“I tried to warn you. There will be consequences if you stay. You should be so very afraid of her.” Lettie’s hand tightened on Dawn’s arm until her fingernails dug into the fabric.
Dawn pried Lettie’s fingers loose and took her hand. “I am scared, but we cannot let fear stop us from doing what is right.”
Lettie’s eyes widened and she searched Dawn’s face. “I want to help but—” She tapped the side of her head and then placed a finger to her lips.
Ava was in her mind. Dawn wondered if she stayed here long enough, would she suffer the same way, or was Lettie’s madness caused by something else? Dawn glanced to her left wrist and an idea germinated, one that required further investigation.
“Lettie, have you ever scratched yourself on Ava’s vine?” It might be nothing, but you never knew if you didn’t ask.
Lettie scrunched up her face as she thought. When she spoke, her voice was a faint whisper, tinged with sadness. “Once, not long after we buried Julian. Ava and I argued. She pushed me and I scratched my head on that horrid black vine, but it was only a tiny thing back then.” She hand went to her temple and rubbed at a spot. “She’s a nasty woman. She stole my Cor-vitis seed too.”
“She stole your seed? How did she do that, could she see it?” Dawn held out her own hand with faint lines crossing her skin.
“The heart sees all. She swiped it from my hand and left me an empty, hollow thing.” Lettie closed her fingers around an empty palm.
Dawn tucked that piece of information away to add to her repository about Ava’s vine. More worrying, if the heart saw all, then Ava must have seen the connection between Dawn and Jasper. “What would Ava have to gain in stealing your seed?”
A single tear slid down the other woman’s face. “She did it to hurt me. Without it I cannot love.”
“Do you remember when it happened?” From what little Dawn saw, there weren’t a great many men in Lettie’s life. Stealing the seed seemed such a petty action. What use could the other woman put it to, if it only sparked into life between two people meant to be together?
Lettie shook her head. “It was so many years ago. He touched me and the seed appeared. Ava saw and she was jealous so she took it from me. She wants me to be mad and lonely like her.”
“Oh, Lettie.” Dawn hugged the other woman. “I will stop her, I promise, and we’ll find your seed.”
If the Cor-vitis seed appeared years ago, there was no way of knowing how many men might have crossed Lettie’s path in the forty years since Ava took control. A warm, friendly face with a clipped moustache appeared in Dawn’s mind. Poor Dr Day. She had hoped he was the gentle cure that Lettie needed and that if the woman was restored to good health, she might one day return his affection. But if Lettie’s seed was stolen long before he became her physician, the broken woman might remain alone for the rest of her unnaturally long life.
21
Days fell into a steady rhythm of clearing away forty years of neglect from around the estate. Dawn picked her battles and concentrated on the maze, the walled garden, and the herbaceous borders. She spent her days pacing the estate like a general inspecting a line of soldiers. Every day she made a point of walking out to the hermitage. Even though she picked different times of day, she never saw any sign of Ava. Mouse, who seemed sensitive to her presence, turned his back on the hermitage and snuffled among the decaying leaves and undergrowth for rabbits.
“Where are you hiding, Ava?” Dawn asked the deserted hill home before walking back with the wolfhound.
Each night ended in a family dinner with Jasper and Elijah, and on one rare occasion, a subdued Lettie joined them. After dinner, they would retire to the library and read or play chess. She was not at all proficient, but Jasper proved a patient teacher. Each time they played, her game improved.
With each passing day, the men advanced farther into the maze. Some days they only managed one foot, others as many as three feet. Each evening Dawn peered at the map in the cottage.
“How does it change itself?” she asked Jasper. She tried to stay awake one night, imagining the ghost of a gardener coming in to rub out and redraw the map. But she never saw anything, and the next morning, a tiny part of maze was clear on the drawing.
“I never gave it much thought. I think it just reforms itself when you’re not looking,” he replied, settling into the armchair to guard her slumber.
Jasper had drawn a jagged line that was the quickest route through the maze on Dawn’s paper version. Her workmen laboured to follow the highlighted path. They ignored the false turns and lanes that led to dead ends and kept moving through the main route that would lead to the centre. When a path doubled back on itself, they simply cut through the old yew. It was slow going partly due to the sheer size of the maze, which covered over an acre of land, and the slow process of dragging out the burned vine.
They were like miners, except instead of tunnelling into the earth they drilled a path into the greenery. Or perhaps they laboured deep under the ocean as the towering hedges enveloped them. Dawn suffered a surfeit of men, with only two at a time able to work within the tall, tight tunnels. The others were employed dragging away sections of vine or clipping the miles of unruly hedge.
She hovered over them, worried that the vine would strike them down or poison their bodies with its thorns. Yet it gave way to the fire meekly with only a pop and sizzle as flames ate through its core.
As they advanced, Dawn walked each twist and turn the maze took. In some places the vine and overgrown yew completely obscured the way, and Dawn paced out where they needed to cut a new arch through the hedge. Each day they marched closer to Ava’s stronghold. While measuring progress, Dawn pondered two questions: did the tree still survive at the centre, and how on earth did Ava make it through if they could not?
They had laboured for close to two weeks with the men working in shifts to battle the thorny vine at the front. Today, work on the maze marched on to a point that Dawn thought if she jumped up and down she should be able to see past the vine to the very centre. They were so close, but the light was fading and the men were exhausted.
“Time to finish for the day, gentlemen. I don’t want anyone inadvertently setting fire to themselves or pruning their limbs,” she said.
Dawn thanked them all and trailed behind as they wound their way back out. She stopped when a flash of red caught her eye. Bending down, she found a leaf from the Ravensblood tree. One side was pitch black, like a moonless night, the other blood red. But the stain seeped over the edges of the leaf as it sought to extinguish the red. She held on to hope. The leaves were not completely black yet.
Jasper stood at the outside perimeter and called good night to the men as they filed past.
Dawn twirled the leaf, making a flash of black and red. “The leaves blacken as the tree dies,” she said, “and this one shows it moving from one side to the other. I wonder how much of the tree has fallen to the disease?”
He let out a sigh. “I would know if it no longer stood, and the ravens still roost there at night. Last time I saw it, the disease had not consumed it all. The top quarter remained untouched.”
She looked up as one of the large black birds flew overhead. She would have to trust their reports back to Jasper that their perch still stood. But did a bird know dead wood from live? Ava’s monstrous vine might hold it upright even in death.