by A. W. Exley
Dawn breathed in a gasp at both his revelation and the realisation it was this Lettie the journal spoke of in the entry from the 1830s. “Lady Letitia saw him die?”
Hector nodded and laid a hand on the vine where the men had managed to scrape off the thorns. He stood for a long moment, lost in memories best buried and left to rest. “From her very first day here, Marjory took Lady Lettie under her fairy wings. Then the babe fell into her care when he was born a few months later. Helping care for Master Elijah gave Lettie something to grasp in those dark days. We were all concerned she would do harm to herself, but she was ever so gentle around the baby.”
As impossible as it sounded, the young Nurse Hatton took charge of both Lady Letitia and Master Elijah forty years ago. Yet her charges had barely aged with the passage of four decades, unlike their nurse. Did it prove something not of this earth touched the noble family? Dawn wrapped a hand around a bare width of vine. She gripped it tight to anchor herself in this world, lest she get sucked into a tale unfolding in a book.
As events played out in her mind, Dawn fought a tight wedge of grief that formed within her. Her pain at losing her parents was still raw, and she only had a second-hand account of what had happened. How would it have altered her mind if she had stood by the railway tracks and watched the tragedy unfold? How would it impact a person to watch a loved one suffer and die and yet be powerless to do anything to help them?
“How did he die?” The question slipped out before she could call it back.
“I guess you’re part of this family now.” Hector patted the branch. “There’s another family, Hamilton, who are a pack of evil bastards, if you’ll excuse my language, Miss Uxbridge. They own a textile factory in the next village, and there has long been rivalry and bad blood between the two families. Lady Letitia and Lord Julian were riding to the family mill to see Jasper when the Hamiltons attacked them. She barely survived, and he didn’t.”
“How terrible! Did the authorities bring the culprits to justice?”
Hector’s hands tightened into fists and his knuckles turned white. “No. The other family denied all knowledge, and Lady Letitia wasn’t a fit witness. I’m sure it eats Lord Seton up that he can’t avenge his brother and sister. Mayhap one day the truth will be revealed.” He rolled his shoulders and dispelled the tension in his body. “Let’s concentrate on today’s problem and this damned vine.”
“Yes. Let us bring a little joy back to Alysblud and restore the grounds to their former glory. So sad they deteriorated under Ava’s touch.” It was a risk, a casually thrown last comment to see if the name elicited any response from either man or vine.
One gasped, and the other made a clicking rattle like a snake issuing a warning before it struck. Mouse’s head dropped to his paws and he closed his eyes.
Hector glanced at the vine and then glared at her. “Don’t mention her name. Not here and never aloud. She is always listening.”
Dawn opened her mouth, but so many questions rushed that she tripped over her tongue.
“No.” Hector shook his head, his eyes wide and startled. That conversation was over.
Dawn swallowed her words and nearly choked on the unvoiced concerns. The old retainer looked genuinely afraid, and she would not cause him further distress. She had enough to keep her curious mind occupied.
She waved at the monstrous vine, so unlike the delicate one that sprouted from her skin. “How do you propose we tackle this monster? Do we don armour and wield swords? Enlist a fire-breathing dragon, perhaps?”
The grin returned. “You’re close. I’ve been giving it some thought, and we could try a controlled burn. If we brush kerosene along the branches, set fire to it, and then douse it before it catches on the yew, we might make the vine brittle enough to smash it free.”
“How would we ensure the fire didn’t spread?” Dawn asked.
There was a sufficient quantity of dead wood to send the entire thing up in a bonfire to rival Guy Fawkes. Lord Seton had suggested burning the estate to the ground, tilling the soil, and starting again, but Dawn didn’t want to do that. The estate was sick, but not yet fatally so. Instead of a Viking burial, they simply needed a way to expunge the sickness from its body.
Ava. She had cast some curse over the garden, and it was connected to the vine that knew her name. Did the plant do her bidding like a witch commanded a snake familiar?
“Blankets,” Hector said.
“What?” Dawn lost track of the conversation.
“We’ll give the men wool blankets to beat out the flames once the vine becomes charred.”
Dawn stared at the impenetrable fortress. Hedge shears and machetes weren’t working. Time to try heavy artillery. “All right, let’s try. But we do a small section at a time. I don’t want this getting out of hand, especially if it decides to fight back.”
“In all my years here, I’ve not seen the blasted plant pick up a weapon yet, but it does grow awfully fast behind your back,” Hector muttered.
They fetched the men from the vegetable garden and allocated new tasks. They were set to work hauling carts laden with buckets of water. Old tin baths were lined up in a row by the hedge and filled up, as an emergency measure. Or for bath time after they finished work for the day.
Then each man was given a woollen blanket.
“What do you think we’ll find inside, miss?” Teddy asked, clutching his blanket in leather-gloved hands.
“Answers,” she replied.
Hector painted a line of kerosene along a woody limb. Not too much, only two feet or so, as an initial experiment. Then he touched a match to the glistening trail. Blue-green flame danced along the vine.
Dawn wasn’t sure what she expected, perhaps a shriek of pain from the vine and for it to uncoil and strike at them, or for Ava to rise up from the ground to defend her minion. As the length burned, a similar hot brand pressed against Dawn’s skin and she sucked in a breath. She wrapped her fingers around her wrist above the scratch, the pressure easing the flames under her skin. She glanced down to see a thin black line creep out from under her hand. When she lifted her fingers it appeared like pencil lines feathered out along the length of the scratch. She needed to heed Nurse Hatton’s advice and scrub it clean or risk a deadly infection.
The vine hissed, as though it expelled air through gritted teeth.
“What’s that noise?” Teddy held his blanket a little higher in front of him like a shield.
“Just the wood burning,” one of the other lads replied and flicked the back of Teddy’s head.
Dawn glanced to Hector, and the concern on his face echoed her own. Let the men think it was just the hiss of sap burning in the wood.
“How will we know if it’s working?” Dawn asked, peering at the hypnotic flames.
“We want it to eat through as much as possible. I suspect it will take some trial and error, but I reckon we leave it as long as we can stand given how tough the old vine is.” Hector handed off the can of kerosene and brush and kept watch.
Minutes ticked by with hisses, crackles, and pops. Fire battled the plant in a collection of odd gurgles and cracks. The vine writhed and tightened as though trying to douse the burning patch, but the oil fed the flame. The men glanced at each other at the movement.
“Just a reaction to heat,” Hector said, but his sidelong squint at Dawn said otherwise.
As the flames started to lick higher up the branch, Hector wrapped his blanket over the branch and smothered the life from the fire. One moment edged into another, then he peeled back one end of the blanket. Satisfied the fire was doused, he removed the covering.
“Well?” She moved closer to peer at the smouldering length of vine. As one fire was extinguished, the tiny one on her wrist guttered out and the pain eased.
Hector picked up a hammer and brought it down on the branch. A crack rent the air, and it split. The vine still held its pieces as the rupture didn’t go all the way through.
“It will work, but we need a sli
ght change to our approach.” He pointed to where a black char had eaten through the top layers of the vine. “If we paint all the way around, it will burn all the way through.”
Dawn took the pail of kerosene and brush and studied the mass. “We need to encircle strategic points that will allow us to pull the vine away from the entrance.”
She approached one large limb and painted a hand width of kerosene, making sure to coat the entire circumference.
“Try again.” She gestured to Hector.
Once more he lit the oil, and they watched the flame race around the entire section. Flames burned downward until they righted themselves. After a few minutes, a clear pop sounded as the vine burst and the section sagged.
“Douse it now,” Dawn said.
One of the men wrapped his blanket around the fiery spot. When he pulled the blanket away, the fire had devoured the entire thickness of the vine. Hector tugged and the end moved. They had caused a break and knew the plant’s weakness. It could hiss, spit, and wriggle, but it couldn’t fight off fire.
Dawn resisted the urge to chortle. She was a general on this battlefield and had struck the first damaging blow against her enemy. But she couldn’t celebrate her victory just yet. “It will work, but we need to think strategically.”
They plotted their course through the tangle of vines. One of the lads ran back to the shed and fetched a pail of paint and a brush. Dawn studied the vine and plotted which bits to attack to remove sections. She painted the vine where she wanted the lads to burn through.
One by one, larger supporting limbs at either side of the entranceway were encircled with fire and charred through until they snapped. Next the men brought ropes and tied them around branches. With three or four men pulling at once, they soon started to clear away larger sections of the monster.
The horse was enlisted to take away cart loads of fallen vine, and by the time the light began to fade, they had battled all day and almost cleared the entranceway. Dawn couldn’t contain her excitement. She picked up her skirts and pushed through the sliver of gap that remained between two overgrown yew.
The hedge bristled past her skin, and she was grateful for the long sleeves of her gown. She stepped into the first alleyway of the maze, and disappointment plunged down to her toes.
“There’s more of it in here!” she called out to Hector, waiting on the other side of the dense green wall. She strained her eyes peering left and then right, but the maze clung to its secrets. She could see nothing past the overgrowth. The vine had laced thick fingers into the middle and blocked the paths.
While not quite as dense inside the old corridors, the rapacious plant still strove to keep out all intruders. The battle would continue tomorrow. They had a methodology now, it was slow going but they would make progress. It would not win.
“I am coming for you, Ava, and I will reclaim the garden from you,” Dawn whispered.
The towering hedges shivered at the sound of the woman’s name and a length of vine fell at Dawn’s feet. Stepping around the wooden limb, she returned to the other side as though parting a curtain. The hedges had languished so long untrimmed, they had almost interconnected and erased all trace of the original paths.
“We will need a map of the original layout to ensure we don’t become lost in there. Let’s regroup tomorrow. Thank you, gentlemen, you have all earned your supper today.”
She trailed the men as they headed back to their horses to ride home. Hector chatted with a couple at the back of the group. Dawn reflected on her first week at Ravenswing Manor. She had feared her weak constitution would bring a quick death and a reunion with her parents. Instead she seemed invigorated. By all the predictions of the doctors her parents consulted, she should be unable to even walk from cottage to maze.
Yet she worked alongside the men. The weariness in her limbs could simply be the unfamiliar burn in her muscles from the exercise. Each day, her heart seemed to beat stronger within her chest. The erratic flurry still returned at times, mainly tied to moments of panic like when she fled the forest, fell through the roof of the hermitage, or was trapped in the pineapple pits. But one touch from Lord Seton did more to restore a steady calm than any amount of tonic.
What magic resided in this place?
14
That night, Dawn pled a headache and took dinner at the cottage. She needed time to sort through her week at the estate and to write down all she had achieved. Soon the earl would decide whether she stayed or was deposited at the train station, and she had woefully little to report. At least the walled garden would soon be back to full production, and that gave her immense satisfaction.
The maze might yet yield, or at least the first few feet of it. She had expected more of a fight from the vine and hoped it wasn’t plotting something in the dark. If she worked long into the dark hours, she might be able to draw up planting plans for the herbaceous border, as long as the earl overlooked the fact it would take a year to bring to fruition.
Apart from the practical issue of the grounds, more fanciful concepts took root in her mind. As much as she wanted to dismiss the idea of the family being older than they appeared, it seemed the simplest explanation. But what of Ava? It would appear she was still alive, even though no one mentioned her. Was she living in the hermitage and tending the vine, urging it to take over all the trees and shrubs until she strangled the life from the other plants?
Hector had hushed her when she said the other woman’s name aloud.
Not here, he had said. She is always listening.
Quite apart from the vine that reacted to her name, did Elijah’s mother still prowl the grounds? Did she spy on her son to watch him grow into a man, or did she linger to see the estate ruined? If she were alive and watching, Dawn had a suspicion that Ava now stared up at the sky through a hole in the hermitage’s hillock. What Dawn needed was sufficient free time to watch the hermitage and find Elijah’s mother.
She scratched at her wrist. The cut hadn’t got any worse, but neither had it healed. She had dissolved a teaspoon of salt in some hot water and scrubbed at the cut with a cloth. The salt water stung, but some of the redness diminished and the black line heading up her arm had halted. Eventually Dawn managed to still her mind long enough to fall asleep.
The next morning a small group of men were given the task under Hector’s watchful eye of continuing to burn through strategic limbs of the monstrous vine. They would also trim the long-neglected hedges as they worked, and foot by foot, the maze would yield to them. It would be some time before they cleared the way, so Dawn decided to copy the layout of the maze onto a sheet of paper. That would give them a reference as they worked, and she could also map out the quickest way to the centre. Then the other passages could be cleared as time allowed.
A rummage in the cottage’s kitchen drawers revealed several pieces of paper, a ruler, and a few pencils. Dawn chose the largest sheet of paper and pinned it on the wall, next to the painted maze. That was when she noticed an odd occurrence. The walled garden was no longer an indistinct mass of green and brown. The beds were clearly drawn with sharp edges. They were coloured shades of brown, like freshly tilled soil waiting to be planted.
“Incredible,” Dawn whispered as she ran a finger over the one area she had managed to restore. She glanced at her fingertip, expecting to see fresh paint, but the drawing was dry and didn’t smudge. Either someone snuck in while she was asleep and updated the drawing, or it somehow altered itself to reflect the small amount of work she had achieved so far.
“There’s magic here. You were right, Mother. Some stories are true.” Dawn swallowed a sob as she remembered the tales of mythical creatures that her mother used to whisper. What if they weren’t make-believe at all?
Over the next two hours she painstakingly copied the layout of the maze onto the paper. Then she stretched muscles that ached from holding the same position for so long.
“Come on, Mouse. Let’s go for a quick walk.” With the wolfhound at her side, Daw
n headed across the path to the walled garden.
There was immense satisfaction in seeing the beds weed free, the soil tilled and harrowed and ready for planting. The fruit trees would be brought under control more slowly. The men now worked to clear the pineapple pits and prepare the trenches for a new layer of fresh manure.
Dawn decided to explore the shelves in the glasshouse to see what seeds the previous gardeners had collected or to see if there were any indications where they ordered new seed. If Hector had undertaken some basic tasks in the absence of a head gardener, he might also have spirited away seed, tubers, or more recent catalogues.
Mouse baulked at entering the glasshouse, and Dawn suspected it was too warm for those wearing fur. He dropped to a shady spot by the wall and rested his large head on his paws. Inside the humid building, she pulled out a wicker basket on one shelf. She rifled through sheets of paper and notes but didn’t find any trace of seeds or catalogues.
“Blast.” She wondered if the locals might come to their rescue. Most people let a few plants go to seed so they could collect and save for the next season. Like the person who sent her the black aquilegia seed. If she asked, there might be plants to spare in the village. Thinking of the aquilegia seed reminded her, and she found a seed-raising tray and a watering can. The weather was warm enough to germinate the seed, and she could raise them through winter in the greenhouse to plant out next spring.
Dawn turned to contemplate the thick jungle pressing against the glasshouse’s murky sides. At some point she would ask the men to help her bring the lush growth under control before the palms burst through the sides. She might even remove enough of the verdant growth to allow space to grow oranges, lemons, and grapefruit.
While she imagined the sweet scent of orange blossom instead of the earthy humid odour, the door opened behind her. She turned to find the earl once again lacking a jacket in a waistcoat and shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows. At times he dressed more like a workman than a peer, and coupled with his broad shoulders and knotted arms, she could imagine him wielding a scythe to cut the hay.