“Now, I am sure no harm has been done, eh?” She smiled at the sailor. “Sit and I’ll pour you another drink.” He’d had enough to be easily manipulated, especially by a woman. He’d drunk the fight out of himself, and what he wanted right now was a warm bed, and an even warmer woman. She put the ale in front of him and took Josef aside.
“Is all well with Lena, Maggie? She is never sick. She started the morning retching and hasn’t stopped. She’s thin and sickly, except for her belly.”
“Don’t worry, Josef. She’ll be fine. Many mothers suffer from this for their entire term, and the remedy I have with me today may help.”
His face brightened again, making him look years younger. “It is a son, no doubt, to have such a strong effect on his mother.”
She chuckled. “Could be. There is much mystery in the begetting of a child.”
He nodded. “I cannot believe it. It is a miracle! After so long.”
Perhaps now she could talk some sense into him. “Josef, you have suffered a great shock. But there is nothing you can do for your nephew now. You must concentrate on Lena and the baby. It is all the more reason you should not speak of what happened last night.”
A group of merchants called out for their dinner.
“Please,” she warned Josef. “Heed our advice. You need only remember what happened last year, when superstition overpowered the common sense of these good people.”
He nodded, but did he really understand?
“Is Ian coming tonight?”
“We spoke of meeting up here,” Maggie said.
“I have something for him,” he said. “He can use it in his travels.” He wore a sly, furtive look, the one that made Lena bristle like a hedgehog. He glanced back at the main room, where a crowd of dock workers had just come in, and the song they sang would grow hair on a woman’s chest.
“I must get back to work,” Josef said. “I know this crew.”
“I will go see if I can help your wife with her morning sickness,” she said. “Josef, you must get some rest. Your wife and unborn child need you.”
He nodded and made his way back to the counter. She followed him behind the bar and walked into the kitchen. Sabine stood at a table, measuring grain with one hand and holding her baby on a hip with the other arm.
She smiled. “Good after—noon,” she said haltingly.
“How are you, Sabine? You look well.”
“I am well, Mistress Maggie.”
Ian was teaching Sabine English; little Ruthie, Maggie’s sister Sarah’s daughter, helped as well. The baby was a year old and gazed at her mother with a beatific smile. Her eyes, like her mother’s, were almond-shaped and the color of toffee.
Lena stood over a large pot, stirring a mixture of grains with a giant wooden spoon. The smell was most agreeable. The room was steamy and fragrant. Lena’s face glistened with sweat.
“Maggie!” She smiled. “Sabine’s kinder has grown, no?”
“Lena, you are working hard as usual. Did you not make ale last week?”
“Ja, and it’s gone. The damn sailors drank their weight in ale and small beer Saturday.”
“You must take a care for yourself, Lena.”
“I’m healthy as a horse but for the vomiting all day. Once it’s over, I feel myself again.” She grinned.
“You have the biscuits by the bed like I suggested?” Maggie reached into her basket. “Cinnamon in warmed wine. Keep it by the bedside. Mayhap it will help.”
“Ach, wine. For aristocrats and Frenchmen.” She made a face. “But this wort. Ugh. It does not smell right.”
“It smells like it always does, Lena. Wonderful.”
She wrinkled her nose. “No, it makes me…” She gulped, put her hand over her mouth, handed the spoon to Maggie, and ran over to the basin to vomit.
Maggie’s gorge rose in sympathy. Oh no. It is a bad thing when a German ale wife cannot stand the smell of her own ale. Maggie stirred, shook her head, and stared into the boiling pot of wort, the brown bits of grain that eventually transformed itself into beer.
It would be easy to tell Lena she had nothing to worry about. Sometimes her responsibility to her mothers to see them safely through their travails weighed heavily upon her, and she had only so much knowledge at her disposal. With Lena, it was especially worrisome, for a few years ago, she had delivered Lena of a stillborn. She straightened her shoulders. She would do everything in her power to see nothing would happen to this child. Or Lena.
“I’m sorry, friend. Perhaps the wine will agree with you.”
Lena nodded, beads of sweat pooling on her pale forehead.
“You must rest when you are tired. Drink, to replace what you have purged, or your humors will suffer for it.”
Sabine stood quietly at Lena’s side. “Mistress,” Sabine said, “I will finish.” Her normally soft voice adopted a tone brooking no argument. She handed the babe to Maggie, eyeing Lena sternly. “You rest.”
“She’s right, Lena. Come put your feet up. You are getting too big to be working so hard.”
Lena nodded. “Ach, you are right.” She took a plate off the stove. “I made strudel today from the apples we gathered last summer. I know how much you like it.”
“You are such a good and kind friend, Lena. Making things for me when you feel so poorly.”
Lena laughed, holding her middle. “And here you are caring for me, when you should be home tasting your strudel of a man. Eat, they’re still warm.”
They left the kitchen and went through the public area to Lena’s private sitting room.
Maggie placed a stool in front of Lena. “Put up your feet when you can.”
They sat in companionable silence. Maggie took a bite of the strudel. The day of apple picking had been one of the most pleasant times she could ever remember. They had taken the ferryboat to Winchelsea and spent the afternoon in the apple orchard. They had picked a bushel and taken a nap underneath the apple trees. As it turned out, the owner of the apple orchard had bartered with his apples for Maggie and Sarah to deliver his child in a few months. A fair trade, apples for babies. She smiled.
“How are you feeling, Lena?”
Her friend leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Like I wobble on a spoon in a vat of wort. Seasick. Wort-sick.”
“Try to keep something in your stomach all the time,” Maggie advised.
Lena gave Maggie the gimlet eye. “Every time my stomach convulses, it is so strong, like I am in labor, and I think, the child, like the one before, will be expelled.”
“No, Lena, one has not to do with the other.” Maggie grasped her thin arm. “It is a good sign. The child makes its presence known. Your body is just growing accustomed to having it there. And indeed it is growing! I swear I will do everything in my power to keep you and the babe safe.”
“You cannot perform miracles, Maggie.”
She couldn’t; it was true. “I will do what I can, Lena. And what your body says to me is despite the power of your nausea, the child grows. Now, let me examine you.”
If she could only look inside and see how the child fared, like she’d seen the twins. She shut the door to the parlor and washed her hands at the pitcher and basin in the corner. With the utmost care, she laid her hands upon her good friend. “I feel the movement of a healthy babe. He seems not troubled by all the upheaval.”
“I promise you this will not last. And I have something I hope will help.”
Lena sighed. “I have had it almost eight months now. Does it mean the child is ill?”
“Some women cast up their accounts their whole term.”
Lena flinched. “Meine Gott.” She smiled. “I thought Josef would swoon this morning. He has never seen me sick.”
“As I said, it means the child has taken root in you and makes his presence known.”
The wrinkles upon Lena’s pale forehead had lessened, and Maggie was glad she could reassure her friend.
‘It is easy for you to say.” Lena smirk
ed. “You do not suffer from this, and I am glad of it.”
Maggie laughed. “Yes, I’m sure I’d be whistling another tune. But do you not admit it is good you followed my advice months ago? Ten juniper berries in the morning may have led to your fertile belly.”
“Ach, enough of your talk.”
“I am sure you are glad to have Josef back.”
“Ja.” Lena sat back up again and leaned toward Maggie. “I cannot believe what my poor Josef has gone through. Such a horrible thing. I never met his nephew, but he was like a son to him. It is my husband’s health we should be worried about. Did you notice how thin he is? But I cannot get him to sit and eat, so distraught he is.”
“It takes time to heal from grief.”
“And he can do nothing but talk about it. To have his nephew die so horribly. Such strange, frightening things he says.” She shivered.
“We have told him to keep quiet about what—or what he thinks—transpired.”
Lena nodded. “It cannot be true, what he is saying.”
“Lena, you mustn’t worry. I’m sure he is just overwrought. Now, close your eyes and rest. I will go see if I can help Sabine.”
She went behind the bar and silently took Sabine’s tray. “Where to?”
Sabine smiled her thanks, showing a fetching set of dimples, and pointed to the table.
Later, Maggie sat at the bar to rest for a moment, and spotted Vicar Andrews in the corner, gawping at Sabine. He had the dazed look of someone who’d been hit with a mallet. His wig was askew, white powder falling on the table in front of him, his hazel eyes not blinking. His head rested on his hands, his pasty forgotten in front of him.
When had this begun? Vicar had a perfectly good cook, and no real need of coming to the inn for supper, except obviously, for companionship. He looked barely old enough to be a vicar, with those smooth cheeks, and a wide smooth forehead like a child’s, unwrinkled by cares or worries.
Then he squinted, and she followed the path of his eyes as they tracked Sabine around the room while she served food and refilled drinks. She had a quiet dignity about her, stately posture, and had put on weight in all the right places since Lena and Josef had taken her in.
“My Maggie is woolgathering?”
She jumped. How had she not seen him come in? Ian’s warm breath caressed her neck. Lands, she had forgotten how he could sneak up on a person. She glanced toward the vicar and Sabine.
“Oh ho!” He smiled. “I wondered.”
“How could you possibly? You’ve not been here for months.”
He sat beside her, bringing the cool air from outside, a hint of salt and sea. “It didn’t take long for me to see he is besotted, and she is completely unaware.”
“Are you sure? She is a woman. Women know.” She shook her head. “Poor boy. A vicar and a former prostitute.”
“He’s a man of marriageable age. You ought to know he’s looking to settle down, for he had his eye on you, did he not?”
“It’s a match destined for disaster.”
“Maggie, you are such a pessimist. Nothing is impossible. Who would have thought a flighty musician like me could have landed a woman like you? But wait!” He grasped her hands. “Come outside. I have something I must show you before it gets dark.”
He pulled her off the stool, his hands so warm they made her skin tingle. His high cheekbones were red, and the wind had blown his nutmeg colored hair around his face. He tried to lead her toward the door. She resisted. She was quite comfortable; her shoulder had started to hurt during her stint as barmaid, and it had finally stopped throbbing. She was ravenous.
He gathered her hands to his lips and kissed them. “You must come outside.” His sea eyes pulled her forward like the tide coming in. She had not the power to resist his enthusiasm. Neither did anyone else, for upon hearing the excited sound of his voice, people began to gather around them.
Josef stood by the door, arms folded.
“My love,” Ian said. “Josef has been too kind to us and has sold it to me for a song. It is ours now, our ticket to freedom, to…”
“What is it?”
Chapter Eight
Josef opened the door. A gypsy wagon lit up the dusk.
“Come, my queen. You must see it from all sides.”
The entire wagon was painted a bright yellow, bordered all round with red and blue flowers. In the center posed a shepherdess with a lamb in her arms, her bosom pouring out of her bodice like clotted cream.
“How do you like it? Come closer.”
Come closer? Every instinct said to run away. She opened her mouth, shut it, opened it again. “No words.”
“Yes, quite right!” He grinned. “I had your same reaction—utter awe—upon seeing it the first time.” He hugged her. “Come look on the other side.”
“But we don’t need a wagon,” she said, drowned out by the babbling crowd of onlookers. A wagon? Not just a wagon, but a…a monstrosity!
They walked through the crowd to the other side, and her jaw dropped open. In the center stood a ram with fierce eyes and horns, and gigantic stones hanging below his belly. His face seemed almost human, a lecherous grin upon his face.
The men oohed and awed. The women gasped.
“It is ours,” Ian sang. “Josef sold it to us for a song.” He took her hand, and she felt the energy coursing through him.
“But we don’t need a wagon. Or the horse,” she sputtered.
Widow Jenkins cackled, a spectator to Maggie’s humiliations, as always. “What have you got there, apothecary? A travelling medicine show?” She pointed her gnarled finger at the ram. “You should be home servicing your wife.”
The crowd roared.
“You see?” Maggie said under her breath. “We are already the laughingstock.”
But there was a beatific look upon Ian’s features, and he hummed under his breath.
He eyed the ram with pride. “Well, I am glad we can be a source of entertainment. People need to laugh. I do not mind being the source of it, if it entertains them.”
No, he did not mind being the entertainment. In fact, the man had travelled all over the world, performing for royalty, selling his herbs, and gathering new ones in search of cures, and one special cure, for his affliction. He certainly didn’t look afflicted at the moment. Perhaps he’d just got tired of being here in this town, being with steady Maggie, always the same.
“Well, I do not like being a laughingstock,” she hissed. “The difference between you and me, for I need to be taken seriously in my work. I need to be someone the women can respect.” Her throat had grown dry from the hissing, and she clamped her mouth closed.
She watched the movement of his Adam’s apple as he hummed and ran his hand along to the other side of the wagon, dangerously close to the woman’s bosom bursting enticingly over her peasant blouse.
She tried one more time. “Ian, how do you expect them to take your doctoring seriously when you go about in this garish embarrassment?”
Utter surprise widened his eyes. “And why would they not take me seriously? Don’t worry so much, my love.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulder, pulling her close. “Zounds, you’re warm as a cinder. You shouldn’t overheat yourself so, Maggie. Do not worry. They will get used to it.”
“Well, I will not,” she muttered. “Where did it come from?”
“Josef had been working on it for some time.”
“He painted it?”
“Yes, is he not talented?”
“Erm.” She had to admit it was skillfully painted.
“Who knew he had such talent? To think he has been keeping it a secret all these years. I made an offer, and well…”
Her husband had paid for this miscreation? The heat rose in her chest and boiled over her face like an unwatched pot. Yet she bit the inside of her lip to keep from talking. A wife cannot tell her husband how to spend his money, could she?
His hair flew about his face in nutmeg-colored wisps. His eyes fair glowed
green like new grass. As his arm encircled her back, she felt the quiver of excitement coursing through him.
For the life of her, she did not understand. The man returns from a three-month absence, and the very next day he buys a frivolous wagon they have no need for.
“Maggie, I can take you to birthings. You can take the birthing chair. This can be a birthing wagon!”
“What birthing chair?” She had wanted Samuel to make one per her instructions, but there had been no time.
“The one I’m having shipped here.”
She dug her feet in. “We don’t need a wagon.”
The crowd listened to their argument with gusto. She clamped her mouth shut. She would not argue with him in everyone’s presence. And there were too many other things to worry about.
A group of sailors stood around Henry’s son, George. The boy gaped open-mouthed at the shepherdess, his hands tracing the swell of her bosom. “Oh, she’s beautiful.”
“Cop a feel, simpleton.” One of the seamen cuffed him on the head. “For it’s as close as you’ll ever get to a real woman.”
Bethan shoved her way through the crowd. “Leave the boy alone, or you’ll find my fist down your throat.” She towered over the sailors, eyes blazing fire.
The women gasped.
“Ooh, look what we have here. An Amazon!” One bushy-bearded gent approached her, close enough to put a finger on her bodice. Ian stepped forward.
Faster than the blink of an eye, Bethan slammed the heel of her boot into his instep. She laughed, fierce and humorless, and circled the group wielding a knife in her hand. “Tell me, is your manhood so…questionable you must harass this good boy? Shall I test my theory?”
They dispersed, stumbling like the drunken sots they were. “No harm meant, mistress. She’s crazy, ain’t she?”
Bethan laughed. “If you think I’m crazy, you should meet my sister.”
She put her arm around George and led him from the public eye. The crowd parted for her, fear and fascination on their faces, and Henry burst out of the door.
He grabbed Bethan’s hand and kissed it. “Thank you. I was in the kitchen frying fish and someone came in and told me what happened.” He dropped her hand like a hot coal and stepped back. “I apologize for taking liberties. I am just…grateful. How brave you are.”
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