Apples and Prayers (11 page)

That evening we took a further infusion – a blend of dandelions to promote prophetic dreaming – to try and see the future of the child. 

No signs were forthcoming. 

Alford told me she'd often dreamt of eggs these few weeks past, which came as no surprise and clarified the news she'd just revealed. She could be thankful, at least, that her dreams weren't of chickens, for that could only mean some dark misfortune. 

That morning before Mass, we'd already collected in the eggs from the coop. In the hay lay the remains of a single egg hatched from the clutch and a bright young chick nestled under its mother's down. Alford picked him up in her palm.

‘Better things indeed are on their way,' I said. 

‘How so, Morgan?' she asked, stroking the chick's head.

‘A chicken in March is eggs for a year, eggs for a year, my dear,' I sang and we left the mother hen to her business.

Back in the house, I went briefly to my bed and knelt before my crucifix, praying to the Virgin that spring would be a time of resurrection and cheer for the folk of our village. For my fretful John Toucher. For Alford and her child.

With Polly White Hair gone from us, many of the commoners in Buckland naturally turned to me as the dispenser of their remedies and medicines. Polly herself had set up a still in the cold room at the back of the Barton's kitchen, where she distilled perfumes and ointments for my Lord and Lady and simple remedies to sell on market day. 

With her death, the responsibility fell upon me.

It was no easy thing being the only woman in the village whom people trusted as apothecary, but I came to know the workings of everybody's blood and bowels and humours: who was with sweating sickness, who the bloody flux; which child was sick with influenza; who was struck with measles.

Word went around that I'd nursed my Lady through some recent aches and pains of the womanly kind and that Lord Ponsford had been cured of some un-nameable ailment. Everyone therefore came to me for whatever it was that troubled them, whether it was cloves for toothache, chickweed for irritated skin, or a preparation of groundsel. You have to pick that carefully, to miss the yellow grass it grows amongst, where the witches piss. But once it's gathered in, it eases the cramps we women suffer, as I'd eased the cramps for my Lady. 

Certain things I couldn't cure – leprosy and smallpox, typhoid fever – though thankfully these scourges hadn't visited us in an age. Dropsy and jaundice I'd manage; the red plague I would not. 

I prayed that Alford's gravidness would pass without impediment and that the birth would be simple enough. I was no midwife and puerperal fever was always abroad, to snatch away the women from our district, just as they were ushering in new life.

Thomas Rivers let me take some of his apples for their healing qualities. Applied to the stomach, your upset bowels will thrive. Strong laxative apples. A poultice of fruit to the skin and your swellings will subside. Lard and apples works wonders for chapped skin and rags soaked in verjuice relieve the aches and pains of farmers' hands. Some of our cider we sold at fair, to be carted away by sea merchants, to ply the men on board their ships, for fighting off the low-laying scurvy. But neither children nor wet nurses were allowed an apple. They suffered the shits enough without them. An apple will open the bowels and rouse the heart, but they aren't so good for the nerves. 

It's all Eve's fault in the blessed Garden.

Even John Toucher wasn't too proud to come to me for treatment, when the moans and gripes of winter finally irked him more than he could bear.

‘Soothe me, Morgan, my sweet,' he'd say and I knew what kind of soothing he wanted. But he'd not be having that from me in the middle of the day. I wouldn't slack my girdle for him at that time and in that manner. He'd need to woo me harder than that.

‘Beans,' I said to him, ‘It's beans you need, John Toucher. Take some beans and mix them with an egg. Stick it to your temples.' I tapped my finger to the place he was to rub the balm.

‘I won't rub eggs on my brow, Morgan Sweet!' he protested, but he knew I was right and, two days later, well, for a while, he was feeling back to himself.

At the month's end we sowed herbs, following the prognosis of the moon. But, what with so much heavy rain, it seemed we'd have to sow the seeds again; they were washed out straight away from the heavy and waterlogged soil. The only seeds well sown, it seemed, were those in Alford's belly. 

In a day or so when the ground had had time to dry, we'd try and sow again: staple turnips, greedy for space, with spinach, beets, leeks and chives, onions, garlic, scallions and carrots filling up the second plot. Behind these, the rocket, parsley and sorrel, sage, hyssop and thyme, marjoram, lavender and rosemary. Once they were in, we draped the beds with branches from the thorn bush, to keep wild birds and chickens off. To stop the cats from digging where they'd littered. It was topped off by straw, to guard against the threat of nighttime frosts. I wouldn't put the parsley in until Good Friday, when the hell-travelling seeds of that old green herb were well protected in the ground from Satan's interference.

It would have been no bad thing if the parsley itself had been fast to flourish. I could have done with a bunch of it to cure John Toucher's premature baldness. He was sickening with worry over his land, that handfuls of it had seemed to come out of his head in recent months. He'd started to resemble a monk on top of his skull. Heaven knows his face was becoming raddled, like a new-ploughed field, each time I saw him, you'd have thought he would have died from constant fretting. John was so often overcome with the malaise and downheartedness of the times, he could barely spare me a kindly word or, when he could, it came fast on the heels of some other hurtful speech. If I asked him, I'd soon find out why.

‘The cruelty of the month is this, Morgan. It seems I'm to pay more rent. Just as I told you. Pay more, or lose my land.
Now
what d'you think of your good Lord's doings?'

John's words were troubling, for himself in his predicament and for me in my allegiance to my Lord.

‘Surely it can't simply be raised without some prior warning, John?'

‘Anything can be done these days, Morgan, with no warning at all!' He was extremely vexed. I'd never seen him like it. ‘Some men here in Buckland hold long-term leases. Those can't be broken. Nor their rents be raised. But they make profit at our expense by hiking up prices and paying no more themselves.'

Although I didn't like to hear it, he was right. The prices of foodstuffs were too high for purchase and had been galloping skyward for some time, like run-away horses bolted from their stable.

‘The freeholders pay no rent at all, or next to nothing to your Lord. Those yeomen sell their corn and cattle for three times the price. Three times, Morgan! Who d'you think's paying for it?'

‘I don't understand, John,' I said. ‘What does this have to do with your land?' I didn't care for the way he was talking so roughly to me, yet again.

‘We've got high rents forced on us, Morgan, because these long-leasers aren't obliged to pay more.
We
are paying for their leisure and profit.'

‘But the landlord's got to pay for his goods too, John, which, as you say, have trebled in price. I know, because I've got to pay for them at market.'

‘And you think that your Lord doesn't have enough to pay for such things, whatever their cost?'

‘For sure, he's the wealthiest of men, John, but…'

‘And for sure, Morgan,' he interrupted me, ‘he raises his rents and converts the land to pasture. What's happened to allegiance? To time-honoured custom? To settled rights? Prices are soaring, Money's worthless. Oh fine, yes,' he went on, the bit now firmly between his teeth, ‘some men are doing very well, thank you. But others? Others are in misery. I'll tell you now for nothing, Morgan, there'll be fighting over this before the year's done.'

Some say that March is a thunderous month, with the year's first sunny days broken by terrible rains, by hail storms and late frosts. It seems as though the very weather itself is torn by the choice of which way to blow. More confused still are the mad March hares, who court in the long grass of the pastures, in the roughly-ploughed fields. They're full of breeding time's folly, with their mad leaping and boxing matches. But most confused of all this March were our own good people of Buckland.

And so, Easter morning this year was strange and strained in many ways, from our own individual doings, to the greater collective actions of our people. Creeping to the cross was banned, already, by the King's new orders. The customary start to Easter Day was altered. After the service of Mass that Holy day, we entertained ourselves with the usual games: rolling eggs down the side of the hill and hiding them in the Barton's garden. Yet these seemed like trivialities after the changes to our service of Communion. 

We'd dyed our eggs in the common way: with beetroot juice for red, gorse flowers for yellow and onionskins for brown. I stained my clothes most awfully with the beetroot, it looked as though I'd been hit by a bolt from a bow. 

But you wouldn't catch me washing my linens that day. It was said that in the nearby village of Upton Pyne, north of us in Buckland, that on Easter Day of the previous year, the very stains of Christ's Holy Blood had appeared on the sheets of the Lady's bed when the scullery maid took them to the stream for early washing. Cross myself and Hail Mary, I would've died there and then if I'd seen such fearful signs. 

And, closer by in Northwood, the village smith himself had received a lightning bolt from out of the Heavens for working with iron on Easter day. I vowed for my own protection that I'd only stoke the fire with a sturdy stick of rowan, afraid as I was to handle the poker. Wasn't it fashioned from the very same metal as the brutal instruments of Christ's ordeal; pernicious iron nails? 

I didn't wish for lightning bolts to come and strike me down that day for handling it. 

No. Rowan would do just fine.

 

Cuckoo… Cuckoo...

The Venus Doves had returned. It lifted my spirit to hear them announcing the spring, on that warm April morning. The mist was still rising off the fields, like steam from the crust of a deep-filled pie, stuffed with sweet cookers and pippins. What a drear winter we'd had of it in Buckland. But what a time those fairy birds had had – while we were all still wet and cold, they were buried under ground in their earthly lairs throughout the lingering winter. There they had stayed, warm and fed, protected, until the wise old woman of the stars had set them free one spangled night, to spend another year in breeding. Song. 

How softly then the cuckoos professed to the world that cold hardship had passed. 

Cuckoo… Cuckoo...

I rose to strew the house with fresh rushes and cleanse the Barton's hall with mallow, geranium, broom. As soon as I'd finished these chores, I was out to the herb garden early, where the cuckoo's plaintive calls came drifting over the fields into my waiting ears. With luck I hoped I might just stumble across a cuckoo feather on the path and wear it with me in my bonnet all the month, to ward the evil eye away. In those days of change, you could never be too well guarded. Sadly, I didn't find one. Their song alone would have to do.

When the days begin to lengthen at both ends, with the sun sooner risen and its later setting, there's much work to be done early in the morning in the herb garden. All manner of herbs are growing to their potency. Pick them in the early hours and you'll have them at their freshest, while the dew is still crisp in their leaves. I had cures to prepare: rosemary powdered and bound in a cloth, to lighten and cheer my Lady's soul; verdancy for pickling and infusion; nettles for rheumatism; bistort for stews; borage leaves to cleanse the blood. The picking time is vital, especially if rains are on their way. And signs of showery weather had been plentiful. When I was at my tasks that morning, I noticed that the spiders' webs, draped between bushes and crystalled with dew, were all broken. The sow was also squealing in her pen, the hens huddled in their coop and the bees were hidden, nowhere to be seen, but waiting in the confines of their hive, without so much as a murmur or a buzz. 

There are none so good at predicting the weather as our common sense livestock.

‘We'll have ourselves a storm before the day's out,' I noted to Alford and, mark my words, I was right. 

By three o'clock that afternoon, the skies opened and such a deluge came, I was ready to build the ark again.
April showers make May flowers
may well be the case, but I'd rather have finished my work in April, than be idly gazing at the pretty, rain-fed herbiage in May. 

The day's downpour set back my plans for work by a whole day, for the new young bees were ready to swarm and this would have been the perfect day to build their new hives. That would all have to wait and, with it, all the other duties of the apiary. Some day soon, I thought, when the ground was dry, we'd gather in the new combs and start on making candles, ointments, beeswax polish.

Such was the pattern of those April days; showers and sunshine. These are the markers of fertile spring, portioning out the days for God's tiny creatures and workers. Rashes of ladybird bugs appeared on garden nettles, sent from Heaven above to save our seedlings from the greenfly. At evening time, brimstone moths flew into our candles. Later in the month, St. Mark's flies emerged in swarming clouds, hanging over the scrubby lanes with their legs dangling beneath them like gauzy sprites. In the hedgerows and banks, where bright cleavers fought their way through the straggling undergrowth, caterpillars were suddenly present in legion and bumblebees hummed in their industry. Wood ants and spiders were building their nests and webs. Dandelions turned the ground bright yellow. Birds and bees sucked at their sap. Goldfinches ate their seed. We gathered the dandelions in and made them into sweet wine. The lengthening days set off the natural desires and drives of every plant and creature.