Chapter Two
Elderwood trees, Orcus luminii, are known for their unusual pale color and their ability to produce light through a process called bioluminescence. Although rarely used in floriography, including elderwood leaves in a bouquet is said to mean Death walks with you.
Two weeks passed, and Elswyth stood in the hall outside her father’s study, clutching a letter in her hands. A letter that—she hoped—would change everything.
The room beyond the door was drenched in shadow. It was early evening, but embers crackled in the hearth, casting a flickering light over the study. The fire did little to stop the cold, which leaked from the old stones as though the house itself were made of ice.
“Father?” Elswyth asked, sliding through the door and into the study.
Once she’d loved that room, with its towering shelves filled with dusty books, its mahogany walls, and its wide desk scattered with papers. There was a carving of her name and Persephone’s underneath that desk from when they were children. A little secret once shared that now belonged only to her.
A portrait of their family hung above the hearth.
Her father, young, hair still coppery brown, body strong as an oak.
Persephone, silver-haired and violet-eyed, standing primly at his feet.
Elswyth, ever dour, even as a girl, even before her scar, with straight red hair and hands folded in her lap.
And her mother, willow-thin and beautiful.
Her emerald eyes, captured in oil forever, looking down on Elswyth from the past.
There were two chairs before the fire, high-backed and upholstered in damask.
Her father slouched in one of them, wearing his evening robe.
She could see the balding back of his head and see the contents of the small table next to him: a bottle of whisky, its amber insides flickering in the light of the fire, and a smaller bottle made of emerald glass.
A rubber dropper lay next to it, discarded.
She could smell the bittersweet sting of laudanum.
Elswyth hesitated, then moved to the chair opposite her father and sat. She reached across the table and touched his hand. “Father,” she said.
Her father woke with a start. His eyes were bleary and bloodshot, and a thin sheen of drool edged at his mouth. He stared at her, surprised, and then wiped his lips with the back of his sleeve.
“Elswyth,” he said, “what are you doing here?”
“I came to check on you. You were not at supper.”
“Ah. Yes, well, I’ve been working.”
He looked over her shoulder to the pile of papers stacked high on his desk. Invoices and ledgers, no doubt, along with letters from their lenders. Those letters had sat unanswered on his desk for months, since the news of Persephone.
Elswyth cleared her throat and forced a smile. “As have I, Father. I have news.”
She hesitated and then handed the letter across the table.
Her father looked confused, but took it, reaching for his spectacles.
His sleep-stained eyes scanned the page, pupils two pinpricks of black.
His nose—once regal, stern as the bow of a ship—had turned red and soft in the past few months.
Faint veins traced their way across it and across his cheeks.
“What is this?” he asked.
Elswyth’s smile faltered. “A letter of acceptance. From Oxford. They’ve begun accepting women, and I applied. Father, they want me to join them in the autumn. The Imperial Botanical Institute.”
Her father stared at her over his spectacles, looking exhausted.
“Oh, Eden’s Ashes, Elswyth. I thought we’d come to an understanding.”
“You said that, if I were accepted, I could earn my degree before marrying. You said—”
“I know what I said. But that was before Persephone. If she found an auspicious match, you could delay marriage in pursuit of an education. Things have changed, Elswyth. Surely you must see that.”
“What has changed? Why can I not pursue my education?” Elswyth tried to keep her voice even. She’d written down what she had planned to say, but already the words slipped away, and anger built in their place.
“Elswyth, you are already eighteen. By the time you are finished with university, your options for a husband—for a good husband, one who can help us—will be severely limited. Wait too long, and you’ll wind up a thirty-year-old thornback with no chance at marriage.”
Elswyth swallowed. “Perhaps—perhaps with an education, I could contribute to our family’s finances. More and more women are finding work these days, in all sorts of fields—”
“So what will you do? You will go and study botany. And who will pay for it? I see nothing in this letter about a scholarship.”
Elswyth began to speak, but her father cut her off. “And even if you do graduate, what will you do then? How many pounds does a scholar of botany make in a year? Do you know many unmarried female botanists who can support a household?”
“There are many applications. Pharmacy, medicine, academia—”
“They’re letting women become professors, now? That surely is news to me. Or was your thought to become a midwife? A corner-store druggist? Perhaps a hedge witch.”
Elswyth gripped her skirts until her fingers turned white. “It would be better than being some lordling’s broodmare.”
Her father’s face blanched. “Elswyth, you will not be a broodmare. You will be the lady of a house. Your mind will be well occupied with the keeping of the estate and the social status of your family. And yes, you will have children, but is that so terrible? You and your sister were—are—the light in my life, Elswyth. I only wish for you to have the same. You might even study. There are women’s interest groups, gardening, floriography—”
“I do not want to study gardening. I do not want to spend my life taking walks and throwing parties and cleaning up after children. Is it really so hard to understand that I wish to have a say over what happens to me? Is it not my life, after all?”
“You will not have a choice if we cannot pay our debts. A proper match—to a wealthy gentleman—could save us. Persephone understood that. And now that she is gone…”
Her father removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. “I have always wanted what is best for you, Elswyth. I have supported your studies. Sent you to the best schools our name and fortune could provide. But now… now it is time to put your own interests aside for the interests of your family.”
Elswyth shut her eyes. She knew she would regret what she said next before the words left her.
“And why not you, Father? You are not far past fifty. Young by no account, but certainly not too old to sire an heir. Why is it me, and not you, who must bear the future of our house on their shoulders?”
His eyes drifted up to the portrait of his late wife. “And who would want me, my dear? A penniless old man with barren lands and a broken castle.”
“A penniless viscount is still a viscount. I’m sure there are many who would marry you for the Elderwood name alone. There are plenty of wealthy heiresses looking for a title. Were we not once royalty?”
“And besmirch the reputation and good breeding of our house with an upstart? The reputation of our house is all we have, Elswyth. The Elderwood name stands alongside the likes of Plantagenet, Angevin, d’Orange—ours is the blood of kings. Not commoners.”
“And yet we die like them, don’t we? So what good is our ancient blood? There are but two of us left, Father. Persephone and Mother are gone. Grandmama is a ghost already.”
As if in response, the wind beyond the castle walls moaned. The fire shifted in its hearth, and the carved eldren on the mantel shifted as well, the flickering light making it seem alive.
When her father spoke again, his voice was quiet. “Do not speak to me of my wife’s death,” he said. “You of all people.”
Elswyth’s face burned. Heat prickled through her scar, and she turned away, hiding it.
Her father sighed. “I am sorry. That was cruel,” he said.
Her father stood, shakily. He picked up his glass and moved over to the fire, placing a hand on the mantel. For a moment, he only stared into the flames. Then he took a long drink. “I had not planned to tell you this, Elswyth. I had hoped—I had hoped that you would go willingly.”
“Tell me what?”
Her father looked at her. His mouth opened slightly, as if he did not know what to say.
“I am dying, Elswyth.”
A peculiar silence settled over the room. Her father’s four words sank like fangs into her throat, tightening until she could no longer breathe.
“What are you saying?” she asked. But her voice was too small and far, far away.
“I am ill. That is why I cannot marry. I’m afraid that, in my grief over your mother, I waited too long to find a new wife. I will not sire a son. Not now, not ever.”
“You are…” Elswyth started, then shook her head. “How? What is wrong?”
“The warping, Elswyth,” her father said.
Elswyth’s mind swam. Her father showed no signs of the growths and galls that plagued her grandmother.
The disease was common enough among older floromancers, even those with little ability, like her father.
When her thoughts finally settled, her words came out in stops and starts.
“But that is not a death sentence, not necessarily. Grandmama has been living with her warping for a decade. There are treatments, medicines…”
“The doctor has excised all the growths he can. But your grandmother’s warping is on the outside. Mine is in my organs, Elswyth. It’s in my bones.”
He absently put a hand to his stomach, staring into the fire. She imagined what that must feel like—to experience the slow growth of plants inside one’s body, growths that one could not control. How painful it must be.
“How long?” Elswyth asked.
“A year, perhaps,” he said. “The doctor has prescribed laudanum for the pain, and it helps some. But it won’t stop the growths.”