Gardens in the Dunes

  Hattie dreamed she was walking under the big elms and oaks in the park at the Boston Commons. A cool fall breeze blew across her face. How bright and alive the red maple leaves and golden oak leaves appeared, backlit by the sun; they shimmered so close to her face Hattie reached out to touch them. She woke with a start, shivering, aware she was lying outdoors in the dark. She had not walked in her sleep since she was a child. The sky was clear; how brightly the stars lit the night. She recognized the garden stepping-stones across from her, but she was surprised to find herself lying on a long flat horizontal stone in a raised flower bed. She sat up and saw her feet and the edge of her nightgown were caked with dried mud. As her eyes became accustomed to the light, she realized she was in a part of the garden she had not seen before; only the high stone walls were familiar. It appeared to be an old, abandoned garden of some sort, oddly adorned by stones, many of them broken, carefully sited in the raised parterres with the sweet bay and dandelions.

  Hattie stood up, shivering, her arms folded around herself, and realized the stone she’d been lying on was the stone from the dream she’d had in Oyster Bay. In that dream, the stone lay in a churchyard cemetery with old tombstones; of course, Aunt Bronwyn’s garden was once a churchyard. What an odd coincidence this was! If her feet had not been so cold, she might have thought she was dreaming. The cool night air was sweet with the scent of river willows and roses. As she followed the stone path out of the abandoned garden she heard a strange noise ahead of her—a loud knock. The loud knock sounded again and to Hattie the sound resembled a club of wood against wood. When she reached the gateway between the two gardens, she saw a strange glow emanating from within. Hattie took deep breaths to calm herself. The light appeared to be on the far side of the grape arbor. At first she mistook the light for a lantern’s glow—were they searching for her? But as she observed it longer, Hattie realized the glow was too soft to be a lantern. The loud knock sounded again, and the fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up; she saw something luminous white move through the foliage of the corn plants and the tall sunflowers. Her heart beat faster as she heard the soft rhythmic sound of breathing approach her. She felt a strange stir of excitement and dread at what she would see when she stepped through the gateway. The luminosity of the light was astonishing: was she awake or asleep? How beautiful the light was! Her apprehension and dread receded; now a prismatic aura surrounded the light. It was as if starlight and moonlight converged over her as a warm current of air enveloped her; for an instant Hattie felt such joy she wept.

  When she reached the front of the house, Hattie found lanterns lit and the coachman and Aunt Bronwyn up and about. They appeared surprised to see her. Embarrassed, Hattie assumed they were looking for her, but no, the cattle were loose, through an open gate or break in the fence—they were not sure, but the white cattle were everywhere. Three cows and their calves browsed on white climbing roses in front of the house, unconcerned with the commotion. Hattie assured her aunt she was unharmed, but the old woman looked intently at her as if she was not convinced. The eastern sky was already bright pink with the approaching dawn.

  Aunt Bronwyn said the sleepwalk might be due to the excitement of their arrival; travel was quite taxing on the nerves, as she learned on a recent trip. She was so exhausted by the train ride from Trieste to Budapest, she hallucinated bad odors in her hotel room. Hattie’s heartbeat quickened at the mention of hallucination; the light she saw was no hallucination. Aunt Bronwyn thought perhaps the breakout by the cattle disturbed her sleep and caused the episode.

  Hattie shook her head. She feared she might be the culprit who left open both the gates. She pointed at the mud on her feet and the edge of her nightgown, evidence she’d walked as far as the puddle outside the orchard gate, though she remembered nothing of the sleepwalk.

  Edward was alarmed about Hattie’s sleepwalk. What if she sleepwalked off the deck of the ship? Should they consult a doctor? Edward wanted to postpone his trip to London, but Hattie insisted he take the noon train as planned for his meeting with the Kew Gardens staff. She felt a bit strange after her sleepwalk, but she certainly wasn’t ill; there was no reason for Edward to miss his appointment.

  Hattie wanted time alone to reflect on her experience in the garden. She promised to rest for an hour or two, but later, in the darkened bedroom, Hattie tossed and turned but did not sleep soundly; she could not stop thinking about what she had seen. Her thoughts raced—what had she seen, luminous and white, moving through the foliage of Aunt Bronwyn’s corn plants and sunflowers? The memory of that instant caused Hattie to weep again with the joy she felt with all her being. Thoughts raced through her mind in swift-moving torrents—glittering and flashing. Words from her thesis notes cascaded before her mind’s eye, then suddenly scattered as if suddenly the words were dry leaves blowing away in the wind: poor judgment, bad timing, late marriage, premature marriage, dread of childbirth, sexual dysfunction.

  Hattie tried to calm herself with deep breathing but managed to doze for only brief periods. The rooms of the Riverside house would not let her be—that house presided over by her dead mother-in-law intruded into her thoughts, room by room followed by the gardens overgrown and sparse and the glass house of orchid skeletons in pots all around the monkey’s cage. Suddenly she realized they must help the Indian child return to her sister and mother! This was all wrong! How foolish she had been!

  The rush of thoughts so unnerved Hattie she got up and went downstairs, where she found Aunt Bronwyn and Indigo at lunch on the round table. The child listened to the old woman name King Arthur’s knights. They had such strange names; Indigo was confident she could remember them all and tell Sister.

  Morfran was so ugly everyone thought he worked for the devil; he had hair on him like a stag. Sandde Angel Face was never attacked in combat because he was so beautiful enemy soldiers mistook him for an angel on the battlefield. Henbeddstr never found a man who could run as fast as he could, and Henwas the Winged never found a four-legged animal as fast as he. Scili the Light-footed could walk above the treetops or above the rushes of the river. Drem could be in Cornwall and see a gnat rise in the morning sun in Scotland. Cynr of the Beautiful Beard endured water and fire better than anyone; when he carried burdens, small or large, the burdens were never seen. If Gwalloig went to a village in need of something, no one in the village could sleep until he got what he needed. Osla of the Big Knife carried a short broadsword he lay across rivers as a bridge so the knights and their horses crossed safely. Gilla Stag Leg could jump three hundred acres in a single leap. Sol could stand all day on one leg.

  Stories like these were Indigo’s favorites; she could hardly wait to tell Sister. In Needles there had been a Navajo woman, and she used to tell the girls stories about long ago when there were giants, and humans and animals still spoke the same language. Indigo told Aunt Bronwyn about the wounded giant’s drops of blood that became the black lava peaks as the giant fled the attack of the Twin Brothers.

  Now the rainbow bird refused to go inside his cage, but perched on the cage top at night or whenever Indigo put him down. After lunch, they went to survey the white bull’s damage to the corn; by midday light the garden looked very different than she had seen it the night before in the glowing light. They followed Aunt Bronwyn to the back wall; the parrot rode Indigo’s shoulder with confidence, squawking and flapping his wings whenever they went outdoors.

  Aunt Bronwyn led them to the stone gateway at the back of the garden, the entrance to the stone garden, as she called it; Hattie recognized it at once as the place she woke hours earlier. In the midday light the stone garden looked much different than it had the night before. Hattie examined the vertical stones, which seemed much taller in the darkness. She searched for the long flat stone from the night before, from her dream, which she distinctly remembered being near the tall vertical stones; but she didn’t find the long flat stone until she neared the back wall. Hattie asked where the stones came from—she was especially curious
about the long horizontal stone.

  The grave of Aunt Bronwyn’s English grandfather was there, among the standing stones; he wanted no marker for himself. A few of the eldest in Bath still remembered, from their childhood, the old man who carefully searched dumps and trash middens near the old village churches to find fragments of the old stones smashed to pieces by order of the parish priest. He ordered his driver to take the muddy back roads to any new construction sites or newly plowed fields, always with an eye out for any old stones cast aside.

  While the child and her parrot walked solemnly from stone to stone, toward the upright boulder alone in the center, Hattie told her aunt about her dream in Oyster Bay: in the dream she sat astride a long, horizontal stone in an old churchyard. Last night she woke on that very stone! Edward was convinced she had seen illustrations of similar old stones in churchyards but had forgotten. Or perhaps as a child Hattie heard the horizontal stone described in family conversations.

  The strange glow in the garden the night before was more difficult to explain; she wanted to think it over a bit longer before she told anyone, even Aunt Bronwyn. Hattie certainly didn’t mention the light she had seen to Edward because he was already upset by the episode of sleepwalking. Hattie felt on the verge of confiding in her aunt about the light when Aunt Bronwyn asked if she and the child might want to stay on with her while Edward completed his business in Corsica. She had so many things and places to show Hattie, and she wanted time to talk about Hattie’s thesis. It was terribly hot and uncomfortable in Corsica in July; worse, there were reports of political unrest. Corsica was always a challenge to the visitor; the mountainous regions were notorious for bandits, who preyed on English and American tourists. It would be lovely to have her and the child stay with her until Edward returned.

  Hattie hugged her aunt; what a delight that would be! She wanted very much to learn about the old stones. She promised she would return next summer, but now it wasn’t possible to stay; Edward wanted her and the child to accompany him.

  Indigo ran back up the path to rejoin Aunt Bronwyn and Hattie. From Indigo’s shoulder, the parrot watched sparrows hop along the top of the stone wall where the rock pinks grew from cracks in the old wall and scented the air; mossy saxifrages and catmints grew all along the base of the stone wall and between the old stones with the daisies and dandelions.

  Aunt Bronwyn identified the stones. Here was a broken stone with a double spiral carving to help the plants to grow faster. Here were the broken pieces of a stone destroyed by an angry mob of Christian converts. Indigo asked if she had any healing stones in the garden, but Aunt Bronwyn did not know. She’d heard discussions of a standing stone that healed patients who were passed back and forth three times over its top. But over the years, the quack doctors and snake oil salesmen of Bath hacked the old stone to pieces to sell as curative charms. Reportedly there were healing stones that fit in the palm of the hand; they were steeped in water from Bath’s sacred springs; they cured any ailment. According to the legend of the healing springwater, the Celtic King Bladud learned from local farmers that pigs with sores were cured by soaking in the mud and warm springwater. The king built a temple and bath at the spring, but later when the king got old he made a pair of wings and jumped from the roof of the temple and was killed.

  For centuries, Bath had been overrun by doctors and pharmacists peddling cures for cancer, gout, and heart disease, formulated from such ingredients as live hog lice, burnt coke quenched in aqua vitae, powdered red coral, the black tips of crab claws, and freshly gathered earthworms. Invalids pushed in their chairs by nurses still flocked to Bath the year round to take the waters.

  Aunt Bronwyn paused to look over the stones rescued long ago by her grandfather. She pointed out a bluestone no larger than a steamer trunk—in times of drought the bluestone was beaten with hazel sticks to bring rain. Indigo’s eyes widened as she went on; Aunt Bronwyn had seen praying stones and cursing stones. There were stones that turned slowly with the sun to warm both sides of themselves, and stones that traveled at night to drink from the river and returned by morning. There were stones that danced at high noon and stones that danced in the light of the moon!

  Indigo asked Aunt Bronwyn if she had ever seen the dancing stones. No, when she was a girl about Indigo’s age, she observed a black stone the size of a stove move across the road to the south side overnight. Tomorrow they’d take a picnic basket and visit the place. Aunt Bronwyn wanted to drive up on the ridge above the river overlooking Bath; a great deal of construction was going on there. Each week she checked to see if any stones were in need of protection.

  Hattie recalled the unkind remarks she’d heard from time to time growing up, remarks her mother made to her father about Aunt Bronwyn’s peculiarities. So this is what it was: while other old women fed stray cats and dogs, this old woman took pity on stones. The evening of their arrival, Edward joked Aunt Bronwyn had gone native; what could be more English than an old woman feeding tidbits to her cows?

  As they walked back through the garden toward the house, her aunt said something that surprised Hattie. The old people had warned her even would-be rescuers of the old stones must use great caution because it was dangerous to tamper with the standing stones or to cut down the sacred groves. The stones and the groves housed the “good folk,” the spirits of the dead. Never interfere with the fairies! When sheep were brought by the English to graze Scotland, the good folk and the people living on the land were displaced, and the fairies waged war against the sheep. An old man heard the sounds of dogs running down the sheep for the angry spirits; the old man was a seventh son of a seventh son and thus was able to hear and sometimes even see the spirits.

  The terrible famine in Ireland in 1846 came because the Protestants and the English knocked down the old stones. The wars of Europe were the terrible consequences of centuries of crimes against the old stones and the sacred groves of hazel and oak. Still, the destruction of the stone circles and groves did not stop; now the reckoning day was not far off—twenty years or less.

  Hattie found herself taken aback by her aunt’s remarks; she was reluctant to link the luminous glow in the garden with the forces of violent retribution. She wished Indigo would not listen so attentively to her aunt’s comments; the child might become confused. She felt a faint flicker of ill ease that announced an onset of anxious feelings, so she excused herself and the child. They needed to rest. Aunt Bronwyn invited Indigo to spend the afternoon with her in the garden, but Hattie was firm and took Indigo by the hand back inside the house.

  Earlier Edward worried there would be trouble if they did not set some limits for the child. He was concerned about the agreement he signed with the superintendent of the Indian school. It was no use to pretend they were instructing Indigo about the duties of an upstairs maid. Hattie had bristled at the mention of the agreement. She was only a little girl; the boarding school superintendent was a criminal to hire out the Indian children at such a young age. Edward said nothing more, but Hattie wondered if he was concerned over the appearance the child was their adopted daughter, an assumption made by a number of their fellow steamship passengers.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The day of Edward’s return from London, Hattie rested upstairs all morning and a good part of the afternoon. Aunt Bronwyn invited Indigo to eat lunch with the parrot on her shoulder and they both laughed with delight at the bird’s dainty table manners as he took bits of chicken pot pie from their forks. That evening when Hattie and Edward came to the table for dinner they found the child and the old woman feeding the parrot broth from a spoon. Indigo noticed at once that Edward did not approve and that Hattie was concerned too, but Aunt Bronwyn laughed and told them about the small white dog her grandfather kept with him; the dog sat on a chair with its own china plate beside the old man at every meal, a napkin tied around its neck as it stared straight ahead with great dignity waiting for its master to feed it a tidbit.

  Edward smiled and shook his head, as if to acknowled
ge the old woman made the rules in her house. He had returned from London in good humor, after finding the watercolor supplies he wanted. The visit to the Kew Gardens went very well. The director of Kew Gardens agreed to pay a handsome price for Citrus medica cuttings. The French government closely guarded the citron orchards of Corsica to protect their exclusive supply of candied citron to the world market. Edward only smiled when the director commented on the difficulty of the task. The incident on the Pará River left him wary of misplaced trust. He revealed the plan to no one, not even Hattie, though he felt guilty for the omission and planned to tell her everything as soon as they reached Corsica.

  The following morning after breakfast, they set out together for a walk downtown to the site of the excavations. Bath had a great many grassy arcades and parks shaded by trees where elegant ladies walked with their maids or drove in smart buggies with their lapdogs. Nowadays the parade of women’s fashions was more subdued, but in the last century the ladies went to great lengths to steal the attention from one another during their promenades in the parks. One woman went so far as to have a garden of pinks and violets planted in the framework of the wide hoop skirt of her dress.

  Aunt Bronwyn nodded briskly whenever she was greeted by townspeople along the way, oblivious of the gawkers and tourists who stared rudely. Of course they must have made quite a spectacle on Stall Street, Hattie thought; the energetic old woman wearing a brown derby marched ahead, and Indigo with the parrot on her shoulder walked just behind her, followed by Edward and Hattie. As they approached the King’s Bath, the streets were crowded with vacationers from London and foreign tourists come to visit the shops and the royal baths.