A Tale of Sogmarsh
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THE BORDER WAR

A Tale of Sogmarsh — being an account of four centuries of hostilities between a lawn and a vine, and of the discovery, by two gardeners, of who had been supplying the enemy.

A Tale of Sogmarsh — a standalone story of the realm. Stands on its own; not part of the Reader's Edition collection.

Along the shared boundary of Castle Bastable and the Poxbury estate there is a war.

It has been going since before anybody's records, it has never had a truce, and it is fought entirely between the Bastable squelch-vines, which advance, and the Poxbury lawns, which are mown.

No human being has ever been injured in it. This is not for want of trying.

THE COMBATANTS

The squelch-vine is the Bastable estate's one agricultural success and nobody planted it. It is a low, thick, dark-green thing with a leaf like a wet hand, it grows about a yard a week in the season, and it makes the noise it is named for when you tread on it, which is a sound that has caused two engagements and one duel.

Lord Percival Bastable regards the vine as cavalry. He speaks of it as cavalry. He has been heard, in his own gallery, to say the words "the vines are moving" with the satisfaction of a man watching his line advance, and everybody present understood that no order had been given, because no order has ever been given, because it is a plant.

The Poxbury lawn is nine acres of the most immaculate turf in the Kingdom of Sogmarsh, which is a comparative honour of the same kind as being the driest thing in a bucket, and which is maintained at an expense Lady Clarissa Poxbury declines to discuss and which two separate valuers have described as heroic.

Lady Clarissa regards the lawn as a statement. She has said so. The statement is: we are not this sort of country, we have merely had the misfortune to be put in it, and she has been making it, at enormous cost, uphill, into the wind, for her whole adult life.

You may see at once that these two positions cannot both be held on one boundary.

THE HOSTILITIES, IN SUMMARY

The advance. Every spring the vine comes over. It comes over at about a yard a week in the wet months, and it does not stop at the boundary, because the boundary is a line on a paper and the vine cannot read.

The mowing. Every spring Poxbury cuts it back to the line. Not past the line — Lady Clarissa is scrupulous, and it is a point of some pride — exactly to the line, with a string, by two men, one of whom holds the string.

The escalations, in order:

formed a view.

is now the most decorated feature on the estate, and Perry Bastable has twice sent his compliments on it, which is the single most infuriating thing in the whole affair.

before the present notary was called; and the boundary has moved twice during the pendency of the proceedings, in opposite directions, and both parties amended their pleadings to suit and neither has ever remarked upon it.

The Bastable contribution to the war effort, in full: nothing. Not one shilling, not one man, not one order. Lord Perry has never in his life done anything to that vine except admire it in a carrying voice. It is the only campaign in the history of the realm conducted entirely at the enemy's expense, and it is winning, and it is the proudest thing his house has done in six generations.

THE GARDENERS

Now: the two men with the string.

Wick Harrow does the Poxbury lawn, and has for two-and-twenty years, and is the man who holds the far end. Sam Brindle is the Bastable gardener, in the sense that somebody has to be, and his duties are largely theoretical because the Bastables cannot pay for a garden and the vine does not require one.

They have been friends since they were boys. Of course they have. There are two men working that boundary and they see each other four days a week and they are both extremely bored.

They meet at the line. They have a spot. There is a flat stone that has been sat on by both estates for twenty-two years and is worn in two places, and they eat their dinner on it, and they talk — and the subject they talk about, obviously, endlessly, with the total professional absorption of two men who have no one else to discuss it with, is the vine.

Wick has watched it come over for two-and-twenty seasons. Sam has watched it go over. Between them they know more about that plant than any living creature including the plant.

And in the spring of the year I am describing, sitting on the stone, Wick Harrow said the sentence that ended four hundred years of hostilities and started something considerably worse.

"It's not coming over. It's coming to the wet."

THE DISCOVERY

Here is what those two worked out on a flat stone over about three dinners, and it has never been disputed by anybody who has looked at it.

The Poxbury lawn is nine acres of grass in a bog. Grass in a bog dies. It has been kept alive for four hundred years by the single most expensive piece of engineering on the estate, which is the lawn drainage — a system of tile and rubble that takes the water out of nine acres of turf and puts it somewhere.

And where it puts it is a soak-away, at the low end of the lawn, along the boundary.

Four hundred years of the most thoroughly drained, reliably damp, gorgeously fed strip of ground in the county. Sitting exactly where a squelch-vine would most like to be. Renewed every day by the pumps.

The vine is not invading. The vine is being watered.

It is not advancing on Poxbury out of Bastable aggression. It is turning, the way anything turns, toward the only guaranteed wet in a valley that is otherwise merely wet-ish — and the guaranteed wet is manufactured, daily, at heroic expense, by the party being invaded.

Lady Clarissa Poxbury has been personally funding the enemy since before her grandmother, and cutting it back at the line every spring with a string.

WHAT THEY DID ABOUT IT

Nothing.

I want to be exact about this, because it is the whole point and both men have been asked about it many times.

They talked about it for three dinners. They agreed it was certain. They agreed, further, that the remedy was straightforward and would cost about a fortnight's work: move the soak-away to the far side of the lawn, and the vine would turn, and the boundary would go quiet inside two seasons.

And then Sam Brindle said, "Aye. And then what?"

And they sat on the stone for a while.

Because Wick Harrow's living is that lawn, and there is no lawn without a war, and there is no Wick on that boundary without the mowing; and Sam Brindle's post is entirely nominal and survives only because his lordship enjoys having a gardener to gesture at while the vines are moving; and the two of them, if the war were settled, would have no reason to be at that line four days a week, and no dinner on the stone, and nothing whatever to talk about with the only other man in the world who is interested.

"We'd be moved on," said Wick.

"We would," said Sam.

They finished their dinner. They have never told either house. They have told the parish, obviously, because you cannot sit on a stone with a thing like that in you, and the parish has known for some years and has said nothing, and finds the whole business the funniest thing on that side of the valley.

The vines came over that spring, and were cut to the line, with a string, by two men, one of whom held the far end.

Lord Perry watched from the gallery and said the vines were moving.

Lady Clarissa entered the year's expenditure and did not discuss it.

And at about noon two men sat down on a flat stone worn in two places, exactly on the boundary between two houses that have not spoken since before the deeds, and shared their dinner, and talked about a plant.

Every long war has somebody quietly supplying both sides, and it is not always malice — sometimes it is drainage. And when two men on the ground work out how to stop it, ask what stopping it would cost them before you call it a conspiracy, because the pair on that stone are the only people in four hundred years to have understood the whole thing, and the only ones who would lose by saying so.