Apples and Prayers (9 page)

Despite the augury of the clay balls – bad luck this time, Alford – it was my own man who appeared first in the morning, almost with the crowing of the cock. 

I'd barely risen from my truck, with the heaviness of dreams still weighing on my eyes, before I heard a knocking at the door. I roused myself and shuffled to the entry. There stood John Toucher, scrubbed up for once in his life, his deep eyes sparking in the lifting dark. He was ready for work in the fields, but something was different. 

A sweet bunch of crocus lay balanced on his palm. 

I hadn't forgotten how he'd upset me so, in the fields just recently. Perhaps he too had realised he had to make amends. 

To keep him waiting, I lingered at the threshold, adjusting my smock in modesty. Then, with his deep voice quavering shyly, he spoke.

‘
Good morrow Valentine, Please to give a Valentine; I'll be yours if you'll be mine. Good morrow Valentine.
'

My blood pulsed as I took the petals from his warm fist, his fingers trailing on my own palm. I breathed in the scent of that gift of flowers.

‘Birds choose their mates this month,' he said, with a growing cocksureness. 

‘Then you should go and find a bower,' I told him, ‘and start building for your hen, young cock.' I waited for his words to come, but John only smiled at my flirting.

I always wondered when the day of John's proposal would actually come. This Valentine's morning must have been the closest he ever came, the lumbering fool. If only he could have found it in himself to say the words we'd both thought of so many times and taken me to be his wife. If only. But, for some reason known only to himself, John Toucher never made proposal and kept me solely as his friend and mistress. Nothing more by way of law, though I know in his heart that I'm as good as his wife for ever.

As we stood there together in the first light, we both laughed – him in embarrassment and me to cover the smart of another renounced proposal – before we caught the better of ourselves and dropped our gazes. My Lady would have censured me for wasting working time in trivial matters at her doorway. 

John then took his leave of me, but not before I'd given him an apple from the kitchen store. The good Lord strike me down if my actions were theft, but the fruit was one of several left over from supper the night before and my Lady often allowed me a small share, before the orts were taken out to feed the greedy swine, or given to the beggars. 

John Toucher took my apple to the fields and strike me dumb if he didn't take great pleasure and sustenance from it as he ate it for his lunch.

Thereafter, Valentine's passed without surprise. Alford pocketed a token of love from Dufflin when she saw him in the market, although I took pains to tease her on his slowness that morning. 

She granted me this, ‘One point apiece,' she said: hers for the first clay ball to rise and mine for the first man. 

The stars it seemed had broken through the clouds that veiled the love affairs of me and sweet young Alford.

 

In March we tend the orchard's apples. By then, the Devil's own offspring have begun their wicked work against our stock, attacking the young apple shoots like a marauding army, making the new leaves curl and wither so soon after springing from their buds. 

The birds have also arrived back, like angels from their sleep beyond the clouds, or imps from their slumber underground, however you may choose to look on them. Those bullfinches wreak havoc in the orchard, among the leaves and flower buds. The orchard's pests are many: bullfinches now; blackbirds, thrushes and starlings come summer. Deer are always stripping bark and have to be fenced out. My Lord's hunting parties also help. In a few months' time, with summer damp, black scab may mar the fruit and leaves. It's a wonder that any greenery survives, or fruit may form, for they suffer a siege more ferocious than those they tell of in stories of war.

The Barton's orchard is a good size, planted with countless varieties: Old Pearmains, Costards, Reds, Stone Pippins, Broomhouse Whites and
Reine des Pommes
. Most are too sour for eating. We grow them for brewing into the legion of hogsheads of cider we make each year; the best cure for weakening spirits. 

Our forefathers made cider and theirs before them, with apples that have grown here for generations without end. The trees don't revolt against a swing in the summer's weathers, which can often happen, nor perish in the coldest winter. Instead, they stand firm in their well-sheltered pasture; my Lord's dairy cows often found grazing beneath their branches when farther fields are mudded up or otherwise disposed. 

An orchard itself is neither a true field, nor a true wood, but a holy conjoining of the two.

We graft and prune in March. I learned these skills from Thomas Rivers, my Lord's old stable-and-orchard-man. Rivers died two seasons past, but he lived to a ripe age and served in my Lord's orchards his whole life. A small barrel of a man, he needed a ladder to reach up into the trees but, once on high, his limber limbs flashed through the branches, pruning and picking faster than any other could work. Up there in the canopy he shaded his old head with a bonnet, for his pate was as hairless and shiny as a pippin. 

He always had the time of day to stop and talk and, many times, I found I'd spent a good hour of the working day in idle chatter with him over the orchard hedge, without so much as noticing it passing. He was spirited and full of stories, which I believe infused his apple trees with all the proper qualities for generous juice. Nobody wants to drink a rough and argumentative brew and Rivers saw to it that his apples were filled with cheerful disposition.

‘Apple trees need pruning through their lives, Morgan.' He'd taken a liking to me when I came to the Barton and, without a child of his own, I think he'd singled me out as his new apprentice. ‘Like the hairs on your head, they'll grow into a knotted mess if you don't tend them.'

‘A good trim keeps the trees and your hair pretty indeed, Master Rivers,' though what he ever knew of hair was now a distant memory. 

‘Aye, but it's not solely prettiness, Morgan. Summer pruning checks their growth. Winter pruning for growth next year. And we know what comes from good growth, right?'

‘Brimming barrels in autumn.'

‘And a village that won't go thirsty for a day!' 

He smacked his lips, as though he could taste the cider already. Rivers knew its flavour well; he'd taken in so much of the stuff in his time. 

Taking his knife out of his britches, he laid the silver blade against the bronzed bark of a newly-planted tree.

‘We want this central shoot,' he said, running his blade the length of the strong middle stem on the sapling. ‘This one we keep. All others we remove. Make your cuts above the buds.' He cut the young shoots to half their length. The older trees, which crop well every year, he tended in a different manner. ‘Thin the outer edges of the tree, Morgan,' he taught me.

‘Doesn't cutting branches mean less apples, master Rivers; less cider in the barrel?'

He smiled at my delusion. ‘No Morgan,' he said. ‘Pruning means keeping the heart of the tree open, as a man or woman's heart should be to God.'

I still didn't understand how thinning it out could improve the yield. 

‘Cutting branches means less fruit, for sure. But better fruit for it. I'd rather see a hundred apples the size of my fist, each and every one bursting with juice, than five hundred hanging up there and each one no bigger than a snail's shell. And as dry.'

It made perfect sense. We searched out the strongest buds and started our pruning.

The buds are still sleeping in March. It hardly seems possible that soft leaves and delicate blossoms, followed by full-burgeoning fruit, could ever burst forth from such knots. But it happens every year, a miracle of transformation, as the knobbled twigs erupt in blooms of deep maroon to pale pink and white, with softly scented petals. The flower buds are fat and round, set on the thicker twigs and branches. The leaf buds are thinner and pointed in shape. Rivers learned me the shapes of each and how to tell them apart. He also taught me how to graft. ‘The orchard's future,' as he called it.

‘Three days after the new moon, Morgan,' he said, ‘when the sap's at its strongest. That's when we graft.' He took his thick pruning blade and cut through the thin wood at the top of a sapling. ‘Take the strap from its parent. Bind her to the stock of a more vigorous plant.' 

I knew that he wasn't referring to me, but it seemed in such moments that he was telling me something of myself.

He climbed down from his ladder and I followed him to the hedge, where he'd many sturdy stocks heeled-in in a sheltered spot, waiting for their new grafts. With a deft cut of his blade, he sliced a deep gouge into the stock and placed the strapling in the gaping wound. She was bound in with twine and made ready for planting in the freshest plot of the orchard. 

‘That's how new trees are made, Morgan,' he mumbled as he worked. ‘Apples'll never take seed. Hardly ever.' 

When we'd finished making the new trees, we trudged to the freshly dug corner of the orchard and introduced the saplings to their new home.

‘Fork in the dung and stake them in,' he told me. ‘All growing things need their support; apples, lambs, children. Water them in and wait for the miracle. Pray. These trees'll bear fruit through two men's lifetimes, God willing.' 

I noted what he said and tried my hand at the work when he'd let me. With some practice it proved to be an agreeable task and not so difficult, with a worthwhile and plentiful end. 

Early in the month, I poured out my shrivings into the private ear of our priest, Peter Lock. I knew I must confess again to all my sins: mean words and thoughts, heartlessness, the white lies I gave to my Lady to cover for Alford and, of course, my sin of lying unwedded with John Toucher this Valentine's past. 

Although I slept with John as though his wife, whenever chance allowed us, my conscience never ceased scolding me for doing so outside the laws of marriage. The devil take chastity, but surely he could have asked, just once, to marry me? Out of honour. It had me confused, John never asking me to wed and me going on with him like a common mistress, even if I never went so far as feeling outright shame – our moments together were most of what pleasure we had in month-on-month of arduous chores. 

I worried what our worthy priest would say, but there was no need to do so, for he'd heard these confessions many times before. There's nothing, however, so strong as the fear of God, to make your heart flutter like a wild bird. I could sense my own blushes as I yielded up the sins of my love making.

‘Lord, I am not worthy,' I began very quietly. 

‘Your sinfulness and baseness make you penitent,' the priest replied. ‘The Lord is listening, child.'

‘I confess to almighty God, to blessed Mary ever Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to all the angels and the saints,' the list of listeners was very long, ‘and to you father, that I've sinned in thought, in word and deed.' 

It was very dim in the church and almost black in the confessional. I felt as though some somber cloud had come to settle on me.

‘Confess, daughter,' he said through the slats of the box. I liked to think he didn't know whose voice he heard, but surely he must have known it was mine, as he must have known all the voices in the village. 

I cringed at the thought of his knowledge.

‘I don't know how to tell it, Father,' I faltered. ‘I have, in recent days… I have…' The ground beneath my feet in that confessional could just as well have opened like a hangman's cruel trapdoor.

‘Yes, my child,' he urged me, ‘the Lord is patient. You have…?'

‘I have… lain unmarried with my beloved.' 

The words came tumbling out of my mouth, like worms from a rotten fruit, into his merciful ear, where they were cleansed and made good. 

‘May almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins and bring you to everlasting life.'

‘Thank you, father,' I stammered, not knowing if my confession was over or not. ‘Repent and bring mercy on your soul with five
Ave's
and
Pater nosters
. Though carnal love itself is not a sin between married men and women, wantonness from out of wedlock cannot go unpunished,' he said.

‘I ask for you to pray for me, to the Lord our God, father.'

‘
Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo. Amen
,' he then said to me sternly in the Holy tongue. I waited a moment to hear if there was more, but the church was silent. The confessional itself may as well have been a coffin, close and dark and frightening.

‘Father?' I said, but he'd clearly departed. All I could hear was the echo of his voice; that ringing
Amen
. 

Although I've never much understood the words, within my heart I felt the meaning of what he'd said and felt my soul lift to be so cleansed and free from the burden of guilt.

  According to father Lock's order, I then made good my transgressions on that cold Shrove Tuesday morning. Come midnight, the austerities of Lent would commence and then we'd take neither happiness in food and drink, nor lie together no more, for conjugation then will bring bad luck to those who fail the test of self-denial.

That morning, I cooked up the last of the eggs.

‘Crush the shells,' I said to Alford, when she'd cracked them in to the bowl. ‘We don't want any witch-boats here for them to sail about in.'

She smashed them quickly beneath her palm, as if a sorceress might glide through the window that instant. I laughed at her and beat the eggs with fat and flour, to make the last batch of batter that the month might fairly allow. Soon we'd be serving pancakes to my Lord and Lady for breakfast, now that the Shrove bell had finished tolling. Beets, roots and parsnips would be our only sweetbreads until Easter was with us and the good Lord resurrected to his rightful seat in Heaven. We'd rise on Easter morning and sing praises to the sunrise in celebration of his restoration. Until then, I'd be eking out the farmyard meats in coming weeks, until my Lord brought back wild duck for the kitchen table from his outings.