Darling Beast

Page 17

At last Caliban showed her the notebook and she saw a full page of writing. He came to sit beside her as she read: It’s a very difficult job to move a large tree, for the roots mirror the tree above. Thus, as tall as the tree might be, so far below the ground do the roots reach. Of course one cannot move such a mass of earth, for there is no machine to dig so far nor one to move it could it be dug up. But…
She marked her place with her finger and looked up. “But if you can’t dig up the roots, how—?”
He rolled his eyes and leaned forward, tapping the page below her finger.
“Oh.” She bent over the notebook, continuing to read, aware that he was looking over her shoulder now, reading his explanation along with her.
But as a tree’s branches might be cut—quite sharply sometimes—and the tree still live, indeed thrive, it is believed that the roots as well might be cut. In this way a tree can be moved with its roots in a ball of dirt that, in comparison to the tree’s height, is quite small indeed.
Lily turned her head—to find that his face was quite close to hers. She blinked, for a moment forgetting what her question was. Then it came to her. “You say here in comparison to the tree’s height. But the earth and roots might still be quite big, mightn’t it?”
He smiled slowly, as if particularly pleased with her question, and she couldn’t help smiling in return.
He reached around her, his arms nearly embracing her, and wrote in the notebook on her lap, Very good. Yes, the root ball should be quite big, even so.
“Should be?”
His breath was warm against her ear. I confess. I’ve never attempted to transplant a fully grown tree. I shall do so, however, this afternoon. Would you like to watch?
If someone had asked her a fortnight ago if she’d like to watch a tree being planted, she would’ve looked at the questioner quite pityingly. But right now, this moment, she was rather excited at the prospect.
Perhaps too many viewings of Caliban’s nude chest had addled her brain.
In any case she gazed into his thickly lashed brown eyes and smiled brilliantly. “Yes, please.”
His grin was quick and all-encompassing and, she couldn’t help but think, solely for her. As she watched, it faded a bit and his gaze dropped to her mouth. Her lips parted almost unconsciously, and she leaned a little forward, her own eyes on that wide, masculine smile.
“Mama,” Indio interrupted, his cheeks smeared with the remains of a jammy tart. “Can I show Caliban my boat now?”
Lily jerked back from Caliban, feeling her cheeks heat, and caught the amused glance he gave her as he turned more leisurely to the boy.
“Yes, of course,” she replied, repressing the urge to stick her tongue out at the maddening man. He’d started it—whatever it might’ve been—after all.
She watched as Indio eagerly crawled over with the boat. Caliban held it carefully, seeming to understand how important the toy was to her son, as Indio pointed out its best features and Daffodil poked her nose eagerly into the matter.
When at last they rose by some unspoken male accord, she noticed with a pang that Indio came only to Caliban’s waist. The man towered over the boy, so much taller and broader that his gentleness was all the more moving as a result. They walked to the pond’s bank and Indio launched his boat. Caliban restrained Daffodil from jumping in after.
This man was not at all like Kitty’s husband. Not at all.
APOLLO WATCHED THAT afternoon as the machine containing his oak tree was hauled into the garden. Elegant in its simplicity, it was a sort of modified cart, and indeed two dray horses labored to pull the contraption in from the dock. Two wheels were at one end with a flat bed where the tree’s huge roots lay. The bed narrowed into a long tongue that held the tree’s trunk and was supported by a smaller single wheel. The horses were harnessed to the root end, where the bulk of the weight rested.
The entire thing had been brought down the Thames on a barge. Tree and machine had been especially ordered from a fellow garden architect whom Apollo had been corresponding with under the pseudonym Mr. Smith. He’d been quite specific in his order, including both diagrams and copious notes, and was pleased with the result before him: his oak lay like a colossus fallen, the roots spidering out from the earth-encased base.
Now all they had to do was get the tree in the ground without mishap.
Lily stood to one side with Indio and Daffodil capering at her feet. The gardeners had apparently become used to their presence in the garden, for there had been no questions when they’d stayed to watch.
Apollo almost literally twitched with the desire to direct the operation himself. Herring, the head gardener, was a good Yorkshireman, able to read and follow Apollo’s written instructions, but he was plodding and not much of a thinker. He had a hard time compensating when something didn’t go as planned.
And many things might not go as planned with the oak tree.
Two of the gardeners—dark-haired brothers from Ireland—steadied the cart while a third man—a short, wiry Londoner, new to Harte’s Folly just this week—led the horses. Herring shouted orders while Apollo, ignominiously demoted to dullard while in the company of the other gardeners, stood by with a shovel.
“Hold it there!” Herring called, and studied the notes Apollo had left him the week before. “Says here that the master wants the cart pulled to near the hole, then the horses to be unhitched there.” He nodded to himself. “Makes sense, that.”
The horses were dutifully unhitched and Apollo, along with the Irish brothers, put his back into hauling the tree the remaining few feet over the hole. If he’d measured the hole correctly and his correspondent had followed his measurements, the wheels should be just wide enough to straddle it.
He watched as the cart trundled into place and felt a surge of satisfaction in a job well done.
“Pretty as a lamb at its ma’s tit, that,” Herring said admiringly, then seemed to remember Miss Stump. “If’n you’ll pardon an old countryman’s expression, ma’am.”
She waved cheerily. “Not at all, Mr. Herring.”
She exchanged an amused glance with Apollo and then he turned back to the work. The root ball now lay over the hole with the tree trunk extending to one side, parallel to the ground. Daffodil was nosing about the hole, as curious as usual, and Apollo gently toed her aside. Awful if the little dog should be stepped on as the men labored. All that was needed now was to haul the tree upright, cut its ropes and drop it—gently—into the waiting hole.
“Stand back, you,” Herring ordered Apollo. “Let the ones with some wits attach the ropes or we’ll have it all down around our ears and I don’t know what we’d do then.”
Apollo feigned patience, standing by as the other men tied the ropes. He winced as one of the Irish brothers drew a rope over-tight about the oak’s trunk and hoped the man hadn’t damaged the bark.
He took one of the ropes as one of the Irishmen and the small Londoner took the other.
“All together now,” Herring called. “And don’t be hasty. Slow and steady’ll get us there faster.”
At Herring’s signal, Apollo and the other two men pulled on their ropes, hand over hand, hauling the tree upright. The tongue and the bed of the cart pivoted as one on the two big wheels as the smaller wheel left the ground. Two ropes were needed for stability and to keep the tree from falling to one side or the other. Now that Apollo was actually pulling the oak tree upright he was beginning to think that three or even four ropes might have been better. Well, he’d experiment with the next tree they transplanted into the garden.
Sweat stung as it dripped into his eyes. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that Daffodil was back, peering interestedly into the hole, but he couldn’t move to shoo her away. His muscles strained and he could hear the loud grunts of the other men. Slowly the tree rose, majestic and tall. It would be lovely at the side of the pond and in a hundred years, when it had spread its branches over the water, it would be magnificent.
He felt the sudden, sickening slackening of the rope first, followed closely by a hoarse shout from one of the gardeners on the other rope. That rope was whipping through the air, free of the men’s hands. Apollo looked up and saw the great oak shudder and then begin falling toward him.
At the same time, Indio darted between him and the cart as Daffodil slipped and slid helplessly into the tree hole.
The sound ripped from him, like a thing outside himself, a beast that’d been bound inside his gut and would no longer stand to be caged.
The shout burned as it roared through his throat.
“INDIO!”
Chapter Eight
Now it fell one year that the maiden chosen as sacrifice was named Ariadne. She was the only child of a poor wise woman, and her mother wept bitter tears at the news. Then the wise woman dried her cheeks and said to her daughter, “Remember this: when you are presented to the court, curtsy not only to the king, but to the mad queen as well, and ask her if there is anything you may take to her son.”…
—From The Minotaur
Lily heard Indio’s name shouted and then all was drowned in the roar of the oak crashing down.
Down where Caliban had stood.
Down where Indio had darted.
The men were yelling. The horses bolted, dragging their harness behind, and where Apollo’s planting hole had been was only wreckage and a cloud of sooty dust.
She ran forward, pushing against smashed tree branches, fighting the man who tried to restrain her. He had to be in there somewhere, perhaps with only a broken limb or a bloodied back. Her lips were moving, muttering, as she bargained with whatever deity would listen. The tree was big, the branches lying shattered and sticking up everywhere and in her way.
“Let me go!” she screamed at the arms holding her.
She couldn’t see them. Even in the mess of demolished branches, there should be some sign—Indio’s red coat or Caliban’s white shirt.
Then in the shouting she heard it: a yip.
“Quiet!” she called, and wonder of wonders, the men actually listened.
In the sudden silence Daffodil’s high, hysterical barking was quite clear—and coming from inside the hole.
“I’ll be,” Mr. Herring said, amazement in his voice.
She turned and looked. At first she saw only the mess of roots. There wasn’t space in there, surely, for a small dog, let alone a man and boy. But as she watched, a huge hand slapped down on the edge. She started for the hole even as Caliban emerged, head and broad shoulders blackened, clutching Indio to his chest like Hephaestus rising from his underworld forge.
She’d never seen such a wonderful sight.
He tossed a very dirty Daffodil over the edge of the hole. The little dog tumbled, righted herself, and shook vigorously, and then she ran to Lily, tail wagging as if nothing especially remarkable had happened.
Lily ignored the greyhound in favor of her son. Caliban had set him on the edge of the hole before heaving himself over.
“Mama,” Indio said, and then burst into tears.
She knelt in front of him, feeling his body with trembling hands. He had a bloody nose and a scrape on his chin. His hair was quite filthy with dirt, but otherwise he was sound.
She clutched him to her chest and looked over his little shoulder at Caliban. “Thank you. I don’t know how you did it, but thank you for saving my son.”
That seemed to bring Indio out of his shocked tears. “He caught me, Mama!” he said, looking at her with his mud-and-salt-streaked face. “Caliban caught me and pushed me an’ him in the hole and the oak tree comed down on us, but it didn’t really because the machine was on the outside, see?” And he pointed to where the tree had landed on top of the hole instead of in it.
Lily shuddered at the sight, for if one of the wheels of the machine had slid, the entire root ball would’ve fallen on them instead of merely tilting half in the hole. But she smiled for Indio.