We paddled all day, keeping close to the riverbank. When we passed a row of upturned baskets at the water’s edge, Eadie paused for a moment.
‘Hives,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised they’re still here.’
The baskets were old and falling to pieces, but bees swarmed around them.
‘Olive made those,’ Eadie told me. ‘Back in the old days when marsh aunties came and went as they pleased. Ah, smell the air!’
She paddled on with long steady strokes. I was getting weary. In fact, I was so tired that I was just pretending to paddle. I wished we had a rope on the reed-boat, because if we did the sleek could give us a tow.
‘Fat chance,’ Eadie said. ‘But you can try if you like.’
She handed me a length of bindweed. I held one end and threw the other to the sleek, but he took no notice, and when I tried it a second time he grabbed the end and dived under the water so fast that he almost jerked me out of the boat.
‘Typical snide,’ Eadie said, as she kept paddling.
It was late afternoon when Eadie steered towards the bank and found a little beach.
‘We’ll camp here tonight,’ she said. ‘Where’s that fish Ebb gave you? It can be our dinner.’
She helped me out of the reed-boat and settled me on the soft sand. Together we made a fire, and when it was glowing warm Eadie pulled her knife out of her coat, scaled the fish and cleaned it. She tossed the guts into the water and the sleek caught them.
‘Guard it,’ she said, with a sharp glance at the sleek. ‘I’m going to get some sticks.’
There was no need to find sticks. There was plenty of driftwood on the little beach.
‘Not for the fire,’ she snapped. ‘For you. I can’t be carrying you around the country like a baby. You’ve got to take your own weight. That leg should be strong enough by tomorrow.’
As soon as she left, the sleek crept towards me, his eyes on the fish.
‘Sit down, Sleek!’
To my surprise, he obeyed me. He sat down and began washing himself.
Eadie returned with handfuls of dried grass, some big leaves and two saplings that forked at the right height to go under my armpits.
‘Pack a wad of grass under each arm for padding.’
She wrapped the fish in the leaves and put it on the coals, then she settled herself next to the fire, patting the pockets of her coat.
‘That’s the only trouble with a coat like this – it has a life of its own, and things are not always where you left them.’
‘What are you looking for, Eadie?’
‘My pipe, of course. Ah, here it is!’
After she’d lit her pipe, she dived into her coat again and pulled out her story bag.
‘Lesson one?’ she asked.
‘Always open and close your stories.’
‘Good waif!’
She took a small handful of sunflower seeds out of her little bag and put two of them in my hand.
‘There was once a girl called Blot. She had a birthmark on her face that covered half her cheek.
‘This girl was the daughter of a woman of power – a queen, or perhaps you would call her a swamp hag.’ She gave me a sidelong glance. ‘She lived in a great house on the riverbank. And she was as mean as they come.
‘What a hideous baby, she cried when the girl was born. I’ll have to find a cure for that face!
‘She went to her remedy room and consulted her library. She had books on everything – how to make tonics, tinctures and potions; recipes for balms and balsams and herbal draughts that could cure any condition. Finally she found the recipe she needed. It was in an old book called Natural and Unnatural Cures – The Herb Queen’s Almanac. Three drops and the girl’s face would be fixed. But the ingredients were rare and some of them grew far away. It would take a long time to gather them all, and the mixture should boil for ten years and a day.’
The sleek stopped washing himself and stared at the fish. I put my hand on him and, when he didn’t spit at me, I began stroking his red fur. I was surprised when he purred.
‘What is more important, the story or the snide?’ Eadie asked. ‘If you are my apprentice you must listen with both ears.’
I’m listening, I thought. And I’m not your apprentice. I’m just travelling with you.
Eadie ignored this and continued with the story.
‘The queen began making the mixture. She collected the ingredients that grew close to home and set them to boil in a big pot on the riverbank. She employed a boy to tend the fire under the pot and an old blind man to supervise the boy. He had to be blind because she didn’t want him to see what she was doing. Then she went away to find the other ingredients.
‘Meanwhile, the baby grew into a little girl. The old man and the boy looked after her. They didn’t mind the birthmark on her face. To them, she was beautiful.
‘When Blot was four years old, her mother returned.
‘What’s that girl doing outside? she demanded. She should be locked up in the great house where no one can see her.
‘The woman shut Blot away and ordered the boy to take food to her once a day. Apart from that, the girl was to see no one until she was cured.
‘If you don’t do what I say, I will know it and you’ll be punished, the queen told the boy. She added the new ingredients to the pot and went away again.
‘The boy and the old man felt sorry for the little girl, but they were afraid of the hag so they didn’t let her out. However, the boy made a gift for the child.’
Eadie put down her pipe and stood up. ‘Turn the fish over, will you?’ She walked down to the water and waded in.
‘You’ll get your coat wet,’ I yelled.
She returned with a handful of mud, the bottom of her coat dragging behind her. Then she sat down and closed her eyes.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘I’m seeing the story in my mind,’ she said. Her hands began kneading the mud. ‘The boy got clay from the riverbank, and he shaped it into a doll.’
Eadie quickly made a head and a body, and she took the two sunflower seeds from my hand and pressed them into the doll’s face for eyes. She looked at what she’d made.
‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘You do the hair. Use grass.’
When I finished pressing in strands of grass to make hair for the doll, Eadie nodded. ‘The doll in the story was more lifelike, but we haven’t got time to do that. I need to get the story told before the fish is cooked.’
I smiled, and I gave the doll a smile as well. First I drew it on with my fingernail; then I found something better, a curved piece of shell.
‘Blot loved the gift,’ Eadie continued. ‘Every night, when the boy brought her dinner, she gave a little bit of food to the doll. Then, one night, the doll opened its eyes and spoke to her.
‘I am your true friend, it said. Tell me what’s in your heart.
‘Blot told the doll her deepest fear. If the brew doesn’t clear the mark from my face I think my mother might kill me, she whispered. Either that, or I will remain a prisoner forever.
‘Don’t worry, said the doll. I will help you.
‘When the hag next came home, six more years had passed and Blot was ten. The queen added the ingredients she’d collected to the boiling brew and stirred it with a paddle. The old man stood back and shook his head and the boy watched sadly as the hag sat by the riverbank and consulted her recipe.
‘On the last day, she read, add the girl’s most precious thing. Now what could that be?’
Eadie stroked her chin and gazed into the fire, then she looked at me with her keen eyes. ‘The queen knew, of course. She knew about the doll because she had special powers and nothing could be hidden from her.
‘On the morning of the ten years and one day she took her daughter to the riverbank and told her to throw her doll into the pot.’
Eadie stopped talking and poked at the fish with a stick.
‘It’s done,’ she said. ‘We’ll finish the story later.’
‘No. Finish it now.’
She pulled the fish from the coals.
‘When Blot refused to throw her precious doll into the pot, her mother grabbed the boy.
‘I’ll throw him in instead! she yelled, holding him over the boiling liquid.
‘No! cried Blot.
‘At that moment the little doll leapt from the girl’s arms into the brew. Three drops splashed out onto the old man’s face – two drops on one eyelid and one on the other. He opened his eyes and saw the pot crack open. The brew burst out all over the queen and she was burnt to ashes. The old man saw the two children clinging to each other.
‘You will be my grandchildren, he said. We will live in the great house, and no door will ever be locked.
‘And that’s what they did. Forever.’
‘What about the little doll?’ I asked.
‘She went back to the river,’ Eadie replied. ‘Her body became mud and her hair became grass, and the two seeds that were her eyes grew into beautiful sunflowers.’
I set the doll on the ground next to me, and she seemed to watch as Eadie put the rest of the seeds back in her little bag and returned it to her pocket. She pulled the fish from the coals, unwrapped it and gave me half.
We ate in silence. The only sound was Eadie sucking the fish bones.
I liked the story. I looked out over the river and thought about Blot. She still had the birthmark, and she’d lost her precious doll but she had a best friend and a grandfather, and she was free. I liked the way the recipe backfired on the herb queen. It didn’t fix the birthmark, but it cured the situation. Maybe all the recipes in the book – the almanac – worked that way.
‘Did you read any books, Eadie, when you were learning the herbs?’
‘It’s so long ago I can’t remember.’ She was licking her fingers clean. ‘Glad you liked the story, Peat. Plenty more where that came from. I’ve got more stories than pockets in my coat.’
She blew into her sleeves, then she stood up and, leaning forward, she began opening and closing the front of her coat very fast. She looked like she was trying to take off.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Puffing up,’ she replied. ‘With a coat like this you never need bedding. Trap some air in the pockets and, no matter how cold the night, you’re always warm.’
She lay down by the fire. ‘One of these days you might own a coat like this, Peat, if you’re lucky.’
I settled myself down for the night. Eadie’s coat was all right for her, but it wasn’t something I would ever want to wear.
Soon Eadie was asleep. Her snore sounded like the rattling purr of the sleek, but it was a hundred times louder.