His Wicked Verse

The small brass bell above my door chimed a sound too clean for the sullied air of Cheapside. I did not look up. My focus was on the mortar, on the steady, circular grind of the pestle crushing dried yarrow into a fine, fragrant dust. The scent of it, sharp and green, was a small prayer against the street’s perpetual stench of refuse and humanity. Another soul seeking a poultice for a weeping sore, or a tincture for a cough that rattled the ribs. They came, they paid their pennies, they left.

But this silence was different. It was not the shuffling quiet of a humble patron. It was a weighted, deliberate stillness that made the fine hairs on my arms prickle. When I finally lifted my gaze, he stood there, a stark column of black wool against the muted browns and greens of my shop. He had pulled the door shut behind him, trapping the afternoon light and the world’s noise outside, leaving us in a sudden, intimate twilight.

He was the new priest. I had seen him from a distance, a severe figure whose youth was betrayed only by the sharp line of his jaw and the fervor that burned in his eyes. Up close, he was taller than I had imagined, and thinner, as if he had whittled himself down to nothing but bone and belief.

"You are the woman they call Isabell," he said. It was not a question. His voice was low and resonant, a church-stone sound that seemed to absorb the light in the room.

I gave a slow, single nod, my hand still resting on the pestle. "I am."

He took a step forward, his dark eyes sweeping over the hanging bundles of lavender and feverfew, the neatly labeled clay pots, the charts of moon phases and plant cycles pinned to the wall. His gaze was an indictment. "Master Albright’s son was near death two nights past. The sweating sickness had him. Today, he sits up and takes broth."

"God is merciful," I offered, my voice even.

A muscle tightened in his lean cheek. "Master Albright confesses he did not pray for God’s mercy. He came to you. He paid for a devil’s cure, and in his desperation, he damned his son’s soul and his own." The words were stones cast into a sinner. "He says you gave him a bottle of black liquid. He says you practiced sorcery."

I slid the pestle from the mortar and set it aside. The clink of marble on slate filled a moment that was otherwise silent. I met his stare, this man of God who saw heresy in my healing. His eyes were the grey of a winter sky, and in their depths, I saw a terrible, rigid certainty. But a certainty for what was unclear.

"It was an infusion of willow bark and elderflower," I said, my voice quiet but clear in the heavy silence. "It cools a fevered blood. There is no magic in it, Father. Only the earth."

"The earth is God’s," he countered, his voice dropping lower, more intense. "And you twist His creations to profane ends. You offer remedies that belong to Him alone, and you whisper incantations over them." He took another step, the space between us shrinking, changing the scent of my herbs so that it mixed with his aroma. "Confess your sin, woman. Confess what you are."

He moved past me then, his black cassock brushing against a hanging sheaf of dried rosemary, releasing its sharp, clean scent into the air. He ignored it. His long fingers traced one of my botanical charts, the elegant, spiraling symbols I used to denote root, leaf, and flower. I had devised the system myself, a private language between me and my work. To his eyes, it was a demonic script.

"What devil's grammar is this?" he murmured, his voice a low vibration of disgust. He ran a hand over a row of clay jars, his touch lingering on the one marked Belladonna. "The shade of night. A poisoner's tool."

"A single drop can ease a racing heart," I said, my own heart beginning to beat a frantic rhythm against my ribs. "The dose makes the poison, Father. Not the plant."

His gaze finally settled on my worktable, on the small, worn book bound in dark leather that lay beside my scales. It was where I pressed my thoughts, my loneliness, and the words that came to me in the quiet hours. He reached for it, his movements slow and deliberate, as if handling a venomous snake.

"And what is this? Your book of shadows? Your pacts and incantations?"

"It is nothing," I said, the words coming out sharper than I intended. "It is private."

He paid me no mind. He opened the book, the leather creaking in the charged quiet. His eyes, accustomed to reading scripture in dim light, scanned the page. I felt a cold dread wash over me, a violation more profound than his search of my herbs. He was touching my soul. He found a verse near the top of a page and drew a breath.

And then he spoke my words.

His voice was not the condemning lash I expected. It was deep, sonorous, and achingly beautiful, the voice of a man who could make psalms weep. It filled the small shop, wrapping around the hanging herbs and jars, giving my simple, secret lines a weight and a sorrow I had never intended, but had always felt.

"The shadow drinks the light from stone,
And in the dark, a seed is sown.
It does not pray for sun or sky,
But finds its strength in a silent cry."

The last word faded, leaving a silence that was heavier than before. He had meant to expose me, to read my heresy aloud as proof of my sin. But something else had happened. In the resonant timbre of his voice, my private grief had been transformed into a hymn of despair. He recognized my solitude. I stood frozen, my breath caught in my throat, listening to the echo of my own heart spoken in the voice of my accuser.

He closed the book. The sound of the leather cover meeting the pages was soft. His long, pale fingers rested on the cover for a moment, a stark contrast to the dark, worn leather. He did not look at the book, but at me. The righteous fire in his gaze had been banked, leaving behind something grey and cold, like ash. The certainty was still there, but it was now laced with a profound and unsettling sorrow. It was the loneliness I knew so well, the kind that lived in the hollow of the ribs, a constant, quiet ache.

He pushed the book back toward me across the worn wood of the table. "This is a dangerous game you play, woman." His voice was low again, the beautiful resonance gone, replaced by a flat, hard tone. "You meddle with things that are not yours to command. The health of a man’s body is tied to the salvation of his soul. You cannot treat one without poisoning the other."

He moved toward the door, his black robes stirring the dust motes in the single shaft of light. He stopped with his hand on the iron latch, his back to me. For a moment, I thought he would leave it at that. But then he spoke again, his voice a low murmur that carried the weight of a prophecy.

"Burn your books. Forget these rhymes.
A woman’s prayer is not in chimes
of word and root, but bended knee.
There is no grace in sorcery."

The words hung in the air between us, a perfect, chilling echo of the cadence he had read from my own page. A verse of warning, crafted in the language of my own heart. I saw his shoulders tense, as if the shape of the words had surprised him as much as they had me. He seemed to recoil from his own speech, a flicker of confusion crossing his features before he mastered them. He pulled the door open without looking back, and the raw noise of the street flooded the sanctuary he had created.

Then he was gone. The bell gave a final, mocking chime.

I stood frozen in the sudden emptiness, my hand trembling as I reached out to touch the cover of my book. His threat was a hollow thing, a priest’s duty recited by rote. I had heard such words before. They were nothing. But the look in his eyes, and the unintentional poetry of his curse—that had undone me completely. It was not the fear of the pyre that left me shaking. It was the terrifying recognition that this man, this vessel of a faith that would see me condemned, had looked into the darkest, most secret part of my craft and spoken its language back to me. He was not my enemy. He was my echo. And I knew I could bewitch him.