Apples and Prayers (18 page)

‘But I'm sure the proposal will come one day soon,' she said.

‘That's as well as maybe,' I snapped back at her.

‘Then thyme to fight your nightmares,' she said, ‘and for your melancholy and your coughs. And purging the worms from your children.'

‘I don't have any of those,' I said.

‘Worms or children?' cracked the hag.

‘Children,' I said, ‘nor coughs and melancholy. Now hurry, please, or I'll be needing your lavender for a headache…'

It seemed her basket was simply laden with the commonest plants of the season, with nothing much to tempt me.

‘How about some clover leaves for your shoes. They'll help you see the fairies…'

The vision of her on a broomstick passed back before my eyes. ‘What need do I have of the fairies!'

‘The same need as any,' she said, with that strange blinking wink again. 

I was afraid then that she'd contrive to turn me to some dark herb craft – thoughts of Jacobs and Killerton passed uneasily through my mind – and I quickly changed the subject.

‘What have you got in the way of seeds?' I asked her.

‘May's herbs are to be sowed under the astrological dominion of Venus,' she said in a vague and recitative manner. Her act was now worn as thin as an old napkin.

‘I know,' I said. ‘I know. Look, d'you carry seeds or not, madam?' 

‘Seeds…?' she rummaged in her trug. ‘Seeds? I don't seem to have any,' she said, disappointed. ‘Apart from hemp to feed your chickens.'

‘Need I repeat myself?' I said, starting to close the door on her. ‘Hemp grows round our garden like grass.' 

With that she huffed and turned to leave and I regretted I'd been too sharp. What might I buy in charity? As she lifted her basket back on to her head, I noticed she had some May sage and asked her for a sprig. 

With pleasure, she charged me above the going rate.

It seems that all prices are monstrously risen, even when charity's concerned.

‘Take it against miscarriage,' she said. ‘One sprig every day before the birth and the child shall be secured.' She winked again. ‘Are you?' she asked. ‘You may take need of my worm cure yet?'

‘Madam All Doer,' I said indignantly. ‘Let me assure you, I'm not bearing children, nor do I require your wretched purge for worms! Now, good day.'

She laughed and walked away from the door, muttering to herself as she tucked my coin into her tattered purse. 

In the days that followed her call, I plied sweet Alford with All Doer's sage, crumbled in her food and drink. Since riding on that rickety May Day cart, I'd become worried that Alford would, through naïve negligence, not give the growing child its due attention and lose it through some illness, or misadventure. She didn't know that I was plying her, although she did complain on more than one occasion about the flavour of her cider.

I made up some excuse that I'd used herbs to mask the staleness of the barrel, now that it was almost empty. She was none the wiser.

Barrels were at the heart of our work in the coming weeks. With spring becoming summer, last season's cider was ready to break from the casks. When the sun was habitually high overhead, a willing workforce gathered at the cider barn to open the vats.

Cider, the harvest time quencher… Cider, the slaker… Cider for long life and health
… the call went up, as the men arrived at the cider barn that morning. Through sheep shearing and hay making, the juice today would keep them happy or, at least, in cooler moods in summer's heat. In winter, I'd mull it into drinks so sugar-sweet they'd lift the soul and cure the gripes that winter makes men prone to.

They filed into the barn, like bees returning to the hive, throwing themselves down on hay bales in the shade. The barn itself is built to suit the stages of the cider making. In the corner stands the old mill, built from oak beams, a great granite wheel and trough. She hadn't moved since last autumn, when she'd crushed so many bushels of apples.

‘Nothing comes close to an apple,' said John Toucher, as they readied themselves to begin work. He leaned against the mill's massive frame and smiled at the waiting barrels. ‘The sweet, sweet scent… the sharpness surrounding the sweet. There's nothing like it.'

‘Except women…' It was Harvey the tanner, who'd come along, most likely to drink more than work. An extra set of hands nonetheless. His comment riled me, as I'm sure he wanted.

‘And their shapes as odd as little heads, or at least as strange as yours,' John Toucher sneered, ‘tall and thin, round and bulbous, ribbed and knobbled and gnarled…'

‘Easy to harvest and carry back home,' Alford put in at my side, resting her weight on a sack of chaff.

‘Aye. And quick to cook and plenty of them.' Dufflin was ever hungry.

He was right. My mind turned to the kitchen. Apples baked, roasted, steamed and fried. Whole, stuffed, sliced and chopped. Apple stuffings, apple salets, apple stews and pies. Cakes, loaves, jellies and jams. Apple sweetmeats. Apple chutneys. From spicey pippins, I've prepared them all.

In autumn months, the barn's as good as lived in by the casual hands. These are quiet farming months, when men take their employment where they can. Hour on hour they mill the apples into a soft pomace in the deep trough beneath the rollers. My Lord's shire horses lend the muscle to turn the mill, the workhands drive the horses in their tracks and their boys cart in apples from the piles we've stacked in the orchard. The air smells of sweet juice and dung.

A mixture of bittersweets and sharps goes in at the top.
More bittersweets
, a man might say, tasting the mixture and finding it too sharp.
More bitter-sharps
, another argues, taking his turn to taste it.
Sweet and fine for me
, the first…
Still and dry
, the second. And so the deliberate mixing goes on day and night, to make the flavours balanced. At the bottom, out come the crushed up apples in a juicy red pulp, gathered into barrels where the mixture stands for a day or two, to gain in flavour.

The second, most vital section's there behind the mill… the press itself. Timbered from oak and elm and beech, she's bound together with iron straps. The mixed-up pomace is loaded inside. We squeeze the ground-up apples flat, between straw beds and rushes. The cold juice flows through the slats and down the press's runnel, like a river of gold. It's as if we're the richest men and women alive. The scent is nectar; the trickle, pretty music on the ears, as it gurgles and slops into the bucket below. But it turns all things black, both man and wood alike. Apple juice… the mystery hidden within the fruit, like the heavenly soul within the earthly body.

When the juicing's done, the residue is worked again, mixed with base water to ferment a second time, in open kegs, to make a pauper's drink. I'd sell it for next to nothing at market, or give it to the beggars at the gate. Whatever apple waste was left, we took to the animals, for autumn nourishment.

The proper juice, though, is carefully jugged and caried to the end of the barn. Here stand the great oak casks, bound around with iron hawsers. They lie in the barn all winter, like great sleeping boars, although they're busy, busy, busy within, fermenting the juice, as any secret hive of bees makes honey within the secrecy of the skep. When the juice was poured in, John Toucher would add some blood from whatever animal has been recently butchered in the yard, to help begin the process. Then toast, floated on the top to bless the brew. Nothing more is added, save for some oak shavings to keep the liquid pure. Oak shavings, apples and prayers. 

From that moment on, there's little more to do with the barrels other than checking their seals from time to time, topping them up to the brim with water, unless bad air should creep into the barrel and spoil the hallowed juices.

Many months later in May, the cider's ready. 

Then we gather together to pour her into firkins and costrels for market, for drinking, for storage. These vessels were provided from the village kiln by Tommy Potter. His workshop lay to the far northern edge of the village, some miles distant out of the square. Tom Potter was a solitary type, a man who lived alone for many years, following the departure of his sons and his wife, who left him for the company of a travelling merchant. That thieving trader had swept the adulterous woman away and left Tommy Potter to the only other thing he truly loved, making his jars. I don't know the reason why she left him, for Tom Potter was fairer to look at than other men, tall and thin, with long curls and big strong hands. His was an artisan's trade, pounding heavy lumps of clay and tending fearsome fires for baking it. He made cooking pots, firkins, tumblers and jugs for all of us. I seldom saw him and, when I did, he said little more than ‘Good day, Morgan,' then went about his business, carting his stuff to the pottery sheds, which he'd set in a small woodland. There grew all the fuel he needed for firing his great kiln. It consumed timber as Hell consumes the souls of the damned. 

That day of opening the barrels, the only sober ones were Alford, me and the dairyman Northcott. I don't think a drop passed his lips all day. He worked silently through the long hours, hefting flagons and jars to the storage room, despite his limping leg. His sobriety, however, was more than made up for by others. Some were there to help; others only to taste and drink. Tan Harvey had quit his tanner's yard and arrived with us early that morning. I groaned at his arrival. Not only because he still stank of guts and hide, but because he could drink three gallons worth of cider and never lift a finger to help out.

‘Tip the barrel this way,' he barked from his drunken seat on the chaff-sacks. ‘No! No! Pour the cider slowly. Take the barrel back, Morgan. Clear those jars.' It was as if we had our own captain of the army issuing orders.

Our cider served the whole village, so most of our men were there: John Toucher for strength, with Reynolds and Lucombes shifting barrels. Despite their frequent differences in the fields, they worked well as a team now. The surly Reynolds, who was mostly toothless and only good for sucking on a peach, even broke into a cracked smile from time to time, under the juice's influence.

On the other hand, Ben Red had only showed that day, it seemed, to keep his drinking partner, Harvey, in good company. He was already fit for nothing when he arrived, still drunk from his revels the night before. He spent most of the afternoon asleep on the cider-soaked floor beneath the empty barrels. Above him, Sidney Strake sat in the rafters, singing childish songs the whole afternoon. 

At one point, Woodbine and Coppin came in from their work in the woods, their hammers and chisels tucked into their jerseys, to wash the empty barrels out, to check them for cracks and leaks and to set them fast upon their racks, ready to receive the new year's juice. 

Some other makers purged the hearts of their barrels with brimstone, to purify the casks. It's said by some that the monks of Tavistock Abbey are in league with the Devil, who's taught them himself how to put damned brimstone to such effect, but that kind of devilry isn't our way: the great oak barrels are simply washed clean, made ready for the juice by simple water.

We filled small costrels with cider, each one no more than a gallon and sufficing a man for a day's wages. As these were handed round, Harvey's endless instructions had clearly worn my own man down. 

‘Close your trap with this, Harvey,' John Toucher advised the tanner and thrust another jug into his hand. Harvey drained it so fast I swear the liquid never hit the sides of his throat as it went down.

‘It's a dry brew,' John Toucher said, when the first taste touched his own lips.

‘Dry is strong, as sweet is weak,' Tan Harvey answered knowingly.

‘Which suits you well, no doubt.'

‘What's the point in drinking, Toucher, if not for how it lifts the soul?'

Sensing an argument, I interrupted them both. 

‘I hope this year's cider won't be the brewer of arguments at any moment?' I said. For a trice the men became silent. Sometimes the drink comes out with distinctive character: cider with a light and carefree edge; cider that's argumentative; cider to make men ponderous and heavy.

‘Don't you think it too bitter? That the fruit was pressed too fast, or left to brew too long in the barrel? It tastes a little sharp to me,' I said.

‘Sharp, my arse!' cried Harvey. ‘There's nothing wrong with the…'

His persistent orders and haranguing were then too much for John. Before we knew what had happened, he stepped across the barn and, with one great swing of his arm, sent Harvey sprawling across the floor, his clothes soaked in the spilled juice, his nose cracked open like the barrel itself.

He stood slowly and wiped at the blood that had trickled down to his lips and his chin. John didn't move. 

I swear Tan Harvey bore my John a grudge forever after that. 

Harvey rose and dusted himself down. He knew he stood no chance in punching back. I watched his face and saw, behind his eyes, that cunning little brain storing away the memory of this clobbering, in case he might ever have cause to win his own back on John Toucher for some reason. 

For now, however, he slyly turned and made for the door. 

‘Men! Men!' cried Alford. ‘Enough! Please. We've work to do and just a day to do it. The cider'll spoil if we leave it out.' The fight would also make for bad feeling and taint the drink unless we nipped it right away. ‘Always one to spoil the barrel, hey?' she chided Harvey's shadow as it crossed the doorway. 

The men took their wages in cider that day; a gallon drum hefted on their shoulders. 

Had Alford been married already, her share would have gone to her husband, but the wedding was still some days away and she took the drink herself.

In coming months, we'd prepare a quick, second brew of summer cider, from the new sweet apples now almost ripe on the boughs. But, for now, we had enough to serve the county and, with it, celebrations to lift our troubles, not least the happy day of Dufflin and sweet Alford's marriage.