The Princess Gardener Read online

  First published by Our Street Books, 2018

  Our Street Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., Laurel House, Station Approach, Alresford, Hants, SO24 9JH, UK

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  Text copyright: Michael Strelow 2017

  ISBN: 978 1 78535 674 2

  978 1 78535 675 9 (ebook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017937406

  All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.

  The rights of Michael Strelow as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Design: Stuart Davies

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY, UK

  We operate a distinctive and ethical publishing philosophy in all areas of our business, from our global network of authors to production and worldwide distribution.

  For Ava, Audrey, Lewis, Jackson, Zephyr, my best critics and marvelous creatures every one.

  Acknowledgements

  Without the critical eye of Audrey G., this book would never have seen the light. Her sharp questions and critical eye kept me rethinking and trying to make this a better book. I hope the result pleases her, those listed in the dedication, and maybe a few more.

  Chapter One

  What do you expect? I was only five years old the first time I said it, so no one paid much attention. But as I grew older, I said it more and more and more until they knew they would have to forbid it. I said, “I would rather be a gardener than a princess.”

  In the princess business, this is kind of like admitting to being crazy or something. “Gardener? Why would you want to be a gardener when you’re already a princess? Gardeners’ little daughters all want to be a princess, Eugenie. Have you lost your mind?”

  And this went on for a long time until I learned to tone down my request and just take my gardening chances when I could get them.

  For as long as I could remember I had liked digging in the dirt and planting flowers and vegetables. And especially trees. My mother and father would leave me with the nanny and the gardeners of the castle, and all afternoon I could get as dirty as I wanted. I could smell the earth, and make things grow. One whole afternoon I spent following a snail to see where it was going, my nose close behind it across the fragrant ground, the sunlight flickering with shadows. The gardener laughed because he saw what I was doing. I pulled back my dark princess hair with one hand so it wouldn’t fall in my eyes, and eye to eye with the snail—a big brown beauty—I shuffled my way in the shadows and, finally, into a crack in the rock garden. “Ah,” I said. “That was nice. Thank you, Betty.” That’s what I had named my big brown beauty snail.

  And she was the just the beginning of my collection.

  “What’s that you’ve got behind your back, Eugenie?” my mother asked.

  “Oh nothing. I was just going to…going to look for a small box. Or something,” I replied. The castle smelled of the big fires kept going in the many fireplaces. “Maybe some kind of cage?”

  “Eugenie! Let me see what you have,” my mother insisted, so I held out my hand and showed the five potato bugs curled up in one hand. I kept the other hand behind my back.

  “Take those outside immediately. No, wait. What’s in the other hand?”

  I tried the trick where you put both hands behind you and then switch the contents and come out with the same thing. But it didn’t work.

  “No, both hands out. What have you got in the other one?”

  Well, it was worms. A whole handful of worms that I knew would get me into trouble. I had brought them in to see what would happen if they got warmer, but I got a storm instead.

  “Eugenie, take both…all of those outside where they belong. And then come back here. We should talk about some things. It’s time to leave some things behind and begin others.”

  I knew all this was coming. I had known it for a long time now. Recently I had been asked to dress up for dinner. Way up! Pearls, those shiny shoes that hurt, the tight dress I couldn’t loosen even when I ate too much. And my hair! The maids pulled and tugged it too tight to make some kind of knot behind, a knot that was fashionable at court but hurt a kid’s hair. There I was wanting bugs and worms and being tucked and coiffed into misery.

  The palace fires burned, and people went here and there being important. But I couldn’t wait to get into the dirt. I had my digging clothes all ready near the small door that went out into the garden. They had been exiled there on wooden hooks since my mother found them hanging in my very large closet with all the princess gear. My overalls and shirt, given to me as a birthday present by the gardener, were now growing too small. When he gave them to me, I had no problem getting outside. But now, well, more and more princess duties were piling up, and I spent way too much time sitting in velvet chairs and not near enough smelling the earth.

  Planting trees was fun because I was allowed to dig a deep hole and then dump in some water and some dirt, then the tree, its root ball all wrapped up like a big present. Then I’d fill in with dirt and compost and right at the end, cut the strings that held the burlap in place. It felt like I was unwrapping a present for the world. Then, with the gardener’s help, more water and finally more dirt. At the end of it all, I was gloriously dirty from top to bottom. I felt at home, I felt just like the tree sticking out of the earth into the sky, I felt lovely. The tree poked up to the sky where it would be headed for years. I poked down into the fine dirt. My hands and knees, I felt, were like special dirt badges. I held up my hands for the gardener to see. And he held up his to show me.

  The nanny, Corrine, was there to see that I didn’t hurt myself, and she, like my mother, didn’t approve of all that dirt. Corrine wore a fresh white dress, and I would chase her around with my dirty hands pretending to want to paint big dirty handprints on that clean canvas. She’d scream, “NO, NO, NO, Eugenie,” and scurry away, and the gardener and I would laugh until we fell down. He showed me how to wipe my hands on the wet grass to get them clean, leaving my dirt signature as royal as any I ever could make.

  But as I grew older, I had to beg and beg to be allowed to work with the gardeners. I made deals with mother. If she allowed me “dirt time,” then I would, without complaint, learn the princess ways that mother and father insisted on—tea party behavior, how to greet dignitaries from other countries, how to curtsey and stand and sit and even turn my head. Fake smiles and how-do-you-dos. Keep my nose pointed evenly out into space while accepting compliments. Tilt my head back slightly to laugh a little; cover my mouth to laugh a lot.

  There was a right way, it turned out, and a wrong way to do all these things, and a princess had to be a model for the rest of the country. Alas, in no case did any of these duties involve getting my hands deliciously wet and dirty, in plunging them into warm soil on a spring day, or mixing manure and dirt and leaves into a compost pile. And, also, alas, none of the princess duties involved that feeling I got when I saw the flowers I had planted pop from their stems, and shout colors of glory across the whole garden: marigolds, long-stemmed daisies, dahlias with flowers as big as my head.

  And there were row after row of blueberries mulched with apricot-colored sawdust like a dream of the moon. I learned the most important things in life from the gardeners: the nitrogen stuff and the manure stuff and the water-saving stuff, the way
plants love mulch, yes. But also the way a thirsty plant would curl its leaves to save water, the yellow signs that a plant was not getting enough food, the sad droop of a plant that was not happy where it was and needed less sun or more sun or some other tending.

  All this was kind of like learning to read, and I loved the reading, learning the new garden language. I thought of it as learning to read plant. My parents wanted me to begin three useful foreign languages that would be valuable for diplomatic purposes later. But I learned to speak fluent plant first. Plants would tell me when they were happy by glowing and reaching for the sun. They’d complain about lack of food or water or crowding.

  While putting on a beautiful dress because I had to appear to greet guests before an important dinner that evening, I dreamed of dirt and trimming roses and tying up the espaliered apple trees. When my attendants asked me if I would like these earrings or those, this belt or that, I’d say, “What? Oh, I don’t know. Either one. It doesn’t matter. How about one of each?” My attendants looked at each other knowingly as if they had just witnessed the beginning of the end for the whole kingdom. The princess loses her mind, and all is lost! You can’t imagine how crabby that made them, as if I were spitting on everything they thought important.

  Again, I learned quickly to turn down my dislike for princess trappings. A little bit anyway. And it became more and more clear to the servants that none of the princess business mattered to me. I was not interested in everything that they were absolutely sure I should be interested in. I even overheard one call me an “ungrateful snot.” And I immediately thought of the snail’s beautiful trail glistening across the fine, brown dirt. And I smiled and accepted the name: I was The Snot. I’d try to work out this princess business though, because I had to. No real choice in the matter.

  And this trade-off might have been satisfactory for everyone, but each day—I was ten now, almost eleven—I was expected to leave my love of dirt and turn to the family business of being an example for the rest of the country. When we rode in carriages, I would look out the window at the kids working with their families in the fields and in the big gardens they tended. And I would sigh a most un-princess-like sigh, though I had been told repeatedly not to, that sighing was a sign of a “disorganized mind, and untidy soul.” I looked up these words and said to myself, “Yes I am both disorganized and untidy.” Unless there was dirt involved. I was, of course, not allowed to add that part because to say so would be bad mannered and insolent. Sassiness did not, I was informed, become a princess.

  And yet I sighed. I couldn’t help my sigh of longing after the dirt. And I pined for the dirt just as the young girls in the countryside, I was told, pined to be the princess. It didn’t matter. I would have changed places with any one of them in a heartbeat. The Sighing Snot, I thought. That’s what I’m becoming. I wondered if I could write that in the grass with my muddy hands.

  One day in the village when my family was making an appearance to unify the people behind a new law, I spotted across the crowd of heads a girl about my age dressed in farming clothes. I had been grumbling to myself about the dress I had to wear, my shoes pinched and people kept telling me what to do and where to stand. I wanted her comfortable shoes, the way she tucked her hair back—all that comfort. I pictured myself in her place. She could have mine. I smiled and waved to the crowd. Then we went on to the local school.

  “Princess Eugenie, dear, be sure to greet the teachers first and then nod to the children,” said Corrine, who had now been promoted to “Protocol Mistress” from being the nanny who feared my dirty handprints. “They will be lined up to your left and then pass in front…” And there I glazed over, I think. All I heard was blah blah blah though I could see her mouth still moving. I thought of the whole business as a dance. Left foot. Right foot. Spin and twirl. “…and then the guard will escort you to the…” Blah. Blah.

  The schoolroom was bright and cheery and had benches and tables and things for writing. It smelled like one of the tool rooms in the stable, maybe because of the wood stacked near the fireplace and the fresh leather door hinges. I supposed I was the first princess ever in the room, and that probably accounted for the many vases of wildflowers placed around. As I looked, I thought that everything I really needed was here: a roof, some friends, a fire, a teacher. And then I would have my own garden. And maybe a cow.

  I said, “I greet you in the name of the King and Queen who send their wishes for prosperity and good fortune. I am Princess Eugenie, daughter of….” And I launched into my pedigree, the names of a few notable ancestors, and the mention of not one, but two famous battles that resulted in the formation of our kingdom. “…and Courtenleigh, and Brodens,” I finished.

  The children were hushed for the beginning, but I had said all this so many times that it seemed to me like one long word coming out of my mouth, though it took more than two minutes. I saw that the littlest children had begun to fidget, and I really wanted to break into some silly song, maybe a dance too, and entertain the most fidgety among them. But I didn’t. This was serious: and it was tradition and custom and convention and ritual—all the things that held a nation together. I could hear the echo of my father’s voice in my own; hear the song of my sober-faced ancestors ringing in the modest rafters of the schoolhouse.

  One small child burst out, “I can’t seeee!” And there followed an adult chorus of hushes like a high wind through the trees. I saw him peeking around bigger children, and I stepped forward and spoke to him.

  “Hello there. What’s your name?”

  He stood stock still, eyes wide. Maybe the princess was a dragon who now would belch fire and fry him to a crisp. The other children moved away from him leaving the poor little guy rooted on the spot and waiting for the fire. No name came out of his mouth. He had stopped breathing. I touched his shoulder to bring him back to life, and he gasped. Finally, breathing in and out, he blurted out, “Orlando!” as if he had said all there was to be said in the whole world, one word that took in the stars and moon and storms on all the oceans.

  And then another voice, one I would come to know and love, but at this time was a sort of a raspy note full of itself. “His name is Orlando and he’s the youngest. That’s why he’s afraid.”

  “And you are?”

  “Jake. That’s with a J, your highness-est. I’m eight.” I had met Jake, and someone put a gentle hand on Jake’s shoulder, maybe to keep him from speaking further.

  And then there she was. She was my height, had the same color hair but a little longer, and—this was the amazing part—had a perfect copy of my face! I couldn’t believe it. I just stared and stared at her. I couldn’t believe nobody else saw it. She was me—more tanned, hair different. But me! Our noses, eyebrows, cheekbones, and chins. Our lips and earlobes! How could that be? She paused with her hand on Jake and Jake, like a spooky horse, became quiet and stared at me, gentled by his sister.

  “That’s my sister, Alyssa,” Jake added. She’s eleven.”

  I read somewhere that everyone had a doppelganger—a pretty good copy of yourself—just waiting out there to be discovered. Most people went their whole lives without seeing their double. I just found mine. But somehow my clothes and my entourage had become my perfect disguise.

  And then she looked at me looking at her. And she saw what I saw. We locked eyes, and then she looked away, pretended to be fiddling with something or other; then she smoothed her dress. But we both knew.

  “I’m pleased,” I said slowly, to put the children at ease, “to meet you all, Orlando, Jake,” and here I looked directly at my double in disguise, “and all the rest of you. I hope to see you all again.” Here came both my eyebrows raised as the only way to talk to her right now, she who was me. “And please take my good wishes to your mothers and fathers. Study well with your teachers and give them the respect they certainly deserve. They work in your best interest to build a better…” And then I heard myself going blah, blah, blah again.

  I had to wade thro
ugh the rest of the official visit, make the best of it. But as soon as the school visit was over, I begged my mother to let me go again to the village schools to make more visits and encourage the children and teachers on behalf of the royal family. I said this time I would take small gifts and begin my own my career as goodwill ambassador to the people. I wanted to do it alone, to start small. And, mother, I argued, “Visiting more schools close by would be a great practice for more important duties later. But I don’t know…”

  You know how that arguing goes. Make your best case, wait a while, watch your mother’s eyes. Then, oh yes, add one more thing when you think you’ve got a chance. “Mother, just think how proud the King will be if I do it on my own.” Done. Sealed. She insisted though that the guardian retinue go with me, and I accepted the conditions. I knew I would have company of some sort. But once there, I’d get out alone and look for my double.

  I scheduled Alyssa’s school for the second one I visited. I spotted her in the back row, the same girl, my face. I was, of course, “all princessed up,” so between my swept up hair, the pearl necklace and the brilliant dress of white silk and pink ribbons, I didn’t look quite like Alyssa there in the back row. Not to the other children, at least. Not to my retinue. But Alyssa knew right away what was going on. I passed among the children, and we smiled at each other. Then came Alyssa, and it was like smiling into a mirror.

  We both wanted to sit down and talk to that other-me right away. Who wouldn’t? Imagine seeing yourself there like a big you-doll dressed up like a farmer or a princess. I wanted to set out tea and cookies and spend the afternoon asking her questions and laughing. I wanted to clear out the whole world so just the two of us could talk and go for a walk where she would show me her garden and fields and take me into the barn with its horse and leather smell and the sweet hay.

  But, of course, that would be impossible just then. My official people kept me moving through this school. There were five more schools to visit this afternoon, and the schedule was very tight. But we both knew we would talk somehow, someplace. And talk and talk and talk, it turned out. And even some more of what I wanted from the first time I set eyes on her: time to talk, garden time, time to breathe.