Anyone who finds this story slightly confusing might want to refer to my earlier entry The Gardener. Again, please vote and then comment.
*
Hyacinth Coxcomb was having very strange dreams. Given the way things had gone yesterday, it was hardly surprising. She'd been sitting under her aunt's pergola, that morning, doing nothing more than watching the grapes ripen when her cell phone rang. To her considerable surprise it was Horatio Boxgrove, the middle-aged bachelor she was timidly pursuing. After a year and a half in which he never did anything more romantic than help her with her roses he suddenly invited her out for a day's punting on the marsh. Naturally she accepted at once and was waiting, sun bonneted and sun screened when Horatio's vintage Jaguar rolled up to the front gate. They drove back to his cottage, put a picnic basket into the punt and poled out into the dewy morning.
She was neither surprised nor disappointed when, instead of unpacking a mandolin and serenading her, he began a quiet, authoritative lecture on the fen ecosystem. This was Horatio. A gardener to the fingertips, his horticultural knowledge and passion were the pride of the village. Nowhere in the Fen District was there so successful a competitive grower of flowers and vegetables. He was—eccentric—and very dedicated to the well-being of rare flowers in the fen, common herbs and flowers in the village's gardens and the trees that lined the roads. Everyone around respected him but there was something beyond his intellect that appealed to Hyacinth. She thought it might be love.
The August sun sparkled on the water as they slid silently through hidden rivulets and came nearly within touching distance of some very surprised herons and ducks. Hyacinth was amazed. She knew Horatio only from his horticulture but now he showed her a side that possibly no one else had ever seen, that of a master of the fens and a naturalist able to blend invisibly into the wild. It was just a bit alarming, to believe that she knew him well and then to find out that she didn't.
By noon the high sun made it warm enough that Horatio recommended they find some shade for lunch and poled the punt over to the tip of the headland where the old Twerington Manor was crumbling into ruin. He pulled the small craft slightly up the bank and tied the painter to a stout stump. Then politely handing Hyacinth out on to dry land, he hefted the basket and led her into a grassy open spot among a grove of extremely healthy-looking trees. The potted meat was open, the rolls split and buttered and a bottle of Riesling uncorked when there was a rustle in the grass and out from the trees stepped a woman. She was possibly the most beautiful person Hyacinth had ever seen, perfect in face and hair and, it seemed, in the second trimester of pregnancy.
"Horatio," she exclaimed, "what a delightful surprise! And you brought company. My dear," she'd continued gliding over to take Hyacinth's surprised hand, "you must be Hyacinth. No, of course you don't know me, but your reputation precedes you. Call me Willow", and she gently kissed Hyacinth's cheek.
Standing up she called out "Come, everyone, Horatio is here and he brought Hyacinth, the one with the so-delicate touch."
At once the couple was surrounded and introduced to the crowd. Hyacinth was puzzled. No one seemed to have a last name or a title, only first names that were, without exception flowers or herbs. The women were named Iris and Rose, Saffron or Alder while the men, who rarely spoke, were called Basil or Sorrel, Linden or Chive. It was all very strange.
Horatio seemed quite at home among them and, given his normal reticence in the village, remarkably familiar, even affectionate. Not that Hyacinth was by any means a wallflower. The uniformly gravid ladies, who certainly were ladies of breeding, chatted companionably with her and seemed to know a remarkable lot about her. Quickly, Hyacinth was made to feel quite at home, too. By the time the shadows were lengthening and it seemed that Horatio should be working his way back to the punt the group instead all flowed up the steps and through the doors of Twerington. To Hyacinth's amazement, the interior of the old mansion was in far better condition than the exterior. It was as though someone preferred that the rest of the world continue to believe the place was abandoned when, in fact, it was lived in by quite a merry crowd. Drinks appeared, wine was poured, a lavish buffet presented and musicians entertained. It was well after dark that a tipsy Hyacinth was escorted up the stairs and into a luxurious guest suite. A hot bath and lavender-scented bed linen, along with the evening's strong vintages, put the girl quickly and soundly to sleep.
