Free The Herbalist by Niamh Boyce Page A

fire while he left the room,
didn’t want to meet his eye. Followed him up the stairs as if she were in no great
hurry. Unbuttoned her dress with her back to Dan, hung it carefully in their wardrobe.
Got into bed with her slip on.
    ‘My eyes are sore, Dan.’
    He got up and closed the heavy drapes. All
light left the room except for bright pins where the curtains didn’t meet. It
reminded her of when the thread ended on the spool and the needle ran on regardless,
puncturing seed holes of light into the seams of the fabric. He pulled up her slip. This
was the first time, the first time since she had lost the child. Again, she felt guilty.
She tutted and sighed as she allowed him to adjust her clothing, like it was all for
him. He was more gentle than usual, went slow. Still, it stung. She winced at first, but
then she felt herself move beneath him, in time with him. Mortified that her body had
betrayed her. It was greedy, ready and waiting.
    Afterwards Carmel had a dream, as mixed up a
dream as she’dever had. The roots of her hair were bedevilled
by care; someone kissed her fingertips with a soft mouth. ‘Oh, my dear, you have
dancer’s hands.’ She wasn’t sure if it was a woman or a man. They wore
a headscarf like a man in a play who acts as a stepmother, who dresses as a witch, who
pretends to be a good woman selling an apple to Snow White. ‘Be careful what you
wish for, it could come true,’ whispered this stepmother, as she pressed the apple
to Carmel’s mouth. It was green and felt hard against her lips. Blood pooled in
the loose skin over her front teeth. ‘I don’t want it!’ Carmel
screamed.
    Dan woke her.
    ‘What is it, kitten?’ He always
called her silly names after.
    ‘It was Goldilocks’s stepmother;
she was trying to feed me a poisoned apple.’
    He hugged her. ‘No, she
couldn’t,’ he said. ‘Goldilocks didn’t have a
stepmother.’
    ‘That doesn’t mean she
couldn’t force an apple down me.’
    ‘It does, because she didn’t
exist,’ he said, pleased with his logic.
    He smiled, moved in closer. ‘Do you
think we’ve made a baby?’ he whispered.
    ‘Stop it. Don’t tempt
fate.’ She pushed him away.
    ‘You’re awful contrary, Carmel,
you know that?’
    ‘Oh, what happened to
“kitten”? Is kitten gone?’
    He pulled on his trousers and walked
downstairs with his hands in his pockets, trying to whistle.



11
    I chanced calling round to the herbalist
early one Sunday morning, just after breakfast. Curious to see if he observed the day of
rest. He answered the door with his shirt hanging out and his hair all over the place.
Asked if I was ill, but he was only joking this time. He looked up and down the lane to
see if there was anyone about – there wasn’t – so he let me in. The partition
curtain was half pulled back. His bed was a stretcher bed. A basin and a jug stood at
the end. A golden virgin-and-child calendar was taped over the head of it. He stoked the
stove, slipped in a piece of turf and set the kettle on heat.
    ‘Tea?’
    ‘Yes, please.’
    I arranged myself on the corner stool with
my new mending bag on my lap. He got on with his morning routine as if I wasn’t
there. Soaped and shaved in front of the mirror taped to the wall above the basin. With
his shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows, I could see he had the muscles of a
barrowman. I moved a bit, to get a better view of him and his reflection. As he tapped
his razor off the basin, something he did again and again, I kept seeing a flash of
green in the crook of his arm. His skin was inked in jade, some sort of tattoo. He
caught me staring then, thought I was admiring his muscles and dared me to feel his
arms; I did. They were like stone.
    ‘Are you human at all?’ I
asked.
    He liked that. Said he did physical
exercises every day in the yard. I made an impressed face, didn’t mention the
tattoo; maybe he was ashamed of it, maybe that’s why he shaved with his shirt on
and didn’t strip to the