This is all more foolishness. I am used to being alone, and it is ridiculous to mind it. Father is fine, I know it. He is too clever and strong to let anything bad happen to him. And I have plenty of work to occupy me and keep my thoughts from straying into dark corners. I check my list:
I will turn over the empty garden beds and prepare them for planting.
I will spread a fresh layer of mulch over the strawberry patch.
I will cut back last year’s dead growth on all the kitchen herbs, right to the ground, so the new sprouts will have sun and room to grow.
Good health to Father, I think nervously. A quick recovery to his patient, whomever it may be. A safe and speedy return to the cottage.
But it occurs to me: perhaps there is no one sick. Perhaps Father is at Alnwick, at the castle library, lost in his research and the workings of his own mind, and that is why he has not thought to send word to me. Perhaps he has finally found the mysterious books he has sought for so long, among the duke’s many ancient and dusty volumes – the ones he believes may have been rescued from the hospital of the old monastery, before the soldiers came to burn what would burn and smash the rest.
Do these volumes even exist? Father believes they do. He believes passionately and without proof, the way other men believe in God. He often talks of these books in the evenings in our parlour, a glass of absinthe and water in his hand. When he speaks of them, his speech quickens and his eyes flash.
“The monastery hospital was famous throughout Europe,” he begins, as if I had not heard this tale from birth. “The monks’ power to heal the sick was so great that the people called them miracle workers, and sometimes even saints.” Then he laughs. “Anyone could be such a saint, if they had access to the same information as those long-dead holy men! Someone must have saved the volumes that contain all the monks’ wisdom. It would have been madness not to.”
He sips his green, liquorice-scented drink and continues in this vein until the fire dies and my head nods forward on my chest.
Sometimes I think Father’s hunger to know what the monks knew is a madness all its own. Once, long ago, I watched him dig up a ten-foot square in a distant field to twice the depth of his spade. He planted nothing, but visited the place daily for weeks, to see if anything unusual had sprouted in the freshly turned earth.
“Did you think your shovel might wake the bones of all those dead monks, until they rise and tell you their secrets?” I joked nervously as I watched him sift through the dirt with his fingers.
“The monks may be dead, but their medicines still lie sleeping in the ground.” There was an edge to his voice. “Hidden deep in the cold, dark earth, a seed can be nearly immortal. Even after so many years, if exposed once more to the light and air and rain, there is a chance some long-forgotten plant of great power may yet reveal itself.”
I had meant only to tease, but instead I seem to have stirred Father’s anger, for he kept muttering furiously to himself: “But what of it? Any discovery I make will be useless, unless I can learn the specimen’s properties, its uses, its dangers…”
“No one knows more about plants than you do, Father,” I said, to calm him.
He climbed to his feet, dirt clinging to his knees. All at once he was shouting, “Compared to the monks I know nothing! I dig blindly to rediscover what they took as common sense. The formulae all burned, the wisdom of centuries in ashes…To kill such knowledge is itself murder – it is worse than murder—”
Father raged on. I stopped listening and let his voice turn to a wordless buzz, a hornet floating near my ear. All I could think was, But how could a puny seed be immortal, when it was so easy for Mama to die?
Wait, I hear someone at the door – it must be Father home at last—
17th March
WARMER TODAY, BUT A STEADY WIND BLOWS from the east, smelling faintly of the sea. The sun peeked through the clouds briefly after lunch. Then grey skies once more.
Made breakfast for Father, who ate little and said less. After the meal he went straight to his study and locked the door. I am alone again.
Changed the soaking water for the belladonna seeds – only one more day before they are ready for planting!
Father still has not told me where he was.
I try to busy myself with chores. I practise sketching, though I can find nothing of interest to sketch: a kettle, a chair, a ball of yarn.
After lunch I can stand it no longer. The fire is still in embers, so I am quickly able to rekindle it and put on a kettle of water for tea. As soon as the tea is ready, I set it on a tray and proceed to Father’s study.
Before I knock, I peer through the keyhole. What I see only fills me with more questions. Father paces around the room and mutters like a wild thing, grabbing volumes from the shelves and throwing them down again. His heavy leather-bound book of formulas, the one he keeps locked in a drawer, lies open on his desk. Now and then he comes back to the book and leafs through the pages, looking for something that he clearly cannot find.
I take a deep breath to calm myself and knock on the great wooden door.
“Father? I brought you some tea.”
Silence. Then:
“I did not ask for tea, Jessamine.”
“I want to speak to you.”
A thud, as of a large book slammed shut. The bang of a drawer closing, the click of a lock. Father opens the door, the small gold key still in his hand.
“Speak then. I am busy; I am sure you can deduce that from the state of my desk.” He looks down at the tray. “What type of tea is it?”
“Lemon balm. Made with leaves that I saved from last summer and dried in the storeroom.” I lift the tray higher, so he can catch the scent. “It is very soothing.”
“Lemon balm tea,” he echoes as I make my way past him and place the tray on his desk. The dark wood is pocked and crisscrossed with grooves from a few centuries’ worth of scribbling pens. “Such a simple, harmless drink. Made by your own sweet hands, I presume?”
“Of course.” I hand him the cup. Lemon-scented steam rises between us. As he sips I gather my courage to ask, “Where were you, Father?”
“In my study, obviously. I have been in here all day.”
“I mean yesterday. And the day before, and the day before that.”
He turns away. “I was where my services were required; that is all you need to know.”
“That is not an answer.” I too can be stubborn – I am my father’s daughter, after all. “I was left here alone for three days. Surely it is only fair that I know why.”
He looks angry at first. Then his face softens.
“I am sorry if you were anxious, Jessamine. I was called away to deal with an urgent medical matter. It took up all of my attention; if you had asked me how many days I had been absent from home, I myself
could not tell you.”
“Called away to where?”
“I have been in London.”
“London! Why? Where? Why did you not take me?”
He