All three women took their shandies and sat at one of the tables in the shade of a lilac now in riotous bloom as May settled in. The scent was both nostalgic and invigorating to them all; grandmothers’ hankies, pastel purple soaps in aunties’ bathrooms and, for Sorrel, the memory of her own garden just beyond her kitchen door perfumed the air.
The drinks were delicious, and Delphine presented, seemingly out of thin air, three perfect rosemary flatbreads glistening with olive oil and sea salt.
“They’re still warm,” Sorrel said.
“They’re really only good warm unless you have some saucisson sec to eat with them,” Delphine said.
Poppy explained why they were there, and Sorrel saw Delphine’s face grow smooth and expressionless. She seemed to be not so much listening as absorbing their story, and Sorrel wasn’t sure if that meant she was ready to help or about to send them away with a flapping tea towel.
Finally, after Sorrel laid the two pictures of Mathilde’s fairy houses on the table between them, Delphine broke her silence.
“Where did you find these?” she asked.
“Mum had a box of the pictures, every house Mathilde ever made in the garden. Are they yours?” Poppy asked.
Delphine shook her head. “No. When she died, I wanted nothing to do with any of her games. I was, unjustly I expect, certain that her illness was a result of her adventures, the way she tore about the estate in all weather collecting pebbles and feathers and bits of things no one saw any use for. I made Gabe throw all the fairy houses away. I asked him to burn them.”
“I am so sorry,” Sorrel said as she scooped up the photos. “I can understand.”
Delphine stopped her hand.
“I was wrong to close the door, the gate if you will, on my daughter’s imagination after her death. I suppose it was her magic, like the flowers are yours, little gardener.” She looked more closely at the pictures. “She was such a force: the heart of a lion and the touch of a lamb.”
Poppy sniffed, and Sorrel wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“So, will you help us?” Poppy asked.
Delphine nodded.
THAT NIGHT THE garden was filled with mist from the coming weather. Heavy air settled over the new soil, which gave off its own fog, a mixture of the heat from the day and the rich compost. There was a whispering in the wind, and insects returned to the garden. Along the walls rock cap moss crept between the bricks, and damselflies appeared, drawn to the damp. Spring peepers around the distant pond took up their song again, confused into mating calls by the scent of green shoots and earthworm castings. Life was returning to the garden.
CHAPTER 10
Spear Grass
It was Delphine who showed Sorrel the blood drops woven into the tapestry. There were three, two on the book and one on the leaf beside it. The delicate bare foot and ankle, all they could see of the hunted, were spattered as well, and two of the hounds’ muzzles were bloodied. Sorrel just knew that if there was a seventh panel, as Delphine believed, it would show the death of the woman no one knew, and while that image frightened and disgusted her, she also knew that somewhere in that panel she could find a clue to the death of the garden as well.
Graham gave Delphine the photographs of the tapestries originally meant for Sorrel. In this way Delphine could study them, not that she didn’t know the images in her sleep, and share her thoughts with Sorrel without leaving the inn to run itself. Truly, Graham hoped to distract Delphine’s continued hints at a seventh panel by immersing her in the six at hand.
On the day Sorrel planned to finally get into the garden, it rained as if Noah were their neighbor. Even Gabe stayed away, and the groundskeepers took the day to maintain their tools and trucks. Stella and Graham had gone into London with Poppy, which left Sorrel and Andrew happily lolling about in the Tithe Barn. They read and slept and made love and then took a shower together in the tiled wet room, filled with steam and the scent of green tea shampoo as Sorrel washed her long hair. Andrew asked if he could brush it so Sorrel sat on a chair by the window while Andrew ran a wide-tooth comb through the heavy locks. He said nothing because he was afraid to startle her from such intimacy. Finally it was hunger that drove them out of the bedroom.
“I didn’t realize how little I’d miss those pesky Kirkwoods until they were gone,” Andrew said. He spoke into the disturbingly empty fridge. “I seem to have kept their larder full instead of mine.”
“Not even an egg?” Sorrel asked.
“Nil,” Andrew answered and shut the fridge. “Shall we swim over to the big house and make dinner there?”
At the word “dinner” Wags bobbed up from under the couch cushions and barked.
“She really does smell like an old stuffed animal and I don’t know what else,” Sorrel said.
“Shoes,” Andrew said laughing. “She smells like wet shoes, always has.”
Wags groaned and slid off the couch.
“Won’t she have to go out soon?” Sorrel asked.
“Not in the rain. She’d rather explode than suffer a downpour.”
Just then there was a crack of lightning followed by a window-rattling roll of thunder.
“Right, that’s it,” Andrew said as he grabbed a sweater and his jacket. “I’m heading to the village where I will pick us up a takeaway curry from Malabar.”
“Be careful, Andrew,” Sorrel warned. “If that car of yours hits a puddle, it’ll die for sure.”
“Perish the thought,” Andrew said. “The old girl has seen worse.”
He left, letting in some rain and wind and several tender green beech leaves ripped from their branches.
Sorrel went to stand at the window again. She loved looking out across the land and sky, but tonight it was so dark and the storm was so brutal that she stepped back from the panes. The rain threw itself at the glass, plastering leaves and twigs over it, and the wind pressed against it with determination. Sorrel saw her reflection, hair sleek as an otter, her arms crossed over her chest. Another flash and the lightning lit up the landscape. Sorrel jumped. And then she saw someone. At first she just assumed it was Andrew, but why would he be there? No, too small for Andrew, too small altogether. A child, thought Sorrel. She ran for her jacket and out the door, swinging wide around the side of the Tithe Barn, sliding in her clogs, slamming her shoulder into the side of the house.
She wiped the rain out of her eyes and cursed the dark and the wind. She could see nothing, hear nothing, and suddenly she felt foolish standing in a storm looking for a will-o’-the-wisp. Of course there’s nothing out here, she thought. Except for a half-dressed idiot. She turned and stumbled back inside, cold, dirty, and shaken. Wags met her at the door whining and quivering, but Sorrel had no comfort to give her.
Andrew came back to find Sorrel in his dressing gown, now settled enough to be holding Wags in her lap on the couch.
“What is it, what’s happened?” he said as he dropped their dinner and knelt in front of her. “Is it your family?”