Poison Diaries: Nightshade

I startle. Am I losing my mind? Is the dark prince of my nightmares standing outside my cottage this instant?

A charming thought, lovely. But I have no need of doors. All the locked gates in the world could not contain me. I enter when and where I wish. I hold the key to every poisoned heart.

The rap comes again, insistent. I remember the woman at church, the one who was heavy with child. Perhaps her pains have started. Trying to shake off this strange bout of madness, I grab my shawl and my medical bag and hurry to the door.

“I am ready,” I begin to say, but two men stand before me. Local men, both farmers. I have seen them before, at market day. Their awkward bulk fills the doorframe and blocks the slanted afternoon light.

“Miss Luxton?”

“Yes.”

The taller man glances at the bag in my hands. “Might we come in for a moment and speak with you? It won’t take long.”

I bid them enter and show them to the parlour, but I remain standing. “I would ask you to sit, but as you see I was just on my way out,” I say, gesturing with my bag. “I trust you are not ill? That is the usual reason for strangers to appear at my door.”

The men shake their heads and glance uncomfortably around the room, with its vaulted ceiling and tall, arched windows. Long ago this cottage was a chapel. Now it is our home. Is that why I am being curse with this strange madness? I think. Can the echo of a thousand unanswered prayers ever truly fade? Can a chapel be haunted?

My uneasy visitors wring their hats in their hands. The tall man speaks. “Sorry to detain you, Miss Luxton. We’re from the Association for the Prosecution of Criminal Acts and Undesirables. Me and Horace, here, we’re making enquiries in the neighbourhood, regarding the matter of – well, a missing person, you might say.”

“Dead person, he means.” His companion scowls. “Don’t drag this out, Ned, I’ll be wanting supper soon, and it’s a long way home on foot.”

Missing person – dead person. Surely they cannot mean Weed? I bite my lip hard, and use the pain to steady myself.

The one called Ned swallows and nods. “Miss Luxton, there was a travelling preacher who came and went through these parts. ‘Repent, repent,’ you know the type – anyways, the man hasn’t been seen for some time. A week ago his Bible turns up near the crossroads, buried deep in a hedge of bramble. A farmer from Alnwick found it. One of his lambs got tangled up in the thorns, see, and he had to cut out the branches to free it. It was a bit worse for the rain and sun – the Bible, I mean – but you could still read the name on the flyleaf.”

Ned pauses and wipes his face with a simple cotton square he extracts from a pocket. “Forgive me, miss. There’s more, but it’s not an easy story to tell to a young lady like yourself. Not far from the Bible was… was…”

“A pile of bones,” Horace interrupts. “Human bones. Picked so clean you’d think they’d been boiled for soup.” He cleans his teeth with his own dirty fingernail, as if to demonstrate.

His words bore into me, releasing a gush of dread from some deep reservoir inside. “The ravens of Hulne Park do their work swiftly,” I say, masking my fear. “I hope you will follow their good example, gentlemen. Why are you here?”

“The truth is, miss, we don’t much care what happened to this fellow. Good riddance, one might say. Who wants to hear all that gloom and doom? But as it turns out, the preacher had a wife, and they both were members of our association. Dues paid in full.” Horace shakes his head in disappointment. “Which means that we two are stuck with the job of investigating.”

“Couldn’t happen at a worse time, either,” Ned adds. “Right in the middle of the harvest.”

“Was it murder?” I say the word as if it meant nothing horrible – murder, murder, murder – a word like any other.

Horace snorts, a contemptuous laugh. “A man’s bleached bones don’t just fall out of the sky, do they?”

“God alone knows what happened.” Ned rolls his eyes heavenward. “And God alone metes final justice. But that don’t mean we can shut our eyes to this business. The association must perform its duty, Miss Luxton. That’s why we’re here. Allow me to ask: Do you have any knowledge of this matter? Firsthand, secondhand, or otherwise?”

“I do not.”

“Duly noted. Like we said, we’ve been making enquiries. We were told there was a young man living here. May we speak to him?”

I hesitate. “Why?”

They glance at each other before Horace replies. “The widow’s paid her dues. That means we have to find someone to prosecute. Otherwise the case’ll drag on and on, and we’ll never have a moment’s peace. We could pay her to drop it, but that’d cost us a king’s ransom.”

The two men stand there, fingering their hats, waiting for my answer. Deliberately I remove my shawl and take a seat. I must, for my legs have begun to tremble.

“So you wish to find some poor fool to charge with a crime? Whether or not he is guilty of it?” My voice is cool, my anger palpable – how like my father I sound!

“Guilty, innocent – it don’t have to be so formal as all that!” Horace smiles. “No doubt it was an accident, whatever happened. Words get exchanged. Push comes to shove. The preacher ends up with a bloody nose in the dirt. Your friend goes on his merry way, as any of us would, and that’s the last he thinks of it. How was he to know the preacher could die of such a feeble blow?”

To demonstrate, Ned cuffs Horace on the head. For a moment I wonder if I am about to witness a murder myself, but Horace grits his teeth and continues.

“We take your friend to the magistrate, where he apologises most sincerely and pleads the benefit of clergy. Then he stands there like a good lad while he gets his pardon.”

“A pardon?” I interject. “But a man is dead. Surely his widow will want justice. I would, if I were her.”

“Every man worth his salt loses his temper now and again. That’s how the magistrate’ll see it, you can be sure. It gets the widow off our backs and puts the whole matter to bed. We’ll pay your friend a day’s wages for his trouble, too.”

Ned grins; his teeth are yellow as a mule’s. “But there won’t be no hanging, that we can promise you.”

“Lay off the talk of hanging, you dumb ox, you’re going to frighten the girl.” Horace turns back to me. “Now that we’ve laid your worries to rest – can we speak to the young fellow?”

I stand and move to the window. “The youth you refer to goes by the name of Weed. He stayed here with us for a short while. He was a great help to my father with the work in the gardens. But he no longer lives here, and I have no knowledge of his whereabouts.”

I let my eyes drift downward, shy and maidenly. “I would like to speak to him as well. He left soon after” – I allow my voice to catch with emotion; why not? – “soon after my father suggested that we become engaged.”

My visitors exchange a look. They too were young men, once. And now that they know how I have been shamed and abandoned, perhaps they will leave me be.

“I see.” Horace’s voice is gruff. “Perhaps it would be best if we spoke to your father, then.”

“My father is out.” I wave my hand, as if to indicate the whole north of England and Scotland, too. “If you can find him, by all means, speak to him. Feel free to go outside and look. I will make tea while you do.”

Before they can catch breath enough to answer, I excuse myself and leave. How convenient it is to be a woman, sometimes! One can always use the kitchen as an excuse to escape men’s tedious conversations, their scheming and planning. Father has his work to hide behind, I think, and I have my kettle.

As I light the fire my mind wanders down strange paths. Dread churns within me – dread that, somehow, this preacher’s death has something to do with Weed’s disappearance. But what?

I take my metal canister of tea off the shelf. It is my own mixture of dried lavender blossoms and lemon balm, harvested from my garden and hung in the storeroom to dry. Weed helped me hang these stalks, I think. His hands touched these tender leaves, just as they touched me…

I measure the tea, crumbling the dried leaves through my fingers to release the sweet fragrance. As I do, I think how easy it would be to add a bit of this and that to the kettle – just enough to sicken my guests later on, when they are safe at home in their beds, with only their wives nearby to hear their cries. Or enough to kill them, and silence their annoying questions forever.

I do nothing of the kind, of course. Even after all I have seen, all I have suffered, all I have lost, I still know the difference between right and wrong.

Do you really, lovely? I find the distinction rather blurry, myself.

I am a healer, I think, blocking out the voice of evil. I will not kill.

But it is oddly comforting to know that I can.

2

20th August

This morning I treated a bad case of sunburn, rheumy eyes, and a deep wound made by a rusted nail that a careless farmer stepped upon. The last was the most serious, but if the farmer soaks his foot in a strong brew of sage and yarrow as I instructed, it ought to heal quickly.