I glanced over to where he stood enraptured with Mertensia’s collection. “For treating heart ailments?”
“Or poisoning people,” he returned. “Everything on this shelf could kill a man—or woman—in sufficient doses.” He began reading off the labels, each penned in Mertensia’s tidy hand. “Peppermint syrup for digestion, lettuce juice for headache, fig syrup for constipation. Those are the harmless ones. But this shelf”—he returned to the foxglove preparation on the top shelf—“this lot is altogether different.” He paused, movingcloser to the bottles as he extracted one. “Mertensia does more than dabble in digestive tisanes,” he said as he lifted the bottle to the light.
I plucked a book from the shelf. It was thick and bound in dark green cloth stamped with a golden mermaid. I flipped through the pages, realizing that it was a sort of receipt book, recording her various preparations with notations and scribbling as she perfected each. Within the leaves were loose pieces of paper, laundry lists and notes from Mrs. Trengrouse, doubtless thrust aside to be forgot in the fever to brew a new batch of potions. I skimmed them, stopping when I came to a sheet of cheap paper headed with the name of a barely respectable hotel for ladies in London. There was no salutation and the text picked up in the middle of a paragraph. Clearly the first page had been lost, but I recognized that flamboyant hand immediately.
—why I am so terribly desperate. I cannot describe to you the awfulness of this place. There are beetles in the beds and blackflies in the bath, and oh, Mertensia! How much better I could bear it all if you were here. Remember what jolly times we had at school? A few short months, but the happiest I have ever known because of your friendship. The lumpy porridge and lumpier beds were nothing at all when I could listen to your stories of St. Maddern’s! Mermaids and giants and piskies—I remember them all, just as you told me. How I envied you, my dear, having such a place to call your own. I used to think that nothing in the world could possibly be as wonderful as seeing it for myself, if only to know that splendor like that exists somewhere in the world. I should not tell you this, sweet Mertensia, but I am afraid and a little sad to think of what the future holds. I need not imagine; I know it as clearly as if it were a picture someone painted and hung upon the wall. I shall grow old as a governess, each year thinner and sadder as I hurry to do the bidding of others. Never a home of my own, never a husband or children or a single square inch of land thatbelongs to me. Nothing of mine except a shelf of books and a handful of handkerchiefs. What a desolate thought! I know I must go to my fate, as Andromeda to the Kraken, ready to be chained upon the rock and wait for my doom. But there is no heroic Perseus to wing to my rescue. I must break my own chains, Mertensia. Will you help me? For the sake of our friendship, I recall to you the promise you made—
The letter stopped there, the following pages not to be found. “This is fascinating,” I breathed. I read the letter to Stoker as he poked about the bottles upon the shelf.
“A genteel bit of extortion,” he said when I had finished. I thrust the page back into the book and replaced it where I had found it.
“I feel rather sorry for her. She was clearly dreading her next post in India. Her prospects were grim.”
“Not as grim as this,” he told me as he scrutinized a bottle plucked from the shelf.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Henbane,” he told me. “Used to treat rheumatics or breathing troubles, but even a drop too much is fatal. There’s any number of deadly things here—jimsonweed, nicotiana, poppy—each with medicinal properties as well as toxic. She has taken great care to mark them as dangerous.” He gestured towards the row of bottles.Beware the sister,Mother Nance had cautioned. I went to the bottles and inspected them.
On each, Mertensia had listed the ingredients beside a tiny black skull, inked in lines so fine they might have been silken threads laid upon the label. I pursed my lips in a soundless whistle. “So, not just the odd broken bone or spot of indigestion for Mertensia,” I murmured. “She has administered life and death to the people of this island.”
“Nothing so sinister as that,” Mertensia said as she moved into the room on noiseless feet. She was carrying a basket of wood and Stoker hastened to take it from her. “Thank you. Another small log to keep thestove hot, I think,” she told him. He did her bidding, stirring up the fire with a poker before placing the wood atop. She wore a pinafore over her clothes, a long affair that reached from shoulders to hem, and her sleeves were rolled back, her hair tucked haphazardly into a snood.
“I made up the foxglove for Mother Nance. Her heart gives her trouble from time to time, and I ensured the preparation was approved by her doctor on the mainland. The others have their uses as well,” she told me as she went to pluck a dried assortment of herbs from the bundles tied to the beams overhead. “More arnica, for your bruising,” she added with a glance at Stoker. “And for Tiberius’. The pair of you have managed to use up my entire store cupboard of the stuff.”
She smiled a little when she said it, but she could not sustain it. “You are worried about Malcolm,” Stoker suggested.
“It isn’t like him to be so irresponsible,” she said, collecting the rest of her ingredients. “Trenny said I should keep busy. No doubt he will turn up by sundown as Tiberius says and have a good laugh at us all for being so worried.” Her tone was light but her eyes were shadowed.
“We have searched the castle and found no sign of him,” I told her. “But we have uncovered evidence that Helen is a fraud as a medium.”
She snorted. “I could have told you that. She spent an entire summer here without even a hint that she might have sensitivities. Then as soon as she left here, she set herself up as Madame Helena. It’s a grotesque joke.” She broke the dried arnica into smaller bits, dropping them into a shallow stone mortar. She took up a pestle of the same material and began to grind the brittle leaves slowly.
“Helen said she had to provide for herself and for Caspian,” I told her.
“She has a small annuity from St. Maddern’s that Malcolm arranged after Lucian’s death. If she needed more, Helen had only to ask and Malcolm would have given them a home,” she retorted. “Lucian’s widow and child would never have been turned out in the cold.”
“Perhaps,” I mused. “But it seems a hard thing to one’s pride to haveto come cap in hand to one’s relations to ask for money. I seem to have overheard Malcolm refusing Caspian a request for a loan only yesterday. The discussion grew quite heated.”
Mertensia’s hand stilled for a moment, but she went on, doggedly. “I do not know anything about that.”
“Then perhaps you would like to tell us about your quarrel with Rosamund the night before she disappeared,” I said sweetly.
She dropped the pestle with a loud crack. Stoker stood beside her, his manner gentle. “Mertensia, I am certain it was nothing—” he began.
She shied away from his hand, looking at him with sudden suspicion. “Is that how the two of you play at it? She hurls accusations and you settle the ruffled feathers?”
Stoker did not look at me. “I know it must seem that way—”
“Seem! You are her creature,” she spat. “Dancing to her tune, pretending to be kind when all the time you are waiting, like a spider.”
“You did not answer the question,” I said sharply, calling her attention back to me.
She returned to her work, taking up the pestle with shaking fingers. “Yes, we quarreled. Rosamund decided to show her true colors at last.”
“How?”
The fight seemed to have gone out of her. She ground her herbs as she spoke, her eyes never quite meeting mine, her back half-turned to Stoker. “She told me that things would be different after she married Malcolm. She said she had plans—for the village, for the household. I told her I did not mind if she wanted to make changes in the castle. It was her right as mistress. As long as I had my garden, I would be happy.”
