Poison Diaries: Nightshade

“What is it, Jessamine? You look unwell. Let me prepare a tonic for you.”

I am faint, but I will not admit that to Father. He pours something for me to drink and brings it to me. The glass hovers in front of me. In its swirl of liquid I see visions: A dying lamb. The madhouses of London. A pair of large, terrifying wings.

I push the glass away. “I had terrible dreams when I was ill, Father,” I say in a low voice. “Some of them were about you. About what you did on your trips to London.”

His eyes glitter in the firelight. “Take a sip, my dear. It will steady you.”

“I dreamed that you went to the madhouse there. That you fed poison to the lunatics, in order to test your formulas.”

He stands so quickly the drink spills. “How strange. The fantasies our minds concoct when we are sick….”

I rise to my feet, clawing at my head as if I could tear that voice out by its roots. “A fantasy? I thought so, too. Now I am not so sure.”

Careful, lovely… your father has a dreadful temper, you know….

I watch the blue vein on his forehead throb. His words are calm, but his voice is a tightened sinew of rage. “Jessamine, it seems your mind is more affected by your illness than I first supposed. I suggest you go to bed. I know some cures that can help you.”

“Your cures!” I practically spit with contempt. “I think your cures are poison, Father. I think everything you have told me is a lie, and that which I believed to be a dream is all too real.”

The images take form again – me, flying high over the fields of Northumberland, born aloft by a pair of dark wings. “And Weed’s love for me, and mine for him, is the realest thing of all,” I gasp. “If you will not tell me where he is, then I will have to look for him myself.”

“Enough.” Three strides, and he is across the room. “I will tell you what you wish to know. But I warn you, you may regret it.” He gestures for me to sit down. “During your illness, Weed became distraught. Because of his extraordinary talent for healing, I believe he felt responsible for curing you, and was driven mad with frustration when he could not. He grew agitated, unreasonable. Finally he left. I could not chase after him, for I did not dare leave your side. You were at death’s very threshold that night.”

The light of the fire glows behind my father, casting lurid shadows along the stone floor. “He abandoned you, Jessamine, and you should despise him for it, not pine for his return. But you are right to call me a liar: He did not simply run off, as I have told you in the past.”

I sit there, unmoving as a statue in church, as Father’s voice drops deep. “You were so weak. I thought it would kill you to know the truth. As time passed and you regained your strength, I dared hope you would make your peace with my story and would never have to know the fate of that coward Weed. I prayed you would forget about him. He fooled us both, for a time. I do not blame you for being deceived by him. I was deceived as well.”

The flames leap, and the shadows do their mocking dance. My father’s words toll like a bell.

“Weed is dead. He hanged himself, in a remote part of the woods of Hulne Park. I found the body myself. The fool!”

Father approaches me and places a hand on my shoulder. I allow myself to soften, to weep. It is not difficult. I shed tears at will these days.

“I thought it would be too cruel to tell you the truth. But it is crueller still to let you go on longing for something that can never be.” He steps back and spreads his arms, as if waiting for me to step into his embrace. “I hope you can forgive me, Jessamine. Oh, the curse of being a parent! The sins we commit to ease our children’s suffering!”

I rise from the chair. Father takes a step toward me. I wheel from his open arms and race outside, into the storm.

“Jessamine –” His voice follows me to the door, but the moment I am outside the shrieking wind drowns out every sound but the pounding of my own heart. Let Father run after me if he dares. I am one with the storm now, wild and furious, a howl of rage.

“Weed!” I hurl my desperate cry to the starless sky. Up the twisting path I climb. The ground is muck beneath my feet. Am I truly mad, then? I must be, to think the poison garden is the only place left for me to turn.

But how else will I finally discover what is real? How else will I know what is true, and what is a lie?

And when the worst has already happened, what is left to fear?

Unless the worst is yet to come. The thought stops me short. I pause for breath. Eyes closed, I feel the earth spin drunkenly beneath my feet, slipped off its axis like a wheel on a broken axle.

Foolish Jessamine… did you really think I was only a dream?

Thunder cracks, loud as a gunshot. I press my hand to my chest. My heart flutters like a trapped bird within the cage of my bones. My hair hangs sodden, like seaweed trailing from the ropes of a sailing ship. My dress is as wet as if I had risen up from the German Ocean and walked ashore.

“Help me,” I cry with all the ragged breath I have left. “If you are here, show yourself, I beg you. For I do not know what to believe anymore.”

I will show you.

Once more, lightning slashes crookedly across the sky, briefly revealing the path before the world plunges into darkness again. The wind howls and blows, not east to west, but in strange circles that seem as if they would pluck the trees straight up from the ground and hurl them down again like broken toys.

The black gate of the poison garden looms before me. I hurl myself at the unyielding bars. The lock taunts me, an iron apple dangling from a lifeless tree. Exhausted, I collapse to the ground.

I assure you, I am no dream, lovely. I have powers you cannot imagine. I can help you find what you seek. All you need do is ask.

Help me, my heart begs, yet I dare not speak the name of the one to whom I plead. The horrors of my nightmares come back to me ten times over: the torment. The lunatic asylum. My father’s wickedness and murderous lies.

Nothing about this world is what I thought it was. I am lost, and have only one refuge.

“Oleander!” I cry, but the wind swallows all sound. I lift myself from the mud and seize the bars of the gate in my two hands. The wet metal is cold and rough against my cheek. “Please! I need you. I need you to show me the truth… as you did once before…”

The sound of the storm changes. To each side of me rain pours, lightning cracks, wind howls. Somehow I am shielded.

I throw my head back and search the sky. Directly above me the night takes form. It is darkness upon darkness, like ink spilled upon black velvet.

The inky stain is in the shape of outspread wings.

I have waited for you to come back to me, the Prince of Poisons croons. And now you are here.

“Tell me, please,” I gasp. The shadow wings beat once, twice. “Is Weed dead or alive?”

Your beloved Crabgrass is rather unkempt at the moment. In a foul temper, and in urgent need of a bath. But yes; he is alive.

The relief I feel is mixed with the sure, sickening knowledge that my father is no more than a murderous villain.

“I must find him – does my father know where he is?”

If your father knew where to find Weed, he would have had him killed by now. He cannot harness Weed’s gifts for his own purposes, and he will not have him be a potential rival.

“He is a monster! Oleander, can you help me find Weed?”

I can if I choose to. But first you must prove yourself worthy.

“Tell me what to do.”

I want you to avenge your mother’s death. Bring justice to her killer. Then you will have earned my aid.

My heart clenches. “My mother was murdered? By whom?”

Who do you think, lovely?

His laughter falls like a rain of ice. There is no end to the wickedness of humans, is there? It surprises even me, sometimes. When your task is done, then I will help you find what you seek. And you will help me in exchange, when the time comes. For you and I need each other, as you will someday learn…

“What do you mean?” I cry, but the shadow being ascends to the vault of the night, and is gone.

The rain pours down with doubled fury. I slip and stumble along the muddy path, back to the cottage, too shocked to even weep.

My whole life has been based on lies. And the only being that can help me find Weed is an incarnation of evil itself.

Have I made a terrible mistake in rousing the dark prince? It does not matter, for I must find Weed again, whatever the price.

And, this, too I swear: No corrupt magistrate, no dim-witted committee of farmers, will stand in judgment of my mother’s killer.

No. I will deal with him – with Father – myself.

The door to the cottage opens with a push. The fire sputters as the water from my clothes streams across the stone floor and sizzles into the hearth.

“Father?” He is not here. Is he out searching for me in the storm? Has he been crushed by a tree or trapped on the far side of a flooding stream?

I hope not. For I would hate to miss the chance to take my own vengeance.

And yet, there is some small doubt within me. My father is wicked, I know. A liar and a murderer. But I always believed he loved my mother. There was a warmth in his voice, a softness in his eyes, that only ever appeared when he spoke of her.

Surely it would not be wrong to want proof, I think.

I walk toward the study, wet feet slapping against stone. The door is unlocked and swings open as I approach. Every window shutter has blown open. Gusts of wind howl through the room, lifting papers, toppling books. I can scarcely see, but who could light a candle in this maelstrom?

As if in answer, lightning flashes once more, and then again. A volume lies open on Father’s desk. Its pages tremble in the moving air, begging me to read them.

I lay a hand on the open page. As I do, the wind ceases and the night goes silent and still. In this otherworldly calm I can finally light a candle to read by. The page is written in my father’s hand, although his familiar neat script is slanted pell-mell and blotted, as if he wrote in a terrible rush, or as if his thoughts had become tinged with madness…

…my life’s work is lost, utterly lost, or so it seems. I think of all that I sacrificed to gain this knowledge, so painstakingly recorded in my diary. What compelled that misbegotten freak to seize the record of my work and flee? As if he had any need for it! Someday I will pay him back, I swear it – I will find him, wherever he hides, and reclaim what is mine.

So much suffering, for naught! So many lives sacrificed! Even yours, my darling, my Elizabeth… but how was I to know that the child in your womb would weaken you so severely? You were never the same after the birth; it was as if all your strength was used to nourish the child, at your own expense. Poor Jessamine. She scarcely remembers you. She would never suspect how I think of you hourly, write you these letters every night, and above all, continue our work…

She has grown so like you it startles me. Would you be proud to know how well she endured my treatments, Elizabeth? She suffered, yes, but survived greater doses than I ever dared give you.

It occurs to me now: Perhaps her physiology has some special tolerance for the dark substances, since she was first exposed while still in your womb… this may be a topic for further study.

Here is all the proof I need.

My father poisoned my mother. She let him do it, it seems. She was a willing part of his “work,” even as I grew within her belly. Still, he bears full blame for her death.

And my illness was no strong fever, my recovery no miracle cure wrought by the skills of Thomas Luxton. My father poisoned me, and harbours not one speck of remorse for doing so.

And Weed – Weed is alive. Somewhere. And my father will kill him someday, if he can. If I do not stop him first, that is.

Truth, terrible truth! It is like an ancient curse, from which there is no escape. The truth will drive one mad. Yet without it, how can one make sense of life’s madness?

Do you like the task I set you, lovely?

I do. For now I know who I am.

I am Jessamine Luxton. Poison ran in my veins before I was born.

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.

We 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?”