Page 21 of Bane Bloom

Hellebore’s folk traditions include associations with the netherworld, fairy worlds, and rebirth. The flowers were believed to glow in the moonlight if they marked an entrance to Fairy.

There are church records indicating hellebore was used in exorcisms, and the plant has been named in old recipes for witches’ flying ointment and invisibility powders.

Invisibility powders! If the Bane Bloom was in fact some sort of hellebore, could this traditional use of the plant explain why I could only sometimes see it? While I didn’t believe in the idea of an apothecary formulation or potion that could render a person invisible, it might be that the flower’s vanishing trick had been the origin of this lore.

I was rising to fetch a journal from upstairs so I might make some notes when I felt something tap the back of my leg. Fearing a rat, I jumped back, and I saw that one of the drawers in the base of the bench had slid partway open. Curious, I knelt in front of the seat and tugged the pull, but the drawer stuck. I bent closer and tugged with both hands until finally it opened, with a scrape of protest, about halfway.

I took up the candlestick and bent close; the drawer contained objects like the ones on the entry table—stones, bits of wood, feathers, other odds and ends. When I reached in and raked through them, I discovered a book resting at the bottom. The skin at the base of my neck prickling, I pushed the small objects to one side and lifted the book carefully out.

It had a cracked leather cover that bore no type or other markings—a diary, perhaps. Opening it, I found handwriting on the first page: “The Poison Garden” in tall script, and under that in smaller letters, “Prudence Artemisia Bane.”

I stared at the page, heart thumping. On instinct, I glanced around me again. The house remained empty and quiet.

I rose and sat again on the bench, beside the open drawer, and turned to the next page. A single line had been inked in the center.

Fill a thimble to cure, a teacup to kill.

This line reminded me of one I’d seen in apothecary books, The dose makes the poison, paraphrased from physician and philosopher Paracelsus. Holding my breath, I turned another page.

October 15, 1812

Now that you are here, my bairn, I’ve decided at last to set what I know down on paper. Papa has filled diaries already from his work here. His whole life’s ambition, rest his soul, was to write an herbal that included lore as well as traditional medicinal uses of nature’s most dangerous botanicals. His first effort was well received by the apothecaries, and he always intended that the two of us would together write a much more detailed reference.

I will borrow what I can from his unpublished work, but much of it is as disordered and disturbing as Papa himself became toward the end, and I will burn it to ensure the apothecaries never find it.

Papa deserves his dignity, but more than that, the learned gentlemen might manage to follow his written meanderings down a path to discovery of things that are best left undiscovered—even within the pages of this diary.

In light of my earlier find, still tucked in my shoe, the line about burning her father’s writings particularly struck me. Also the last line, about things best left undiscovered. I couldn’t help but think of the Bane Bloom.

I was eager to read on, but before I did, something occurred to me.

This book belongs to Thomas.

If I’d found it on the shelf with the other books, I might have felt more justified in reading it. But what if he’d buried it in the drawer on purpose?

Put it back. Ask him about it tomorrow.

I wasn’t sure I was brave enough; he’d think I’d been snooping. And what if he took it? He was stingy with his knowledge of this place, and here it all was, set down by his mother.

My eyes were drawn to the entry again.

The plants in your grandfather’s glasshouse are curious and wonderful. They are as much his children as I am. A plant, like any living thing, has a spirit, after all. Papa always believed this, even before he left London. The quiet of this place helped him to hear their voices.

It wasn’t madness. That came later, when he had traded too much of himself for knowledge. Never beg such knowledge in desperation, my son. If you haven’t received this warning from my own lips before now, I hope you won’t heed it any less as lines on a page.

The spirits of the glasshouse are well known to me. They were playfellows when I was a child. Henbane, the straw-haired, black-eyed crone who rides the four winds. Belladonna, dropping pearls of wisdom from behind her amethyst veil. Aconite, whose kiss brings fevered dreams of wolves. Black hellebore, a shape-shifting guide to the worlds of

Upon reaching the end of the page, I closed the cover with a thwack. The temptation to continue was almost more than I could bear. Prudence Bane’s descriptions of plant spirits fascinated me, reminding me very much of my work on The Fairy Herbal.

Only, she speaks of her plant spirits as if they are real.

Might she, too, have been mad?

Our queen believes in fairies. Though up to now, I’d wondered whether Her Majesty’s professed belief might have been a bit of cheek directed at the stiff personages who surrounded her.

Pine Cottage was hiding secrets, that much was plain enough. And a suspicion was rising like a shadow in the back of my mind: I’m in over my head. An unexplained disappearance, a family touched by madness, strangely behaving flora. To say nothing of the grumpy Viking gardener who was scarcely able to tolerate me one moment and the next was serving me dinner foraged and prepared by his own hand.

Sighing, I knelt and tucked the diary back into the drawer. I could sort out what to do about it in the morning. The drawer wouldn’t close until I threw my weight into it, and I wondered how on earth it had managed to open itself, even just a little. After that, I put out all the candles but the one I took to light my way upstairs.