nodded. It was true that Trieu was fond of Lucie. I had felt very lucky that they all pecked over her lovingly.
“That tea,” Lanh said slowly, looking out at the river. “I had never seen those particular herbs before. Or I didn’t think I had. So I took them to a doctor that many of the local people like me, servants, rely on. A Chinese herbalist. A highly regarded one.”
“Out of concern for Lucie?” I said.
“No,” said Lanh quietly. “Out of concern for you.”
“What did he say?” I asked, searching Lanh’s face.
“It didn’t take him long at all,” said Lanh. “He smelled the small bit I brought, then he ingested a little of it. A trace amount. As soon as he’d swallowed it, he said it was without any doubt an herb called ky nham. Langdang in his language, in Chinese.”
“Ky nham?” I said numbly.
“Ky nham,” he repeated. “Henbane in French. Hyoscyamus niger is the medical name. It’s a poisonous plant. And a very strong hallucinogen.”
“A hallucinogen?” I said, my stomach churning. “They’ve been giving me a hallucinogen?”
“I don’t know who has. And I don’t know if it was once or many times, but that day, when Trieu gave you that tea, that’s what was in it.”
“That can’t be right,” I said, thinking back to the tea I drank that day. It hadn’t tasted strange. It tasted just like the tea I drank nearly every day. The one she had been serving me since my second day in Indochine—the day I’d seen the dead man. The king’s herb, she called it. It had had no effect on me then. I’d been fine then. But when had I stopped being fine? It had all been so gradual. When was the line drawn dividing the Jessie Lesage who’d been able to handle her nervous energy into a woman who was consumed by worry, and much worse?
“Why would she give that to me?” I asked, my heart starting to pound.
“I don’t know,” said Lanh. “That’s what I’ve been puzzling over.”
“But when was that? The afternoon I spent at the horse race, that was six days ago.”
“Yes,” he said, apology in his voice. “I have known for a few days, but you were dealing with your own matters and I haven’t been able to speak to you alone. But when I received this phone call today, I knew. Something was terribly wrong, and it had to do with Trieu and that herb. I was sure of it.”
Trieu. I thought of my relationship with Trieu. Don’t try to befriend them, Victor had said. And I hadn’t, but it didn’t mean I hadn’t grown fond of her. More than that, I had come to rely on her. She had seen me naked, bathed me, spoken to me at my most vulnerable. She must have been going up to her room every night and laughing at me. Me, the foolish woman, yet again.
“How long has Trieu worked in the house?” I asked.
“Not long. Madame van Dampierre hired her a few months before you arrived. That caused me to worry even more. Unlike Diep or Cam, she is still not very familiar to me.”
“What else does this ky nham do?” I asked.
“It’s a hallucinogen. That’s what the herbalist said. A very strong one. The effects can last hours, he said, but can linger for days. In your case, I’m unsure. It depends how much she was administering. He also said that if ingested with alcohol, the effects could be worse. And drinking, it’s something that all French women seem to do more in Indochine than they usually would,” he said. “Alcohol aside, this herb, even in small doses, could cause confusion, problems with the memory, stomach illness. All things that perhaps you’ve been suffering from for some time?”
“Yes,” I said, gripping my hands together. “But I thought it was just me. Just my mind refusing to cooperate with the rest of the world. A repeat of something that happened to me years ago. After Lucie was born.”
“I don’t know much about you, beyond what I see, but I don’t think you’re sick. Here or here,” he said kindly, pointing to my heart and then my head.
I nodded, letting his disclosure sink in. In the past few months, what had been real and what hadn’t been?
I was scared, and I was angry. My whole experience in Indochine felt stolen from me, as if I’d been living the way someone else had wanted me to. Ever since I’d left Virginia,