‘It is a wonderland,’ she said. ‘Your haven of myth and dream.’ A certain gleam in her eyes made Samuel wonder whether she’d divined the nature of his relationship with some of the more narcotic plants. He did not like her thinking that. She seemed to be laughing at him.
‘ It is my hobby,’ he said stiffly. ‘I have spent a lot of time on it.’
She smiled. ‘Oh yes, I can see that. I have some small knowledge myself, for my father is something of a horticulturist.’
‘Really.’ This was news to Samuel.
‘Indeed. I think I can say that although you cultivate many rare species, there is only one of true value - your maiden of the night. The others may be seen commonly in many Mewtish gardens.’
‘Is that so?’ Samuel felt nettled, annoyed that someone, who herself had confessed to having ‘small knowledge’ would dare to comment on the value of his collection. It would take some getting used to - living with someone else, who was full of opinions of their own. Still, she was indeed beautiful, and he was gratified she shared his respect for the Damozel. He bent down to pluck a delicate blue flower, a species of orchid. ‘This reminds me of you. It is named Velenia, after a bewitching woman. This flower is yours, my love.’
Xanthe took the bloom and stared at it bemusedly. ‘It has thorns, tiny thorns,’ she said, twirling it in her fingers.
By the time they reached the sundial, her fingers had begun to itch and sting. She dropped the flower on the lawn.
At mid-day, Hesta arrived for work, and disappeared with Xanthe into the kitchens. Samuel felt strongly that he was excluded from their domain, but was relieved that Hesta seemed not to resent his new wife. Later, he questioned Xanthe on how Hesta had behaved.
‘We will have an understanding,’ Xanthe replied. ‘She is a strong-willed woman, who expected trouble, I think, but I trust she is as pleased with me as I am with her.’
This answer seemed ambiguous, but it was clear Xanthe did not intend to expand upon it. Samuel, a stranger to the ways of women, reluctantly accepted that it was beyond his comprehension.
On the morning of the second day, Samuel said to Xanthe, ‘You have brought the sun from Mewt with you.’
By ten o-clock, the gardens had begun to simmer in the heat.
‘Aah, this is the weather I like,’ sighed Xanthe, padding on bare feet out from the house to the lawn.
Samuel glanced at the sky. A heat-wave, or worse, a drought, would mean a lot of work for him in the garden. All the plants would need to be kept watered. He felt exhausted. Tonight, he must try to get more sleep.
Xanthe on the other hand seemed full of energy. She made her way to the sundial garden and there composed herself on the ancient grey flag-stones, fanned by the scent of baking herbs.
At noon, Hesta stamped out from the house, carrying a tray of refreshment. Samuel, working on a flower-bed nearby, saw her disappear into the herb garden. She did not come out for some time. It was strange how Xanthe seemed to have cultivated a friendship with the dour Hesta so quickly. They seemed unlikely companions.
As the weeks passed, this friendship developed. Xanthe apparently encouraged Hesta into cleaning some of the rooms, because the house became a lighter, airier place that smelled of scent and polish. Xanthe seemed to respect that Samuel needed time alone with his ladies, for she rarely went into the garden after sundown, having spent most of day sunning herself by the sundial. She really was quite a lazy creature, but her presence inspired Hesta to work hard, despite the uncomfortable heat, which seemed now to have invaded even the shadiest corner of the house.
Samuel was concerned by the persistent lack of rain; the more delicate of his plants were already beginning to suffer the effects. Fortunately the shady bower of Night’s Damozel seemed to suffer the least effects, and it was here where Samuel concentrated his greatest efforts at keeping the soil moist. He always watered the Damozel in the sultry evenings, and after his task was complete, disrobed himself, confidant he would not be disturbed. Then he would lie down on the drenched leaves of the Damozel, while a mist of dream dust shimmered down from her open hearts. Sometimes, in his intoxicated state, Samuel could almost believe that the Damozel was indeed a female of flesh and blood. A spirit lived within her, who manifested into his dreams as a soft-fingered lover. It was as if he had two wives; one of the sun and one of darkness. The night was so serene and comfortable, whereas the scorching day made him irritable and anxious. In these tranquil moments, Samuel found uncomfortable thoughts forming in his head. Had he made a mistake in bringing Xanthe here? She was lovely, but a foreigner, and despite their weeks of passion in Mewt had very little else in common. She was here now, installed. He would have to live with her forever. Yet she was compliant, soft-footed and unobtrusive. The only changes she had made to his life had to be seen as positive. Why did these doubts come to plague him? All the while, a soft drift of pollen fell from the blooms of the Damozel, like words into his ears.
As the summer scorched the lawns, Xanthe basked in the herb garden, while Samuel toiled to keep his ladies alive. The work was really too much for him, the garden too large. At first, as he struggled around his domain carrying heavy buckets of water, he thought Xanthe might offer to help, but when no suggestions were forthcoming, he stomped over to the herb garden, intent on complaining. Wasn’t a wife supposed to assist her husband in all his duties? He found her lolling prostrate in the sun, soaking up its heat like a reptile. At his approach, she rolled onto her back on the flag-stones and squinted up at him. Her dress had fallen from her shoulders, where her skin was as dry as paper and studded with tiny pebbles and strands of moss. ‘You are sweating on me, Samuel. What is it you want?’
‘Some help.’
She frowned. ‘To do what?’
He gestured angrily. ‘My garden is dying and you just lie here all day, every day. Help me carry the water.’
Xanthe laughed and raised herself onto her elbows. ‘You want me to help? What on earth for? Get a boy from the town, or one of the farms. You surely can’t expect me to lug carriers of water about.’
‘You know I don’t want strangers here.’
Xanthe shrugged. ‘You are a fool. Keep your dark lady secret, by all means, but there’s no reason why some local boys shouldn’t attend to the rest of the place.’ She smiled. ‘Samuel, I am not a big, strong man and that’s what you need for this. See sense.’
‘What about Hesta? Get her to help me.’
Xanthe shook her head mildly. ‘No, the garden is not Hesta’s province. She has too much to do about the house.’
‘I noticed!’
Hesta’s hours had increased over the weeks, as had her wages - at Xanthe’s insistence. It was as if the women were somehow building a new house around Samuel that no longer belonged to him.
‘Are you complaining that I have turned your ruin of a house into a home?’ Xanthe said, her voice cool.
‘No, no...’ Samuel wanted to abandon the conversation. He backed away from his wife until the hedges hid her from view. Pausing beyond them, he heard her sigh, then imagined she just settled herself back to drowsing, dismissing him from her mind.
Disgruntled, Samuel sought the sanctuary of Night’s Damozel’s bower. He couldn’t help unburdening himself of sour thoughts about his wife. ‘Sometimes, the mere sight of her makes me angry,’ he confessed. ‘Yet she is exquisite - submissive and calm. What she said about hiring boys from the village was right, of course, and yet...’ He shook his head. ‘There is something wrong. Something.’
The queen of his garden listened patiently. She alone seemed unaffected by the heat. Around her, her maidens lay swooning on the soil.
Later, when Samuel returned to the house, Xanthe was there with her serpent smile and cool, welcoming hands.
‘Samuel,’ she said, ‘we must not argue about petty things. Of course, I shall ask Hesta to give you an hour of her time every day. I’m sure she won’t mind.’ She bathed his brow and kissed his finger-tips. She was his wife, his beauty. He fel
t ashamed.
Now, every day, Hesta, apparently without grudge, tramped back and forth from the kitchen to the gardens with water. She was a strong, steady worker, but even her help was not enough to slake the thirst of the parched soil.
‘The garden is dying,’ Samuel told Xanthe in anguish. ‘I am helpless.’
‘There is more to life than gardens,’ Xanthe said. ‘And anyway, what is lost can be regained. Your precious Damozel won’t wither. I know you make sure of that.’
Samuel did not like her tone. She often seemed to make innuendoes about his relationship with the Damozel, but not enough for Samuel to challenge her outright. He wondered whether in some way, Xanthe actually enjoyed watching him panic as his ladies succumbed to the drought. Perhaps she was jealous.
Every day, Samuel examined the rat-traps he kept in corners of the house to augment the poison trays. For the past few weeks, he’d been surprised to find all the traps empty, although on one occasion he’d thought he detected a smear of blood, some hairs. It was strange there were no kills. Had the vermin become wise to his precautions, or was the continuing hot weather responsible?
He mentioned it to Xanthe, who replied, ‘Are you complaining? I’d have thought you’d be glad to see the back of them.’
Again, that sharp tone, an implied criticism. ‘But they are not gone completely,’ Samuel said, ‘I hear them walking beneath the floor-boards at night. Don’t you?’
Xanthe shrugged. ‘I hear many strange things. This is an old house. What do you expect?’
Anger burned through him. He wanted to strike her. Relations between them were becoming more frequently tinged with what Samuel perceived as sniping comments, yet at the same time, he found his desire for Xanthe increased. His lovemaking became urgent and unsophisticated, although Xanthe remained unruffled by his lust. Samuel always felt drained and exhausted afterwards, usually falling into a deep sleep within minutes, while he suspected that Xanthe remained awake for hours. More often than not, he would wake in the morning with a pounding headache, as drained and groggy as if he had hardly slept. The heat was oppressive; he felt feel weak and sickly.
As the weeks of summer rolled on, it seemed that Xanthe’s initial interest in renovating the family pile had been short-lived. Hesta, no longer confined to scrubbing away the past in the house, was now Xanthe’s constant hand-maiden, sitting beside her in the herb garden, shelling peas for dinner, or skinning rabbits. Xanthe’s sole occupation was to lie in the sun, and when she entered the house at night, she seemed to burn with her own light. She and Hesta murmured together. Samuel could hear their soft tones in every corner of the garden, and occasionally a husky laugh. Hesta brought gifts for Xanthe from the farm, some of which were distinctly strange: a dish of goat’s milk, what appeared to be a withered umbilical cord, some dried poppy heads, a dead bird. Samuel supposed this was some traditional thing that once his mother must have enjoyed with the local women.
One day, in the kitchen, he said, ‘She seems to think you are a cat.’ He gestured at the milk Hesta had left out in a dish on the table.
‘No,’ said Xanthe emphatically, ‘she does not. The milk is for my hands and arms.’ She began to rub it into her dry skin.
‘But the other things...’ He wrinkled his nose in distaste.
Xanthe examined him blandly. ‘Alkanet root, poppy seeds, feathers? They are ingredients for a herbal concoction. I have trouble with my skin.’
Samuel shook his head. Xanthe increasingly unnerved him. She was attentive in their shared bed, but during the day seemed distant and indifferent. Also, Samuel noticed that she rarely seemed to drink. It was unnatural. As he watched her dipping her pointed fingers in the milk, he had to suppress a shudder. It was more than being unnerved; he felt a wave of revulsion.
Xanthe looked at him, alert, as if his mind was her garden in which to walk. She smiled at him, perhaps with a hint of cynicism. He felt dizzy; the heat was getting to him. There was so much to do, yet he had little energy. Xanthe had come into his domain and had made it hers. She had brought searing equatorial heat with her, and both he and his garden were withering in it. She will be the death of me, he thought.
That evening, Samuel wearily carried water to the Night’s Damozel’s bower. Her blooms reared into the darkness, releasing a drizzle of shimmering pollen. He held out his hands to it, let it run over the backs of his hands.
Xanthe left dust wherever she lay. In the mornings, their bed was full of it, a pollen of her own, faintly soapy against his fingers.
Groaning, Samuel threw himself into the lap of the Damozel’s leaves. ‘Help me,’ he said. ‘I am invaded!’
The Damozel could not speak. She only gave him visions.
As the pollen settled over him, seeped down into his lungs and melted through the pores of his skin, he saw Xanthe stealing through the house at noon, when all was still and drenched in heat. He saw her stoop over the rat traps and take the soft corpses from them. He saw her eat. In his stupor, his stomach roiled. She had what she wanted: this house, these gardens. She would turn them into a barren desert where her unnatural hunger for heat could be indulged. She was a witch who influenced the weather, killing all that he held dear. Hesta was her creature now; bewitched and pliant. What a fool he had been.
The blooms above him looked like fairy faces. He fancied he could almost see thin lips mouthing silent words. ‘Listen, my beloved, listen...’
Later, Samuel crept in from the garden, and went to the room where his wife lay slumbering. He stared at her for a few moments, noticing the faintly luminous sparkle on her skin, which might be an effect of the oils she used. He dreaded the powdery touch of her flesh against his own, yet when he slid beneath the covers beside her still form, he could do nothing but take her in his arms, inhale her strong, musky scent. She had that power over him. He resented it. Do not think. Act now or it will be too late. Carefully, he rolled her onto her back. She made a small sound, but did not wake. Her lips were slightly parted.
Samuel dribbled a shining stream of motes down into Xanthe’s mouth. The Damozel’s pollen could be rubbed into the skin, inhaled or ingested, the latter being the most effective method. The gate of dreams or the portal of death: only long acquaintance with the lady made that distinction. A dust glistened faintly at the corners of Xanthe’s lips; Samuel covered them with his own, her body with his.
The funeral cortege milled around the front of the house. There was Sythia, imported from her summer home of Mewt, holding a scrap of black lace to her eyes. She was surrounded by others of her tribe, profligates, counts and divas, debutantes, artists and concubines. The majority of them had been summering at Sythia’s estate, and once the news of the death had arrived by swift courier, the group had flocked to accept the invitation to the funeral. They were a mass of tall, nodding feathers and rustling costumes of black silk. Jetty horses stamped and snorted before the hearse, tossing their girlish manes, their hooves polished to a sheen. The day should have been overcast and grey, the trees weeping tears of rain. Clouds should have occluded the sun. The brightness and heat of late summer seemed an affront to the occasion, and several ladies were already feeling weak in their tight stays.
Sythia spotted a tall figure emerging from the shadows of the hall and swept up the worn front steps. ‘Oh, but I shall ride with you in the foremost carriage. What a distressing time, for you, dear heart. How terrible. How cruel.’
Xanthe paused to pull on a skin-tight pair of black gloves. She inclined her head coolly. ‘I shall be grateful for your company, Sythia.’
Together, the women descended the steps, and the mourners drew apart to give them passage.
On the boat over, one of Sythia’s friends had divulged an alarming revelation. Although information concerning Xanthe was scant in Mewt, the informant had discovered that Samuel’s death occasioned the fourth time Xanthe had been widowed. ‘It seems, my dear,’ the confidant had said dryly, ‘that the lady has a distressing propensity for losing husbands.’ r />
‘Sad coincidences,’ Sythia had said coldly, for she admired Xanthe greatly.
‘Perhaps so,’ the companion had continued, ‘but this is certainly the shortest marriage of her history. The other three husbands at least survived the wedding for several years.’
‘You should not say such things,’ Sythia had retorted. ‘That is how ugly rumours start.’
Her friend had raised an eyebrow. ‘But I heard this from the second cousin of her last husband, who was Cossic. What do you think the talk of the coast is at present? There were rumours already. Some have said that Samuel had the spectre of death at his shoulder even as he spoke his marriage vows.’
‘I won’t countenance this nonsense,’ Sythia had said. ‘Xanthe is a lovely woman. She comes from a rich family, and lacks for nothing.’
Now, as she climbed into the sombre carriage, with Xanthe so self-possessed beside her, suspicions flitted across Sythia’s mind. The widow seemed very little marked by grief. Her eyes were clear, her face set in its usual enigmatic expression. ‘It was very thoughtful of you to wait so long for the interment, my dear,’ Sythia said. ‘This heat…’
Xanthe flicked her a glance. ‘Poor Samuel has no family. It was the least I could do to gather his friends for this occasion.’
‘But three weeks…’
‘The coffin is sealed,’ Xanthe said. ‘And we have stored him in the cellars, which are cool.’
Sythia shuddered. The frank details seemed indelicate. ‘Of course, we came as soon as we could.’
Xanthe patted Sythia’s hand. ‘I know. Please don’t trouble yourself.’
Sythia paused for a moment, then said, ‘The contents of your message were scant. How exactly did Samuel die?’
Xanthe closed her eyes for a moment, the first signal Sythia had seen that the widow suffered any twinge of emotion. ‘This may be distressing for you to hear,’ she said, ‘but the truth is, Samuel has long been addicted to intoxicants extracted from certain exotic plants he grew at the estate. I’m afraid he poisoned himself unwittingly.’ She seemed to sense her companion’s troubled thoughts and fixed her with a guileless stare. ‘The family doctor from the town has identified the plant responsible, and we made upsetting discoveries in my husband’s study - equipment to distil the essence of the plant, and so on.’