Page 31 of A Fearless Heart
“So I was. Let’s begin, shall we?”
Thus, Cady ended up spending most of the morning with Gabe, and after a little while, she even forgot to be embarrassed about the intimacies she’d confided last night. Working with him felt very natural. He was quick to learn and he was genuinely interested in the grounds, asking question after question about the plants he saw, the various buildings, and Cady’s experience as a botanist.
“Where did you get all these plants?” he asked, while peering into one of the glasshouses where Cady maintained most of her seedlings.
“Often, the seeds are mailed to me by colleagues, or sometimes agents in specific cities, and I propagate them here in the glasshouse. On the east side here, I’ve got shipments from the west and east coasts of Africa, India, Persia, and China.”
“Those places are all hot, aren’t they? I don’t understand how they can survive in England,” he said, sounding baffled. “The winters…”
“That’s why they’re inside,” Cady explained. “The glass traps the heat of the sun and keeps it much warmer in here. Even in December, it might be below freezing outside, but in here I don’t even need to wear my shawl. And for the plants that are truly sensitive, we’ve got the hot walls.”
He looked blank. “Thewhat?”
“The hot walls. I’m glad you brought the issue up, actually, because one of your tasks will be to help restore them. After my mother’s death, some of the hot walls got damaged and I never quite had the time to see them repaired. Come, I’ll show you.”
Cady led the way through the glasshouse to the other end, where it connected to a brick hallway that turned a sharp ninety-degree angle.
“One of the previous generations planned for a continuous passage through all the glasshouses all the way to the orangerie, which is the building due west of the main house.”
“How? That building isn’t connected to anything.”
She said, “The passageway drops below ground level between the last glasshouse and the orangerie, in order to preserve the symmetry of the view from the house.”
“Interesting,” he said softly.
“The passageways allow us to take tender plants from place to place without exposing them to inclement weather,” Cady went on. “But they also exist to give access to the hot walls.” She laid a hand on the wall to her left. “This wall here—it’s the north side of one of the glasshouses. That means that in the glasshouse, it faces south, which gives the plants growing there full exposure to sunlight for the longest stretch of time.”
“What if it’s cloudy?”
She chuckled. “A problem my predecessors acknowledged. To make absolutely sure that the plants in the glasshouse would survive, they designed the hot walls.”
She rapped on the wall, which echoed with a distinctly hollow sound. “There’s four feet of space between both sides. Within, ceramic pipes can carry hot air through the walls, heating them up day or night.”
“Where’s the hot air come from?”
“A coal furnace, centrally located. After the ideal temperature is reached, a single worker can maintain the fire easily, just periodically shoveling in more coal.”
Gabe put his hands up against the wall, but then looked disappointed. “Doesn’t feel hot.”
“That’s because the system is damaged. That’s what I need your help to repair.”
“Show me where to start.”
“It’s not very far,” she told him, continuing down the passage. The air here was faintly musty, but nothing like what one would have expected of a windowless, lightless hall.
“Do you use this route often?” he asked.
“Parts of it,” she said. “Other parts…well, you’ll see.”
Ahead, a whole section of ceiling and wall had crumbled, blocking access to the next part. But the space widened into a squarish room, with a coal stove in one corner, a pile of coal nearby, and a few shovels lying on the floor.
“This is where the heat would be generated if things weren’t broken. One worker can keep the heat level up with only a shovelful or two of coal every few hours.”
“But they have to run through the house and your workroom and all those passages each time?”
“Oh, no!” Cady laughed. “The best entry point for the coal shoveler is actually beyond that door. There’s another passage continuing toward the orangerie that has a door to the outside. It’s much more direct than the route we took today.”
“Then why not use that?”
