Page 39 of Bane Bloom

I found scissors in the desk drawer and used them to trim the border from the small illustration, so it would fit inside the envelope. Leaving the letter and painting to dry, I began a brief missive to Papa, letting him know I’d arrived safely and promising a longer letter soon.

Finished with my correspondence, I went down to the glasshouse to start my workday.

Through the door I saw Thomas already at work among the plants. Nothing prevented us from working there at the same time, of course, yet I shied from the idea. He was distracting, for one thing. Let me count the ways. And I couldn’t help feeling he’d be watching me.

Thinking to wait and see if he’d finish soon, I went to the reading nook and took down Arthur Bane’s Plant Lore of Britain, opening to the section on mandrake. The plant had two full pages in the slim reference. Even more interestingly, someone else who’d read this entry—someone with a now-familiar hand—had penned the following list in the margin:

Belladonna

Fly agaric

Hellebore

Henbane

Mandrake

Thorn apple

Mandrake, or Mandragora, turned out to be another of the plants identified as commonly used in witches’ flying ointment, and with the help of this entry and the handwritten list, I began to understand what this was. The hallucination-inducing and sedative properties of the plants associated with these recipes could produce visions and even the sensation of flying.

I found all this of great interest, especially considering Prudence’s reputation as a witch, but the thing that most caught my attention had to do with the dolls carved from the plant’s roots.

Manikins. The roots of Mandragora, which may only be safely obtained through ritual, were carved by witches into dolls. These dolls would then house the spirit of a familiar, which, when properly cared for, would answer questions about the future and could even bring prosperity.

Had Prudence made the doll in Thomas’s hut for these purposes? Next to this paragraph was another handwritten note: dittany of Crete. This was an herb, I believed, though not poisonous to my knowledge. Curious, I flipped back in the book to see if there was an entry but found one only for dittander, a native marsh herb also known as pepperwort. However, the entry included this:

Dittander was sometimes referred to as dittany in medieval texts, causing it to be confused with dittany of Crete. The latter is a variety of oregano associated with love spells but which also may be put to darker use. Because the highly valued herb is happiest growing upon Grecian crags, harvesting it has at times proved fatal. For this reason, dittany has also been used in necromantic witchcraft, for manifesting spirits of the deceased.

The last line had been underscored by someone. I recalled the dried leaves inside the box with the manikin. I recalled the yellow cloth that wrapped the doll. And I recalled the box’s lily decoration.

It seemed more and more likely that Thomas’s mother had created the doll. She had witnessed her mother’s death, and the diary made it clear she blamed herself. Had she hoped the doll would allow her to speak with her mother’s spirit? Or perhaps she’d created it to help her father, when his own “experiments” had failed to produce the result he had hoped for.

Was it possible that the woman in yellow had not been a result of the house affecting my mind, as I had thought, but of the doll causing me to see an actual spirit?

Realizing how tightly I’d curled around the book and my thoughts, I set it on the bench and got up to pace the length of the room. How I yearned for someone to talk to about all of this! Yet the only person to hand was Thomas, and every jot of my information had come from snooping through his family’s things. Annie gave every indication of being a sympathetic listener, yet as a neighbor of Thomas’s, I could hardly discuss his hidden family history with her, either.

With a sigh I went back to the seat and took up the book again, moving on to my second, lighter area of interest for the day.

I intended to include bluebells in my reimagined herbal series, and my growing fascination with the plants of Pine Cottage was now as much tied to that series as to my work for the apothecaries. In truth, I saw no reason I couldn’t do both. And Harding had, after all, made me no promises.

Mr. Bane had written a nice long entry for bluebells.

In this writer’s opinion, bluebells are the most beautiful and evocative of our native wildflower species. (Though I must confess there are days I might just as assuredly declare that honor belongs to foxgloves.) The Botanical Society of London uses a bluebell as its emblem.

Hyacinthoides non-scripta has a compelling mythology in Buttermere, the Lake Country dale from which I write this. It is believed that Norsemen settled here as early as the ninth century and that an eleventh-century Norse chieftain, Jarl Buthar, held out against Norman invaders for some fifty years. The lore states that a particularly bloody battle took place in the adjacent Rannerdale Valley, and swaths of bluebells sprang up in the aftermath.

Medicinal uses of bluebells are not well documented, and the plant is known to be toxic. There is some evidence that medieval monks used them to treat leprosy and snakebites, but therapeutic dosages are unknown. Modern research will hopefully provide further illumination on this subject.

There are, however, many strong folk beliefs associated with bluebells, which especially thrive in England’s oldest forests, in areas where light dapples the ground. Bluebells may also be called “fairy thimbles,” and tales of fairy trances, abductions, and glamours abound.

I recalled Thomas’s unease about leaving me alone in the woods. Though tempting to dismiss his concern as rural superstition, I could hardly judge him for sharing the apparent beliefs of his family.

There is a very old tale told in Buttermere of a maid called Mary Robson, lost one year during May Day celebrations. According to the story, she was last seen at twilight walking among the bluebells that blanket the lower slopes of Rannerdale Knotts (a smallish fell in the area). Though foul play was suspected, no body was found, and locals came to believe she was taken by the fair folk. On May Day of the following year, she was sighted again in the bluebell meadow, this time wearing a gown of vibrant blue and a crown of silver, riding a white horse. Shortly before midnight, she rode down from Rannerdale Knotts under the full moon, then through the village of Buttermere, before disappearing into the lake. She was reportedly seen every May Day after that.

The white horse reference stopped my breath, though the story’s horse and my new friend could hardly be related. And yet, another strange coincidence! May Day was only a few days away, too. Mary Robson would certainly have a place in my herbal, along with an illustration of Phantom among the bluebells.

I set the book aside and got up to peek through the glasshouse door. Thomas had at last gone, and I retrieved my basket from the entryway and went in.