Page 32 of Bane Bloom

The paint on the back appeared fresher, and I thought the lettering had been done by a different hand. Prudence Bane’s diary had suggested collaboration between father and daughter. Annie had told me her husband believed Thomas’s mother to have been a witch. Could it be the medicinal uses of winter daphne had been noted by Arthur Bane, and the other use—which to me suggested a love charm—had been added by his daughter?

I recalled then that Mr. Bane’s book had also included a witchcraft reference, in its entry for hellebore.

Annie’s husband, and I along with him, might be guilty of a bias. Categorizing Arthur Bane’s interest in plant lore as scholarly but his daughter’s as something else. A career as an apothecary wasn’t open to a woman in Prudence’s time any more than it was in my own. Women effecting plant cures, whether intended for body or spirit, had never been taken seriously by men of science.

Respectful of the skull illustration, I put on the garden gloves and snipped several leaves and a cluster of the fragrant flowers. These I placed in the basket, and I noted in my journal the name of the plant along with the contents of the plaque. I’d let them dry for a short while outside the moist environment of the glasshouse and then press them.

Next came a clump of leggy vervain, with its spikes of tiny purple flowers. Nancy always said vervain provided protection from fairies and the evil eye, and it already had a listing in my fairy herbal. Vervain’s plaque lacked the skull warning but contained a medicinal description of “Digestive & asthmatic complaints.” The back of the plaque read “All-purpose, esp. protection & the Sight.” The last item seemed to be a misplaced medicinal use, but then I thought of second sight. Visions and prophecies, I supposed.

The mauve poppies were labeled as used for “sleep, pain,” or “hedge riding”—another unfamiliar term that sounded like it might be associated with witches.

Impressed by the knowledge and care that had gone into this collection, I was rapt. So much so that, before I knew it, a couple of hours had passed and my back was aching.

Counting my earlier survey of Mr. Carroll’s work, I’d made good progress for my first day. Before I took the cuttings inside, I decided to reward my efforts with a few minutes of sketching. I fetched one of the garden chairs and placed it beside the winter daphne bush.

When I sketched, I tended to lose track of all parts of myself not physically required for the task. At one point, I became aware that I’d leaned so close to the daphne bush that the fragrance had begun to swell my nasal passages. I was almost satisfied with the drawing, though, and kept at it.

After making the final strokes, I blinked a few times to soothe my dry eyes—and noticed something odd. I’d drawn the cluster of flowers in such a way that they resembled a woman with flowing hair and garments. More than resembled. I’d created an illustration of a woman running from something. There was no way I could have done this accidentally. Yet how could I have done it deliberately without being aware?

Glancing up again at the flowers, I now saw the figure there. As I struggled to make sense of this, the figure moved, launching from the bush to the ground right in front of me. I let out a yelp and jumped up, tipping my chair over.

I took a couple of steps back and closed my eyes. It’s not there.

When I looked again, all that remained of what I thought I’d seen was a small pile of soft-pink petals on the ground beneath the cluster of empty stems.

The door to the sitting room opened behind me, and I turned. Thomas stepped in. His eyes found the overturned chair, lifted to my face, then cut briefly to the lily pool.

“I’ve left you some supper,” he said.

Still shaken by the illusion of a moment ago, I nodded rather absently. “Thank you, Thomas. I’ll go in.”

He went immediately back out.

I glanced once more at the daphne, and at the petals on the ground. Sighing, I righted the chair and went to collect my things. Before leaving, I searched the flora at the edges of the lily pool, finding more painted plaques among the forget-me-nots and other plants. But I could find none for the Bane Bloom.

I carried everything to the dining room and found my supper on the table, but no Thomas. Though disappointed, I was hardly surprised after our last exchange. I felt sure he’d had enough of me and my questions, and I told myself I felt the same about him and his overly personal observations. But it wasn’t true. My stay at Pine Cottage had brought a sense of eerie, unmoored isolation, and Thomas, impossible as this would have seemed yesterday, was beginning to feel like an anchor.

I spread out my plant samples at one end of the table and then ate my supper in solitary silence without really tasting it. After that I carried my dishes to the kitchen and washed them before going back out to the sitting room. Standing with my hands on my hips, I stared at the drawer beneath the reading bench.

Thomas had begun to talk, but his explanations were vague and unsatisfying. More worrying than reassuring.

“He began to go wrong in his mind.”

And now my mind was playing tricks on me. I needed to understand how real the danger was, not only for Mr. Carroll’s sake, but for my own. I would not consider abandoning my commission—which I believed was what Thomas wanted—without very good reason.

I knelt and tugged open the drawer. I took out the diary and sat on the bench, holding it on my lap a few moments. My interest in Prudence Bane went beyond her knowledge of Pine Cottage. I felt a kind of kinship with her. Her intellectual curiosity. Her independence and self-reliance. The relationships she cultivated with the plants and their spirits. Her disregard for societal boundaries, and the fact that her identity, in the eyes of the villagers at least, had been determined more by that than anything else.

The old leather made a crackling sound as I opened it. I began reading the first lines my eyes landed on.

October 20, 1812

Your grandfather was once a reasoning man. I believe it was this country and this house that disordered his mind. But it did not happen all at once.

We came here when I was a child because Papa’s physician told him the city was poisoning his lungs. And the Lake Country air did slowly cure him, but then the lake took his wife for payment. My mother. Your grandmother. Lily Bane was the light of his life.

Papa was away when it happened, somewhere on the Continent collecting specimens for his beloved apothecary garden. Mama and I were not alone here; we had Cook, our housemaid, and Papa’s undergardener. And there were two workmen on the lakeshore—constructing Papa’s folly of a potting shed—the morning Mama set out with me in the rowboat in her wide-brimmed sun hat.

We were barely out of the shallows, at a depth of perhaps six feet. I wanted to see a fish, and I did. A great beast nearly as long as I was at four years of age. I exclaimed and bent over the side—and in I went.