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.
Grandma Bergamot came to the gate, whispering, “Do you want me to take her, Gardener? I’ve raised five and helped with as many more.” She peered at the baby, crying out a little. “Oh, but the wee thing, born far too soon!”
The
