Gentian Hill

by Elizabeth Goudge

  "lf you want to see the treasure the doctor saved for me, honey, it’s hid in the church tower," said Granny Bogan.

  "The church tower!" ejaculated Stella.

  "My neighbors at the almshouses do not mind their own business," said Granny. "I keep nothing that could get me into trouble. I see from the shape of your pretty mouth, my honey, that you know how to keep it shut."

  "Thank you for trusting me, Ma’am," said Stella soberly. Yet she wondered why she should be admitted to Granny Bogan’s confidence in this way. As they walked up the path to the church door, the old woman enlightened her.

  "When I die, love, I’ve neither chick nor child to whom to leave my treasures," she said. "For years now I’ve been looking into the face of every young girl I meet, trying to find one with wisdom and the power to see further than most. You are the one, my love. You shall have the two books and the other thing also, and my blessing with them. Now, don’t look scared, child. I was a black witch once but I put that evil from me, and now I’m a white witch and can do you no harm. Ask your friend the doctor. He’ll tell you."

  2

  They had reached the dim old church of St. George and St. Mary at the Settlement near the Springs. In the stained glass windows the apostles, James and John, Peter and

  Andrew, and St. Martin with his sword, looked down at them benignly, the bright colors of their robes staining the worn flagstones. The walls were plastered and covered with hatchments and coats of arms, and the Squire’s pew was so large and had such towering walls that it dominated the whole church. It had a fireplace in it and beautiful padded cushions.

  “Madam Mallock likes to be warm and comfortable," explained Granny Bogan.

  She seemed in no hurry and was quite pleased to sit down and rest while Stella explored the church. There was a gallery for the musicians and a beautiful screen carved with the Devon vine pattern. Stella counted sixteen birds among the foliage, and three of them in particular captured her interest. One was eating a grape, another was killing a caterpillar, and one had its beak wide open as though it were singing very loudly. Below the singing bird was a boss of the Madonna wearing a crown, holding her Babe upon her arm and a lily in her hand. Stella was sure there was some story attached to these birds, but Granny Bogan did not know what it was. Stella made up her mind to ask Mon Pere. He would know.

  The church explored, she and Granny Bogan climbed the tower stairs. Halfway up Granny stopped and opened a low door, and inside was a bare room like a cell lighted by one small window. There was a fireplace with its chimney in the thickness of the tower wall, and low down in the door was a hole large enough to pass food and drink through, with a cupboard niche just inside in which to place it. There was the branch of an oak tree in the cell, and sockets on either side of the door into which it could be fitted to prevent anyone coming into the room. There was a table in the room, and a three-legged stool.

  "Someone must have lived here!" cried Stella.

  "Some anchorite," said Granny Bogan, "or some popish priest hiding from his enemies. No one comes here now but Granny and the holy hermit."

  "What holy hermit, Ma’am?" asked Stella.

  "Him they call the Abbé," said Granny. "I came here once and saw him sitting in the window seat reading. He is one of your true readers-he never even heard my step on the stairs or the opening of the door. Other days I’ve seen him crossing the park, coming this way, and once we passed each other, he coming to the church and I leaving it. We looked at each other, and he saw what he saw and I saw what I saw, and having seen it, he took oif his hat and bowed to me like a courtier, and I curtsied low as the ground. We’ve left our evil courses, he and I."

  The idea of Mon Pere pursuing evil courses was astonishing to Stella, but in no way lessened her love for him. The worse you had been, the better you could be, the doctor had told her once, for it meant you had in you the power of doing a thing thoroughly.

  Granny Bogan was standing by the fireplace, and putting her arm up the chimney. Stella was not at all surprised. Every farmhouse in Devon had loose stones in the chimney, with a cupboard inside where the smuggled brandy was kept. Stella did not suppose that an anchorite or a persecuted priest would have possessed French brandy, but he might have kept his breviary there, or secret papers.

  Granny kept two books up the chimney, and something rolled up in a piece of linen. These she laid on the table, and unfolding the linen tenderly, revealed what Stella thought at first was a very large nobbly parsnip. Then she took a hasty step backwards, for upon closer inspection it looked like a dead baby.

  "Nothing to be afraid of child," laughed Granny. "It’s naught but a mandrake."

  But at this Stella took yet another step backwards, for she knew all about mandrake. Madge had told her about it. It grows in Germany, and above ground it has a broad green leaf and a yellow flower and looks wholesome enough, but below ground its root has a human shape and it cries aloud when, men dig it from the earth. If considerately treated, washed in wine, wrapped in silk, laid in a casket, bathed every

  Friday, and clothed in a little new white smock every new moon, it acts like a familiar spirit, foretells the future, and gives counsel. But, growing only in Germany, it is hard to come by. Only witches possess it, and generally for no good purpose.

  "It’s done no harm for a long time, child," said Granny Bogan. "Not since I gave up sticking pins in wax images and making charms and spells. When I was a black witch, I lived in a cottage out at Smoky, and I had a stocking full of gold pieces that men and women had given me to do harm to those they hated. And then one dark night a farmer who thought I had put the evil eye on his pigs-and I had, too-came with his lout of a son and beat me nearly to death, and took away my stockingful of gold and my mandrake. I lay there groaning in my cottage and not a soul came near me, for they were afraid. I’d have died there had not Dr. Crane heard what had happened, and though I was nothing to him, yet he came and cared for me. Every day he came, and though he had no opinion of my evil practices, he was as tender with me as though he’d been my son. But I made no progress for weeping and fretting for my mandrake, which I loved like a child. So the good doctor went to the farmer, and so put the fear of God into him for a thief and a murderer that he gave back the mandrake. And then the doctor put the fear of God into me too. He stood by my bed thundering at me, threatening me with everlasting damnation, till I shook for fear, and vowed I’d put the black magic away from me and be a white witch until the end of my days. And I did, too, though the struggle was so fierce it nearly killed me. But it wasn’t only the fear that made me turn aside from the evil, ‘it was love of the doctor as well. He’s a good man, and looking into that ugly face of his, and hearing him talk, I came to prefer the light to the darkness. When I got well again, he persuaded the gentry around about to give me work as a weeding woman, for a white witch with her healing medicines makes less money than a black one with her charms and spells, and he protected me until I’d lived down the evil reputation that once I had. Now that I’m here in the almshouse, he still comes to see me sometimes. He’s not a man who forgets his friends."

  "You still have the mandrake," said Stella.

  "But it has no bath of wine and no silk shift now," said Granny Bogan, "and never since the doctor saved me have I invited the evil spirit into it for harm. I do nothing with it now, child, but ask it some wholesome question now and again, and grate a little powder oif it to mix with a soothing syrup for those who need to sleep deep." Stella remembered her Shakespeare. "Poppy and man dragore, and all the soothing syrups of the world." But still she did not like the mandrake, nor relish the thought that one day it would belong to her. She was sure that the evil spirit that Granny Bogan had once invited into it was one of Them, one of that terrifying company whom Sol used to summon with his bull-roarer. She was glad when Granny Bogan wrapped it up again and turned to the books instead. They laid one on the window seat and the other on the three-legged stool and examined them. The first was a worn leat
her-bound book of the type in which ladies of fashion wrote their diaries, but in it Granny Bogan had written not a diary but her recipes for making healing medicines, salves, and lotions from herbs. There were pages of them, all in-scribed in a handwriting as spidery, as pointed and beautiful as Mrs. Loraine’s.

  "What lovely writing!" murmured Stella.

  "I was a lady once," said Granny Bogan briefly, and then turning the pages, "there’s no disease in the world, my honey, for which the Lord God has not provided the cure growing in the good earth, and when you’re a wedded wife with a brood of children, there’s no sickness they can take but you’ll find the medicine for it here. You’ll never lose a child, my love, if you never lose this book."

  "I’ll always keep it safely," Stella promised. "But, Granny, how did you learn to make all these medicines?"

  Granny Bogan gave her cackle of laughter. "From a child I’ve loved all flowers and herbs and growing things," she said. "I learned much from the wise old gardener at my father’s home, and more from our housekeeper, who was a great·herbalist, but the most precious receipts I learned from the Good People themselves--those that have the charge of the nine mystic herbs and all the healing plants." Stella’s eyes opened wider and wider, and her mouth was slightly ajar. "You’re a country girl born and bred, aren’t you? Did you never see the Good People?"

  "Sometimes the goblins-when I was little," murmured Stella.

  "Not the others? Well, they’re hard to see. I saw them when I was young and innocent, no more than shadows falling on the flowers, but I’d know it was them. I’d sit out in the herb garden with the book on my lap, my quill pen in my fingers and my ink horn by my side, and I’d know how to use the herbs about me, and I’d write down what I knew. They’ve no voices that we can hear, but they know how to make themselves understood when they’ve a mind."

  Granny closed the herb book and opened the other. Its leather cover was so stained and mildewed that it looked as though it had been bound in the bark of a tree, and the thick stiff pages were the color of autumn leaves. The center of each page was covered with exquisite writing too, but the ink was so faded and the letters so curiously shaped that Stella could make out nothing at all except that the book was written in Latin. All ’round the margin of each page the writer had drawn exquisite little pictures, faintly colored here and there, of birds, beasts, and flowers.

  "What is it, Granny?" asked Stella.

  "I can’t tell you, child," said Granny Bogan. "It would take fine eyesight, and a fine knowledge of the Latin tongue to make it out, and I had neither when I found it up there in the chimney cupboard two years ago. That was when I first came to the almshouses, and came up here to find a safe hiding place for my mandrake and my herb book. I guessed there’d be a hole in the chimney, and there was, with the book inside it. I knew it was a good book the moment I held it in my hands, but the mandrake bade me show it to no one for the time was not come. Take it, child. Hold it and turn the pages."

  Stella took the book and held it between her hands for a moment or two. Yes, it was a good book. She felt as she did when she carried the Weekaborough prayer book to church, quiet and good tempered. Then she turned the pages again, exclaiming in delight at the loveliness of the little pictures. There was one of a clump of gentians growing beside a mossy stone in the middle of a fairy ring, just as they had done in the field this morning, and one of sheep beneath a yew tree, and another of a hare turning somersaults.

  "Do they always turn somersaults on Midsummer Day?" she asked Granny Bogan.

  “Of course, child. Midsummer Day is a great day for the birds and beasts, the flowers, and the Good People. It is their reveling time. It is the climax of warmth and growth, and the whole earth leaps and sings for joy. You felt it in the park this morning. You were swaying in time to the music, knee deep in the flowers. Now close the book, for it is yours, and get back to Torre for your breakfast. And here’s my mandrake and the book of simples. They are yours, too. Hide them under your cloak and take them home and keep them safe."

  "No, Ma’am, no!" cried Stella, shrinking back. "They are yours still, not mine."

  "I’ll not live out the year," said Granny Bogan placidly.

  "I’ll sleep easier tonight, knowing they’re in safe keeping." But Stella still hesitated, frightened by the mandrake and the one of Them who had once been invited into it. "Couldn’t they stay here, Ma’am?" she pleaded.

  "I’d be easier if you took them, love," Granny Bogan insisted. "But speak of them to no one, child, except, if you wish, to the doctor and the holy hermit."

  Then she got up briskly, as though the matter were settled, and led the way out of the little tower room and down the stairs.

  3

  Stella was home in time to take Mrs. Loraine her cup of hot chocolate as usual, and all through that Midsummer Day she was outwardly her usual serene and happy self. Yet inwardly her thoughts were in a turmoil and she was longing for the evening, when Dr. Crane would fetch her and drive her back to Weekaborough.

  The longed-for moment came at last, and she was sitting beside him in the gig, Aesculapius carrying them along at a brisk pace, bound for home. She looked up at him with delight. He had a rose in his buttonhole this Midsummer Eve, his hat was cocked at a more acute angle then ever, and his smile, as he looked down at her, warmed her right through. At her feet was the wicker basket in which she carried her clothes and few treasures-the workbox, and the box covered with shells that Mother Sprigg had given her-backward and forward from Weekaborougli to Torre. It had a lid, and the lid this evening did not shut.

  "More treasure-trove in the basket?" asked the doctor, eyeing it.

  "Yes," said Stella. "A mandrake and two books."

  "God bless my soul!" ejaculated the doctor.

  Stella poured it all out in a flood, and the doctor gave her story his silent attention all the way up the long steep lane from the sea to the hills.

  "Nothing to be afraid of, honey," he said when she’d done. "I know Granny Bogan well, and she is now a good as well as a wise woman, and she’d give you nothing that could harm you."

  "But the mandrake!" cried Stella. "What is a mandrake?"

  "The root of a pretty yellow flower called mandragore, that grows in Germany."

  "But Granny Bogan said that she invited an evil spirit into it."

  They had reached the top of the hill and the doctor drew the gig to the side of the lane, dropped the reins, and let Aesculapius crop the grass. "Let’s have a look at my old friend the mandrake?

  Stella dived into her basket and produced the mandrake in its linen wrapping, the book of simples wrapped in her clean nightshift and the good book in her best apron.

  “There he is," said the doctor, and unwrapped the mandrake and set it on his knee like a baby.

  "Don’t say he!" implored Stella. "It makes it sound alive."

  The doctor laughed and wrapped the root up again. Then he became grave. "Now listen, my honey. You remember your Shakespeare? ‘There’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.’ That’s the root of the whole matter. The universe about you is charged with opposing forces-angels and devils, good and evil, light and darkness-you can call them what you will, and as you think of things and people, you invite into them one or the other. Think evil things of a man, and you’ve done your poor best to make a devil of him. Think there’s a demon in this bit of root, and you’ve made the thing potent for evil. And the other way around. Is that clear to your ladyship?"

  "Yes," said Stella, and took the mandrake back without a trace of fear. "It shall be my doll. A good doll. I’ll keep it in my room to frighten away the mice."

  The doctor laughed and picked up the book of simples. Aesculapius went slowly on, snatching at mouthfuls of grass when he felt like it, but his master was too absorbed to know what he was doing. At last, the doctor closed the book and handed it back. "You’ll soon know more than I do about the healing powers of the earth," he said briefly.

  "Granny Bog
an said the Good People taught her about the herbs," said Stella. "Could they have done that? Are there really Good People, or are they just something that we’ve made up?"

  "What should you say was the opinion of Will Shakespeare on that point?"

  “I should say he believed in them," said Stella slowly.

  "I should say the same."

  "Then are they real?"

  "Why not?"

  "Can’t you tell me something certain about them?" demanded Stella a little impatiently.

  "Can’t you tell me?" continued the doctor. "You are nearer to childhood than I am, and it is children who are wisest in these matters."

  "I used to think I saw goblins," said Stella, "and I used to run away."

  “And Granny Bogan used to think the Good People told her the secrets of the herbs. And in both cases the thought had results. You ran away, and Granny wrote down medicinal receipts. So there must have been something in it."

  And that was all he would say upon the subject of the Good People. Dismissing them, he picked up the second book. It absorbed him as much as the other had done, so much that Stella began to think they would never get home that night, and pulled at his sleeve. He turned and looked down at her, his eyes strangely abstracted, and then laid it gently on her lap.

  "It’s yours, my honey."

  “What is it?" she asked. "Granny knew it was a good book, but she could not read the writing."

  "Some sort of an old tale, Stella, written about this country in which we live, but that is all I can make out. The writing is difficult and I am not much of a Latin scholar, you know. Greek was my first love. Keep the book very carefully and when the opportunity comes, show it to your friend the Abbé. He’s a fine Latinist."

  Then he whipped up Aesculapius and they bowled home to Weekaborough at a line pace, arriving at the garden gate in the first glow of the sunset. Carrying her basket, Stella darted like a swallow up the path, through the front door set wide to welcome her, across the hall to the kitchen, and into the arms of Mother Sprigg. They were all there, Father and Mother Sprigg, Sol, Madge, Hodge, and Seraphine. She flew from one to the other as though she had not seen any of them for years. The firelight glowed warmly in the great kitchen and the shadows played hide and seek in the cave-like crannies of the walls and beneath the low beams of the ceiling. The brass pots and pans twinkled and shone, and there was a delicious and all-pervading smell of rabbit pie. Soon the candles would be lit and they would have supper, and then Father Sprigg would open the Good Book and read the evening chapter, and magic would fall from the air. Wherever Stella might go, whatever she might do, Weekaborough would always be home.