The young woman wearing the well-patched grey dress, a scarf covering pale red hair, delved deep into the damp soil. She felt a sharp gust of wind blow through the thin material, but she was used to being cold. She had planted the parsnips months earlier in the garden of Slaugh Cottage and her deft fingers scrabbled in the dirt, pulling out three fine vegetables.
She wiped her grimy hands on her apron and stood up, closing her eyes for a moment. She was small and slight, her frame slender beneath the long frock that trailed in the mud. The harsh wind blew again, tugging strands of hair from the scarf and lifting them across her face. She smiled, welcoming the buffeting breeze as an old friend. Then she bunched the parsnips in her apron and rushed back to the cottage, through the narrow stone hall into the warmth of the downstairs room, where a fire burned in the hearth and a single tallow candle was burning on the table.
A man’s voice murmured, ‘Is that you, Grace?’
‘Who else would it be, Father, the King of England?’ She paused for a moment, gazing at him slumped in the wooden chair, his cheeks flushed from the blaze. ‘Just give me a moment. I have some parsnips here for the pottage. Tonight, we'll eat as well as King Charles and his Portuguese Queen Catherine.’
Will Cotter turned his eyes back to the fire and watched the flames flicker. His daughter was fond of making light-hearted quips, but he liked her gentle prattle; she kept the home alive with her bubbly chatter and he would seldom ask her to hold her tongue. His eyes were heavy and for a moment he felt warm and soothed in the firelight, then sleep took him.
Grace gave her father one last look, checking he was comfortable, then she moved on light feet to pick up the bucket she had set down in the corner. She had drawn water from the well earlier, and now she cleaned and sliced the parsnips carefully, adding them to the beef bones, potatoes, onions and grains already in the pot. She returned to the fireplace, sidling past her father, easing the blackened cook pot onto its hook over the flames.
‘The bread’s baked now, I hope.’ She picked up a cloth and slid her hands into the bread oven built in to the wall on the side of the fire, pulling out the brown-topped loaf, setting it down quickly on the wooden table and waving her hands to cool them. ‘Yes, we will eat well tonight.’
Will’s eyelids flickered open and he said, ‘You’re a good girl.’
Grace studied her father carefully. Forty-two years old and ravaged by a lifetime of farm work, he was thinner now; his long legs stretched towards the hearth, ending in boots that hissed and steamed in the heat. Worry had furrowed his brow and faded his red hair. She watched the troubled rise and fall of his chest beneath the linen shirt and frowned. He was one of the oldest of the men who laboured on the farm, and Grace worried about his health constantly. Suddenly an idea came to her. ‘Will you take a mug of mulled ale, now, Father? That would set you aright before we eat.’
Will nodded as if speaking might require too much effort.
Grace bent down and lifted the pitcher from the hearth, feeling the heat of the blaze briefly scorch her skin. She poured the drink into the tankard and set it in his hands.
He gripped it, his large labourer’s palms shaking with weariness as he brought the ale to his lips. He supped once and sighed. ‘Ah, this is good. Then after we have eaten, I am for my bed.’
‘I will wait up awhile,’ she replied. ‘Next Tuesday is Lady Day, the twenty-fifth, the day Our Lady was spoken to by the Angel, so I want to have everything made clean and tidy. It gives me but three days – tomorrow is Sunday and we must go to church. There are things I want to do, to make ready. I want to tidy the house; I want to collect a pail of milk and some cheese from the farm. I have my herbs to tend…’
Will was watching her, the flames reflecting warm light in his eyes. ‘You remind me of your mother, Grace. Always busy, always something to tend, something to mend.’
Grace nodded, her expression soft. ‘I miss her too.’
‘I think of her each day that passes. You were just twelve years old when we lost her. It was ten years ago now, on Michaelmas, when she was taken in her bed, carried off by the fever.’ His hands clutched the tankard. ‘You’ve never complained since – the cooking, the mending, the weeding on the farm. You’re just like she was, strong, kindly-natured, patient.’
‘I learned from her,’ Grace said quickly. ‘And I learn from Grandmother Bett in the village, how to sew and use the spindle, to work with simples* and plants to heal, and I am grateful she showed me how to bake bread and cook. I will go to see my grandmother before church, take her a few bits for her pot.’
‘She’s a good age now, Bett. Sixty years and still hale and hearty. It’s a pity your mother wasn’t blessed with the same healthy disposition.’ Will began to wheeze, then he coughed, air caught in his throat, struggling to breathe. He leaned forward and sipped his ale slowly. ‘Ah, I miss her, my Anne. Taken too soon.’
Grace took the tankard from his fingers and set it down by his feet. ‘I will slice the bread now, Father, and fetch the last of the butter. Then we can eat.’
Will closed his eyes, relishing the sound of his daughter bustling round, her footsteps fading as she moved to the adjoining room at the back of the cottage where the butter and cheese were kept inside the small pantry and the dried goods were stored.
For a moment, Grace paused, fingering the bunches of dried roots that hung from the rafters, touching the thyme tied with string, checking a few sweet stalks of lavender, bowls of berries and herbs. Then she was back at the table, busying herself and humming a tune.
Her presence soothed him, somehow making him feel secure, the master of his own home, where he was respected: there was precious little esteem in the life of a farm labourer living in a tied cottage, but Grace brought a homely peace to the house. His wife, Anne, had the same gift of creating calmness around her, and her mother too, Bett White. After a long day on the farm, tending cattle, ploughing fields, Will seldom had much energy left for conversation, but it was reassuring to listen to Grace chatter. All he wanted to do each evening was to sit in his chair staring into the fire, remembering, watching the pictures form in the dancing light, resting his aching limbs. But Grace, who stood behind him slicing crusts from the loaf, had other ideas. At the end of the day, when her father retired to his bed, that was the moment she longed for most.
*Herbs
Several hours later, Grace stepped outside into the moonlit garden, breathing in the fragrance of damp grass. Her father was already slumbering in his pallet bed and he wouldn’t wake until after seven tomorrow, it being Sunday; the extra hour’s sleep would be beneficial. And now the night garden was her own domain.
Grace removed the headscarf and shook her pale red hair free, then she tugged the kerchief from her neck, instantly feeling the wind’s bite on her skin. She lifted her arms, allowing the breeze to encompass her, to ruffle her gown and blow against her neck like the cold breath of a lover. She closed her eyes with the pleasure of it.
When she opened them, the moon shifted from behind a cloud, gliding across the indigo sky, round as a beaten-metal coin. In the distance, an owl hooted. Grace cupped her hands to her mouth and returned the same low sound. The owl replied, and Grace smiled.
She wandered through the garden, trailing her fingers in crop of lavender stalks, lifting them to her nostrils, inhaling the faint scent. Soon the flowers would bloom again and she could dry them, use them to make a poultice to ease inflammations and swellings. She knew that a few cabbage leaves, heated and pressed flat, would heal a bruise or a swollen ankle. Calendula and yarrow made to a paste with hot water and tied in muslin would soothe most agues. Her mother and her grandmother, Bett, had shown her the ways of using herbs and plants since her childhood, and she kept her garden full of everything she needed. Grace would dry herbs and make teas to calm and soothe, to help sleep come. Parsley, watercress, mustard, burdock, meadowsweet and celery grew in her garden so that she could make infusions. Her father’s joints were often swollen and sore; a poultice of ragwort leaf, cabbage, turnip and coltsfoot boiled in milk with oats and butter would ease his pains.
The moon slid behind a cloud and Grace turned back to the house. The blackthorn tree that grew outside was almost in full flower, and she moved towards it, her fingers lightly touching the spikes on the branches. It was her favourite tree. She whispered, ‘May I pluck a bloom or two for myself?’ She lifted two tiny white flowers and folded them behind a strand of hair, close to her ear. ‘Thanks be to you.’ Grace touched the dark wood again with a careful finger, tracing the edges of the delicate petals: she loved the blackthorn for its slender trunk and dark green leaves, its black bark and spiny branches. She loved the way the fragile blooms could be woven into a bridal headdress for a spring wedding, but it would be bad luck to bring the flowers indoors.
Each October, Grace used the dark berries to make sweet sloe gin and they were useful in the cook pot to impart flavour. But, most of all, she remembered that a scratch to the flesh from the spikes could be deadly; a piece of blackthorn burying itself under the skin might cause severe infection, swelling and pain. A thorn in the hand might make the joints stiffen and poison the blood.
Grace walked in the thick darkness towards the old well as the wind lifted her hair. She paused next to the old stone well that was sunken into the earth, gazing into the black depths. As she stared, she could see the inky water ripple, exploding the reflection of the silver moonlight above. She gave a soft laugh and the echo returned it to her from deep in the ground. She asked, ‘How are you this night?’ and the well replied with the same question, the hushed chorus of many voices. She smiled. ‘I am most hearty,’ enjoying her own chattering well where she could unlock the treasures of her heart, and her words would come back to her in a breathless spell. She whispered a name once, ‘Nathaniel Harper,’ and the echo returned the secret sound, tender as a lover’s voice. She stared into the swirling water at the bottom of the well and the moon slithered away, leaving the depths dark as pitch. She whispered again, ‘Nathaniel Harper and Grace Anne Cotter,’ and her words bubbled back softly in answer.
Grace pressed a hand against the stone top of the well, a promise to return the next evening. In the bright light of morning, she would draw the day’s water in the wooden bucket, but under night’s dark cloak, the well shared her secrets and kept them safely locked in its depths.
She wandered through the garden towards the wooden gate, resting dreamily awhile, leaning her head against her arms. The wind had died down and, despite the cold night air, Grace felt warm, skittish. She blinked and turned her gaze towards the big farmhouse at the top of the hill where the Harper family lived, where her father toiled most days, where she too went to weed crops and sometimes to milk cows. She liked the farmer, Joseph Harper, who was a solid, quiet man, although his wife, Harriet, could be sharp of tongue and stern to the girls who worked for her. But her son, Nathaniel, was the apple of his mother’s eye; he was the reason Harriet was so quick-tempered with any young woman who offered him a smile or a furtive glance.
Nathaniel, at twenty-four, was tall, broad and handsome, with dark hair and deep-set blue eyes. He sported the best leather boots; a sheepskin cloak; a woollen hat and mittens kept him warm throughout the long winter. But now spring was here, Nathaniel wore an open-necked white shirt and breeches that fitted him snugly. Grace couldn’t help the way her breathing quickened when he smiled in her direction, or when he doffed his hat on Sundays after church, standing at the lychgate a distance from his mother’s glance so that he could extend a polite bow and murmur, ‘Good day, Mistress Grace.’
The owl fluttered low over Grace’s head, hooting softly, and Grace looked up. ‘Oh, it is later than I thought. There are but wo days until Lady Day and there is much to do in the house and the garden. I will need to get up early and before church I must go to see Grandmother Bett.’ She glanced up at a tall tree, where the owl was roosting, and waved a hand, then she wrapped her kerchief around her neck, pulling the scarf over her tousled hair, and scurried back towards the house.
She opened the door, rushed through the hall and stepped into the warmth of the downstairs room where the fire still glowed. The tallow candle was flickering, almost spent. Her father’s chair was empty, but his tankard and the pitcher were on the hearth. Grace lifted the tankard to her nose, inhaling the sweetness of the dregs, now cold, and sighed. ‘I am for my bed – this will wait until tomorrow to be washed clean.’ She placed it on the table, then she trod on soft feet up the wooden staircase towards her bedroom, the smallest room in the cottage, nestling beneath the thatched roof, with the small pallet bed covered in a patchwork quilt painstakingly made by her mother some twelve years ago.
The room was in darkness, except for the smouldering embers. Outside the window, a breeze buffeted the thin wooden shutter, and a branch of the blackthorn tree tapped three times and was still.