“No,” he said quietly. “Look at me. It can’t go on, Catherine. We’ve been friends too long for you to hold me in such aversion.”
“I … don’t hold you in aversion.” She slowly turned her gaze to meet his own. Straight and golden and bronze, in his way he was as beautiful as the fields of flowers beyond the window. So beautiful. The color flew to her cheeks. “I don’t remember any of it,” she whispered. “You’d think I’d never be able to forget a place as beautiful as Vasaro, wouldn’t you? Those fields of flowers are—”
“Catherine, you’ve been avoiding speaking to me for the entire journey. Will you not let me beg your forgiveness? I know what I did was unpardonable.”
“Please, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Then we’ll speak no more but will you let me help—show you Vasaro? It belongs to you now, but I love it too.”
All this beauty belonged to her. She gazed out of the window and felt again that stirring of excitement mixed with something else too evanescent to define.
This was her property, her land. Her mother had been the mistress of Vasaro and her mother’s mother before her. They had beheld this glory, wandered in those fields, and spent their years helping it to flourish. Now she was there to take her place in caring for the blossoms of Vasaro.
“Catherine?”
She gazed at him absently. “If it’s time to harvest, why are there no pickers in the fields?”
A slow smile broke over his face. “They’ve gone back to their village. It’s over that far hill.” He gestured toward a rolling hill to the west of the manor. “It’s late in the afternoon and it’s always best to pick flowers early in the morning, when the scent is the strongest. They usually start picking at dawn and continue until just after noon.”
“Oh.” She looked out into the fields again. “Everything is blooming. In Paris the flowers will die soon.”
“Here, the climate is such that there are always blossoms. Not the same ones, of course. There’s a season for every variety.”
“And we grow them all?”
“Almost. Vasaro has the most fertile ground on the coast, and it extends for miles.”
“I see.” Catherine leaned back in the carriage and breathed deeply. Fresh-turned earth and the heady scent of geraniums and lavender drifted to her in an intoxicating cloud. “I don’t see how the scent can be any stronger than this.”
“At dawn. You should smell it at dawn.”
“Should I?” She gazed out the window again and the stirring came again, stronger this time. Her land. Vasaro.
The carriage stopped at the house.
“This is Manon, Catherine.” Philippe gave his hat and gloves to the plump, smiling woman who met them in the flagstoned hall. “We also have three other maids and two cooks besides the stable workers, but Manon has been here supervising the running of the house ever since I first came to Vasaro.”
Manon murmured a low greeting and curtsied to Catherine.
“She’ll show you to your chamber.” Philippe took Catherine’s hand and raised it to his lips. “Until supper.”
Catherine nodded and followed the servant up the stairs and down the hall. She had no memory at all of this house, and yet she was beginning to feel a growing serenity, a sense of coming home.
Manon opened the door and preceded her into the bedchamber. The room was filled with sunshine, not only the light pouring through the long casement windows across the room but in color. The Aubusson rug spilling across the shining oak floor was patterned with delicate ivory flowers on a green background and the bed and wall hangings were also ivory with a lemon-yellow border. Yellow cushions graced both the window seat and the armchair at the elegant rosewood desk across the room.
“I’ll unpack as soon as your bags are brought up, Mademoiselle.” Manon strode briskly across the room and threw open the casement windows.
Scent again. Overpowering fragrance swept into the room.
“Monsieur Philippe always dresses for dinner whether he has guests or not,” Manon said. “Shall I send Bettine to help you with your bath and dress your hair?”
“Yes, if you please.” Catherine moved slowly across the room to stand before the window. The breeze blew gently, lifting the tendrils of hair that had escaped the confinement of her bun. Stretched before her were fields of flowers, groves of lime and lemon trees, a vineyard nestled beneath a far hill, and in the distance a glimpse of steep, jagged mountains.
“Is the scent too strong?” Manon asked anxiously. “We who live here hardly notice it, but visitors claim it makes their heads ache. I could close the window.”
“No, don’t close it.” As she looked down at the fields of flowers that seemed to stretch into forever, Catherine again had the strong feeling of homecoming. “I’m not a visitor. I belong here. I … like the scent.”
“No!”
Catherine sat bolt upright in the darkness.
She was trembling, sweating. The tomb. No faces.
She was alone.
Dear God, where was Juliette? Juliette had left her alone with the nightmares. Alone with the fear that swelled her heart until she thought it would choke her and churned the black bile into her throat.
She wrapped her arms around herself, panting, trying to shut out the sounds of the tomb. The men’s guttural laughter, the tear of fabric, the sound of her own moans.
Bells.
No, that was wrong. There weren’t any bells in the tomb.
But there were bells here, fragile silvery threads of sound coming from beyond the open window across the room.
She slowly swung her feet to the floor, stood up, and crossed to look out the window.
A column of men, women, and children straggled down the road, coming from the direction Philippe had indicated as the workers’ village.
The first light of dawn broke over the distant field, torching the orange-red blossoms with fire as she threw the casement window open wider and knelt on the cushioned window seat. She gazed curiously at the small throng of people walking down the road. Men and women dressed in coarse clothing and wooden shoes, the women with braided hair or heads covered with shawls or scarves.
Catherine hadn’t expected to see the children. Children of all ages staggered sleepily in the wake of the grown-ups, the smallest clinging to their mothers’ skirts or carried in their arms.
The pickers followed a cart drawn by two shaggy horses, and as the animals tossed their heads, Catherine heard again those silvery bells fixed to their harnesses. The driver of the cart stopped before a field of geraniums and the throng following him grabbed their large woven baskets from the cart and flowed leisurely into the field. She could catch the sound of laughter and chatter carried on the clear morning air, the scent of the flowers beckoned with irresistible allure.
Catherine turned dreamily away from the window and began to dress.
A short time later she was standing on the small hill overlooking the geranium field. The scent was almost dizzying. She watched the pickers pluck the dew-covered blossoms and toss them into their baskets. Babies were now tottering among the rows of flowers or lying in their own baskets while the older children picked the blossoms with the same amazing speed as their parents.
All except one child. A small boy slightly apart from the rest of the pickers had paused and was staring at her as intently as she was staring at the field below. The boy was no more than nine or ten, with tousled curly black hair, and winged black brows, dressed in a coarse blue shirt and ragged trousers.
She glanced away from him and drew her shawl closer about her as she sat down on the dew-wet grass of the hillock. She was soon absorbed in watching them pick and then throw, pick and throw. Why, there was a curious rhythm to their movements, as if they were moving to the beat of a drum only they could hear. She found herself unconsciously straining to hear the—
“Hello. I’m Michel. Who are you?”
She turned her head to see the curly-haired boy who had been wat
ching her from the field. His face was too thin to qualify him as a beautiful child. His skin was browned to the color of sandstone, and his eyes were the clearest blue she had ever seen. He gazed at her with a gravity that was curiously unchildlike.
“My name is Catherine.”
“You’re new here.” His face lit with a smile of unusual sweetness. “Would you like to pick with me today?”
She was startled. “I wasn’t thinking of picking the flowers. I’m here to watch.”
“You should come down to the field. It will help you. The rhythm is very good today.”
Her gaze flew to his face. Rhythm? It was almost as if he had read her mind. “What do you mean?”
He knelt beside her and dug his hand into the earth. “Here, feel it. Put your hand here.”
Bemusedly, she put her palm on the earth.
“Do you feel it?”
“What am I supposed to feel?”
“The earth sighing, trembling, giving up its soul.”
“Soul?”
“The flowers. Everything has a soul, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know. Is that what the priests told you?”
He shook his head. “But I know. Can you feel it?”
She did feel a stirring beneath her palm, but it surely must have come from the breeze disturbing the grasses, their roots slightly moving in the soil. “I don’t think so.”
He frowned in disappointment. “I thought you might be one of the ones who felt it right away. Don’t worry, you’ll feel it later.”
He was so earnest she found herself smiling at him. “You’re so sure that—”
“Run away, Michel.”
She looked around to see Philippe dismounting from a chestnut horse a few yards away. She had never seen him dressed so simply in worn brown knee-boots, dark trousers, and a linen shirt unbuttoned at the top to reveal his strong brown throat.
Michel nodded in acknowledgment, but his gaze never left Catherine’s face. “You should come with me now. We can pick together.”
Philippe smiled indulgently at the child. “This is the mistress of Vasaro, Michel. She won’t be picking the blossoms.”
Michel turned to Catherine. “Are you sure? I think you’d like it.”
“She’s sure. Go back to the field, Michel.”
The child hesitated, smiled again, and then was running down the hill. As he reached the field, he was met by smiles and laughing remarks, drawn lovingly into the crowd of pickers.
“I was worried when Manon told me you’d left the house so early,” Philippe said. “You should have told me you wanted to come to the fields this morning.”
“I didn’t know I did. I was standing at the window this morning and saw the workers going down the road.…” Her gaze was on Michel, who was picking the blossoms with a dexterity that astonished her. “Is he the son of one of those women?”
“Michel?” Philippe shook his head. “He belongs to no one. He was found almost dead by the overseer in one of the rose fields when he was only a day or so old. Evidently, his mother was a picker who gave birth to him in the field and just left him there.”
“But how could she do such a thing?” Catherine asked, shocked. “A baby …”
“Babies aren’t always wanted. The woman probably had no husband.” Philippe glanced back at the field. “We think the mother was one of the pickers from Italy. There was a woman big with child who disappeared about the time the baby was found.”
“And she never came back?”
He shook his head. “Never.”
“Poor boy.” Her gaze went back to Michel. “But he seems very happy.”
“Why shouldn’t he be happy? He has everything he needs. He chooses which family he’ll live with every season and I give the picker an extra allowance for his food and lodging.”
“That’s kind of you.”
“Part of managing Vasaro is providing for its workers. It doesn’t cost the property a great deal and Michel works as hard as the other pickers.”
“Shouldn’t he be given schooling?”
“I sent him to the priest to learn his letters, but he refused to go back after a few lessons. He’s happier in the fields anyway. He’s a little simple.”
Her eyes widened. “Nothing seemed wrong with him to me.”
Philippe shrugged. “He’s not like the other children. Perhaps he was damaged from lying in the field exposed to the weather those two days. You’ll see, if you get to know him. He doesn’t think like anyone else.”
“Working in the fields seems a hard life for a child.”
“All the children work. Besides, Michel likes it and doesn’t work only in the fields. Sometimes I let him work with the pomades and the essences. Someday he may be of real use to us. I think he has a nose.”
“Of course he does.”
Philippe chuckled. “No, I mean a nose for scents. Very few people can distinguish precise ingredients in a perfume and how they should be blended to make new scents. It takes a sensitive nose and a certain instinct.” He grimaced. “Unfortunately, I have neither. Thank God, a gentleman has no need for them.”
“But the boy has this talent?”
“Augustine thinks he does. Augustine’s our master perfumer here at Vasaro.”
“We make perfumes as well as grow the flowers?”
“Recently we started to create our own scents. Why should the perfumers in Paris reap all the fattest profits?”
She turned to look at him. His expression was more enthusiastic than she had ever seen it. “That was very enterprising of you.”
“I love Vasaro,” he said simply. “I want it to continue to prosper.” He swung up on the horse. “So I’d better be checking on the pickers in the south field. May I escort you back to the house first? You should have your breakfast.”
She shook her head. Her gaze returned to the pickers. “I want to stay and watch a little while longer.”
He hesitated. “You’re sure that—” He stopped, his gaze on her absorbed face. “Eh bien, I’ll come back and fetch you after the morning’s work.” He turned the horse and trotted down the hill toward the road.
Catherine scarcely realized he was gone as she watched the rhythm of the pickers as they plucked the blossoms and tossed them into the baskets. Some of the baskets were full now, and the men were carrying them to the waiting cart and dumping them in large casks on the bed of the cart. Then they returned to the field and the rhythm resumed.
“Catherine!”
It was the child, Michel, waving at her from the field, his tanned face alight with laughter, his eyes squinting against the sunlight. She lifted her hand and waved in return.
He was motioning to her. He wanted her to come down to the field.
She hesitated and then shook her head.
Disappointment clouded his face and Catherine felt a sudden twinge of remorse. What difference did it make if she was the mistress of Vasaro? She jumped to her feet and was halfway down the hill before she had realized she was heading toward the boy. She reached the road, crossed it, and started winding her way through the plants, smiling shyly at the workers who stared at her with an uncertainty equal to her own. She came to the row where Michel was standing.
“You wished to speak to me?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Watch, I’ll show you how it’s done and then you can do it.” He bent down and started to pluck the geraniums again.
“I don’t want to—” She did want to pick the flowers, she suddenly realized. She wanted to be a part of the rhythm that united the pickers with the plants, to know how the dew-wet blossoms felt in her fingers. She wanted to be a part of Vasaro.
That was why she had been drawn from the house to the field that morning. She had not realized her purpose, but somehow the child had known.
“Tomorrow you must wear a hat. You’re not as brown as the other women, so you’ll burn.” Michel didn’t look at her as he quickly plucked the blossoms. “And wooden shoes are best. There?
??s much mud from the dew in the morning. You’ll remember?”
“I’ll remember.” She watched him closely and then began to clumsily pluck the blossoms and toss them into his basket. She was slow at first, but she found the occupation ambivalently both soothing and exhilarating. The work itself was mindless labor and yet the scent of the earth and flowers, the sun warming her skin, the rush of blood through her veins, and the unaccustomed exercise turned her warm and breathless. She didn’t know how long she worked beside Michel, but the basket was filled to overflowing with the orange-red geraniums, emptied into the cart and filled again, emptied and filled.
Michel worked in companionable silence beside her, his fingers like the beaks of small birds biting the blossoms from the stems.
She moved down the row to another plant and reached out to find the first flower.
“No.” Michel’s callused hand abruptly covered her own. “It’s enough. It’s time for you to leave now.”
She looked at him in surprise.
“The sun’s high now and you’re beginning to grow very weary.”
“No, I feel fine.”
“It’s time for you to go.” His smile touched his face with a special radiance. “You can come back tomorrow. It’s a big field and we won’t finish today.”
“But I want to stay.”
“You’ve already taken what you need from them.”
Her brow furrowed in puzzlement. “What?”
“You needed the flowers but you’re at peace now. You mustn’t take too much or the healing will go away. There’s a …” He frowned, searching for a word. “Balance.”
“Healing?”
He started to pick the geraniums. “Come back tomorrow, Catherine.”
She stood staring at him for a moment, uncertain what to do. His words were strange, but they struck a note of rightness deep within her. She turned and walked down the row of denuded plants and then up the hill toward the manor house.
Catherine returned to the geranium field the next day and the day after that. On the fourth day the pickers moved to the field of pink bois de roses and Catherine moved with them. With every day she grew stronger, the rhythm of the work became clearer to her, more serene and better defined. On the fifth day Michel let her stay with the pickers until their workday was ended in the mid-afternoon. Pride and contentment filled her as she and Michel followed the pickers from the field.