Weed: The Poison Diaries Read online

  I give the half-naked Duke a low bow before I take my leave of the castle. It’s an hour’s walk to the ruins of Hulne Abbey but I complete the journey in less than half that. The moonlight is strong and I spy from a distance the burned and gutted remains of the chapel. Last year I lived there so briefly in a state of bliss, in love with the girl I now go to avenge. By the time I reach the rusted gates of the old Poison Garden there are dark storm clouds gathering overhead and I’ve ingested a thumb-sized piece of hashish.

  I view again Jessamine’s grave nestled obscenely between a growth of Strychnine and Bloodwort. My mouth is dry and my teeth are coated in a foul-tasting paste that won’t clear my palate. The heart in my chest pounds like thunder and my green eyes are dim and insensible. The garden is poisonous and alive with many voices chattering in a ceaseless tumult. These growing things should be my kindred but they are under Oleander’s influence and their words torment me.

  ‘He’s back!’

  ‘We have enjoyed supping on lovely Jessamine.’

  ‘She is so foul and corrupted by dear Oleander that her mulch is nourishment for our venom.’

  My head spins from the exotic Hashish. I tremble even as the garden makes its first assault against me. Wherever I tread, dead roots spring to life, uncoiling ghastly, probing tendrils around my ankles and legs. They crawl and creep up my body, leaving tough cords to bind me to the ground. This is Oleander’s doing; he uses the natural world against me.

  ‘Spirit! Show yourself!’ I roar hoarsely, almost fainting. My sword is drawn but not for attack. I’m leaning on it, trying to right myself. I feel white light smothering my comprehension and drowning my senses.

  ‘Hold your mouth, Weed, or Oleander will wet his needle and sew it shut.’ A green filament, sinewy and strong, passes over my face, violating my mouth and ears. I am revolted as I feel it touching and delving into the wet mucousy flesh of my eyeballs. You’re no ordinary ignorant man; you ought to know all about this, Weed. The Duke’s words echo inside my head, leaving a thought in their wake. I will not be killed by shrubs and bushes; after all they are mine to command too. Oleander is making them grow for him. Well, I will better the instruction.

  I command the garden to grow. Grow beyond its strength and be spent. I am blind but I hear the plants scream in pain as I adjure them to bud, flower and die in an instant. Only to do it all over again. And again and again. Desperately compelled, the poisons breed shoots from spent husks, roots feed on roots and the plants eat themselves. Their agony is palpable and their shrieks deafening as they squander a century’s cycle of life and death in seconds.

  Lightning strikes far above me and a high whistling sound infests my ears. It grows louder and louder, until all I can hear is a howl that turns into a harsh scream as Oleander’s great wings emerge from the gloom. He bears down, a streak of black against black, fast moving, cutting through the heavens. I dive out of the way, landing heavily against the stone wall of the garden as Oleander crashes to the earth beside me.

  His mouth is frothing and his silver hair unkempt. The eyes, green like mine, flash passionate hatred and pain at me. ‘What are you doing? You consume their lives in one guttering spark to end them. My poisons, your brothers and sisters, will be extinguished forever. The seasons will come and go without new growth. This is an abomination and against the law of Green. You will be punished for it.’

  What does he mean by brothers and sisters and Green laws? I do not understand. I hold my hands out, insensible, but even as I do a sloughed seed strays into the crook of my shirt. It germinates violently, growing beyond its capacity and spasms dead in an instant. Around my feet a thousand blooms are wilting. I can hear their voices wailing.

  ‘Stop!’ Shrieks Oleander as he pivots his enormous black wing towards me. A dactyl of sharpened hard wood clad in leathery black leaves flashes in the moonlight and pierces my shoulder, pinning me to the wall. Blood gushes forth, spilling my vitality into the earth where it is hungrily subsumed into the churn of life and death turning in the ground beneath us. The pain is immense and my emerald eyes sharpen. I focus on my enemy and turn the growing off. A dull whimpering can be heard in the soil, and little enough of that.

  Oleander’s teeth are bared as he wrenches his bloodied pinion from my shoulder and I stagger forward onto my knees. Immediately I feel the wind whip as his other great air-beater scythes horizontally over my head, slicing where my neck was a moment before. I glance into his misty green eyes and gasp, dodging madly as the first dexterous wing, still dripping with my own blood, stabs the dirt where I knelt. I’m a heartbeat ahead of my enemy but I must take this grim battle to him if I am to end it.

  Grunting, I grab the steely hilt of the Duke’s sword in my fingers and leap to my feet with such force that I leave the ground behind me. My back arches in mid-air and time seems to slow down as I cleave the heavy weapon in a deadly arc from foot to head. A loud thuck! greets my ears, like the sound of an axe chopping wood. In the darkness I see Oleander’s monstrous black wing jerking. I have rent it from his shoulder and it hangs lifeless, a trunkless branch. Oleander screams and like a lame bird his balance fails. In pain and terror he flaps his one remaining bat-limb and his body lurches rudely to the ground. His last flailing pinion whips above our heads but a horizontal slice from my sword maims it soundly. The cleft wing convulses for a moment in its final dying throes and then lies still on the grass.

  Oleander looks up at me with tears and murder in his eyes. He pushes himself to his feet with the bare arms of a man. I have clipped his wings but he is not defeated yet. His face contorts in fury and he grapples me to the mud, taking my throat in his fingers. He hisses venom in my ear. ‘I killed your Jessamine and forced her to commit such acts of degradation and sin before she died. You abandoned her and now she lies buried beneath our feet, next to her cruel father who she herself killed. Did you know that? Oh Weed. Demon. Monster. Had you never been born to bring such a story to an innocent girl who only a year ago was frightened of the bleating of lambs.’

  ‘The boy you chased away from here before has gone. Whoreson! I have maimed you and now I will kill you.’ Oleander’s murderous nature, so practised at the deceitful art of alchemy, is no match for the brute strength I now bring to him. I have done battle in war and dainty poison, but this night the strength in my arms will overcome. I throw my enemy from me, surprised at the slightness of his frame. Robbed of the mighty black wind-riders, in truth the life is already ebbing from him. I let my fingers find his neck. The stubs of broken wings beat wildly at his back as I pour my hatred and revenge into my tightening grip. The tendons and muscle of my hands squeeze and squeeze again until I see the green pinpricks of his eyes roll into the back of his head. I whisper last words.

  ‘Whatever I am I will discover, Demon, but tonight I am nobody’s creature but my own.’ I hope they take him to hell.

  Chapter 4

  Hulne Abbey Ruins

  I woke cold and alone in the ruins of Hulne Abbey. I know not how long I have lain here, sheltered from the elements by the few remaining joists of the old chapel roof, thin ribs that somehow survived the fire Jessamine kindled here so long ago. My shoulder is matted with blood. The Duke’s great sword lies discarded on the cold stone floor. In front of it, gnarled in rigor mortis, spread the twisted wings of Oleander, like the denuded branches of some ghastly dead tree. I stare at my awful trophies unceasingly. I dare them to evaporate into thin air, but they stubbornly remain. So the preposterous battle was real and I am not yet a lunatic. Can I be a mortal man to fight with spirits and twist the growing world to my will? Or perhaps I am a bad dream made flesh, for I bring nightmares where I tread.

  The poisonous throbbing ache in my shoulder is searing. I sweat and tremble in a fever. The wound needs treatment or it will fester and worsen. I carefully remove the tattered remnants of my linen shirt and stand unsteadily to my feet. I am delirious but I must search to see if anything remains of Luxton’s old medicine garden. He was an evil man
obsessed with poison and power but he kept a small corner of the grounds hereabouts for healing plants and herbs.

  Outside there is a strange stillness in the air. A great bright firmament seems to blot out the sun and hangs ponderously over the ruins of the chapel. I do not feel the cold but I hunger for the soft touch of sunlight on my body. After the strain of battle I know that I will need its kiss if I am to be made whole again. I avoid even looking at the poison garden and instead I hunt for treasures: bright Houseleek to heal and Yarrow to bind the wound. Soon I hear their call.

  ‘Weed… Break my casing and use my sap.’ The voice of ancient Houseleek whispers, barely carried by the still wind.

  ‘Yes yes, Weed! Yes. Peel my leaves, peel them right off! And I will hold all your bits inside your stem and I won’t let go of you until you’re fixed right up.’ Yarrow can’t help being cheerful. It’s naturally exuberant.

  ‘Weed… What have you done? The poison garden is fading.’ Another whisper.

  ‘Don’t bother good Weed about that. Can’t you see his juice is leaking? He needs healing. That’s right. Less talking, more healing.’

  I cut a stem from Houseleek and proceed to squeeze the unguent liquid from its living green stalk into my wound. The vibration of pain in my shoulder begins to calm itself.

  ‘Weed… You cannot let the garden die. You are of nature and yet you have committed a crime against nature.’

  From Yarrow I peel a fibrous stalk on which three leaves grow. I feel the plant flutter at my touch, taking pleasure in being used and appreciated. ‘Houseleek. I was forced to defend myself against a great threat: an army of poisonous plants grew up around me, intent on my death.’ I lay the Yarrow leaves upon my bare shoulder and bind them in place with its stem.

  ‘Weed… to defeat the garden you forced them to spend their seed and make barren the soil from which they sprang. A great enormity. You bring them unknown death. A final end such as is unnatural to us… You must return them to the sun and earth. Make amends now or you will find the Green world closed to you. You will be alone. Sap-abandoned. Red blood and men will be your only companions.’ A cold rod of steel burns down my back in the shiftless air. I am no friend to men. To live without the roar and rumble of the living earth in my ears? I feel dread merely contemplating that dire state of loneliness. It is a curious sensation and a terrible one. Oleander said that I had killed my brothers and sisters. In my forgetfulness, in my fugue of rage can I have closed the door on the natural world? I look up into the sky for comfort, but even the sun has forsaken me.

  ‘What must I do?’

  ‘Weed… Re-plant the garden.’

  I look towards the dreadful dead remains of the poison garden: last night’s battlefield. ‘But the ground is rotted here.’

  I feel nothing but a chilling absence from Houseleek, but from Yarrow there is precious pity. ‘Sorry, Weed? Can I say something? I have a suggestion. Yes I do. A suggestion for you and a good one. There is a garden in the north. I can feel it there on the deep veins that run beneath us. It vibrates like a leaf in the rain. Not far away; it has always been there, or for a very long time at least. Air-breathers came there and seeded their young. I feel Yarrow there, and Houseleek, and all the good herbs you have hereabouts.’

  ‘Weed…’ Houseleek’s voice is thin and dour. ‘Listen to Yarrow. There is strong soil at old Soutra Aisle.’

  The plants are my dearest allies in this world. I distorted a hundred seasons of regeneration and decline into an atrocity of seconds. I forced on them cannibalism and death and they will not germinate here again. I resolve to redeem myself if it is not too late. I will salvage what can be saved. I look to the dead silence of the poison garden. If Soutra Aisle is a medicine bed then it may heal these poisons as well as Yarrow and Houseleek will heal my wound. But I will need to sustain them in seed or sprout for the journey and I am still too weak. Today I must rest in the ruins of the chapel. If I am able, tomorrow, I will leave this place and let forgetfulness take it from my memory.

  Chapter 5

  Hulne Abbey Ruins

  Today my wound has grown no worse, but if I am to heal I need to feel the sun and move away from this pall that hangs in the air about the ruins. I have found evidence of Soutra Aisle among the books of Thomas Luxton. I will go today. Amid the instruments spared by fire here in the Abbey is a crucible and I have burned the wings of Oleander. As they crisped and flamed the cinders danced and then, as if agitated by a draft of wind, the white residue scattered out the window, drifting dream-slow towards the Poison Garden. I follow the stream of ash now to that place I did not wish to see again.

  Though dead silent from afar, as I reach the gates of the poison garden I hear a terrible keening in the earth. I had hoped that entering this unhallowed battlefield would be more bearable by day than by night, but I was wrong. All colour has been leeched out of leaves and stems, leaving behind an ocean of brittle greyness. A great fire has burned the spark of life out of the soil. There is an oppressive stillness as though even the passage of time has stopped on this desolate scene. Airy ash hangs in the air as I search for living root and seed among the fallen. I dread to make a sound lest I break a spell and the sky comes crashing down upon me. This garden has been watered by the murky waters of Lethe. In silence I gather my wretched refugees.

  When my work is done I stand back in the ruined chapel and breathe a sigh of relief. I have reclaimed at least some living part of each poison at the Hulne Abbey garden. It was hard work and my shoulder aches to prove the labour. The poison plants lie in a damp hemp grow-bag on the turf just beyond the chapel’s threshold; their sap pulses dreadfully weakly but by force of will I keep them alive in a state of inertia. If I do not delay I can reach Soutra Aisle soon enough. I have but few possessions: my tattered shirt and trousers, the boots I walk in, the Duke’s sword hanging at my side and my belt of many pockets; all but one is empty and only a little of the Hashish remains. I leave the charred bones of the ruined chapel of old Hulne Abbey, take up the grow bag and head north. I won’t be returning.

  I have learned my route from Luxton’s books. I must cross through the forest that spreads north of here and shortly afterwards I will find the old Deere Street. That will lead me to the medicine garden Yarrow talked of. By the time I am out of sight of Hulne Abbey the atmosphere seems to thin and the familiar sweetness of the sun touches me. The air smells fresh in my nostrils. My name is Weed and I have a gift, although I know not from where it came. I can speak with the Green world of living things; I can command them to grow tall, bear fruit and die. Their secret nature to harm or help is laid before me like an open book and I feel more kinship with what lives in the earth than with those of flesh and blood who walk upon it.

  Master Sun is bright and hot in the sky and I am struck by the magnificence of spring. Winter kindly obscures the memory of the growing season from green things, when sleep makes the long months of darkness and cold bearable. With the return of that glorious orb my limbs throng with renewed vigour and a clear mind blesses me like a gust of truth. Abuse at the hands of men has robbed me of my memory, but I have carried the burden of oblivion for too long. Now as I drink in the rays of the sun, I feel certain that I can find the path that will lead me to understand my own nature. But as for today there is a journey to complete.

  Bushes and shrubs thicken to patches of Silver Birch and Aspen, then Elm, thick-trunked Oak and Yew. Before long I am walking in the dappled light of a great forest. The birds sing above me and the woods and sprouts join them in a chorus. The trees speak in a tongue of ages, humming a deep basso profondo. The younger plants speak words.

  ‘Come, take shade beneath my leaves.’

  ‘Eat my fruit.’

  ‘Smell my scent.’

  ‘See my colour.’

  I listen hard to the music around me and hear the secret melody that trills behind the rest with a simple, exuberant command: ‘Grow.’

  And I do grow. I feel a sharp tingling in my shoulder
and know that the sun’s magic is knitting my flesh. The Houseleek sap glows beneath the Yarrow leaves and by noontime the whole sorry business of violence at Hulne Abbey seems a distant memory. Energized, I feed a little more life to the poison plants I carry in my grow bag and they purr appreciation.

  I scoop a handful of black berries from a passing shrub of Belladonna, saving some in a pocket of my belt for later and eating the rest. I crush them between my teeth, and relish the sweet-bitter juice running down my throat.

  ‘Ahem. I wouldn’t eat them if I were you.’ The voice seems strange and out of place in the woodland. Am I being addressed by some over-cautious root? I turn, ready to return the conversation, but my heart sinks when I see that it is just a man who approaches. Another traveller in the forest. I turn back to my course and press on. Men I don’t like, and strange men I like even less. I wish I was alone with my Green friends but I hear him running up behind me. I know that either violence or tedium awaits. I ready myself as a hand touches my shoulder.

  Spinning: ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Hang on a mo’ lad! I don’t ask for trouble from a man wi’ a sword hanging at his side.’ He takes my hand and raises it to his face and sniffs. ‘You’re too young to be out in the woods by yourself. That scran you’re eating will have your stomach in knots. Best you gang back to town and get to a doctor anyway you can.’

  I take my hand back with a jolt. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Haadaway! They’re none learned that don’t heed good advice. There’s a wee stream up ahead. You can have a bevvy of water. Afore long you’ll need a good lie down.’