The Midsummer Garden

by Kirsty Manning

  Pip picked up the pace and skirted the corner of her research building on Rue Cuvier, bypassing the huge wooden front doors and heading to a small back door with her security tag. Inside she took the stairs two at time until she got to the third floor. After the flurry of colour that had greeted her that morning, it was a shame to be back in the austere grey and beige corridors and perched at her little steel desk. At least, if she leaned to her left, she could peek out her window at the patchwork canopy stretching in grids for acres. There was surprising joy to be had in such curated colour, in the unfurling buds of spring.

  Pip shared her tiny corner office with another benthic invertebrate researcher, Nadia. The absence of a blue coffee cup on Nadia’s desk told Pip she was not yet in for the day. She was probably at a meeting over at LOCEAN. Damn. She needed Nadia’s help to navigate the complex password system in the database. She looked at the list of a dozen French passwords in the blue and green colour-coded flowchart sticky-taped to the window and the hairs on her arms prickled. Last time she’d tried to log in, her screen had flashed like she was trying to breach the White House firewall and she’d been locked out of the system for twenty minutes. She’d need a coffee before she risked it.

  Pip hung her coat on the back of the door, collected her new green Limoges coffee cup and headed to the staff kitchen.

  Ariel, the gruff kitchen lady, was guarding the percolator with the ferocity of a bulldog. It was clear from her demeanour that she would have been equally at home running a women’s prison. Pip estimated she must be at least fifty, with salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a bun so severe it looked like she’d had a facelift.

  Ariel swung a blue-stockinged leg into the middle of the floor and put one hand on her hip; the other she held out to Pip.

  Pip deposited a euro in her outstretched palm and handed over her cup. Ariel grunted a merci and turned to the percolator to fill it. Pip didn’t bother to wait for the offer of milk before she sculled the lukewarm coffee and put her hand in her pocket to pay for another. It was damn hard to find a decent coffee in Paris and Ariel’s was better than any of the liquid cardboard in the local bars.

  ‘Non,’ barked Ariel, waving her hand, then she poured Pip a top-up with an unexpected chuckle. It was her lucky day.

  When Pip returned to the office, Nadia had arrived and was busy collating two inches of printouts into piles on her already cluttered desk. She was wearing a black long-sleeved T-shirt with je suis Charlie printed across the middle. Onto each pile of notes, Nadia was placing a fluorescent pink sticky-note with a number from one to seventeen. It was reassuring to see that despite the mammoth web of databases here in Paris, the filing systems were as rudimentary as at home. A plastic container of couscous and roasted eggplant and zucchini perched on the corner of the desk. Pip’s stomach rumbled. She might have to run out for one of the lemon and sugar crepes from the little stall outside the building. Hopefully they would get a chance to sit out in the garden together on their lunchbreak. Nadia always had a secret stash of green metal garden chairs. Chairs seemed to materialise when they sheltered behind the alpine section. On particularly freezing days they sweated it out in the Mexican greenhouse, nestled between rangy cacti and succulents. Pip suspected that one of the gardeners had a soft spot for Nadia. Who wouldn’t?

  ‘Sorry, Nadia, can you please show me how to get into the spatial variation section for the benthic infauna? I also need the seasonal variation in the chemistry logs.’

  ‘Sure.’ Nadia smiled and fired up Pip’s computer, tapping through a succession of blue screens until columns of data starting flashing. While she was bent at the desk, Pip admired her dewy cheeks and dark skin. Her own arms were so translucent they had practically turned blue this long winter. She needed vitamin D.

  ‘Now,’ said Nadia when she’d finished, ‘I have some good news for you. I stopped by and saw Marie across at the Herbier National and they’ve managed to carbon date those recipes and drawings you had sent over from your family. She was a little, er, surprised that you risked posting them, to tell the truth. May have used “idiot” and “Australie” in the same sentence. Twice!’ She grimaced apologetically. ‘Anyway, it looks like they date back to the late 1400s or early 1500s. They’ll need to run more tests to get any more specific than that.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ Pip clapped a hand over her mouth and let out a yelp. She danced a little jig on the spot. ‘Wait until I call my sister. She’ll freak! She hates old stuff.’

  Nadia threw her head back and laughed. ‘Yes, well, they are fragile. Marie was relieved you managed to transport them in such good condition. Laughed at the specimen jar. Do you want that back, by the way?’

  Pip shook her head and laughed along with Nadia.

  Nadia continued: ‘Now that they have verified their authenticity, they’d like to consider origination. They’ve run an initial search through their databases. There doesn’t seem to be an exact match for this linen-based parchment. Marie did mention that it was strange that most recipes were French but the paper matches types made in north-east Italy. They polished the parchment with a stone to make it shiny, or something. Very distinctive.’ Nadia shrugged. ‘Definitely not Germanic. It’s a plausible connection, though, as there were strong trade routes over the Alps right through this period. There’s also no match for the ink, nor the handwriting. They’ve also had a look at matching the drawing of the Artemisia and other herbs like the rosemary and roses. Nothing—yet.’

  ‘Oh, well I think it’s amazing they got the date so quickly. Thanks for chasing it up, Nadia. I know you have a lot on.’ Pip looked at Nadia’s desk, heaving under the weight of chemistry models.

  ‘Before I forget …’ Nadia reached into her handbag and passed Pip two specimen bags with brown paper inside. ‘They made copies for you. There seems to be two different hands. Some recipes are signed “Artemisia”, some “Andreas”. It’s almost an exchange of letters. It’s confusing. They’ve made a few translations for you. Not many—just enough for you to get a sense of them.’

  ‘Thanks, that’s very generous.’ Pip held the top bag up to the light, and saw the fine line sketch of the wormwood still had the spiky hairs. It looked like it was drawn in grey lead now it had been photocopied.

  ‘They have kept the originals, and they are going to talk to the main library preservation team for all the herbals. They have thousands, apparently.’

  ‘What’s a herbal?’ Pip looked over at Nadia.

  ‘From what Marie explained, it’s a book made up of documents a bit like this. Herbs, recipes. But they used the herbs as medicines. This may be part of something like that. Or not.’ She raised both her palms, and turned back to her desk to get on with work, then swivelled in her chair to add: ‘They are also going to take it to the Cluny to get the experts there to look at it. See what else they can find. Often the monks did all the transcription and there may be a record with these names.’

  Pip raised her eyebrows and shook her head. Was she supposed to know what the Cluny was?

  ‘It’s the Museum of the Middle Ages—the medieval collection. Just up near the Sorbonne.’ Nadia turned back to her computer.

  ‘Well, my recipes are in good company, then,’ said Pip. ‘Thanks, Nadia, I really appreciate your help.’

  Nadia turned around again. ‘No, no, Pip; you don’t need to thank me. You’ve been so helpful proofreading all my papers and précis for conferences. My written English is so bad. It is I who owes you.’

  ‘Let’s call it even then. So I’m heading down to Châlus this weekend to stay at Château de Boschaud. There’s some family connection there through my dad’s side. A great-aunt had some relative there, we think. No-one really knows, because Margot is long dead. She’s the great-aunt who gave us the pots I found the parchment in, so I’ll take these copies and see if anyone down there knows anything. It’s worth a shot. And then I’ll go over and see Marie.’

  ‘Of course.’ Nadia returned to her work, as Pip took a fe
w minutes to sit down and read some of the translated letters.

  Chapter 29

  Château de Boschaud, Summer 1487

  Dear Monsieur de Vitriaco,

  Please find the list of supplies required for the preparation of the Boschauds’ wedding banquet next month. I require the main delivery Friday’s morn.

  My order is as follows:

  30 lbs almonds, 6 hulled corn, 8 lbs powdered columbine ginger, 1½ lbs ground cinnamon, 4 lbs ground rice, 6 lbs lump sugar, 2 oz saffron, 1 qr cloves and 1 qr paradise mixed, 1 qr long pepper, ½ qr galingale, 1 qr mace, 2 qr green bay leaves, 1 lb citron, 2 lbs red anise, 3 lbs rose sugar, 1 lb caraway seed and 1 lb coriander seed mixed, 4 lbs black pepper, 10 lbs grain salt.

  Thank you for your last letter and the sweet spice combination for your candied orange peel and the spiced apples. I shall serve these items at the beginning of the feast.

  I also thank you for your detailed recommendation for the confetti. It has never been used in these parts, but I agree with you that the sugared coriander and caraway seeds and pine nuts in addition to the sugared almonds will make a fine first course with the fruit from the garden and ensure all humours are in good spirits for the banquet. The coriander will assist with the digestion of the last course and the caraway will tie the groom to his bride and encourage love and devotion and ensure the sweetest kisses in the eve.

  It is too much, perhaps, to hope that Abbot Roald chokes on the seeds, but perhaps the combination will soothe his bile and take the heat and accompanying anger from his liver. At the very least it may tame his flatulence. It is too much to ask of even your finest quality powder to sweeten the old hog’s breath.

  I can assure you I am staying well out of sight of Abbot Roald. God himself could not conduct himself to the abbot’s standards this week and would be given the same swift kick in the guts or sharp smack to the kidneys to moderate behaviour.

  It is my aim to give the new mistress of Château de Boschaud a perfect wedding banquet, and I thank you for your assistance in this regard.

  I need also 7 lbs small and large candles and 10 pots of your house rosewater to be delivered to the door the morn of the wedding for wash bowls during the feast, and to launder the wedding sheets and finery.

  I trust once you have made a list of necessary items you will burn this letter, as our agreement.

  Your humble servant,

  Artemisia

  Chapter 30

  Paris, March 2015

  Pip jumped off the 67 bus at the top end of Rue des Martyrs and thanked her lucky stars that her father’s colleague, Professor Trigg, had offered her his apartment around the corner from the coolest street in Paris. At the moment he only visited it in the summer with his wife, but they planned to move to Paris for a bit when he retired.

  She liked to get off a stop early to walk the few blocks of her favourite street and soak up the joie de vivre neatly arranged in the shop windows. This evening she decided to celebrate spring and sunshine by sitting under the red-and-white striped awning at her local deli, Terra Corsa, and enjoy a glass of rosé with a small bowl of tiny green olives infused with olive oil and lemon rind. Baptiste, the owner, delivered them to the table. His skin was as dark and craggy as a Corsican cliff and, despite his crisp white shirt and black vest, he seemed to give the impression he’d just rushed in from a day of foraging catmint and thyme in the mountains. Either that or a surf. She’d recognise the dry, fluffy hair of a surfie any day. She flushed as she thought of Jack.

  ‘Bonjour, Pip. You are having some dinner with us tonight? I can put you inside at the big table, if you like.’

  ‘No thanks, Baptiste. No dinner for me tonight. And I’m heading down to Châlus this weekend to see some distant relatives, so I won’t be in.’

  ‘I knew your excellent taste had to come from somewhere!’ Baptiste twinkled. ‘I’ll just get you a little slice of jambon to sample for the walk home.’ He hummed as he headed towards the slicer. The back corner of Terra Corsa had become Pip’s second home and she often came in for a late dinner, to skim some work and to hide from the wind and slush right through winter. She’d once told Baptiste about her mother’s garden, only to end up in tears. Sometimes, she was so cold and homesick in this city. Baptiste had tutted and given her traditional Corsican recipes like roast chicken thighs with catmint. Her parents would love this place, she thought. Trying new wines. Swapping recipes. She could almost hear Mary’s laughter and see her dad studying the wine list and working his way through the cheeses.

  Rejuvenated by her glass of rosé, Pip lifted her backpack and headed into the street, past the poissonière next door. Trays of fresh oysters, cockles, pipis and clams from Brittany filled the window. She considered the relationship between a sunny day, champagne and benthic invertebrates. Now that was something she’d like to crunch the data on in Paris. She laughed. Like Terra Corsa, all the wine bars in the street had glistening shellfish in pride of place in the window. Unfortunately, three hours of analysing samples of the European clam Varicorbula gibba and the green crab Carcinus maenus suspended in jars of formalin at 15.5 degrees meant shellfish was the last thing she felt like for dinner. Besides, she preferred to bring her molluscs home fresh in a bucket, secure in their provenance, not wrapped in plastic. Spoiled for life with hand-caught Tasmanian seafood whose origins she could specify down to the millimetre, she shook her head.

  She missed home. She missed Jack.

  This yearning blindsided Pip for a minute. She stepped past the trays of fish and glanced at the queue in the fromagerie next door and decided she would skip the brie and chèvre too. Parisians had perfected the art of takeaway. Last night Pip had had paella with mussels, fish, chicken and chorizo mopped up with half a baguette. The night before she’d come from twelve hours straight in the archives so she’d picked up some duck terrine with prunes, cheese and a still-warm baguette. Friday nights were usually her big treat: free-range rotisserie chicken with a few potatoes cooked in the fat underneath and a mesclun salad with exquisite French dressing—just the right blend of mustard, olive oil and vinegar. She could smell it as she climbed uphill. But she’d had a big lunch of a ham and cheese crepe and Nadia shared some of her mum’s divine couscous, so she really didn’t need the works tonight.

  She ducked into the deli and looked at the line-up of orange, yellow, green, red and cream soups in elegant glass bottles—they were so pretty that she’d taken a photo of it and sent that to Megs rather than one of the exquisite rainbow in the macaron shop next door. Pip hoped that would brighten her day—Megs adored Paris. When they last spoke Megs had just finished a gruelling night shift and was due back the following evening. Pip smiled to herself—spring colour for her sister was just what the doctor ordered.

  Pip needed comfort food, so chicken and leek soup went into her bag, along with a baguette and a tiny lemon tart. Last stop was the fruit shop, with its open green trays of strawberries. It was the wrong season for strawberries; they probably came from Spain. But they were smaller and sweeter than any of the overwatered Goliaths she’d tasted in Australia, so she picked up a tray. Maybe food miles were counted differently in Europe.

  She paused for a minute to take in the sweet scent of roses that spilled out onto the footpath from the flower shop. Hundreds of boxes filled with bunches of plump white, red and pink roses. If you wanted to decorate a wedding banquet, you could pull up right now and fill a van. Done. The familiar pang was back, but she leaned over to look at some artful pot plant arrangements of tiny pine cones, succulents, parsley and a dark green featherlike grass. Fairy lights scattered along a grey awning sparkled above.

  The patisserie across the road was equally dazzling. Complicated fretwork laced apple and pear tarts, strawberries perched on top of lemon tarts, endless lines of danishes and—Jack’s favourite—chocolate mousse. A croquembouche sat in the centre of the window. She wondered if it had been ordered specially for a wedding this weekend. Pip picked up her bags and started walking ho
me with her eyes downcast, not even pausing to look at the glossy gems in the window of the chocolatier.

  The last stop before home was the little épicerie under her apartment building. Mustafa nodded hello and kept counting coins on the counter without looking up as Pip dashed past. He was used to her crazy midnight chocolate raids. She bought some more coffee beans and at the last minute threw in a couple of dark Lindt balls. Why not? She’d done the Sacré-Coeur stairs twice that morning.

  Pip approached the door to her apartment building and reached into her bag for the swipe tag. She swiped. Oops, it was the wrong one; she started digging around the bottom of her bag. Why was it always so hard to find her keys? Jack had always joked she could do an archaeological dig in her handbag. Frustrated, she pulled out her Lee Child novel (for reading at lunchtime if Nadia was too busy) and propped it against the glass door. She also took out her new small makeup bag and a wad of photocopies of the database where sections were missing, which she needed to go over that night. She also had a marked-up ten-thousand-word section of her thesis that Monsieur Leroy had handed back to her today with covering note outlining his thoughts. They were meeting for a coffee next week to go over it. While he wasn’t a formal supervisor, he was a global expert in the field and a friend of Tom’s from Canada, so it wouldn’t hurt to get his feedback before she compiled the final data and results when she got home. Back in Australia, both Professor Grant and Imogen were pleased with the results, so she was very close to presenting her thesis. She did a little skip on the spot and grinned like an idiot. So close!

  She’d almost emptied her bag, and she tipped it upside down to see if the key dropped out. It did, along with a couple of stray tampons.