Laura’s hybrids were quite colorful and of interest for their strong fragrance, though she said they did not reproduce their fragrance in their offspring, a common failing in hybrids.
The old lindens along the walls cast welcome shade; otherwise the terraced garden was open to the sky; the stone path was crowded by spikes of red-black and rose-black flowers as tall as Hattie’s shoulder. Hattie had never seen so many gladiolus planted together with not one other plant or flower, and no lawn to border them. Black flowering stems rose out of graceful arched leaves, from terrace to terrace — black gladiolus descending to the sunken stone lily tank. She could not take her eyes off the hundreds and hundreds of the black blossoms; on closer examination, Hattie noted here and there scatterings of mottled rose-gray and ivory-gray gladiolus accented the black. Pale pink and pale lavender flowers formed a narrow border between the frame of white gladiolus, which were shorter and branched; ah! what a fragrance these white gladiolus had! She closed her eyes for an instant and breathed in the perfume. If she felt tipsy earlier, now she felt drunk, surrounded, even embraced, by the profusion of flowers so tall that they shaded the edges of the garden path. Hattie sat a moment on a narrow ledge of the terrace wall to gaze about and fully realize the effect of the black garden.
Below the terraces of black gladiolus, at the center of the sunken garden, was a stone-paved oval with a shallow lily tank. Hattie saw a stone pedestal with a stone figure of some sort next to the lily tank, but first she wanted to see the artifacts on the other niches and pedestals on the upper terraces.
In a niche of the garden wall, nearly hidden by the tall black gladiolus, sat a white pottery pitcher with black designs. When Hattie got closer she saw the spout of the pitcher was formed by a waterbird’s head and beak; but most amazing yet, on the chest of the waterbird were women’s breasts! Hattie looked over the tops of the black flowers to see where her companions were; the buzz of the bees in the flowers seemed amplified by the sunken garden, though she could not make out what Indigo was saying to Laura as they examined a figure on the terrace below.
Edward stood in front of a niche in the wall of the terrace nearby and glanced up at the sun from time to time as if calculating film exposures for his camera. Hattie slipped her arm into his as she joined him in front of the stone pedestal. The small terra-cotta was a snake-headed figure with human arms and breasts that held a baby snake, but her legs were two snakes!
“How odd this black garden is!” Edward whispered to Hattie. The sight of the breasts on the waterbird pitcher recalled the designs incised on the egg-shaped rock yesterday. Perhaps it might be better if Indigo took her parrot back up to her room in case other figures were unfit for a young girl.
They joined Laura as Indigo, the parrot gripping her shoulder, began to walk the narrow stone ledge of the raised flower beds; she was careful to push aside the gladiolus as she went.
“I assume black is symbolic of night and death,” Edward said; Laura broke into a smile. To the Old Europeans, black was the color of fertility and birth, the color of the Great Mother. Thus the blackbirds belong to her as well as the waterbirds — cranes, herons, storks, and geese. Laura confided she imagined the ancient people as she looked at these figures of clay and stone. After a long brutal winter, how they must have watched the sky of the southern horizon for the return of the nourishment givers!
Edward felt a bit sheepish as he inquired about the modesty of the remaining figures displayed in the gardens, but Laura graciously assured them not to worry. She led the way to the niche, where Indigo stood with her parrot, apparently spellbound by the figure, no more than eight inches tall — another of the crude terra-cottas that Edward did not recognize at once. Whatever it was, it held the child’s attention, so he stepped closer to see.
The figure was a seated bear mother tenderly cradling her cub in her arms; Indigo could feel how much the bear mother loved her cub just from the curve of the clay. She stayed by the bear mother even after Hattie and Edward followed Laura to the next niche; Indigo felt embraced by the bear mother, loved and held by her even as she stood there. The bear mother’s affection made her smile for Mama and Grandma Fleet — they’d held Sister Salt and her just like that, even after they were big girls. They all used to laugh when Grandma pulled one of them onto her lap and pretended to cradle a big girl. The girls used to go along with Grandma’s joke and pretended to be huge babies that made baby sounds as they laughed even harder.
Rainbow became impatient with her for stopping so long and leaned off her shoulder to reach the black flowers with his claws and beak. She cautioned him to let the flowers be, and walked in the middle of the path, but the long flower spikes leaned toward them and the next thing she knew, the parrot clutched a blackish red blossom in his claws and held it to his beak for inspection. Indigo quickly looked to see if anyone witnessed the parrot’s damage.
“Hurry up and eat it if you are going to,” she told him; he shredded the petals in his beak but did not swallow them; then casually dropped the remains on the ground. Indigo took a last look at the bear mother with her cub; she wanted to stay with them longer, but she could see Hattie looking back at her and just then Edward gestured for her to come.
Indigo didn’t want to miss the figures in the other niches, so she took the long way around to join the others. The clay figure in the next niche was larger than the bear mother; it was also seated and appeared mostly human, but she was painted with black-and-white stripes and over her belly a snake curled in a spiral. She felt a chill of excitement when she realized that the figure had snakes for arms! She’d never seen or heard of anything like this before; she couldn’t wait to tell Sister.
Indigo rejoined the others on the terrace below, where they stood before a stone pedestal with a seated figure of carved sandstone that gazed at them with the round eyes of a snake. The snake-headed mother had human arms and in them she cradled her snake baby to human breasts; but instead of legs, she had two snakes for limbs. Indigo took a deep breath and the others looked at her. Well, what did she think? Indigo didn’t know what to say. Grandma Fleet used to talk to the big snake that lived at the spring above the old gardens; she always asked after the snake’s grandchildren and relatives and sent her best regards.
“It’s nothing like the minotaur, is it?” Edward said; he found the grotesque madonnas far more monstrous than the centaur or minotaur.
As they made their way to the niche on the terrace below, Laura described the remnants of snake devotion still found in rural villages of the Black and Adriatic Seas. There, people believed black or green snakes bore guardian spirits who protected their cattle and their homes. In her travels, Laura saw ornamental snakes carved to decorate the roofs and windows for protection. Great good fortune came to anyone who met a big white snake wearing a crown; the crowned snake was the sister of the waterbird goddess, owner and guardian of life water and life milk.
Edward hoped to quicken the pace of their tour as he led the way to the small lily tank; above the lilies was a deep niche that held the bird-snake woman. Fragrant red water lilies as big as dinner plates rocked back and forth when Indigo stirred the green water with her hand.
Previously Hattie agreed with Indigo the bear mother and her cub were the dearest figures they’d seen; but when Hattie saw the carved stone figure of a bird-masked woman holding a bird-masked baby in her arms, she could not take her eyes from them.