The Gardener (15 page)

“No! Wait!”

He paused at the desperate cry. She was pleating the folds of her dress between her fingers like a schoolgirl.

“I saw you, you know,” she said suddenly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I saw you planting the new flower bed. The courtyard looks ever so much nicer.”

He bowed. “Thank you, Miss Radstone.”

She edged toward him. “How ... how did you know moving the flowers would help? They're blooming so much better now.”

He couldn't help smiling a little. “The wall along the east side is in shadow all morning. You cannot plant living things just anywhere, you know; you must consider where they would do best. It was obvious those flowers never would thrive in that spot.”

She took another shy step forward. “You are so awfully clever. Henry says you can read. Mother gave me lessons before she died. I can read a few passages from the Bible and
The Pilgrim's Progress
, you know.”

“Is that so?” He tried to pretend interest, but in reality, he wanted nothing more than to go up to his room. Radstone had been working him like a slave all week, and exhaustion was weighting his eyelids. But of course, he could not leave until dismissed, although it was growing more and more difficult to remember that she was his superior in rank.

A sense of déja vu swept over him, of another time when he had yearned to leave his master's daughter’s presence but had been forced by convention to remain. Now it rankled more than ever to obey. The old habits he had grown up with were beginning to loosen, new rebellious instincts growing.

Miss Radstone met his eyes directly for the first time, and she took another step forward, so she was only an arm’s length away. “Tell me about yourself, Tom West. Where did you come from, what did you do before? I asked Father once, and all he said was that he had paid cash money for a good, strong pair of arms, and that was what he had got.” Her voice, improbably, took on a semblance of her father's rough tone, and she made a comical face. “He said that was all he needed or wanted to know. But I want to know more.”

Betty had asked something similar, Tom remembered. He answered the way he had before, somewhat gruffly. “I used to work in a big house in England. As a servant.”

“A big house?” Her eyes widened. “What do you mean? Isn't ours big?”

As with Betty, Tom fumbled for words to make her envision Blackgrave Manor. “It wasn't just a house. It was like a palace, with a hundred servants and dozens of out-buildings: stables, an aviary with peacocks and parrots, and a gatekeeper's cottage, finer than the house your father lives in.” For a moment he could almost see the estate spreading before his eyes, with the tall, stately poplars lining the gravel road leading up to the red-brick walls. “The windows of the manor were big enough to walk through. The master's wife dressed in satins and silks and wore a sapphire on her finger as big as a robin's egg.”

He saw from her eyes that she did not believe him, that he might as well have been reciting a fairy tale. It felt unreal to him as well, he realized, almost as if it was all a dream from which he had awoken into dreary reality.

“And the people?” She was humoring him. “What were they like?”

“The people?” He thought of the Marlowes' greed, their casual cruelties, all of them except young Sir Jonathan, who had been kind to him in an off-hand, careless way. His thoughts turned to the others: The lovely lady's maid Jenny, with her beauty and coldness; the old gardener Lemley, with his gruff warmth and courage; and the coarse-haired seamstress Rosie, with her lack of sentiment and unexpected kindness. “I suppose the people were about the same as here,” he said finally, surprising himself. “Good, bad, and both, all mixed together.”

“And the women...? Was there anyone special?”

“Please, Miss Radstone. I must go.” Although she had not dismissed him, he bowed before she could ask any more questions and started for the ladder that led to the loft. Her slender shape glimmered in the shadows below. He sensed her big, protruding eyes watching him, even after he was gone.

Chapter Thirteen

Several weeks later, Radstone called Tom to the low-ceilinged room in the house that served as his office.

“I have a letter that needs to be delivered to my solicitor,” he said, thrusting a folded piece of paper at Tom, its wax seal embossed with an embellished R. “I have written you a pass in case anyone questions you along the way.”

Tom tucked both documents carefully into his pocket, nodding. Without the pass, he might be taken for a runaway. The matter would be resolved soon enough, but the last thing he wanted was to attract attention lest someone traced him back to Blackgrave Manor, although that possibility seemed remoter every day.

“Where is Henry?” he asked curiously. Normally such tasks belonged to the hired man.

“He's at the dock picking up some supplies I ordered from England. A ship has just arrived from Bristol.” Radstone glanced up irritably. “Go along. It will take you an hour to walk to Providence and another back, and our orders are piling up.” He lowered his big head and continued to slowly scrawl numbers in a ledger, biting his lower lip like a man to whom arithmetic was a labor.

The day was hot. Dust from the road hung in the air and covered trees, grass, and houses like a shroud. Even so, Tom was happy to be outdoors. He rarely left the house since Henry usually was charged with all tasks that led away from the forge, and the rare freedom was a treat. He soon located the solicitor's office in the center of town, for the two-story red-brick building flaunted a shiny brass plaque that read, after he puzzled over it for a moment, “Atherton & Merkel, Attorneys at Law.”

Mr. Merkel was busy at his desk. When the man raised his head, Tom returned the mildly curious gaze, thinking the lawyer's broad, pale face and stocky build seemed familiar, but he could not place it.

“A letter, sir.” Tom held out the folded paper. “From Mr. Radstone.”

Merkel took and read it silently. When finished, he looked over the top of his brass spectacles. “You may tell Mr. Radstone the matter will be taken care of.”

“Thank you, sir.” Tom bowed and took a step toward the door.

“Wait a moment.”

Slowly, Tom turned back. The attorney was inspecting Tom again. A wave of apprehension ran through him, stiffening his spine. “Yes, sir?”

“What is your name?”

“Tom West. I am indentured to Mr. Radstone.”

The dark, intelligent eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Tom West? I remember you! I met you at the dock last year. You're the fellow who accompanied my mother-in-law from England.”

Tom found it difficult to mask his relief. Now he recalled the rotund figure with the beaver hat who had come with his family to take Mrs. Parker away. “Yes, sir,” he said with relief. The pressure in his chest decreased, making it easier to breathe. “I remember.”

The lawyer's face broke into an unexpected smile, altering the heavy, somber features. “And by gad, my mother-in-law remembers
you
. Mrs. Parker never stops talking about you, the young gentleman who saved her from a watery grave.” His smile broadened. “I say, my boy, she would be delighted to see you again. What luck that after all this time, you should walk into my office!” He rang a bell on his desk and a clerk appeared. “Mr. Farthington, go upstairs and tell Mrs. Parker we have an unexpected guest for dinner.”

“Yes, sir.” The clerk gave Tom a curious look and left.

Tom looked forward to meeting the old woman again. At the same time, he knew Mr. Radstone would be waiting for him. So far, he had avoided the beatings Henry had incurred, but he had no wish to risk his master's wrath by being late.

Mr. Merkel saw his hesitation, but was unexpectedly insistent. “Now, now, I will not hear of you refusing! My mother-in-law would never let me hear the end of it if I did not persuade you to sup with us.”

“But my master—” Tom began.

“Do not worry, we'll send you back in a hired carriage. You'll arrive home at the same time as if you'd walked.” Mr. Merkel stood determinedly. “If Radstone objects, I shall take it up with him myself.”

Tom felt a smile crease his cheeks. “Very well, sir. Thank you.”

The upstairs apartment was clean and comfortable, with high painted ceilings, large windows, and neat furnishings. Mrs. Parker, looking slightly plumper and grayer than he remembered, threw her arms around him with a delighted cry.

“I knew our paths would cross again!” She stood back and surveyed him. “America has been good for ye. Just feel those muscles! Ye've become a veritable ’Ercules! My granddaughters will fall madly in love with ye.”

He felt his ears redden. It appeared that the awkward gardener inside him hadn't entirely disappeared after all. “If you find me in good health, you can credit the Radstones' cook, Betty," he said stiffly. "You would like her. She’s a good woman, if a bit … formidable.”

Just then, a pink-cheeked young woman came up, holding a toddler on one hip and surrounded by children clinging to her skirts, and Mrs. Parker turned to her.

“Martha, dear, meet me traveling companion, Tom West. Did I not tell you ’e was as tall as Colossus, with the face of Apollo? You see, I did not exaggerate.”

Mrs. Merkel had her mother's frank, cornflower blue eyes. “You must forgive my mother,” she said, smiling at Tom. “She blurts out whatever is on her mind. I love her all the more for it, but I'm afraid there are some who find it discomforting.”

“There is nothing your mother could say that I would find out of place,” Tom said and realized it was true.

Someone had already set an extra plate for him, and he found himself seated elbow to elbow with Mrs. Parker's family as if he had been dining with them all his life. After Mr. Merkel had thoroughly blessed the food, they shared a plump roasted chicken and coarse bread washed down with ale, while Mrs. Parker boasted that her daughter had been giving her writing instructions, and she could now read her own letters.

Apparently she had told Mr. Merkel Tom had once been a gardener.

“A gardener, eh? Then it may interest you to know that, in my opinion,” the lawyer said, dabbing the corners of his mouth with a napkin, “the future consists of farming in the west.”

“Farming? In the west” Tom’s head came up sharply. “But I thought the land west of the Appalachians belonged to the Indians.” One of the customers at the forge had mentioned the fact, and it had stuck in the back of his brain. Mr. Radstone certainly never talked about such subjects. It was good to know things. One never knew when the information might come in handy.

Mr. Merkel waved his fork, blandly assuming that everyone at the table was as interested in the topic as he and Tom were. Looking around at the motley group of faces, young and old, male and female, Tom saw they all were watching Mr. Merkel with affection, as if used to coddling his passions. “Didn’t you know? A couple of years ago, the Northwest Ordinance officially opened the continent to settlement. All the land north of the Ohio River and all the way to the Mississippi River. If you’ve seen a map, you’ll understand how enormous that is.” He spread his hands wide apart, to illustrate. “Thousands and thousands of square miles of virgin land! Congress plans to divide it into three to five smaller territories which will eventually become a number of states.”

“States?
New
states? You mean, like Massachusetts, Rhode Island, or Virginia?” Tom was puzzled. Such an eventuality had never occurred to him.

Mr. Merkel nodded his dark head vigorously. “Why not? We already have sixteen, since adding Kentucky and Tennessee a few years ago. The government has now determined that when each new territory gains a population of 60,000, its residents may petition for statehood.”

“But why not just make the original states larger?” asked his oldest daughter, a girl of fourteen or fifteen with her father’s dark hair and her mother’s pink cheeks. “Why go to the trouble of creating new ones?”

Tom looked at her, surprised. Children at the dinner table were meant to be seen, not heard, and he expected a quick reprimand. But Mr. Merkel smiled and chucked her under the chin.

“An excellent question, my dear. Virginia and Massachusetts hoped to do just that, expanding their borders into the new territory. But President Jefferson has a different vision. Under his plan, as the nation grows, each new state will enter the Union with exactly the same rights and privileges as the original thirteen.”

Tom's mind returned to Mr. Merkel's first statement, the one that had struck him with such force that even now his palms tingled. He cleared his throat. “You say there are thousands of acres of arable land available in the new territory? For anyone to purchase?

“Correct. And it costs only a dollar an acre.”

A dollar an acre! He had a few dollars under his mattress in the loft right now, saved from odd jobs that Radstone had allowed him to take on in his spare time. Tom's collar suddenly felt tight and he could scarcely breathe.

“But what about the Indians? Surely all that land is not uninhabited.”

“Not entirely, no, but most of the natives have been driven out of the area permanently now that the British are gone. The old treaties are no longer recognized, and from what I hear, towns and settlements are already springing up everywhere.”

Tom remembered a conversation on that topic he had overheard somewhere, long ago, no doubt at Lord Marlowe’s dining table. At the time he had hardly paid attention, because it had seemed to have nothing to do with him. Now, Sir Anatole Corbus’s contemptuous words came back to him:
“... Any penniless wastrel with an ox and a plow can have his own farm, as big as that of a duke or an earl....”

He leaned forward, unable to hide his excitement. “Cheap land? Available to anyone, you say?”

Mr. Merkel waved his fork. “So I hear. Why, if I did not have such a comfortable position here in Providence, I'd be tempted to emigrate to the Ohio country myself.” At his wife's sharp intake of breath, he patted her hand soothingly. “But of course, we are too well off here to even think of it, aren't we, my love?” Regret tinged his voice.

Ohio.
For some reason, the word resonated in Tom's mind like the reverberations of a struck bell. Until this moment, he had never before thought, even dreamed, of having his own land. After all, his father had not owned the farm he worked on, although the Wests had tilled it for hundreds of years. Think of it! Rich farmland, practically for the taking! Tom’s hands trembled.

He looked down at them. They were strong, capable hands which could do anything he asked, from shoeing a plow horse to coaxing seedlings to emerge from barren earth. Once, he had expected to spend his life growing things, before fortune had set him on an unexpected path. Had he still the knack?

Then reality pierced his daydream. Gardening was not farming. Planting roses and trimming hedges at Blackgrave Manor was a far cry from subsisting in an unfamiliar country with a strange, unfamiliar climate, facing attacks by Indians who may not have fully acquiesced to the terms of the new ordinance. Still … Lemley had once said Tom could grow anything. And that touch of arrogance that continued to lurk inside assured him that he could.              

He remembered that horticulture book of Sir Jonathan's, hidden under his mattress in the servants’ quarters at Blackgrave Manor long ago, in his former life. It was almost as if some unseen hand had guided his path toward just such an outcome as this. But could he wait six more years? Would the best land be gone by then, snapped up by those who arrived before him?

With those questions racing through his head, Tom shook hands all around as he prepared to take his leave. The Merkel family seemed reluctant for him to go, and even the baby, Hannah, clung to his leg and wailed.

True to Mr. Merkel's word, Tom's host called up a paid coach which carried him home. It was an odd feeling to step inside the doors and sit on the upholstered seat, rather than riding postern, as he had so often done. Once again, Tom was struck that this family had treated him so kindly. If only he could repay them, although he felt they neither expected nor desired it.

When the door shut, Mrs. Parker stepped close to the open window. “If you should ever need anything, Tom,” she whispered, “remember we are here.”

He had heard similar words before. For a moment, Rosie's dark-haired visage swam before him, pressing a cloth of coins into his hand. Before Tom could respond, the coachman cracked the whip and the family was gone, left behind in a swirl of dust.

*     *     *

Henry's green eyes grew round when he saw Tom step down from the coach. But Tom brushed aside the boy's questions like a draft horse swishing its tail at a pestering fly, until he saw the items Henry had brought from the English ship, among which was a package for Tom.

Tom stared blankly at the brown-paper wrapper with his own name scrawled across it in unfamiliar black, spidery writing. No sender's name; no return address. He had never received a package in his life. Then, he had a suspicion. Something about the package's size.... He weighed it in his hands. Surely it couldn't be…?

Henry was watching curiously. Tom turned his back and climbed to the loft where, safe from prying eyes, he eagerly tore open the wrappings. In his hands lay the book on horticulture which Jonathan Marlowe had given him. The book from the Blackgrave library.