Chapter 15

15

"I brought the soil." Kai handed a bag to Andrew at the inn, and it took Andrew a moment to remember that several days ago, he'd had an offhand conversation with Kai about the yields he'd had in his garden the last year.

He'd managed to browbeat Kai and Naomi into bringing some of the garden soil down for Andrew to examine.

That was the thing: when Andrew read in the newspapers how some of those lords spoke about farming, they had the strangest ideas. They thought that essentially all one had to do was stick seeds in the ground and collect plants after time passed. If you pressed them on it, they'd agree that water was also necessary, and the new nitrogenous fertilizers? Those were good, too.

Soil, though, was so much more than a backdrop for roots and leaves. It was a living thing, and like all living things, it could not be sustained simply by pouring the right things on top of it. Soil required balance. It required bugs. It required… Andrew licked his finger, tapped it in the bag of dirt, then brought it to his mouth.

All Wedgeford soil tasted a bit chalky: that was inevitable out here. "Are you doing the composting method I talked about?"

Naomi spoke up. "The one that uses ash?"

Andrew nodded.

She tossed her head. "Of course I've been doing it. You've had me using it since I used to live down here."

"How much did you work into the soil?"

"An inch last December. That's what you do down here, isn't it? I've been trying to follow what I remember."

"Ah." Andrew tasted it again. "I've been developing the soil in the inn's garden for close to a decade. You're going to need two inches before you do the rest of your spring sowing, and another two before each planting. I also think that you could use more ash in the mix: hard wood ash from your kiln would be ideal."

"The kind of ash matters?" Kai's eyebrows went up.

"Everything matters. And you should be planting beans. They'll help improve the soil, too."

Kai blinked. "You can tell all that from one taste?"

"Two tastes." Andrew shrugged. "And I rolled it around on my tongue, so it was more like seventeen separate ones."

Kai just shook his head. "You're a very curious character."

"Well." Andrew smiled indulgently. " Someone has to bring out the sense of curiosity in this village, or where would we find fun?"

His cousin-in-law was unrelenting. "You let people think that you're a bit of a joke."

"Let? I do nothing of the sort. I do my best to be serious, but the jokes keep coalescing around me. Damn my hard work."

"No."

"No?" Andrew clasped his hands over his heart. "Devastating! Liu-go, you don't think I'm funny?"

"You're amusing," Kai said slowly. "But underneath it all, you have a rather serious bent to you."

"You've found me out. Let me tell you the truth: it's because farming is hard. It shouldn't have to be any harder than it is, but that requires knowledge." Andrew tapped his forehead. "I don't really do anything myself, you know. I'm just a repository. I talked to the farmers who were here before us about how they managed the chalk before the chemical fertilizers became available. I asked the Hakka men what they were doing. There are some Japanese methods my mother and aunt remember… But none of this came from me. I'm just making note of what everyone has said. Memory isn't work."

"Even if you remember things in journals?" Kai raised an eyebrow. "And do it more often than everyone else around?"

"Not at all, not at all." Andrew grinned. "The journals are because my memory is poor. And because if anything were to happen to me—such as being murdered by someone who hates jokes—we should have a record of everything I've remembered."

"Well, that's one real risk." Kai sounded dubious.

"What are you two talking about?" Alan, who had been convinced to help carry dishes because Andrew had pitched the sheer novelty of manual labor, came over, wiping his hands on the apron he'd been given.

Andrew frowned at him. "Don't you have chores to do?"

"Don't you?" Alan shook his apron. "I just figured out that you gave me yours."

"Did I?" Andrew pretended to be puzzled. "No, no. I was giving you an opportunity. How else will you learn how the world functions? Don't tell me you're spurning this happy advantage?"

Alan plonked himself down on the bench. "I am merely making more opportunity by, ah." He glanced around. "By listening to my elders talk." He gave them both wide, soulful eyes.

God, that pitiful look should not be so effective.

Beside them, Kai shook his head. "For a boy who attends?—"

"Ugh," Alan wrinkled his nose. "Don't mention that school."

"This isn't a compliment," Naomi said, "but, Alan, has anyone told you that you are shockingly like Andrew in some regards?"

Alan froze. His eyes widened in joy. "Am I?" His hands trembled. "Am I really?"

"It's like you've studied his exact, ridiculous sense of humor." She shook her head. "Child, there are better models."

Alan tapped a forefinger to the corner of his eye, dabbing away a tear. "I'm overcome. This is the best day of my life! I've never wanted anything more."

"Yes, well." Andrew cleared his throat. "Naomi, your husband was just saying how wise and amazing I am. Surely I'm not so bad as all that."

"Was he?" Alan's eyes shone. "What did you do?"

Andrew held out the bag of soil. "Here. Get a pinch of this and taste it."

Alan reached in and took a large pinch, without asking what it was, and deposited it in his mouth. He paused, the eagerness on his face fading into shock, before he coughed and snatched Andrew's linen from the table.

"Faugh!" He spat. "That's dirt! You made me eat dirt!"

"No," Andrew said, "it's soil. Everything you eat comes from this, one way or another. Dirt is the thing that you find if you dig a well deep enough: it's inert grit. Soil is what we care about. And soil depends on what you do with it. If you're not careful, you can turn soil into dirt. If you manage it carefully…" Andrew smiled. "It becomes tilth: the rich loam that gives back to you ten times what you've given it. This dirt right here? This is a thousand years of history. Try it again."

"You're having me on."

Andrew looked at him evenly. "I never joke about soil."

"This is a lie," Naomi said. "He jokes about everything."

Gingerly, Alan took another pinch and set it on his tongue. "Weird," he mumbled.

"The thing you're tasting is Wedgeford itself," Andrew told him. "It tastes like a method of composting leftover bits of food that I got from my mother, who got it from her uncle. You'll sense a hint of chalk: that's just what the land is like around here."

Alan stared. "How do you know what chalk tastes like?"

"How do you not?" Andrew wrinkled his nose. "And then there's a method of cultivation from Hakka farmers, who don't till the land the way some do in England. That allows fungi to form and grow?—"

"What?" Alan looked shocked. "There's mushrooms in here?"

"Enh." Andrew made a face. "Something like. When they're present, you can taste them. This is a pinch of knowledge, gathered from all over the world, and it's what holds all of us in Wedgeford together: the ability to extract food from soil that everyone else thinks is good for little but grass. People think that soil is just there . They're wrong: soil is what we choose to nurture, and the more we choose to nurture it, the better it resolves."

Alan considered this. "It does taste like dirt, though."

"We'll get some dirt, so you can taste it side by side and see the difference. Without this soil, Wedgeford would not exist."

Alan scratched his chin. "You know, I was thinking?—"

But before he could say what he was thinking about, the door to the inn opened and a man came in. He was tall and muscular, with the kind of thick shoulders that one got if one did a lot of loading and unloading of carts. He looked around the inn as if searching.

Andrew began to stand.

"No, no." Naomi pushed him down. "Keep telling your little shadow about soil and history. I'll take care of it."

"I should. I've been absent these past days?—"

"I don't know what exactly you've been doing," Naomi said briskly, "but you're obviously managing something."

" Or," Andrew said, "you know me. I do love shirking."

"You actually don't. You're very conscientious; you just pretend not to be so nobody notices."

He glared at her in the outrage of being so accurately identified.

She patted him on his head. "You helped me take my ambulance classes last year. Let me pay you back now. You do love talking about dirt."

"Soil," Alan corrected from his seat.

Andrew grinned, and Naomi left. But as she walked out the door, Lily breezed in the inn with a bright smile and a smudge of ink low on her neck.

"Sorry I'm late!" she said, coming over to sit by them. "I brought these!"

She had obviously tried to wipe away the ink, and just as obviously hadn't got all of it. It remained there, a faint dark bruise that made Andrew think of what it would look like if he set his lips against her skin and?—

"What's this?" Alan said, picking up the little stitched booklet Lily was setting in front of each of them with a puzzled look. "Poems?" He blinked at the pages as he flipped. "Translated by Princess Zhu Wei Na? Is this relevant?"

"Probably not." Lily's shoulders fell. "I just needed to feel like I was doing something after this morning, so I printed all the signatures and stitched them together, and then I thought, maybe…"

Andrew had been thinking about ambition ever since he spoke to his mother last night. In Lily, it looked so easy: she wanted to print her volume of poetry, and so she'd obtained a printing press. She'd molded her own plates. And she was, simply, printing. It was that easy for her.

Lily had always had a goal, had always known her next seventeen steps. Andrew, by contrast, had always just been a joker with a bunch of seeds. He didn't have Lily's direction or brilliance. He just wanted to stay in Wedgeford.

Alan flipped through the pages. "It's short."

"I know," Lily moaned. "I can only print four-page signatures. I have only a jobbing press. But still—I'm twenty percent finished. That counts for something."

"Twenty percent?" Alan looked at it. "This is twenty percent of a book?"

"I could do more, but I thought a smaller volume to start would be useful." Lily seemed worried. "Oh, who am I fooling?"

Lily was brave, bright, and beautiful, and Andrew had never thought he was a match for her. On the one hand, he'd had the reasons of his brain: the whole not wanting to marry and not wanting my wife or children to be at risk thing.

On the other hand, he'd had his reasons of the heart: the part of him that whispered at night, the part that said this: You're not a good person. You know who your father was.

He'd spent his entire life not wanting to be someone. Lily was his absolute opposite: yearning to be someone so hard that she'd alter the fate of the world to accomplish it.

"The printing is beautiful." Andrew looked at her. "I love the way you've handled the front. How did you do this?" He gestured to the border around the title, an intricate pattern in which a dragon wove between clouds.

"I had a woodcut made before I left China. Then I made it into a stereotype mold here."

"Can I keep this to read?"

She blinked at him. "No, I need it to bind. You can read it once I'm done."

"I'll be sure to purchase a copy." He smiled at her.

"It says there's a princess." Alan set his signature down. "Is there a princess living in Wedgeford alongside a duke and an e?—"

Andrew stomped on his younger brother's foot, and Alan winced.

"The late Princess Zhu Wei Na," Lily said stiffly, "lived in Hong Kong."

"What did you mean, a duke and a… You didn't say the other one." Kai frowned. "Has someone mentioned another lord?"

"Um." Alan looked around. "Well, truth be told?—"

"No mentions!" Andrew interrupted. "None at all. This is a one lord village."

"Because if you've heard tales of a Chinese marquis, that's a lie my father told," Kai said.

"What a funny slip of the tongue." Andrew tried not to grind his teeth. "Of course there are not two lords of the realm in Wedgeford."

"But," Alan said, "what if?—"

Andrew put his foot back on top of the arch of his brother's foot in threat.

"It's just a thought!" Alan yelped. "An idle thought to consider!"

"Very well." Andrew had to stamp this idea out now. "Since you insist on raising the possibility, let's see it through to the end. Let's imagine that—for whatever reason, I'm sure this will never happen—there were two lords of Asian descent in England. What do you think would happen?"

"People from the Orient would be treated better in Britain?" Alan mused.

"The opposite." Andrew shook his head vehemently. "Everyone would say that we were taking over. Jeremy—that's the Duke of Lansing?—"

"I know who he is!"

"He is one. And he has made it a particular habit of his to be an extremely non-threatening lord of Asian descent for this exact reason. One lord is a joke, particularly if he makes himself one. But if there were two? Parliament would want to know how to stop the Oriental takeover of the Lords. People would start rumbling. Riots would come. And Wedgeford would cease to exist."

Alan blinked.

"That," Andrew said, "is why nobody in Wedgeford wants to be a lord. Even the one person who is one would rather not be. Me, personally? I have my life's work: to make this place small, stable, and insignificant."

"Wow." Alan blinked. "I love that. That's what I want for myself: insignificance."

They couldn't keep having this argument out in public. There was nothing to do but change the subject. "Where's Naomi gone off to? I thought she'd be back by now. And where's that man she was seeing to?"

To his immense relief, a few moments later, Naomi came out of the kitchen, carrying a refilled pot of tea. She set this on the table and sat down with a smile.

"That was odd. That fellow who showed up? He thought he was in a different village altogether."

"What?" Andrew laughed. "With the great big sign in three languages where the road comes into Wedgeford? How could he possibly mistake?—"

As if from far away, Andrew could remember Lily reciting what she knew about the person who had stolen the log. She'd said they had to be from Wedgeford, because a stranger would have been remarked upon.

A stranger.

Would have been remarked upon.

Andrew felt his pulse pick up as he looked toward the door where the stranger had vanished. He had a bad feeling. A very bad feeling.

Lily had straightened, too. She was looking at the door.

"Alan," he said carefully, "what precisely did your earlier telegram say about the, um, the thing?"

"What thing?" Naomi asked. "Did Alan find some kind of treasure?"

"Never mind the details for now. This is urgent."

Alan rummaged in his pocket. "I have the slip right…" He removed a crumpled ball. "Here." He handed it over.

Andrew flattened the page between his palm and held it up so only he could read it.

FOUND LOGBOOK PROVING MY FATHER'S MARRIAGE TO BE BIGAMOUS. CURRENTLY IN VILLAGE FILLED WITH PEOPLE FROM THE ORIENT. SAFE IN SHED IN MIDDLE OF IT ALL. WILL PROVIDE MORE DETAIL SHORTLY.

Andrew's whole body was locking up in panic. "How." He shook his head. "Or rather, who. Who on earth gave a boy your age enough money to send such a lengthy, detailed telegram? You pay by the word!"

"It didn't cost much!"

"There are so many words on this page!" Andrew folded the sheet back carefully. "They provide so much detail! What possessed you to send it? I thought we'd agreed to never mention the, ah, the…you know."

"My solicitor is trustworthy! I told you already! And I only promised not to say anything without proof, and now I've got that!"

"Do you understand what a telegram is, beyond the sending and receiving of it? The postmaster's wife sends it out, and then who knows how many other dozens of people repeat the message down the line until it arrives in London? Then it's given to a courier to deliver. So many people must have seen this."

"Oh." Alan licked his lips uneasily. "I…did not consider that."

He didn't consider that. Andrew wanted to bang his head against the table.

"I'm sure nobody else understood it, though," Alan said. "I didn't sign my name to it."

"What is going on?" Naomi asked.

"I can't tell you just yet." Andrew pressed the folded telegraph slip once more. "Alan, are your uncle and solicitor often in conversation?"

"Well, yes, but only so far as it touches on my wellbeing."

Andrew waited.

"Ah." Alan sounded faint. "This…might, I suppose, in his mind, touch on my wellbeing? I can see how he might think that."

Andrew's own mind was catching up with him, whispering his worst fears. "For the love of all that is holy. I'd lay odds that he knows now."

Could he have acted? The timing was tight. Alan's telegram would have to have been read immediately; the response would need to have been coordinated without hesitation. But they would have acted swiftly, if they knew of a threat to an earldom.

They'd had just enough time to hire someone to come to Wedgeford. Just barely enough.

"Shite." Andrew stood. "Fuck. Shite."

Alan stood alongside him. "Can I say those words when I grow up?"

"You can say them now," Andrew snapped. "When will it ever be more appropriate?" He jumped over the bench and started toward the door, walking as swiftly as he could.

"Fuck!" Alan jogged at his heels. "Shite! Is this bad for us?"

"Maybe not yet," he snarled, and took off at a run toward his shed. It hadn't been that long—maybe fifteen minutes. It couldn't be too late. It couldn't.

Wedgeford was quiet around them as he ran. He could hear Lily calling behind him, could hear Alan's footsteps trying to keep pace. He left them both behind. He couldn't stop. His lungs burned.

The door to his shed was thrown open. He'd left it before dinner service with the curtains closed and the incandescent lights on. He hadn't locked the door. It was Wedgeford. Who locked doors in Wedgeford? It was quiet now—quiet and ominously dark.

He dashed inside. Even in the darkness, he could tell things had been disturbed. The smell of overturned soil was strong. He found the little shelf near the door where he kept a lamp and fumbled for matches.

Smoke flared; light flickered, red, then golden, over absolute devastation. A handful of minutes: that was all it had taken. Andrew's shed had been ransacked. The cabinet had been overturned; his careful packages of seed had been tossed to the ground and stomped underfoot. His journals had been thrown to the floor, spines bent, pages splayed.

All that could be fixed with patience. But one thing could not. At the far end of the room, his seedlings had been flung to the ground. There they lay in haphazard spills, dirt and roots and bright green leaves that did not yet know they had been murdered.

His long beans. Andrew felt his heart contract.

"Andrew?" Lily came up behind him, chest heaving. "Andrew? What is—oh." Her breath was ragged. "No."

He could feel something wind tightly inside him. His eyes stung, almost as if he were about to cry. Searching for the logbook was one thing. But this? This was cruelty: destruction for the sake of destruction. And for what? Because they wanted to take something Andrew had planned to destroy anyway?

Senseless. That's what it was. Senseless. There'd been no need.

Andrew turned to Lily and tried to do what he did best. He tried to find a joke. "You're never going to believe this." His smile felt like ash on his face. "The logbook has been stolen again. I realize suspicions must be high and the obvious culprit should be blamed. But I swear by everything sacred: this time, it was not me."