The Margarets Read online

  We went up the hill together with the questions unanswered. I couldn’t answer them. Not then. Not for a very long time.

  I Am Gretamara/on Chottem

  The Gardener told me that Swylet had been founded by several wagonloads of malcontents who, tired of being told what they might and might not do by the Lords of Manland, had set off westward in search of a place where they might do as they pleased. They left the coastal cities of Manland, Chottem’s only human-occupied continent, and turned west, through the surrounding orchards and vegetable plantations, the dairy farms, the estancias with their horses and herds of cattle and haylands and grain-fields, then left settled people behind as they moved into endless plains, where flocks of purple-feathered jibbernek bruised the sky at midday and whole villages of skritchers pranced on their rock-mounds, screaming alarm in the voices of old women. They climbed slowly into rolling hills, thence to a high tableland from which people could see for the first time retreating ranges of mist-valleyed mountains: indigo on azure on sapphire on ice.

  Moving into those mountains they had arrived at last—and purely by fortune, so they thought—at a well-watered valley, hidden and protected by ramparts of immemorial stone. There at the end of nowhere they found an area fenced off, grown up in shrubberies and trees, and occupied by the Gardener. She welcomed them and told them to build beside the flowing river and to name their hamlet for the small, swift birds that nested there, the swylets.

  Every now and then, a man or two from the village might backtrack into the world on an urgent errand, to obtain breeding stock, or seed, or certain tools the settlers could not make for themselves. Sometimes they brought new settlers with them when they returned, though, as time went on, such additions became extremely rare. No one ever found the place by accident, though Swylet-born folk who went adventuring could always find their way home.

  One such adventurer was the young artist Benjamin Finesilver. He had wandered the land with hunters, climbed the mountains with miners, sailed across the great freshwater seas of the north with fishermen. He had spent a season following the herds across the grasslands with the nomadic Skellar people, humans drawn from an ancient itinerant culture on Earth to inhabit the endless northern plains. From the black city of Bray he had sailed eastward toward the sunrise land of Perepume. The ship had anchored far out and discharged its trade goods into small boats crewed by little people no taller than his waist, who wore veils and talked a strange language in the high, sweet voices of children. They did not show themselves to strangers, the ship’s captain told him, nor did they allow visitors.

  To Benjamin, this was a great disappointment, but he was not long downcast. Since he had no way to see the farther side of the world, he would forget about Perepume and concentrate upon Manland. Though the eastern half of the human continent was flat, fertile, and relatively boring, the west and north held innumerable wonders in their broken, mysterious lands. Blue butterflies the size of a man’s two hands. Beetles with gemmed carapaces that fought battles with the spears on their noses. A little fox the size of a kitten, which crept about the houses at night, crying like a baby, then laughing as it ran away when people came out. And the k’yur, which were rather like large cats but more like very thin bears, who stood atop the hills on three-moon nights and sang with the voices of angels.

  Benjamin Finesilver talked with printers and booksellers and found them eager to help him. The people of the sea cities had plenty of time on their hands and plenty of money in their pockets, and though they were far too complacent and indolent to seek the marvelous for themselves, they were mightily amused by seeing or reading of anything wonderful and strange. The printers introduced him to people who published books, and the people who published books introduced him to people who financed such things, and thus Benjamin was brought to the attention of Stentor d’Lorn and his daughter, Mariah.

  It followed that after ten years absence from Swylet, Benjamin returned with Mariah d’Lornschilde as his wife. She was lean and disdainful, with hair black as a traveling tinker’s pot and blue eyes that silvered like swift fish in shallow water. She was taken aback some by Swylet, for it was smaller and slower than she had imagined. Still, she thought she loved Benjamin Finesilver, both because he adored her and because he had given her a way out of a sore predicament, and she was willing to spend a year or two in a dull, bucolic place if it pleased him.

  Gardener knew this, as she knew everything about everyone in the place. She told me that even as a boy, Benjamin had been so eager to leave Swylet that he had paid very little attention to the place. Even had Mariah been interested in the hamlet, he could not have told her anything important about it, and he would never have thought to mention the Gardener to his new wife, even if he had remembered that the Gardener existed.

  So, when the Grandmas came to welcome the bride, she was astonished when the first thing they said was, “You must go along to the gate and speak with the Gardener.”

  “And why must I do that?” she cried, laughing and shaking the ribbons in her hair so they danced on her head like butterflies. “In my home, my father speaks to the gardeners, and that is quite enough attention paid to them.”

  The Grandmas shared swift glances, some puzzled, some amused, a few even angry. “It’s a custom,” said Grandma Vine. “One we have. You might like to share our customs.”

  The others nodded, making light of it, saying yes, yes. Do share our customs.

  “Well then, I will,” said Mariah. “When I have time.”

  When they talked with her after that, time and again they would bring the Gardener into the conversation, for more than one had noticed the bride’s waist was thickening and her steps had slowed. “A good time, now,” said Grandma Bergamot. “Especially with your first.”

  Mariah, who felt nauseous most mornings and out of temper most afternoons, turned the talk to something else: the carpenter’s newly built shop on the green, the plethora of lambs in the meadows, the way the cats kept on crying so strangely outside her window, keeping her from sleeping.

  “Those are the Gardener’s cats,” they said. “Inviting you to visit.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “If the woman wishes to meet me, let her pay me a call.” Indeed, she regretted mentioning the cats at all, for when she had peeped out the window to see what cried there, the moonlight had disclosed a crowd of furry, prick-eared animals dancing a gavotte. Mariah had a strong appreciation of her noble lineage and costly education. She was quite sure that if dancing cats existed anywhere in Chottem, her highly regarded professors would have told her of them. Therefore, she had simply been dreaming.

  What could the women say? They had said no less than they had said to any of their own. They had suggested, invited, encouraged. If she had been of Swylet, they might have surrounded her, swept her away, and not let her go until they were outside the Gardener’s gates, but she was not of Swylet. Who knew what family she came from, or what power it might have to upset their lives? Who knew what she thought or meant or intended with that easy, scornful laughter and superior mien that just missed being contemptuous. All very mannered, nothing to complain of, but very much as though they were merely a group of well-meaning ewe sheep while she…she was something else.

  “Let her be,” said the newest Grandma Vinegar. “She’ll come to us soon enough when she needs to.”

  “No,” said Grandma Bergamot. “I’ll plead some tea for her. That much I can do, at least.”

  It was soon after my arrival on Chottem that Grandma Bergamot came to our gate and rang the bell. The Gardener and I went to the gate, the cats trailing around us.

  “This is my ward, Gretamara,” said the Gardener. “She has come to live with me while she learns to be a healer.”

  Grandmother Bergamot bobbed a curtsy, said a how-dya-do, and I greeted her with a smile. She glanced from me to the Gardener and back again, and I knew she was thinking we were kin, for we had the same tawny hair and green eyes, the same golden skin. Only our eye
s were different. The Gardener’s eyes were full of wisdom, but mine could have held only an endless list of the questions I had been asking since I arrived.

  Grandma Bergamot recalled her errand and pled some tea for the new woman, who had come from far away.

  “What is she like,” the Gardener asked.

  “Tall and dark, with silver eyes and a proud walk,” said Grandma Bergamot. “She was Mariah d’Lornschilde in a sea city called Bray, and our Benjamin brought her home as a bride. She does not nest well here. It’s as though she’s counting the days until she can…”

  I could see Grandma Bergamot hadn’t known this until she said it, but it was right. We had seen the proud, dark woman. To us, too, it had seemed she was counting the days until she could…what?

  “See my proud cock, there,” said the Gardener, pointing at a peacock beneath a willow, tail and wings spread wide, quills rattling an accompaniment as he pranced before three inattentive hens. “See how he dances. He would dance to the cabbages if there were no hens about, but his joy would not be in it. Perhaps the people of Swylet are only cabbages to Mariah d’Lornschilde, and though she dances, joy is not in it for her.”

  “If her heart does not dance for Benjamin, then for what?” whispered Grandma Bergamot.

  The Gardener shook her head. “Who knows. Gretamara will give you tea for her, Grandmother Bergamot, but I do not think she will drink it. Come back just before sunset.”

  I made the tea myself. The brew, heal-all, was the first brew I had learned, and when Grandma Bergamot came, I was waiting at the gate for her.

  “I thank thee, Gretamara,” said Grandma Bergamot.

  “I will take your thanks to Gardener,” I responded.

  “Do you plan to visit long?”

  “So long as the Gardener wishes,” I said. “I am learning a great deal from her.”

  “And do you like it here in Swylet?”

  “I have heard the history of Swylet and its people,” I admitted. “And I like it very much where I am.”

  Grandma Bergamot took the tea. Gardener told me she had probably spent the day devising some way to get Mariah to drink it, and so she had. Grandma’s own house was on the street where Benjamin Finesilver lived, and Mariah walked down that street each afternoon with a market basket in her hand and a parasol over her shoulder. So, next afternoon, when Mariah went by, Grandma Bergamot was sitting beneath her grape arbor, tea things set ready on a little table, and she invited Mariah in. “Do come. Have a cup of tea. I’m feeling lonely today.”

  Such a plea could not be politely refused, so Mariah came in and drank a cup of tea, while Grandma Bergamot only pretended to join her, for everyone knew the Gardener’s gifts were for the intended ones alone.

  “Odd,” said Mariah. “An odd taste. Lovely, rather…what? Like rose petals but with something else. Where did you get it?”

  “It’s a brew gathered hereabout,” Grandma replied. “If you like it, it would please me to make you a present of the packet.”

  Mariah started to refuse, then realized it would be rude to do so, and while she was often thoughtlessly haughty, she was never wilfully rude. She accepted the ribbon-tied packet with gracious words, picked up her basket and her parasol, and went off down the street. Though it had all worked just as Grandma Bergamot had planned, something about it had not been satisfying.

  The Gardener stood on the stoop of her house, eyes fixed on the treetops as she spoke to me. “I see the packet of tea is going home in the marketing basket. It is sliding down as Mariah walks, and there it is beneath the apples and potatoes, the honey and the flour, the fresh eggs and the cut of lamb for Benjamin’s supper. With most women, this would not matter, for she would see it when she put away the foodstuffs. However, Mariah is no cook, so Benjamin has hired one. There is Mariah, giving the basket to the cook, ah, yes. And the cook is putting the packet away in the cupboard.”

  “Won’t Mariah ask for it?” I asked.

  “No.” The Gardener shook her head. “Tomorrow she will feel well, very well. She will not think that it has anything to do with the tea she drank. In a day or two, the effect of the tea will wear away, but she will never think of it again.”

  Benjamin Finesilver, meantime, was getting on with his work. He had finished a good many paintings of places he had been. He had a comfortable study in which to work and sufficient funds to live decently for a year or so; he had written a good deal about the areas he had traveled through. He had not bothered to write anything about Swylet; he seemed scarcely to have noticed it since returning there. I saw him go by, several times. He did not even glance across the fence.

  It was not long thereafter that Mariah considered it best to stay at home. She told Benjamin that the village women might show themselves swollen as melons as, indeed, most of the younger ones did at intervals, but Mariah’s people did not do that. When one became ungainly, one stayed home with the front curtains drawn. One sunned in the garden and read books and sewed clothing for the baby, or so Mariah’s aunts had instructed her. Mariah obeyed faithfully, though her days were so boring that she prayed for the baby to come quickly so her visit to this provincial backwater could be over.

  Grandma Bergamot tried once again. She called on Mariah and was admitted if only because she broke the boredom of an endless afternoon.

  “Our Gardener is a healer, you know,” Grandma Bergamot said. “I know you’ve had the midwife here, and she’s skillful, but when one has one’s first, it does no harm to have a little something extra. Wouldn’t you visit her, Mariah? In your carriage, just to her gate?”

  “What is all this nonsense about the Gardener,” cried Mariah in a temper. “I have written to my father in Bray. He has sent word that his doctor is coming to tend me, all the way from Bray, where my father is Lord Governor. When the baby comes, I’ll be well enough provided for.”

  And that was that. The Gardener knew this as she knew everything that went on. She could stand in thought for a moment, staring into nothingness, then be able to tell me what everyone in Swylet was thinking or doing. This time, she stood outside the door, and her mouth was sad, for she pitied Mariah.

  “Can you go to her?” I asked.

  “I can do nothing out there. Only in here, which is why those in need come to the gate.”

  “I could go for you,” I suggested.

  She shook her head sadly, and I knew I could not do anything out there either.

  Not long after, on a dismal morning with rain beating from a sullen sky, the baby announced its desire to be born weeks early, long before the doctor was expected to be there. The midwife was fetched. The labor went on. The midwife, in some agitation, suggested that someone go to the Gardener for Mariah, who was having a very difficult time. Benjamin Finesilver, who knew no more about childbirth than he did about Perepume, said nonsense, send for the village healer. This was done without improving the situation. The midwife again said someone should go to the Gardener, and this time Mariah screamed from her bed, yes, yes, go get someone, someone to help me…

  Benjamin came himself, feeling a fool. Few men ever presented themselves at the gate, but he vaguely remembered having been taken there a time or two as a child, so it held no fears for him. He rang the bell, as the Gardener had said he would, and we went down to the gate. Benjamin begged something to ease his wife’s pain. The Gardener asked him to put his hand over the gate, which he did, and she took it in her own while looking into his eyes. With a gesture, she summoned me to look at him also, and I saw what she had told me I would see.

  After a long moment, she nodded and told him to wait. We went back into the house, and shortly she sent me to the gate. I told him, “Make a tea of this and have her drink a cup every hour. It will ease her pain.”

  “Will the child…will the child be all right?” he begged.

  “You must bring your daughter here,” I said, as I had been told to say. “To receive the Gardener’s honey on her lips.”

  Thus somewhat comforted
, he went back the way he had come, to brew the tea and make Mariah drink it and to see the pain leave her eyes, though the labor went on. After several more cups of tea and as many hours had passed, the baby girl was born.

  “All’s well, then,” cried Benjamin.

  “All’s well with your daughter,” said the village healer, turning back to the room where Mariah lay amid the crimson flood neither he nor the midwife had any way of stanching. “And your wife is in no pain.”

  All night Benjamin sat at the bedside holding Mariah’s body in his arms. He would not look at the child the midwife brought to him, not until dawn came—clear, cloudless, hymned by birds—when he took the sleeping baby wrapped in its blankets and came down the street to the Gardener’s gate. He rang the bell and waited, the tears still flowing down his face. By the time we reached the gate, Grandma Bergamot had come up from her house, for she had heard the bell.

  “I’ve brought you the child,” Benjamin cried, tears flowing down his face again. “Her mother is dead. You did not save her!”

  “You did not ask me to save her,” said the Gardener in a stern voice that cut through the fog of grief he was in. “You asked me to ease her pain. I did so. Grandma Bergamot asked me to save her some months ago, and I sent a medicine for her then.”

  Grandma Bergamot called, “Oh, she’s right, Benjamin, she did, indeed. I sent her home with the tea myself. We tried to get Mariah to come here herself, but she wouldn’t hear of talking with the Gardener…”

  Benjamin gasped, recalling how Mariah had laughed about the Gardener. And he, he himself had not asked the Gardener to save her. Why? Why had he not? Sobbing, he thrust the child across the gate and into the Gardener’s arms. “She’s yours. Take her. I must take Mariah’s body back to her people. I do not know how I will face them, and it is likely I will never in this life return to Swylet.” He turned away, stumbling off toward his home, and by nightfall he was gone. The people of Swylet never saw him again.