“Actually, William isn’t being entirely honest,” she went on. “We don’t catch diseases because most of our first-comer ancestors were recipients of geneering before they settled here. It stands to reason, on a planet which deliberately excludes the most advanced medical treatments it’s wise to protect yourself in advance. So in that respect we don’t quite match up to the simplistic pastoral ideal. You probably couldn’t have built a society as successful as Norfolk before geneering; people would have insisted on continuing technical and medical research to better their lot.”
William Elphinstone made a show of turning his head and staring out over the fields.
“Fascinating idea,” Joshua said. “You can only have stability once you’ve passed a certain technological level, and flux is the natural order until that happens. Are you going to take politics at university?”
Her lips depressed fractionally. “I don’t think I’ll be going. Women don’t, generally. And there aren’t many universities anyway; there’s no research to be done. Most of my family go to agricultural colleges, though.”
“And will you be joining your relatives there?”
“Maybe. Father hasn’t said. I’d like to. Cricklade is going to be mine one day, you see. I want to be more than just a figurehead.”
“I’m sure you will be, Louise. I can’t imagine you as just a figurehead for anything.” He was surprised at how earnest his voice had become.
Louise cast her eyes down to see she was knotting her fingers in her lap in a most unladylike manner. Whatever was making her babble like this?
“Is this Cricklade now?” Joshua asked. The fields had given way to larger expanses of parkland between the small woods. Sheep and cattle were grazing placidly, along with some xenoc bovine-analogue that looked similar to a very hairy deer, with fat legs and hemispherical hoofs.
“We’ve been riding through the Cricklade estate since we left town, actually,” William Elphinstone said snidely.
Joshua gave Louise an encouraging smile. “As far as the eye can see, is it?”
“Yes.”
“Then I can see why you love it so much. If I ever settle down, I’d want it to be in a land like this.”
“Any chance we can see some roses?” Dahybi Yadev asked loudly.
“Yes, of course,” Louise said, suddenly brisk. “How dreadfully remiss of me. Cousin Kenneth said this was your first time here.” She turned round and tapped the driver on his shoulder. The two of them exchanged a few words. “There’s a grove beyond the forest up ahead,” she said. “We’ll stop there.”
The grove took up ten acres on a northern-facing slope. To catch the suns, Louise explained. It was marked out by a dry-stone wall that was host to long patches of moss-analogue which sprouted miniature pink flowers. The flat stones themselves were often crumbling from frost erosion; little attempt had been made at repairs except in the worst sections of subsidence. In one corner of the grove there was a long barn with a thatched roof; moss had clawed its way into the reeds, loosening the age-blackened bundles. New wooden pallets stacked with what looked like thousands of conical white plant pots were just visible through the barn’s open doorway.
Still, dry air magnified the grove’s placid composure, adding to the impression of genteel decay. If it hadn’t been for the perfectly regimented rows of plants, Joshua would have believed the grove had been neglected, simply treated as a hobby by an indulgent landowner rather than the vital industry it was.
Norfolk’s weeping rose was unarguably the most famous plant in the Confederation. In its natural state it was a thornless rambling bush that favoured well-drained peaty soil. But when cultivated and planted in groves it was trained up wire trellises three metres high. The jade-green leaves were palm sized, reminiscent of terrestrial maples with their deep serrations, their tips coloured a dull red.
But it was the flowers which drew Joshua’s scrutiny; they were yellow-gold blooms, twenty-five centimetres in diameter with a thick ruff of crinkled petals hugging a central onion-shaped carpel pod. Each plant in the grove had produced thirty-five to forty flowers, standing proud on fleshy green stems as thick as a man’s thumb. Under Duke’s unremitting glare they had acquired a spectral lemon-yellow corona.
The four of them walked a little way down the mown grass between the rows. Careful pruning of the bushes had ensured that each flower was fully exposed to the sunlight, none of them overlapped.
Joshua pressed his toe into the wiry grass, feeling the solid earth. “It’s very dry,” he said. “Will there be enough water to fill them out?”
“It never rains at midsummer,” Louise said. “Not on the inhabited islands, anyway. Convection takes all the clouds up to the poles; most of the ice-caps melt under the deluge, but the temperature is still only a couple of degrees above freezing. It’s considered frightfully bad luck if it even drizzles here in the week before Midsummer’s Day. The roses store up all the moisture they need for fruition in their roots during springtime.”
He reached up and touched one of the big flowers, surprised by how stiff the stem was. “I had no idea they were so impressive.”
“This is an old grove,” she said. “The roses here are fifty years old, and they’re good for another twenty. We replant several groves each year from the estate’s nurseries.”
“That sounds like quite an operation. I’d like to see it. Perhaps you could show me, you seem very knowledgeable about their cultivation.”
Louise blushed again. “Yes, I do; I mean, I will,” she stammered.
“Unless you have other duties, of course. I don’t wish to impose.” He smiled.
“You’re not,” she assured him quickly.
“Good.”
She found herself smiling back at him for no particular reason at all.
Joshua and Dahybi had to wait until late afternoon before they were introduced to Grant Kavanagh and his wife, Marjorie. It was an opportunity for Joshua to be shown round the big manor house and its grounds, with Louise continuing her role of informative hostess. The manor was an impressive set-up; an unobtrusive army of servants was employed to keep the rooms in immaculate condition, and a lot of money had been spent making the decor as tasteful as possible. Naturally enough, the style was based prominently on the eighteenth-century school of design, history’s miniature enclave.
Thankfully, William Elphinstone left them, claiming he had to work in the groves. They did, however, meet Genevieve Kavanagh as soon as their carriage drew up outside the entrance. Louise’s young sister tagged along with them for the entire afternoon, giggling the whole time. Joshua wasn’t used to children that age, in his opinion she was a spoilt brat who needed a damn good smack. If it wasn’t for Louise he would have been mighty tempted to put her over his knee. Instead he suffered in silence, making the most of the way Louise’s dress fabric shifted about as she moved. There was precious little else to absorb his attention. To the uninitiated eye the estate beyond the grounds was almost deserted.
Midsummer on Norfolk was a time when almost everybody living in the countryside helped out with the weeping rose crop. The travelling Romany caravans were in high demand, with estates and independent grove owners competing for their labour. Even school terms (Norfolk didn’t use didactic laser imprints) were structured round the season, giving children time off to assist their parents, leaving winter as the principal time for studying. As the whole Tear crop was gathered in two days, preparation was an arduous and exacting business.
With over two hundred groves in his estate (not counting those in the crofts), Grant Kavanagh was the most industrious man in Stoke County during the days leading up to midsummer. He was fifty-six years old; modest geneering had produced a barrel-chested physique, five feet ten inches tall, with brown hair that was already greying around his mutton-chop sideboards. But a lifetime of physical activity and keeping a strict watch on what he ate meant he retained the vigour of a man in his twenties. He was able to chase up his flock of junior estate managers with unnerving doggedness. Which, as he knew from sore experience, was the only way of achieving anything in Stoke County. Not only did he have to supervise the teams which went round the groves setting up the collection cups, but he was also responsible for the county’s bottling yard. Grant Kavanagh did not tolerate fools, slackers, and family sinecurists, which in his view described a good ninety-five per cent of Norfolk’s population. Cricklade estate had run smoothly and profitably for the last two hundred and seventy years of its distinguished three-hundred-year existence, and by God that superb record wasn’t going to end in his lifetime.