“I love Vasaro,” he said simply. “I want it to continue to prosper.” He swung up on the horse. “So I’d better be checking on the pickers in the south field. May I escort you back to the house first? You should have your breakfast.”
She shook her head. Her gaze returned to the pickers. “I want to stay and watch a little while longer.”
He hesitated. “You’re sure that—” He stopped, his gaze on her absorbed face.“Eh bien, I’ll come back and fetch you after the morning’s work.” He turned the horse and trotted down the hill toward the road.
Catherine scarcely realized he was gone as she watched the rhythm of the pickers as they plucked the blossoms and tossed them into the baskets. Some of the baskets were full now, and the men were carrying them to the waiting cart and dumping them in large casks on the bed of the cart. Then they returned to the field and the rhythm resumed.
“Catherine!”
It was the child, Michel, waving at her from the field, his tanned face alight with laughter, his eyes squinting against the sunlight. She lifted her hand and waved in return.
He was motioning to her. He wanted her to come down to the field.
She hesitated and then shook her head.
Disappointment clouded his face and Catherine felta sudden twinge of remorse. What difference did it make if she was the mistress of Vasaro? She jumped to her feet and was halfway down the hill before she had realized she was heading toward the boy. She reached the road, crossed it, and started winding her way through the plants, smiling shyly at the workers who stared at her with an uncertainty equal to her own. She came to the row where Michel was standing.
“You wished to speak to me?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Watch, I’ll show you how it’s done and then you can do it.” He bent down and started to pluck the geraniums again.
“I don’t want to—” Shedidwant to pick the flowers, she suddenly realized. She wanted to be a part of the rhythm that united the pickers with the plants, to know how the dew-wet blossoms felt in her fingers. She wanted to be a part of Vasaro.
That was why she had been drawn from the house to the field that morning. She had not realized her purpose, but somehow the child had known.
“Tomorrow you must wear a hat. You’re not as brown as the other women, so you’ll burn.” Michel didn’t look at her as he quickly plucked the blossoms. “And wooden shoes are best. There’s much mud from the dew in the morning. You’ll remember?”
“I’ll remember.” She watched him closely and then began to clumsily pluck the blossoms and toss them into his basket. She was slow at first, but she found the occupation ambivalently both soothing and exhilarating. The work itself was mindless labor and yet the scent of the earth and flowers, the sun warming her skin, the rush of blood through her veins, and the unaccustomed exercise turned her warm and breathless. She didn’t know how long she worked beside Michel, but the basket was filled to overflowing with the orange-red geraniums, emptied into the cart and filled again, emptied and filled.
Michel worked in companionable silence beside her, his fingers like the beaks of small birds biting the blossoms from the stems.
She moved down the row to another plant and reached out to find the first flower.
“No.” Michel’s callused hand abruptly covered her own. “It’s enough. It’s time for you to leave now.”
She looked at him in surprise.
“The sun’s high now and you’re beginning to grow very weary.”
“No, I feel fine.”
“It’s time for you to go.” His smile touched his face with a special radiance. “You can come back tomorrow. It’s a big field and we won’t finish today.”
“But I want to stay.”
“You’ve already taken what you need from them.”
Her brow furrowed in puzzlement. “What?”
“You needed the flowers but you’re at peace now. You mustn’t take too much or the healing will go away. There’s a…” He frowned, searching for a word. “Balance.”
“Healing?”
He started to pick the geraniums. “Come back tomorrow, Catherine.”
She stood staring at him for a moment, uncertain what to do. His words were strange, but they struck a note of rightness deep within her. She turned and walked down the row of denuded plants and then up the hill toward the manor house.
Catherine returned to the geranium field the next day and the day after that. On the fourth day the pickers moved to the field of pink bois de roses and Catherine moved with them. With every day she grew stronger, the rhythm of the work became clearer to her, more serene and better defined. On the fifth day Michel let her stay with the pickers until their workday was ended in the mid-afternoon. Pride and contentment filled her as she and Michel followed the pickers from the field.
