Elementary (33 page)

It was time to make a telephone call.

 • • • 

“I don't know who you contacted, miss, but the Director didn't half act as if he had seen a ghost.” There was certainly a hint of both glee and astonishment in Burkill's voice.

“You'll have a chance to meet him. He's meeting us here to have a look at the peonies. I'm afraid that there is more going on than meets the eye, and he sees deeper than most. Even if he spends most of his time in that silly Men's Club of his.” That last comment was voiced tartly enough that Isaac raised an eyebrow and yet held his peace.

Mei and Mr. Burkill didn't have long to wait. Shortly, they saw a very dapperly dressed man with a shock of white hair, almost like a lion's mane, walking toward them along the path. He plied his walking cane briskly and was within speaking distance after only a few minutes' wait.

“Miss Walsingham,” he said courteously.

“Lord Alderscroft, this is Mr. Burkill. He is in charge of the Herbarium and this section of the Gardens.” With a twinkle in her eye, Mei went on to say, “He's a Cambridge-trained botanist, and sure to achieve Director himself someday.”

“I don't know about that, miss.” Mr. Burkill held out his hand to shake Lord Alderscroft's. “I'm just a simple gardener,” he said a little stiffly.

“I'm a Cambridge man myself, you know.” And with that mysterious alchemy of attending the same college, even if in a different discipline, the ice was broken; Mr. Burkill beamed. “I recall we met once or twice in school,” Alderscroft said, “and your credentials prove you are no simple gardener.”

After a few moments' courtesy talk, Alderscroft excused himself and walked slowly among the peony beds, leaning over to examine several. He spent quite a few minutes wandering around, and the frown on his face deepened.

Eventually, his travels brought him back to Mei.

Mei looked questioningly at Alderscroft. They had discussed the possibility of Elemental interference on the phone when she had asked for his help. Alderscroft shook his head; there was nothing he could detect.

“No?” she asked aloud.

“I find no signs of any foul play,” he said.

Her heart sank. She couldn't have done anything to harm them. She hadn't. All was as it should be. Except they were dying.

“Please let me look for myself?”

With Lord Alderscroft standing as surety for her conduct, Mei was allowed to approach the wilting beds. She knew that she should feel insulted by the need to have him here for that purpose, but she was too intent on the task before her. The conversation of the two men occasionally penetrated her concentration.

“. . . they're making a lot of fuss over having the daughter of an exiled and disgraced Chinese high-caste family in charge of an Imperial treasure, by which they mean the peonies . . .”

Mei felt the ground; it was sufficiently damp, but it clumped oddly.

“. . . there's a lot of people who don't have anything better to do than spread around what I put on the beds . . .”

She stroked the leaves and stalks.
Tell me what is wrong,
she asked the peony. It responded slowly, as if through a fog, that it didn't know.

“. . . the Director's not the only one listening. I hope she can solve this, or there may be an Incident . . .”

The peony couldn't tell her, but Earth and Air could. There was a vague smell that was neither peony nor rot. Something had been added to the soil around the plants.

It was either poison or some kind of magical equivalent. Certainly the other side was eager to suppress the peonies and their healing agency. But was this attack on them via Elemental intervention, or by simple contamination?

“It is either a poison, or something has been added to the soil,” she announced.

“You don't think it is a common blight?”

“There is an easy way to tell,” she said. “We plant an unrelated species and see how it responds.”

Alderscroft said, “We have less than a month until the Coronation. There isn't time.” He emphasized the last word to remind her that they needed live peonies at the Palace within days.

“There is time enough for me. But I must be left in peace. I need a rose.”

Alderscroft gestured. At a nod, one of the gardeners, Mr. Higgs, came over to consult, then strode briskly to the greenhouse. For fifteen minutes, Alderscroft and she waited silently. He pretended to observe the garden. She used her hand to dig a small planting hole.

Mr. Higgs returned with a rose cane, its root in a burlap wrap.

“Thank you, Mr. Higgs,” Mei said politely, then turned and placed it in the ground.

Shifting her long skirt, she sat on her knees in front of the rose, whispering to and caressing it. It visibly grew as she coaxed it. She moved from sitting to squatting and back, keeping as comfortable as she could on the damp earth. Lord Alderscroft was nearby, she knew, checking on her every few minutes. She paid no attention. The plants needed her. Mr. Burkill kept a more discreet distance.

When the rose was only an hour old, it was already a foot high with a tiny bud blushing through sepals.

However, the bud was dark-tinged and oozing.

Poison. That was what had happened. Nothing magical was involved, which was why no amount of Elemental effort had found anything.

Lord Alderscroft cleared his throat. “Is that grotesque color what you refer to?”

“It is,” she said. “Now I need a lot of roses.”

He raised an eyebrow. “If that's what you need.”

Mr. Burkill came over, worry on his face. What he'd seen wasn't natural, and he clearly knew that.

Alderscroft still wasn't convinced, but he gave her the benefit of the doubt.

“How many is a lot?” Mr. Burkill asked, less skeptically than Lord Alderscroft. He could see the effects of the poison for himself.

“Probably all we have. Have the planters run them in a line along the edges, right against the bricks. Then we'll need to run a hose and pump from the pond.”

She expected to be told it was impossible, but Mr. Burkill stood, stiffened, and took off at a smart walk, almost an ungentlemanly run.

Twenty minutes later, five gardeners Mei didn't recognize trundled over barrows containing a half gross of roses.

“Here, miss?” one of them asked.

“There. All the way along, please. Just a handbreadth in will be fine.”

They produced trowels and started digging.

“The water should be pumped slowly, just to keep the barest puddle on top,” she said.

Another team of men arrived with a hose and pump on a cart, and unrolled it toward the water.

Mei felt guilty at what she was to do. The poor roses were a sacrifice. As they drew more water, they would draw out the poison, and she'd force them to strain unto death to do so. People told jokes about flowers feeling pain. They weren't jokes to her. But the peonies were wards of the Royals, and the roses were the soldiers she intended to use to protect them in turn.

 • • • 

Alderscroft watched her, convinced at last she was right. And what power she had. Who would have thought a Talent over something as mundane as flowers could be so key? And now, it seemed that Talent could force entire fields of growth. But it was draining her.

He motioned for one of the staff. The man hurried over.

“Sir?” he asked.

“Please ensure Miss Walsingham has sandwiches and water. Some lemonade might be nice, too. If there is a parasol available, bring that as well.”

“At once, My Lord.”

She sat there all day, encouraging and stroking the roses, roses that visibly crept from mere canes to mature shrubs, then died. Each wilted, tattered rose represented poison drawn from the soil. Was it enough? As each rose wilted and died, it was replaced by yet another immature cane brought by selected staff. Were there enough plants?

Mei grew tired and ragged, her eyes bloodshot. By the time of the long dusk, she slumped alongside a row of dead English roses.

Inside that perimeter, the peonies stood proud, bright and healthy.

 • • • 

Mei awoke to voices in the next room. Her surroundings were unfamiliar; she was not back at the boarding house where she lodged. The room was bright and airy, featuring a floral wallpaper and late afternoon light streaming into the room. The last thing she remembered was the gardens and then darkness.

“. . . Look, I don't care how she did it; it
could
be magic for all I care. Those peonies are now right as rain. Those so-called diplomats were wrong about Miss Walsingham, and you know it!”

“The problem, Burkill, is that while I, King Edward, and now you, all knew the value of those peonies, no one else does. Except whoever is trying to kill them off.”

“The other problem is that King Edward is dead. King George is too busy getting ready for his coronation to even know what danger he could be in.”

“That's my problem, Burkill. We can bring the King into the fold after things settle down a bit. Meanwhile, those peonies are additional protection until we can. They have to stay healthy!”

“I'm just a gardener, my Lord. Miss Walsingham and I can handle the flowers; you just make sure we don't have to deal with any of those deuced foreigners while we do so.”

“A Cambridge botanist is not a simple gardener, and Mei is one of those deuced foreigners in some people's eyes.”

“Yes, that's the other problem—now they're saying that maybe the peonies might have contributed to King Edward's illness. After all, there was one clutched in his hand when he was found . . .”

The voices faded off as Lord Alderscroft and Mr. Burkill headed out of her hearing. Mei would have liked to have heard Alderscroft's reply; things would have been much easier if she knew what he thought of such rumors. Well, it didn't matter. She had to get up and see for herself just how the peonies were doing.

She was still very weak, and being light-headed didn't help her progress. They'd removed her shoes before covering her up. Bending over to lace them up almost caused her to faint again. She had really pushed her Talent past her limits. Leaning up against the door, she listened, then slowly opened it.

“Miss?” a female voice said.

“Yes?” she asked, turning.

“Are you feeling better? Mr. Burkill said we was to take care of you.” The reflection of the gaslights off the housekeeper's starched white apron almost made Mei's headache worse.

“I'm all right now,” she said. “Thank you. Is this his house?”

“Yes, miss.”

Taking her time and frequently leaning up against the wall, Mei made her slow and careful way to the front doors. She had to politely shoo the housekeeper away. She'd be fine. She just needed to get back to the Gardens.

She hoped the cabs were still running in this neighborhood.

 • • • 

The brief rest in the cab restored Mei enough for her to walk with some semblance of her normal energy through the entrance to Kew Gardens. While she kept to a decorous pace, inside she could hear her peonies crying out,
“Hurry, hurry, hurry.”
She knew something was wrong. Everything in her felt it. There was a gathering of energy ahead, a swirling of air and a spattering of rain where the sky had been largely clear shortly before.

Undeterred by the weather, she approached the peony beds. The area was deserted as the visitors took shelter from the sudden storm. Weather had never bothered Mei. Even though she couldn't see them, her father's Air allies watched over her still. A quick pause to reach down and touch the earth confirmed her feeling of something amiss. Earth, too, was troubled and for the same reason that Air was troubled: magic was stirring ahead—dark magic.

Quickening her pace as much as she could in her long skirts, she reached the peony beds around the Pagoda. Those closest to her appeared to be unharmed, and she sighed with relief. Reaching down, she stroked the leaves and flowers of the shrub nearest her. The peony practically screamed into her mind. Shocked, Mei staggered back, then noticed a furtive figure skulking near the beds closer to the Pagoda.

Near the crouching figure, there was a ripple of color running through the white peonies. They were changing from white to red and then to black. Without pausing to think, Mei approached the unknown person. Straying slightly to the side of the paved path, she grasped a hoe one of the planters had left behind from the planting yesterday. With her steady stride muffled by the rising winds, the figure was too involved in whatever he was doing to notice her.

Hesitating slightly at the vague sense of recognition at the man's clothing and the touch of the magic spilling over, she stood poised above him with her hoe—and then she swung.

 • • • 

“
Earth and Air, our daughter. Earth and Air will find you. Earth and Air will aid you. Earth and Air will bind you.”
Mei-Hua Walsingham heard her parents' voices in the caress of the wind on her check. She smelled her father's pipe and her mother's favorite flower carried on that breeze.

Then she was awake.

She looked around. She was in a tower looking out over the gardens. She was in the Pagoda. How did she get here?

A gust of wind slapped at her, and she turned while clutching at the wall. She was on the top balcony, and the man from the garden was standing near her.

“Mei-Hua Wang, you have been most aggravating,” he said in Mandarin. But his accent placed him to Shandong, where the Boxers arose. “Your ancestors would not approve of you consorting with
guizi
.”

Guizi.
Foreigners
. But she was English, too, caught between worlds.

She wasn't sure if the wind had been Elemental, but he hardly needed it. He could loft her over the balcony in a moment. If he was a Boxer, they were called that in the West because they were skilled in Kung Fu.