The Windflower

Chapter 1

Merry Patricia Wilding was sitting on a cobblestone wall, sketching three rutabagas and daydreaming about the unicorn.

A spray of shade from the swelling branches of the walnut tree covered her and most of the kitchen garden, but even so, it was hotter here than it had been inside.

A large taffy-colored dog with thick fur stole past the fence; she noticed it as a flicker of movement in the corner of her vision.

Light dust floated in the air and settled on the helpless leaves.

The breeze brought the scent of baking ground and sun-burnt greens.

There was no one about to disturb her solitary concentration, or to mark the intriguing contrast she made with the homey products of the earth that grew freely near her soft-shod feet.

Her appearance suggested a fragile, pale icon: lace and frail blossoms rather than fallen leaves and parsley plants.

She was a slender girl, with delicate cheekbones set high in an oval face, and dark-lashed eyes, lazy from the day.

Early that morning she had put up her heavy hair in anticipation of the heat, but the ivory combs and brass hairpins were working loose and silky red-gold strands had begun to collapse on the back of her neck.

It never occurred to her that some might find the effect charming; it merely made her feel hot, untidy, and vaguely guilty, as though she ought to return to her bedroom and wind her hair back up.

She would have been so much more comfortable, she thought, if she dared sit as the housemaids did on the back stoop in the evening, with the hems of their skirts pulled up past their knees, laps open, bare heels dug into the cool dirt.

A slight smile touched her lips as she imagined her aunt’s reaction, should that lady discover her niece, Merry Patricia, in such a posture.

Setting down her pencil, Merry spread and flexed her fingers and watched as a tiny yellow butterfly skimmed her shoulder to light on the ground, its thin wings fluttering against the flushing bulge of a carrot.

The beans were heavy with plump rods, and there would be good eating from the sturdy ruby stalks of the rhubarb.

Merry looked back to her drawing and lifted her pencil.

The rutabagas weren’t coming out right. The front one had a hairy, trailing root that jutted upward at an awkwardly foreshortened angle.

Though she had corrected the drawing several times, the result remained an unhappy one.

It would make a better exercise to continue reworking the picture until she had captured the very essence of the vegetable, in all its humble, mottled-purple symmetry.

… Merry was disappointed to discover in herself a flagging interest in the rutabagas… discipline, discipline.

Discipline and a hot afternoon sun are the poorest allies, and while Merry forced her pencil back to its labor the dream invaded her mind once more.

Last night the unicorn had come again.

Ten years ago she had had the first unicorn dream, after seeing an impression of the creature fixed into the sealing wax of a letter to her aunt from England.

Merry had been eight years old then, and as she slept the unicorn had come to her, like a tiny toy with great soft eyes, and she could pull it after her on a string.

As she grew the dream had altered. She would dream of meeting with the unicorn in an enchanted wood, and they would run between the trees, a race which neither won, and afterward they would drink from a secret spring.

She wasn’t allowed to have pets; but her dream unicorn was satisfying, exclusively hers, and would always come again if she went to the edge of the woods and called.

Her aunt would never find out about it because it lived in the wild and was only tame for her.

Then it left her dreams and hadn’t returned for years—until last night.

It had burst through the window in a frightening rush of energy, glass flying everywhere, and it had reared in the corner of the room, pawing and snorting, looking bigger than it had been before, its muscles white and glistening beneath its creamy hide, its chest broad and heaving, its horn poised and thick.

She had cowered beneath the covers, but curiosity caused her to look in small peeps and then long gazes.

Its eyes were different now, still big, but there was knowledge there, a frightening intelligence, and it tossed its head, beckoning to her.

He wants me to ride him, she had thought in her dream. Am I too afraid? She was going to leave her bed and go closer, but before she moved, it turned in a sudden dash and leaped through the window, hooves flashing in the moonlight.

The fantasy hoofbeats faded slowly from her daydream, slipping away into the dimly lit part of the mind where dreams lie in safekeeping. Merry came back to reality as the soft walking rhythm of a flesh-and-blood horse prosaically replaced her midnight creature.

She had been expecting no visitors, so she looked up quickly toward the sound, toward the narrow pebbled carriageway that split her aunt’s two-story red-brick house from the old frame barn.

From behind the potent green of a ridge of lilac bushes, she saw her only brother emerge and watched with unbelieving elation as he worked his sweaty animal over to the shaded wall beside her.

“Carl! Oh, Carl, hello! Hail! Salutations! Guten Morgen!”

Leaning forward in the saddle, her brother said, “I take that to mean I haven’t arrived at an unwelcome moment? Who’s been teaching you German?”

“Henry Cork—but that’s all he knows, so it was a short lesson.

” Grinning her delight in a way she was sure must look foolish, Merry set down her sketch pad and extended her hand.

Three months it had been since she had seen him, a comparatively short interval.

Heroes, it seemed, didn’t make the most attentive brothers.

“How did you know to find me back here?”

“One of your abigails told me—Bess, I think. She’s sitting around front, shelling peas and dickering with a trunk-peddler over a card of buttons,” he said, taking her offered hand. “I imagine it will ruffle April’s feathers that I didn’t have myself announced.”

It was clear from the unemotional tone of his observation that this was not a circumstance that would trouble him overmuch, but because her brother’s casual dislike of their aunt made Merry uncomfortable, she sidestepped the ramifications of his remark and said, “Not at all, Carl. Family needn’t stand on ceremony.

How glad I am to see you. But I’m surprised!

I thought you were in the capital with Father.

” Her expression changed. “Has something happened? Father—is he…”

“He’s well. Same as always. Tough as a horseshoe, although Mrs. Madison says he doesn’t get enough rest. I don’t know.

I didn’t come to talk to you about him.” He gave her hand a brief squeeze before he released it, and then removed his hat, brushed back his hair, which was red-gold like hers but not as thick, and put his hat back on.

He was gray with road dust and had tired, fine lines on his lean face, around his eyes, unusual lines on one so young, mapping the intensity within.

She could tell he’d ridden hard. He was wearing civilian clothes, riding clothes which flattered him less than his officer’s uniform, making him look more like the young adult of twenty-one he was and less like a man used to drilling recruits.

He glanced around with shaded eyes. “Can we talk here?”

“Of course.” She lifted her feet to the top of the wall and hugged her knees, looking up at him with a slight tilt to her lashes. “The only ears here are on the sweet corn.”

“But the potatoes have eyes,” he answered with a reluctant smile. “Is that what you’ve been doing, sketching vegetables?”

“Trying,” she said. “There are riches in shape and shading under the leaves, but I’ve a poor hand this afternoon.” She held up her sketch pad for him to see.

“Hmm. Amazing. Like life. I can’t see what you find amiss with it.”

Merry only smiled and closed the sketchbook. “Will you come in the house, Carl? It’s almost teatime, and we’ve got cider cooling on ice chips.”

“Later.” He waved his hand impatiently, as though dismissing an inane courtesy. “I need you again, my girl.”

Her heart quickened. “To draw, do you mean?”

It was the pride of her life that twice before she had been able to help him and the American cause.

He had taken her once to a coaching inn and once to market day at Richmond, where he had quietly pointed out men suspected of collaborating with the British.

She would make her best effort to watch them without seeming to and later had rendered the faces in detailed sketches.

Carl saw to it that the drawings were reproduced and circulated, which neutralized the British agents as effectively as if they’d been captured or hanged.