In the Heart of the Garden Read online

  Also by Leah Fleming

  The Olive Garden Choir

  The Wedding Dress Maker

  The Daughter of the Tide

  IN THE HEART OF THE GARDEN

  Leah Fleming

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in the UK in 1998 by Hodder and Stoughton, a division of Hodder Headline PLCThis edition published in the UK in 2019 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Leah Fleming, 1998

  The moral right of Leah Fleming to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A catalogue record for this book is available fromthe British Library.

  ISBN (PBO): 9781789543278

  ISBN (E): 9781789543384

  Images: © Shutterstock

  Head of Zeus Ltd

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  Contents

  Also by Leah Fleming

  Welcome Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One: The Clearing at Fritha’s Well

  Into the Forest

  The Search

  Strangers

  Miracles

  Strange Harvest

  By the Water’s Edge

  Part Two: The Priory

  The Hut By The Well

  The Spider Brusher

  The Bequest

  The Warrior Wind

  The Priory

  The Ghost Garden

  Part Three: Within These Walls

  Rumours

  The Michaelmas Market

  Face to Face

  A Mystery

  In The Rose Garden

  Part Four: The New House

  Staying On

  The Knot Plot

  The Century Oak

  Down The Path

  Part Five: Fridewell Garrison

  Arrivals

  Under Sufferance

  Harvest Home

  Bitter Seeds

  The Circle of Flame

  The Tipsy Hedge

  Part Six: The School

  Secrets

  The Water Gardens

  The Shed Garden

  Part Seven: The Shed Garden

  A Chime Hour Child

  Percy’s Patch

  In the Heart of the Garden

  Part Eight: Friddy’s Piece

  Arrivals

  English Lessons

  The Paprika Moon

  Goodnight

  Acknowledgements

  About the Druin Burch

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  For David and that corner of the world, above all others, which holds a smile for us.

  ‘This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England’

  —Richard II, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  Prologue

  For Sale.

  The sign is fixed above the gate post. The deed is done. Miss Iris Bagshott takes a deep breath to mark her decision, gulping in the green silence outside. It’s a Samuel Palmer evening, bronzed and enamelled with gold around the edges, one of many in this Vaughan Williams folk song of a summer, haunting, harmonic, memorable. Why should she be feeling so agitated when the pipistrelles are darting into the shadows and the bees drone and the night air smells of stocks and honeysuckle? Time to take the tour. That might ease all her misgivings. Time to do the nightly inspection of sunshine borders and shade corners, water in her seedlings, let the dog stretch its legs in the fields beyond now the sheep have been shifted from the meadow…

  Slow down, Iris, follow the golden rule, slowly, don’t rush the tour or you’ll miss something. It’s not that difficult these days to creep at a snail’s pace.

  The sign above the gate should please that blessed builder. Now he can make me a generous offer, stop pestering me to sell up and downsize… what sort of word is that? If Arthur Devey’s a cutting off the old stock he won’t be able to spell it either! What about buying one of his new bungalows indeed! He keeps harping on about the value of a cherry orchard with planning permission, the premium of having such an ancient barn suitable for redevelopment, the size of my cottage for just one old lady and her dog. Well now, let’s see if he puts his money where his mouth is. How dare he think that at eighty-five I don’t know the stairs are getting steeper and narrower, and that two acres of garden is a bit too much for arthritic knees? Really… I can still remember flaying his dad’s backside with a slipper when he was a nipper in my classroom. The Deveys are mere Johnny cum latelys to Fridwell village while Bagshotts are rooted in its soil like the oaks in the forest. Some say we’ve been here since Domesday.

  Miss Bagshott sips from the smooth rim of her china mug as she surveys her kingdom from the bench seat by the kitchen door. The tour always begins at the homely end of the garden where the salmon pink rose, Albertine, climbs up the warm wall and the studded oak door looks out on the oldest part of her kitchen patch, with not a square inch of its soil vacant. Nothing seems more simple or more beautiful to her at that moment than a well-stocked kitchen garden where even the brick path sprouts seedlings, lemony thyme and velvet moss amongst the weeds.

  Into the rows of green lettuces, spinach, chard, cabbages and carrot ferns, chickweed, thistle and couch grass muscle in like thugs but in such well-manured red soil anything will grow. What a riot of plants for the pot stuffed into beds edged with alpine strawberries, glistening in the moonlight like a Sultan’s rubies, mixed with bronzy sage leaves, lobelia and any stray herbs which can grab a spot. Silver-green foliage, blues and pinks all spilling out over the path in front of her favourite peonies whose heads flop like ballerinas curtseying in pink tutus.

  Peonies shouldn’t really be in a kitchen patch but I like it when plants find their own place in the sun. The sweet peas dance up the cane tepees alongside an arch of scarlet blossoms from the runner beans. They give height and interest to the bed.

  Her eyes drift beyond the boundary wall where the rhubarb has gone to seed and spirals of golden heads lighten the shade. Why shouldn’t some of her umbellifers stick their feathery heads in the air and feed the hoverflies? It takes away the regimented look from the borders, gladdens the eye as it rises over the wall up to the Chase. Here the great oaks sleep in the dusk on the high ridge, silent witnesses to centuries past silhouetted against a marigold sky.

  Nothing like trees to cut you down to size, outliving each generation in the end, and Miss Bagshott wonders: Is it true, do her ancestors really stretch as far back as the forest itself? Who cleared this piece and chose this blessed plot to feed themselves?

  Then she hears the soft trickle of water over stones. The stream which meanders through her patch is so much a part of her garden that she scarcely gives it a thought. Now, in the silence of evening, amidst the perfume of newly mown grass cuttings on her compost heap, Miss Bagshott smiles. Human kind never strays far from the source and giver of life and Fridwell spring must have been named in someone’s honour. But who and why?

  PART ONE

  THE CLEARING AT FRITHA’S WELL

  AD 912

  ‘All things pass away, so may this’

/>   —Deor’s Lament, The Exeter Book

  ‘The Peony

  The roots are held to be of more virtue than the seed; the root is also effectual for women that are not sufficiently cleansed after childbirth, and such as are troubled with the mother; for while likewise the black seed beaten to powder… is also available’

  Into the Forest

  The buzzard circled and coiled high over the forest, patrolling above the treetops, sweeping the air with upturned wings dark against the lavender sky of late spring. The roosting birds hid deep under the branches, wary and silent, until danger passed over. The wolves, like grey shadows, crouched under cover of scrub, watching the lambs graze in a terraced clearing.

  The bird was joined by its mate. They swooped down into the vale of the silver river which coiled like a snake, glistening in the moonlight; down to the dark earth clearings and the smoke of man, spiralling up to greet them from holes in thatched rooftops.

  The sun was setting low over the thick forests of the west, rays of pink and orange promising a settled spell of weather. To the east lay the grey swamps of the Minster church clearing; more sloping terraces fallen to the foe of woodland, the plough. Further afield stood the earthworks of Tamworthig, open land no longer the domain of wolf or eagle. The buzzards soared back to their roost among the oaks.

  Underground, moles were turfing and digging to the surface, pushing through the bracken fronds. Worms were churning and sucking down the rotten autumn leaves. They could feel the thunder of heavy ox hooves and the rumble of cart wheels. Men were on the move.

  The dusk creatures darted into the hazel scrub, but the little spring still gushed and bubbled out from the deep rock, dancing over the pink boulders, carving a path through the thicket downwards to the brook and river beyond. The Forest of Canok was alive, watchful, waiting, while mankind trundled trek-weary over the faint track. Finally the sparse procession of covered wagons ground to a halt before fording the stream.

  ‘Stop right here! I’m not going another foot tonight. This’ll do, Baggi. There must be a wellspring ahead – we can rest up here, feed the stock. Me bum’s nailed to the boards.’

  Fritha jumped from the cart, stretched her stiff joints, shook out her dark braids and the skirt of her tunic and waved to the other cart. There was a scent of bluebells on the dusk air. They were on the edge of a forest and somewhere close by a spring was trickling into this shallow stream. It would be an ideal spot to rest their weary bones.

  For two days the travellers had struggled on in heavy rain, ploughing through the mud with restless livestock tethered to the cart, reluctantly dragging their hooves. The rain had lashed on to their covered wagon, everything was soaked, even the boards they sat on. The children were sodden, hungry and tired out.

  She lifted her son, a flaxen-haired babe of two summers, from the back of the cart and shook him awake but he lay draped like a mantle over her shoulder. His sister slept, curled up with the hound, whining at being roughly woken.

  ‘Are we here?’ she yawned, staring up at the net of black branches overhead.

  ‘Just another stop over, Wyn. It’s almost dark, time for supper,’ Fritha soothed, hoping to humour the child.

  ‘Can me and Ranulf go rooting?’ Wyn jumped up and down, her dark plaits flying. Once awakened she would want to scamper and play, race about and get under everyone’s feet. Her father, Baggi, shouted from the other side of the cart.

  ‘Pee in the bushes but stay close by, do you hear? There may be bears, wild boars or wolves lurking in the scrub. We don’t know this track and any noise from us may make them edgy. Mam’ll light us a fire and get the kale pot on the boil to warm yer innards with broth.’

  He turned to untether the goats and the other beasts, moving them on to graze as best they could. He led the animals to the wider verge by the stream, waiting for his younger brother in the cart behind to lift his heavy wife down from the back where she had lain wearily all afternoon. She needed watching that one, not like his woman who was already at her chores.

  Fritha took the wooden bucket to draw water. It was still light enough to trace the source, which could not be far, for the stream was still weak. She followed the bank where primroses and purple violets, chickweed and watercress, edged the water. The garlicky scent of ramsons wafted down from under the taller trees in the distance. It was a beautiful setting in which to lie down and rest, with plenty of bracken to stuff a plump mattress. Soon she came to a hidden bank, out of which water bubbled from the rock. This was a sacred spring, of that she was sure, and Fritha squatted to draw the water into her bucket, first sipping it from her cupped hand. It was soft and sweet to her parched tongue. Above her the birds were making their evening noises, piping and chattering, oblivious to her presence. She sat down to enjoy a moment of quietness.

  What a bunch of moonstruck idiots they were, striking out to find a new life for themselves with hopes as tall as spears! Beorn’s woman, Lull, looked exhausted, too close to her time to be travelling for three weeks over rough tracks and deserted stone roads. They rattled and bumped, became stuck in ruts and boggy, swampy tussocks, pushed, shoved and struggled to keep moving on to a better site, lighter soil, higher ground. A hard journey for families with young.

  Baggi promised he would know when they found the right place to settle but Fritha was bone-weary. All I want is a bed of ferns amongst the bracken, some tree shelter and a fire to keep the wild beasts from attacking our livestock. This place will do, she thought.

  It was good to be deep in a forest away from the open stone way of the ancient folks, where ghosts marched with the blood of her ancestors on their swords. They had kept the old east to west street in sight as a guide on their great trek to find new land to clear, a better living for their childer, away from the troubles, away from warring thanes and the Dane folk; savage warriors who skinned folk alive and carried off the women to satisfy their lust. Now they were heading northwards from the old stone street, through dense forest with only the tracks of animals and packmen to follow, rising higher on to ridges with a better view.

  Holding the bucket in one hand and a bunch of kindling sticks under the other, she shouted to her childer on her way down from the well to gather more brushwood for the fire. Fritha busied herself setting a circle of firestones, striking the flint and tinder, boiling water in their kale pot for the rootings. The children also gathered cress from the stream and any first spring growth they could find for the pot. Wynfrith was a helpful lass in that way, but disobedient and wilful when the moon was in the other direction.

  There were still oats in the leather bag and a few of her dried herbs to add flavour to the broth. The chickens in the wooden cage had not laid an egg for days and were eating up the last of their meal. How she wished she could wring their necks! It was weeks since they had tasted meat. If the hens were let out they would soon disappear into the undergrowth for a fox’s feasting.

  Lull sat with her back hunched, rubbing her belly, looking low in spirits. For a moment Fritha felt a flash of annoyance at her laziness. Beornwulf was already making up a shelter for her to rest in. If only she were not so swollen in those legs and ankles. It was not a good sign.

  ‘We shall have to stop soon, Baggi, or Lull will drop the bairn in the cart,’ whispered Fritha to her husband. He was always the more cheerful, hale and hearty of the two brothers, full of schemes and dreams. It had been his idea to strike out for some better land for the two families. Baggi was always the one who listened to the packmen’s gossip that there were rich pickings in the northern kingdom of Mercia, where no thanes had cleared land and the holy men lived in hermit’s cells deep in the forests.

  Baggi and Beorn were freemen. Poor though they were, they still had the right to leave their thane’s service and seek other dwellings. Beorn was happy to strike out, too, but Lull was not. There was a restless streak in the elder brother which made Baggi push them on and on but even he knew it was time to stop for a while, to see Lull’s birthing through
. They must settle, make a clearing and plant out before the summer’s end if they were not to starve or be destroyed by the winter darkness.

  The wooden carts were mud-splattered, wheels splintered and in need of repair. Baggi must not risk another upset load. They were worn, crammed with tools, and the precious plough took up most of Beorn’s cart. Baggi had brought everything they could barter, buy or make for the life ahead. Strapped to the sides with leather thongs were dry seasoned oak beams for the hut-making.

  Nothing was left behind but the tears of the old ones, too afeared to make the journey. Their well-loved voices still rang in Fritha’s ear, the parting touch of kin, all the fare-thee-wells stuck inside her chest. It would be the last she would ever see of all of them, as solemn a parting as at the graveside. Her heart held hundreds of misgivings.

  Would the provisions last? There was flour, meal, hard cheese, honey combs, dried apple rings, mead in the cask, seeds in the dryest purse, amongst the skins and precious roots and plantings wrapped in damp straw, a bucket of barley sproutings for the ale-making, a gift of salt for curing – all that well wishers could spare for them. Fritha fingered her grandmother’s amulet around her neck, a necklace of beads carved from the root of the peony flower; her trusted charm against evil and sorcery, sickness and bad spirits. For extra measure she had a string of peony seeds and her own store of sacred herbs safe in a leather purse tied to her waist girdle. She was taking no chances.

  Sometimes as she lay beside Baggi she felt such foreboding. As if by leaving the settlement they would attract evil spirits to follow in the shadows, setting them around with obstacles and mists, luring them into bogs and swamps to be swallowed whole and sucked down into the blackness. Perhaps if she made a wooden cross piece and hung it around her neck as many now did for protection, calling on the High God of Heaven as the priests and hermits taught, that might help them find a fertile spot.