Isabella's brothers murder her lover, and she buries his severed head in a pot of basil she tends with her grief.
Books that mention Isabella, or the Pot of Basil (1)
Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: “She was reading "Isabella and the Pot of Basil," and her mind was full of the Italian hills and the blue daylight, and the hedges set with little rosettes of red and white roses.”