The Herbalist

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Authors: Niamh Boyce
Tags: Fiction, General, Historical
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eyes crinkled as he flashed
a grin.
    ‘Cat got your tongue?’
    ‘Can I give you a hand – carry your
case?’
    He laughed. The herbalist wouldn’t let
me carry anything but he let me walk alongside him. He didn’t talk much either; he
just whistled. We walked across the square, down the lane by the River Inn, and I nearly
died then. He didn’t live in a house; he lived in a hovel with a tin chimney. It
was almost bare inside – rags, an earth floor, hooks on the walls. I wondered how he
slept at night. How he kept so clean-looking. For a fancy-looking man, the herbalist had
nothing – no possessions beyond his case and folding table and the clothes he stood up
in. He had a box of greasy bottles and jars. I stood there looking on as he began to
wipe them clean with newspaper. Then I walked across to a small square window. It
overlooked a yard of weeds and beyond that was water. The river looked different from
there, blacker, higher, faster.
    ‘Well, now,’ he said, as if it
was time for me to go, but I didn’t want to go.
    ‘Do you like it here?’ I
asked.
    ‘Well enough, but pious people are
hard to get to know.’
    That was my opening: if there was one thing
I knew, it was the people of this town. I informed him who was who, ran quickly through
the Greaneys, Nashes and Chases, to the Feeneys, Purcellsand Ryans,
and of course the Holohans and their recent problems. I told him Grettie Birmingham
looked posh but rarely spent a penny and certainly wouldn’t come near him, what
with her husband being the proper doctor, no offence. ‘None taken.’ I left
my own family out of it. I told him what people were saying about him – that he was a
godsend, saved them a fortune in doctor’s bills. That he was clean. And that he
was an Indian. When I ran out of information, I just sat quietly on a crate while he
wiped glass jars.
    Then the herbalist took some blankets and
old papers from a heap in the corner. I followed him outside and around to the yard,
where he piled them up, poured kerosene over the lot and set it alight.
    ‘Hope you’re not burning
anything that doesn’t belong to you, my boy!’
    It was Aggie Reilly, shouting from the deck
of her shabby black barge, bosoms and dusters flapping.
    ‘Just rubbish, just foul rubbish,
madam.’ He took off his hat, waved it and bowed low like he was in a play.
    She cocked her head to the side, almost
smiled. Aggie never moored on this side of the bridge. She must be after something. I
didn’t wave. The poor herbalist, though, wasn’t from around here, he
didn’t know any different.
    ‘She’s a bad woman,’ I
whispered; ‘goes with men.’
    ‘Ah.’ His hand felt hot on my
waist as we turned towards the shed. ‘Like you?’
    I stomped off. Regretted it the second I
left. I would rather have been with him clearing his shed, making it suitable for human
habitation, than facing into Mam’s questions, into the hot air of our house.
    I mooched around for a day or two, spent
most of my time stitching a new sewing bag, dark green, with my name embroidered in red.
I was fevered with imaginings: that the herbalist was being seduced by some lecherous
widow; that he had run off to greener pastures; that someone had set light to his shed
while he slept. I couldn’t settle to anything, so I swallowed my pride and went to
check on him.
    He was letting out Catty Dolan as I arrived.
She nodded at me and hurried on by. Then she stopped and turned. ‘I’m
beating the queues,’ she said.
    ‘Are you?’
    The herbalist didn’t look a bit
surprised to see me. He walked on into the shed and left the door open for me to follow.
There were shelves there now, filled with brown bottles and jars, pestle and mortars,
and tins for tea and sugar that didn’t look like they contained tea and sugar. He
had a gas-burner. Someone must’ve given him a kettle, someone else a saucepan. I
felt bad that I’d nothing to give him. A dowdy partition curtain stretched from
one wall to the

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