Gardens in the Dunes (42 page)

The grave of Aunt Bronwyn's English grandfather was there, among the standing stones; he wanted no marker for himself. A few of the eldest in Bath still remembered, from their childhood, the old man who carefully searched dumps and trash middens near the old village churches to find fragments of the old stones smashed to pieces by order of the parish priest. He ordered his driver to take the muddy back roads to any new construction sites or newly plowed fields, always with an eye out for any old stones cast aside.

While the child and her parrot walked solemnly from stone to stone, toward the upright boulder alone in the center, Hattie told her aunt about her dream in Oyster Bay: in the dream she sat astride a long, horizontal stone in an old churchyard. Last night she woke on that very stone! Edward was convinced she had seen illustrations of similar old stones in churchyards but had forgotten. Or perhaps as a child Hattie heard the horizontal stone described in family conversations.

The strange glow in the garden the night before was more difficult to explain; she wanted to think it over a bit longer before she told anyone,
even Aunt Bronwyn. Hattie certainly didn't mention the light she had seen to Edward because he was already upset by the episode of sleepwalking. Hattie felt on the verge of confiding in her aunt about the light when Aunt Bronwyn asked if she and the child might want to stay on with her while Edward completed his business in Corsica. She had so many things and places to show Hattie, and she wanted time to talk about Hattie's thesis. It was terribly hot and uncomfortable in Corsica in July; worse, there were reports of political unrest. Corsica was always a challenge to the visitor; the mountainous regions were notorious for bandits, who preyed on English and American tourists. It would be lovely to have her and the child stay with her until Edward returned.

Hattie hugged her aunt; what a delight that would be! She wanted very much to learn about the old stones. She promised she would return next summer, but now it wasn't possible to stay; Edward wanted her and the child to accompany him.

Indigo ran back up the path to rejoin Aunt Bronwyn and Hattie. From Indigo's shoulder, the parrot watched sparrows hop along the top of the stone wall where the rock pinks grew from cracks in the old wall and scented the air; mossy saxifrages and catmints grew all along the base of the stone wall and between the old stones with the daisies and dandelions.

Aunt Bronwyn identified the stones. Here was a broken stone with a double spiral carving to help the plants to grow faster. Here were the broken pieces of a stone destroyed by an angry mob of Christian converts. Indigo asked if she had any healing stones in the garden, but Aunt Bronwyn did not know. She'd heard discussions of a standing stone that healed patients who were passed back and forth three times over its top. But over the years, the quack doctors and snake oil salesmen of Bath hacked the old stone to pieces to sell as curative charms. Reportedly there were healing stones that fit in the palm of the hand; they were steeped in water from Bath's sacred springs; they cured any ailment. According to the legend of the healing springwater, the Celtic King Bladud learned from local farmers that pigs with sores were cured by soaking in the mud and warm springwater. The king built a temple and bath at the spring, but later when the king got old he made a pair of wings and jumped from the roof of the temple and was killed.

For centuries, Bath had been overrun by doctors and pharmacists peddling cures for cancer, gout, and heart disease, formulated from such ingredients as live hog lice, burnt coke quenched in aqua vitae, powdered red
coral, the black tips of crab claws, and freshly gathered earthworms. Invalids pushed in their chairs by nurses still flocked to Bath the year round to take the waters.

Aunt Bronwyn paused to look over the stones rescued long ago by her grandfather. She pointed out a bluestone no larger than a steamer trunk—in times of drought the bluestone was beaten with hazel sticks to bring rain. Indigo's eyes widened as she went on; Aunt Bronwyn had seen praying stones and cursing stones. There were stones that turned slowly with the sun to warm both sides of themselves, and stones that traveled at night to drink from the river and returned by morning. There were stones that danced at high noon and stones that danced in the light of the moon!

Indigo asked Aunt Bronwyn if she had ever seen the dancing stones. No, when she was a girl about Indigo's age, she observed a black stone the size of a stove move across the road to the south side overnight. Tomorrow they'd take a picnic basket and visit the place. Aunt Bronwyn wanted to drive up on the ridge above the river overlooking Bath; a great deal of construction was going on there. Each week she checked to see if any stones were in need of protection.

Hattie recalled the unkind remarks she'd heard from time to time growing up, remarks her mother made to her father about Aunt Bronwyn's peculiarities. So this is what it was: while other old women fed stray cats and dogs, this old woman took pity on stones. The evening of their arrival, Edward joked Aunt Bronwyn had gone native; what could be more English than an old woman feeding tidbits to her cows?

As they walked back through the garden toward the house, her aunt said something that surprised Hattie. The old people had warned her even would-be rescuers of the old stones must use great caution because it was dangerous to tamper with the standing stones or to cut down the sacred groves. The stones and the groves housed the “good folk,” the spirits of the dead. Never interfere with the fairies! When sheep were brought by the English to graze Scotland, the good folk and the people living on the land were displaced, and the fairies waged war against the sheep. An old man heard the sounds of dogs running down the sheep for the angry spirits; the old man was a seventh son of a seventh son and thus was able to hear and sometimes even see the spirits.

The terrible famine in Ireland in 1846 came because the Protestants and the English knocked down the old stones. The wars of Europe were the terrible consequences of centuries of crimes against the old stones and the sacred groves of hazel and oak. Still, the destruction of the stone circles and
groves did not stop; now the reckoning day was not far off—twenty years or less.

Hattie found herself taken aback by her aunt's remarks; she was reluctant to link the luminous glow in the garden with the forces of violent retribution. She wished Indigo would not listen so attentively to her aunt's comments; the child might become confused. She felt a faint flicker of ill ease that announced an onset of anxious feelings, so she excused herself and the child. They needed to rest. Aunt Bronwyn invited Indigo to spend the afternoon with her in the garden, but Hattie was firm and took Indigo by the hand back inside the house.

Earlier Edward worried there would be trouble if they did not set some limits for the child. He was concerned about the agreement he signed with the superintendent of the Indian school. It was no use to pretend they were instructing Indigo about the duties of an upstairs maid. Hattie had bristled at the mention of the agreement. She was only a little girl; the boarding school superintendent was a criminal to hire out the Indian children at such a young age. Edward said nothing more, but Hattie wondered if he was concerned over the appearance the child was their adopted daughter, an assumption made by a number of their fellow steamship passengers.

♦   ♦   ♦

The day of Edward's return from London, Hattie rested upstairs all morning and a good part of the afternoon. Aunt Bronwyn invited Indigo to eat lunch with the parrot on her shoulder and they both laughed with delight at the bird's dainty table manners as he took bits of chicken pot pie from their forks. That evening when Hattie and Edward came to the table for dinner they found the child and the old woman feeding the parrot broth from a spoon. Indigo noticed at once that Edward did not approve and that Hattie was concerned too, but Aunt Bronwyn laughed and told them about the small white dog her grandfather kept with him; the dog sat on a chair with its own china plate beside the old man at every meal, a napkin tied around its neck as it stared straight ahead with great dignity waiting for its master to feed it a tidbit.

Edward smiled and shook his head, as if to acknowledge the old woman made the rules in her house. He had returned from London in good humor, after finding the watercolor supplies he wanted. The visit to the Kew Gardens went very well. The director of Kew Gardens agreed to pay a handsome price for
Citrus medica
cuttings. The French government closely guarded the citron orchards of Corsica to protect their exclusive supply of candied citron to the world market. Edward only smiled when the director
commented on the difficulty of the task. The incident on the Pará River left him wary of misplaced trust. He revealed the plan to no one, not even Hattie, though he felt guilty for the omission and planned to tell her everything as soon as they reached Corsica.

The following morning after breakfast, they set out together for a walk downtown to the site of the excavations. Bath had a great many grassy arcades and parks shaded by trees where elegant ladies walked with their maids or drove in smart buggies with their lapdogs. Nowadays the parade of women's fashions was more subdued, but in the last century the ladies went to great lengths to steal the attention from one another during their promenades in the parks. One woman went so far as to have a garden of pinks and violets planted in the framework of the wide hoop skirt of her dress.

Aunt Bronwyn nodded briskly whenever she was greeted by townspeople along the way, oblivious of the gawkers and tourists who stared rudely. Of course they must have made quite a spectacle on Stall Street, Hattie thought; the energetic old woman wearing a brown derby marched ahead, and Indigo with the parrot on her shoulder walked just behind her, followed by Edward and Hattie. As they approached the King's Bath, the streets were crowded with vacationers from London and foreign tourists come to visit the shops and the royal baths.

Aunt Bronwyn pointed out the smaller pavilion, which was the Queen's Bath. Originally there had been only the King's Bath, but the queen became frightened by strange lights in the King's Bath and refused ever to go back. So the Queen's Bath was built. Hattie's heart was pounding; what sort of strange light? she asked.

“Swamp gas caused the light,” Edward joked. Hattie was disappointed he felt he had to make a joke out of her question. Aunt Bronwyn was about to reply when they arrived at the hotel entrance, where Aunt Bronwyn was greeted by the doorman.

Rainbow tightened his grip on Indigo's shoulder apprehensively as they entered the lobby of the Pump House Hotel. Hotel guests seated in the lobby stared with open mouths as Aunt Bronwyn marched past, eyes straight ahead, to the back hall and the stairway to the basement. The modern baths were separated from the old baths by a new wall. Kerosene lamps hung from excavation scaffolding to light the stairs; as she descended, Indigo felt the warmth and dampness of the springs below, and despite the odor of the lamp oil, an even stronger odor, of wet clay, old urine, and mildew, wafted around them as they descended.

They approached the edge of the big excavation, where workmen filled wheelbarrows with dirt and stone debris by the light of kerosene torches that projected strange giant shadows of the workmen on the walls. Below them, on the deepest level of the excavation, Edward saw the edge of the old Roman pool that once encompassed an area far greater even than the site of the hotel.

Major Davis left the workmen as soon as he saw them, and he and Aunt Bronwyn exchanged warm greetings. After the introductions were made, the major lit a small lantern and guided them between heaps of old stones and piles of damp earth to point out the periods of occupation: the Tudor and Elizabethan levels were hardly distinguishable from each other and appeared as dark gray streaks; the medieval level was deeper but a lighter gray; the Norman level was the color of ashes. The exposed layers of earth reminded Hattie of the alternating layers of jam and cream in a fancy cake. They descended the wide stone steps the workmen had unearthed only days before; a damp odor of clay and decaying organic material clung to the steps. Indigo was reminded of the odor of the smelly black mud she and Sister Salt tried to avoid at the edge of the river. As Hattie took a step down, the major announced she was now standing on the earliest Roman occupation level, from the time the sacred hot springs were first contained in a pool of cement and limestone; the construction of a Roman temple dedicated to Sulis Minerva followed. Its name was somewhat of a mystery, Major Davis explained, because Sulis was a Celtic deity of the sun and Minerva was the Roman goddess of the moon. He led them past piles of stone and plaster debris.

Edward noticed a number of torches lighting an area that appeared to hold something of great importance. Major Davis led them to it and stepped aside with a flourish to reveal the carved limestone altar of Sulis Minerva. All eyes were on the corner pillars of the altar—each was carved with voluptuous nude figures, two women and two men; fortunately the most prominent features of the statues were weathered enough, so Hattie allowed Indigo to step up to get a better look.

Hattie realized the altar platform stone, though larger and wider, was almost identical in shape to the flat rock in her dream and in her aunt's garden. An odd sensation pulsed through her body when she touched the corner of the altar stone, and left her feeling a bit light-headed, but not unwell.

The parrot became extremely agitated, flapping its wings and screeching on Indigo's shoulder; for a moment the workmen all stopped to stare,
but with a stern glance from the major the work resumed. As soon as she moved away from the altar the parrot quieted; Indigo was not surprised to see Edward's frown but she was saddened at the odd expression on Hattie's face, as if she wanted Indigo and the parrot to leave at once.

Aunt Bronwyn took Indigo's hand firmly in hers. The parrot was only trying to warn them the air in the basement was not fresh! The Romans made a mistake when they built structures over the hot springs. Aunt Bronwyn was more interested in the sacred springs before the invasion of the Romans, when the Celts tossed coins and tablets of lead to curse enemies to the spirits of the springs. At the mention of coins, Edward interrupted his examination of the altar platform and turned to the major and Aunt Bronwyn. Was it possible to see the artifacts that were for sale? Of course. Would they like to see the excavation where the Celtic objects were found? It was right on their way to the storage area for artifacts.