The Knot. Jane Borodale

you hands, didn’t he?’ Turner holds open his own palms skywards as if to be inspected.

      ‘Use them!’

      Henry’s ears are ringing all the way home.

      Chapter VI.

      Of TUTSAN or PARKE LEAVES. At the top of the stalks groweth small knops or round buttons which bring forth floures like St Johns grasse, when they are fallen or perished there appeareth litle small pelets very red, like to the colour of clotted or congealed dry blood, in which berries is contained the seede. The roote is hard and of wooddy substance, yeerely sending forth new springs.

      THE GREAT FROSTS HAVE COME. The fields and hedges are white and the early morning air in the ribbon of valley beneath the slope is quick with birds. The redwings are here, getting down to the business of stripping the last of the haws, and filling the hedges with a gregarious, weighty presence that sets the squirrels chattering angrily. Crisp, seeded heads of wild angelica are spiky with crystals.

      Henry walks down to Broadmead to cast an eye over the cattle. They should be brought in for the winter now; they stand cold and miserable in the hoary grass, breath in clouds about them. He must talk to his stockman. He walks on and stops by the Cary, the little course that runs down off the Mendip, through Somerton and winds out across the Levels. There is vapour rising from the river. One moorhen nervily shrugs itself through the water at the edge near the overhanging reedy bank, black plumage against the blackish water, a faint wake the only clue to its movement.

      He calls in at the barton to see it is ready for cows, and then goes back up the hill to eat with his family. He takes a shortcut across the back of Horse Close, and then without thinking turns past Widow Hodges’s place. Rounding the corner of the new wall he comes across her suddenly, weaving a wide-mouthed, greenish basket in the cold without looking at her hands, as if they had a way of their own and could work on without her.

      ‘Good day to you, Master Lyte,’ she says. Her nose is running. Her hands are very pale in the November light, almost flashing as they move, twisting withy against withy. The flickering lids of her eyes are very dark and seem to latch on to his movement as he passes, as a hawk’s gaze might, fixing to the warmblooded gait of rabbits. He is unwilling to put his back to her, and turns once to raise his hand absurdly as he bids her good morning.

      It is warm in the hall by comparison. He stamps the frost from his boots. Hannah has boiled black puddings and somehow the cold makes them all seem even more delicious.

      ‘That woman gives me the shivers, Frances,’ he complains.

      ‘Your Widow Hodges? All men find old women disconcerting, Henry.’ Frances is amused. ‘Once past childbearing age, a woman’s use is ill-defined even if working, particularly if she has no husband to tend. Men are unsettled by their ugliness. They are afraid of withered things.’

      ‘Gardeners are afraid of withered things,’ Henry concedes, going off to his unformed Knot.

      It is good to stand up straight after two hours’ digging and to quench his thirst with a long draught from the flagon Mote’s boy brings him, instead of waiting, tetchy, inside at his desk, for the slop-slop of the maidservant’s stepping up the corridor. The lawns are steaming where the sun hits the frost. He wipes his mouth. He needs to decide what shrubs to plant for the low, trimmed hedges that will form the body of the Knot.

      He has considered the cost of bringing down from London some of the newly introduced box-tree. They say Buxus is best planted at this time of year, and he is tempted, because the hedges of box he saw in France and Holland were firm and densely foliated, and agreeably disposed to being clipped into shapes. But they also say it has little use in medicine, and with its reeking, astringent smell like cat’s piss it could prove a mistake for his garden. Hyssop, though apt to grow straggly, has a mildly aromatic charm of its own, and many virtues.

      Henry sits down on the upturned new waterbutt, just delivered from the coopers, and examines the progress so far. The bricklayers finished their final course last week, and the garden wall stands ruddy and crisp. Tobias Mote’s children are clearing up the hardened bits of lime mortar all along its base. The joiners over at Kingsdon are measuring up now for the pair of doors.

      Henry calls over to Mote. ‘Has the smith sent in his bill for the ironwork?’

      ‘Not yet. I can fetch the hinges in the afternoon if you’re in a hurry for them.’

      ‘I’d like to get them as soon as possible because the trees will be in soon and those doors will keep out nibblers.’

      Mote crosses the sea of opened earth.

      ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he says. He takes off his soft cap and scratches his head. ‘It’s only that there are a few things we should mind.’ He pauses.

      ‘Like?’

      ‘Like we’re getting a bit forward of ourselves.’

      ‘Are we?’

      ‘That plot needs a lot of husbanding before it’s fit. If you want the handsomest plants you’ll need, well, diligence.’

      ‘What are you saying, Mote?’ Henry sighs inwardly. ‘I sense a dampening of enthusiasms coming on.’

      ‘It would not be seemly to start planting this year.’

      Henry raises his eyebrows.

      ‘It wouldn’t harm to put in some trees, perhaps, come a month or two, but we ought to be getting the soil in better fettle and, as it is, that ground is overbound with clay. There’s still thorough clearing to be done, look at that ashweed, and setting our minds firmly to the shape of it all. We can’t do that if we’re fiddling around with plants already put in, and bits of earth already committed over to being sown or set with slips. It’d be an evil mess in my estimation.’

      Henry is thinking that he couldn’t remember asking Mote for his thoughts on the matter.

      ‘It’s a big job, Master. It’s not just a few dainty pot-herbs in a frame.’

      Henry doesn’t need reminding of the scale of his task. He sighs again, louder this time. It’s just that the idea of a desolate unplanted mudbath outside the house for a twelve-month is not appealing. He pictures the rainwater puddling on the walkways and the creep of the most voracious sort of weeds colonizing the blank spaces; thistles, docks, running grasses. And then after almost a year’s worth of decrepitude and neglect, once everything was waterlogged and become prone to yellow mosses and vermin, the frost would descend, unmitigated by any sheltering stalks or the overreach of wintered shrubs; needling down with violent, icy precision to split the lias paving slabs asunder, the earthenware pots he hasn’t bought yet, this very waterbutt.

      ‘It’ll fly by,’ Mote says, rubbing his hands together, as if it were all settled. ‘Time won’t lie long on us, as for the while we can hoe what comes up, and we’ll get the gang back to turn in the dung after St Martin’s feast in a two-week’s time. We’ll still need a fair portion of the dung over in the kitchen garden as well, remember, Master. It’s what’s needed most for a fair, well-dressed earth.’

      ‘Are you saying there may not be enough?’

      Tobias Mote shrugs cheerfully. ‘And that all depends.’

      ‘On what?’

      ‘On whether you carry on with all those roses you’ve got a mind for is the truth, Master. They’re hungry buggers for the dung.’

      Henry winces. ‘I see. Well we can buy in more from somewhere, can we?’

      ‘Probably.’ He chuckles. ‘Though that’ll get them talking.’

      He can see that it would. He imagines the gossip at the market; have you heard? They’re buying in shit up at Lytes Cary. He imagines the sucked-in breath and shaken heads. Whatever next? It’ll be all over anyway, come the frosts, for those fancy plants. It makes him annoyed, the way he cares about what other people think.

      ‘But it’s not just the roses, Master,