Princess of the Midnight Ball - Jessica Day George [11]
Rose went out of the long gallery where she and her sisters had been assembled, down a flight of steps, and through the tall doors that led to her mother’s garden. Once in the garden, she paused to breathe deeply. The palace smelled of stone and paint, of people and food and beeswax floor polish.
The garden smelled only of flowers and earth.
Her mother, Queen Maude, had been from Breton and had not liked the cold, harsh winters of Westfalin. She hadn’t liked the dark evergreen trees or the scruffy little edelweiss flowers and holly bushes that had comprised the palace garden before she came, either.
To make his new bride happy, King Gregor had ordered the old garden redone. Flowers from Breton had been imported, along with ornamental trees, climbing vines, and even Bretonermade iron benches and marble statuary, all to make Maude feel at home.
Unfortunately, Westfalin and Breton did not share the same climate. The gentle misting rains of Breton, the soft winter snows and warm, humid summers transformed in Westfalin into freezing sleet, blizzards, and summers so hot and dry that many less hardy plants perished. In order to keep the Queen’s Garden flourishing, a team of gardeners had to work daily, watering, weeding, fertilizing, and coaxing the tea roses, lilacs, and ivy.
It seemed only natural when the queen named her daughters after the flowers in her garden, calling them her own garden of lovelies. But then, when little Petunia was only two years old, Queen Maude died. In memory of his beloved wife, King Gregor kept her garden exactly as it had been.
This caused no little resentment among the Westfalian people. The kingdom had been at war for more than six years, and there had already been protests over the extravagance that was the Queen’s Garden. It was thought wasteful to spend the manpower and the resources to keep the garden flourishing, and the queen’s death was seen by some as a reason to put a stop to what had become known as Gregor’s Folly.
But King Gregor did not dig up his wife’s roses to plant wheat. There were no potatoes among the daisies, nor carrots in the primroses. It was still a pleasure garden, even when there was little pleasure to be had outside the palace walls.
Rose was grateful for the garden. Not only for the reminder it provided of her gentle mother, but also for the privacy it afforded. Here were endless paths that wound between shielding trees. There were bowers of climbing roses, artfully trained to arch over benches where a girl might sit and think, out of sight of her sisters, her governess, and maids. There were always gardeners at work, but the head gardener, Reiner Orm, was not a talkative man and did not hire gossips to work for him. They respected the privacy of the royal family, and left them alone.
As she rounded a corner, Rose came upon one of the under-gardeners. Walter Vogel was a grizzled man with sparkling blue eyes and a wooden leg. He had showed up at the gates of the palace on the day Rose was born, looking for work, and by now was as much a fixture of palace life as the king. Walter was seated on a boulder, his wooden leg propped on his good knee, and his chin propped on a fist.
“Good morning, Walter,” Rose said.
“Good morning, Princess Rose,” he said gravely. “I was just sitting for a moment and pondering the state of the world.”
“I see.” She smiled a little. It was very like Walter to say such obscure things, but she really wanted to be alone. She began edging past.
He climbed down off the boulder. “But if I don’t get to work pruning the weeping cherry tree, I’ll need to worry about the state of my hide.” He winked at her and picked up his pruning shears.
Rose held a finger to her lips. “I won