for a moment to eat the last of the Belladonna seeds. They will help me in this morning’s work. I approach the medicine beds and note how well appointed the gardens remain. Few weeds have overgrown the abundance of healing herbs and plants that grow here still. There is a quantity among them of shrubs and bushes used by midwives to induce labour, or to bring off an unwanted child: Tansy, Black Cohosh, Cramp Bark, Motherwort, Goldenseal and Artemisia.
There are many others too that quicken the blood, calm the mind or bring comfort to diverse ailments: Hyssop, Chamomile, Quinine, Tea, Feverfew, Arnica, Hawthorn, St John’s Wort, Narcissus, Rose. Curiously, I note many more exotic plants that have no business growing in this climate: Asafoetida, Cannabis, Ginseng, Peyote, Balm of Gilead, Coca, Khat. Beneath my feet I feel a throb of natural power to sustain them. I stand at a junction of ancientness. This place was once a formidable hospital for the ailments of men and especially women.
I am glad to find a rusted hoe in the corner of the westernmost courtyard. This tool will suit my needs well and I spy several promising patches and nooks wherein to introduce the new residents. I wield the hoe and dig deeply into the soil and turn, exposing hidden depths to the sun’s touch. The muscles of my shoulder and back flex and relax into an easy rhythm. I allow my mind to wander contentedly, lost in the ancient animal delight of simple exertion.
By mid-morning the day has warmed up and my rough linen shirt lies damp with sweat. It hangs heavily from my shoulders and hugs my chest and back when I pause from exertion. I begin my planting with deadly Strychnine, Henbane, Angel’s Trumpet, Winter Aconite, Ragwort Mandrake until I get to Poppy.
‘Here. Here. Who do you think you are? What are you doing?’
‘I am Weed, Narcissus. Do you know me?’
‘Oh you. We’ve heard of you I suppose. We felt you coming towards us yesterday on the deep vein when the sun was high.’
‘I’m here to root some weakened plants. This here is Poppy.’ I slot Poppy’s roots into the earth and cover them gently.
‘No fear. No fear! Weed. If you even think of letting that repulsive thing grow here next to me then I shan’t be responsible for my actions. Dig it up. Dig it up! Just the thought of its disgusting pods oozing all over the place. It makes me shudder.’
‘Narcissus! Don’t bother Weed with your gibbering.’ Rose’s voice is strong, clear and commanding. I am pleased to hear it.
‘I don’t care if Weed is the living embodiment of great Queen Mab herself, but I shan’t be in the presence of this muck. Look. I’m wilting. I’m browning! I doubt I’ll manage a flower this year.’ I pass my hand gently though the Narcissus bush and watch as half a dozen blooms of colour sprout from the stem. ‘Don’t think you can charm me so easily.’ It complains but I can sense its happiness at its own ripeness.
‘Hmm? Is it you, Narcissus?….… Why don’t you just……’
‘See. Sharing a bed with Poppy! Can’t even string a sentence together. It’s insupportable. Insupportable, I say.’
‘I like Poppy. Poppy! Do you hear me? I don’t think ill of you. I think you’re very impressive. All the great gardens have you. Since forever, all over the world. I’m just so lucky to be in this company. And you too, Narcissus. You’re so beautiful.’
‘Oh, Feverfew, shut up. I don’t need you to tell me I’m beautiful.’ Narcissus preens itself.
‘This bed was crowded before and now we have to share it with a dozen new malignant little plants. Look, Strychnine is all over you, Echinacea. You’ll not get half the sun you used to. That’s a poison taking your light. Well, what have you got to say for yourself?’
‘Don’t get me involved, you tedious bore.’ The Echinacea flower shrinks right back into its bud.
‘Narcissus. You’re a poison too.’ A lilting voice tries to mediate.
‘What do you know? Asafoetida. I don’t want to be the one to say it. But your smell is disgusting. It’s the shame of the whole garden.’
‘Little Narcissus. Great Princes of the East tasted my fruit since before the stars were in their current constellations. Not that that means anything to you, senseless stalk. You are a poison. You made that young walker fall into a very deep sleep just last spring. I don’t think his juices moved after that. You’re lucky you weren’t pulled out by your roots. Now why don’t you try and get along with Poppy?’
‘…… hmmmm. Yes.… I’m sure that red blood ate you right up.… You look just like an onion in the bulb.’ Poppy wakes up to defend itself. This isn’t going to end well.
‘How dare you, Opium. I mean really. How dare you. A common onion. I’ve never been so insulted in all my life.’
An onion seedling joins the chorus. ‘Excuse yourself, Narcissus. Preening pansy! Onion’s good for soil, full of health, keeps the rot at bay and tastes damn fine.’
‘Vain, stinking turd-blossom thinks it’s better than everyone else.’ Strychnine raises its ugly head. ‘Weed? I would that you stamp me to death rather than listen to these gossiping fusspots all day. I doubt one of them has healed, harmed or done anything but laze around in bed since Samhain last. Good for nothings.’
‘You’re a fine one, Strychnine. Talking to me of vanity. You acting like an earthworm wouldn’t munch between your roots. You sprout from the ground up just like the rest of us.’
Strychnine’s poisons run very deep and deadly. His nature is dangerous and his voice rasping. ‘You are lucky, little Narcissus, that I am bound by higher powers to do no harm among growing things or I’d strangle your roots with my hairy ganglions.’
‘You don’t have the bulbs! Get back to the ditch where you came from. You’ve been nourished on horse shit and people puke.’
‘Oh, Narcissus. I’m not going anywhere. In fact, I think I’m going to like it here. I can already feel this loam stimulate my roots. They’re getting stronger and growing even now. You are so uncommonly gorgeous I think my rootlets would like to get closer to you. I could be your scion and you could be my rootstock. How do you think a Strychnine-Narcissus cross would look?’
‘The very notion. How dare you. Weed! Do something. I think I can feel something moving in the soil. Weed!’
‘There is nothing that grows here, Narcissus, that has not grown here before. I have brought no real change on the land.’ I ignore the chatter and carry on with my work. I labour and plant Belladonna, Hellebore, White Baneberry, Hemlock. The sun is high in its house by now. My journey in the good forest yesterday has steeled my thighs and hardened my chest, though still it heaves with the effort of the morning. My wild black hair lies damply against my forehead.
‘Weed! Your rind is half drowned in dew.’
‘Hello, Rose. It is good to hear your voice on this glorious day. What do you mean my rind?’
‘Your bark. Your peel. The made-thing thing that covers your stem. It’s dripping wet. You’ll worsen if you don’t let your uprights breathe the clean air. Canker and mould will come in hot humid places when the sun is shining like today. Throw it away! You don’t need it anymore.’
I approach the bush standing proudly at the margins of the medicine garden and brush my hand against a nascent bud. At my touch the bud grows towards the light of the sun, splits open and flowers in violet. ‘Thank you, Rose, but I’ll keep my modesty for now.’
‘Blushing, bashful brawn! You are among friends of the good earth, what care we for man’s shame? I stand proud in bud and bloom and so should you too. Unless you want to be like those strange walking creatures that lived here. They never sloughed their husks no matter the filth that gathers between their leaves. I mean the monks of Soutra Aisle.’
Rose is prized of old, and has a wisdom of air breathing men that is uncommon among plants. ‘What do you know of them?’
‘I know they rarely died when nature would intend. They come to a malodorous end, rotting from the inside out with no shaft of sunlight to illuminate their mulchy mildewed sappy parts.’
‘Not everything can smell as sweetly as you, Rose.’ I gesture and three more buds rise and flower to join the first, an arrangement of colour among the green stems and leaves.
‘Of course I know that, Weed. I don’t expect miracles but come now, why don’t you lay that quenched drabness out to dry on my branches? It’ll be dry as drought in mid-summer by the time Master Sun is in his perch and leaves no shadow. Besides we’ll burn in the heat without some shade. You, on the other petal, look pale as the bark of a birch tree. Some colour will liven you up. Do you good, I don’t doubt.’
‘It’s no good arguing with a Rose bush, so used to being favoured and spoiled by man and beast.’
‘Quite right. You’ve got ears to listen and I can keep it up till sundown.’
It is a relief to peel the wet cloth from my shoulders and cast it over the nattering shrub. Rays of light play on my broad chest and I lose myself to the simple physical pleasure of connecting with the shining orb above. The hairs on my arms rise and I tremble as the moisture on my skin ebbs into the cool breeze. Every inch of my body feels amplified and alive as I stand squaring up to the sun and drinking in the ardour of its energy.
A whispered voice gently grazes the back of my neck and tranquillity settles on my spirit. I hear a sonorous hum that reminds me of some long forgotten covenant. I see a hidden door opening ahead of me and every cell in my body remembers an ancient bond of strength, a sweet temptation. I know that through that door, if I push just a little, I will unite with something, with everything that grows around me.
My choice is made almost before the suggestion forms. I push and open myself completely to the glare of the limitless sun. I let its light and heat photosynthesise within me and a powerful vigour inflames my body. I lose myself utterly to sensation; I had forgotten this freedom. A strange pulse of blood and sap charges within me and in an eternal instant I play, turning red nerves and green roots as they dance at my fingertips. I debauch on the sun’s generosity. I feel the trees, plants, each root and hair on every growing thing in the garden. And beyond the garden, I push further into the endless bounty of nature. I am a human lens for the sun’s raw energy, privileged, unique.
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.