Gardens in the Dunes

Part Two

“FIRST CHANCE you get, run!” Sister Salt had whispered to her before they dragged Indigo toward the train, where the other children were cowering or sobbing, crowded four to a seat. Indigo was shocked to learn she and her sister were about to be separated. The authorities judged Sister Salt to be too much older than the others to send away to Indian boarding school. There was hope the little ones might be educated away from their blankets. But this one? Chances were she’d be a troublemaker and might urge the younger students to attempt escape. Orders were for Sister Salt to remain in the custody of the Indian agency at Parker while Indigo was sent to the Sherman Institute in Riverside, California.

Indigo wasn’t afraid. Her eyes were dry. She was one of the older children in the group. Cocopa and Chemehuevi girls her own age who had already lived at the boarding school for three years were in charge of new students; only their skin looked Indian. Their eyes, their hair, and, of course, the shoes, stockings, and long dresses were no different from the matron’s. The matron gave the older girls orders to seize a little boy who had slipped from the train seat to the floor; she did not want to touch the little wild ones herself. Indigo tried to get one of the older girls to look her in the eyes, but the Cocopa and Chemehuevi girls were obedient; no talking to the new students.

The older girls had learned to be good Christians from the time they first arrived at boarding school. They thought they knew more than she did, but Indigo knew all about the three gods, Father, Son, and Ghost. She knew English words because Grandma Fleet and Mama knew them. The older girls hated her because she already knew English words and she had never been to school. They pulled her hair and pinched her when she recited all the English words she remembered from Needles: Jesus Christ, Mother of God, Father God, Holy Ghost, hallelujah, savior, sinners, sins, crucify, whore, damned to hell, bastard, bitch, fuck. Indigo enjoyed the shock on their faces as she cursed them with English words the teachers never used. The others ran to tell the dormitory matron. The fat matron dragged her to the laundry room with the others trailing along to watch. Indigo did not cry as she was pulled along; she spoke English to the matron, who looked Indian but behaved like a white woman.

“Hey, lady! What’s the trouble? I’m talking English — see. God damn! Jesus Christ! Son of a bitch!” The matron was a big Pomo Indian, who gripped Indigo’s arm even tighter. At the laundry sink they struggled, and one of the older girls had to help hold her while the matron shoved the bar of brown soap into her mouth. Indigo broke loose from them and spat soap in the matron’s eyes. Even with soap in her eyes the matron would not loosen her grip on Indigo. One of the janitors, hearing the commotion in the laundry room, had appeared then; he was one of those mission Indians, and like the matron, he spoke only English. He picked up Indigo by both shoulders and carried her to the mop closet and shut her inside.

She didn’t mind the darkness of the closet; darkness was safety. She had to keep spitting to get the soap taste out of her mouth. Light peeked in around the edges of the door, and gradually her eyes adjusted, just as they had when she and Sister Salt traveled at night. The damp mops smelled of mildew and the disinfectant used to clean the bed after a sick student died.

In the months Indigo was at the Sherman Institute, she had watched three girls from Alaska stop eating, lie listlessly in their beds, then die, coughing blood. The others said the California air was too hot and too dry for their Alaskan lungs, accustomed to cool, moist air.

Indigo was locked in the mop closet all night. She relieved herself in a scrub bucket; she did not mind the odor of furniture polish and arranged a pile of dust cloths into a bed. That night in the closet she dreamed about the three dead Alaskan girls; they were happy, laughing together at the edge of the ocean, with great tall spruce trees all around. The ocean mist and the fog swirled around the girls’ feet as they ran and chased one another on the beach. The girls did not speak to her, but she knew what their message was: she had to get away or she would die as they had.

The first time the fat dormitory matron turned her back, Indigo took off, running at full speed. She ran past the big boys’ dormitory, past the steamy soap and starch smell of the school laundry, past the dairy barn’s warm cow smells. She headed for the row of palm trees that marked the eastern boundary of the boarding school property. She did not look back. She stopped by the palm trees to catch her breath; she leaned against the tree and felt the odd curled bark against her back. She could hear voices in the distance.

She crouched low as she moved away from the tree; she glanced once over her shoulder, and seeing no one, she took off running, just as she had the morning she and Sister Salt escaped the soldiers and Indian police who pursued the Messiah’s dancers at Needles. Sand Lizard people were not afraid of capture because they were so quick. Grandma Fleet taught the girls to wait and watch for the right moment to run.

Indigo heard the sound of horses’ hooves and the rattle of a wagon in the distance; that would be the superintendent with the big boys to track her down. She removed the school shoes so she could run faster; the shoes rubbed sores on her toes and left the soles of her feet too soft. The ground burned her feet, but she found, if she ran quickly, she barely felt the heat. The skin on the soles of her feet would callus in no time. Once before, right after she first arrived, she ran away, but made the mistake of heading directly into the desert, where they easily tracked her and caught her within a few hours. This time she headed for the orange groves down the dusty road from the school. The orange trees would hide her better than the low desert brush.

The ground was cooler in the orchard, and the air perfumed by the orange blossoms; under the canopy of blossoming trees, there was the low steady hum of bees. Here she stopped to rest and to listen for her pursuers, but the only sound was the bees, a soothing sound that reminded her of the bees that hovered at the spring above the old gardens. When Indigo was little, Grandma Fleet used to tease that the bees sang a lullaby for Indigo’s nap so she must not disappoint them. The sound usually made her feel sleepy, but not when she was on the run. She did feel a bit tired, so she sat with her back against the tree trunk and closed her eyes. Wherever they were, Sister Salt and Mama must have thought about her at that moment because suddenly she was thinking about them too. She felt their concern for her and their love; tears filled her eyes. Grandma Fleet still loved them and prayed for them from Cliff Town, where the dead went to stay.

The bees’ hum, the perfume of the orange blossoms, and the dampness under the trees made the air heavy; Indigo felt drowsy as she sat there. She checked the position of the sun in the sky; it was still early enough that the superintendent and the big boys were probably still driving up and down the dusty farm roads, between the lemon and orange groves, searching for her. The old buggy creaked and rattled so loud she could hear it a mile away, with the jingle of the harnesses and the clip-clop of the horses. She was safe there and would wait for darkness. She smiled because Sister Salt and Mama would be proud of her.

The sound of the buggy and the loud voices of the big boys and the superintendent woke her. There were so many — half the summer staff at the school must be searching for her. She took off running again, deeper and deeper into the rows of orange trees; now and then she caught sight of a grove of tall trees, much taller than the orchard trees, up ahead. She was thirsty, and tall trees meant water nearby.

She left the cover of the orchard and bolted across open ground and a road to reach the tall trees. She stopped and listened. Nearby, the buggy horses moved at a walk while the big boys trotted alongside, talking and laughing as they searched the orchards, row by row. She ran with all her might, all her being. She ran to escape them all — the white teachers with the sour faces, the dormitory matrons with their cruel smiles and quick pinches; she ran from the other children too, because they teased her and pulled her hair. They wanted to make her cry because she was from the Sand Lizard people with their odd ways — they preferred cliffs and sand dunes far from the river, far away from churches and schools.

Get away, get away; the words sang inside her head. She ran until her lungs and legs were burning and the sweat ran into her eyes so she caught only glimpses of the grove of tall trees up ahead. She felt the ground change under her feet. Smooth dirt, a road, then suddenly she stumbled and fell hard; the breath was knocked out of her, but she wasn’t on dirt anymore. The surface was absolutely hard and flat, scorching hot; she jumped up breathlessly and she saw the white stone tile that tripped her was part of a walkway into the grove of tall trees. She could hear the wagon and the voices of the searchers. The stone tiles were not quite as hot as the ground. She ran down the stone path until she reached the bushes that enclosed the grove of tall trees. If they were so smart, let them try to find her tracks on the stone walk. She glanced over her shoulder and saw no one; then with both arms in front of her face she dove under the thick green bushes the way Grandma Fleet taught her and Sister.

She lay motionless until she caught her breath. The cool damp of the rotting leaves smelled so good. The palms of her hands and her knees were stinging from skin scraped away by her fall; the damp earth soothed the pain. Her face felt much cooler pressed against the ground. She closed her eyes. Suddenly the sounds of the horses’ hooves and the rattle of the buggy were right there on the road across from the bushes. She held her breath and watched; through the leaves she saw the superintendent’s angry face as he scolded his posse of Indian boys.

“She can’t have got very far,” he told them, but the older boys leaned against the buggy or squatted on the ground while they caught their breath. They were tired; they gave up. The superintendent motioned furiously for them to get in the buggy, then took one last look at the lilac bushes as he took the reins in both hands; it seemed as if he was looking straight at her, right into her eyes, but he saw nothing. Then they were gone and silence returned.

Indigo dreamed about the old gardens. Grandma Fleet and she were making little windbreaks for the bean seedlings from dry twigs. Somehow Grandma Fleet made crackling sounds with the twigs, sounds that seemed so odd Indigo had to ask Grandma what she was doing. Her own voice woke her. Only the crickets were awake; desert singers like them knew the night was made for music and love, but the heat of the day was for sleep. Under the bushes it was dark, but beyond she could see outlines emerge from the predawn light that kept shifting — from dark gray, then dark blue, then violet that lifted to lavender that faded to a rosy gray streaked with pale yellow. Faster, faster, faster, the gray sky vanished, and now the eastern horizon was a blaze of red-yellow. Somewhere Sister Salt and Mama looked up at the same sky. She was not so far away from home: some of the same birds lived here — little speckled cactus wrens were calling one another around the lilac bushes, and though she could not see him, a desert curved beak greeted the dawn with trills of praise.

She was thirsty. Grandma Fleet taught them to smell water, to catch the scent of dampness early in the morning before the heat of the day scattered it. She tried to see beyond the bushes, but the foliage was too thick. Her knees and hands were sore as she crawled, head down, pushing aside the twigs and leaves. She saw the trimmed lawn just ahead of her just as she heard a woman’s voice call a name over and over. Suddenly a little bearded man no taller than a turkey stood in front of her; he seemed surprised to see her too. He crouched down so he could look her in the eyes. He wore red leather around his little neck. His eyes were golden brown and calm. Timidly he extended his tiny hand toward her face. Just then the woman’s voice rang out: “I see you! You little monkey! Come! Come! Linnaeus! Here, sweetie! Come!” As the woman knelt to reach under the lilacs to pick up the monkey, she gave a little shout of surprise when she saw Indigo.

“Oh!” she said as if she had been struck. Their eyes met. She held the monkey close to her.

“Linnaeus,” the woman said, “who is this?”

♦ ♦ ♦

Hattie did not try to coax or drag the child out of the bushes; instead she smiled and nodded as if she was accustomed to visitors in the lilacs. Edward had alerted her to the runaways from the Indian school a few miles down the road. No danger. No cause for concern. Only the first-time students tried to run away; after the first year they were not so wild, he said, and she laughed gaily and replied, “Thank goodness we haven’t got a penitentiary next door!”

At first she could not determine if this was a boy or a girl, though Edward said the boys were shorn of their long hair; this child’s hair seemed long, though it was too tangled with weeds to be certain. Poor little Indian.

She did not want to frighten the child any more than she had already. She carried the monkey to his cage in the old orchid house, damaged some years ago by an earthquake, then abandoned to a white wisteria. Over the years, the wisteria followed the contours of the glass panels of the vaulted roof, snaking along tiny ledges formed by the leaded glass. Long cascades of pendulous white blossoms caught the bright morning light through the glass; the white blossoms gave off a luminous glow as if they were little lanterns. The monkey did not want to go into the cage and clung to her tightly; she tickled him gently and played with him until he loosened his grip, then quickly set him down inside the cage on his bench. She hurried to the house to decide what to do about the Indian child.

The cook was in the laundry helping the new maid iron the linens, but she did not disturb them. Edward’s household staff was accustomed to the needs of a bachelor who spent more than ten months of the year away on expeditions. Hattie was in no hurry to make changes; she wanted the cook and maids to feel comfortable with her.

She opened the cupboards and drawers in the pantry in search of something special to lure the child from under the lilac bushes. A peach? Some bread with strawberry jam? Edward said the Indian students were quick to learn civilized ways. In the summer, when he was not away on an expedition, Edward hired two or three Indian boys to help with the weeding and mowing.

She carried the bread and jam and a cup of water on a tray and left them at the edge of the lawn next to the lilac bushes. She wanted the child to see she meant no harm, so she proceeded to measure the grassy arcade created by the lilacs. She had big plans for this area. While she paced off the length of the lawn, she kept watch from the corner of her eye for any sign of the child. She wondered what the school fed the Indian children. Did they feed the children the tribal foods they were accustomed to?

She paced off the width of the grassy area and noted the measurements on one of the note cards she carried in her pocket, a habit left over from her days of scholarly research into early church history. Of course, to Edward, the garden was a research laboratory, though she felt he appreciated its beauty. During his mother’s last illness the orchid house and gardens were neglected, but the acres of lemon and orange trees were tended by Edward to occupy himself. He did not talk about those difficult years, so Hattie did not press him, but she saw evidence of some sort of breakdown in the neglect of the orchid house.

The rectangle of lawn outlined with lilacs was wasted space she could put to good use. She stood motionless for a good while as she surveyed the area and imagined its transformation. She became so engrossed as she sketched her renovation plans for the arcade, the child under the lilac bushes slipped her mind. She wanted to surprise Edward when he returned from the Bahamas — Key West expedition. She wanted to reassure Edward that she was not at all bothered that the expedition had come so soon after their wedding.

Of course, the expedition had been planned well in advance of their engagement; Edward always kept a busy schedule. Actually, she looked forward to this time by herself to get accustomed to her new home and new life. The day after his departure, she rose at dawn and gathered pink rose petals from the old climbing rosebush that covered the wall of the kitchen garden. While the petals dried she sewed sachets from white satin remnants of her wedding gown; now the musty drawers and closets of the old house were scented with roses. Her mother said no man wanted a professor for a wife, but Edward was no ordinary man; he showed no concern at all over the controversy her thesis topic caused.

The first week Edward was away, she walked from room to room; from the polished oak floors to the oak paneling and high ceilings, she could find nothing out of place. Edward’s mother died ten years before they met, but her presence still was there. The rooms had an aura of completion about them that reminded her of her parents’ house, with its aura of self-satisfaction rising off its mahogany furniture and emanating from dark oil portraits in gilded frames.

Hattie’s mother did not permit the maids to reposition the furniture, and Hattie did not bother to challenge her mother over the furniture or rugs, because housekeeping chores bored her. Hattie laughed at her mother’s prediction that she was destined for spinsterhood — she knew she was too pretty to be an old maid. She had a sizeable dowry too. Actually she hoped her mother was right: if she were a spinster she would never have to run a household or take an interest in the shirt starch the laundress used.

From the time she was able to ride her pony alone, she vowed to herself she would not have a husband to interfere with rides along the beach as her parents had when she was thirteen. She discovered books when she was four years old, and Lucille, the cook, held her on her lap, where Hattie loved to listen to Lucille read from the old Bible she kept in the kitchen. Hattie pointed at words and Lucille pronounced them, and before long, Hattie recognized the words when she saw them again. Her father was delighted when Lucille proudly informed him Hattie could read; he went into the city that afternoon to buy children’s books of simple rhymes and the alphabet. Hattie rapidly lost interest in the dolls dressed in elegant gowns and the tiny china teacups and plates she was given on her last birthday. With a book in her lap Hattie became a different person, thousands of miles away, in the middle of the action. Her mother worried that books at such an early age would ruin the girl, but Mr. Abbott didn’t agree. He admired the theories of John Stuart Mill on the education of women and he was proud of his precocious child.

As Hattie finished noting the measurements, she glanced down and saw the bread and jam were gone from the tray; the cup was empty on the lawn. At that instant she heard the cook call her. Hattie returned her call, and the big woman came down the steps to the lower garden with a telegram in her hand. As the cook approached, Hattie said, “I’ve found a little Indian hiding in the lilacs.”

“I’ll send word to the school right away, Mrs. Palmer.”

“Oh no — that’s not what I meant.” Hattie was surprised at the sudden change in the expression on the cook’s pink face. With her lips pressed together in disapproval, the cook bent down and squinted to get a better look under the lilacs. But when Hattie pulled back the branches to show her, the child was gone.

“You have to notify the school. It’s the law,” the cook said.

No one was permitted to employ or otherwise “keep” reservation Indians without government authorization. Edward had explained that out west it was necessary for the government to protect the Indians on reservations; otherwise the settlers would have killed them all.

The cook stared at the lilacs as if she expected a tiger to leap out. In that instant Hattie realized the cook disliked her, and she was embarrassed that her feelings were hurt.

“I’m sure the child returned to school herself,” Hattie said stiffly. What did it matter if Edward’s cook did not approve of her? The controversy over her thesis topic had shaken her self-confidence; before the thesis committee’s decision, she seldom cared what others might think of her, certainly not a servant.

The cook seemed to be waiting for her to open the telegram.

“No need for you to wait,” Hattie said. “I’ll come inside if there is a reply to be sent.” She was annoyed at the cook’s attitude. Her mother said leave the cooks in the kitchen, otherwise there would be trouble; if a cook left the kitchen, look out; cooks wanted to run the whole house. Her mother said bachelors like Edward, who were never at home, spoiled good servants because he allowed them the run of the place while he was away. Hattie must be firm with the cook from the start.

She waited until the cook was gone before she opened the telegram. The message was odd; it must have been sent by someone else, a colleague, perhaps, who signed the message “Dr. E. G. Palmer,” not “Edward” as he would have. The telegram told her nothing but the arrival time of the train. Had there been an accident? Was Edward ill?

She felt her heart pound as she hurried past the water garden and fountain and up the steps to the house. The expedition was to have lasted three months, time enough, Edward hoped, to allow him to complete the collection of sponges and marine algae of the Caribbean Sea.

She sat down at her writing desk, then realized she might have to break into his desk to locate the name and address of Edward’s liaison officer at the Bureau of Plant Industry in Washington. She had not thought to ask for the address, but Edward did not leave instructions for her either. He had been a bachelor too long, her mother said, but he was the only gentleman willing to take a heretic to be his wife.

She paused at the door of Edward’s study. They had not discussed what she should do in the event of an emergency. Edward had invited her into his study once, when they first arrived and he showed her their home. The entire third floor of the house was three big rooms, one passing into the other; the walls of every room were lined with oak bookshelves booked solid from floor to ceiling; in the center of the rooms were oak cabinets with dozens of small drawers.

Edward made his study in the first room; the desk in the center, flanked by two vast library tables covered with papers, books, and bits of dry leaves and plant stalks, was Edward’s desk, as massive as a throne. She felt uncomfortable as she looked through the papers and letters on top of the desk. No mention of the expedition underwriters, no names or addresses, only Latin names of plants, diagrams of leaf structures, and queries from other plant collectors concerning plants they wished to sell or to buy.

The drawers of the desk were locked. She sat down in the big oak chair and took a deep breath. Her heart was pounding and she could feel the perspiration cling to her clothes and her body. She took deep breaths, as her doctor had instructed, and calmed herself. Easy does it.

She was not about to break open the locks on his desk drawers lest she appear to be overwrought. Her annoyance surprised her. Edward prepared for weeks and methodically reviewed all that he might need for three months in the Caribbean. The floor of his study had been spread with lanterns, candles, tents, tarps, a folding shovel, a trowel, a clock, bottles of chemicals — formaldehyde and alcohol — and a number of handsome cherry wood boxes that contained magnifying glasses, a microscope, a small telescope; and of course, one cherry wood box contained Edward’s camera, another the glass plates and bottles of chemicals. Specimen collection envelopes, botanical field guides, a book of maps, blank notebooks, leather boots, rubber boots, rubber hip waders, a wide-brim straw hat, a pith helmet, mosquito netting, a canteen, and a revolver all were carefully packed into huge black steamer trunks. With so much equipment to organize, no wonder he forgot to leave her a name or address to contact in the event of a mishap for himself. The telegram said nothing about illness or injury. She really had made much over nothing. Her nerves were still fragile, though she was much better since she married Edward.

She got up from Edward’s desk because walking calmed her. She wandered up and down the aisles of worktables in the laboratory-study. He collected other curiosities as well as plants. On the floor in one corner, a fossilized clamshell as big as an oven cradled a giant yellow tooth. Odd baskets as tall as chairs were filled with artifacts — bows and spears and arrows bristled out of pottery jars painted with serpents and birds. A strange carved mask with a frightful expression gazed at her from another corner stacked high with colorful handwoven textiles. Mineral specimens filled the shelves — fist-size amethysts, flawless crystals, and rows of eye agates watched over glittering pyrites.

As she turned, her ankle brushed a big dark lustrous rock on the floor. A meteorite. Edward had showed it to her because he was quite proud of it. Too heavy for the shelf with the other meteorites, it was allowed a place on the floor. He was quite keen on “celestial debris,” as he called it. Meteorite specimens were nearly indestructible — unlike rare orchids.

In the seventh month of their courtship, Edward told Hattie about the disastrous expedition to collect rare orchids on the Pará River in Brazil. He lowered his voice slightly as he recounted the events. His companions on the expedition were unreliable, and Edward was injured, unable to protect the specimens during the ocean storm. Boxes of rare orchid specimens were lost at sea during a storm, and others were ruined later when they were stored in a damp shed in Miami. Dozens of rare orchids, intended to repay the underwriters of the expedition, mildewed and rotted. Later there were allegations certain plant materials were exported without proper government permits. His companions behaved irresponsibly, and the failure of the expedition nearly ruined him.

Hattie had not expected such frankness from Mr. Palmer, though he was much older than the suitors she was accustomed to. Suddenly she felt too warm, on the verge of a queasy stomach. Was this a test, to see if she would confide her difficulties? How much had his sisters told him about her? Should she tell him how the suitors vanished from her doorstep after the decision of the thesis committee became known? Or how the illness that followed was to blame for her withdrawal? What a relief it had been to stay home with her books. Yes, she would confide in Mr. Palmer.

“By now you must have heard — I am the heretic of Oyster Bay,” Hattie said bravely, with a smile. Then Edward Palmer won her heart as he looked at her intently and replied, “Good for you!” He was a man of science himself, he said. He listened quietly to her story of the failed thesis with its scandalous view of early church history. The thesis committee had been unanimous in its determination that her principal reference sources — Dr. Rhinehart’s moldy Coptic scrolls — were not authenticated, and in any case the scrolls were unacceptable Gnostic heresy, pure and simple.

“Surely you’ve heard all about the furor from your sister,” Hattie said, feeling bolder. “My heresy was a lively topic of dinner party conversations on Long Island for months!” Edward’s laughter at her wit endeared him to Hattie; all the other gentlemen she told looked a bit shocked.

How good Edward’s laughter sounded! To hear her mother talk, Hattie’s entire life was ruined by her assertions that Jesus had women disciples and Mary Magdalene wrote a Gospel suppressed by the church.

Her affection for Edward stirred at that instant, and she could only smile at his neglect to leave her a way to reach him. The hundreds of tiny specimen drawers in the huge oak cabinets stirred her curiosity. She pulled out a drawer: inside was a small manila envelope carefully secured with red string. She unwound the string from the circular clasp and gently squeezed the sides of the envelope to look inside. All she saw was a single shriveled stalk with fragments of dry plant material, remains of leaves, perhaps. She sniffed the envelope but detected only a faint odor. Edward’s special interest was in aromatic grasses and plants, which always were highly prized by horticulturists and gardeners. Edward traveled to places so remote and collected plants so rare, so subtle, few white men ever saw them before. He added these rare treasures to his growing collection of roots, stalks, leaves, and, most important, when possible, seeds. His ambition was to discover a new plant species that would bear his name, and he spent twenty years of his life in this pursuit before their marriage.

♦ ♦ ♦

Hattie did not attend any parties or formal gatherings after she left graduate school, though gradually she accepted invitations to family picnics and outings to the beach — always with a group of her younger cousins, who needed a chaperone. The only reason she agreed to attend a formal event like the Masque of the Blue Garden was because their neighbor Mrs. Colin James served with Hattie’s mother on the bishop’s fund-raising committee, and Hattie was curious to see the garden so well known for its drama and the spectacle of its mistress.

Hattie’s mother wanted the party to mark the end of the seclusion Hattie assumed. Eyebrows were raised when she enrolled in graduate studies in early church history; all the other young women her age were engaged or married. After the scandal over her thesis topic, Mrs. Abbott was relieved to let the dust settle awhile, but she still hoped to find Hattie a husband. In a year or two the incident would be forgotten. By chance, Susan James’s distinguished brother, Edward Palmer, arrived from an expedition abroad two days before the blue garden event.

The Masque of the Blue Garden was considered the premier event of the summer season, and Hattie thought it promised to be eccentric enough to be interesting. And so it was. Just as the full moon rose over Oyster Bay, out stepped Susan Palmer James from the arch of blue rhododendrons, dressed all in sapphire blue — blue feathers and blue satin. She strode grandly from the far end of the blue garden along the white marble terrace next to the pool filled with fragrant blue water lilies.

Moments after her triumphant entrance, their hostess introduced Mrs. Abbott and Hattie to Edward Palmer, distinguished botanist and brother. His face and hands were tanned from his fieldwork just completed in Mexico. Hattie found him quite interesting, and while the others danced, Hattie and Edward talked about Italy. She went to England with her parents when she was a child, but she wanted to see Rome. Edward laughed when Hattie recounted her mother’s fears that high church officials might excommunicate her for heresy. But Hattie’s father, God bless him, suggested the church’s cardinals had more pressing concerns than a Gnostic heretic. Her trip to Italy was scheduled for the following spring.

Mrs. Abbott did not trust Hattie or Hattie’s father; after all, they conspired to enroll Hattie in graduate school at Harvard without her knowledge. What respectable man wanted a wife who sat in a musty library all day to pore over heretical texts? Mrs. Abbott’s face assumed a stricken expression at any mention of Hattie’s thesis, but her expression relaxed whenever she reminded Hattie of the size of her dowry. Mrs. Abbott talked about money almost incessantly — who had money, how they got the money, and who lost their money. Despite her family’s impeccable lineage, their wealth was in decline when Mrs. Abbott was a child. She felt quite fortunate to find a husband who did not care about such things.

Despite Mr. Abbott’s disapproval of the practice, Hattie had a sizeable dowry that made Mrs. Abbott smile every time she thought of it; she liked to remind Hattie of its size.

“In that case, I hereby renounce my dowry!” Hattie used to reply. “I’d rather spend the money on travel.”

“Oh nonsense, Hattie!”

“I’d rather not be married anyway — now that I’m a heretic!” she laughed, but after she got acquainted with Edward, her opinion of marriage began to change. Edward was a remarkable man. He traveled a great deal to the most distant and fascinating destinations, and he had a wonderful gift for recounting his adventures, in which he portrayed himself humorously, as the innocent tourist hell-bent on disaster. The tourist identity was the disguise he adopted to confuse the customs officers. Some foreign governments were quite unpleasant about the export of valuable root stock and seeds.

Edward was quite irreverent about customs authorities in general, which Hattie found appealing. I am a heretic, she thought, but Mr. Palmer doesn’t seem to mind. Hattie asked her father what he thought of Mr. Palmer.

“He’s too old and he travels too much,” her father said, “but nothing I say will stop you if your mind is made up.”

She linked her arm through her father’s. “My mind isn’t made up,” she said as they walked to the dining room together. “Mother’s mind is made up.” Mr. Palmer wasn’t as young as the others, and like any longtime bachelor he might be set in his ways; still, he didn’t seem adverse to children. Indeed, in the months that followed the garden party, Hattie saw Edward again at a picnic on the seashore and at a birthday party on the lawn for Edward’s young nieces. On both occasions Edward brought along his view camera and made photographs of the children playing, and later posed everyone for a group photograph that included him too — he tripped the shutter with a long black string as he posed with the group. Edward really could be quite appealing. Hattie had not wanted marriage or children, but Edward changed all that. Children — the child! Suddenly she remembered the Indian child in the lilac bushes. What if the child did not find her way back to the school?

Hattie rushed downstairs and out to the south garden lawn hedged with lilacs. Next to the plate, the cup was lying on its side in the grass. Hattie didn’t mind if her skirt got dirty; she crawled and searched carefully under and among the dark green leaves of the lilacs. She found a few late blossoms hidden in the lower branches; their perfume seemed stronger than the earlier blossoms; but she could not locate the child. Hattie blamed the arrival of the telegram for her thoughtlessness; she should not have taken her eyes off the child!

Hattie rushed up the steps to the fountain and pool for a better view. Beyond the lilacs, orchards of lemons and oranges stretched to the horizon. She couldn’t quite see the redbrick buildings of the Indian school, but once from the third-floor balcony, Edward had pointed out a cluster of two-story buildings in the distance. The child almost certainly returned to the school; there was nothing but desert beyond the citrus groves.

She checked under the lilacs a last time just to be sure. A late afternoon breeze wafted the perfume of the yellow climbing roses on the kitchen garden wall. She still had to bathe and change clothes before she went to meet Edward’s train, but the excitement of the telegram on top of the discovery of the Indian child left Hattie exhausted. On a marble bench that overlooked the gardens and orchards below, she felt herself almost shiver with anticipation, so she closed her eyes and took deep breaths as her doctor instructed. The fresh outdoor air relaxed her. The doctor’s orders were to take every opportunity to relax and to avoid fatigue lest she fall ill again. She exhaled slowly, as the doctor instructed. She still had not unpacked her books or papers because the doctor advised against the resumption of her studies until they were certain she was fully recovered. Men were equipped for the rough-and-tumble of the academic world in ways women, unfortunately, were not, the doctor said. Hattie’s mother looked sharply at Hattie as the doctor spoke.

Fortunately, Hattie’s father entered the room just then. Bless his heart, he reminded them of Hattie’s academic honors in her undergraduate studies at Vassar. Women who never opened a book suffered from nervous exhaustion — how ridiculous to blame Hattie’s studies! Mr. Abbott encouraged Hattie to continue work on her thesis regardless of the committee’s decision, but she could not bring herself to even look at the manuscript or notes, though she did bring them with her to California.

The sun began its descent in the west, and the thick perfume of orange blossoms washed over her in the breeze. Hattie was considering whether to send a note to the superintendent of the Indian school when the cook hurried across the terrace breathlessly.

“Mrs. Palmer! Mrs. Palmer! He’s here! Dr. Palmer has just arrived!” Hattie stood up and looked beyond the fountain in time to see him step through the French doors to the terrace. Hattie waved and called out a greeting as she ran. She paused an instant to look him over for signs of injury, then rushed to him. Edward smiled and embraced her.

“I was afraid something was wrong,” she said, the words muffled by his chest.

Only the weather was wrong, he explained; one hurricane after another. He kept her close to his side with his arm around her and neither of them spoke as the huge red sun slipped behind the groves of oranges. She found his height and fitness very attractive; men half his age were not as lean and fit as Edward, despite the lingering effects of his injury in Brazil. Before their courtship commenced in earnest, Edward insisted she understand the impediment; he was so tender and ardent in all other ways Hattie was confident he would make a full recovery. She leaned closer to him and kissed his cheek; he smiled and glanced down at her warmly before he looked west again at the sunset as though something was on his mind.

They remained on the terrace in silence even after the sun went down. A gentle wind moved through the white climbing roses heavy with perfume. At last Edward shifted his weight to give his good leg a rest and glanced toward the orchid house.

“How’s the monkey getting along?” he asked.

“Oh he’s a jolly little thing!” Hattie inhaled sharply as suddenly she remembered the child.

“Oh Edward! How could I forget! Linnaeus found an Indian child hiding under the lilacs this morning.”

“A bit late in the season for runway Indians,” he said. “Usually by this time they’ve sent them home for the summer or they’ve farmed them out.”

“I was about to send a note down to the school, but the telegram arrived — in the excitement I forgot.”

“Where is the child now?” he asked, looking down past the pool to the lilacs.

“I’m not sure. I went back to find her just now and—”

“Her?”

Hattie felt her face flush. “I think so. I’m not sure. I saw long hair. You said the Indian boys—”

“—have all their hair cut off.”

“Yes, but now I can’t find her.”

“No need to worry. She probably went back.”

♦ ♦ ♦

After the sun went down, Indigo crept out of her hiding place under the trellis of cascading white roses. She ran from the lilacs into the white garden because it was enclosed by a low rock wall that concealed her. While the twilight was still bright, she moved cautiously, listening for footsteps or voices. She peeked around the corner of the rock wall and saw the stone walk led to stone steps up to an arch of climbing red roses. What a fragrance they had! Grandma Fleet used to talk about the flowers the Mormon ladies grew, but never had she or anyone ever talked about flowers so fragrant and big as these.

She wanted to run right over to examine these red giants more closely, but she waited until the twilight darkened a bit more. The white blossoms seemed almost to glow and the wonderful perfumes only increased with the darkness. On stalks taller than she was, huge white lilies leaned their faces down to hers. She went from flower to flower, burying her nose in each blossom as deeply as she could, licking the sweet pollen from her lips. The night air was delightfully cool and the sensation of the rich damp soil under her feet made Indigo want to dance. She had to hold the stupid long skirt of the school uniform in one hand to keep from tripping over it; a moment later she pulled off the skirt and danced between the white lilies and white irises, around the white lilacs next to the gate. As she danced, Indigo looked up at the great field of stars like so many little bean blossoms; Grandma Fleet could travel up there now, but where were Sister Salt and Mama tonight?

After she got tired of dancing, she sat on the low wall overgrown with white honeysuckle to watch the moon rise from the same direction she must travel to get home. She made a plan: The school dress with its long sleeves and long skirt would serve as a blanket as well as a pack to carry any food she might find around here. What she really needed, what she really missed most, was her gourd canteen. She didn’t have much time. She had to find a place to hide before daybreak. She might need another day to locate the things she would need for the journey home.

The west wind stirred and cooled her face; she inhaled the scent of orange and lemon blossoms, then suddenly caught the scent of roasted meat that wafted down the path from the back of the house. Indigo’s stomach grumbled about the scanty food. She crept out from the low wall and made her way to the steps that brought her from the lilacs and past the fountain and pool. From the top step Indigo could see the fan shape of the gardens — in orderly squares and rectangles, outlined by low walls of stone bright with the moon’s light. Orange and lemon groves surrounded the house and the gardens and a number of outbuildings and sheds. The place was almost as big as the boarding school.

With the moon high overhead, she could see the white stone steps and paths clearly. She needed to find the best hiding place before morning. She slipped off the school dress and underclothes — how delicious the open air and warm breeze felt against her bare skin. Clothing suffocated her skin; naked in the moon’s light, she felt alert and invigorated. Grandma Fleet was right: too much clothing wasn’t healthy. She skipped down the steps, two at a hop, past the white garden’s snaking branches and thickets of white bougainvillea; she brushed aside the flowering branches and saw three steps down. Below, planted in spirals and whorls, were blood red dianthus, red peonies, red dahlias, and red poppies; bright red cosmos and scarlet hollyhocks made the backdrop along the east wall. Indigo’s heart pounded with excitement at all the red flowers — oh Sister Salt would love to hear about this garden of red flowers. By daylight the red garden would be even better.

She picked handfuls of fat rose hips and ate herself to sleep, curled up under the rosebushes with her head at the edge of a stone step. She awoke when the color of the sky was dark red, almost black, the color of the hollyhocks at the burned house. Rapidly the sky became the color of the roses, and finally the sky was blood red. Too bad she had to get going, because Grandma Fleet always advised the girls to collect as many new seeds as they could carry home. The more strange and unknown the plant, the more interested Grandma Fleet was; she loved to collect and trade seeds. Others did not grow a plant unless it was food or medicine, but Sand Lizards planted seeds to see what would come; Sand Lizards ate nearly everything anyway, and Grandma said they never found a plant they couldn’t use for some purpose.

There were other gardens she could see only partially because of tall bushes and trees that enclosed them. The sunny gardens, the shady gardens, the damp gardens, the water garden — where was the garden with the beans and corn? Indigo followed the stone path to the point where it forked; one branch turned back toward the house, the other branch led down four steps to a sandy border at the edge of the orange grove.

While she ate oranges in the shade of the trees, she surveyed the house and the gardens. Where did they get all the water? The land here was sandy desert nearly as dry as home — the panic grass and amaranth grew just as they did at home. She heard a buggy and horses, then voices from the road beyond the house; she had to find a better hiding place or the school search parties were certain to find her.

Indigo crept back up the steps, past the garden of red flowers and the white flower garden to the stone path that turned back to the barn and outbuildings behind the house. She listened for footsteps and voices but heard only the cicadas and a cactus wren; she darted around the corner of the barn to the strange glass house she noticed the afternoon before. The whitewash on the glass weathered off to reveal glimpses of green foliage and cascading spikes of white wisteria that grew up and out the roof vent. How wonderful the scent was! She closed her eyes and inhaled again and again; then she heard a sound — tap-tap-tap-tap, silence, then four more taps. She froze in her tracks; the hair on the back of her neck stood up; she turned quickly to locate the source of the sound. Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap! There it was again; someone was tapping on the inside of the glass house. She glanced over her shoulder as she retreated down the stone path to the gardens and caught a glimpse of the shining eyes and face of the little hairy monkey man who found her the previous morning. The monkey motioned for her to come to him.

♦ ♦ ♦

An early hurricane season in the Caribbean Sea had forced them to cut short their expedition. One after the other, the tropical storms lashed the Bahamas and the Keys. They attempted to wait out the first storm in St. Augustine, but a great gust of wind and ocean surge flung the small boat containing all their supplies against the crushed pier. Fortunately, all of Edward’s equipment and the precious collections he managed to make were in the hotel room with him. Before the second storm arrived, Edward tried to send a telegram to Mr. Talbot at the Bureau of Plant Industry to ask for authorization to extend the effective dates of their expedition and for funds to replace the lost and damaged supplies, but the high winds from the approaching storm knocked out telegraph communications as far north as Atlanta. Weeks later the downed lines were still not repaired, which was the reason his telegram to Hattie had arrived only hours before Edward. He was dubious when he asked the captain of a freighter bound for Galveston to send the telegram for him.

“The last thing I wanted was to upset you,” Edward said as he held Hattie’s chair for her at the table. But there was good news as well: when their ship finally reached New Orleans, Edward found a telegram from Mr. Albert at Lowe & Company. Edward’s face flushed when he spoke of Lowe & Company. Though he had told her only a few details of the unfortunate expedition to Brazil, she recalled Lowe & Company was involved in a misunderstanding that occurred over certain rare orchids Edward was sent to collect for a group of private investors.

The cook had prepared lamb chops in mint jelly, green beans, and raisin-stuffed potatoes, special favorites of Edward’s, and there was mincemeat pie for dessert. Hattie did not care for the heavy flavor of lamb, and the odor of mincemeat pie had repelled her since the one bite of mince pie she took when she was eleven. She was too excited and happy to feel hungry so she daintily picked the raisins out of the potato and pushed the green beans across the plate with her fork while Edward related the new development: Lowe & Company had advanced him $5,000 for an expedition to Corsica. Now Hattie would have an opportunity to visit her aunt in England and they would see Italy as well. In little more than six weeks, they would depart for New York by train to visit their families on Long Island for a few weeks before they departed.

“But I’ve barely just arrived here,” Hattie said, surprised at the news. “I haven’t even unpacked our wedding gifts yet.” Edward smiled.

“Never mind that!” he said, taking both her hands in his. “You will have years and years to settle yourself here.”

He looked so distinguished and stalwart — the military posture from his prep school years in the east. As Hattie listened, she studied the face and the mouth, the intent expression in the eyes, and felt her heart beat faster because this was her beloved, still so new to her; it was still startling to see and realize here was her husband! Did she look as unfamiliar to him as well?

♦ ♦ ♦

The voyage from the Keys across the lower Gulf had taken a week longer than scheduled as the ship was forced to take refuge in protected coves to escape the high seas and winds that scoured the Keys and the coast. When they departed Veracruz the skies were blue and the wind calm, but as they began to cross the Bay of Campeche, the wind speed intensified. The ship’s captain steered for Tampico to escape the storm. With the expedition cut short, Edward was pleased for the opportunity to have a look around the public market in Tampico. He had made it his practice to collect samples of local and regional agriculture. The natives might possess unknown medicinal plants with commercial potential or a new variety of citrus or a new source for rubber. He was also eager to purchase archaeological artifacts and curiosities. Weather permitting, he would hire the cabin boy to assist him with his camera so the more interesting subjects could be photographed.

There were only light winds in Tampico; the topaz blue sky was scattered with cirrus clouds in a strong breeze that brought refreshment to the sweltering dockside streets with their stench of dead fish and sewage. Evidence of the civil unrest and the hurricane season were apparent: iron shutters were closed across shops; soldiers loitered in pairs on street corners smoking cigarettes, carbines slung over their backs. The streets were deserted though no one could name the cause. Rumors abounded: an outbreak of yellow fever, or an epidemic of rabid cats. There were always rumors of impending crisis in Tampico.

Earlier the first mate mentioned a recent uprising by half-castes and Indians who claimed to be guided by the Indian Virgin of Guadalupe against the state tax collectors. The early storm season and the dispute left a great many empty spaces and vacant stands; still, Edward was able to find a variety of muskmelon he had not seen before. Its shape reminded him of a human skull; its succulent sweet flesh was bright red. The melons were heaped in great piles on the old flagstones next to clay incense burners shaped like water lilies, filled with lumps of cloudy copal to fuel them. He purchased bunches of mysterious dried flowers beneficial to weak hearts and bald heads; he found strange roots the shape of a baby’s fingers, said to aid in digestion. He methodically peered into the stalls and shops that were closed lest he miss some unusual item. He noticed one stall that was actually the front of a tiny house at the entrance of the narrow alley behind the cathedral. He hesitated and nearly turned back because the stall was closed behind an iron gate; but then between the iron bars piled on the ground he saw chunks of lustrous black meteor iron for sale. He was always interested in acquiring meteor irons or other celestial curiosities. He knocked, but no one stirred inside; he would return later.

The massive stone towers of the old cathedral caught his eye; they were built with the stones of the Maya temple that once stood on the site. Edward felt he must photograph the cathedral and the market for his report; he returned to the ship for his camera and tripod and hired the cabin boy to assist him. While the cabin boy steadied the tripod legs, Edward adjusted the camera lens and arranged the black viewing cloth over his head. At this, the market fell strangely silent; Indian and mestizo women of the market hid their faces behind the corners of their shawls as they had when they told the price of a root or seeds.

They moved the camera methodically from stall to stall to photograph the goods for sale. Edward gave the cabin boy centavos to hand out and the odd silence shifted into a low murmur as the Indian women gathered to compare coins, faces still hidden by their shawls.

By midafternoon the local varieties of maize and beans and other market produce had been well documented with photographs, and the specimen bag was full. Edward had just begun to remove the lens board from the camera when he noticed activity outside the stall with the chunks of meteorite ore. A large figure wrapped in a bright red shawl disappeared inside the iron bar gate. Edward hurriedly repacked the camera and sent the cabin boy ahead to the steamer with the equipment while he went to inquire about the purchase of the meteor irons. Recently there had been a great deal of excitement among archaeologists after a meteorite shaped into a frog was found atop the big pyramid at the Maya ruins of Cholula.

He knocked politely but the figure in the red shawl was nowhere to be seen. He became concerned about the lateness and the departure of the steamer, so he knocked a bit harder. The corrugated steel sides of the stall shook. Suddenly a huge blue face appeared in the window and Edward could not help but jump back. The old woman’s long tangled hair and her ample chest and arms all had been painted a bright blue that emphasized the woman’s Maya features: sharp high cheekbones and aquiline nose. Her glittering black eyes fastened on his, and he felt beads of sweat form above his lip and across his forehead. He pointed at the meteor irons on the ground by her feet.

“How much for these?”

The woman stared at him until he had to look away. He saw the black skin of her legs and realized the woman was African as well as Maya.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “Go away, I’m closed.” The tone of contempt in her voice astonished Edward.

“I’ll buy all the meteor irons you have,” he said as he reached into his specimen satchel for his purse. She leaned her blue face and breasts closer; he felt the heat of her breath and instantly a terrible dread swept over him as if he was in imminent danger.

“Go away! You cannot buy them but you will pay!”

Had she misunderstood him? He held out a handful of silver coins to show her he wanted to buy the irons. She hissed out the words again — go away! The sweat on his forehead felt cold and the hairs on his neck stood up. He got a sudden impression the blue-face woman knew him and she had hated him for a long time.

How silly, he thought later when he was safely in his cabin. He was pleased with the handsome melon specimen and the photographs; the visit to the Tampico market had been a success. He put the unpleasant incident with the Maya Negress out of his thoughts; there would be other opportunities to acquire meteor irons. The encounter only whetted his appetite.

At high tide the steamer departed, but they were under way only a few hours when the wind began to increase and the ship’s barometer began to fall. The whitecaps began to slap the sides of the ship and the captain attempted to outrun the storm by heading due north. The ship rolled and plunged as she circled, waiting for the storm to move. In more than thirty years on the Caribbean, the captain had not seen as many storms as there were this season, and all of the winds followed the same path out of the Bay of Campeche.

The wind howled and drove the rain relentlessly against the ship; on the third day the storm gave no sign of abating, and the sailors began to recount old stories about hurricanes that raged for weeks. Edward remained calm. A few years before, he had weathered a far worse storm on the return trip from the Pará expedition.

That time a sudden storm sprung up off the coast of Venezuela; he was convalescing from his injury, immobilized in his cabin alone. Wind-driven waves nearly swamped the ship; the terrified sailors cast overboard much of the ship’s cargo to buy the wind’s mercy, and all but two crates of the rare orchid specimens were lost.

The sailors believed the storm was the work of the Black Indian of Tampico, who kept two sets of altar saints, one for the day, one for the night. The ship’s barometer fell so far that they thought it was broken. Who or what had angered the Black Indian? Edward listened to the men and wondered if she was the same woman who refused to sell him the meteorites. They said she was a daughter of the African spirits and the Maya spirits as well. The sailors heard spirits in the high-pitched whine of the wind.

The Black Indian and her black dogs combed the beaches after big storms to collect the gold and other valuables from shipwrecks. Edward listened to the sailors’ comments with amusement. The seamen worked themselves into self-righteous anger: What fool had angered the Black Indian, prompting her to burn black dog hair and rum in a white bowl to call up the winds? No solution but to throw gold coins and valuables overboard. That’s what she wanted; gold floated to the shore for her.

Later, when they were alone, Edward asked the ship’s captain where in Tampico this Black Indian might be found. The captain had already finished the first bottle of wine and opened another. Her ugly mug was unmistakable — painted bright blue. Edward felt a chill run down his neck. He said nothing about his encounter with her lest they accuse him of bringing down the storm. He excused himself and returned to his cabin. To think that he had inhaled her hot breath reeking of rum!

The rain and wind were relentless, never increasing but never decreasing in velocity; like the other tropical storms this season, it seemed to stall in Campeche Bay. The vessel was in a protected anchorage but they were unable to move. The first mate poured holy water as the ship’s captain threw handfuls of gold beads overboard; for good measure, the sailors dumped two palletloads of bananas. The wind seemed to slacken somewhat.

Edward took no chances this time; he kept his trunks and chests full of specimens safely locked in his cabin. The relentless howling of the wind brought on a deafness in his right ear, an affliction Edward first suffered in childhood after swimming in the ocean with his father.

The next morning the sky was blue and the ocean calm as if there had never been a storm. Edward took the opportunity to collect specimens of kelp and seaweeds churned up by the storm before the steamship got under way. As he filled the bottles with salt water and strands of seaweed, he felt a bit more confident the expedition was not entirely wasted; he could not afford to return empty-handed.

Perhaps it was the strain of this worry that triggered the headache that descended on him as he hefted a bucket of kelp and ocean water onto the deck. With the sudden sharp pain over his left eye came a blinding streak of light. He was scarcely able to stopper and label the collection jars before he began to perspire and feel nauseous from the pain over his eye. The headache lasted for two days. The ship’s captain sent the steward to administer belladonna, and at one point, the pain was so excruciating Edward begged the steward to put him out of his misery with an overdose. Now as he described the incident to Hattie, he laughed, but Hattie noted the hesitation in his voice. In the fury of the headache he became so disoriented, he believed he was back on the Pará River.

♦ ♦ ♦

“I could smell the burning foliage. I could even feel the broken bone fragments in my leg.” Edward took a sip of wine and settled back in his chair across from Hattie.

“At one point, I even imagined my father was in my cabin, smoking a big cigar and laughing at me!”

Hattie smiled. She enjoyed Edward’s animated mood. She put a light shawl over her shoulders and they strolled the west terrace arm in arm without speaking. The scent of citrus blossoms suffused the night air and overpowered even the white climbing roses and the lilies. No need to plant scented gardens here, though after a time, one became accustomed to the orange and lemon blossoms. She wanted to plant a garden of scents to contrast the heavy sweetness: wild sage, coriander, basil, rosemary, scented geraniums, and catmint for a start. She saw so many possibilities for the gardens despite the neglect they’d suffered.

Edward’s father planted the first citrus groves in Riverside County before the railroad line was completed. But he wasn’t a citrus farmer; he called himself a botanist, though he lacked formal training. Edward’s father seemed not to care that the family fortune, in decline since statehood and further drained by his obsessive gambling, might easily be renewed with the sale of the sweet oranges by the railroad boxcar to the northeast. Edward’s father did not want the bother such business enterprise entailed — orange crates, train schedules, purchase orders bored him.

Instead his father spent all day in the orange groves or in the greenhouses, where he showed Edward the results of his citrus grafts — lemons, grapefruits, and tangerines all grew on the same tree. Every Thursday afternoon found his father at his desk for hours, valise packed and the coachman waiting while he calculated and recalculated his lucky numbers before he left for a weekend of gambling in Long Beach. Edward understood he must never ask to accompany his father.

As a boy, Edward shared his father’s enthusiasm for citrus trees; the workshop of the orangery, with its odors of paraffin, sulfur, and damp earth, had been Edward’s childhood haunt. The dwarf tangerine trees along the back wall of the red garden were grafts Edward made when he was twelve. Back then, if his mother and sister were in New York, he did not feel as lonely in the greenhouse, surrounded by his mother’s orchids.

Edward was seven when she pronounced him old enough to stay with his father. She began her annual summer visit to Long Island with Susan in tow; they took the train the day after Easter because she could not tolerate the dry heat of Riverside in the summer.

For the first few years, Edward dreaded the approach of Ash Wednesday; on Easter Sunday he woke in tears because in a matter of hours his mother and sister would be gone until October. But gradually he learned to overcome the sadness by following his father to the greenhouse or orange groves. His father tolerated him as long as he did not speak unless spoken to. His father’s trips to Long Beach or Pasadena occasionally lasted for weeks, and when his father returned, he brought new suitcases full of soiled clothes newly purchased. No one ever spoke about his father’s absences, not even after he died during a two-week stint in Pasadena.

A cool wind stirred off the desert, and Hattie pressed herself closer to Edward’s side and rested her head lightly against his shoulder. A moment later Edward felt suddenly weary and they went indoors. He was asleep before Hattie came to bed, but after midnight he woke from a dream with a start and sat up in the bed.

In the dream he had been in a narrow bottom bunk in the crew’s quarters of a ship. Ocean waves had crushed the sides of the ship and salt water was exploding in all around him. The specimens! He must make sure they were safe. He left Hattie sleeping soundly, to check on the new collections.

One of the containers of seawater had leaked out between Los Angeles and Riverside, and he was concerned about damage to the rare algae. The first thing in the morning, he would send to Los Angeles for fresh seawater. He had not unpacked the dried plant specimens; now he worried they might have been wet by the leaking container of seawater. He dried the sponges before he packed them; if moisture reached them they would rot. He prepared the drying cabinet and took the precaution of opening the specimen envelopes and placed each sponge on top of its envelope for closer inspection. Jacksonville, Lake Okeechobee, St. Johns River, Titusville, Indian River, St. Lucie, Pine Key, Cedar Key, Key West, Cape Florida, Nassau, the Dry Tortugas. He examined each envelope of dried plant material to be certain there was no dampness. Although the hurricane season’s early arrival cut short the expedition, he felt confident he had collected an adequate sampling. The Smithsonian Institution and the Bureau of Plant Industry were organizing a joint installation at the World Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans the following year. The focus of the exhibit was to be the commerce, industry, and natural history of the Gulf and the Caribbean Sea, with special attention to the commercial and other sponges, the ornamental corals, and the larger species of mollusks and crustaceans fit for human consumption.

Once he was satisfied the specimens were safe, he opened the trunk with his field notebooks and maps marked to pinpoint the locations of each of the specimens collected. After the hurricane season passed, a work party, using his notes and maps, would retrace his steps to collect the large quantities of specimens needed for the displays at the Centennial Exposition. Mr. Talbot showed him the plans. Congress had appropriated $75,000 for elaborate preparations: special curators would bathe the corals and sponges in solutions to preserve and enhance their colors; saltwater display tanks costing hundreds were already being assembled.

The night after his arrival, Hattie woke and saw that Edward was not in bed. Concerned for his health, she went to find him. She noticed light from the third floor study. She did not mean to watch him, but he was so absorbed, she paused in the doorway. What was he doing so intently? He had a wool camp blanket across his lap with the edge of the blanket between the fingers of both hands, examining the blanket inch by inch. Now and then he seemed to find something and pull it free from the wool; then he reached over to a jar on the desk.

She did not disturb him but waited until the next morning to see what he put in the jar. She found delicate grass seed in the shapes of long arrows and others in the shapes of stars. Edward saw her examine the jar.

“Oh those. I wasn’t able to finish my collection of grasses but I found some specimens on the blanket.”

Something about Edward with his notebooks and specimens in jars awoke Hattie’s longing for her books and notes, still packed in the trunks. Despite its rejection by the thesis committee, Hattie still hoped to complete the manuscript. While she was packing for California, one of her notebooks fell open to a page that outlined the teachings of Valentinus, with 365 heavens and 365 different choirs of angels; suddenly she realized how much she missed her work with the old Gnostic texts, so full of exuberant imagination.

The doctor blamed her father’s “wild progressivism,” as Mother called it, for Hattie’s sensitive nervous system. The doctor’s orders stipulated that she rest, relax, and avoid intellectual exertion, particularly the overstimulation caused by the reading and writing for her thesis. Her mother blamed the furor over the thesis for another incident so shocking they did not speak about it.

Her father was so proud of Hattie that he accepted any responsibility he might have even for her illness; knowledge did not come without its price. Mr. Abbott planted a white oak tree in the front yard the day Hattie was born. As an ardent student of John Stuart Mill, he believed it was his paternal duty to give Hattie the fullest education possible; so he taught her himself. She was exceptional, he told her, and urged her to look beyond the narrow interests of current feminists — prohibition of alcohol and the vote for women — and look to the greater philosophical questions about free will and God. At Vassar she found the other Catholic women timid or dull, but she disdained the suffragists as well. Hattie preferred her cubicle in the library and the books to the ballroom; she completed her degree with honors in three years.

The peculiarity of Hattie’s education separated her entirely from other young women her age. Because Mr. Abbott was a freethinker, Hattie’s mother had been adamant about the Saturday afternoon catechism classes at the convent, which were Hattie’s only opportunities to socialize with young women her own age. Even after Hattie completed her First Communion and confirmation, her mother continued to send Hattie for religious instruction, in part because Hattie asked to go. Five or six other girls attended the classes, which would have been deadly boring but for old Sister Conrad, who was too deaf to hear them whispering and too eccentric to follow the catechism book.

For years, Sister Conrad had instructed the daughters of prominent families in the creed of the church. The first part of Sister Conrad’s classes were too boring to remember; first they stood and prayed in Latin to prove they’d memorized the words, then the old nun talked about goodness and sainthood and heaven. But before long Sister Conrad would drift off the shining virtues to the serious topics, which reddened her big Irish face. Hattie was twelve years old the first time Sister Conrad talked about the devil and the fires in hell, and she was spellbound by the old nun’s stories.

Sister Conrad looked each one of them in the eyes as she told stories about the selfish, lying little girls whose behavior was so wicked it caught the attention of the devil himself. Inflamed by their sins, the devil came and hid in their bedrooms — in the closet or under the bed — where he waited to ambush the bad girls. If the sinful girl did not die immediately of fright, then the devil flung her high in the air and let her crash to the floor, where she broke her bones. When Hattie told the devil stories to her father, he appeared concerned and asked if she wanted to stop catechism classes. She quickly said no because she enjoyed her time with girls her own age to gossip and giggle over boys.

Hattie trusted the loving, forgiving God her father described — the God who brought only good to his children and no harm. No devil could harm Hattie — she was confident God loved her too much to allow evil to touch her, and she was curious about the hidden dangers of the world polite people seldom discussed. Her mother’s friends whispered about young women who were “ruined,” but aware Hattie was nearby, they never disclosed the lurid details.

Sister Conrad dropped hints and made innuendos about “bad girls,” who must confess sins of the flesh if they lingered in their warm baths too long. Hattie had no idea what the nun was talking about until she asked the other girls and they told her. Shocked but not surprised, Hattie went home and straight to the library for the set of medical reference books. The chapters on reproduction and childbirth, complete with diagrams and color plates, left Hattie a bit queasy; but she felt sick after her mother described her loss of blood and hours of suffering to bring Hattie into the world! Poor dear! She wasn’t able to have more children.

From time to time a Jesuit priest came to lecture them on church history. He was a pale, heavy man who did not look at them but at the wall at the back of the room. Even when a girl raised her hand with a question, the priest stared at a point above her head. The other girls became restless and bored whenever the priest lectured about the dangers of the loss of their immortal souls, but Hattie secretly was thrilled at the drama of the old struggle between God and the devil played out in endless new situations.

The priest began his instruction on the early history of the church with the third day after Christ’s crucifixion. Naturally, Jesus’ followers were grief-stricken and confused — Hattie felt tears in her eyes as the priest related the event: Mary Magdalene was the first to see the risen Jesus, but Peter refused to believe her. Why would Jesus appear first to a woman like Mary Magdalene? Hattie felt indignant at the injustice; she raised her hand and the Jesuit nodded at her. The other disciples did not like Mary Magdalene, Hattie said; they were jealous of her because of Jesus’ regard for her. Boldly Hattie went on: perhaps the reason Jesus appeared to her first was to teach the other disciples a lesson in humility. The Jesuit remained expressionless. A divine mystery, he said; only God knew the answers.

Hattie was fascinated by the early years of the church; heresies sprang up almost as soon as Jesus was crucified. Week after week, the pale Jesuit took them over the great heresies: Gnostic, Arian, Nestorian, Pelagian, Waldensian, Albigensian, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican. The girls made up a singsong chant of the names to memorize them for the quiz. The history of church heresy was far more interesting than the lives of the saints, though the stories of martyrdom by fire and steel were comparable. The other young women in the religion class talked about nothing but young men and marriage; though Hattie was interested, still she preferred books.

At home, Hattie read all the books of mythology she could find. When she finished with Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology, she began to read about the Egyptians. Her interest in archaeology came from her passion for hidden tombs and mummies. She loved to read Shakespeare’s plays — weepy Richard II and malevolent Richard III were favorites; suave, brilliant Lucifer of Milton’s Paradise Lost captivated her.

Her mother insisted she take riding lessons for the benefits of fresh air and sunshine; she wanted Hattie to develop normal interests and hobbies to take her away from her books long enough to find a suitable husband.

She galloped her pony in the dunes above the bay; she loved the rush of the wind in her face and the sensation of flying above the powerful muscles of the horse. Her father sent along a groom at a discreet distance in case of a fall; otherwise Hattie rode alone. A ride along the beach cleared the mind and allowed completely new ideas to spring up. She loved to imagine she was Joan of Arc riding to battle or a knight of the Crusades.

By the time she completed her studies under her father’s direction and departed for college, Hattie had exhausted their own library of books about early Christianity. They saw two white swans and a black swan from the train window on their way to Poughkeepsie to settle Hattie at Vassar.

Hattie completed her course work with honors in three years; Mr. Abbott spoke with pride about Hattie’s interest in the early church and her desire to continue with graduate studies. A Harvard graduate himself, Mr. Abbott arranged with the Divinity School to allow Hattie to attend lectures as a nondegree student until she proved she was capable of distinguished graduate work.

Mrs. Abbott did not share her husband’s enthusiasm for Hattie’s continued education; she feared Hattie’s reputation might be compromised. How many respectable gentlemen wanted scholars of heresy for wives? Why must she go to Harvard when Columbia was so much closer? But Mrs. Abbott knew when she was outnumbered and graciously accompanied Hattie to the comfortable town house rented near Harvard Square. Mr. Abbott intended to stay home in Oyster Bay with his wind power experiments, but loneliness quickly sent him to them, accompanied by the cook and coachman.

Hattie’s father contacted his old friend Dr. Rhinehart in Cambridge and arranged for Hattie to use his private library from time to time. A scholar of ancient Coptic manuscripts, Dr. Rhinehart’s library of texts and treatises of early church history was remarkable, an equal of Harvard’s collection; Hattie was delighted.

Months later the doctor blamed the overstimulation of the lectures in the presence of young gentlemen for Hattie’s illness. The doctor confided to Mrs. Abbott that he treated many more nervous disorders in young women since the advent of Margaret Fuller, Mrs. Eddy, and the like. But Hattie thought her illness seemed quite natural in view of the incidents that preceded it.

Dr. Rhinehart’s library surpassed Hattie’s expectations. The sight of so many ancient scrolls in glass cases, and folios of early church history shelved from the ceiling to the floor, took away Hattie’s breath. She was silent as she moved around the shelves to savor the scent of leather bindings and glue. The beauty of the bindings caught her attention; the arrangement of the books on the shelves was precise but not by author or title or time period. Here and there volumes bound in red leather and saffron vellum were clustered together amid volumes of fawn, chocolate, and hunter green leather; bindings of black leather formed borders, so the effect was of a lovely strange garden.

From his study, Dr. Rhinehart brought out an armload of leather-bound manuscripts and stacked them on the library table near Hattie. He invited her to read at her leisure his translations of the old Coptic scrolls that were his life’s work. She thanked the kind doctor and promised to return as soon as she settled into her classes. The graduate lectures included long reading lists, so the first semester she limited herself to a lecture course on the Crusades and a seminar on heresy. Both classes demanded a great deal of reading and preparation; weeks passed and Hattie was still too busy to return to Dr. Rhinehart’s library.

The lectures on the Crusades were exciting, but disturbing as well because of the bloodshed. The seminar on heresy was as fascinating as Hattie hoped it would be. Christ was scarcely in his grave before the first heresies sprang up. As the semester progressed, she found the Gnostic heretics the most interesting and thought she might find a worthy subject for her thesis. Whether she was granted graduate student status depended in large part on the thesis topic she chose; of course, her father thought she should write her book and not bother about a graduate degree.

The Gnostic heretic Basilides was really quite wonderful. He preached Jesus was not crucified, that Simon of Cyrene took on Jesus’ appearance and carried the cross and died instead. Basilides believed Jesus came to redeem mankind with the light of divine goodness, but since the material world is full of suffering and evil, Jesus assumed a phantom body that appeared normal but was of heavenly, immaterial origin.

Lecture after lecture Hattie discovered heresies and heretics never mentioned in catechism class, such as Simon Magus, the Samaritan Messiah, who claimed to be the chief emanation of the Deity and was reputed to be the author of a lost gospel, the Great Revelations.

The Gnostic Cerinthus taught the world was not made by God but by a power remotely distant from him. He looked forward to a millennium when a Messiah would rule for a thousand years of peace. Carpocrates, a follower of Cerinthus, taught the world was made by six angels, and all believers are equal with Christ; man could be free of vice and sin only after enslavement to vice and sin.

What would the pale Jesuit say if he could see Hattie now? She knew Sister Conrad would have declared her immortal soul in jeopardy! For her first paper, Hattie wrote about the origins of Illuminism, preached by Valentinus, who said he received secret instruction about the secret doctrine of God. “May you be illumined by the Light” was the greeting of his followers to one another. The Illuminists appeared first in Spain with Priscillianus, who preached special enlightenment directly from God, which naturally caused a furor. The Spanish bishops persuaded the emperor Maximus to condemn Pricillianus to death, but Martin, bishop of Tours, who was present at Trier, protested the heretic’s punishment by state authorities and insisted excommunication was enough. Martin refused to leave the city until the emperor promised to spare Priscillianus, but as soon as Martin left, the bishops persuaded the emperor to behead Priscillianus and one of his followers. In her concluding remarks, Hattie asserted that A.D. 385 marked the first time the church invited the state to meddle in church business, but not the last.

When the paper was returned to her she found extensive notes from the professor in a tiny cramped script in the margins. Her paper was well written, he said, but her conclusions were impetuous and unsound, and might even be mistaken for an indictment of the Spanish bishops for Priscillianus’s execution. Moreover, her paper allowed the possibility that God did give secret knowledge denied to the church hierarchy; that was heresy, pure and simple.

While Hattie was looking over the comments on her paper, she was aware that Mr. Hyslop in the next chair seemed quite interested. Mr. Hyslop was the first of her classmates to introduce himself, polite and even hospitable while the other students continued to ignore her. She glanced up and smiled, but gave him no further notice while she considered the B her paper received.

After class, Mr. Hyslop waited outside on the steps for her and reminded her they had two classes together — heresy and the Crusades, he said with a chuckle. Hattie liked his bright blue eyes but felt her face flush, so she looked down at the steps. The others might feign indifference to her, he said, but they all knew her name because she was the only woman to audit classes that semester. A Presbyterian himself, Mr. Hyslop thought it quite amazing that a Roman Catholic, never mind a woman, was attending Divinity School lectures.

But Hattie didn’t even flinch the morning the lecturer asserted that the Crusades were a disaster for Christianity. Afterward, she told Mr. Hyslop she agreed: the Crusades accustomed Christians to killing for the sake of religion. She relaxed as they moved down the sidewalk under the trees away from the lecture hall.

Two women audited classes the year before, he said, and both were quite good students. Hattie replied she certainly hoped the women were good students — why else should they bother to audit classes? Mr. Hyslop’s face became bright red. Just then they reached the end of the walk, where the Abbotts’ carriage waited each afternoon. The young man stood awkwardly with his hat in his hand as the driver opened the door for her. Hattie called out, “Good afternoon,” to him as she stepped into the carriage, and he blushed and waved as they drove away.

For her second paper in the heresy seminar, Hattie wrote about the followers of Valentinus, who prayed to the Mother as the mythic eternal Silence and Grace, who is before all things and is incorruptible Wisdom, Sophia. Valentinus said those who listened to their guardian angels would have knowledge revealed to them because their angels could not enjoy eternal bliss without them. He taught the material world and the physical body are only temporary; thus, there are no sins of the flesh, and no sacrament of marriage is necessary either, since the spirit was everything.

Hattie’s attention focused on the equal status accorded the feminine principle in Gnostic Christian tradition. She researched other instances of the equality of the feminine element and discovered the Ophites, who believed the light, or glory, of God is without equal and Christ will reign for 365,000 years. The thrones of the twelve disciples will be near his throne, but the thrones of Mary Magdalene and John the Virgin will be higher than the thrones of the disciples. Amazing! Hattie thought. Fantastic, remarkable. The heresy was plain to see, and yet she was spellbound.

Marcion became another of Hattie’s favorites. After he and his followers were expelled from the church, Marcion established his own church, thus adding the sin of schism to heresy. He claimed to preach a purer Christianity than the orthodox Christians, and he and his followers were called the Dissenters. They believed in a supreme God of pure benevolence, not found in the Old Testament; the Just God of the Old Testament was a creating power with anger, jealousy, and the urge to punish, while the God of the New Testament was a Kind God, who sent his Son to rescue mankind. Those loyal to the Just God were inspired by him to crucify Jesus, but this act brought the defeat of their God, who acknowledged his sin in killing Jesus out of ignorance. The Just God was punished by losing all the souls of his followers, who embraced the Kind God. Thus mankind was saved by Jesus’ crucifixion, and all that was required for salvation was a belief in God’s love. Aha! Hattie thought, and composed her conclusions: Marcion’s teachings rendered the orthodox church useless; no need for punishment if there are no laws, only God’s love. No need for church hierarchs, or tithes either.

Hattie was curious to read more, but from the pens of the Gnostics themselves; she sent a note around to Dr. Rhinehart, who was about to leave town but was delighted to instruct his household staff to let Hattie into the library and to see to her every need. She opened the first volume of the translations to this passage:

Abandon the search for God and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who is within you who makes everything his own and says: My God, my mind, my thoughts, my soul, my body. Learn the sources of sorrow, joy, love, hate. If you carefully investigate these matters you will find him in yourself.

Hattie experienced a wonderful sense of pleasure and excitement to find such bold words in the old doctor’s translation. As she continued to leaf through the manuscripts, Hattie was astonished to read:

After a day of rest, Wisdom, Sophia, sent Zoe, Life, her daughter who is called Eve, as an instructor to raise up Adam…. When Eve saw Adam cast down and she pitied him and said, “Adam, live! Rise up upon the Earth!” immediately her word became deed. For when Adam rose up, immediately he opened his eyes. When he saw her he said, “You will be called the mother of the living because you are the one who gave me life….” It is she who is the Physician, and the Woman and She who has given birth…. the Female Spiritual Principle came in the Snake, the Instructor, and it taught them, saying, “You shall not die; for it was out of jealousy He said that to you. Rather your eyes shall open and you shall become like gods, recognizing evil and good….” And the arrogant Ruler cursed the Woman and the Snake….

At that moment Hattie knew her master’s thesis must explore further this female spiritual principle in the early church.

Hattie had difficulty falling asleep because her mind was abuzz with ideas for her thesis. She slept fitfully, and the following morning she woke and realized something felt very different about the world, though both she and the world appeared the same as they had been the previous morning. The names Sophia, Zoe, and Eve came to her again and again like a nursery rhyme, and when she glanced at the small marble Pietà on the foyer table, the words “Adam, live! Rise up upon the Earth!” came to mind. On her way to class, as it did every day, the carriage passed the church with the life-size bronze of Christ on the cross; but this morning Hattie found herself scrutinizing the figure. This bronze Jesus was well fed and his posture more relaxed than tortured; the expression on the face was one of peace, even satisfaction. Was this actually Simon of Cyrene, at peace, relieved that he managed to spare Jesus the crucifixion?

The thesis committee declined Hattie’s proposed thesis topic, “The Female Principle in the Early Church,” and the dean of graduate programs concurred with their decision. Hattie’s proposed research materials and corroborating texts were deemed inadequate. Dr. Rhinehart’s translations from the Coptic were impeccable, but there was as yet no reliable documentation to authenticate the papyrus scrolls. Little or nothing had been written about the feminine principle, wrote one committee member, “because it was a peripheral detail, too minor to merit much scholarly attention.” Still, the committee might have entertained her proposed thesis topic had Miss Abbott not rejected all reliable authorities and texts in favor of odd forgeries of old heresies.

Both Dr. Rhinehart and her father warned her from the start it was unlikely the committee could be persuaded of the scrolls’ authenticity. Her father cautioned that the scholars of early church history were quite conservative, and she was bound to be disappointed. But the worst of it was the casual suggestion by the Divinity School dean that Miss Abbott should attend the Metaphysical College operated by Mary Baker Eddy in Boston. Hattie was furious to be linked with Mrs. Eddy or her “healer,” Phineas P. Quimby. Hattie felt she had been dismissed as a suffragist, but her mother feared far worse — that Hattie was bound to be linked to Margaret Fuller, notorious advocate of free love. More than once, acquaintances of Mrs. Abbott compared Hattie’s precocity and ambition to Mrs. Eddy or Miss Fuller, which caused Mrs. Abbott to exclaim she was sure a compliment was intended, however she really must point out Mrs. Eddy was not Catholic and Miss Fuller was not even a Christian and was quite dead.

Though she had been aloof from most of the other Vassar women, still she felt cozy in the classrooms with other women. But at Harvard the atmosphere was far different. The decisions of the thesis committee were to remain confidential, yet news of Hattie’s rejected thesis topic leaked out at once to humiliate her. The eyes of the other students no longer were averted from her; there were whispers and smiles because the worst of her proposed thesis had been its conclusion, that Jesus himself made Mary Magdalene and other women apostles in the early church!

As for the behavior of Mr. Hyslop after the committee’s decision, Hattie greatly misjudged his character; he was not the gentleman or Christian he appeared to be. From the start, all had proceeded properly enough, and Hattie welcomed his companionship in class and their discussions after class. But Hattie should have been alerted to Mr. Hyslop’s intentions when he compared Hattie’s ambitious thesis topic to the “lofty and spiritual ambitions” of Margaret Fuller. At the time, Hattie politely assumed Mr. Hyslop’s comparison of her to Miss Fuller was strictly limited to intellect and ambition; after all, the Fuller woman shocked polite society with her endorsement of free love and her premarital pregnancy.

Later Hattie realized there was a great deal about Mr. Hyslop that she misunderstood or, worse, that she had imagined for her own comfort. She assumed he was trustworthy because they shared class notes and compared grades and had exhilarating discussions after class. Although he did not seriously challenge the church canons (his thesis topic concerned Irenaeus and the Coptic Christian Church), on numerous occasions he expressed his respect and admiration for her scholarship. But Mr. Hyslop was not honest with her or himself.

In the days that followed the committee’s decision, Hyslop began in good form with a gentleman’s solicitude after the seminar, consoling her for the rebuff. The glorious spring morning looked so inviting Hattie arranged to walk the short distance home after class. As she and Mr. Hyslop chatted under the big oak tree along the Commons walk, a breeze came off the river and sent yellow blossoms fluttering across the lawn as rain showers drifted in front of the sun. Mr. Hyslop saw she carried no umbrella and kindly offered her a ride home in his coach, which seemed harmless enough, since Mr. Hyslop intended to enter the ministry upon graduation.

But they were no sooner in the shade of the giant oaks along the park drive when Mr. Hyslop oddly complained of the sunlight and closed the coach curtain next to himself, then excused himself and leaned in front of Hattie to reach the curtain next to her. The instant the curtains were closed, Mr. Hyslop suddenly embraced Hattie. He pinned her against the seat with his chest and shoulders, while one hand sought to pull her around to face him and the other hand fumbled, then grabbed her right breast with the cloth of her dress. Too startled to scream, Hattie struggled and twisted away while she gave him a good kick in his ankle. Her dress was askew and her hair pulled loose from the pins. She retreated to the far corner of the carriage seat with her heart pounding and angrily opened the curtain next to her. She stared out at the activity in the park though she scarcely saw anything, she was so shaken. Hattie waited for Mr. Hyslop’s litany of apologies to begin momentarily, but she was further shakened after he remained silent and strangely aloof. Hattie felt the blood rush to her cheeks when she realized that Mr. Hyslop was angry with her for disappointing his expectations!

She immediately signaled the driver to stop and left Hyslop without another word. Tears filled her eyes as she hurried home through the park in the rainy mist. She rearranged her hair as best she could and glanced around to see if any of the picnickers or people strolling with their dogs had witnessed her hasty exit from the carriage; but no one seemed to have noticed. While her confidence in her entire life and her very being were changed forever, ordinary life went on without cease.

Lucille opened the front door, took one look at Hattie, and knew immediately what had happened. “Oh honey! He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

Hattie shook her head, but tears filled her eyes as Lucille embraced her gently.

“Please don’t tell Mother,” Hattie whispered. “I’m only shaken up.” After she fell ill, Lucille had to tell Mrs. Abbott, and Hattie admitted Mr. Hyslop’s crime.

The door latch seemed stuck, or maybe she misunderstood how this one worked. There were so many different sorts of door latches at the school, and now here — press down, lift up, twist left, twist right. Indigo put her face close to the glass door and peered inside. At first the objects she saw made no sense to her; then she noticed identical red clay pots with strange skeletons and dried remains of plants all lined up in rows on the floor. She could not see clearly, but there were vines of green leaves and hanging pods of white flowers that formed a canopy above everything in the glass house.

She wasted no more effort on the door latch because all the slanting windows were open, just wide enough that if Indigo lay on her back and made herself as flat as possible, she could get in. As she rolled in, she noticed the warmth and dampness with the wonderful odor of rich earth; there was an odd animal smell as well. The light inside surprised her with its brightness despite the canopy of vines. The smooth gray branches snaked across and enclosed the ceiling entirely and had begun to push outside through the open vent windows in the ceiling. She saw a flash of motion out of the corner of her eye and turned; it was the little hairy man, jumping from side to side of a big cage. The polished brass cage filled the entire east end of the glass house; near the cage, draped with long wisteria blossoms, Indigo noticed a bench carved out of white stone.

“Hello,” she said softly as she approached the cage. “I know you want to get out.” She recognized the latch on the cage door was a close relative of the brass latches on the school’s closets. Out he came, chattering his gratitude. He wrapped his long curling tail around the bars of the cage to steady himself as they studied each other closely. He had shining golden eyes and he seemed to understand the language of the Sand Lizard people when she spoke to him.

“I’m hungry. Is there anything to eat?”

The monkey blinked its eyes and rubbed its hand on its thigh; it looked down inside the cage and Indigo saw the crockery bowls, one full of water, the other with the remains of chopped vegetables and fruit sprinkled with shelled nuts. The monkey looked over its shoulder at Indigo eating from his bowl, then gleefully bounded up the outside of the cage and disappeared into the wisteria. While she ate, she listened to the rustle of the branches and leaves overhead; then a twig of blossoms dropped on the stone floor next to her. She glanced up but saw nothing. Behind her another twig of pendulous blossoms fell, then another and another; as Indigo reached down to pick up a twig, she felt something thud against her back. This time when she looked up she saw bright eyes in the leaves and she laughed. Her mouth and face felt odd; the sounds she made seemed strange because she had not laughed out loud for a long time. Her laughter delighted the little monkey, who raced through the vine canopy throwing down the fragrant blossoms until the gray stone floor was nearly covered.

They played hide-and-seek among the long rows of benches — most were empty, but a number of them were lined with clay pots of shriveled stalks and leaves. They took turns; the monkey hid first. After she found him, she ran as fast as she could and crawled under one of the wicker chairs by the table, where she lay motionless until she felt his little hands pat her on the back. She got up and sat on the wicker settee to rest; the monkey climbed up and sat beside her. She looked around at the glass house and wished Sister Salt could be here to see it for herself; otherwise she might not believe it when Indigo told her.

Indigo laid her head against the arm of the settee and the monkey laid his head against the other arm of the settee. She knew she had to find a place to hide before she fell asleep. Just then the monkey jumped up and stood on the back of the wicker settee; he looked at the door and rubbed his hands together anxiously. Indigo jumped to her feet and ran to the farthest end of the glass house and looked around desperately for cover. She heard the footsteps and then the sound of the door latch, and she had no choice but to crawl over the dead plants in their clay pots and lie facedown as flat as she could make herself so the rows of clay pots and shade might conceal her.

Hattie was unpacking a box of books in her study when she heard Edward call her name. She hurried to the stairs, where Edward met her with a perplexed expression. Had she fastened the latch on the monkey’s cage yesterday? Hattie was irritated that Edward thought she had not properly secured the cage door, but she knew the monkey meant a great deal to him.

He had been out there just now and found the monkey loose in the wisteria, scattering leaves and vines inside the greenhouse. Edward held an empty crockery bowl; the monkey was out of water.

“Oh no!” Hattie put her hand to her cheek. “That can’t be! I filled the bowl with water myself!” She hurried down the stairs and out to the conservatory.

Wilting wisteria blossoms and leaves were strewn all over the floor, and over the benches and old clay pots as well. No harm; the wisteria thrived on severe pruning, and the monkey had only done a bit of thinning. The monkey sat on the top of the cage with his head in the wisteria leaves and refused to come down. Hattie stepped inside the cage and was surprised to see no bits of fruit or vegetable peelings on the cage bottom, where the monkey fastidiously tossed all refuse.

Edward brought a handful of peanuts and waved it invitingly at the monkey, but the little creature refused to come to him.

“Linnaeus! Come down! Come! Linnaeus!” Edward stood on a rattan chair to reach the handful of peanuts higher but the monkey scampered away into the thick green canopy.

“This isn’t like him at all!” Edward continued. “I don’t understand it.” Hattie turned to Edward.

“I know what it might be,” she said, and she began to walk slowly and look under the benches. “Linnaeus has found a new friend.” Edward smiled and nodded his head. Of course, he should have guessed from the start; the little Indian had opened the cage to take the monkey’s food and water.

Edward did not want to crawl under the benches among the clay pots to reach the Indian child. He left Hattie to watch that the Indian child did not escape while he sent the cook in the buggy to alert the boarding school superintendent. Although the child had remained motionless since Hattie first spotted her, Hattie could hear the child’s fast shallow breathing.

“Please don’t be afraid,” Hattie said softly. “Nobody will harm you. Please come out. I won’t let them hurt you.” The monkey climbed down the bars of the cage and crept along under the benches until he was next to the child. Hattie smiled.

“I understand, Linnaeus; she is your friend.”

Edward returned after a time with a short length of rope.

“No need for that,” Hattie said. “Linnaeus came down of his own accord. He’s under there with the child.” Edward squatted with the rope in his hands and peered intently under the bench into the mess of pots and debris, and Hattie realized the rope was intended for the child.

“Please, Edward, she hasn’t moved. She can’t get away. Let’s wait until the school authorities come.” Hattie took his arm and nodded her head in the direction of a white marble bench strewn with ripped-up wisteria leaves and blossoms. Edward let the rope drop to the floor before he joined her. She appeared upset with him, so he apologized at once. He never meant to imply she neglected the monkey. She wasn’t so sensitive as that, Hattie replied; she was concerned about the Indian child. The rope really was beyond the limit!

The rope had been only a precaution — for the child’s own good, so that she did not escape and flee into the desert, Edward persisted. Riverside people were familiar with runaways from the Indian school; Hattie had no experience with Indians — certainly not these wild Indians.

Edward took his watch from its pocket. What was taking so long? The boarding school was only two miles down the road. Edward went up to the house to see what had become of the cook and the message to the school authorities.

After Edward shut the door behind him, Hattie sat very still and waited; after a time, she watched the child lift her head to look around. The monkey came out from under the bench first, followed by the child, on her hands and knees, who then stood up. They both ignored Hattie as they marched up the middle aisle of the glass house to the monkey’s cage, only a few feet from the marble bench.

She watched the monkey and child sit side by side on the monkey’s straw mat, where they took turns rolling the monkey’s toy ball to each other. Both the child and the animal seemed to know their holiday together would soon end. A terrible wave of sadness and hopelessness welled up in Hattie, more overwhelming than anything she had felt during the thesis scandal, and her eyes filled with tears. She might not know much about “wild Indians” but she did know they were human beings.

An unaccustomed anger sprang up inside her at that instant, and Hattie became determined the child would not be bound and dragged away like a criminal. She was still angry at the tone of voice Edward had used with her earlier, despite his apology. His tone revealed something disturbing about his impression of her — something she could not yet identify.

Edward returned with an expression of frustration on his face. The school superintendent was away until the following week, and only the janitors and gardeners were on the premises. Any remaining students had been sent home for the summer or placed with local families to work until school started again. The dormitories were closed. The monkey and the child watched Edward’s every motion as he explained the Riverside sheriff would take the child until the superintendent returned next week.

Hattie was incredulous that the school personnel so quickly called off their search for the missing child, even if it was the end of the school term. Edward reminded her the school personnel were government employees. Besides, the Indian students ran away constantly. Hattie was not persuaded. The child was too young to simply abandon! It was outrageous! It was criminal. Anything might happen to a child, especially a girl! Hattie noticed Edward’s surprise at the vehemence of her words, but she did not feel ashamed, she felt fierce. The Indian child meant nothing but trouble to the school authorities; they didn’t care if she was lost or died — that meant one less Indian they had to feed.

“At least she can stay here with us until the school superintendent returns next week,” Hattie said in a more controlled voice.

Edward was too surprised by Hattie’s display of emotion to argue, although he expressed concern the child might flee before the school authorities returned. Staff personnel at the school had warned him about the girl. She was from one of those renegade bands of desert Indians. She was a wild one.

“Does she speak any English?” Hattie asked. Edward shrugged.

“I wonder how old she is. What would you say?”

This time Edward smiled and shook his head. “You’d be a better judge than I.” They both were looking at the child, who sat solemnly on the monkey’s mat watching them; the monkey sat quietly beside her.

“We can’t leave her here,” Hattie said,

The child could stay in one of the spare bedrooms until the authorities came for her. Edward was so relieved that Hattie was no longer upset, he failed to mention the Indian boys he hired from the school always slept on pallets in the tack room.

Edward was annoyed at the sullen expression on the cook’s face when he asked her to prepare the spare room for the child. She muttered under her breath about being murdered in her sleep, and Edward recalled the cook used to fear that the Indian boys would leap up from their weeding and shoveling to ravish her.

After Edward left, the monkey came out of the cage and approached Hattie confidently. It hopped up on the end of the marble bench and sat down beside her to examine the lace inset in the arm of her dress. Hattie sat very still while the monkey carefully fingered the delicate threads of the lace.

“Linnaeus, you are a darling creature!” she said as she gently stroked the fur on his back. “I wonder, does your friend over there speak any English?” Hattie watched the girl’s facial expression for any shift that might indicate she understood Hattie’s remarks, but saw none. The sun was overhead now and the heat inside the greenhouse was quite noticeable; the glass panels badly needed a fresh coat of whitewash. Hattie stood up with the monkey in her arms and walked over to the door of the cage. The child’s dark eyes fixed on her every move. Hattie smiled and knelt down; the monkey went over to the child and took her hand as if to lead her to Hattie, but the child stayed put.

Edward returned with a volume of linguistic surveys of various desert Indian tribes. He stood with Hattie at the door of the cage and began to attempt to pronounce words in Shoshone and Paiute to see if the child responded. All this time she had not moved from her place on the monkey’s pallet inside the cage. Edward went through the Agua Caliente and Cocopa words and was just beginning to struggle with words in Mojave when a big smile spread across the girl’s face and she laughed out loud. The monkey chattered excitedly and climbed to the cage top. The girl stood up and looked down at them confidently.

“I talk English,” Indigo said. “I talk it way better than you talk Indian.”

All morning Indigo had listened closely whenever the man and woman spoke, and she realized she understood English better than ever; there were only a few big words now she didn’t recognize. The monkey made it clear the woman was a friend of his. The appearance of the length of rope had alarmed Indigo, but the woman’s words caused the man to drop the rope; the woman’s words gave Indigo the confidence to speak.

“Yes, you speak English very well,” Hattie said, amused at the child’s sudden boldness. Edward looked at the child and then at the photographs of the Indians of various tribes in the book. He tried to determine which tribe the child came from, but the school stripped the children of all evidence of their particular tribes.

Indigo had intended to stay only three or four nights until the people least expected an escape. But the monkey did not want her to begin the journey yet; it was too hot and she would die along the way. The monkey sensed the approach of the desert heat. Hadn’t they taught her any better than that? Yes, she told the monkey; Grandma Fleet always said it was best to wait for cool weather to travel.

Every morning she was up and washed and dressed as Hattie taught her; then she hurried down the stairs and out to the glass house to open Linnaeus’s cage. They walked in silence through the terraces and gardens in the vivid yellow light after the dawn. The air was warm and would get warmer as the sun rose. They washed in the water lily pool below the fountain and strolled down the steps to the back of the property to pick ripe oranges for breakfast. The monkey had strong fingers and was able to peel his orange and consume it before Indigo had eaten half of her orange. The monkey went into the branches and found ripe oranges heavy with juice. The monkey carried his oranges in the crook of each arm; he and Indigo ate them later in the afternoon. Indigo used the skirts of her dress to carry oranges for herself and for Hattie and Mr. Palmer.

Hattie permitted Indigo to pull the bedcovers off to make a bed on the floor after Indigo told her that she was terrified she would fall. At the school they had tied her in her bed to stop her from sleeping on the floor, and that night Indigo had screamed until she was soaked with sweat. Indigo dreamed the red garden and the white garden were growing in the dunes and Mama and Grandma Fleet and Sister Salt were all there with her. They were all so happy with her because she brought back so many interesting seeds.

Every morning Indigo and the monkey brought the oranges to the breakfast table, where the monkey offered an orange to Hattie, who bowed to the monkey as she accepted it; then the monkey went to Edward, who also bowed formally to the monkey as he accepted an orange. Hattie loved the child’s vivid imagination and the make-believe with the monkey; Edward was impressed as well with the rapport the child developed with the creature, and although he was a bit stiff with his formal bow to a monkey, even the monkey joined in the laughter they shared on this occasion.

The lovely morning ritual included breakfast, then more wandering through the gardens, where Edward described the years his mother had spent designing and supervising the plantings that once had thrived there. So many of the more delicate plants and shrubs had died of neglect in the years since his mother’s death. Hattie took her notebook along and the child gravely held one end of the measuring tape while Edward held the other. Hattie described her ideas for each of the terraces and gardens and for the lawn and lilac arcades, and made notes of the places she wished to make new plantings. Edward felt a contentment he had seldom experienced, as he spent the morning with Hattie and the child, and the afternoons with his specimens and correspondence.

He understood Hattie’s reluctance to travel when they were so comfortable where they were, but the letters from Lowe & Company made it quite clear what must done. The night before the child was to return to the school, Hattie asked Edward how he had arranged for the Indian boys to work for him last summer.

It wasn’t difficult, he explained. The school superintendent encouraged the summer placement of students in proper, upright homes because too often promising students went home for the summer and failed to return.

“Please, Edward,” she said, placing her hand gently on his arm, “arrange for Indigo to stay with us for the summer.”

“But we are leaving for New York in a matter of weeks,” he reminded her.

“I feel as if I’ve barely just arrived. I only began to unpack my books last week.”

Edward reminded her how disappointed her parents would be if he arrived alone. What would he tell everyone?

Tell them the truth, Hattie said briskly. The journey by train was exhausting.

Edward did not pursue the matter, because he sensed her opposition strengthen when he pressed further. He wanted very much for Hattie to accompany him. Her presence on the Corsica trip would assure success. He knew only too well from past experience, British or American men who traveled alone aroused suspicion in local authorities and villagers, who refused even to speak to a foreigner, much less permit him to approach their gardens or orchards.

Though reluctant to travel abroad, still Hattie had been agreeable to the trip until the Indian child appeared; now she made it quite clear her intention was to stay in Riverside unless the child came along. Actually, now that he thought about it, he realized the child would be an asset in Corsica; the natives adored children.

The following morning Edward spoke with the school superintendent. He learned the child was an orphan from the remnants of an unknown desert tribe in Arizona. The superintendent was concerned over the child’s rebellious behavior, but Edward assured him that they would be able to control the girl. The child would accompany his wife as a personal companion and she would be taught to read and write and, of course, the proper etiquette, while in their custody. The school superintendent supplied the necessary documents to travel abroad. The proposed travel was permissible so long as the child was returned safely to the school by October.

Edward was pleased to see how relaxed and happy Hattie was to have the girl with her. In the short time they’d had her, the child adjusted quickly to her new surroundings, although after Hattie tucked her in bed, Indigo dragged the bedding to the floor. Despite her bold words in the beginning, the girl was quiet, content to listen to their conversation without comment. She followed Hattie in the gardens but disliked the house, perhaps because of the cook’s hostility. Indigo repeated the names of the plants and shrubs after Hattie, but otherwise she spoke at length only to Linnaeus when they played in the glass house together.

Edward continued to search through his library for ethnological reports on the desert Indians. He was intrigued with the notion that the child might be the last remnant of a tribe now extinct, perhaps a tribe never before studied by anthropologists. He began to read about the known desert Indian cultures of the Mojave Desert and Colorado River basin. He began to compose a list of simple words gleaned from linguists’ work with each of the known desert tribes. When the list was complete, Edward asked Hattie to bring the girl up to his study, where he slowly pronounced the words. The child listened and often laughed at Edward; but asked if any of the words were from her language, she shook her head emphatically.

Neither he nor Hattie were able to pronounce the name the child gave them when they asked her what she wished to be called. The papers from the school had listed her only as “girl child,” approximate age eleven years; a name was assigned to her before she was sent on the train, but the child refused to answer to it.

One morning when Hattie was walking with her, the child bolted off toward the desert. Hattie’s heart pounded for an instant as she feared the child was running away; but almost as quickly she returned with a plant in her hand. She held out the branch of a tall plant with attractive magenta leaves.

“This is the plant I am named for.” Hattie took the plant stalk and examined it carefully. Edward did not have to look at the plant long before he identified a variety of desert indigo.

“Indigo,” Hattie said to the child. “Your name in English is Indigo.”

Hattie’s spirits soared once she knew the child was permitted to stay and to travel with them, and she began to talk to Indigo about the wonderful gardens they would see in England and Italy.

A seamstress was hired to sew clothing for the child. Hattie was pleased with the dressmaker’s allowances for the child — nothing must fit too tightly, otherwise the child removed the offending garments and went on playing, quite oblivious to her own nakedness. Attempts to locate shoes wide enough to fit the child had not been a success, so she would have to wear the slippers that did fit until they reached New York. The steamer trunks were brought out by the stable man. The constant activity around the house unsettled the monkey. The little creature chattered constantly and could no longer be trusted indoors after it went leaping from bookcase to bookcase, pausing only to send a vase or bookend crashing to the floor. Edward thought the monkey may have remembered the steamer trunk from the Brazilian voyage; the monkey traveled inside the trunk after its cage was smashed open in the storm. The child was deeply affected by the monkey’s odd behavior and refused to stand still for a fitting of her new wardrobe, insisting that the new dresses pinched her. She wanted the monkey to sleep with her, and when Hattie explained it was impossible because of fleas, the child crept outside later that night. Hattie got quite a shock when she looked into the child’s room before dawn and she was gone — to the glass house to sleep with the monkey curled up next to her.

Whenever Hattie felt about to lose heart over the travel preparations, she turned her thoughts to the gardens they would see. She talked to Indigo about the English gardens and the Italian gardens and all the new flowers and shrubs they would see. Indigo was not convinced; she took Hattie by the hand and walked with her to the red garden to point out that they already had plenty of flowers and shrubs. Hattie had to agree, but added that in England the climate was much different and so the trees, plants, and shrubs also grew much differently there than here. Indigo was going to see all of this for herself, Hattie reminded her. In the last weeks before departure, the child had become quiet and withdrawn, preferring to play with the monkey in the greenhouse. It was plain that the child did not want to part with the monkey; she had asked Hattie three times if the monkey might go along with them.

Each time Hattie had smiled and shook her head gently; she reassured the child that the monkey would be there when they returned.

“Linnaeus would hate the heat and noise — he will be more comfortable and safer if he stays home.”

“He might get sad and die if we all leave him,” Indigo persisted. Her voice rose perceptibly.

That night she dreamed she was in her bedroom, where she awoke before dawn to the monkey’s terrified screams. In the dream Indigo ran to the glass house, where she found the monkey’s cage splashed with blood; she nudged something bloody with her foot and realized it was the freshly skinned hide of her beloved Linnaeus. She ran to the kitchen, where the fire in the cookstove crackled as it burned; she heard muffled monkey cries from inside the oven. Just as she opened the heavy oven door the cook strode in with a big butcher knife and grabbed her by the hair and she screamed for Sister Salt and woke herself up.

She crept outside in the dark to the glass house to be certain Linnaeus was safe. The cook hated her most, that was plain, but now the cook hated Linnaeus too, because he was her friend. Indigo hugged Linnaeus and whispered that she would come back for him. She told him her secret: The train was about to take her home; Hattie had told her they were traveling far to the east, just the direction Indigo needed to go, and a few miles west of Needles, when the train slowed down, she was going to jump off the train when the others were asleep. She would find Sister Salt and they would come get Linnaeus and he would live with them and always be safe.

When Hattie found the child in the morning, she was asleep with Linnaeus curled up beside her on his pallet. Hattie discussed the child’s fears with Edward, who admitted that he had been taken aback by the ill temper displayed by the cook toward the child. He was confident, as the child learned more of civilized customs, the cook would mind her manners as well. The downstairs maid betrayed no ill feeling, but she had only just been hired when the child appeared. The household staff would benefit from their absence; they would have time to rest and adjust to the changes in the household. Hattie nodded earnestly.

She was concerned about their itinerary now that Indigo was coming along; perhaps it would be wise to reconsider the length of their visit in New York.

“I hoped we might arrange to depart sooner — while the weather for the crossing is still relatively calm. Later in the season the storms arrive — the child would be terrified.”

“Yes, of course. I agree absolutely.”

Hattie was quite fond of her father and mother, but she was not eager to return so soon to Oyster Bay and the whirl of teas and dinner parties her mother and Edward’s sister would organize to honor their visit. During the dinners and festivities that had celebrated their engagement she had commented that she felt she was on display, and Edward reminded her that he was himself a subject of curiosity because of his expeditions abroad.

Hattie felt tears spring into her eyes when she saw the child and the monkey cling to each other as they watched the luggage and trunks carried outside to the coach. She gently guided Indigo and the monkey away from the activity to the shady garden near the glass house, where the maid brought a tray with bread and milk and fresh grapes. Hattie watched the maid’s expression as she spread the cloth and set the plates on the lawn in front of the child and the monkey; she was curious to see if the new maid had been poisoned by the cook’s ill will toward the child. Hattie was already thinking about the changes in the household she would make after they returned from abroad.

The bulk of the trunks and luggage had already been sent to the train station the day before; now the last few valises were loaded on the coach. As departure time neared, the child held the monkey, who clutched her shoulder tightly; from time to time she whispered to the little creature, which seemed soothed by her words.

Hattie gently lifted Linnaeus from Indigo’s arms and gave him to the maid, who smiled and allowed the little creature to perch on her shoulder. Linnaeus wanted to leap into the carriage but the maid gently restrained him. Indigo watched the white girl closely to see if she liked Linnaeus or if she was only pretending. Indigo watched the cook’s fat face for a reaction to the maid with the monkey and saw hatred redden her cheeks. The cook needed someone to hate; with Indigo gone, she would hate the monkey and grow to hate the maid by association. Hattie and Edward had taken the young woman aside to reiterate instructions on the care and feeding of the monkey. The maid had been directed to feed Linnaeus and clean his cage each day, and above all, she was to play with him and take him for walks. Hattie explained all this to Indigo so she would not worry about Linnaeus while they were away, but Indigo was not convinced. Just as Edward knelt down to lift Indigo into the coach, she stepped forward and stood directly in front of the cook.

“Don’t hurt the monkey,” Indigo told her, “or you’ll go to jail!”

Edward and Hattie were too shocked to speak, and the cook blushed beet red. There was no more to say. As Edward lifted Indigo into the coach she burst into tears, and Linnaeus began chattering frantically. Edward followed Hattie inside and the coachman shut the door.