Lord Eadgar stepped through the grass with sudden caution, careful not to crush under his gait delicate white and purple lilies, nor bend under his long tunic clusters of yellow tansies and spider-petalled pennyroyals. His eyes circled the garden, the variety of specimens grown there, in the shadow of the château’s keep.
Eadgar had never given much thought to plants. Not beyond their function to feed and heal and to provide shade from glaring heat. Too common, too trivial, always there and ready to be taken for granted. Animals were meant to be eaten or employed in chores, rivers to carry ships and lakes to be fished, and mountains to be crossed, for God had gifted Man the power to use nature. But on this morning, the gentle breeze was bearing scents of late spring that reminded him of something long gone, something undefined. An unfamiliar tremor of anticipation.
The path that opened ahead was shaded by wooden arches, arbours with white and rose flowers opened in full bloom. And there, in the verdant shelter, a woman was tending to the blossoms, guiding the vines along the arches with her gloved hands, gently as if caressing a child. She was humming a song to herself. Gowned in a dress of dark emerald, she seemed to be one with the verdure surrounding her. Sunlight shivered through the dense foliage of the arbour, its tiny reflections shimmering like golden flowers in the woman's hair and rosy skin.
Though he had expected to find her there, Eadgar’s feet stopped as if unprepared. He smoothed out the collar of his tunic and the cloak pinned on one shoulder, making sure the leather band that held his hair was still in place, then assumed his usual statuesque bearing.
“Good morning, Lady Agnes,” he uttered in Norman. “I hope you’ll forgive my intrusion.”
Startled, the woman turned. At the sight of the visitor, her visage lit up.
“Lord Eadgar!” she exclaimed in flawless Northumbrian. “I did not expect you at this early hour. I imagined you’d sleep longer after your late night arrival.”
Dawn had found him awake, reading The Good Book by candlelight. “A soldier’s sleeping habits, my lady.”
Her gardening gloves were dirty but she must have forgotten, in her surprise, running her hands on her dishevelled headdress to make it neat again. Dirt now blemished the translucent embroidered linen, matching the smudges on her long sleeves and wrinkled white underskirt.
Agnes caught his gaze and dusted it off in vain, awkward smile and rosy cheeks, like a little girl who finally shows up for dinner when the food is already cold, soiled, sweaty, and out of breath, trying to hide stolen fruits from orchards where hunger has won her over, tattered dress from trees she’s conquered, fur and dirt from pets she’s pampered. She put her gloves away to greet him, and Eadgar might have smiled, had he found it proper; but, instead, he took her hand for a formal kiss.
There was something childish in Agnes’s compulsion to delve into nature – whenever it needed tending to or whenever it had something out of the ordinary to show – and lose herself there, and it felt so familiar to him; and there it was again, that something warm and heavy that had kept him awake. What was it?
He hadn’t felt it once in the war against the Danes where resolution and faith had driven him, nor in his years of loyal service to King Æþelræd where commitments as thegn had kept him away from home for weeks on end, nor for his family whose memory sparked but feelings of duty. He had come to Ivry to speak to its lord with whom Northumbria had sealed an alliance fourteen years ago, but it wasn’t the prospect of their meeting that gave him the heaviness.
“Goodness,” Agnes wondered, “have you even had breakfast yet? I told the maids to set the table outside – it’s much more pleasant in the sun than in those stone halls this time of the year - but I made them wait, lest it gets cold before your arrival. You must be famished.”
“I’m not hungry in the morning, lady, so I thought I’d take a little walk through your garden.”
“Parts of the château are still under construction, as you can see, but Rodulf and I had planned for us to give you a tour of the grounds after breakfast. But… now the garden isn't a mystery to you any longer.”
Her smile betrayed a touch of disappointment, and offending his host would have made him an ungrateful guest, so he answered: “Nature is always mysterious to me because I know so very little about it, I’m afraid. It’s beautiful. Your hand was in all this, I can tell.”
The smile waxed again. “It is the garden I’ve always dreamed of – my own Eden before the Fall, a God-shaped shelter from the wickedness of man! I think God loves flowers. Otherwise, why would He have made such enchantment spring from the ground, with giddying scents, with such intricately-woven patterns – like a labyrinth – and so unfathomably diverse!”
She walked towards a rose bush and cupped one of the flowers in her hands. Its petals wound round and round the pistil, and her finger traced them, barely touching.
“Look. Do you see? Each plant has its uses, but the fruits and roots and leaves are often more beneficial than the flower itself. And yet, it’s the flower that arrests the eyes with its shapes and colour and scent. I think God made them because He wanted our hearts to leap in admiration of nature's beauty.” She used the small knife hanging from her belt to cut off a stem. “Does your heart leap at the sight?”
She held out the flower to Eadgar’s lips for him to smell. The perfume flooded his nostrils, and the blue of her eyes stared into his, zestful and expectant and carefree. But, instead of an answer, he swallowed, the corner of his lips pulling into a faint smile. She laughed:
“Of course it doesn't. What a silly question! You have more useful passions than flowers and gardens.”
“A passion that makes one admire God's creation is the best kind of passion, lady.”
“So grave and serious you still are,” she exclaimed, “just like when we were children – as if the weight of the world pressed upon your brow!” She pinned the rose into the gold brooch decorated with garnets that held his cloak on one shoulder. “Can you imagine – fourteen years have passed since I left England! Goodness! You were almost the same age as my son is now!”
“Truly?” Eadgar exclaimed, a greater surprise in his words than in his mien, which remained unchanged. In truth, he knew it well.
“Yes, my little angels have grown up. My daughter is six and – ” she whispered, “I’ll let you in on a little secret, one that Rodulf will soon spoil, anyway: I am with child again.”
Eadgar’s glance briefly slipped from her smiling face down to her midriff. Behind the loose dress, one could not tell that she was pregnant. But, then, her frame had always been svelte.
“The Lord keep them. How time flies...”
“And yours?”
“Oh?”
“Your children.”
“Ah, yes. My girls are four and six.”
“How wonderful! They’d make perfect playmates for my little Maud, she’d befriend them right away to show them all the nooks and crannies of her house and garden. I hope Godgifu is well, too – I haven’t seen her since your wedding day, and how lovely she was then! You must all come and stay with us when the château is finished!” Hands pressed together, she looked at him intently. “I don’t know what matters bring you here to discuss with my husband but, I hope you know, you’ll always find safety here, should you need it.”
He did not want her concerned, so he thanked her only. She went on to ask about his father, the Earldorman, about his brother Edmund who had fought at London by his side, about young Aidan – such a sweet tiny thing when she’d seen him last! – who was now taking the path of the Lord in the newly-erected monastery on the island of Dun Holm, about the deceased Lady Merwyn, Eadgar’s stepmother – what a beauty she was, inside and out! Agnes spoke about them all with such familiarity and fondness as if she were part of the family herself.
Before he could elaborate an answer, she gripped his arm and cried out:
“Heavens, Eadgar, how blessed we are! I thank God for it every single day, for keeping us safe during these troubled times, for gifting us… this,” she pointed through thin air, arms open as if to embrace the garden, the château. “As much as I miss Bamburgh, Normandy is my home now. And you... you must be so happy, too, Eadgar, with your perfect little family!”
He stared at the hawthorns shedding pale petals in the light wind. “Of course,” he nodded. “Of course.”
Still leaning on his arm, Agnes led him on the path shaded from place to place by trees forming arches above them. She would tell him a little something about plants they met along the way and how she had acquired them, about gardens she had encountered during her travels and of her ambition to set up her own, about Rodulf’s estate before the garden had enriched it so wonderfully, about how he had endorsed her passion, having rare plants brought from abroad for her to nurture, about their children who would play there.
Eadgar would nod and every now and then, his free hand reaching a few times under his copper cloak to something hidden in his bad – something meant for Agnes – but then, whenever she mentioned her husband with such delight, he would decide to wait. So, instead, he would sense her hand wrapped around his arm, the corners of his eyes catching the play of light and shadows on her face.
They reached the pond and stopped by its surface reflecting the May light like a mirror.
“Eadgar, do you remember the day I left? We went into the orchard and the linden trees were in bloom. They used to spread such a wonderful smell, I can feel it even now. And then...” she chuckled, “I can't believe you climbed all the way up in that high tree to carve your name on the bark! Those were our trees – our lindens – planted in the year of our births. We had built that little bridge between them, remember? We used to climb there and hide.” She frowned at him in jest, as if looking at a child: “You silly boy, why would you try to drag me up there with you? Treating me like a child when I was about to travel to meet my future husband. I was wearing a new dress and I only met you to say goodbye!”
“It used to cheer you up. You were sad to leave, and I didn't want a teary farewell.”
“I was, wasn’t I? How foolish we are to doubt His choices.” She smiled again. “Well, you made me climb with you and I watched you carve your name. And you carved mine in the linden beside it... in runes, so that it would be our secret. And then you said... you said those linden trees were you and I, and they would stand side by side forever, no matter where our paths may take us...”
She let go of his arm and they were now standing further apart under the shade of hawthorn trees in bloom that quivered in the breeze, staring along the bright surface of the small lake. The wind had begun to blow stronger and pale petals of hawthorn fell thicker and thicker off the branches, swirling and soaring like scented rain. Agnes arranged the shawl that covered her shoulders and hair, pulling it tighter around her, and Eadgar shook some fallen petals off the sleeves of his tunic; but their eyes did not meet.
“Well met, Lord Eadgar!” a voice sounded behind them, in Norman. They turned to the sight of a robust auburn-haired man, moustache twisting in a smile as he gave Eadgar a hefty embrace.
“Forgive my delay, a little errand kept me away longer than I had intended. Thank God you were in good company, at least,” he beamed. “My Agnes is always gladdened by Northumbrian guests, and I know you were close as children. Like siblings, am I right? But you haven't given her any bad news, I trust?” he glanced now at Eadgar, now at Agnes.
“Not at all, I hope. In case I have, the gift I brought may bring some cheer.”
“Don’t tell me you kept the lady waiting for my sake!” the man wondered amused.
“Come, I’m sure it’s nothing unfit for a husband's eye, now, is it?”
Eadgar produced a leather-bound book.
“On plants,” Agnes read the title, running her fingers over the smooth decorated leather.
“With excerpts of Pliny’s Naturalis Historia and Bede’s De Rerum Natura,” Eadgar added.
“Decorative plants... rosa alba, rosa gallica, honeysuckle, rue, iris, ivy,” she leafed through the illustrated pages, her smile wider and wider as she did so, “spices, medicinal plants, horsemint, sage, fennel, cumin, rosemary...”
“A book! And a book on gardening too! Such fuss for a bundle of words about plants – as if a garden full of them wasn't too much already. Women!” Rodulf gestured in feigned exasperation.
At this, Agnes elbowed him, so Rodulf took her by the shoulder in a half-embrace which she leaned into, both chuckling as they glanced into each other’s eyes, looking, for a moment there, like happy youths teasing each other to mask feelings they are too sheepish to express.
Hearing Agnes speaking of Rodulf with such fondness during their tête-à-tête moments before, a part of Eadgar had hoped it was something like a façade. Not a mask for some dark secret – no, nothing of the sort, he wished no darkness on her – but simply a way to say It’s not perfect, but it is what it is. Because that would mean that, in the course of those fourteen years, she had asked herself What would it have been like…? A garden path dotted with forget-me-nots, what-ifs, and might-have-beens that may never be discovered, but the simple knowledge that it was there brought some comfort.
But, seeing them together like this, Eadgar felt a pang of guilt for having hoped for such a thing. Perhaps Agnes had asked herself that question, but nothing more. The path not taken, forever overgrown and unfindable in the garden. She was happy; and he was happy to see her so.
Then she turned to Eadgar and bowed her head shortly:
“It shall be a pleasure to read it, and in my mother-tongue too. Thank you, Eadgar.”
She excused herself to go see to the preparations for the meal then went away, book in hand.
“This shall keep her happy and occupied for the foreseeable future,” commented Rodulf, but his amused tone turned serious. “This was thoughtful of you. Thank you.”
As Rodulf told of the costs of stone and mortar and of his architect from Paris, Eadgar glanced aside. Leafing through the book as she walked the path towards the house, she stopped at a certain page: a tiny branch of linden was inside it, pressed, with two yellow flowers sheltered by leaves. Her feet slowed their pace for a moment as she took the leaf to her lips to smell it.
She looked back and her eyes met Eadgar's, face lit up by a bright smile, and nodded with friendly gratitude.
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