Chapter Eight
I don’t know the priestess glaring at me, but her features are hard, and her eyes narrow and angry.
Oh, this is bad.
She huffs. ‘I will not ask you again. In the Goddess’s name, what are you doing here?’
My throat dries and my heart hammers while I fumble for an innocent explanation, but there’s only one priestess I can be taken to who might not see me thrown in jail.
‘I’m here fetching some things for Dinah,’ I blurt.
‘Dinah?’
‘Yes, yes, Sister. She asked me to fetch something.’
The woman looks behind me, searching for the accompanying priestess I should have with me but don’t.
‘Priestess Dinah? What exactly did she ask you to fetch?’
There’s no way I can say hemlock. No one is going to be foolish enough to believe a priestess of the Goddess of Life would want poison.
Pleading ignorance is the only thing I can do. ‘Allium. She … she asked—told me, yes … she said they were white plants. Bushy flowers.’
‘Yes, they are. But those are not alliums,’ she says firmly, pointing at the hemlock plant before glancing at me, eyes trailing down to my hands. ‘You did not pluck any?’ she asks.
‘No,’ I lie easily, shaking my head. I make sure I stay in the shadows and pray she will mistake my white-stripped hair for something else in the darkness, a honey-blonde or even an old woman’s grey.
‘You’re lucky. The sap alone is enough to blister your skin. Allowing you to wander through this garden alone … it’s highly irregular for Dinah, not to mention dangerous.’
‘It’s my fault. I wanted to impress her, so I told her I knew what they looked like,’ I say.
‘Still, it is not right. I will take you to her now.’
I bite down on my bottom lip. Taking me to Dinah. I’ve already seen one more priestess than I wanted to on this trip, and there’s no way Dinah is going to buy a lie about me not knowing what plant is what.
I have no choice but to nod politely and let the priestess guide me to a far corner of the garden.
There, pruning in near darkness, is the priestess who raised my mother – my grandmother in all but name. Her eyes widen at the sight of me and her fellow priestess by my side, but she recovers quickly.
‘Sister Dinah,’ the stern priestess says. ‘I found this young woman wandering the gardens alone. She said you had sent her to find something.’
‘That I had.’ Dinah looks up, her eyes cool now, no hint of the shock I saw in them a beat before. ‘Yes, Sister, I did. She was gathering something for me.’
I appreciate her vagueness.
‘Well, she nearly gathered hemlock by mistake.’
‘She what?’ Her glare is enough to make me shrink into my shoulder. ‘I should have gone with her. I trusted her to be better than that.’
Her choice of words causes a dead weight within me. Her disappointment is plain. I’ve never felt it emanate from her to me so directly, and it feels like a direct reprimand from my mother, too. A lump forms in my throat, thick and hot, and I try to swallow it down.
‘Thank you, Sister. It was time Rose was leaving anyway. Thank you for bringing her back to me. I’ll take her from here.’
There’s a commanding tone to her voice, and while I know very little about the hierarchy of the priestesses, from the way the other woman dips her head and shuffles back slightly, she knows she’s been dismissed.
And I’m left here with a stone weight in my belly, staring at my feet. For some reason, I find it easier to square up against drunk men in the slums or climb impossible heights for a couple of eggs than to face the berating I’m about to get.
‘Hemlock, Rose? I hope she’s joking.’ Her nose wrinkles. ‘In the Goddess’s name, why do you smell like a sewer?’
I bite the inside of my cheek and consider making up some lie, but she’d see straight through it.
‘It’s how I snuck in here,’ I tell her. ‘So I wasn’t seen.’
‘You came in through the sewers? Goddess, Rose.’ She stares at my bag. ‘And I guess you got what you came for?’
Again, I consider lying. After all, it worked well enough on the previous priestess, but she didn’t know me. Dinah does.
It’s no use. I have to tell the truth.
‘Dinah, please … I need to keep Kay off the streets.’
‘By killing someone?’ A look of horror crosses her face. ‘What’s happened, Rose? Has something happened to Acacia? Why didn’t you come to me?’
I shake my head. ‘No, no, she’s fine. For now. Please, Dinah, believe me, this won’t fall into the wrong hands. If anything, it’s doing good. It’s going to save more lives than it takes.’
‘But it will take lives.’ Her expression hardens, and as I glance down at her fists, I notice the way her hands are clenched. I thought she was mad at me, but I was wrong. She’s fucking furious.
‘You come into the garden of the Goddess – the Goddess of Life! – and you steal a plant grown for death? What on earth are you thinking?’
‘What am I thinking?’ The fear and self-recrimination I felt only moments ago shift into frustration.
‘I was thinking that Kay has been talking about wanting to work, and the fact that I need her to work to earn money so we can survive. But you and I both know there’s only one job a girl who looks like her ends up with in the slums. There’s no chance of her being a seamstress like she could be if she were in the fifth ring.
No work in a rich house learning to cook if she were closer to the High Hold.
There’s only one job for someone like her, and it will break her.
It will break her so fully that I don’t know if she’ll even want to keep living after that.
I am exhausted, Dinah. Father’s only been dead six months, and it’s taken everything from me.
I thought it would be easier without him.
Without another mouth to find food for, without someone spending any money we managed to scrape together on drink.
But for all his drinking, Father still laboured.
Still brought us coin. Now that’s gone. I’ve been doing all I can, trying to make it work and failing.
I know I’ve been failing. We’re starving every night, Dinah.
But now I’ve finally got a chance. A chance to get Kay the right kind of work.
That’s what I was thinking. That maybe taking the life of one murderous rapist who killed one of Kay’s only friends is worth it to prevent my sister from spreading her legs for coin and going the same way as poor Talia.
So if you’re going to ask me if I regret my decision to come here today, the answer will be no. A thousand times no.’
Dinah stares at me, jaw slack in shock.
‘Rose, Etta is the Goddess of Life,’ she finally repeats, like I don’t know whose garden I stand in.
‘And yet her priestesses grow hemlock.’
‘For mercy!’
‘Right,’ I spit back. ‘And what is it you always say to me? “The Goddess has her reasons.”’
My skin bristles as I say those words aloud. I’ve lost count of the number of times the priestesses have spouted that line at me. When we were stripped of our powers and sent from the household. When my mother got ill. When she finally lost her life.
‘Maybe the Goddess has her reasons for sending me here today. In making sure that you were here in the garden when I needed you. It’s possible, right?
You grow that herb. You grow hemlock. Surely there’s a reason for that, too?
’ I pause, giving her space to respond, but she doesn’t.
‘The Goddess has her reasons for me being here. That’s what I think. ’ I fold my arms stubbornly.
I see the deliberation flicker through her features. Surely she knows I’m right – that you can’t use a phrase when it suits you and ignore it at all other times. Meaning that maybe – just maybe – she’s going to let me walk out of here with the hemlock in my satchel.
As the pause extends, a flicker of hope sparks through me, only for her to stiffen her back, stamping it out.
‘She is the Goddess of Life. I cannot let you do this, Rose. I cannot. Give me your satchel.’
I want to say no. To tell her I need it. But how can I? There’s nothing more I can say. I laid all my cards on the table; I couldn’t have stated it more clearly.
With reluctance in every line of my body, I pass her my satchel. She opens it and takes out the small bag within it, mouth pressing into a hard line of disapproval.
‘Come on. I’ll walk you out,’ she says.
Rather than going out through the temple, we head to the garden wall.
There’s no evidence of a gate or a door, but Dinah doesn’t need it.
One of her powers allows her to walk through walls, and though she can’t take me with her, she can remove the obstacle from my path.
She places her hand against the grey stone and a shimmer of light cascades down to the ground.
A moment later, the stones fade to nothing.
‘I’m sorry, Rose,’ she says finally, and she does sound a little sorry, but not as much as I think she should, ‘but this is for the best. You know it is.’
I can’t respond. I don’t want to be angry, not at someone who has done so much for me, who is like family to me. But she’s chosen the Goddess over us, over Kay and me. But then, what else should I expect from a priestess?
Dinah gestures through the open doorway, a clear indication that it’s my time to leave.
Without so much as a word, I step through the wall and onto the lawn outside.
I stalk away, but then abruptly turn back.
‘My bag?’ I ask. It’s not like it’s worth anything as it’s old and tatty, but it’s useful, and in my situation that’s as much as I can ask for.
‘Of course,’ Dinah replies, throwing it to me lightly through the newly created doorway. As it leaves her hand, I realise priestesses don’t practise a lot of throwing. Or at least Dinah doesn’t. It drops to the ground far too quickly, about an equal distance between the wall and me.
I walk back to it and with a slight huff, I bend down to pick it up, only to stop. My heart stutters.
There, stuck on the tar-like gunk that covers my shoe, is a cluster of green. It’s the first handful of leaves I managed to snap off. The one that dropped to the ground before I could get it into the bag.
It’s not a lot, but it’s at least five or six sizeable leaves.
Enough to brew one vial of poison.
Turns out the Goddess of Life has a more nuanced way of thinking after all.
My hands are trembling as I pick up my bag, wave jauntily to Dinah, and walk – very carefully – away from the garden wall.