Beloved Poison (21 page)

‘What it means?’

‘Yes.’

I glanced at him sideways. ‘Yes, I do,’ I said. Surely he didn’t mean . . . He couldn’t . . .
Could
he? ‘It means “unrequited love”.’

His cheeks flamed crimson. ‘Does it? I thought . . . I thought it was something else.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head. ‘New beginnings, perhaps? Optimism? Looking to the future?’

‘Oh.’ Now it was my turn to look discomfited. ‘I’m sorry.’

He spoke softly then, peeping up at me from beneath the brim of his tall hat. ‘Are you, Jem?’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘I mean . . . I think . . .’ But I did not know what I meant, and I did not know what to think. I fell silent.

He sighed, his gaze now fixed upon the ground. ‘I understand. I just . . . I just thought you might like it. A flower the colour of sunshine.’

‘I do.’

‘Well there it is then.’

He looked downcast. Had I offended him? I could not bear to leave it that way; could not bear to have anything come between us. ‘But you know,’ I said, ‘to give only
one
narcissus is considered unlucky.’

‘Is it? Good Lord! Well
that’s
no use! No use at all.’ He reached forward and with one swift movement ripped up the whole bunch. ‘Here,’ he thrust them towards me, twenty golden trumpets tumbling into my lap. ‘Then take them all, every last one. For luck – lots of it – and anything else you care to add into the bargain.’

I laughed, gathering the flowers in my arms. ‘Thank you.’

‘My pleasure.’ He sat back and closed his eyes, the moment and whatever awkwardness it contained dissolving in a brief shaft of sunlight. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I suppose it won’t be long before the hospital moves to new premises. Who knows what might happen then. Perhaps the governors will provide you with a new physic garden. And a new apprentice.’

I knew he was trying to be reassuring, but I felt despair creep over me once more. All at once the daffodils I held seemed garish and artificial, their brightness obscene, their petals cold and thick as dead flesh. I thrust them aside. What, indeed, might happen then? And
before
then? I looked up. I could see dark clouds gathering. It would not be long before the rain found us.

‘What do you grow here?’ said Will, looking about.

‘Lots of things,’ I replied. ‘The poisons are my speciality. We have
Aconitum lycoctonum, Cimicifuga racemosa, Atropa belladonna
—’

Will covered his ears. ‘In English,’ he said.

‘Wolfsbane, black cohosh, deadly nightshade, poison hemlock, opium poppies – of course, by poison I don’t necessarily mean deadly poison. Some of the plants will just make you ill. In small amounts they can have medicinal properties. Others have parts we might eat without much caution, and parts that might kill us – rhubarb, for instance.’

‘It’s a poison?’

‘The leaves.’ I held out my arms, embracing the green sweep of the garden. ‘This is the most comprehensive poison garden in the city. I’ve been working on it since my apprenticeship. I’ve even devoted a section of the glasshouse to cultivating those species that don’t tolerate our climate well, though I’ve had limited success with that. One simply can’t recreate South America in a London glasshouse, no matter how hard one tries.’

I could have talked about the poison garden all afternoon, but I could tell that Will’s interest was waning. ‘Who has access to the poison plants?’ he said.

‘Anyone who climbs over the wall or comes in through the gate. But not everyone knows which plants are which, and how they might be used. Some specialist knowledge is required—’ I sat up, peering down the garden. ‘Who’s that?’ I shaded my eyes with my hand and stood up. At the far end of the garden, beyond the glasshouse, someone was moving about, crouched behind the yews.

‘Who is it?’ said Will. ‘The gardener?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘I’ll sit here.’ He leaned back and closed his eyes. ‘And chew on a mint leaf while you go and find out. I assume you have some edible herbs here too?’

She had her back to me, and was bending over a small, creeping plant. I could smell the pungent mintiness of the leaves she had picked from it, even before I saw who she was. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Magorian.’

‘Oh!’ She spun round, dropping the leaves she had gathered onto the path. Sage, pennyroyal, peppermint, camomile, wintergreen. ‘Jem – Mr Flockhart – I didn’t hear you.’ She fell into a guilty silence, looking down at the scattered herbs. ‘They’re not for me,’ she said at last.

‘Of course.’ I waited.

‘My maid—’

‘Is in trouble?’

She nodded.

‘You should have spoken to me sooner.’

‘But you’re never alone and I couldn’t speak in front of anyone else. And your father’s ill. I didn’t want to bother you.’

‘And Dr Bain?’ I knew every shadow, every expression of her face. Blindfolded, I could have drawn her likeness. I regarded her now, watching her countenance for signs of the truth. But her face had taken on that closed look I had seen earlier in the apothecary. Her eyes were downcast, her face blank and impenetrable.

‘I met Dr Bain,’ she said. ‘The night before he died. I was going to tell him – To ask him—’ She bit her lip so hard that a pinprick of blood appeared.

‘About your maid?’ I said.

‘Yes. But then when it came to it, I couldn’t—’

The silence gathered about us, tense and charged, as if we were counting the seconds between lightning and thunder. ‘I’m surprised your father allows you to keep such a girl in your employ,’ I said at last.

Eliza said nothing.

‘Well.’ I stirred the fallen herbs with the toe of my boot. ‘What you have here will never do. And you have no idea about the correct quantities, nor how to prepare it.’ I waited. Still she did not speak. ‘Will you tell me what’s going on?’ I said. I spoke sharply. All at once I hated Dr Bain. Was he not content with Mrs Roseplucker’s girls, with Mrs Catchpole, that he must have Eliza too? For a moment, a single crimson second, I was glad he was dead. He had taken Eliza, and he had treated her no better than the laundry maid, Lily the whore, Gabriel’s mother . . . But fury, I knew, was a destructive emotion. No good ever came of it. No one could help her but I, and I would do anything I could. ‘Eliza—’

‘I cannot tell you,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t ask.’

‘But how else can I help?’

She drew back, her face hard, her eyes downcast. ‘I must have the herbs,’ she said. ‘It’s all you can do. Please, Jem. No one else can help.’ She glanced up at me. ‘And then you must forget. Forget what I’ve just asked, forget this conversation. And when you think of me, think of me as I once was, as I used to be when I was in this garden, with you.’

I tried to look at her, but I could not. I put my hand up to my face, to my eyes, covering my ugliness with an instinctive gesture. She reached up and took my hand.

‘Don’t hide,’ she said. ‘Not from me.’

I could not speak. I tried to turn away; I would not be scrutinised, or pitied. I knew I could never be loved or touched by anyone.

She dropped my hand with a sigh, and turned to go.

I could not allow it. I could not permit her to leave with nothing. ‘Wait here,’ I said.

I moved quickly. I knew what I needed and where I could find it. I took up a fork and dug up roots. I gathered handfuls of leaves – some dried and hanging in bunches in the hot house, some fresh and growing.

‘Blue cohosh root, pennyroyal, camomile, tansy,’ I said. I wrapped them in muslin, and pressed the packages into her hands. ‘Two tablespoons each of cohosh and tansy, three of pennyroyal and camomile. Pour on two pints of boiling water. Leave it to steep for three hours. Strain it. Heat it up again and drink a cup every four hours, day and night, for five days. No more than five days, d’you hear? I have given you enough for that.’ I took her wrist. ‘No more than five days. And tell your maid to be careful with this formula. I would not lose her for the world.’

‘Will it work?’ she whispered.

‘I’ve nothing else if it doesn’t.’

She nodded, and took my hand. She looked into my face, searching my expression for – what? I lowered my gaze, my feelings visible in the heat of that scarlet, heart-shaped mask. ‘Will you not look at me?’ she whispered. ‘Jem?’

‘Eliza?’ Mrs Magorian’s voice came from the other side of the wall. ‘Eliza!’

‘Quickly now,’ I said. ‘Put those herbs in your pocket and over the wall with you.’ I dragged her over the beds to where a lawn roller rusted amongst the ivy against the wall – it had always been her route out of the physic garden. ‘Let me check,’ I whispered. I stood on the roller and peeped over. I saw Eliza’s mother vanish behind a beech hedge.

‘Quick!’ I sprang down. ‘Over you go.’ I helped Eliza onto the roller and over the wall, unapologetic as I shoved her arse up with the heel of my hand. She glanced back, her curls an auburn halo about her face. It was how I would always remember her, innocent, blameless, an angel looking down at me from heaven. And then she was gone.

W
icke Street had once been a proud terrace of sugar-white stuccoed town houses, though it had been half a century since anyone had felt the need to patch or paint the plaster on any of them. Years of smoky rain had covered the once-gleaming edifice with a layer of sticky black soot. Here and there chunks of filthy plaster had bubbled like the pox on the smooth cheeks of the buildings, or fallen away in great chancres to reveal the stone beneath.

Mrs Roseplucker’s house looked far worse in the daylight. The windows were dark with grime, the gutters drooped; the drainpipes leaned like drunken men, bearded about the knees and elbows with green stains. We mounted the steps and scraped the mud and horse dung off our boots while we waited at the door.

‘What a wretched place this is,’ muttered Will. ‘I hardly noticed how bad it was when we came here with Dr Bain.’ He sniffed. ‘And the air is abominable.’

‘The city is full of such houses; some
far
worse. It’ll never change.’

Will sighed. ‘Well, I for one am not resigned to it, even if you are.’ He closed his eyes and lifted his face as a shaft of sunlight shot through the rainclouds. How young he looked. With his cheeks hardly whiskered, his narrow shoulders, tall hat and broad-shouldered top coat, he looked like a boy dressed up in his father’s clothes. ‘This city is drowning in filth,’ he said. ‘Its houses are crowded and decayed, its citizens sick, diseased and grubby. But whereas you accept it, and work within those constraints, I hope for better things.’ He smiled. ‘I hope for drains and sewers and culverts. I hope for clean, new buildings and wide, airy streets.’

I shrugged, cross that he had made me sound so uninspired. ‘Rebuilding the city won’t get rid of venality.’

‘No.’ Will dragged his shit-caked sole across the metal rim of the broken boot-scraper. ‘But it might make the place smell better.’

Mrs Roseplucker was sitting beside the fire. She looked no different to the last time we had seen her: in the same dress, the same pose, the same chair. In the grimy daylight her elaborate coiffure of ringlets was dull with dust, her red dress gathered about her in folds and ruffles of lace and rumpled, water-stained taffeta. Her lips moved soundlessly as she turned the page of a greasy-looking penny blood. Beside her chair more of the same were scattered:
Ramona and the Bloody Hand
;
Dick of Old London
;
Lady Elvira’s Secret
. I plucked
Lady Elvira
from the wreckage and flicked through its pages. The story of a wealthy heiress locked away in an asylum while her fortune was squandered by a theatrically nefarious husband, it had kept Gabriel enthralled for weeks. But I knew for certain that there were far more men than ‘ladies’ shut up in asylums. A lady might behave erratically and it would be passed off as ‘nerves’ or ‘feminine weakness’. For a man, the bar was set far higher. There was no domestic sanctuary to hide in, no boudoir door to weep behind, no sofa to droop upon. There were no excuses, and no quarter. For every wrongly imprisoned heiress or pregnant unwed girl locked away there were a hundred broken down fathers weeping or raving beside them. I could guess which version of events fiction – and posterity – would choose to remember.

I flung the paper down. Mrs Roseplucker watched me, with watery, malevolent eyes. There was no sign of any of the girls. Instead, the daylight revealed a slovenly domesticity, the dusty mantel, the threadbare furnishings, a chipped plate of congealed kipper bones on the hearth. Despite the fire, the room felt damp, and the red walls had a moist, spongy look to them, as though the place was located within a gigantic bodily orifice. I pushed the image from my mind and tried to concentrate on the task in hand.

‘I’m looking for Lily,’ I said.

‘She ain’t up.’

‘But it’s after three o’clock,’ I said. ‘When does she get up?’

Mrs Roseplucker licked her finger, and applied it to the crumpled corner of a page. ‘You can go up, but not before you’ve paid. Both of you. Double, each, seeing as there’re two of you and it’s not even tea time.’