“You know perfectly well what I mean ...you made the flowers in the painting move, didn’t you?”
“So what if I did?” She wasn’t admitting anything.
“Do it again. Please.” The effect had been entrancing.
She leaned forward and breathed gently across the surface of his painting. Once again the petals and leaves on the painted wreath moved as if stirred by an errant breeze.
Hamish was dumbfounded for a moment ...then, “Wow, you’d be an instant success in the art world. Just imagine ...Monet’s garden paintings ...or Van Gogh’s Cornfield ... if you breathed on them they’d give the paintings a whole new life!”
“I can hardly wait,” Liana retorted dryly. “Spending eternity puffing on paintings for people...”
“Hmmm ...I see what you mean,” Hamish agreed. “Still, it’s a pretty good party trick.” he paused, then, “If you don’t mind me asking, what else can you do?”
“You’ve seen most of it, ...I don’t do tricks,” she sighed resignedly, “well, since you ask,...there is this,...” as she was talking she slowly faded from his sight, reminding him of their encounter of several weeks before in the dovecote. ....if it hadn’t been for the sound of her voice emanating from the same spot where she had been standing moments before, he wouldn’t have known where she’d gone. She stopped speaking for a moment, and when she reappeared, she was some distance away, sitting on the doorstep to the house. “Very useful for evading unwanted attention,” she said dryly, when she came fully back into his view, “and for creeping around undetected,” she added. As he’d already experienced how good she was at that, Hamish was inclined to agree.
“How do you do it though?” He was curious to know.
“I don’t disappear into thin air, if that’s what you’re thinking ...I’m just exceptionally good at disguising myself. She got up and walked over until she was standing directly in front of him, then spun slowly as she faded from view. Chattily, her voice continued, as if she was still visible, “I’m still right here in front of you ...but you mortals have a tendency to see only what you expect to see. You need to look more carefully ...and think, camouflage. It’s more of a disguise than anything magical…”
Hamish strained his eyes towards the sound of her voice, but still could not make out any visible form. “Here, put your hand out and I’ll show you,” her disembodied voice said. He did as she had suggested, starting slightly when his hand touched warm flesh. “Watch it there, you nearly poked out my eye!” she remonstrated, then, as he moved his hand over her cheek and down the line of her neck, “That’s quite far enough, I think. Now, watch carefully.” Yes, he could see, faintly, the outline of her head and neck, but the rest was like some three-dimensional painting that blended seamlessly with the background of the house and shrubs.
“And you can do that so it’s a perfect camouflage from any angle?” he asked, walking carefully around where he surmised she was standing, his hand gently circling her neck as he moved. Try as he might, he still wasn’t able to make out any more than the faint outline she had allowed him to see.
“Hmmm,” he was back to where he had started. She reformed into a solid shape, lightly batting away his hand.
“An even better party trick.” He tried for nonchalance but was mightily impressed. “Is there anything more?”
“Just the flowers,” she said, moving over to a rather untidy-looking shrub. It was taller than her and leafless, but Hamish could see buds that would soon form leaves and flowers, so he knew it wasn’t dead but deciduous. She put her hands on the bare stems and began whispering words that were too low for Hamish to hear. As she continued to speak, heart-shaped leaves on one of the branches started to unfurl, then the unmistakeable pyramidal flowers of a lilac formed with a speed that Hamish would not have believed if he hadn’t been watching it with his own eyes. Before he could react, she had clipped the small branch and carried it over to him. “It’s too early in the season to ask more of the lilac right now, but it has been kind enough to offer us this.” She handed him the branchlet, which was adrift with fresh green leaves and delicate powerfully scented claret-mauve coloured flowers.
“What was that you were saying? Were you chanting a spell to make it flower?” he asked.
“Not at all!” she replied, seemingly affronted by his assumption. “What do you take me for? Are you saying that I’m some kind of witch? I am not, and never have been involved in witchcraft. What I do is no more magic than the first new flowers of spring or the changing leaves in autumn. It is simply as I told you that day in the kitchen ...I ask politely, and the plants respond. We are, after all, both parts of the same creation and I am as much a part of this place as they are ...we understand each other.” She made it sound as if he, Hamish, was outside that understanding. “Mostly, I am here to help them ...I can heal their hurts when they are damaged, but if the hurt goes too far, I cannot bring them back from the dead ... there is only one who can do that.” She turned away from him then, and ran her hands over a group of small plants that had been flattened and damaged by the snow. Under her ministrations they soon stood tall and plump, looking better than they had before the snow storms had hit.
“I’m sorry,” Hamish apologised, feeling that he was doing a lot of that where Liana was concerned. In future, he thought, he would try to would be more careful what he said to her. But, between her longevity and her special talents, she was so far outside his experience, that he had a feeling he would most likely get to apologise many more times before he got to know her well enough not to make, what she considered, were basic mistakes. Still, he thought, she could be a little more forgiving. And there was the matter of her longevity ...he would have to talk about that with her soon ... now, in fact. But how to broach the subject? He noticed her shiver, despite the jacket, “Time you were back in the warmth, I think. Are you hungry?” She nodded, “Good, in that case we’ll go and have brunch ....how does bacon and eggs sound to you? You must be ready for some solid food after all that watery broth that David and I have been spooning into you.”
“I’d like to meet this David,” she said, as they walked into the kitchen, “He seems to be privy to rather a lot of knowledge about me for someone to whom I haven’t yet been introduced. How do I know I can trust him?”
“Well, might it help if I were to tell you that his full title is Reverend Doctor David Cowley?” Hamish said while hunting for the frying pan in the pot cupboard before removing eggs and bacon from the refrigerator. “He’s the vicar over at Saint Michael’s at Thornden. And as for him being trustworthy ...would it be good enough if I said that I trust him? He helped a lot in that first week, since he knew that you possibly couldn’t be taken to hospital ...he spent hours sitting with you while I rested or painted. As far I know, he hasn’t told anyone else about you,...in fact, it was him that suggested we should keep quiet about your ...um ...origins. He’ll be very keen to meet you, as well, now that you’re up.”
“A Vicar? Well, if I can’t trust a man of God, then whom can I trust. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have doubted your judgement of him ...you have done nothing but good for me, and I had no right to question you.”
Perhaps he wasn’t the only one feeling that he was doing a lot of apologising, Hamish thought. “Forget it,” he said, “I imagine you’ve had to be careful in the past to who you told the truth about yourself.”
“I chose my friends carefully, and the garden tends to attract those who would wish me no harm,” she replied, “that’s all. I’ve never lied to anyone about myself. I’m too old for that ...I decided long ago that it was tedious pretending to be something I wasn’t.”
The aroma of frying bacon filled the kitchen. Hamish broke eggs into the pan before asking his next question. “What exactly is it that you are? Technically speaking, I mean …Are you a fairy? A sprite? A wood nymph? Or something else?”
“A wood nymph? Do I look like a nymph?” Her scathing tones spoke volumes.
“O.K., I’
m guessing, not a nymph?” He held the spatula up defensively, in front of his face, peering around one side of it. “But what’s so wrong with nymphs?’ He was curious enough to forget that he was asking about the character of creatures he had, until very recently, thought to be fictional. “I thought they were just beautiful woodland maidens.”
“If you’d ever met one, you wouldn’t need to ask that,” she replied. “They’re silly, vacuous, totally immoral creatures ...and as for maidens. Pah!” She made a derisive noise. “Just where did you think the word ‘nymphomaniac’ came from?”
“Yes. Well, I see your point. So …flower fairy?” Her regally elfin features and finely boned limbs did rather put him in mind of the Queen of the Meadows.
“That might be fine for Cicely Mary Barker ...but not for me.” She pointed over her shoulders with both forefingers, “See. No wings. Can’t fly.”
“Oops ...Slash through Fairy,” he made a sideways cutting motion with the spatula. “...We’re running out of options here ....there’s just ‘sprite’ left ...unless you’re something else.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint your need to classify me ... but I’m not exactly a sprite either. You said you spoke French ...well, ‘sprite’ is from the French ‘esprit’... spirit,...so you’re right back to elves, goblins, pixies and fairies with that idea. And don’t even try me with ‘naiads’ ...those watery wenches are even worse than the forest nymphs.”
“So. Scratch all known varieties of supernatural beings,” he was wishing, now, that he hadn’t started the conversation, and adopted a more placatory tone. “Still, It doesn’t really matter what you are I suppose ...it’s enough that you are you.”
“Yes …I’m me.” Her voice trembled with emotion as if she was trying to reassure herself of that. “My beginnings are lost in the mists of bygone times ...even I can’t remember back that far and it’s not as if there’s anyone around that I can ask. Well, no one that will tell me anything, anyway. I’m not supernatural. I’m not super-anything. I do what I do and I exist, that’s all. She shook her head as if to dispel her thoughts, abruptly changing the subject. “Are those eggs ready yet, I’m starving.”
After they had eaten ...three rashers of bacon, four eggs and toast in Liana’s case ...requiring Hamish to go back to the frying pan to cook more; he made tea for her and coffee for himself before bringing up David’s suggestion, not wanting to leave it any longer.
“Have you given any thought, Liana, as to why things have changed so much for you since you woke? He asked, as he placed the hot drinks on the table. Then, “Whoa ...you might want to ease up on the sugar there,” he exclaimed, as she spooned four heaped teaspoons of sugar into her cup.
“Why? Is it a problem?” she looked at him. “I told you I had a bit of a sweet tooth.”
“Well, if you want to keep any of those aforementioned sweet teeth, it might be,” he replied.
“But I’ve never had any problems with my teeth, see,” she pulled back her lips and tapped perfectly formed white teeth with one finger nail.
“Very nice, but I see major dental care looming if you don’t take better care of them from now on.”
“Why? What do you know that I don’t?”
“I’m not sure how to put this,...but David and I have developed a theory that goes like this, um,...well,... we think,.... that is, I think and David agrees,....that, um,...”
“Get on with it, please!” she thumped her tea mug down on the table with a force that resulting in the hot liquid spilling over the sides and onto her hand. “Ouch!” she pulled her fingers back to suck the scalded flesh, sounding surprised as much as hurt.
“Precisely my point,” Hamish expounded as he pulled her up out of the seat and led her to the sink, where he turned on the cold tap and held her hand under the flow of chilly water. When she tried to pull her hand away he held it tighter. “It needs to stay under there for a few minutes or you may blister from being scalded.”
Liana started to deny this but Hamish interjected, raising his voice to be heard over the noisy tap. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” At her puzzled frown, he explained “O.K. here it is. It’s possible ... No. ... Make that, more likely, probable ... that your immortality is on the wane ...on the way out, so to speak.” This last came out in a rush, his Scots accent even more pronounced than usual in his anxiety to get the words spoken. “Now, if my theory’s right ...if we hadn’t done something about that hand, pronto, you’d have ended up with a nasty burn.”
She looked at him, opened her mouth to say something but closed it again and didn’t speak for some time. There was a red mark already forming where the liquid had burnt her flesh. They didn’t continue the conversation until after she had pulled her hand from the cold flow, dabbed it dry on the hand towel and they’d both sat down again at the kitchen table.
“Well?” he prompted, wanting to know her thoughts on his idea. She sat, staring at her hand, turning it this way and that to look at the red weal left by the hot fluid.
“I’ve never been burnt by anything before,” she said, conversationally. “I only remembered what to do because I’ve spent so much time with mortals. I should make some calendula ointment ...that will help it heal.” She appeared to be talking more to herself than him now, staring off into space. “Nicholas burnt himself badly in the summer of 1760. It was around the time that all those poor Frenchmen were being held at Sissinghurst Manor …before they started calling it a castle, you know. The burns never really healed …they always marred his beautiful skin…”
“Liana,” Hamish felt he was losing her into the past and wanted her attention back in the here and now.
“Yes, I have heard what you said ...it’s alright; I’m not turning into a rambling lunatic ...yet.” She smiled slightly and refocused her gaze to look directly at Hamish. “I suppose it is one answer to explain all these changes ...though if it is, I hope I shall not be ill as violently as I’ve been in these past weeks.” She pursed her lips to look at him across the width of the table with a knowing stare, “And I suppose you have thought of some way to prove or disprove your theory?”
He played with a fork while marshalling his argument. “Well, actually, that’s what I was hoping to discuss with you. You told me you could never leave the garden, that it was the source of your immortality and that any time you tried to go far beyond its confines you felt weak.” He was attempting to sound upbeat but felt he was missing that by a country mile.
“…Weak?” she broke in, “That’s something of an understatement. Let’s see ...I vomit. I faint. I have convulsions. In short ...I become very very ill. You are not, are you, suggesting that I try out your theory by leaving the garden? Because I won’t! I haven’t attempted that for hundreds of years and I’m not about to start now!”
“So don’t you think it would be a great way to prove, conclusively, that you are now as mortal as the rest of us?” he countered.
“Are you not listening? The answer is no, No. Categorically NO!” She shouted, adamant.
“So you’ll think about it then?” he countered, thinking it best to completely ignore her outburst. “There’s no great rush, we can wait until the weather improves and maybe go and have a look at Sissinghurst Castle, since you mentioned it. It’s not that far away and you’ll find it’s altered a lot since those days you were talking of. The gardens are quite special.”
“You are quite impossible.”
“Possibly.” He grinned lopsidedly. “You’d be surprised how many people have told me that ...even in my relatively short lifetime.”
She did not look amused.
***
In the past weeks, since hearing of Liana’s illness, Jack had taken to listening in on every conversation that he could. This one was a winner! Finally he had found the means of ousting Liana from the Garden and taking his rightful place as guardian of the secrets that lay hidden within its boundaries. She was weak now –a mere shadow of the being she’d once been. He’d s
imply get her to leave.
One way or another she had to go.
For beauty with sorrow
Is a burden hard to be borne:
The evening light on the foam, and the swans, there;
That music, remote, forlorn.
Walter De La Mare
Chapter Sixteen
Given Liana’s negative reaction to leaving the garden, Hamish put the excursion to Sissinghurst on hold. As he had told her, there was no imminent need to try out his theory and besides, he wanted to give her time to recuperate fully before attempting anything that might place an added strain upon her fragile health. But he wasn’t going to let it go indefinitely ...she would, he thought, benefit from knowing whether she could now leave the confines of White Briars’ walls. Beautiful as it was, there was much more to the world than just this small part of Kent and for someone so long confined it surely couldn’t be a bad thing to get out now and again.
After an exhaustive internet search Hamish had come to the conclusion that Liana was closest to something between a flower-fairy and a sylph, an idea that he was careful not to share with her, well aware as he was by now that she did not appreciate his efforts at definition. He could understand her dislike of being categorised by mortals when all of the terminology for someone such as her had been fabricated in all probability long after her ‘birth’. Cicely Mary-Barkers flower fairies were relatively recent creatures of the preceding century and even the much older word Sylph had passed into general language as a term for spirits, elementals, or faeries of the air in the time of Alexander Pope. He had penned a poem, in which women who were full of spleen and vanity; turned into sylphs when they died because their spirits were too full of dark vapors to ascend to the skies, although the idea of Sylphs had originated with another man called Paracelsus. Born with the unlikely moniker of Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, Hamish thought it understandable that he’d wanted to change his name. Paracelsus had been a Swiss German Renaissance physician of the 15th and 16th centuries with interests in botany, alchemy, astrology, and the general occult. As a man of some learning he had shunned much of his own contemporaries’ thinking and was now generally lauded as the father of toxicology.
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