The greenhouse was a different kind of warm.

  Gerald had been through it before -- carrying herbs for Mary, fetching an empty pot Nessa needed, once helping Sable move a tray of seedlings from one bench to another while Mam propped the door. He had passed through it on his way to somewhere else, a room between other rooms, and he had not paid it more attention than it asked for.

  Mam brought him in on a Tuesday.

  The morning chores were done -- woodbox, hall, chickens, table -- and the kitchen was clearing, Mary already scrubbing the porridge pot, Tom collecting the last of the bowls. Mam came from the greenhouse corridor with soil on the inside of her wrist and a watering can in each hand and looked at Gerald the way she looked at the rosemary when it was time to prune: assessing, unhurried, already decided.

  "Come," she said.

  The door at the end of the corridor was heavy, wood-framed, with glass panels that had a faint ripple in them -- old glass, some of the oldest working panes on the estate. Through the ripple the green on the other side shifted and bent, and Gerald had always liked looking at it from the corridor, how the plants became something not quite real behind the old pour.

  Mam pushed the door open with her hip. The heat came through.

  Not the Hot House heat. Gerald knew that heat -- mineral and dry, pressing against the skin, tasting of iron and superheated sand at the back of the throat. This was wet. Heavy the way a blanket was heavy, not crushing but close, settling against his face and arms and the backs of his hands all at once. The air smelled of soil and water and green -- dense, living green, the smell of things growing in enclosed warmth. It was as far from the furnace's clean edge as bread was from stone.

  Gerald stood inside the door and looked.

  The beds ran in long rows, separated by flagstone paths so narrow his feet nearly touched both edges. Some had low, leafy plants in thick mats of green. Others had taller stems tied to stakes with strips of cloth, reaching toward the glass above. Along the far wall, herbs grew in shallow trays -- dark green, grey-green, a pale yellow-green Gerald did not have a name for. Morning sunlight came through the panels and broke across the beds in long, shifting lines, and where the light hit the dark soil directly, thin threads of steam rose and vanished.

  Mam set the cans on the flagstones.

  "Morning round," she said. "Each bed gets water. Not all the same. The leafy beds take more. The herbs take less. If you aren't sure, use less." She touched the handle of the larger can. "This one's for the beds. Slow pour, close to the soil, not from above. The water soaks in, not sits on the leaves."

  She lifted the can and tilted it over the nearest bed. The pour was slow and controlled, the spout close to the soil, the water falling in a thin steady stream that moved along the row at the speed of walking. It sank into the earth almost as fast as it landed, darkening the soil in a strip that widened as Gerald watched.

  "Your turn."

  Gerald picked up the second can. Smaller than Mam's -- not sized for him, but lighter, brass, dented along one side, the handle worn smooth by hands that were not his. Heavy. The water inside shifted when he moved and pulled his shoulder forward when he tilted.

  He tried to pour the way she had. The water came out faster than he wanted. It hit the soil in a thick splash that kicked dark flecks of earth onto the nearest leaves, and Gerald pulled the spout back too far and the water stopped, and when he tilted again it came in a rush that pooled in a low spot where someone's knee had compressed the soil.

  "Slower," Mam said. She was at the end of the row, her own can already at her hip, her pour finished. "Tilt less. Let the weight do it."

  Gerald tilted less. The stream was not even -- it surged and thinned as the water shifted inside the can -- but it reached the soil without splashing. He moved down the row. His forearms trembled before he reached the halfway point, the muscles along the tops burning with the effort of holding the angle, and his lower back ached from crouching to bring the spout close to the low beds. There was no other way to reach them without standing over them and pouring from above, which Mam had said not to do.

  By the time he reached the end of the first row his legs were shaking.

  Mam had finished three rows. She had not rushed. Her pace was the same steady pour she had shown him, her steps between the flagstones neither quick nor slow. She covered more ground because every motion she made was the right motion. No wasted tilt. No pulling back and resetting.

  "Keep going," she said. "Finish the row."

  Gerald finished the row. He refilled the can from the rainwater barrel at the greenhouse's near end and started the second.

  The afternoon was weeding.

  Gerald had not thought about what grew in the beds beside the plants Mam intended to be there. The beds looked complete -- green and full and deliberate, every leaf in its place. But when Mam knelt beside a bed of basil seedlings and ran her hand along the soil between the rows, her fingers found things Gerald had not seen: small pale shoots growing between the basil stems, their leaves thinner and lighter than the plants around them, growing low and flat against the soil.

  "These," Mam said. She pinched one between her thumb and forefinger and pulled it free. The root came up in a thin white thread. She held it where Gerald could see. "Everything that isn't basil comes out. If you aren't sure, leave it and ask."

  Gerald knelt beside her. The flagstone was hard under his knees, and the humidity pressed against his face, and the basil seedlings were small -- their leaves soft and round and barely wider than his thumbnail. Between them, the pale shoots grew in clusters of two and three, roots shallow, leaves almost see-through.

  He pulled one. It came out easily, the root sliding free of the damp soil with a small sound that was barely a sound at all.

  He pulled another. And another. The work was slow because each weed had to be found first. Gerald's eyes were not trained for this. The pale shoots looked different from the basil when Mam pointed them out, but on his own, kneeling in the thick heat with sweat running behind his ear, they blurred together. He pulled a basil seedling on his fourth try and knew it the instant it came free -- the stem thicker, the leaves rounder, the root longer and more developed than the shallow weed roots.

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  He looked at it in his fingers. Already limp. The leaves softening. The root dangling in a thin white line with a clod of soil attached.

  "That was basil," Mam said. She was two beds away, hands moving through her own row. She had not been watching. She had not needed to.

  Gerald set the dead seedling on the flagstone beside his knee and kept weeding.

  The second morning was easier -- not because the work had changed but because his hands remembered. The pour came more evenly. He spilled less. He reached the end of the first row with his arms aching but not trembling.

  Sable arrived in the middle of Gerald's third row.

  She came through the corridor door without announcement, her hair tied back, her sleeves pushed to her elbows. She had her own can -- the same size as Mam's, full, and she carried it with one hand on the handle and the other under the base, the weight braced against her body rather than out at arm's length the way Gerald carried his. She set it down at the far end and began pouring without greeting anyone.

  Her pace was something else. Quieter. More considered. Her eyes moved along the row ahead of her hands. Twice Gerald saw her pause, lean closer to a plant, touch a leaf, and then pour. He did not know what she was looking for.

  By the time Gerald finished his fourth row, Sable had finished six. She was weeding now, her knees on the flagstones, her fingers moving through the basil bed with a speed that made Gerald's careful picking look exactly like what it was. She did not pull a single basil plant. Her fingers found the weeds and left the seedlings without pausing between them, her hands reading the bed the way Pim's hands read the horses -- by feel, by years, by something Gerald could watch but could not copy.

  She had been doing this for three years. Gerald knelt in the heat and pulled weeds and tried not to crush the seedlings his fingers passed over. Sable had started at eight. His age. The difference between them was not anything Gerald could name. It was just time.

  On the third morning, Gerald heard the workshop through the greenhouse wall.

  The Hot House was not far. Its near wall faced the greenhouse's far end, separated by the width of the yard, and when the air was still the furnace hum carried through the glass panels and mixed with the greenhouse's own sounds -- dripping condensation, creaking stakes, the rustle of leaves when the ventilation shutters opened to let the worst of the heat out.

  Gerald was watering. His fifth row. The pour was steadier now -- three mornings had taught his arms the angle, and the water fell in something close to the stream Mam used, though it still wavered when the can's weight shifted and his wrist adjusted late. His back had stopped complaining about the crouch. His knees found the flagstone paths without looking.

  He heard the ring.

  Not the hum. The ring. The bright, clean note of a finished piece struck from the punty, carrying across the yard and through the glass panels and into the humid air. Gerald's hands stopped. The pour stopped. The water in the can settled. The greenhouse was suddenly too quiet, and the plants in front of him were suddenly just plants, green and still and not the thing he wanted to be near.

  He started moving faster.

  He did not decide to move faster. His hands tilted the can further, walked the pour down the row at twice the speed he had been using, the water falling in a heavier stream that hit the soil and pooled rather than soaked. He reached the end of the row and turned to the next and poured again, the same heavy stream, the same fast walk, the water flooding the low points and sitting on the surface in flat dark pools that did not drain.

  The basil row was sixth. The seedlings were three inches tall, their leaves bright green and tender, the stems still soft enough to bend under the weight of a single drop. Gerald poured. The water came in a rush -- the can was more than half full and the angle was steep and the stream was wider than it should have been. It hit the soil at the base of the first seedling and the surface broke, water pushing through the loose topsoil and pooling around the stem, rising until it covered the base to the first leaves. Gerald moved down the row. The water followed, flooding ahead of his pour into the spaces between the seedlings, filling the gaps, covering the soil in a shallow standing sheet that reflected the glass panels above.

  He reached the end of the row. The can was lighter.

  Gerald stood and looked at what he had done. The basil seedlings stood in water. A quarter-inch, maybe less. But standing water, water that sat on the surface because the soil beneath was already full. The leaves of the nearest seedlings were dark with splashed water, bent under the weight of drops clinging to their undersides. The smallest seedling at the row's edge was leaning, its stem pushed sideways by the force of the pour, its roots loosened in the waterlogged soil.

  Mam was behind him.

  She was there the way she was always there in this room -- not hovering, not watching, but present, moving through the rows on her own circuit. She knelt beside the flooded row and ran a finger through the soil between two seedlings. The soil was dark, nearly black, and when her finger drew a line through it the line filled with water immediately.

  She looked up at Gerald.

  "These were basil," she said. "They would have been ready in six weeks."

  Gerald looked at the row. The seedlings were still standing, most of them. But the water sat around them, and the water was in the soil, and the soil was in the roots, and what he had done could not be undone by wanting it undone.

  Mam's face held something Gerald could not read. Not anger. Not disappointment. Not patience. A question forming behind it, the kind she asked that was not a question at all.

  "Can you grow them back faster?"

  Gerald looked at the flooded row and then at Mam and then at the row again.

  No. He could not grow them back faster. Six weeks was how long basil took. He could not negotiate with it or hurry past it or shorten it by trying harder. The only way was to start again and do it right and wait the six weeks, and the six weeks would take exactly as long as six weeks took.

  "No," he said.

  Mam stood. She brushed the soil from her knees. She crossed to the workbench against the near wall, where the tools and seed packets were kept in shallow wooden drawers, and came back with a paper envelope, soft with age, marked in pencil with a word Gerald could read -- basil -- and a date he could not.

  "Pull what's drowned," she said. "Turn the soil. Replant."

  She showed him the spacing. Two fingers between each seed, pressed into the soil to the depth of the first knuckle, covered and patted flat. She planted the first three, her fingers moving with the same unhurried certainty she brought to everything in this room, and then she stood and gave him the envelope and went back to her own work.

  Gerald knelt in front of the ruined row.

  He pulled the drowned seedlings. They came out too easily, their roots soft and dark, the stems limp between his fingers. He laid them on the flagstone beside his knee. Eight seedlings. They had been alive an hour ago. They smelled of basil -- the crushed-green smell that came from the broken stems -- and the smell got on his hands and stayed there.

  He turned the soil with his fingers, working the drier earth from below into the wet layer above. The soil was cool and gritty with the sand and perlite Mam mixed in for drainage. He turned it until the surface no longer shone with standing water and the bed looked something close to what it had looked like before he flooded it.

  He planted the seeds. Two fingers apart. First knuckle deep. Cover and pat. The seeds were small and dark, barely visible against the soil once they were in. His fingers learned the spacing by the fourth seed and held it through the rest.

  The row was his now. Mam had not said this. She had not needed to. The seeds were in the soil and the soil was his to water and his to weed and his to watch for the next six weeks while the seeds he had planted grew into the seedlings he had killed.

  He put the envelope back in the drawer and washed his hands at the rainwater barrel. The basil smell stayed on his skin after the soil was gone. The crushed-green sweetness of it, sharp and particular, nothing like the mineral iron of the workshop or the hay-and-horse smell of the stables or the soap-and-linen smell of the front hall. A new smell on old hands.

  His palms had a ridge forming along the right side where the watering can's handle sat. Not a callus yet. A beginning. Below it, the rope grooves from three days ago had faded to nothing.

  Sable, three rows away, was still weeding. She had not looked up during any of it.

  Gerald picked up his watering can. He refilled it at the barrel. He started the next row, and the pour was slow, and the stream was thin, and the water reached the soil and sank in and did not pool.

  Outside, through the glass, the Hot House sat in the morning light with its vents open and its hum carrying across the yard. Gerald heard it. He kept pouring.