Apples and Prayers

by Andy Brown

  When it came to making me up for the part, we anointed my skin with periwinkle sap for a thorough cleansing, celandine for my several warts and whitening my teeth. To finish my complexion, my Lady dusted me with orris and a little rouge. Then, to hide what we’d just achieved, we draped an imposing veil over my head. I have to say myself, I looked half passable, masked in greasepaint and shrouded like that.

  Before we set off, Alford swore I looked no more than sixteen summers and, where her deceits had tricked me into this in the first place, her flattery now got the better of me.

  In fact, the people were so drunk by the time our procession passed, I don’t think they would have noticed if it had been an ass’s head rising from the neckline of the May Queen’s robes, let alone my own. At my Lady’s instruction, Alford kept herself privately back at the Barton, until our cart returned from its rounds.

  As for that procession, the cart was pulled by a moody, sour bay mare from my Lord’s stable. The horse was old and unsuited to such a pageant. She pulled and bucked out of the stable, which made for the bumpiest of rides. It was better that I endured this continual jolting than Alford. The mare was drawn on by the odd-jobber, Rawlings, who waved his moth-eared hat and smiled to the crowd as though the procession was his and not the May Queen’s.

  ‘Hi there, you old nag!’ he shouted, as he beat the animal on with brisk swishes of his withy. I trusted he meant the horse instead of me. He must have drunk such huge amounts of dandelion beer and elderflower wine before we left, for he stumbled his way along the lanes, barely able to keep to his feet. It made for an unsettling ride, in the extreme. By the time we’d circled the parish and returned home, his breeches were muddied through and torn at the knee in several places from tumbling down. He wasn’t the only one though. It seemed that the whole village had washed its sins away with copious bottles of sense-numbing juice, as they lay on the green verges, or underneath the shade of overhanging trees.

  My Lord and Lady rode ahead of us, their obedient mounts parting the way through the crowd. As we turned the corner from the Barton’s lane, over the bridge and up to the village, men, women and children cheered us on, whirling reels to Woodbine and Coppin’s pipe and fiddle. They seemed to fall over more times than not, so the only ones left standing were the children, who found it all a riotous game.

  ‘Alford! Alford!’ cried Dufflin, as he saw us round the bend. I waved at him from my high chair behind the belligerent horse. Dufflin was dodging his way between the dancers to keep up with our cart’s progress along the higher lane. ‘You look… why, you look… beautiful Alford!’ he called out. I felt flattered, if not a sly dissembler.

  ‘You’ve got yourself a fine one there,’ another said.

  The young lad came to an abrupt halt, running bang into the other’s chest at full pelt. He fell to the floor, as though he’d hit a tree.

  That tree was John Toucher. ‘A lovely young girl indeed,’ John Toucher laughed.

  I wondered if he’d ever spent such compliments on me.

  From where I was sitting, I saw it all acted out before me, like the scenes of a play on a distant stage. The gauze of the veil that hid me from view made it seem as though life was happening elsewhere; as though I was a spirit come down from above, to watch the antics of the living one last time. There were small hounds yapping, livestock braying, children running in and out of their elder’s feet, lewd and furtive couples kissing in bushes and farming men passing their time in idle talk, oblivious to our passing by, as though it might have been just any old day in the calendar.

  All this distraction suited me well, for in the end no comment was made about my sitting there in Alford’s stead and she, in fact, received much compliment in the days that followed.

  When it was finished, Alford and I swapped back to our rightful places and I was pleased to have the journey over. At least she hadn’t had to endure the rickety ride of Rawlings’ mare and put her child at risk. She was also now recovered from her ordeal by mustard; a small price to pay, I thought, for the favour I’d done her.

  Although the month began with such festivities, it wasn’t all a time of playfulness. There was always much work to be done. Last year’s cereals were still piled up in the threshing barn, where they’d been carefully stored over winter. Proper storage is vital. Rye left to mould in the damp season, causes fire in the veins when it’s ground into bread and eaten; visions in the mind like scenes from the underworld; weird fantasies, delusions. If the boils don’t kill you, the mania will. A good husbandman guards carefully against it and keeps some of the threshing work over til May. Threshing makes good wet-weather work, something we’re used to beneath Buckland’s leaky skies.

  We did have some warm breezes I recall and the tree blossoms were already on display for the bugs and the bees. But the grass wasn’t yet fully grown and the cattle needed feeding up on last year’s hay, added to with some newly threshed grain. This would keep them strong until the pasture was lush and ready. Haymaking had been delayed a week or two, with all the recent flooding and threshing also gave us chaff, to feed the hungry pigs and poultry, my Lord’s horses. Not forgetting grain for our very own loaves. It isn’t all about the animals.

  All the grinding, grain and beans, took place at my Lord’s mill. It made the miller, Billy White, unpopular. Gossip and rumour abounded, about how he abused his monopoly. For the most part, I understood these grievances as petty jealousies… he was nothing more than a shrewd dealer when it came to business. White was a small man, but very strong from carting sacks of flour and grain, each and every day of his life. He was in his middle years, but lively, though often should have known better conduct. Perhaps he felt some need to make amends for his unpopularity, by acting up larger than life when he was at the ale. If you saw him during the day he’d be stained from head to toe in flour, as white as the spirits I saw on St. Mark’s Eve. But in the tavern, once he’d dusted off, you wouldn’t recognise him… the hair on his head and the beard on his chin was so dark and thick. Billy Black more like.

  When the mornings weren’t given to threshing, I’d sometimes walk along the river beyond the Woolbrook, to wash my masters’ linens. The Woolbrook’s the spot, the shallow ford, where shepherds bring their flocks to drink and, in the spring, to wash their grimy fleeces. They clear off earth and muck from wool, then herd their sheep to shearing. There’s a place near there where I like to douse my head in the refreshing stream, where the river cuts through the hazel coppice.

  One time last summer, at its height, Alford and I even dared to bathe there together and lifted our skirts and removed our blouses, swimming near naked in the stream. We splashed in between the boulders, enjoying the run of water down our aching backs.

  And then the fun stopped.

  Alford let out a great shriek.

  Some shepherd was there, she said to me, doing something behind the cover of bushes.

  I covered my breast and turned to see and there indeed was some gaberlunzie, fiddling with himself beneath his breeches, lusting at our nudity. I didn’t recognize him as one of our own and barely saw his face, though other parts were plain enough to see.

  I pushed Alford down in modesty and, picking a flat stone from the riverbed, hurled it as hard as I could at the brute.

  Either it caught him square in the chest, or it clattered against some tree trunk. There was a dull thud, a sudden groan and then the comedy of the rascal fleeing through the briars, his flapping breeches snagging on the thorns.

  From his continued gripes and cries, I hope he hurt himself sore enough. Not as bad as I’d have hurt him though, if I’d been able to land a kick between his bandy legs. I like to think he snagged that little worm of his badly enough though, for his vulgar intrusion.

  After that, we were more discreet in our bathing and saw that we were never spied upon again. I never did learn who he was, some passing self-abuser, as could have been a man from any tribe.

  While sheep were being shorn, heifers were calving
their first.

  Northcott the dairyman took the calves straight away from their mothers and placed them in the meadow behind the Barton, where he could watch them easily, but where they were also out of mothers’ earshot. Cows and calves call and call to each other, or even trample fences to get back together again. Northcott was sensitive to his animals, more so than most of the Buckland herdsmen and, for this gentler husbandry, I trusted him. He had little to say, saving his words for the right moment. He was a large man and needed to be so, for the hard work of herding his cattle. But he walked with a limp in his leg, after a bull gave him a goring, while he was learning his trade as a boy. It hadn’t, however, deterred him from his purpose, but steeled his determination and now he was known among us for this solid resolve.

  When he separated the calves from their mothers, Alford insisted his practice was cruel, but it was only her motherly feelings taking over. Northcott didn’t have a cruel bone in his body.

  ‘Heavens, what are you doing, girl, you great fool!’ I chided her when I found her unloosing the latch on the gate to the calves’ field.

  ‘They’re crying for their mothers, Morgan. Can’t you hear? It’s terrible! Listen.’ She was crying loud enough herself and seemed confused, fiddling with latches and rope pulls on the gate.

  ‘I can hear it Alford, of course. But they’re only cows. What’s all this silliness?’

  ‘I haven’t slept all night for listening to them crying, Morgan,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s not be sentimental Alford,’ I said. ‘I never heard such nonsense.’

  She cried even more when I scolded her and I realized her humours were strongly affected by her child. She’d stopped puking in the mornings, as far as I could tell, but her moods would swing from good to bad and back again each day, like the censer that swings between the pews at Mass. I tried a calmer way.

  ‘Just think of it, Alford. It’ll do no good now to have a calf suckling at the udder,’ I told her more gently. ‘All that milk would go upon the calf and little to spare for us. It’s common sense.’

  She looked at me a moment, almost as if in agreement and I thought I’d persuaded her. But she was soon fussing again, dithering here and there through the grasses as if she’d lost her way back home. There was little I could offer her, in reason or consolation.

  When we did return to work, she wept all morning and was useless for any chores that needed doing. To find her something useful to do, I made her follow me down to the orchard where, at least, her agitation wouldn’t have her spilling and slopping things, as she was doing in the kitchen.

  I hoped that we’d be blessed with a rich glut of honey that year… the bees were all swarming. They gathered in great numbers with their queen and began to make new nests. Alford was inexperienced in the skills of beekeeping, but I hoped to instill in her something of what I knew. She was, however, terribly worried about getting stung and, already, struck up another trying bout of whimpering at the orchard gate. My patience was wearing thin.

  ‘Enough now, Alford,’ I said. ‘It’s perfectly safe to draw near them.’ I showed her the bundle of Herb Bennet I’d tucked into my apron. ‘A few minutes rubbing with that and it’ll take away the hurt of even the most ferocious poison.’

  She fingered the small pat of ointment I’d wrapped in a cloth in my pocket and, while I had her hand, I pulled her into the orchard, keeping hold of her until we were standing in the middle. Not that she had anything to fear from bees, now that she was with child. The danger’s more for virgin girls to swallow one of the creatures. They’ll never find themselves gravid if they do, staying barren and sadly infertile and swollen only where the bee has dug his sting. Virgins at the hives should wear their masks and guard their mouths with vigilance and that’s all there is to it. As it was, neither of us need wear one.

  Once her fears had waned, we began building the new hives. This work should have already been done, yet another job delayed by all the flooding. We made the hives attractive to the bees by rubbing the skeps with thyme and lemon balm. We left a lucky charm… a hazel-twig honeypin, to wed the bees to their new home and ensure they wouldn’t wander. Then we moved the hives next to the hyssop and lime flowers, to lure them in.

  While we were busy with this, Alford apologized for the bother she’d made with the calves. I asked her what was worrying her.

  ‘The wedding,’ she simply said. It wasn’t her child, as I’d thought. She was happy enough with her conception. Marriage was, given the child, a foregone conclusion. But her dealings with Dufflin’s family weren’t good. A child out of wedlock was reason for any parent to quake.

  ‘May’s as good a month as any for a marriage, Alford,’ I said to her, as she fussed about the appointed day.

  ‘Aye, but it’s so soon Morgan.’

  ‘Better sooner than later, Alford,’ I said, nodding at her roundness.

  ‘But May’s not the best month for a wedding…’

  ‘She’s as fair as any you’ll find nowadays, Alford. What’s all this nonsense?’

  ‘Not nonsense at all, Morgan,’ she said, plainly hurt. I touched her arm and, appeased, she went on. ‘The fairest month for weddings is June. The fairest time for nuptial feasts.’

  ‘For nuptial feasts indeed!’ I laughed. ‘Go to, nuptial feasts! Where did you hear such talk?’

  ‘June is from Juno, who watches over house and childbirth,’ she said, suddenly the scholar.

  ‘And how are you so unexpectedly educated in the ways of Juno, might I ask?’ I laughed at her again. She didn’t take kindly to my teasing, but what on earth was all this fanciful talk? She was usually so plainly spoken, sweet but simple. This sudden learnedness was quite unlike her.

  ‘From my Lady, Morgan. From who else?’

  Then I knew that she’d finally summoned the courage to tell my Lady about the child, about the marriage. And if the talk of Juno was any proof, my Lady must have received the news well enough. It seemed she’d already begun teaching Alford what to expect with the child.

  ‘June may well be Juno’s month, house and childbirth and all, Alford, but May is a month like any other, blessed by the Virgin and good enough for you my girl, as it is for anyone.’ I busied myself with the skep, to stop myself laughing any more. ‘What difference will it make,’ I went on, ‘a few days here or there? End of May, early June, what’s the difference?’

  She made to reply, but I cut her short.

  ‘Don’t answer that, Alford,’ I said. ‘The day’s been decided and there’s no more argument about it. Nuptial feasts!’

  With that I made doubly sure that Alford wouldn’t trick us all with her cold feet, as she’d shown on May Day, wriggling out of the appointed wedding.

  It needed a pledge. I made her speak it to the bees.

  She laid them out a little piece of bread she had in her pockets and, later, came back with a cup of ale, to leave it near, for good luck and fertility.

  Bees are mysterious creatures. They’re good for divination, not only honey. A confession made in earnest by the hive, or news sincerely told within their presence, augurs well for any arrangements that might need making.

  Including nuptial feasts.

  A herb woman, dressed in coarse and unclean rags, arrived at the Barton’s gate a few day’s later. I was at my usual business, when I saw her shuffling across the yard towards our door. I opened it upon a face as puckered as the skin of a leathercoat russet. She balanced a woven basket of herbs on her head, set upon a coil of ragged cloth. Her basket was filled to overflowing with nostrums, cures of her own devising and bundles of herbs. She took it from her head as she arrived at the doorstep and set the trug down on a walking stick that served her as a market seller’s table. I was used to dealing with such vagrants, indeed had seen a spate of them in recent months and so I gave her the time of day, although I let her know I had little time for idle chat today, nor any other.

  ‘Good day,’ I said, ‘and what can we do for you? Be quick about it. I’m
busy as you’ll see.’

  She looked at me with distant eyes and I wondered if she hadn’t been one of the May Day witches, rubbing herself with noxious oils for flight.

  ‘Good day madam,’ she said. ‘I’m just a simpler. Fabled in these parts. The name’s All Doer.’

  It sounded like rehearsed patter, but I indulged her in it a while. I’d heard her name before, which brought her down to earth from my imagined broomstick. All Doer was, indeed, well known around here and her stock was fairly priced. I wondered if she might have any herbs that I wasn’t able to grow in my own garden. I went along with her.

  ‘And why’d they call you that, mistress All Doer?’

  ‘I have a herb and remedy for every condition, madam at good prices.’

  ‘We have our own still, here in the manor, madam,’ I replied. ‘We can distil all the preparations we might have need of. Now, thank you for your service but, as I said, I’m really very busy.’ I started to close the door on her.

  ‘You’ll be disappointed if you turn me away,’ she said.

  ‘Tincture of marjoram will dispel that disappointment,’ I said.

  She chuckled at that, a grating sort of cough as much as laughter.

  ‘Aye, you know your business, madam,’ she nodded and, although I knew I’d called her out, I felt a bond of charity towards the woman. She clearly knew her trade as well as I.

  I engaged her further. ‘What have you got there then?’ I asked.

  ‘Hemp for medicine and killing pain. Fibres of hemp for yarn, for rope and thread. Flax for your spindle. Make yourself some fine new linens, madam.’

  ‘We’ve got hemp and flax in plenty, in the fields beyond,’ I said. ‘Besides, we’ve got wool coming out of our ears in these parts, or haven’t you noticed?’

  I laughed, but she didn’t seem to like the jibe.

  ‘Try my rosemary for flavour then,’ she replied curtly, ‘and for storing your Lady’s clothes. Throw a few sprigs on the fire for good luck.’