“Indeed, Thomas Kirkwood took what he wanted when he wanted it and, as it turned out, he took the garden into ruin, at least that’s what I have gathered.”
The truth was that nobody at the time really knew why the garden began to fail. And Stella’s research had uncovered little more than rumors and ghost stories, legends and fantasies about curses and hauntings.
“How did he do that? I mean, did he physically destroy it?” Sorrel asked.
“That’s what we think happened,” Stella said. “I can only imagine that he had it torn out as a kind of punishment for Elizabeth because she found life outside his walls. Then he marked the garden with a plaque that threatened anyone who dared to enter or cared to replant it. That’s the curse Poppy mentioned, but of course, it’s just a story.”
“Could the garden have recovered given the right care?” Sorrel asked. She’d already dismissed Graham’s hapless conviction that a curse was even possible.
“Who can say?” Stella answered. “Elizabeth died soon after the garden failed, and at Thomas’s nasty order, no attempts were made to salvage it then. Any more recent attempts, including mine, have been unsuccessful.”
“So how does anybody know even this much of the story?” Sorrel asked.
“Gossip mostly and the archive that lists births, deaths, mercantile exchanges, land grants, surveys, that sort of thing. We know when the garden was planted and when it failed, when the estate passed from Kirkwood to Kirkwood. The rest is detective work on my part and an obsession on Graham’s. There are clear hints at a diary that Elizabeth kept in the history and if I had that, I am sure I could practically hand you the garden on a silver salver. But it’s gone with the years, that book, and all its secrets with it.”
“And now?” Sorrel asked. “You all think I can bring this place out of ruin?”
“We do, and with any and all help you require, we hope it will be done before the solstice.”
“About that,” Sorrel said. “I will need to be home for my high season, which doesn’t give me much time. Why didn’t you come to me earlier?”
“We didn’t know you, did we?” Stella asked. “And as it turns out, you hadn’t been tested in your own life yet. I suspect that is required for a woman of substance to change her world. As for waiting another year, to give you a full season, I guess we just couldn’t. I was poorly this February and made no headway within the walls. Graham was frightened, I think, that I might be seriously ill and that the garden was the cause. That’s why he started searching for an outsider. Then Fiona came through and here you are, late but not too late, I hope.”
“So my health is of no consequence to your husband?” Sorrel asked. This was a side of her host she couldn’t quite accept.
“The Thomas Kirkwood ‘curse’ is quite clear,” Stella said with an eye roll. “Only his subjects were threatened, and since he considered even his family subjects, no one dared cross him. And of course, it’s all just superstitious nonsense.”
“Okay, but Graham almost seems to believe it, which makes him not just superstitious but also kind of uncaring,” Sorrel said and wondered if she’d overstepped.
“It does,” Stella said. “Or it would if my silly husband were even sillier.” She took Sorrel’s hand. “Graham has the softest heart of us all,” she said. “He couldn’t hurt a soul, and it is just that softness that drives him to restore the garden for everyone. His ancestors may have been real shits, but this Lord Kirkwood is determined to cancel them out. Please believe that.”
Sorrel thought for a moment. She remembered the misguided people of Granite Point when they turned on the Sisters, the fear that spiked their hate, and the return to sense that came when the fear faded. She knew what a curse looked like, real or just imagined and she wasn’t going to let this ancient one change her one bit.
“Well then, I guess I need to dig in, even if this family probably needs a keeper more than a gardener,” Sorrel said and stood, offering her own hand to Stella, who seemed drained by the story. Together they walked back with an occasional stop for Sorrel to pluck a blossom or touch a leaf on the path.
SORREL LEFT STELLA at the stables surrounded by steaming horses and the scent of warm hay and oats. Three baby goats followed her as far as the tall, crenelated yew hedge before leaping in a circle to return to the barn. She pulled her jacket closer as she crunched along the path back to the garden to meet Poppy. The rain had changed to mist now, and the sky had lightened to the west as afternoon came on. The sedge warblers and mourning doves began their songs as they might in Granite Point, and Sorrel began making lists as she approached the garden walls where Poppy was waving her on.
“You’ve not run away then?” Poppy asked.
“Not even after your mother told me about the curse,” Sorrel answered.
Sorrel and Poppy followed the wall around until they were at the very back of the garden. Neither woman felt the need to go back into it, particularly after Stella’s story. They stood and read the sign in silence.
“It’s not a curse, clearly,” Poppy said. “It’s just an ancient scary story, and my father is just being a bit of a tit.”
“It says right here that it’s a curse,” Sorrel said and pointed at the nearly featureless iron plaque. “Also, this is a plaque. People don’t make plaques unless they are informing the viewer of something important. In this case, a curse.”
She bent low to read the worn letters aloud. LET NO ONE ENTER THIS GARDEN WITH THOUGHT TO PLANT. LET NO WOMAN BRING FORTH FRUIT OR FLOWER LEST SHE GIVE HER LIFE FOR IT.
“Right, but it’s not real is my point,” Poppy said. “We’ve all known about it for yonks, but no one pays any attention. Really, the whole thing is more like the toxic uncle the family keeps in the spare room because he can’t be trusted in fine company. He’s not dangerous, just embarrassing.” She looked at Sorrel with something very like fear. “Please, you’ve just got to stay. Otherwise I swear my summer will be cursed for sure!”
Sorrel laughed. “I don’t believe in curses, Poppy,” she said. “I’ve had far too much experience with the destruction that comes when people think they can blame misfortune on something or someone ‘other.’”
“Well, that’s settled then,” Poppy said. She was relieved, not just that Sorrel dismissed the curse but that she wasn’t going to run screaming into the night now that she’d seen the full scope of the Kirkwood madhouse. “The curse won’t stop the Sparrow.”
“There is no curse, Poppy.”
“Of course not.”
CHAPTER 6
Laurel