Apples and Prayers (4 page)

‘Of course, Morgan.'

‘What for?'

‘Now that would be telling!'

‘But you have to tell me, Alford.'

‘Telling you would spoil the wish.'

‘And not to tell would spoil my day.'

‘How could you!' she cried, batting me mildly with her palms. 

I dodged away from her and she chased me around the well. We were like two little children skittering over the ice.

‘Stop, Alford. Stop,' I laughed. 

We came to a standstill, breathing the cold air in with yawning breaths, so it bit into our chests and made them ache. When we'd gathered ourselves, I picked up the pails. 

‘Enough play,' I said. ‘Now back to work, girl.' 

We began to pace back to the house, thinking our own private thoughts. 

‘I know what it was though,' I suddenly uttered and ran on ahead of her, chanting her darling's name. ‘Dufflin, Dufflin, Dufflin,' I sang. 

She raised her skirts and scampered after me, but I had the yard on her already and she couldn't fluster me any further.

Alford and I often passed our working hours in idle talk like this. I myself am of the plain and average kind, which has suited me well, for I couldn't any more be doing with the attentions of our village men than those of an angry hive of bees. It would have driven me from my wits. As it is, I've had the attentions of the one man I've ever needed – John Toucher, you honest fool, where are you now? 

But Alford, her face was as sweet as her nature. At fourteen or fifteen – she couldn't tell anyone for certain the date of her birth – Alford was admired by all the young boys of the village, each one of them besotted with her. Her own affections, however, were directed solely towards Dufflin, the young apprentice from the blacksmith's forge. She and Dufflin had been courting and carrying on for several months before the festive season. Although I'd shown her how to take precautions for herself, I feared that she'd become very worldly-wise in a very short time. I was also concerned for the number of times I'd found her missing from the Barton, when she should have been busy at work. I'd had to lie and cover for her countless times, with many small untruths given to my Lady, who often asked of Alford's whereabouts. ‘The boghouse,' was wearing thin. ‘At market,' too, was overused. ‘Running chores, my Lady,' covered most of Alford's sins.

She gave off a naive and girlish allure, of which she was hopelessly unaware. Her hair was straight and long and a dark chestnut colour. When it wasn't swept up beneath her cream linen kerchief, it reached down to her breast, a sweet cluster pushing up from her tight brown bodice, innocent enough, but inspiring to the boys. She wore that dress above her underskirts that many lewd boys dreamed of lifting, I'm sure. Many times I made her loosen that homespun frock, but Alford told me with her plaintive eyes not to fuss about her. She little understood the ways of lust, which the very Devil himself stirred up in her admirers. Her small, keen face housed deep brown eyes with long, inviting lashes. Her full lips seemed to be always half-opened, as though she were constantly struck in wonder.

Her hands, however, were rough like mine and knobbed from her days of scrubbing and serving. It doesn't take long to harden young skin in our line of work. 

Alford had been brought up in the Sugar Bush Inn at Langworthy, just a few miles off from Buckland, where she washed the tankards, turned the hog on the spit and scrubbed the flagstone floors. She also fought off the lewd advances of the landlord, Thomas Knight, who was sorely misnamed, lacking the most basic, honest manners of a gentleman. Her parents dead and none to care for her, the Sugar Bush was all she had. But her blunt refusal to satisfy the keeper was all that lost her her position at the Inn. She was taken on at the Barton only through the charity of my Lady, who'd found young Alford drenched and shivering with a fever one morning at Kirton Fair. My Lady was like that. Charitable to a fault some said. 

It was in this same tavern at Langworthy, so I heard, that several of our own village men were arrested in a rude brawl with the bailiff and his henchmen, early this January, arguing over some enclosed land and great rises in land rents and tithes. These were the early signs of unrest in our shire, although we seldom paid such disturbances much heed, for fights and disagreements were often breaking out where ale and cider were involved. Afterwards the men spent several hours in the Langworthy stocks for their efforts, nursing their bruises and pride. 

I was pleased to hear my own John Toucher wasn't among them.

When Alford and I reached the Barton's door, with the heavy pails of water yoked across our shoulders, the fire I had set in the New Year's grate was nearly out and I put myself to rekindling it, crouching by the fire dogs to pump the leather bellows. As I was at this, my Lady appeared in the kitchen doorway.

‘Good morning, Morgan, Alford,' she greeted us, ‘and a frozen one to boot.' She raised her chin as if to ask us what we would be serving her for breakfast that morning. I must have still had my back towards her, crouched there by the fire grate. ‘I believe it's the first of the year, isn't it?' she said, more by way of statement than question.

‘Indeed it is, my Lady,' said Alford.

‘And, so, isn't it “Happy New Year”, as well as “Good Morning My Lady”?'

‘A happy and prosperous New Year to you, my Lady,' Alford murmured humbly.

I was having the deuce of a time getting the kindling to relight and still hadn't raised myself to greet my Lady good morning. It hadn't, so it seemed, gone unnoticed. 

‘Tell me, Morgan,' my Lady then asked. There was a note of sarcasm in her voice. ‘What do you remember of how this first month comes about its name?' 

Detecting her disdain, I stopped what I was doing with the firewood. Alford too must have sensed the sudden stiffness in her manner and busied herself with scrubbing something in the corner, pretending not to listen to proceedings.

‘I don't think you've ever told me about January's name, my Lady,' I replied, contritely, across my shoulder.

‘Then it must have been Polly I told it to, God rest her soul,' she said, crossing herself. 

Polly had been the matron at the Barton until recent years and I too crossed myself in respect for her departed spirit. She had served my Lord and Lady nigh on her whole life. An old and clever woman, Polly was the head of all those who worked here at the Barton, whether in the kitchen, or out on the land. What stood her out, besides her all-embracing knowledge, was a mane of long hair that the finest mare in my Lord's stable would have been jealous of. It was this generous feature that gave her her affectionate name, Polly White Hair. She was uncommonly generous with her instruction in the ways of herbs and hearth and I missed her sorely. Now, however, I had come of age to fill Polly's shoes, with Alford next in line to receive the wisdom she had passed on to me. All that I have learned has come from Polly, or my Lady, eager as she's also been to see her women profit from a little education in matters of the home. I've them to thank for almost everything.

‘The month takes its name from Janus, Morgan,' my Lady went on in her dry way, making it clear she had some truck with me. ‘The Roman god of doorways?'

‘I see, my Lady,' I said, standing at last to face her now the flames were licking round the firewood. Before me, my Lady gave her head the slightest of shakes while widening her eyes, as if annoyed. I had done something wrong and gave the matter a moment's thought. 

‘Forgive me if I'm mistaken, my Lady,' I said, when the fact had settled on me. ‘But it seems very strange to me to have a god who solely watches over the threshold. Doesn't he have more important things to do in matters of charity and love, as does our own?'

My Lady laughed impulsively and brushed her hand over the milk jug. ‘Forgive me if
I
am mistaken, Morgan, but “it seems very strange to me”,' she echoed back at me, ‘that a housemaid shouldn't raise herself at once to bid her Lady good morning. Clearly you have two faces on you yourself, Morgan, just like Janus. One on the front and one on the back?'

‘Forgive me, my Lady,' I said, realizing my error. ‘The fire, it was…'

‘I see what the fire was… or, rather, was not… doing, Morgan. I hope you're not losing your touch? Raise yourself in future please,' she said.

‘Of course, my Lady. Forgive me. I meant nothing by it.'

‘I hope the year proceeds on better foot,' she said.

‘Indeed it will,' I said. She turned to leave. 

Alford and I looked to each other and grinned sheepishly. Neither of us was used to such pointed words and we wondered what else might be irking her.

‘By the way,' she said as she reached the kitchen door. ‘Janus watches more than those who come in and out of the house, Morgan. He guards time itself – one face on the old year and one face on the new. Each of us might learn something from that, no?' 

‘Yes, my Lady,' we both echoed.

‘Good,' she said. ‘Now, if you'll serve us, Morgan,' she requested, ‘your Lord and I are ready to break our fast in the hall.' 

She left and we busied ourselves with preparing their morning meal; fruit and brawn, a boiled egg. 

I don't know anything about Gods that have two faces, but I hoped, if there was one, that he could see prosperity and happiness coming our way this coming year and, perhaps, just some small upturn in my Lady's dented humours.

The way that things were in our land, however, I had my doubts that anything good could come of the New Year. So many beggars were attendant on the Church gates, what with the clerical lands stripped and the monasteries in ruin. In her generous way, my Lady spent her charity upon them. ‘Who'll offer succour to these unfortunates, if the Church no longer cares for them?' she rightly noted and so, from time to time, gratuities of leftovers were made to these beggars in the Barton's yard. 

Of what remained, our greedy swine made short work with their pigs' noses in their pens. There they dig their brown snouts through the earth like ploughshares, rooting out the scraps and, in doing so, providing us with their plentiful pork and bacon. The previous year, their pound had been knocked down by an amorous boar, wishing to be reunited with his mate. The boar broke free and ran amok. Shortly after, the odd-jobber, Rawlings, made an improved pound and the animals were returned and well contented in their new home.

The Luck-Bringer came to visit us soon after we had cleaned away the plates and goblets from their morning meal that New Year's Day. By God's grace and for Alford's better fortune, it was none other than Dufflin, bringing round the lucky platter. His presence at the gate as good as threw her into a fit of swooning. The lucky wishing stone she'd dropped into the well, not more than an hour before, had done its work already. A great silliness suddenly overcame her. Her fancy was also shared it seemed, for there was more bravado and flirting on Dufflin's part than would have been fit, on any other day, to be parading at the kitchen door of this, or any other noble home.

‘A healthy and prosperous New Year, sweet ladies,' he bade us.

‘Master Dufflin,' I replied, ‘some more of the
health and prosperity
, if it pleases you and a little less of the
sweet ladies
…'

‘The fair of face should only be addressed by that name, Morgan,' he said to me. ‘And as your name is Sweet, by your sweetness you shall be known.'

‘Aye, but that sweetness may soon turn sour if it's taken too much in vain, master Dufflin,' I said. ‘Now, to your business and no dallying.' 

He stepped into the kitchen and bowed his head down low beneath the large platter he held precariously on high, balancing its hunk of bread, its lump of coal, the rattling coin from his meager wages.

‘Dufflin,' said Alford, addressing him with smiles behind her palm. 

The boy worked as apprentice to the blacksmith, Don Coleman, whose forge stood at the far end of the village, away from the Barton, for all its smoke and brimstone. Don had one time been a smelter from the tin mines across the Cornish border. He'd come to Buckland on a mule train many years past, fallen helplessly for a local girl in a night of drunkenness and stayed here ever since. To the eye it seemed as though he'd fashioned himself in his own forge. His arms and legs were thin, but strong, like twisted ropes of wrought iron. His body was compact and dense, like an anvil. Upon his head he wore a wire brush of curly, silver-flecked hair and his face was flat, like a hammer's. He was made for forging.

‘What brings you here so early on this first day of the year?' asked Alford, no sooner than Dufflin had set foot across the threshold. She twirled her hair between her fingers as she spoke, as if she were pulling the boy in on a rope. He swallowed and flicked his mop of hair to one side.

‘Bringing Luck, sweet Alford,' he smiled to her.

‘Then the luck must be mine,' she beamed back at him.

‘Good Lord!' I said and turned to washing dishes.

Dufflin had started work at Coleman's forge only in recent months, much to Don's delight to have a fit and young apprentice. A strong young man, clever and useful with a hammer, Dufflin was also fine-looking for the girls. If Coleman appeared to have been forged in the fires of the colliery itself, then Dufflin was his opposite. He looked as if he'd fallen from a tree, still carrying his rosy puppy fat about his cheeks like a little cherub. His eyes were blue, disarming. He couldn't say boo to a goose, yet had all the girls in the village gaggling around him. But it was Alford who seemed to have won his heart. A boyish twist of hair fell across his brow, which he continually brushed up with a flick of his hand, leaving lines of soot from the forge across his brow, blackened like a strange jewel from the Orient. Like she, however, Dufflin's recent attentions were fixed so much on love, or lust, infatuation, or whatever it was between them, that he had begun to neglect his work at the forge, just as she frequently forgot her own duties. The arguments he had with his master became fiercer and more common. Dufflin wasn't a lazy lad, but his mind had been turned by his honey.