The Lady's Slipper (16 page)

‘Let me meet your committee. They shall decide if I am too young. Kings have ruled countries at a more tender age. Let the committee decide.’

Geoffrey had always found it hard to resist his son. Although Stephen drove him to distraction, for he had always been weak and easily influenced, some might say soft, Geoffrey had always held out a hope that somewhere inside him a boy like himself was buried and would one day emerge. Perhaps this would be the making of him.

He sighed. ‘Very well. You may put your case to the committee. But you must stand or fall on your own merits, no word from me. And if they fail to hire you, then you understand–this conversation must go no further.’

His father’s agreement in his grasp, Stephen replied, ‘Of course, sir. Yes, sir.’ Then, smiling broadly, ‘Snug’s the word.’

‘And, Stephen,’ Geoffrey looked pensively out of the window to where Emilia was just sauntering in from the garden with a nosegay of flowers, ‘say nothing of this matter to your mother, she knows nothing of men’s affairs.’

Something was wrong–very wrong. Alice stood in the orchard, holding the lid of the beehive in her hands. The orchid’s leaves were starting to curl over, the edges tinged with yellow; the flower head drooped limply from its stalk. She put down the lid and, oblivious to the possibility of being stung, removed her hat and veil. She lifted the pot from its little well in the ground and brought it up to her eyes. There was no sign of slugs or snails or any other insect–the hive kept them out, but nevertheless the lady’s slipper was wilting, and she didn’t know why.

The weather was mild; there had been no frost that night, and the other flowerbeds were blooming as usual. The little knot garden of herbs in the corner was buzzing with bees, and the white autumn lilies stood upright and tall in the corner. She looked again at the wilting flower. Perhaps it needed more light, or more warmth. She hurried over to the summerhouse, where she stood the pot out of view in a place where the sunlight cast yellow diamonds on the floor.

Throughout the day she kept returning to look at the lady’s slipper to see if it was reviving. She could not leave it alone. She tested the soil for moisture, she turned it to face the light, put a little cane next to the stalk to support the drooping flower, fed it shakily with diluted ground chamomile and black tea. By the evening it had still not recovered.

That night she tossed in her bed, not sleeping, her forehead rigid with tension. The responsibility of it weighed on her, the idea that it might die and Wheeler be right. She ate breakfast with her eyes red-rimmed and without bothering to wash her face or comb her hair. Thomas made a comment about it, and she slammed down her cup on the table and burst into tears, occasioning more sharp words.

By now the leaves of the little plant were starting to turn brown at the edges. She agonized over her decision to take it, wondered if she should have left it where it was. She pored over her father’s leather-bound notebooks about plants and their conditions, riffling through one after another in a rising panic, turning the pages quickly, searching through his spindly handwriting for an answer. The orchid would not set seed in this condition, nor would it be safe to divide it.

Poor flower. It had placed its trust in her. She felt her own inadequacies as a gardener more keenly than ever before. She longed for her father’s calm presence–he would have known what to do, what ailed it. The thought of him brought a lump to her throat. It had been a shock when he died, there had been no warning–it was as if the heart had suddenly gone out from him. Yet he had survived the fighting, even when Cromwell’s men set fire to their house and they had to run into the darkness with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Her mother had been frantic when he had insisted on collecting his notebooks. ‘They are my legacy,’ he said calmly as the smoke filled the hallway and she tugged at his arm. Later, with an unerring instinct he had guided them across the countryside. ‘Don’t look back,’ he kept saying, and the words had stuck with her all these years.

But he had not been the same man without his garden. It had always been his abiding passion. The life seemed to seep away from him. Although their new town house was adequate for their needs, the loss of their family home cast a shadow over them all. When Flora was christened, they were still in mourning for his death. Less than a month later her mother was gone too. Weakened by childbirth, she had succumbed to an infection of the lungs.

Alice bit her lip; she seemed to have been wearing black for half her life. ‘Don’t look back,’ she thought, bitterly. She could not help but look back. She lifted up one of the flaccid leaves in desperation. and let it fall. She knelt down.

‘Come now, little flower, be strong. Come now, I will look after you. Please don’t die.’

When she spoke these words tears sprang to her eyes. She had said nearly the same words to Flora barely a year ago. She had watched helplessly, unable to prevent it, as the life ebbed away, as Flora’s warm face grew pale as whey and her hands turned grey and icy on the coverlet.

She prayed harder, asking God for his forgiveness if she had offended by bringing the plant home, begging him to restore it to health. Perhaps he was going to punish her after all, for her lies. Perhaps Wheeler was right, and God was displeased with her. She prayed fervently, her knees pressed into the hard floorboards. She heard no answer to her prayers, nor any sign that anyone was listening, just as she had heard no answer as she bent to pray on the blue rag rug at the foot of Flora’s bed.

The lady’s slipper looked sickly, as if it too had given up on life. She had failed Flora, watched her slip away moment by moment. A sense of her own impotence overwhelmed her. There was no one to help her. She moved about the room like a linnet confined to a cage. Her hands tightened into fists.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t you dare die.’ The room echoed oddly with her voice. Flora’s pink and white face stared down from the walls, smiling, her white teeth painted like a row of barleyseeds, but her eyes seemed to grow sadder. As Alice looked, the smile no longer looked sweet and natural but full of sorrow, as if her sister was watching her and grieving. Alice had a sudden desire to take her on her lap and comfort her. But the image was only paint. She would never feel Flora’s warm arms around her neck again.

‘Damn you,’ she sobbed. ‘Damn you!’ She picked up a pot of ferns and hurled it at the ground. ‘Why did you have to die? It’s all right for you, you are not left here all alone.’

The crashing noise was louder than her voice. Shuddering with tears, she took up another empty pot and threw it at the wall. It smashed down hard on the tiled floor, shattering. It felt good to make this much noise. She kicked her feet amid the debris of broken fern and clods of earth, a wild destructive wind inside her. Sobbing uncontrollably now, she swept her arms across the table, sending pigment jars crashing to the ground in puffs of saffron and pink and splinters of glass. Her breath came heavily but still she didn’t stop.

She caught a glimpse of her hands, stained yellow, small cuts dribbling dark red blood, before she grabbed her paintbox and threw it with all her might across the room. It rebounded with a crack against the window before falling to the floor, its hinges broken and the porcelain jars in pieces. Still sobbing, she dragged the watercolours from the table, feeling glass crunching underfoot, and started to tear them into small pieces. Each one shredded with a satisfying ripping sound until they lay like ashes round her feet. She lifted up a vase of white lilies and turned to throw it at the door, but the door was open. Her hand hovered above her shoulder in mid-flight.

Margaret the herbalist was standing in the doorway.

‘Get out,’ screamed Alice.

Margaret stood her ground, looking steadily back at her.

Alice drew back her arm, threatening to throw the pot. ‘I said, get out!’

She saw Margaret take in the state of the room. ‘Bit of a mess you’ve made.’

The vase narrowly missed Margaret’s head and flew out of the open doorway to smash on the flagstone path. Unarmed, Alice paused. She looked in astonishment round the room, at her sanctuary–at the broken bottles, at the floor strewn with earth and paint, at the lady’s slipper orchid wilting in its pot amidst the debris. She felt the fire drain out of her, her legs buckle and give way, and she sank down to the floor, tears silently coursing down her cheeks.

‘There, there.’ A pair of strong arms grasped her round the shoulders. Alice did not push them away but held on with both hands, her fingers wound tight into the cloth of Margaret’s cloak. She inhaled a smell of damp wool and grass, and another smell that could have been nutmeg. She let herself feel the warmth of the other woman until her breathing calmed. Her tears gradually subsided and she felt a peacefulness descend, a hollow in her chest. Alice leaned up against Margaret, who rocked her quietly, murmuring and clucking under her breath.

‘Better get cleaned up, before your husband comes home,’ Margaret said. ‘Then we can have a look at what ails the orchid.’

‘How did you know?’ Alice drew away and wiped her face on her sleeve.

Margaret stood up and looked at it. ‘Well, anyone can see it’s not thriving. Get up now, and let’s get started. Make haste.’ Alice took a proffered kerchief, noticing it was none too clean, but stood up sheepishly and blew her nose. Her skirts were smeared with gold and green paint, her eyes must be red and puffy from crying. Margaret was already picking up pieces of plant pot and putting them in a log-basket by the door.

‘Have you a broom?’

Alice fetched it from the corner.

‘Get sweeping, then,’ Margaret said. Alice swept. She did not know what to think; she surely should not let this woman just make herself at home. But she had been so kind. Alice did not know what had come over her to cry all over a stranger like that. She watched Margaret out of the corner of her eye, heard her humming tunelessly as she worked, gathering up broken jars and strewing damp sawdust to pick up the dirt and mud as Alice wielded the broom. After a while Alice began to feel better. Her shoulders relaxed and she put her back into the task.

‘Might as well give everything a good scrubbing,’ Margaret said, wringing out a cloth and passing it to her.

She wiped the walls and the windows and the tops of the cupboards. It was satisfying seeing the cloth pick up the grey dust, watching the pigments darken; good to wring it out in the water. Margaret found an old leather bottle and put a few sprigs of lavender in it from her bag. When they had finished the room smelt sweet and clean. Everything was back in its place, the broken pots stacked neatly in the wooden wheelbarrow just outside the door, the lady’s slipper orchid set on the scrubbed table. Margaret drank it in with her eyes, her breath coming out in a small whistle.

‘What a beauty.’

Alice gestured to it. ‘I thought I could save it, but it is dying and I do not know what’s the matter. Except that I uprooted it from the place it belongs. Richard Wheeler said I was interfering in God’s plan. Do you think that? That I am going against God?’

Margaret reached down into her bag. ‘While I think, let’s keep body and soul together.’ She drew out a small hard-looking loaf, some grubby cheese and two dark plums. She divided these into two portions and bit through her plum. ‘It’s not possible to go against God, as God is everything,’ she said matter-of-factly.

Suddenly Alice was hungry. But it would be considered quite unacceptable for her to be sitting here opposite this dishevelled old woman, eating plums. She pushed this thought away because the plum’s sweet flesh beneath the bitter skin was delicious, and after it she finished all her bread and cheese, trying to eat politely despite the strange circumstances.

‘I should think the plant is missing something in the soil.’ Margaret indicated the orchid with an inclination of her head. ‘Where it grew–does the Quaker keep cattle or sheep?’

‘I do not believe so. No, there’s probably only deer, and rabbits and badgers maybe.’

‘Not droppings then.’ She stood up, brushing off her clothes. ‘We had better go back for a look at where it grew.’

‘I cannot. Wheeler already suspects me of stealing it, and if he saw us trespassing on his land he would have us arrested.’

‘Can we get close to his land then?’ Margaret asked, even though she knew the answer.

‘Well, I suppose we can get into the field next to the wood without actually trespassing.’

‘Get your cloak then, there’s no time to be lost.’

The two women peered over the wall into the leafy depths of the wood, towards the place where Alice had removed the orchid from the ground. Margaret scrutinized the mesh of leaves and foliage. Then she threw her brown cloak back over her shoulders and bent down, digging into the ground with her rough fingers, scraping away at the rocks under the soil.

‘Limestone,’ she pronounced. Alice looked at her questioningly.

‘It’s limestone,’ said Margaret. ‘That’s what your orchid is pining for. Here, help me get one of these loose stones out.’

She scratched in the dirt trying to loosen a piece of the chalky white stone. Alice was tentative, reluctant to dig in the dirt with her bare hands. ‘Come on,’ Margaret insisted, and Alice got down on her knees; she found herself bending to Margaret’s will. They both worked away, scraping the ground, levering the stone, trying to prise it from its bed of hard-packed earth.

A sharp crack as a shot whirred past the top of the wall, glancing a blow to the keep stone which showered them with grit. The stone rocked in its housing and almost toppled off.

The two women slowly stood up, Margaret clutching the piece of limestone they had dug out of the earth in her hand. A tentative look over the wall showed Richard Wheeler striding towards them, armed with a smoking rifle. When he saw them, he stopped, a mortified look on his face, before running up.

‘Good heavens, Mistress Ibbetson,’ he said from his side of the wall, ‘I could have killed thee. What on earth dost thou there?’

Alice recovered her composure. ‘We were looking at some wildflowers.’

She saw Margaret slip the white stone into her bag, and saw also that Wheeler had seen it too. He frowned and looked at Margaret.

‘I mistook thee for the deer that has been stripping the bark off my birch trees. I just saw something brown moving near the wall. The shots were meant to scare it off.’

‘You must be more careful with your gun, Mr Wheeler,’ Alice said. ‘If one of us had stood up at that moment, we could have been killed.’

Wheeler looked at Margaret. ‘It was the cloak, I thought it was the deer.’

Margaret had kept quiet until now, and Alice hoped Wheeler might think she was her servant, but now she spoke. ‘No harm done, Mr Wheeler. As you can see, we are both unhurt.’ From her tone it was obvious she was no servant.

Wheeler looked her up and down, then turned towards Alice. ‘Thou hast not introduced us.’

Heat rose to Alice’s face. ‘This is my friend, Widow Poulter.’

‘Isn’t it a lovely day,’ Margaret said.

Wheeler’s face stiffened as he realized who she was. He took an involuntary step backwards, away from the wall, as if he had come across something distasteful. Alice’s heart sank. If she was seen abroad with Margaret, he would surely think she was involved with some sort of devilry. The idea that he would not think well of her was disconcerting. He addressed her in a tight voice.