Let me see her. Celia said. Ruth's eyes focused on Celia, and something like recognition crossed her face. You you know, you understand. Tell them.
Tell them what I did. Hush now, Celia said. Her voice gentle in a way Thomas had never heard. No need to tell anyone anything. What's done is done, and what's coming will come regardless.
I didn't mean for him to die. Ruth sobbed. I was just so angry. He had no right to touch me like that. I just wanted him to hurt like he made me hurt.
I didn't know the mushrooms would kill him. I swear I didn't know. The crowd went silent. Thomas felt as if the ground had shifted. Ruth, are you saying you poisoned Samuel?
But Ruth wasn't looking at Thomas. Her eyes were fixed on Celia, pleading and terrified. Make it stop, please. The voices, the shadows, make them stop. Celia touched Ruth's forehead with two fingers, a gesture that seemed almost ritualistic.
Can't stop what you started, child. You opened a door you didn't know was there. And now you have to walk through it. All I can do is ease the journey. What are you talking about?
Thomas demanded. What door? Celia ignored him. She produced a small bottle containing a sedating herbal mixture and held it to Ruth's lips. "Drink this.
It will calm the voices and help you sleep." Ruth drank obediently. Within minutes, her struggling ceased. Her eyes closed. Her breathing became slow and regular. The men carried her to an empty cabin to be watched and the crowd dispersed slowly whispering.
Thomas grabbed Celia's arm before she could leave. What did you give her? A sedating herbal mixture, mostly intended to help her sleep. She confessed to murder. She confessed to being foolish.
Girl had relations with Samuel she didn't want. Got some mushrooms she thought would make him sick. Teach him a lesson. Didn't realize the ones she picked were deadly. Easy to mistake if you don't know what you're looking for.
Celia pulled her arm free. Now she's eaten up with guilt, seeing things that aren't there, hearing voices that don't exist. Mind can do terrible things when it's breaking under the weight of what it's done. You seem to know a great deal about minds breaking. Celia met his gaze steadily.
I know about guilt, master. Know about what it does to people, how it twists them up inside until they can't tell what's real and what's not. I know about debts and how they come due in ways people don't expect. She walked away leaving Thomas with more questions than answers and a growing certainty that he was in far deeper water than he had realized.
Ruth died two days later still sleeping. She simply stopped breathing during the night, peacefully by all accounts. Celia examined her and declared it heart failure following extreme distress. The death was ruled natural. Though several workers whispered that Ruth had been allowed to die, that Celia's medicine had been something other than valerian.
Thomas didn't know what to believe. Ruth had confessed to Samuel's murder, which should have brought clarity, but instead it had only deepened the mystery. How had an ignorant girl known which mushrooms to use? Where had she learned about plant toxins? The answer came slowly as Thomas observed Celia more carefully.
She wasn't just a healer. She was something older and more complex. A keeper of knowledge that predated American slavery, carried across the ocean in the memories of stolen people. She knew herbs not just from books, but from generations of accumulated wisdom passed mother to daughter in secret. And she was teaching others.
Thomas began to notice patterns. Women who had been sick would spend time with Celia and emerge different. More confident, more knowing. Ruth had been one of those women.
January brought bitter cold and an ice storm that coated everything in crystal. The plantation operation slowed to a crawl. During this forced confinement, Thomas finally took action he should have taken months earlier. He broke into Celia's cabin while she was away treating Hutchkins' wife. The cabin was meticulously organized.
Dried herbs hung from ceiling beams, each bundle labeled. Bottles and jars lined shelves. A well-kept mortar, pestle, measuring spoons, a small scale. But there was more. Hidden beneath the bed, Thomas found a wooden box wrapped in cloth.
Inside were notebooks, pages covered with Celia's writing, medical notes mostly, but interspersed were other entries written in a different tone. Thomas read one dated October 15th, 23 sick, 21 saved. The power to heal is the power to choose who lives. They don't understand this. They think my knowledge belongs to them because they own my body.
But knowledge can't be owned. It can only be shared or withheld. I share it with those who deserve it. I withhold it from those who don't. This is the only power I have and I wield it carefully.
Every life saved is a debt in my favor. Every death prevented is a weight on the scales. When the scales balance, justice will be served. Thomas's hands shook as he turned pages finding more entries in the same vein. Celia was keeping a ledger of moral debts.
She was deciding who was worthy of healing and who was not. Another entry dated December 20th. The girl came to me in tears. Told me what the man did to her. Told me she wanted him to hurt.
I gave her knowledge as I give all who ask and deserve. Not my place to judge what she does with it. She makes her own choices, faces her own consequences. But I also gave her something else, guilt. Planted it deep with careful words.
Guilt is slower than poison but just as deadly. It eats from the inside, destroys the spirit before the body fails. She will not live long. This is mercy though she doesn't know it yet. Thomas closed the notebook carefully, his mind racing.
Celia hadn't directly poisoned Samuel but she had taught Ruth how knowing what the girl intended. Then she had driven Ruth to madness and death through psychological manipulation masked as spiritual counsel. He continued searching and found wrapped in oilcloth at the box's bottom, a single sheet of yellowed paper covered with different handwriting. My if you are reading this, I am gone and you carry our knowledge alone. Remember what I taught you.
The plants are neither good nor evil. They simply are. We choose how to use them. Use them to heal when the scales are balanced. Use them to harm when justice demands it.