Gardens in the Dunes (38 page)

“Monkey refused to believe what he saw and was just about to jump away when Buddha turned the fingers of his hand into five mountains, which buried the rebellious Monkey.” Hattie paused and glanced to see if the child was asleep; but just then Indigo's eyes opened wide and she said, “Don't stop now! The monkey is buried under five mountains! Read how he gets away!”

The rolling of the ship had subsided and Indigo's face was not as pale; Hattie glanced at the pages ahead and shook her head.

“Monkey doesn't seem to escape for at least six pages—it's too late to read it now. Tomorrow,” Hattie said, firmly closing the book.

“Good night, and sweet dreams.”

“Sweet dreams,” Indigo replied.

She tucked the covers around Indigo and kissed her forehead. The parrot's head was tucked under its wing but a glittering eye watched as she put out the light. It was after nine so she did not disturb Edward in the adjoining cabin, but she did not feel like going to bed quite yet. During the
afternoon she felt an odd lethargy that slowed her motions and demanded her conscious effort to climb the steps to the ship's dining room. She recognized the feeling at once: it was that old companion of melancholy, inertia, which the doctors blamed on her reading and writing and lack of exercise.

When she was first stricken, the doctors mistook her lethargy for a more serious illness; fortunately her introduction to Edward at the ball banished the symptoms. Surely the melancholy had not returned!

How ironic if the malaise were to return during their visit with Aunt Bronwyn. In the months she suffered most from melancholy, the letters from her grandaunt had meant a great deal to Hattie. Aunt Bronwyn followed the latest theories of the mind and emotions, and it was her observation Hattie's illness could be cured if she completed her thesis. After the announcement of their engagement, Hattie's melancholy lifted and she was reluctant to return to the notes and manuscript for fear the anxiety and hopelessness might reoccur. Once or twice during Edward's absence a fatigue tried to take root, but Hattie warded it off with cool baths and green tea. Since Indigo's arrival, Hattie felt so fit and was in such good spirits she assumed herself cured. After travel and a visit with one's family, fatigue was not unusual, but Hattie also felt a vague discouragement that she could not articulate, a feeling similar to the one that preceded her illness before.

She summoned all her energy to break free of the heaviness in her limbs to pick up the portfolio. She did not open it at once; the very sensation of its weight in her hand brought back vivid memories. So much had seemed possible in the beginning; Hattie took pages and pages of notes—copying entire sections of Dr. Rhinehart's translations. She shuffled through the pages of notes until she found the quotations from the Coptic manuscripts she intended to use to illustrate her thesis. Here it was! the passage that had excited her so much, and inspired her thesis—the same passage that caused such consternation on the thesis committee:

I was sent forth from the power,

and I have come to those who reflect upon me,

and I have been found among those who seek after me.

Look upon me, you who reflect upon me,

and you hearers, hear me.

You who are waiting for me, take me to yourselves.

And do not banish me from your sight.

And do not make your voice hate me, nor your hearing.

Do not be ignorant of me anywhere or any time. Be on your guard!

Don't be ignorant of me!

For I am the first and the last.

I am the honored one and the scorned one.

I am the whore and the holy one.

I am the wife and the virgin.

I am the mother and the daughter.

I am the members of my mother.

I am the barren one

and many are her sons.

I am she whose wedding is great

and I have not taken a husband.

I am the midwife and she who does not bear.

I am the solace of my labor pains.

I am the bride and the bridegroom,

and it is my husband who begot me.

I am the mother of my father,

and the sister of my husband

and he is my offspring.

How naive she had been to think her thesis topic would be approved! Hattie could smile now, but at the time of the committee's decision her entire world seemed to have come apart, especially after the dreadful encounter with Mr. Hyslop! Hattie had planned to continue auditing classes until term's end at Christmas, but the morning following the encounter, the symptoms appeared.

The doctor was called, and with one look he pronounced her condition female hysteria, precipitated by overstimulation. He prescribed complete rest and above all no books. Hattie refused to give up all books, but she no longer had the heart to read early church history; it was obviously incomplete, and the orthodox church had no intention to ever acknowledge the other gospels. But now she felt as if she were reunited with an old friend as she shuffled through the pages. She felt the old excitement stir; she wanted to learn more about the Illumined Ones, those to whom Jesus appeared and whom he instructed in secrets not revealed to the bishops or cardinals or the pope himself.

The parrot's damage to the train case was not discovered until Hattie began
to pack her toilet articles, and by this time they were only a few hours from docking in Bristol. They were in sight of land, and Hattie was so relieved at their safe Atlantic crossing she only laughed when she saw how carefully the parrot removed the brass tacks.

“Oh it's easily repaired,” Hattie said when she noticed Indigo's stricken expression. “Odd how it happened. I don't remember the train case being near the birdcage.” They were about to dock in Bristol, where they'd take the train to Bath.

Edward gathered the notes he made from his reading about citrus horticulture. He lingered over his notes on the pome-citron, as the
Citrus medica
was known. The largest groves were in Corsica, but the authorities there were wary of foreigners who might be agents of foreign governments seeking to cash in on the growing popularity of candied citron rind. Agents for Lowe & Company reported the best specimens of
Citrus medica
were to be had in the mountain villages outside Bastia.

Aunt Bronwyn insisted on meeting them in Bristol for the short train ride to Bath. She was the same Aunt Bronwyn Hattie remembered, jolly, bright blue eyes enlarged by the thick lenses of her glasses. She was anxious to get out of Bristol—too much coal smoke and dust, too much noise in the streets.

Hattie watched Indigo's grip on the parrot's cage tighten as she was introduced to Aunt Bronwyn, but the child seemed to relax after Aunt Bronwyn praised Rainbow's beauty. Indigo leaned back on the wide leather seat and clutched the parrot cage tightly as the coach lurched through the port traffic. She had a feeling Aunt Bronwyn was going to be fun to visit.

From time to time she caught glimpses of the waterfront—so many tall ships, so many coaches and freight wagons in the streets. The noise and smoke and the odors of cooking food resembled those in the streets of New York City, except here the overcast sky and high thin clouds reminded Indigo of winter.

Ah, the great port city of Bristol astride the river Avon, Edward thought as he scanned the docks where workmen unloaded bales of cotton and pallets
of lumber. The cab passed the wide doors of a large building where people and carts of raw wool darted in and out.

“What is it?” Hattie asked, noticing Edward's attention to the wool market building. Aunt Bronwyn took one look and guessed immediately.

“The site of the old slave market,” Aunt Bronwyn said, watching Edward's expression. “No great English port city was without its slave market.” The slave market in Bristol had been one point of the golden triangle of world trade. Ships sailed out of Bristol Harbor with English textiles, tin, and glass for the coast of West Africa, where the goods were traded for slaves; in the Americas the slaves were traded for cargoes of tobacco and cotton, which were transported back to Bristol, where the golden cycle repeated itself.

Hattie glanced at Edward, whose face reddened a bit.

“Of course, all the port cities of the Americas had slave markets too,” Edward added.

“And we in the Americas kept our slave markets longer,” Hattie said as she watched Indigo kneel on the seat to get a better view out the window. Indigo wanted to see the place where slaves used to be sold because Grandma Fleet told them stories about such places, like Yuma and Tucson. In the old days, twice a year, in the fall and the spring, the slave catchers brought their harvest of young Indian children to trade to the cattle ranchers and miners. The Sand Lizards preferred the old gardens because the slave hunters did not usually travel that far; she and Mama always warned the girls to be careful because the slave hunters didn't care what the law was; they tied you to a donkey's back and took you so far away you'd never find your way home.

“My sister and I know how to hide from the slave catchers,” Indigo said, turning away from the window. Both Hattie and Edward looked a bit shocked, but Aunt Bronwyn nodded.

“Oh Indigo! There are no slave hunters anymore!” Hattie didn't want the child to make a habit of exaggeration to get attention or approval. Indigo's eyes got round and her face was serious.

“I've
seen
them, Hattie,” Indigo said breathlessly. “We were on the hilltop with Grandma Fleet. Off in the distance we saw the children tied together in a line!” Indigo could tell Aunt Bronwyn believed her but Hattie and Edward did not.

As they boarded the train to Bath, Indigo thought her ears were failing her, but then she realized the people here spoke a different language. The
people looked a bit different too, with light pink skin, light blue eyes, and light brown, thin hair; the damp cool air and the abundant shade of the tall trees must be the cause, Indigo decided. The people on the train stared at Indigo, but not unkindly.

The motions of the train felt quick and sharp after the days on the ship, and the air smelled of the locomotive's coal smoke. The train left behind the noise and congestion of the waterfront. The dingy tenements at the edge of Bristol gave way to green rolling hills above the river; the sky's color shifted from gray to green-blue. The railroad followed an embankment along the river. How lovely to drive along under the green canopy formed by the old elms and oaks along the meandering river. For a moment, off in the distance on the southern horizon, a shaft of sunlight broke through thin clouds. Indigo excitedly pointed at the sky. The sun had seldom been visible during their ocean crossing. Indigo pressed closer to the window but the sun slipped behind the clouds again.

Hattie was delighted with the beauty of the countryside; here and there between the tall trees and the shrubs—willows, bracken, brambles, and bog myrtle—little clumps of periwinkles, wild pinks, and marshmallows grew above the riverbank. All along the edge of the road foxgloves and primroses stood tall, with wild buttercups and white daisies scattered all around. She was hardly more than a child the last time she and her parents visited Aunt Bronwyn in Bath.

Aunt Bronwyn had been born in the United States, but years ago she married in England, where she remained even after her husband's death, on the estate inherited from her English grandfather. She was regarded a bit odd by the other Abbotts, who disliked the English for their snobbery. “Nonsense!” Aunt Bronwyn liked to exclaim to enliven the discussion. For centuries, the city of Bath had been populated by a great many wealthy foreign princes and other foreigners, who came to gamble and take the waters of the healing spring, so they took no notice of Aunt Bronwyn. The local people thought her foolish because she moved into the old cloister in the orchard, too close to the river, and the structure in disrepair. Aunt Bronwyn was too busy to waste time on teas and dinners, and in Bath they left her in peace. No effort was made to invite her, though they were pleasant enough when she met them on the street or in a shop.

Hattie and her father loved his old aunt, but Hattie's mother found Aunt Bronwyn's eccentricities quite unnerving during their visit years before. They found her beloved Irish terriers asleep in their bed and when Mrs. Abbott tried to force them off with her umbrella, the dogs made ugly
growls at her. Mrs. Abbott urged them to stay at a hotel or they would get no sleep as there were cattle lowing and dogs barking all night.

Indigo was amazed at how damp and green the air smelled in England. Water, water everywhere, it seemed—in little ponds and lakes along the river. Through the slit in the cage cover she whispered to the parrot: Aunt Bronwyn seemed very nice, just the kind of person who would not mind a parrot out of his cage. She promised to let him out as soon as they arrived.

“Welcome! Welcome!” Aunt Bronwyn exclaimed again; she was so delighted they were able to stop with her even for a short visit. Indigo shook Aunt Bronwyn's hand but was too shy to speak until she saw the parrot's beak reach between the bars after Aunt Bronwyn's forefinger, then she exclaimed, “Watch out!” just in time to save Aunt Bronwyn's finger. Indigo showed her the half-moon scar on her own finger, the mark of the hooked beak.