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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Author’s Note

  Gardens for the Gambia

  Reading Group Guide

  About Philippa Gregory

  This book is dedicated to the children of Sika village, in The Gambia, and to all the peoples of Africa, wherever they are today

  CHAPTER

  1

  MEHURU WOKE AT DAWN with the air cool on his outstretched body. He opened his eyes in the half darkness and sniffed the air as if the light wind might bring him some strange scent. His dream, an uneasy vision of a ship slipping her anchor in shadows and sailing quietly down a deep rocky gorge, was with him still.

  He got up from his sleeping platform, wrapped a sheet around him and went quietly to the door. The city of Oyo was silent. He looked down his street; no lights showed. Only in the massive palace wall could he see a moving light as a servant walked from room to room, the torch shining from each window he passed.

  There was nothing to fear, there was nothing to make him uneasy, yet still he stood wakeful and listening as if the coop-coop-coop of the hunting owls or the little squeaks from the bats that clung around the stone towers of the palace might bring him a warning.

  He gave a little shiver and turned from the doorway. The dream had been very clear—just one image of a looped rope dropping from a stone quayside and snaking through the water to the prow of a ship, whipping its way up the side as it was hauled in, and then the ship moving silently away from the land. There should be nothing to fear in such a sight, but the dream had been darkened by a brooding sense of threat that lived with him still.

  He called quietly for his slave boy, Siko, who slept at the foot of his bed. “Make tea,” he said shortly as the boy appeared, rubbing his eyes.

  “It’s the middle of the night,” the boy protested, and then stopped when he saw Mehuru’s look. “Yes, master.”

  Mehuru waited in the doorway until the boy put the little brass cup of mint tea into his hand. The sharp, aromatic scent of it comforted him. There had been a stink in his dream, a stink of death and sickness. The ship that had left the land in darkness, trailing no wake in the oily water, had smelled as if it carried carrion.

  The dream must mean something. Mehuru had trained as an obalawa—a priest, one of the highest priests in the land. He should be able to divine his own dreams.

  Over the roofs of the city, the sky was growing paler, shining like a pearl, striped with thin bands of clouds as fine as muslin. As he watched, they melted away and the sky’s color slowly deepened to gray and then a pale misty blue. On the eastern horizon, the sun came up, a white disk burning.

  Mehuru shook the dream from his head. He had a busy day before him: a meeting at the palace and an opportunity for him to show himself as a man of decision and ambition. He put the dream away from him. If it came back, he would consider it then. It was a brilliant cream-and-white dawn, full of promise. Mehuru did not want such a day shadowed by the dark silhouette of a dreamed ship. He turned inside and called Siko to heat water for his wash and lay out his best clothes.

  IN THE BRISTOL ROADS—where salt water meets fresh in the Bristol Channel—the slaving ship Daisy paid off the pilot who had guided her down the treacherously narrow Avon Gorge and cast off the barges that had towed her safely out to sea. She put on sail as the sun rose and a light wind came up, blowing from the west. Captain Lisle drew his charts toward him and set his course for the Guinea coast of Africa. The cabin boy had laid out a clean shirt for him and poured water for him to wash. He poured it back into the jug, holding the china ewer carefully in grubby, callused hands. It would be two months at least before they made landfall in Africa, and Captain Lisle was not a man to waste clean water.

  Cole and Sons,

  Redclift Dock,

  Bristol.

  Monday 15th September 1787

  Dear Miss Scott,

  I write to you Direct on a delicate matter which Perhaps should best be addressed to his lordship. However, since I have not Yet his lordship’s Acquaintance, and since you indicated to me that you have to make your Own Way in the World, perhaps I May be forgiven for my Presumption.

  I was Delighted to meet you at my Warehouse when you applied for the Post of governess, but your Family Connexions and own Demeanor convinced me that I could Never think of You as an Employee of mine. It was that Realization which prompted me to draw the interview to a Close.

  I had an idea Then which I now Communicate to you: Namely that I wish that I might think of you as a Wife.

  Some might say that as a Bristol Merchant I am overly Ambitious in wishing to Ally myself with your Family. But you say Yourself that your circumstances do not permit the Luxury of Choice. And tho I am in business—“in Trade” as I daresay his lordship might say—it is a Respectable Trade with good prospects.

  You will be Concerned as to the House you would occupy as my wife. You saw Only my Warehouse apartment, and I assure you that I am moving Shortly, with my Sister, who will remain living with Me, to a Commodious and Elegant house in the best Part of town, namely Queens Square, which his lordship may know.

  As to Settlements and Dowry—these certainly should be Arranged between his lordship and myself—but may I Assure you that you will find me generous if you are Kind enough to look on my Proposal with favor.

  I am Sensible of the Honor you would do me, Madam, and Conscious of the Advantage your connexion would bring me. But may I also hope that this Proposal of mine will Preserve you from a lifetime of employment to which your Delicate talents and Aristocratic Connexions must render you unfit?

  I remain, your most obedient servant,

  Josiah Cole.

  Josiah sprinkled sand on the letter with a steady hand and blew it gently away. He rose from his chair and went to the high window and looked down. Below him were the wharves and dark water of the Redclift Dock. The tide was in, and the ships were bobbing comfortably at the dockside; a steady patter of sound came from their rigging, rattling in the light, freezing wind. There was a heap of litter and discarded bales on the Coles’ empty wharf, and mooring ropes were still coiled on the cobbles. Josiah had seen his ship Daisy set sail on the dawn tide. She should be at sea by now, with his hopes riding on her voyage. There was nothing that he could do but wait. Wait for news of Daisy and wait for the arrival of his second ship, the Lily, laboring slowly through the seas from the West Indies, heavy with a cargo of s