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Dearest Dorothy, 

I have just arrived in the Ganges. After a wretchedly impatient journey, I met Lord Canning this afternoon and have settled into the landscape rather nicely. A vibrant country! Despite the colossal geographic divide between us, I do wish you settle into Rookwood swiftly. Never hesitate to pen me should you have the slightest concern. 

Your devoted uncle, 

Captain Wallingford Rookwood

15 June, 1857. 

The letter remained on Dorothy’s person, crumpled from weeks of nervous folding and apprehensive rereading. It had been seven months since the letter arrived at the stone entrance of Rookwood Castle, the estate Dorothy was left as ward following the departure of her uncle to India. Built of tremendous stone, the castle stood solemnly on the hill of Rookwood, nestled in the vast expanse of the moors. The letter was the only correspondence she had received from her uncle and her own letters remained unanswered.

 As the summer season had changed to spectre-gray, January brought the third month of desolate winter to Rookwood. Dorothy had never lived in such a landscape. The blank hills expanded on all sides of the estate, and the ground produced only bracken and dry mosses. Wallingford had left suddenly, his library desk cluttered with open books and loose parchment. He did not employ a housekeeper and, as Dorothy soon discovered upon arriving, had no need for a groundskeeper, as the land produced little vegetation. The remnants of a greenhouse sat derelict on the edge of the estate, the doors locked by an ancient and lost key. Dorothy’s  days were spent listlessly wandering. Throughout the seven months of her inhabitance, Rookwood Castle crept behind her daily movements—a mournful estate, longing for its rightful owner. 

An ordinary girl of eighteen, Dorothy had lived with her father in London until his death, joining a mother she never knew. Dorothy’s father had tried, but failed,  to establish his daughter in London society. Conveniently, Dorothy had preferred to remain solitary. She was raised by a nanny, who took her to the city hothouses, taught her how to sketch the leaves of the trees in the parks, and how to press petals of flowers, preserving moments of delicate life for human enjoyment, if not also for the sake of science.. When Dorothy had received an invitation from her uncle, her mother’s brother, she did not hesitate in responding that she would be delighted to take up residence at Rookwood. She longed for an adventure outside of the world she knew. 

What had been a dream of an enchanted year spent exploring the moors had turned into a terrible affliction for young Dorothy. She missed the vibrancy of the life she had abandoned, confined within the enormous walls of Rookwood, a prisoner of the desolate and grey landscape. The sun would come up in the morning, only to be obscured by the dark clouds—the permanent residents of this region's sky. The rain came with a frightful force, pounding the glass of the windows and blowing the peat of the grounds into a frenzy. Only the worn furniture of the castle provided any color in Dorothy’s life. The purple drapes, heavy with years of dust, hung in each window and the velveteen settees sagged with invisible occupants. Dorothy often sat in the library blankly gazing at the landscape, imagining what it would look like with even the slightest hint of life on the skeleton branches of the bushes and the hard surface of the earth. 

On one particularly bleak morning, Dorothy found herself in the library. She knew the room well, having spent hours ghosting her fingertips over the spines of the tomes that lined the walls, hearing only the echoing sound of her own slow footfall. She had read and reread a story of a similar castle, one that had a terrible curse placed upon it, yet one that was full of masters and servants, starkly contrasting to her own singular presence at Rookwood. The book lay discarded on the windowsill. 

Dorothy sighed and turned the corner of the library, hand still outstretched to delicately touch the books. Suddenly, her hand caught an unusual object she knew to be out of place. Upon closer inspection, a hand-bound book peered at her from the shelf, similar to those she had pressed her flowers in as a child. Dorothy knew it had not been there in the prior months. A sudden feeling of excitement crept up her spine and she hastened to the window with her new discovery.

 It was indeed a botany book of sorts, a volume she was unfamiliar with. The book was large, and the size felt strange in her hands. The inner cover contained an inscription: vinci natura non potest nisi parendum.  The pages of the book were marked in decisive and delicate script, handwritten by an anonymous and likely long deceased reader. The notes were instructions on cultivation and notes of warning, Dorothy realized. The greenhouse is more kin than stranger, yet more foe than friend. The soil, an unmannerly wretch I find myself chained to. Plant seven seeds beneath his surface, water at midnight. 

The gloomy afternoon disappeared as Dorothy poured over the pages, recounting the experiences the nameless owner had growing flowers in the Rookwood greenhouse. The sudden sound of the clock chiming midnight alarmed her and she realized she had not moved in hours. Gathering herself, Dorothy felt a sudden urge to see the greenhouse, to put real world  visions to the stories she had read. It was raining, and through the clouds the whisper of the full moon painted the grounds in a muted light. The greenhouse stood in the dismal landscape, a glass monument of disrepair. The glass panes were riddled with cracks and spiders had claimed the structure as their own, cobwebs glittering with rain in the dim light. The Rookwood crest was hidden beneath a particularly resolute vine, long dead and withered, yet tenacious in its grasp.. When Dorothy reached the entrance that she knew to be locked, the door swung open at the slightest touch, creaking as if to release a long awaited sigh. 

Entranced by the structure, Dorothy entered the greenhouse. Pots and tools littered the shelves; dirt was deeply encased upon the stone floor. The room resembled the castle in its idle air, an appendage long forgotten. The wind howled against the fragile glass. Dorothy felt distinctly uncomfortable, as though she had intruded on a scene she was not meant to witness. Moreover, she felt an inexplicable and unannounced presence. Turning, she ran from the greenhouse, leaving the doors open and made her way back to the castle, suddenly afflicted with a wretched sense of dread. She returned, breathless, to her bedroom, and immediately fell into a deep and troubled slumber. 

For the next few days, Dorothy anxiously peered from the castle windows in the direction of the greenhouse. She did not leave the window, feeling somehow more dismal knowing someone had once grown objects of beauty on the grounds, knowing that the land had a potential to be vibrant. She felt, to her surprise, jealousy. She found herself jealous that someone before her had succeeded in penetrating the thick strangeness of Rookwood and growing life in the greenhouse. Her wretchedness only grew as the days went by. 

The following week, as Dorothy was reading in the evening, a sudden gust of wind rapped at her window, startling her awake from her daydream. In her first few weeks at Rookwood, it had not been uncommon for a sudden noise or creaking of the floors to jolt her senses, but as she grew to be familiar with the movement of the castle, she had not been startled in months. The clock on the wall showed half past eight, and Dorothy felt a strangeness in the castle. Gathering her dressing gown, Dorothy cautiously moved to the bedroom window, now ajar from the wind. At the edge of the estate a light dimly shone through the thick rain. Thinking not of her previous encounter with the greenhouse, Dorothy felt compelled to dress and bravely embark towards the structure. Fearing interlopers, she picked up a rather large stone from the walkway and placed it in her pocket.  

As she approached the greenhouse, she realized that one of the lamps at the entrance was the source of the mysterious light. As she got closer, the light flickered and went out, leaving her enveloped in the darkness of the grounds. The door was as she left it the prior week in her haste to return to the castle. Dorothy peered inside the dark greenhouse. It was terribly still, yet she felt drawn to enter. On the shelf where the discarded pots and tools had been now lay packets of seeds, their bright illustrations showing various species of flowers. How odd, she thought to herself. Perhaps she had missed their presence during her last visit. The spade shone in the moonlight and Dorothy found herself picking up the tool and a packet of seeds, feeling a sense of strangeness. Lighting the lamps inside the greenhouse, Dorothy recalled the directions she read in the botany book, to plant seven seeds just below the surface of the soil. She pulled a handful of soil from one of the shattered pots and felt the damp earth in her hands. It felt like an old friend. 

After neatly planting all of the packets of flower seeds, Dorothy collapsed on the floor of the greenhouse, utterly spent. She had been working meticulously for hours, cleaning and resembling the lines of pots and cleaning the thick dirt from the stone floor. The sun had begun to emerge behind the gloomy clouds, and Dorothy looked at her new charges: seven neatly planted pots containing seven seeds each. She reached out and touched one of the clay pots, wondering when she would see the first buds of life. She fell asleep on the stone floor with one hand cradling the pot. 

Dorothy dreamt of walking through fields of exotic flowers on an endless hill, petals for miles ahead of and behind her. She twirled, stretching her arms as far as she could to touch the delicate faces of the flora. She looked up and saw the sky a shade of blue she had forgotten was possible, the sun glowing, unimpeded by dark clouds. In her dream, a door appeared in the midst of the vegetation, beckoning her in. Once she entered the door swung shut behind her with a sudden and astonishing slam. As if a spell had been broken, the picturesque sky was stormed by angry dark clouds and the flowers wilted in varying states of decay. Dorothy felt in a panic, the dream was dismal and had begun to closely resemble the reality of Rookwood Castle. She looked around her, longing for the once vibrant scene. 

Dorothy awoke, gasping for air, cold and contorted on the ground of the greenhouse. She had no memory of falling asleep there, and from the light streaming through the glass windows, it was well past morning. Sitting up,  Dorothy was astonished and stared in disbelief at the clay pot she had fallen asleep holding. What had been a dark layer of soil now showed budding shoots of bright green. It was impossible, she thought, remembering everything she had learned from reading the botany book and her childhood spent in nature. Nothing could have sprouted overnight at such a rapid rate. At least a week’s worth of growth had occurred in mere hours. All seven pots stood displaying their specters of flora. 

Breathless, Dorothy ran back to the castle in search of the mysterious book. She wished to not miss a moment of this remarkable development, and rushed back to the greenhouse. In the mere minutes of her absence, the seven pots now showed the buds of flowers. Dorothy was perplexed, rapidly flipping through the pages of the volume looking for any hand written note that could explain this mystery. Stupendous growth on the eve of the 24th. January, shrunken hard and dry is no match to the joy illimited by the plants. Dorothy recounted the days on her fingers, it was January 24th. She had crept to the greenhouse on the night of the 23rd, meaning her hard work and dream had bled into the early hours of the 24th. 

She spent the afternoon perched on the greenhouse workbench, transfixed at the growth she saw before her. There was magic in the hothouse, and Dorothy began to feel hopeful that her remaining time at Rookwood Castle would be an entirely different season from her bleak months of boredom. As the clouds above the glass panes darkened to the blackness of night, Dorothy slumbered once more in the structure. She slept a dreamless sleep, encompassed by the forgetfulness of repose. The following morning what had been lush green shoots had transformed into blooming flowers. She compared the bright petals with the images sketched in the book, and determined that the flowers were indeed exotic to the moorland, most bearing names she was wholly unfamiliar with. She sketched their blossoms on parchment and recorded the time of day they turned in search of the nonexistent sunlight.

Dorothy began to feel sorry for these beings, they instinctively sought out that which they needed, only to find the grey landscape incapable of providing anything more than air. She saw herself in their being. They were products of her own hand and wished for a life of beauty. It was a life she was incapable of providing, and she fretted that they would soon face an untimely demise. Dorothy knew not of what was to come. 

____________

Little is known of the history of Rookwood Castle. Belonging to the Rookwood family for generations, it is situated in such a location that locals—in their minute numbers—avoid the grounds on account of the long history of tragedy. The Rookwood family history was riddled with disappearance and untimely death. As Captain Wallingford Rookwood had no children, locals assumed the property would eventually be passed to the closest relative. A man of forty, the captain was known for his eccentricities, but the neighbors frowned at his refusal to maintain the grounds. 

Captain Wallingford Rookwood never returned from India. No correspondence was ever recovered between himself and his young niece. While the surrounding homes knew of Dorothy’s arrival the previous year, she had led such a reclusive life that they thought little of her presence. In fact, they had wholly forgotten about the young occupant of Rookwood. One particular afternoon, a woman found herself walking the pathway that wove alongside the edge of the Rookwood property. 

She had been visiting an acquaintance for tea and as the clouds parted for the first time following the last bout of acid rain, she strayed from her usual route, enjoying the fleeting feeling of the clean air. As she rounded a turn in the path, a menagerie of bright color came into view. To her astonishment, a glass greenhouse sat on the hill, vibrant with shades of purple, blue, red, and orange. The woman had not seen such an abundance of color in years. 

As the woman approached the hothouse, the structure shocked her. She had grown up walking past the ruins of the greenhouse, yet here it stood before her unrecognizable. It had been restored to its former glory, the glass shining in the weak sunlight. The woman rounded the building, searching for a door. To her surprise, the structure was entirely shut in, there was no door or entrance, but tendrils of the vegetation seeped from the windows and the aroma of the flowers wafted from within. 

Had it been any other estate, any other circumstances, the woman would have admired the flora for several minutes before continuing on her journey, telling her friends and family of the odd encounter on her walk. She knew of the Rookwood legacy, and having heard of Dorothy, felt a particular unease at the appearance of such vegetation. Picking up a rock from the dead ground, the woman broke the largest pane of glass, providing her with just enough space to enter the greenhouse. Fighting the stubborn branches and leaves, the woman forced her way through the thick plants. Vibrant colors swirled in her vision as the stone floor disappeared and the window from which she came in disappeared out of sight. 

What the woman stumbled upon in the center of the flowers was nothing short of a shocking terror. Lying wrapped and coiled by the plants was the lifeless body of young Dorothy. Her hand outstretched, clasping an open book. From her body flowers bloomed, her skin the soil of their cultivation. Her eyes were closed and her face reflected an unexpected sense of peacefulness. The woman screamed, a sound muffled by the blooming petals, unheard through the thick vegetation. 

In the days following, the flowers continued to bloom in the Rookwood greenhouse. Authorities uncovered Dorothy’s body and upon her posthumous departure from the castle, the flowers quickly withered and died. As the letters to Captain Rookwood went unanswered, the locals sought out their own explanations for the strange events that had unfolded at the castle. The volume of the botany book was examined. Having been badly soiled by the dirt and decay of the scene, only two pages remained legible. They were inscribed in Dorothy’s own delicate penmanship: 

In vapid spiritedness I planted the very seeds of myself. Vivid as specters, the flora blossom neatly and hungrily in their glass house. I once more know joy, illimited. Nature cannot be conquered except by being obeyed. 

Works Consulted 

Alcorn, Keith. “From specimens to commodities: the London nursery trade and the introduction of exotic plants in the early nineteenth century.” Historical Research, Volume 93, Issue 262, November 2020. Pages 715–733. 

Chiverrell, Richard Christopher. “Moorland vegetation history and climate change on the North York Moors during the last 2000 years.” The University College of Ripon and York. September, 1998. 

Dalrymple, William. The East India Company: The Original Corporate Raiders. The Guardian, March 4, 2015. 

Hardy, Thomas. “The Darkling Thrush.” 

King, Joy. The History of Greenhouses. Growlink.org. September 18, 2020. 

Spedding, James, et al., editors. “Preface to the Cogitata et Visa.” The Works of Francis Bacon, by Francis Bacon, vol. 3, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011, pp. 589–590. Cambridge Library Collection - Philosophy.

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