The Poisons of Caux: The Hollow Bettle (Book I) (2 page)

Sadly for Ivy, it was the case that the well-timed arrival of Mr. Flux heralded an important departure. The day that Mr. Flux arrived inquiring about a position was the day Ivy’s uncle Cecil left, unhappily, not for a week as he had planned, but for good.

In his hurry, Cecil Manx overlooked some of Flux’s more obvious failings. He also neglected to tell the taster anything of his niece Ivy—after all, the man had not asked. And in this, it could be said that Mr. Flux had sorely underestimated the talents of his charge.

As Flux had arrived across the threshold of the Bettle, his incurious nature allowed him to overlook a crooked panel, with a flourish of red ink, that clacked beside the front door.

And since Ivy Manx held the questionable taster responsible—rightly so or not—for the disappearance of her uncle, it was an astonishing feat that Mr. Flux survived what was to be his entire year of tasting for Poison Ivy.

t was generally assumed at the Hollow Bettle that Cecil Manx’s excuse for his inexplicable tardiness was his own death. It made natural sense to everybody—everybody but his niece—that Cecil had succumbed to poison along the route his impulsive errand had brought him. Ivy would hear none of it, while her taster preferred not to raise the subject lest his desirable position somehow be lost. The only problem with this agreement—immediately presenting itself upon Cecil’s departure—was the simple fact that Mr. Sorrel Flux was a taster of dubious quality and talent. He seemingly could no sooner detect poison in a bowl of the Bettle’s famous hundred-year soup than stretch out his scrawny arms inside his shabby cloak and fly.

“Cabbage,” he pronounced Ivy’s lunch shortly after Cecil had left. It was his first and only attempt to taste for the young girl.

“But this is
beet
soup!” Ivy answered, incredulous.

“Yes, of course. Just as I said. And it’s quite fit to eat,” he called over his shoulder—making fast progress up the stairs to her uncle’s chambers with his small roll of possessions.

Ivy wondered almost immediately if he was indeed a graduate of the revered Tasters’ Guild.

Mr. Sorrel Flux dressed in the robes of the Guild, although ill fitting and worn, and he liked to pepper his phrases with references to the secretive school for anyone within earshot. But Flux was, simply put, an awful taster who couldn’t save anyone’s life but his own, and this he did purely through inactivity and insubordination to his taster duties. He ate very little, and only for himself, and even then with a look of distrust and trepidation on his unpleasant face. Given these habits, it would be of no surprise to learn that he was of quite a scrawny build. That, coupled with the yellow cast of his skin, made him, with very little stretch of the imagination, resemble a plucked chicken. Mr. Flux was furthermore entirely un-apologetic in his inabilities and quite soon revealed another annoying trait: a penchant for napping and idleness.

So it was on one subject alone that the two of them agreed: they would talk to each other as little as possible, and then only about vagaries.

Conveniently, there had been nothing of an introduction between taster and charge—Mr. Flux simply referred to her almost immediately as “the little menace.” (The taster did, however,
stumble upon the old crow’s name, purely by accident, as he repeatedly swatted it away from his morning porridge.)

Their conspiracy of silence was broken only twice.

The first was early in his stay, when Ivy wondered whether Mr. Flux might have had any word from her uncle. Mr. Sorrel Flux replied—truthfully—that he had not. Inwardly, the taster could not have cared less about the girl’s uncle, except where it concerned the comfort of his feather bed or his taste in nightshirts. Mr. Flux was of the opinion, anyway, that it was unlikely that the foolish man had gotten far—his journey’s commencement was ill timed to the start of Caux’s dangerous Windy Season.

This prompted the second, and last, conversation.

It was a simple request. Ivy warned him away from her garden.

Ivy’s satisfying garden grew behind crumbling stone walls thick with moss and knotted branches and buzzed loudly with honeybees. Poisonous plants grew right beside their natural antidotes, with chipped slate announcements (in curly writing) labeling each in the old tongue. With Ivy’s care, the herbs grew to great beauty and potency. With Shoo’s help, the garden was not bothered by pests; he could be found—without any sense of irony—perched upon a stricken scarecrow.

Understandably, for the uninvited, Ivy’s garden was a place of grave danger.

Sorrel Flux knew himself to be uninvited, but Ivy’s warning had piqued an uncharacteristic interest in his languid brain. One day, in a fit of exertion, he found himself beside the overgrown walls. Hearing something, he peered in.

A picture of sweet sadness met his eyes. Ivy had been weeping over a crop of feisty snapdragons—her uncle particularly delighted in them—and as she sat there crying quietly upon the earth, not a soul could resist being moved by the young girl’s plight.

Not a soul, that is, but Mr. Flux.

Mr. Sorrel Flux’s heart, in fact, which pumped its limp business inside his chest, was just as hard and calloused as the rest of him. It was stony and small, and if someone had plucked it from his chest and thrown it at you, it would have certainly left a bruise. Because of this, Mr. Flux was entirely incapable of shedding a tear—except perhaps for himself—so Ivy’s current lonesome state left him entirely dry-eyed.

Dry-eyed and thirsty.

As he made to leave, he was distracted by a different sight. Mr. Flux was not in possession of even the slightest green thumb, but his eyes were drawn to the curious nature of the plants within the old walls. The foliage seemed to positively sparkle and pulse with an odd, shivery force, and the taster wondered at once if he were not the victim of a bottle of bad brandy. The plants trembled, as if with a chill, and Flux couldn’t escape the idea that they might extract their pale, sodden roots from the soil and start scurrying about. He blinked several times and rubbed his eyes thoroughly, and to his relief, the effect was gone.

But the experience served as a reminder that the tavern that Ivy Manx called home had some fine brandies from which to choose, as well as a hearty assortment of hard ciders and something called applejack that was better suited as fuel for the tavern’s few and flickery lanterns. With this, Sorrel Flux departed the garden for the tavern, where he spent the rest of the day recovering from his stroll.

The next morning, Ivy recognized telltale signs of his adventure. Flux’s first and only visit to her garden resulted in a persistent rash. It began as blisters and soon formed red itchy welts, concentrating themselves upon the taster’s heavy-lidded eyes but soon spreading merrily about his entire face. The punishment for his excursion was straightforward—the glossy vine that clung to the garden walls was none other than Ivy’s
namesake. And since none of Cecil’s poultices seemed to alleviate his discomfort, he resigned himself further to bed. Here he breakfasted and lazed away the day, occasionally calling on a little wooden whistle for Ivy to prepare for him a tray of assorted brandies.

Sadly, Mr. Flux never felt entirely well again for the complete year he lived there. The yellowish cast his skin possessed upon arrival became more pronounced, spreading alarmingly to the whites of his eyes. He complained of sharp pains while reclining in bed. (Shoo had taken to introducing Ivy’s silvery pushpins into his mattress while he slept, and it resembled more a pincushion than a pallet.)

In fact, never once did Mr. Flux think of leaving the Hollow Bettle for more predictable digestive arenas. In a thin convalescent’s voice, he would remind the Bettle’s lone maidservant that the Tasters’ Oath to which he’d sworn prevented his departure.

He must stay with his charge to the bitter end.

It was Ivy Manx’s hope that that end would come soon, and from this wish was finally born a plan, a dangerous plan, which she decided to implement only after it became sadly clear that her uncle was not coming home.

ooking down at the world of Caux, say, from a passing cloud, there is no telltale sign—no indication at all—of the mischief and malingering of its inhabitants. Why, Caux from up here looks positively cozy—snug within its borders of sea and cliff. Vast green plains and fertile rolling hills. Thick, fecund forests filled with luscious flora and fauna. Bustling cities. Clever castles. Winding rivers, picturesque trains, and, of course, glorious trestles.

But as we draw close, looking down now as a circling crow, there is hardly anything to spark the same surge of joy. From even here, high above the tallest trees, you can feel the land’s misfortune—a poison that the citizens endure. You might feel it even pulling you in.

And were you to actually put your two feet on the ground, thus falling under the rulership of Caux’s contemptible new king—King Nightshade—why, the world at your doorstep might not seem very bright at all.

In fact, positively dismal.

King Nightshade of Caux was a wicked and unhappy man. He was unhappy because he suffered greatly from a hideous affliction he possessed since birth. He was wicked because, well, he was unhappy. (Or perhaps he was just born that way—we’ll never know for sure.) But from being shamelessly vile he derived great pleasure—thus forgetting momentarily his own unhappiness in the utter suffering of others.

The king maintained one wish, which was a simple one. He wished that his suffering—his dismal disfigurement—would disappear. He wished to be alleviated of his defect, and he thought that this might finally make him happy. Still wicked, but happy.

So he devised a plan and put the word out, in the form of a Royal Proclamation, that anyone who might cure him of his affliction would benefit greatly. He was intentionally vague, mostly because he was undecided about what form his reward might take. He was unused to acts of kindness, and so, incidentally, was the queen.

But it was finally announced that whosoever might provide him with a cure would receive a handsome fortune—his weight in gold and priceless bettles. And since bettles were beloved by the citizenry of Caux not for their beauty and rarity (and they possessed both), but for their supposed charms against poison, this was a tempting prize indeed. The king
knew that most of the people of Caux who were presently alive preferred to stay that way.

But the punishment for failure, well, that was quite natural and easy for the Nightshades. Queen Artilla would see to their demise. She was, after all, quite famous throughout Caux for her spectacular acts of ruthless poisoning—a reputation she worked hard at maintaining.

King Nightshade enjoyed his power. Indeed, he had worked hard to take it away from his predecessor. It was an unusual day when he did not issue forth a Proclamation of some sort—whatever struck his royal fancy—and it would instantly become law. He was, after all, the king.

After assuming reign in what was generally believed to be Caux’s most dismal day, his first act as quite a young king was to abolish at least one thousand years of learning in an enormous bonfire, targeting for the flames anything remotely connected to the previous king. He raided the famed Library at Rocamadour—the fire burned, it was said, for eight days and eight nights.

It so happened that the previous king was also a learned apotheopath, so what was thought to be a priceless collection of irreplaceable medical and herbal healing books was lost forever. With the Deadly Nightshades in the seat of power, apotheopathy evolved into poisonry quite quickly, and people soon foraged deeper in the forest for the darker, more potent herbs.

What followed was the new king’s First Proclamation:

At the time, when the news reached him that he was now an outlaw, Cecil Manx had merely shrugged. He was a man of many talents. He’d always wanted to open a tavern, and so he did.

It was hardly a secret, however, that he kept seeing patients in his back room.