The Brotherhood of the Dragon

Chapter Three

Chapter ThreeThe afternoon air was soothingly cool after the stifling greenhouse, so I decided to take a walk through the garden. No sooner did I put a foot on the path, though, than I found Robyn Stamford walking beside me.

‘Stay away from my grandfather.’

‘And good evening to you, Miss Stamford,’ I replied warmly.

‘What did the old man want from you?’

‘To show me his paper daisies. I must say he certainly has a fine crop coming in this season. Did you know they were a favourite of Napoleon? He even grew them on the island of St Helena while a prisoner there.’

Her face grew as dark as the clouds above. ‘You think you’re being clever. There is nothing sadder in this world than a man who thinks he is being clever.’

‘I bow to your expertise on the failings and foibles of men.’

We continued walking down the garden path in silence. I smiled away the time, and even began a jolly hum and stopped to watch as a butterfly on gossamer wings of orange and white fluttered and flitted from one flower bud to another. Next to me the delightful Robyn Stamford harrumphed, unsure how to proceed and far too stubborn to let me have the last word.

What a sight we must have made as we continued strolling down the path. I stopped again to inspect one of the more picturesque blooms the garden presented and could feel Robyn had reached the end of whatever good grace she had been holding onto.

In frustration the girl grabbed my elbow and forced me to turn and face her. She then snarled in a most unladylike way, ‘Stay away from my grandfather, stay away from my family, and stay away from me.’

I held back a reply and allowed the girl to storm off. Though she was clearly angry with me over I knew not what, I had learned a long time ago you get nowhere antagonising young women. They have a nasty habit of turning vindictive and can make your life a living hell, so best to avoid that particular pitfall whenever you can.

Instead I spent a few minutes watching a team of four gardeners planting a semi-mature tree of a variety I was not familiar with. The men struggled to lower the specimen into the deep hole they had dug and, once safely nestled inside, three of them shovelled dirt over the exposed roots. I did not see where the fourth man had gone, but assumed he was retrieving some unseen supervisor to inspect their work thus far.

Perhaps it was my wounded head or having not recovered from the heat of the greenhouse; perhaps I was still pondering the conversation with the lovely, if not somewhat disturbed, Miss Stamford. Whatever the case, I never gave the timing of the gardener going missing with my own arrival a second thought. It was a mistake I could easily have regretted.

Leaving the tree and its sweating trio of workmen, I decided to take the long way back up to the house through a grove of mature trees. Among this grove were statues of men I did not recognise, some of whom were protecting women who looked the sort I too would like to have known a little better. If that required protecting them from some unknown danger, well, I could do that.

There were also several small outbuildings along this path, carefully hidden from the main garden and the house. Some of them I assumed were used for potting and for the storage of tools. It was as I passed between two such buildings that the missing gardener stepped out from behind a shrub and hit me over the head with his shovel.