Chapter Text
"You're bound to make the doctor jealous if your plan works, you know," said Martha, skittering about the nursery like a bird trapped indoors.
Lily straightened Colin's little blue coat. To the sometimes chamber, sometimes scullery maid Lady Lily Craven's sensible idea to give her child sometime outdoors had transformed her from a great lady that needed to be tiptoed around, to a trusty lass who she could talk to however she liked as long as it was in an admiring tone. Lily didn't mind the frankness, it felt a little, she supposed, like having a younger sister.
"Colin and I will be fine. And if Doctor Craven rages at you about it, Martha, tell him to find me."
"Yes, madam. If it's all right for me to say, I think it's high time you started taken the wee lad out. He looks too pale even for a babe, and even village parents take their little ones out at eight months."
"Sensible, like your mother," Lily laughed, shifting the bag containing a blanket, bottles, a tatty dog, and fresh napkins more comfortably on her shoulder, before setting out to her garden, Colin wrapped snug in her arms.
She wouldn't sit in the tree that rose above the wall of her plot. Whatever Neville thought of her "kind but medically reckless idea", Colin could see birds perfectly well from the ground. She laid her blanket away from where Ben was seeing to a stubborn patch of violets, and sat with her son as he flailed about on this new, springy surface.
She encouraged him as he dipped his little hands in the earth, grubbying them with soil, then did the same with the toy dog, but stopped him from putting either of them in his mouth. She talked to him through the morning and the start of the afternoon, naming the flowers and types of birds and insects; rocked him, changed him, and fed him lunch, depending upon whether he cried or fussed.
When the task of keeping his eyelids open proved too much of a feat, Lily brought him back inside for a nap. Mrs. Medlock and a group of delivery men stood at the door, seeing to that week's order of food. Every able-bodied man they had also stood at attention, like hunting dogs that only needed the word to race after game.
"Madam," she gasped, looking stunned not at the sight of Lily, but the child dozing in her arms. Colin stirred with a discontented gurgle, and Lily hummed his lullaby.
When he'd settled she asked, "Were all these people going to look for us, Mrs. Medlock?" She glanced at the grocers. "Not counting these men?"
"We were concerned, madam. The maid said-"
"Ah." Lily peered into the gathering.
Martha stood at the back, face flushed with guilt and fear, as little Dickon materialized from behind her skirts, watching with a calmness that made him seem a hundred.
"I hope Martha hasn't been punished, or let go, or any nonsense like that, simply for following my instructions." She laid a delicate stress on the final words.
"Certainly not, madam."
Not yet, Lily surmised, swallowing a sigh at all the ballyhoo. The manor would fall apart without Medlock, but she was used to obeying Archie or Neville, the latter giving more orders than the former before her marriage, though Archie's authority eclipsed his younger brother's.
Usually she and the older woman got along well enough; she had heard herself described as sweet the day she and Archie returned from their honeymoon in Switzerland, and the fastidious housekeeper wasn't one to mince words. However, Sarah Ann Medlock respected authority and the proper, detailed way of things above all else, and in her view a doctor outweighed a mother.
Lily knew all too well how difference of opinion could lead to rifts that were seemingly beyond repair (Rose had never responded to the announcement she had sent about Colin's birth), and she was determined to have this woman on her side.
"I find it very telling, Mrs. Medlock, that your concern for Colin's health didn't extend to letting me know anything was amiss," she said coldly. "I would rather not speculate about what that means. I would not be moved from marrying your employer, and unless being out and playing every now and then visibly worsens Colin's health, I will not be moved from this either. If you feel your opinion of that will have you undermining me in favor of Dr. Craven's treatment, then you will leave this house with what is owed to you."
"No-"
The objection she had expected, but not that it would be made on such a wounded sound.
Some of the hardness ebbed from her eyes and voice as she said, "Then this can be our first and last disagreement. Is Dr. Craven back from the village?"
"No, madam. And Lord Craven has not returned from his meeting with the school."
"No, I thought he wouldn't." The draconian school that had destroyed her first garden and given Archie the nerve to give her her second was on the brink of financial ruin, and had reached out to the estate owner, who felt no qualms about letting it tip into the abyss. "Thank you, Mrs. Medlock. On with your work, all of you."
With two imperious sweeps of her arm, Medlock banished the men off to the servants' entrance and sent three young kitchen lads cowering in the shade of the house after them. Lily smiled at them, and a boy tripped over air. Martha scampered into Misselthwaite like a frightened squirrel, while Dickon flashed Lily an impish, approving grin before gazing out at the maze.
"Stay where Ben can keep an eye on you, Dickon," she called after him, the entrance of the manor letting her voice carry. "He's finished working my garden, so there's no reason for him not to see you about."
"Aye, Miss Lily."
***
NINE YEARS LATER
Colin let out a whoop of laughter as Archie scooped him up, and tossing him onto his shoulders, charged through the door of the private dining room. Though at ten he was growing bigger, bolder and stronger every day, it was one of the boy's favorite places. His peels of laughter filled the cavernous halls as he was rushed through Misselthwaite Manor, out through the extensive garden maze, and to a screen of ivy, broken by the shape of a large key protruding from the door.
He had taken his first steps in this square garden, under the gazes of his loving mother, overwhelmed father, and astounded uncle. It was special and part of home, a place to play and see the beauty of flowers after hard work, but not, he felt with no disappointment, something that belonged to him. His mother loved the garden in a way no one else did—not even Ben, who kept the maze from growing wild over the house—though they all helped plant and tend to its various seeds and blooms, or could suggest new ones that would come from far-off places.
Now, as his father lifted him down, he watched his mother, fingernails so covered in dirt they would have made Mrs. Medlock faint. "If you're going to play hide-and-seek, keep away from the tree. It needs doctoring."
There were several trees, an entire rose bower, but they all knew which tree she meant. The lone one nearest the wall, where robins liked to build nests, and whose existence had let his father know the soil would be rich enough to nourish anything he tried.
"Has Weatherstaff seen it?" Archie asked her.
"Yes. He says it's not going to be on the cheap."
"That doesn't matter." Archie smiled as Dickon rapped lightly on the door. The boys locked good-naturedly competitive gazes and raced to the opposite end of the garden—Dickon was taller, but Colin was the faster runner.
Lily poured water from the watering can over her hands with a mock frown. Eleven years of marriage, and her husband would still give her all he owned or the world, and made her unreasonable requests, like restoring a tree that had been in the walled space longer than she, sound like inevitable maintenance only she'd seen fit to remind him of. Like his beautiful eyes, this wellspring of kindness and trust in her decision still left her breathless.
"Eventually Colin will think all he needs to do is ask and he'll get whatever he likes."
"That's why he has a very strict governess who cannot be charmed by children."
"Silly me, I thought we hired her for her intelligence."
***
At bedtime Archie sat beside Colin's bed, a book of fairy tales resting on his lap. They had finished them ages ago, but a story required a book even if the story being told was one of fantasy grounded in truth.
"Now let's see, Colin. When we left off last night the hideous dragon had carried the maid to his cave by moonlight. He gnashed his teeth and breathed his fire; the earth quaked and we trembled in fear."
Lily perched on the foot of the bed as Colin trembled, pulling the quilt up to his chin. Her part came afterward, the old lullaby used to curb any lingering suspense in the narrative. The summary was for her benefit; she'd missed last night's story when her visit with Neville about a slight pain in her elbow ran long.
"Colin has a mathematics test in the morning. Should we save this one for tomorrow night?" she teased.
"No!" Colin begged.
At Lily's nod, Archie continued, soft voice rising and falling with the melodic cadence he took on even when reading aloud. "I said, 'someone must save this sweet raven haired maiden, though surely the cost will be steep'. So we lads all drew lots, our insides tied in knots. And I won, and the rest went to sleep. So, I picked up my staff and I followed the trail of his smoke to the mouth of the cave. And I bid him come out, 'yea forsooth', I did shout: 'ye fool dragon be gone or behave'."
Colin stared with rapt attention at his father.
"And then under my breath I uttered a charm said to make the worst fiend become kind, 'knaves and knights of dire plights now diminish his sights'. And it worked, and the dragon went blind. Then he charged off the cliff, howling mad, and he died, and the maiden accepted my ring..."
Lily smiled as the Colin of the fairy tale went on to help his father hide a great treasure from a greedy giant, only to find another dragon had come to scorch the land, forcing them to seek aid from the wizard who lived on the hill. Before she sang of flowers safe from cold, the story paused with them hoping to sway him with one of the maiden's rare sky-flowers, which gave strength to even the best of magical arts.