Jacobus took the torn page he’d found crumpled beside Artemisia’s body from his pocket. He squinted to make out all the words in the moonlight, then held it out to Andreas. ‘Monsieur de Vitriaco, sir, I—I found this.’
Andreas closed his eyes and groaned, for he didn’t need to read the words he had written for his lover:
For Artemisia,
Mother of Herbs,
With all my love on our betrothal,
Your Andreas.
No good could come of this now. ‘Here, child.’ Andreas batted away the page. ‘Be off to the kitchen with you. And toss that scrap of parchment into the coals simmering under the cauldrons with some yarrow and garlic. And rose petals. Make sure you don’t forget, Jacobus. Run now.’
It was time to let Artemisia’s spirit rest.
Chapter 50
Tasmania, March 2016
Jack could feel the wash from Pip’s kick beside his head as she overtook him on their homeward lap of the bay. He adjusted his stroke and stretched out to try to catch her. No chance.
After ten more strokes she slowed, and rose to stand shoulder-deep in the water. As he swam up behind her and stood, she turned and wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist, pressed her chest against his, clinging tight. He could feel her heart beating and her gasping breath settling into a steady rhythm. Her body felt warm as the wind skimmed the water’s surface, whipping his face. He wondered if he could convince her to pull off her navy Speedos as the evening swell started to build around them. When her breathing settled, she let go of his neck and lay back in the water, floating like a starfish.
‘Beat you,’ she said. ‘Again.’
Pip’s auburn hair fanned out around her head like seagrass. His wife was beautiful. They hadn’t told anyone they were staying put for their honeymoon. He scanned the wide arc of the bay, taking in the canopy of the eucalypts, walls of sandstone and the mudflats that spread like corrugated iron all the way to shore. Greying clouds were moving in fast, obscuring Mount Wellington. The bitter scent of eucalyptus leaf had mellowed and sweetened. He took a deep breath, drawing the soft, humid air deep into his lungs. A storm was gathering, but Jack didn’t care a bit. He and Pip could hunker down together at Ashfield House, warm and dry, until it blew over.
He gently poked Pip in the stomach until she was fully submerged.
Pip came to the surface, spluttering. The chill of the wind stung her face and she dived under again, blowing a trail of bubbles. When she floated to the surface a second time, she paddled back to her husband and gave him a slow kiss. His lips were warm. He cradled her head in his hand and pressed his lips close to her ear and whispered: ‘I’ll beat you tomorrow, babe.’
‘Let’s find some clams for dinner and go home.’ She started swimming with brisk, short strokes to shore.
The mudflats had drained and lay raw, pockmarked and exposed. Jack brought over a red bucket, and Pip squelched ankle-deep in muddy sediment until telltale bubbles popped near her feet. She started digging a small hole with her fingertips before plunging her forearm into the sandy mud up to her elbow. She emerged with a large handful of silt, and when she smoothed it across the surface she plucked several clams from the haul. She looked up and smiled at Jack. ‘Couple more of these and I’ll be done.’ A gust of wind hit her back and she braced against it.
As she paused, she looked up at the shadows falling across the rugged sandstone escarpment, the orange hues fading to a soft grey. Beyond the foreshore, the khakis and browns of the soft scratchy native grasses and spiky bracken rippled and folded like waves as the onshore wind gathered. The scrubby saltbush held firm—stoic even—studded among stands of rough-barked peppermint gums. She scanned for the pale, smooth bark of the rarer blue gum and heard the high trill of a swift parrot. As the high note pierced the low steady evening hum of flies and cicadas, she caught Jack’s eye and smiled. Not long now until the parrots jumped on the back of the cool winds and drifted to the mainland for winter. A cycle that refused to be broken.
When Pip had half-filled the bucket she picked up a decent-sized clam, tracing the soft ochre lines where the triangle curved down to the lips of the shell before placing it back into the bucket. Jack lifted the pail with one hand and reached out for Pip’s hand with the other as they dropped their heads and shoulders and stepped head-on into the gusty nor’westerly with the sun falling behind them.
Acknowledgements
When I showed my twelve-year-old son Henry the draft cover for The Midsummer Garden, he pointed out that my name was way too big: ‘Because, Mum, it’s not like you did the whole book yourself. You had a lot of help!’
No truer words were spoken.
Three cheers to my very thoughtful agent, Clare Forster, at Curtis Brown Australia. She’s read far too many drafts and has always been wise counsel—not to mention a fabulous dinner companion. Thanks also to Dana, Benjamin, Fiona and the team at CB for their enthusiasm and professionalism in dealing with my queries and contracts.
Annette Barlow is a brilliant publisher and, now, a wonderful friend. She has an astute, warm and loving way of engaging with both text and author and this novel is a thousand times better for it. The very clever (and patient) senior editor Christa Munns and copyeditor Ali Lavau completed this Allen & Unwin editorial dream team and I am so very, very grateful for all their hard work. Indeed, the entire team at Allen & Unwin—Robert Gorman, Tom Gilliatt, Karen Williams, Caitlin Withey, Lillian Kovats, Andy Palmer, Tami Rex and Andrew Brown—embraced this concept enthusiastically from the outset and I am thrilled my story found such a vibrant, warm and professional home. Thanks also to Nada Backovic for the dreamy cover.
Pip would still be floundering in chemistry and biology 101 without the generosity, guidance and stiff fact-checking of Tasmanian marine biologist Dr Karen Parsons. UTAS associate Sophie Bestley was most generous with her descriptions of her time working in research at LOCEAN, Natural History Museum, Paris. Any mistakes and misrepresentations are my own.
Jennifer Walker wrote an article in Quartz in November 2015 called ‘There’s an awful cost to getting a PhD that no-one talks about’. From my interviews with many PhD students in general, threats of funding cuts and fear of failure are an all-too-common scenario for these high-achievers.
A huge shout-out to my fabulous, clever and discerning reading buddies Fiona Laird, Peta Heine, Sue Peacock and Kate Daniel. A book only comes to life when there are readers. You all took the time to read sections (or all of it) and talk about it many more times than you probably wish to remember! Also thanks to my beautiful (and very patient) mum, Carolyn Manning, who scaled rocks when camping in the outback to get emails of drafts and was always on the end of a phone line when I needed it. She always said I’d write a book! (So did my dad, who always read to me and told magical tales when I was young.) Thanks to my beautiful, clever and very special sister, Prudence Hannon, for the fashion advice, champagne and ‘detox meals’.
My extended Wilcox clan always provide adventures galore on the Tasmanian waterfront (or any waterfront!), along with amazing meals invariably involving something they’ve caught. They are all non-stop inspiration.
A special thanks to my incredible, upbeat reading and writing buddy Sara James Butcher. The writing journey is so much better with amazing friends like you.
There are many people in the publishing industry who saw an early draft and were full of enthusiasm and feedback. I’m deeply grateful to each person.
In late 2014 I undertook an online creative writing course with Penguin Random House Writers’ Academy UK. It was liberating, and gave me the tools to try my hand at fiction. Barbara Henderson, my online tutor, told me my premise was compelling enough for a novel. She said, ‘You must have faith in this idea—I really think it’s going to work.’ (I kept the email!) She pushed me outside my comfort zone to write more than 3000 words. Closer to home, Kate O’Donnell was a very patient and professional writing mentor and sounding-board. Her deadlines and
advice helped me finish the first draft. Bravo! Tony McNamara, writer and director extraordinaire for screen and stage, read an ugly early draft and gave me three simple but key tips. Hooray!
Tasmanian chef (and keen surfer) Jahan Patterson Were was very generous in multiple phone interviews, sharing his experience living and working as a chef in Spain.
Zest, Azure, Telmo’s (indeed the whole village and region of Mendiluze) and the Gros are fiction (as are all the dishes). Thanks to Magda Debiec and bar owner Gerald Diffey for sharing their Basque experiences with me. A shout-out to my husband, Alex Wilcox, who has the best job ever and is always willing to share his travels and meal highlights. He took his research in Spain very seriously indeed!
The Gardenist, Michael McCoy (www.thegardenist.com.au), was super-helpful on the botanical front, checking flowers, seasons and so much more. Any horticultural mistakes are my own.
Former cardiothoracic surgeon and current CEO of One Life Live It (www.onelifeliveit.net.au) Dr Simone Ryan has publicly shared her story of resigning on the back of a hospital chart. She has gone on to help people keep healthy at work. All characters are one hundred per cent fiction, and the circumstances of Megs’s resignation bear no resemblance to those of Dr Ryan’s.
If you or someone you know may be suffering from postnatal depression, visit PANDA: Perinatal Anxiety and Depression Australia (www.panda.org.au).
Pip’s and Mary’s bridal bouquets are replicas of my own wedding bouquet, but I got the original inspiration from Christina Hindhaugh’s The Great Herb Tour, a book I worked on many moons ago (still one of my favourites).
Alison Pouiliot gave me some essential mushroom tips at a fungi workshop held in the magnificent grounds of Ard Choille Heritage Gardens, Mount Macedon.
Finally, all my love to my family. Thanks to my lovely Henry, cheeky Charlie and darling girl Jemima Artemis for the laughs, delicious dinners, help in the garden and dispensing cuddles, chocolate and daisy chains to keep me going. And to Alex—for everything. Big love. x
Resources
The complete list of sources consulted in the writing of The Midsummer Garden is too long to detail here. Below is a list of essential resources.
The following books were useful for research:
A Brief History of Swearing, Melissa Mohr; The Medieval Cook, Bridget Ann Henisch; Medieval People, Michael Prestwich; A Study of Cooking Tasks, Methods, and Equipment in the Renaissance Kitchen, Chris P. Adler; The Royal Horticultural Society New Encyclopedia of Herbs and their Uses, Deni Brown; The Complete Book of Vegetables, Herbs and Fruit, Matthew Biggs, Jekka McVicar and Bob Flowerdew. Two divine websites useful as background for both the chateau and a medieval garden were www.chateaudebrie.fr and www.prieuredorsan.com/jardins/jardins-a.html.
Snippets plucked from original sources include: Roman de la Rose (by Guillaume de Lorris in c. 1230 and Jean de Meun in c. 1275); Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), She Ruled in Beauty; Giuseppe Verdi, Sempre Libera from La Traviata; and the Bible (in order of appearance)—Proverbs 29:15, Genesis 2:15, Matthew 23:26, Psalm 52:2, 1 Corinthians 7:32, Proverbs 16:18, Luke 16:15.
Some recipes (for example, tizanne doulce, rosewater, violet broth) and gardening snippets were drawn from a book out of copyright: The Goodman of Paris: A Treatise on Moral and Domestic Economy by a Citizen of Paris, c. 1393, translated by Eileen Power, 1928. (Originally published by George Routledge and Sons Ltd in 1928 and in 2006 by The Boydell Press, Woodbridge.)
Other medieval recipes were mentioned with the kind permission of University of Chicago Press: Odile Rendon, Françoise Sabban and Silvano Serventi, The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy, translated by Edward Schneider, the University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998. (Originally published as La Gastronomie au Moyen Age: 150 Recettes de France et d’Italie, Èditions Stock, 1993.) The recipes referred to include: hypocras, crespes, green porée, spice mixtures, mustard, green porée for days of abstinence, roast kids with sauce of gold, parsley studded lamb or mutton, stuffed suckling pig, confetti, eel and spinach torta, san vincenzo’s day grilled eel, entremets, chaudumé of pike, marzipan sweetmeats (caliscioni), cherry pudding, spiced plum pudding, nucato, candied orange rind, poached pears in spiced syrup, grilled mackerel.
Original language material reproduced from The Medieval Kitchen (above) was originally sourced from the following texts:
For the hypocras and crespes, Le Ménagier de Paris, edited by Jérôme Pichon. Crapelet, Paris, 1846; reprinted Slatkine, Geneva, 1970.
For the roast kid, suckling pig, eel and spinach torta, marzipane and caliscioni, Maestro Martino, Libro de Arte Coquinaria, edited by Emilio Faccioli, in Arte della Cucina, Libri di Ricette: Testi sopra lo Scalco, il Trinciante e Vini dal XIV al XIX Secolo, Il Polifilo, Milan, 1966.
For the nucato, Francesco Zambrini, Libro della Cucina del Secolo XIV, edited by Gaetano Romagnoli, Bologna, 1863; reprinted, Forni, Bologna, 1968.
I heard the anecdote about the Sudan–Paris giraffe at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle at Geelong’s Word for Word Festival in 2015, in a talk given by QI researcher Molly Oldfield. You can read more about it in her spectacular book The Secret Museum, Firefly Books, New York, 2013.
The recipes for rosewater were based on the following resources: Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, ‘Making Medieval Style Scented Oils and Waters’, 2008 (http://www.gallowglass.org/jadwiga/herbs/oil&water.html); Jeanne Rose, Herbs & Things: Jeanne Rose’s Herbal, chapters VIII, XVII, XIX, Putnam, New York, 1972; The Goodman of Paris: A Treatise on Moral and Domestic Economy by a Citizen of Paris, c. 1393, translated by Eileen Power, 1928; ‘Sixteenth-Century Sweet Water for Linens’, Bulleins Bulwarke, 1562, quoted in Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, The Scented Garden, 1931.
Lastly, the fruits on p. 163 were inspired by Heston Blumenthal.
The Midsummer Garden Page 31