“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 eyes 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
