Serpent in the Garden (5 page)

Recently several of Herbert’s acquaintances had remarked that he had grown perhaps a little less placid, a little more taciturn, a little quicker to growl. And now Joshua observed his legs twitch, his arms flinch; his belly rumbled audibly. Standing still for an hour had clearly become uncomfortable. Herbert pointedly remarked that when he sat for Sir Joshua Reynolds, it had been for a trio of half-hour sittings.

When Herbert’s oblique request for some respite failed to draw Joshua’s notice, he approached the subject more directly. “Upon my word, Mr. Pope, I find my legs grow uncommonly heavy. I will pause for a few minutes, sir, before resuming.”

Joshua was just then at a delicate stage, concentrating on Herbert’s chin. Leaning close to the canvas, he painted on without pause.

Herbert spoke again, this time more fiercely. “I say, Pope, sir, did you not hear me? I said I must halt this instant. I am grown extremely uncomfortable.” He began to work his stiffened jaw and stamp his boots upon the platform, as much to attract Joshua’s attention as to relieve the tingling discomfort in his feet.

When the sound of Herbert’s feet grew into a thumping crescendo Joshua shook his head and flickered his eyelids as if rousing himself from a trance. He cast a rueful look at the canvas before glancing at the clock.

“Forgive me, Mr. Bentnick,” he said with a preoccupied smile. “I had quite forgot the time. We should have ceased half an hour ago; I ought to have given you some intermission from the discomfort of standing. My profound apologies, sir. How could I be so thoughtless? How have you endured it so long and so patiently? Do sit down, I beg of you.”

Herbert sat down slowly, holding up his palm to indicate Joshua was to chastise himself no further. Still Joshua felt himself blush, for he saw he shouldn’t have made Herbert stand so long. He was ashamed at his self-centeredness.

Joshua removed his smock, smoothed his embroidered waistcoat, and adjusted his cravat. He pulled back the curtain—it was a habit of his to work with it partially drawn to give the half-light he required. Sun streamed into the room, and they blinked at the prospect before them. And what a prospect it was!

ASTLEY HOUSE, Richmond, the seat of the Bentnick family, was a wide red-bricked and flat-fronted mansion, with porticoed entrance and eight large sash windows in its main façade. It had been built a half century earlier by Herbert’s grandfather Horace Bentnick, a seafaring merchant who had prospered spectacularly from sugar plantations acquired at a lucky hand at whist.

As a memorial to mankind’s enduring desire for sweetness, and the wisdom of occasionally throwing caution to the wind and putting everything on a pair of queens, Horace razed the medieval Astley of his ancestors and replaced it with a stylish grander version, complete with splendid greenhouse, which afforded a magnificent prospect of the river Thames and the purple undulations of the royal park and countryside of Surrey beyond.

When Herbert Bentnick inherited the property, he had been determined to set his own stamp upon the place. His interest in horticulture had been nurtured when his grandfather had given him a handful of orange pips with the instruction to see what happened if he planted them. Some of the seeds grew and bore fruit. Herbert became a compulsive collector of exotic plants and trees, with a weakness for foreign novelties, which he bought from local nurserymen.

He spent a considerable sum of money and much of his time making Astley’s gardens and parklands among the most alluring in the region. He commissioned the master of all landscape gardeners, Mr. Lancelot Brown, to enhance Astley’s natural beauties. Brown’s design was for a serpentine lake with an island in its midst and cascades and a grotto at one end, where once only swampy fields and rocky wastes had been. Dotted about parkland of nine miles’ compass were ponds of carp, enclosures for fowl, walks lined with lime and elm. Lawns were cleared and scythed, copses of native trees planted, vistas opened up and punctuated with a scattering of architectural delights—a Palladian bridge, a fountain of Neptune, a temple to Diana, a Gothic ruin, an octagonal pump room, and an obelisk. Of his grandfather’s gardens, only the parterres surrounding the house remained untouched—those and the conservatory, for what improvement could any man make to such a palace of plants?

HERBERT and Joshua thus surveyed an Arcadian prospect: the green parklands, the lakes, the temples and vistas of Astley. To one side lay the kitchen gardens. Against high brick walls, fans of espaliered apricot, peach, quince, medlar, and other fruit trees were currently in bloom. In the center, parterres laid out in a complex geometrical design were filled with flowers interspersed with fruit and vegetables. Beyond rose the cupola roof of the pinery, one half of which had lately been given over to the growing of Sabine Mercier’s pineapples.

“The scene is as fine today as I have ever seen it,” said Herbert, amiable once more now that he was no longer standing still.

Joshua nodded. “Is not nature prodigal? What a legacy you have here, sir. More splendid gardens I have never seen. Now that we are finished, and since the day is so remarkably clement, I intend to take my pocket book and begin my sketches outdoors.”

“An excellent plan, Mr. Pope! And if I were any use with a crayon I would join you on such a delightful day. Perhaps I might assist by pointing out some of the choicest places?”

Joshua welcomed this offer and Herbert began describing their whereabouts. He was just getting into his stride when Sabine appeared in the vista before them and Herbert fell abruptly silent.

They watched her emerge from the side gate and stride along the gravel path in the direction of the hothouses and the pinery at the far end. From this distance she was a tiny figure shrouded in a billowing cloak, poised and elegant.

An instant later Sabine disappeared from view. Herbert swiftly resumed his drift. There was a sunken garden with a sundial that Joshua should not ignore; beyond it, in the middle of a rose garden, lay a delightful fountain in the form of a cupid, which many found most enchanting. Scarcely had he begun to give Joshua directions to these attractions when the discourse was once more interrupted.

Minutes after she had disappeared into the pinery, Sabine rushed out again. Judging by the speed of her exit, all the monsters of Hades might have been snapping at her heels. Even at this distance Sabine’s strange gestures and demeanor told them something was dreadfully amiss. Together they watched in astonishment as she threw back her head, like a soul in torment, and let out a fearful scream.

T
HE SINGULAR circumstances of Herbert Bentnick and Sabine Mercier’s betrothal had become the subject for much tittle-tattle among the polite circles of Richmond.

Until she arrived in England three months earlier, Sabine had lived most of her life on the West Indian island of Barbados. She inherited her fascination with plants from her father, a naval physician of Huguenot descent, who, drawn to the medicinal properties of foreign species, had gathered seeds and saplings throughout his working career and settled in Antigua to nurture them. He had married a coffee-complexioned girl who spawned two children. The elder child, a son, followed his father into the navy, rising to become the master of a frigate. Sabine had inherited her mother’s sable eyes, honey-colored skin, and pleasant demeanor, and, it later transpired, her father’s fascination with the world of botany.

Sabine’s passion for horticulture (one cannot call it a hobby, for it was more absorbing than that) flourished after the death of her second husband, Charles Mercier. She had inherited a comfortable house on an agreeable hillside overlooking the port of Bridgetown, and with it came ten hectares of land. Charles Mercier had been a shipping clerk, a man of good sense and frugal habits, who wanted no more than to provide for his family’s modest comfort and, in order to do so, invested every spare penny of income in order to make more. During his lifetime the garden had been a narrow strip leading to the door, within which a few necessary culinary plants and trees supplied the table. The remaining land was planted up with sugarcane that provided useful additional income. After her husband’s death, Sabine removed the cane and invested most of Charles’s savings and her energies into cultivating the ground. She employed an Irish dockworker and trained him as her gardener; she bought several slaves to work under him. She practised the art of propagation and cultivation of every tropical plant she could find, using the knowledge she had gleaned from her father. She learned how to multiply her plants, how to grow cuttings and slips in moist shaded places, how to make layers by cutting through a joint and bowing a branch into the soil with a peg, how to collect seeds from the most vigorous stems.

Thus the brilliance and beauty of Sabine’s gardens were increased. Frangipani, banana, lemon and orange trees, and jacaranda flourished in her care. Orchids bloomed for her as nowhere else on the island; arums and cannas burgeoned in unparalleled abundance. In an island famed for its profuse vegetation, Sabine’s garden became renowned as the most verdant and luxuriant, and she became a feted connoisseur on the subject.

It was occasionally the habit of conscientious and intrepid British plantation owners to inspect their lands. For many of these gentlemen visitors, this was the first journey to such foreign parts. When the boat drew close to shore and they glimpsed the terrain for the first time, they were frequently overwhelmed. The climate affected them most forcefully. It was rarely temperate; indeed, it was often excessively rainy or searingly hot. Either they were drenched to the skin by downpours or their fine woollen dress coats were soaked in sweat.

Yet they were struck by the richness of the surroundings. Such luxuriance, such abundance, such handsome buildings! There was scarcely a foot of land on Barbados that was not cultivated. Frequently they remarked their interest to the host at their lodging house, whereupon Sabine Mercier’s name might be mentioned. Anyone drawn by the natural curiosities and wonders of the island could not miss a visit to her garden.

Sabine gladly permitted visitors with the right introduction entry to her domain. Her gardener was a willing and informative escort. Moreover, during the tour visitors might encounter the chatelaine herself. They had only to express admiration for her achievements and reveal a passable knowledge of horticulture, and she would talk energetically on the most worthwhile way to grow custard apples, avocado pears, ginger, pawpaw, calabash, pineapples—in short, any tropical horticultural subject that the visitor cared to name.

For gentlemen plantation owners so far from the comforts of home and hearth, to be tutored in a fascinating subject by a lady of bewitching eyes and generous disposition held understandable appeal. Not only did she welcome visitors in her garden, but she bestowed farewell gifts of leaves and branches and seeds, and instructions on their cultivation. Thus beguiled, they took up correspondence with her, and from these exchanges more introductions were made, more callers came, and her reputation burgeoned like an extravagant tropical bloom.

SO IT WAS that the horticulturally enthusiastic Herbert Bentnick, visiting Barbados to view the sugar plantations that were the source of his inherited wealth, made the acquaintance of Sabine Mercier. And she, with customary hospitality, invited him to view her gardens. Unusually for those times, Herbert’s wife, Jane, had accompanied him. She was a woman of bright intellect who was also curious to view the gardens that were deemed an earthly paradise, and to meet their illustrious creator.