24th April
THE WEATHER IS FAIR AND MILD. FATHER SAYS I AM NOT permitted to write about what happens today. The contents of the apothecary garden must remain secret.
Did I mention that the weather is fair?
The key to the apothecary garden hangs on a large circular key ring that I have never seen before. Father slips it out of his pocket with practised familiarity.
Weed and I stand behind him. The morning air promises a warm day, but Weed seems frozen. I imagine he has steeled himself against whatever ill effects he fears the garden may have on him by cultivating a cold, blank exterior. How odd it is to stand so close to him and see no flicker of affection, no sign of our closeness of yesterday!
Soon, I think. Soon we will be alone again, and the truth can finally be spoken.
Father slips the key in the keyhole and turns it, until the lock falls open with a soft click. He shakes loose the heavy chain and lets it slip to the ground. In answer to a gentle push, the tall black gate swings open on smooth, silent hinges.
At last! I long to whoop in celebration, but I dare not. Something more sombre and dangerous is at stake. Weed stands near me, his face impassive.
“Come inside; don’t be afraid.” Father gestures for us to follow.
My high spirits give me the courage to tease Father. “All right, but aren’t you going to tell us not to touch anything?”
He smiles faintly. “I assumed you knew that by now.”
As we step inside, the temperature of the air itself seems to change, as if a great cloud suddenly blotted out the sun. Weed shudders, but he does not hang back, and together we proceed.
Excitement courses through my every nerve. Is it because Weed is near me, or is it because, finally, after years of waiting, I stand inside the forbidden garden? Is the thrill of one any different than the thrill of the other? I cannot tell. He is with me, the garden is before me; my heart quickens with the rightness of it all.
And yet, as I look about, I am forced to admit: on its surface, the apothecary garden is not so very different from any other garden. There is the smell of rich earth, the green plants growing quietly in their beds, the soft hum of bees making their rounds.
Father walks ahead of us. He too seems charged with excitement; there is a spring in his step I do not often see. “My aim is to keep the plant families together as best I can, based on scientific principles,” he explains. “Weed, are you familiar with the work of Carl Linnaeus? His Systema Naturae describes a classification system for all growing things.”
Weed’s eyes dart everywhere, probing every corner. “ Unless he visited the madhouse, I never met him,” he replies.
Father allows himself a wry smile. “Some consider him to be the greatest botanist of the century. I find his work useful, though no doubt future generations will call it primitive. I can instruct you in it if you like.” He sweeps his hand around. “Bear in mind that what I have done here is, at best, an approximation of a true botanical garden, but that is because of the unusual nature of my collection. There are many plants here that have been collected from the farthest parts of the globe. Despite all my research, my knowledge of the relationships between them is scanty. Perhaps you will be able to enlighten me on that account, Weed.”
Father does not wait for an answer. “Let us start our walk here, along the east wall. These are plants you may be familiar with. Some are native to England, and some were brought over from the American colonies a century ago – the United States of America, I suppose I ought to call it now. This plant, for example. Do you recognise it?”
“Angel’s trumpet,” Weed breathes. “A plant of many dreams.”
Father looks at him sharply. “Dreams, yes – some might say hallucinations. Angel’s trumpet, also known as datura. They say the name ‘datura’ comes from a Hindu word meaning ‘thorn apple’ – but perhaps you already knew that.”
Weed presses his forehead with both palms and squeezes his eyes shut. Does he not know, or is he trying to rid himself of what knowledge he has?
“A craggy old fellow I met at the St James fair told me that titbit of lore,” Father continues. “He specialised in plants of the Orient, and claimed to be a survivor of one of Captain Cook’s expeditions. I suspect he was lying about that, but the specimens he offered were quite rare. And the prices he charged were exorbitant, I must say.”
Father continues to stroll as he talks. He seems fully at ease here inside his locked garden – more at ease than I have ever seen him, in fact. “This is henbane. And this is poison hemlock. A painless death, but a particularly cruel one, don’t you think?”
“From the feet it begins,” Weed intones.
Father nods. “Death starts from the feet and travels upward, until it reaches the heart and finally kills you, and the whole time you are fully aware of what is happening. They say it took poor Socrates twelve hours to die. Ah, here is a favourite of mine: wormwood, the ingredient that gives absinthe its peculiarly intoxicating properties.” Father waves me closer. “Take a good look at the white bryony, Jessamine. It is all too easy to mistake its roots for parsnip. That would be the last bowl of soup any of us would ever enjoy.”
We follow Father from plant to plant. “Bittersweet,” he points out, “and adder’s root and mandrake. And this potent specimen is called oleander—”
Suddenly Weed clutches his head in pain. “No!” he cries. “These are not plants to heal the sick. These are poison! All of them…poison…”
Something twists inside my chest. Is it true? I knew these plants were dangerous if misused, Father always told me that – but is Father’s private, closely guarded collection of plants really nothing more than a poison garden? A locked armoury of deadly, living weapons? For what purpose would he, or anyone, create such a wicked place?
“You must know it is not as simple as that, Weed,” Father says smoothly. “The plant that can kill can also cure, if only one has the knowledge to use it properly. That is why it is so important – so very important – that you tell me what you know.”
Weed shakes his head violently back and forth, as if he would cast out some deeply embedded pain.
“Are you all right?” I cry out, but as I reach towards him I lose my balance and stumble into a nearby garden bed. My arm brushes against what looks like a nettle. It feels like a thousand pins plunging into my flesh. Within seconds, a tiger’s striping of scarlet welts begins to rise and scroll around my skin.
Father does not even turn around. “Do be careful, Jessamine,” he says casually, walking on. “I paid a great deal of money for some of these plants.”
I cradle my wounded arm. The burning sensation forces tears into my eyes. Vivid, puffy stripes rise and spread with shocking speed. “A dock leaf will take away the sting,” I tell Weed with forced calm, though I feel suddenly light-headed. “I’m sure we will find one on the walk home.”
“A dock leaf might, if that were an ordinary nettle.” Weed closes his eyes, then walks in staggering zigzags until he reaches a small group of plants near the southern fence. Dizzily I scurry after him.
“Weed,” I whisper hoarsely. “Please, do not touch anything. Father will be furious—”
Ignoring my objections, he bends down and tears a leaf from a low, inconspicuous shrub, then stands and rubs it on my skin. The worst of the pain subsides at once, and the sharp pinpricks turn to a dull throbbing.
Father has wandered far ahead of us; now he turns. “Come along, you two, what is holding you back?” A glance from Weed instructs me to say nothing. I draw my shawl close around my arm to cover the welts, which are already starting to recede.
Father calls again: “Make haste, Jessamine. I want you to see this.”
I glance behind me. Weed’s lips are pale and moving rapidly, as if he were reciting some desperate prayer. Please, let Father not see him acting so oddly, I think.
Ahead, Father beckons. Obediently I go to him. He steps aside with a smile.
“Look – here are some old friends of yours.”
Before me are the belladonna sprouts. Each one is nearly a foot tall now, delicate and lanky. They sway in unison with the breeze, like a company of dancers.
The sight of them makes me forget everything else: the fading throb in my arm, Weed’s bizarre behaviour behind me on the path, Father’s strange, cool indifference—
“My belladonna seeds!” I exclaim. “Look how well they are growing. Weed, come and see.”
I kneel down to get a better look at the infant shoots. Truly, it is a miracle, the way a tiny nubbin of a seed can so quickly transform into lush green growth.
“Isn’t it amazing?” I say to Weed, who now stands next to me. He looks ashen and preoccupied. I keep my voice merry and my arm hidden beneath my shawl, so Father will not suspect anything is amiss. “Before the season is over these plants will be nearly as tall as I am.”
Playfully, I tease the little plants with the tip of a stick I find on the ground. “Hello, lovely girls. I wonder if you remember me? Jessamine, who bathed you so tenderly, and cared for you every day before you were born?”
With sudden violence Weed seizes the stick and snaps it in two. He looks at me, as if astonished by his own act. Then he groans and collapses to the ground.
Father and I carry a half-conscious Weed back to the cottage. He feels impossibly heavy; with each step it is as if we are pulling him from the earth.
“Did you see him touch any of the plants?” Father grunts. “Did he taste anything? Smell anything?”
We will be banned forever from the garden now, I think, but for Weed’s sake I tell the truth. “He did, Father, but only to help me. When I fell into that nettle plant, he tore a leaf from something to ease the burning.” I drop my shawl and hold up my arm to show him. The red welts have already faded, and the skin is cool and flat, with only faint pink streaks to show where I was hurt.
“Which plant? Which plant did he touch?”
“I don’t know!” The look on Father’s face is terrifying; for an awful moment I cannot tell if he is upset because Weed is ill, or because he had the nerve to tear a leaf from one of Father’s precious plants – or because Father himself did not know which plant cured the nettle sting.
With Weed slung over his shoulder, Father opens the cottage door with a violent kick and marches straight up the stairs to my bedchamber.
“Can you help him?” I plead.
Father lets Weed slide off his shoulder and on to the bed, then walks around the room and opens all the windows fully. “If he did not ingest any of the leaves, the fresh air will revive him soon enough. And if he did, he is worse than a fool, for he must have known exactly what would happen.”
He turns and looks down at his patient. Weed’s breaths come evenly, and his eyes flutter back and forth beneath closed lids.
“He dreams. That is a good sign.” Father takes a light blanket and places it over Weed’s frame. “If only I could look through some enchanted lens that would let me observe those dreams,” he murmurs. “They might reveal much.”
I too long for such an enchanted lens. Do you dream of me, Weed? I wonder. Do you dream of our kiss, as I do? Or was it a moment’s fancy, already forgotten?
Father’s penetrating gaze finds me and pins me to the spot. “I am more sure of it than ever, Jessamine. Somehow this silent, unschooled boy knows more than I do about the very plants I have made my life’s work. But how? Has he revealed anything to you? You must not keep it from me if so.”
“I do not know what Weed knows, or how,” I say earnestly. “I wish I did.”
Father stares at me until I have to look away.
I do not think he believes me.
I spend the night dozing in a chair I drag up to my bedchamber from the parlour. My sleep is so light and broken that I dream all night long. They are strange dreams of icy water, swirling about my ears—
I am a mere speck tossed about in a turbulent sea, while a smiling giantess empties and refills the ocean beds with rushing, foam-flecked tides, again and again and again—
It is nearly dawn before Weed begins to stir. At once I am at his bedside. His eyes do not open, but he breathes a single word:
“Jessamine.”
My heart swells until it hurts. What is this feeling, this deep ache that contains both pain and joy? Is it some leftover poison from that strange nettle? Is it love?
“I am here, Weed.” I lift his hair back off his forehead. “I was so frightened! What happened to you in the garden? Was it anything to do with that leaf you picked?”
He shakes his head. “The voices are strong there. So strong, so cruel. So beautiful. They want me to stay.”
“What voices? Who wants you to stay?”
He looks at me with those fathomless green eyes. “Jessamine,” he whispers, so softly his words seem to enter my ears like the sound of a breeze in the meadow. “I am not like other people. I ought not to speak of these things.”
My mind whirls – there is so much about Weed I do not know. So much I could ask, and should ask – but I am afraid.
Surely it would be better not to know…
But I must be braver than that. “I touched the belladonna plants with a stick,” I say, in a trembling voice. “And then you cried out.”
His eyes widen into two green marbles, swirls of liquid emerald enclosed within perfect spheres. The early morning sun renders their colour translucent, like the liquorice-scented absinthe Father drips into his water glass, one intoxicating spoonful at a time.
I take Weed’s hand in both of my own. “Can you at least tell me why you collapsed in the apothecary garden?” I plead. “These voices of yours – to whom do they belong?”
The curtains billow inward from the window. The fragrant spring air caresses us both. I lean forward until my face is a hand’s-breadth from his. I close my eyes and imagine brushing my lips against his, again and again.
“Tell me what you know,” I whisper. “Show me what you see.”
“I wish I could.” He turns his face away. “But I cannot.”
The kiss dies on my lips.