The Forgotten Garden (36 page)

And, as she pressed her cheek against the desk, Rose promised herself that one day someone would speak her name that way . . .

‘Put your hand down!’ Mr Sargent was exasperated now. ‘If you continue to move it, I’ll paint you with three and that’s how you’ll be remembered evermore.’

Eliza heaved a sigh, knotted her hands behind her back.

Rose’s eyes were glazed from holding the one position and she blinked a few times. Father had left the room now, but his presence lingered, the same unhappy feeling that always trailed after him.

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K a t e M o r t o n

Rose let her gaze rest once more on her scrapbook. The fabric was such a pretty shade of pink, one she knew would suit her dark hair well.

Throughout her years of sickness, there was only one thing Rose had ever wanted and that was to grow up. To escape the bounds of childhood and live, as Milly Theale had put it so perfectly in Rose’s favourite book, however briefly and brokenly. She longed to fall in love, to marry, to have children. To leave Blackhurst and begin a life all her own. Away from this house, away from this sofa that Mamma insisted she recline upon even when she felt quite well. ‘Rose’s sofa,’ Mamma called it. ‘Put a new throw rug on Rose’s sofa. Something that will pick up the paleness of her skin, make her hair look shinier.’

And the day of her escape was drawing near, Rose knew it. At long last Mamma had agreed that Rose was well enough to meet a suitor.

Over the past few months, Mamma had arranged luncheons with a procession of eligible young (and not so young!) men. They’d all been fools—Eliza had entertained Rose for hours after each visit with her re-enactments and impersonations—but it was good practice. For the perfect gentleman was out there somewhere, waiting for her. He would be nothing like Father, he would be an artist, with an artist’s sense of beauty and possibility, who didn’t care two whits about bricks and bugs.

Who was open and easy to read, whose passions and dreams brought light to his eyes. And he would love her, and only her.

Beside her, Eliza huffed impatiently. ‘Really, Mr Sargent,’ she said.

‘I should paint myself faster.’

Her husband would be like Eliza, Rose realised, a smile pulling at her placid expression. The gentleman she sought was the male incarnation of her cousin.

c

And finally their captor set them free. Tennyson was right, to rust unburnished was inconceivably dull. Eliza hurried out of the ridiculous dress Aunt Adeline had insisted upon for the portrait. It was one of Rose’s from a season ago—lace that itched, satin that clung, and a shade of red that made Eliza feel like strawberry pulp. Such a pointless waste of time, losing a morning to a grumpy old man intent on capturing 254

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T h e F o r g o t t e n G a r d e n

their images so that they too could be hung, lonely and static, upon some chilly wall.

Eliza hopped down on hands and knees and peered beneath her bed. Lifted the corner of the floorboard she’d loosened long ago. She reached her hand inside and pulled out the story ‘The Changeling’. Ran her hand across the black and white cover, felt the ripples of her own penmanship beneath her fingertips.

It was Davies who had suggested she put her tales to paper. She’d been helping him plant new roses when a grey and white bird with a striped tail had flown to a low bough nearby.

‘Cuckoo,’ said Davies. ‘Winters in Africa but returns here in the spring.’

‘I wish I were a bird,’ said Eliza. ‘Then I should simply run towards the cliff top and glide over the edge. All the way to Africa, or India.

Or Australia.’

‘Australia?’

It was the destination that currently held her imagination in its grip. Mary’s eldest brother, Patrick, had emigrated recently with his young family to a place called Maryborough, where his Aunt Eleanor had settled some years before. Despite this family connection, Mary liked to think the name had also swayed his choice, and could often be probed for details of the exotic land, floating in a far-off ocean on the other side of the globe. Eliza had found Australia on the schoolroom map, a strange, giant continent in the Southern Ocean with two ears, one pointed, one broken.

‘I know a fellow went to Australia,’ said Davies, pausing a minute in his planting. ‘Got himself a farm of a thousand acres and couldn’t get a thing to grow.’

Eliza bit her lip and tasted excitement. This extremism was in line with her own impression of the place. ‘They’ve got a giant sort of rabbit there, Mary says. Kangaroos, they call them. Feet as long as a grown man’s leg!’

‘I don’t know what you’d do with yourself in a place like that, Miss Eliza. Nor Africa nor India neither.’

Eliza knew exactly what she’d do. ‘I’m going to collect stories.

Ancient stories that no one here has heard before. I’ll be just like the Brothers Grimm I was telling you about.’

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K a t e M o r t o n

Davies frowned. ‘Why you’d want to be like your pair of grim old German fellows is beyond me. You should be writing down your own stories, not those belonging to others.’

And so she had. She’d begun by writing a story for Rose, a birthday gift, a fairy story about a princess who was turned by magic into a bird.

It was the first story she’d ever trapped on paper, and to see her thoughts and ideas turned concrete was curious. It made her skin seem unusually sensitive, strangely exposed and vulnerable. Breezes were cooler, the sun warmer. She couldn’t decide whether the sensation was one she liked or loathed.

But Rose had always loved Eliza’s stories and Eliza had no greater gift to give, thus was it the perfect choice. For in the years since Eliza had been plucked from her lonely London life and transplanted to the grand and mysterious Blackhurst, Rose had become a soul mate. She’d laughed and longed with Eliza, and gradually come to fill the space where Sammy once had lodged, the dark empty hole belonging to all single twins. In return, there was nothing Eliza would not do or give or write for Rose.

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THE CHANGELING

by Eliza Makepeace

n the olden time, when magic lived

I
and breathed, there was a Queen

who longed for a child. She was

a sad Queen, for the King was oft

away, leaving her with little to do

but dwell upon her own loneliness,

and wonder how it was that her husband, whom she
loved so well, could bear to be parted from her so
long and so often.

It happened that many years before, the King had
stolen the throne from its rightful ruler, the Fairy
Queen, and the beautiful, peaceful land of Fairy had
overnight become a desolate place in which magic
no longer flourished and laughter was banished. So
wrathful was the King that he determined to capture
the Fairy Queen and force her back to the kingdom.

A golden cage was prepared specially that he might
imprison the Fairy Queen and impel her to make
magic for his pleasure.

One winter’s day, while the King was away, the
Queen sat by an open window, gazing out across the
snow-laden ground. She was weeping as she sat, for
the desolation of the winter months had a habit of
reminding the Queen of her own loneliness. As she
took in the barren winter landscape, she thought
of her own barren womb, empty, as ever, despite
her longing. ‘Oh, how I wish for a child!’ she cried.

‘A beautiful daughter with a heart of truth and eyes
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that never fill with tears. Then need I never be lonely
again.’

Winter passed, and the world around began to wake.

The birds returned to the kingdom and set about readying
their nests, deer could be seen once more grazing where
the fields met the woods, and buds burst forth upon the
branches of the kingdom’s trees. As the new season’s
skylarks took to the air, the Queen’s skirt began to tighten
around her middle, and by and by she realised she was
with child. The King had not been back to the castle and
thus the Queen knew that a mischievous fairy, far from
home and hidden in the winter garden, must have heard
her weeping and granted her wish by magic.

The Queen grew and grew and winter came once
more, and on Christmas Eve, as a deep snow fell across
the land, the Queen began to pain. All night she laboured,
and on the last chime of midnight her daughter was
born, and the Queen was able to look at last upon her
baby’s face. To think that this beautiful child, with pale
unblemished skin, dark hair, and red lips in the shape of
a rosebud, was all hers! ‘Rosalind,’ the Queen said. ‘I shall
name her Rosalind.’

The Queen was instantly smitten and refused to let
the Princess Rosalind out of her sight. Loneliness had
made the Queen bitter, bitterness had made her selfish,
and selfishness had made her suspicious. At every turn
the Queen worried that someone was waiting to steal
the child from her. She is mine, thought the Queen, my
salvation, thus must I keep her for myself.

On the morning of the Princess Rosalind’s christening,
the wisest women in all the land were invited to bring
their blessings. All day the Queen watched as wishes for
grace and prudence and wit rained upon the child. Finally,
when night began its creep into the kingdom, the Queen
bid the wise women farewell. Her back was turned but
briefly, yet when she looked again upon her child, she saw
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that one guest remained. A traveller in a long cloak stood
by the crib, staring down at the infant.

‘It is late, wise woman,’ said the Queen. ‘The princess
has been blessed and must now be allowed her sleep.’

The traveller pushed back her cloak and the Queen
gasped, for the face was not that of a wise maiden, but a
wizened crone with a toothless smile.

‘I come with a message from the Fairy Queen,’ said
the crone. ‘The girl is one of ours, thus must she come
with me.’

‘No,’ cried the Queen, rushing to the crib-side. ‘She is

my
daughter,
my precious baby girl.’

‘Yours?’ said the crone. ‘This glorious child?’ And she
began to laugh, a cruel cackle that made the Queen draw
back in horror. ‘She was yours only as long as we let you
keep her. In your heart you have always known she was
born of fairy dust and now must you give her up.’

The Queen wept then, for the crone’s pronouncement
was all that she had feared. ‘I cannot give her up,’ she
said. ‘Have mercy, crone, and let me keep her longer.’

Now it so happened that the crone liked to cause
mischief and, at the Queen’s words, a slow smile spread
across her face. ‘I offer you a choice,’ she said. ‘Relinquish
the child now and her life will be long and happy, spent
at the Fairy Queen’s knee.’

‘Or?’ said the Queen.

‘Or you may keep her here until the morning of her
eighteenth birthday, when her true destiny will come for
her and she will leave you forever. Think carefully, for to
keep her longer is to love her deeper.’

‘I don’t need to think upon it,’ said the Queen. ‘I choose
the second.’

The crone smiled so that the dark gaps in her mouth
showed. ‘She is yours then, but only until the morning of
her eighteenth year.’

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At that moment the baby Princess began to cry for the
first time ever. The Queen turned to scoop the child into
her arms, and when she looked back the crone was gone.

The Princess grew to be a beautiful little girl, full of
joy and light. She bewitched the ocean with her singing
and brought smiles to the faces of all throughout the
land. All, that is, except the Queen, who was too plagued
by fear to enjoy her child. When her daughter sang the
Queen did not hear, when her daughter danced the Queen
did not see, when her daughter reached out the Queen did
not feel, for she was too busy calculating the time left
before the child was to be taken from her.

As the years passed, the Queen grew ever more afraid
of the cold, dark event that lurked around the corner.

Her mouth forgot how to smile, and the lines about her
forehead learned how to hold their creases. Then, one
night, she had a dream in which the crone appeared. ‘Your
daughter is almost ten,’ said the crone. ‘Do not forget that
her destiny will find her on her eighteenth birthday.’