Free The Savage Garden by Mark Mills

was wrong. He had somehow managed to achieve both—a demure quality coupled with an erotic charge.
        "So I'm not wrong?"
        "Huh?" he said distractedly.
        "I'm not alone. You see it too."
        "It's possible."
        "Possible? It is there or it isn't," came the indignant reply.
        "You're not wrong."
        "Everyone else thinks I am. My grandmother thinks I imagine it, and this says very much about me."
        "What does she think it says about you?"
        Even as the words left his mouth he realized it was an impertinent question, far too personal.
        "It doesn't matter now," she replied, "because we are right and she is wrong."
        He found himself smiling at the ease with which she'd deflected his inquiry, sparing him further embarrassment. His mind, though, was leaping ahead, questions already coalescing. Was it done knowingly? And if so, why? Why would a grieving husband allow his wife to be personified as some prudish yet pouting goddess, some virgin-whore?
        The questions stayed with him as they moved on down the slope to the grotto buried in its mound of shaggy laurel. They entered silently, allowing their eyes to adjust to the gloom.
        The marble figures stood out pale and ghostly against the dark, encrusted rock of the back wall. In the center, facing left, was Daphne at the moment of her transformation into a laurel tree, her toes turning to roots, bark already girding her thighs, branches and leaves beginning to sprout from the splayed fingers of her left hand, which was raised heavenward in desperation, supplication. To her right was Apollo, the sun god, from whom she was fleeing— youthful, muscular, identifiable by the lyre in his hand and the bow slung across his broad back. Below them, an elderly bearded gentleman reclined along the rim of a great basin of purple and white variegated marble. This was Peneus, the river god, father to Daphne.
        The story was straight from Ovid's
Metamorphoses
: the nymph Daphne, fleeing the unwelcome advances of a love-struck Apollo, begged her father to turn her into a laurel tree, which he duly did. It was an appropriate myth for a garden setting—Art and Nature combining in the figure of Daphne. As the file pointed out, there was a relief panel depicting the same scene in the Grotto of Diana at the Villa d'Este in Tivoli. But here in the memorial garden, the myth had an added resonance, mirroring the story of Flora—a nymph who also underwent a metamorphosis following her pursuit by an amorous god.
        This last observation was Antonella's. It wasn't in the file, nor had it occurred to Adam, which was mildly annoying, although this wouldn't prevent him, he suspected, from claiming it as his own for the purposes of his thesis.
        Antonella explained how the water poured from the urn held by Peneus, filling the marble basin. A lowered lip at the front then allowed it to overflow into a shallow, circular pool set in the stone floor. This was carved with rippling water, and at its center was a female face in relief, staring heavenward, the gaping mouth acting as a sink hole. The hair of this disembodied visage was bedecked with flowers, identifying it as that of Flora: the goddess of flowers drawing sustenance for her creations from the life-giving spring water.
        It was an exquisite arrangement, faultless both in its beauty and in its pertinence to the overarching program of the garden. The only false note was the broken-off horn of the unicorn crouched at Apollo's feet, its head bowed toward the marble basin. This was a common motif in gardens of the period. A unicorn dipping its horn into the water signified the purity of the source feeding the garden; it announced that you could happily scoop up a handful and down a draft without fear for your life. At some time since that era, though, the unicorn had lost the greater part of its horn.
        Adam fingered the truncated stump.