by Julie Hearn
The cunning woman looks puzzled.
“What?” she says loudly. “What’s that you’re saying?”
Nell feels her face grow warm as she repeats every word.
The cunning woman wrinkles her brow.
“Make up a fresh one? Why?”
It is getting harder and harder, Nell thinks, to deal with the slipping and sliding of her granny’s mind.
“So I can watch what goes into it,” she explains. “I wasn’t with you when you mixed the last one. Remember? And I should have been, shouldn’t I? I should have been watching. To see what goes in.”
The cunning woman still doesn’t grasp what she is getting at.
“Pshaw!” she snorts. “You know what goes into a purge, girl. We’ve studied purges. Now fetch the bottle, so this man can go empty himself out, since he be so mule-minded and set upon it.”
Slowly, reluctantly, Nell puts the dun chicken down and goes to find the bottle marked with a brown smudge. She knows better than to run through its contents in front of Silas Denby, for no healer, or one in training, would ever knowingly give away her recipes. All she can hope is that her granny got all the ingredients right on the last new moon, and in the correct measures.
“Here it be,” she says, handing the bottle to Silas. “Take two swallows at sunset and three more upon rising. Payment by Friday, as usual. A pound of cheese, a sack of flour, and a rabbit fresh-skinned should do it. Or a dozen eggs would be welcome, in place of the cheese.”
Silas Denby eyes the dun chicken.
“She’s family,” Nell informs him. “She doesn’t have to work.”
With the door firmly closed and the big man gone, she turns to her granny.
“Remind me,” she says. “What went into that purge?”
The wrinkles on the cunning woman’s face seem to smooth themselves out as she considers the question, only to deepen and furrow when she cannot answer.
“Prunes?” Nell prompts.
“Yes.” The cunning woman nods. “Forty of those, pulped and strained. And carrot, parsley, and anise seeds, ground fine.” She pauses. “Half an ounce,” she adds. “Of each.”
“All right,” says Nell. “And what else? What else is in that bottle?”
The old woman reaches for her broom and starts sweeping the floor.
“Oh … this and that,” she mumbles. “A peck of this and a smidgen of that.”
Nell grabs the broom handle. “It’s important. Think hard. Senna. Did you add any senna?”
It is like wringing milk from a stone, drawing facts from the cunning woman on mornings or afternoons when her memory is particularly addled. Such mornings or afternoons are becoming more frequent, Nell realizes. Before long there will be whole days like it.
“I did!” declares the cunning woman, her voice triumphant yet scarily girlish. “I did, yes. And garlic. That’s the other thing. Senna and garlic. Both powdered. Now let me be, girl. I’m in the middle of something … some task or other.”
There is a little pile of sweepings between them—cinders, chicken droppings, petals from a mallow flower, and little bits of lavender. The cunning woman stares at it as if wondering how it got there.
“How much of each ingredient?” Nell presses her.
The cunning woman blinks rapidly.
“Have we fed the chicken today?” she wonders.
“How much, Granny? How much powdered senna and garlic went into Silas Denby’s purge?”
The cogs and wheels of the cunning woman’s mind are spinning and flying now. Spinning and flying and all out of time as she remembers … and realizes … and knows herself lost.
“Forty,” she mumbles. “Of each.”
“Specks?” Nell says hopefully.
“Ounces.”
“Ounces!? Granny, it’s forty prunes in a purge and just four ounces of senna and garlic. That’s enough to turn a bogging giant inside out! I’ll go after him.”
“No, girl.” The cunning woman clutches her sleeve, holding her back. She is lucid now—for the time being—and well aware that Silas Denby is more than likely to down every drop of his purge on the spot, turning all his vital organs to goo, if some chit of a lass asks for it back. “I’ll go. I’ll explain. He’ll listen to me.”
Nell isn’t at all sure. “It’s a long walk,” she says. “And it’s still hot out there.”
But the cunning woman is already tying her bonnet strings.
“I’ll be home before nightfall,” she tells her granddaughter. “Start drying the next batch of earthworms for me. And be sure to cleanse them first, of all impurities. At moon’s light we’ll make a syrup of roses with hellebore, so you’ll need to make up the fire and get started. Six parts rose water to four parts sweet syrup. And purify the cauldron first. There be traces of fox fat in it still.”
She is all briskness as she pushes open the door and making enough sense for Nell to feel less apprehensive about her going. Left alone, she finishes sweeping the floor before turning her attention to the worms. It is a tricksy job, slitting earthworms up the middle and flushing out the dirt, and she is only on her third when she hears another knocking, through the honeysuckle.
“Who’s this now?” she grumbles to the dun chicken. “Who be this, tapping at our door?” She half hopes it will be Silas Denby, come back of his own accord to get a gentler remedy for his gut. The very last person she expects to see, wilting like a lily on the step, is Grace Madden.
For a few moments she is too surprised to speak. Then: “My granny be out,” she scowls. “If that’s who you be wanting. You must have passed her, surely?”
“Well, I didn’t,” Grace tells her. “Because I didn’t take the path. I came another way, around the back.”
She is telling the truth. There are burrs snagged on her clothing and in her hair, and her hands are scratched from parting brambles. The tricksiness of cutting and cleaning earthworms pales in comparison to struggling through the dense scrub behind the cunning woman’s cottage. Quite apart from the difficulty of making a path, there are snakes out there. And they bite.
Whatever brings Grace Madden here, the long way round and in secret, is clearly serious. Still, Nell can’t resist this chance to get her own back on the sly, hoity maid.
“You’d better call again tomorrow,” she says. “Bye-bye.” And she begins to close the door.
“I can’t,” Grace replies. And she looks so pale and desperate, leaning against the door to stop it shutting, that Nell feels curious, suddenly, and just a little sorry.
“All right,” she relents. “You can wait. Im busy, though, so don’t talk to me. And don’t touch our chicken. She won’t like you.”
Meanwhile, in a spot where no one ever walks and the corn grows tall, something small and pesky is jolted from a doze by the sound of a human voice. (“Sweet marjoram. Lovely … lovely. An herb of Mercury under Aries … good for the brain and diseases of the chest.”) Squinting up from its nest, it spies the old one picking long, flowering stems less than a spit away and almost right above its face.
Ooooo, it chunters. But it won’t attack or torment, because the old one is known to be harmless and going rapidly to seed in the head region. And anyway, it is a female piskie, this one, so it bites only when provoked or threatened beyond endurance.
The sound if its squeaking attracts some neighbors—all females, three with offspring attached to their chests and one so ancient that the lichens sprouting from its head and clumped beneath its armpits are as white as frost. Their menfolk are either dead or off scavenging.
Budge! Budge! they squeak, settling down to watch, listen, and learn.
“Marjoram,” croons the cunning woman, “made into a powder and mixed with honey, takes away the marks of blows and bruises.”
Oooooo.
Before long the cunning woman’s arms are full of flowers, but she is in no hurry to be on her way. The sun is warming her old bones like a big hug, and the yellow of the corn and the blue of the sky are like
medicine to her ragged senses.
Moving dreamily she makes her way farther into the field. And as she walks she remembers the rituals performed long ago, in this very place, to mark the Summer Solstice. Wrens’ nests on an altar … goblets with rims of jeweled stars marking the four quarters … libations to the Corn King … the drawing down of the sun.
She feels almost young again as she pats out a space among the stalks, places her heap of marjoram at one end, for a sweet-scented pillow, and lies down for a bit of a rest.
Ahhhh. No memory of any mission now. No nagging scraps of thought at all. Only the Powers of earth and air, as familiar as lifelong friends, keeping her company while she nods. On impulse, she unties her bonnet and lays it aside. It is good, very good, to feel the sun on her face and the ground beneath her head as she drifts easily into sleep and begins to snore.
Yippeee! Woooohoooooo!
The piskies wont harm the cunning woman. But they will swipe her bonnet—and anything else they can filch from her person or pockets while she snoozes.
Nyingy ding ding! Oooo yes! And up they scamper and away they go—all but one, that is—dragging the bonnet among them, deep into the corn. Even their offspring are excited. Nyit! they squeak, showing tiny teeth already as green and crusty as tombstones.
It is the elderly piskie who lingers. Not that there is anything else to steal, for the cunning woman wears no jewelry or lace and her pockets contain only fluff. No. It is something else that prompts this rickety twig of a creature to kneel down beside the old woman’s right ear.
Sympathy.
Sniff. Sniff.
Sympathy, unlike malice, glee, and spite, doesn’t come naturally to most piskies—at least where humans are concerned—but this one has mellowed with age. And the information it gleans through the clat in its nostrils as it snuffles and sniffs around the cunning woman’s head, is making it sad in the heart and mind regions.
Nyeeeear, it rasps softly, the sound of it like paper tearing. O nyear, nyeeear … And it reaches out with shriveled fingers to lift a strand of silvery hair away from the old one’s mouth region, so it won’t tickle or bother her or give her bad dreams.
Then it hobbles off after its neighbors, to claim its share of the bonnet.
There is no timepiece in the cunning woman’s cottage, but Grace can tell from the way a puddle of sunlight has moved across the floor that she has been here long enough.
She doesn’t like this pokey hovel. It is too dark and strange. There is a bittersweet scent in the air that disturbs her. It seems familiar, although she cannot place it. The dun chicken has just tried to land on her basket. She slapped the fat, smelly thing away as roughly as she dared, but it is still fussing around the bench, aiming inquisitive pecks at her boots.
The cunning woman’s granddaughter is crouched beside a cauldron, doing something horrible with a pile of dead worms. Perhaps it is supper, thinks Grace, drumming her fingers restlessly on the bench. These people are very poor, after all.
“I can’t wait much longer,” she says, doing her best to sound calm—friendly, even. “Why isn’t she home yet, your granny?”
Nell shrugs and throws a clean earthworm into a bowl.
“None of your concern,” she replies. “But I’m expecting her back by sunset.”
“Sunset? But that’s hours off still. Why didn’t you say so before?”
Nell shrugs again. She is enjoying herself. “You didn’t ask,” she says. “And anyway, I said ‘by’ sunset, not ‘at’ sunset. She could walk in any minute … or not for ages and ages.”
Grace can feel sweat breaking out on her forehead.
“Then you’ll have to help me,” she says. “It will have to be you. And don’t pretend that you can’t, because I know full well that you can. That you know enough about … about the right plants and things to be able to help.”
Nell wipes her fingers on her apron. Torn between disliking this girl so much that she begrudges giving her so much as a spoon to lick and a natural inclination to be of service—to do her job—she isn’t quite sure which impulse to follow.
“All right,” she says eventually. “What is it you need? What’s the matter with you?”
She suspects, from the older girls fidgety manner and the unhealthy pallor of her skin, that this is a stupid love thing. Maybe she wants a charm or a spell to attract some lad. Maybe Sam Towser spurned her after that awful sermon about frolicking, and she wants him back.
If so, there are all kinds of spells Nell could whisper to her. This is one:
A SPELL TO MAKE A LAD SWOON WITH DESIRE
On a spring or summer’s morning—and best it be a Friday, on a waxing moon—follow the one your heart is fixed upon until he maketh a clear footprint in the earth. Dig out the earth and bury it beneath a willow tree with a lock of thine own hair and a sprinkle of petals from a pink geranium. Tilt thy face toward the sky, and declare, in utter certainty: “As many earths on earth there art, so shall I win my true love’s heart.” So mote it be.
“I be with child,” says Grace. “And I need something—a potion—to be rid of it.”
“Oh …”
Nell stares, openmouthed, over the rim of the cauldron, too surprised and alarmed to say more. A bit late for charms, then, she thinks. Too late for pink petals, waxing moons, and pretty words. This is a grave and troubling matter—and dangerous, too.
“I think you’d better wait for my granny,” she says eventually. “I really do. Or come back another day.”
“No!” Grace jumps to her feet, clutching her still-flat belly with both hands as if whatever it contains is hurting her. She looks almost deranged—no longer serene, anyway—and Nell does not know what to do.
The minister, she thinks. The minister will surely kill this daughter of his, now that virtue is no longer her chiefest beauty and noblest ornament And the lad …
“Be it Sam Towser’s?” she asks quietly.
“Yes,” Grace replies, in a voice so bitter and low that Nell needs ask no more. Sam Towser, she realizes, will be unable to drivel-talk his way out of this one, in front of the minister. Both he and Grace Madden are in the worst possible trouble unless what is done can be undone.
Behind Nell’s back the dun chicken has pinched an earthworm and is clucking and bobbing with glee—too stupid to simply keep quiet and eat it. Nell picks up the bowl of clean ones, so it cannot get at those, then returns her attention to Grace.
“So you won’t be wedded, then.” It is a statement of fact rather than a question, since the answer seems blindingly obvious.
Grace swallows and looks away. The worms in the bowl look like a mess of entrails. The sight of them is turning her stomach.
“No. He’s going for a soldier. He may already be gone.”
Nell sighs. “Men and boys,” she says kindly. “Some are worthy of us and some aren’t.”
Studying the older girl’s tragic profile, she feels an even stronger rush of concern. It isn’t right that Sam Towser should get clean away, leaving someone he has saddled with a pot lid to suffer the consequences alone. And Grace, Nell knows, will be very much alone. For if the minister doesn’t kill her, he will surely take her way out onto the moors, or into a forest, and leave her there to survive as best she can. Death or vagrancy, that’s all Grace Madden can look forward to now unless …
Moved at last to sympathy, Nell sets the bowl of worms at her feet, leans forward, and touches Grace on the arm. “There is something … ,” she falters. “A syrup you can take, to bring on the courses. So long as you be no more than a couple of moons gone.”
“Fetch it.”
Nell moves slowly. She is feeling sorrier by the moment for this beautiful, foolish girl. Still, something stays her hand as she reaches for the bottle marked with a splash of red.
“This … this unborn,” she says, turning suddenly. “Might it have started up in you on May Morning? On the first day of May—the day sacred to nature?”
Grace frowns. “It
might,” she says, annoyed and embarrassed by such a personal question. “But what of it? Give me the syrup. Hurry up.”
Nell shakes her head. “A Merrybegot … ,” she whispers. “A child sacred to nature.”
Grace doesn’t understand. She hears the word—“Merrybegot”—and, like the bittersweet smell, it reminds her of something.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she cries. “And what does it matter anyway? Just let me have the syrup.”
But Nell has turned away from the collection of stone bottles, without even touching the one that would change everything.
“I can’t help you,” she says sadly. “And nor will my granny or anyone else with the Knowledge. ’Twould be a sin against nature … against every Power there is. This unborn is meant to be, to know its life and be special.”
She is opening the door.
Stunned, Grace picks up her basket. There is a feather from the dun chicken’s hindquarters stuck to the handle. It is the same color as the basket, Grace thinks mechanically.
She stands very still beside the cauldron, just in case the cunning woman’s granddaughter is toying with her for the pleasure of it before fetching the syrup after all.
But, no. There is no pleasure or guile in the younger girl’s face as she holds the door ajar. She is sorry. Very sorry. But she means what she says—every word of it. “I will help you any other way I can,” she promises. “And so will my granny. And we will see you safely delivered, when the time comes, wherever you may be.”
“Pah!” A great wave of fury rises up in Grace Madden and gets her moving. Just a minute ago she thought she might cry. Now she knows she never will. Not over this. Not now or ever. Holding her head high and clutching her basket, she pushes past the cunning woman’s granddaughter, resisting the urge to slap her on the way.
“It will be all right,” Nell tells her, at a loss to know what else to say as she flattens herself against the door. “The Powers look after their own.”
Grace wheels round then, almost spitting. “How would you know?” she mocks. “How would you know anything at all, you … you … simpleton, you ugly worm!”