Apples and Prayers (5 page)

‘Good luck today and for the future evermore,' he winked. ‘Look, sweet,' he charmed her. ‘I bring bread for your stomach,' and he passed behind her, letting a finger trail across her apron, over her belly.

‘Master Dufflin!' I scolded him and he hopped to one side to avoid the swipe of my dishcloth.

‘Some coal from the forge to light your fire,' he went on.

‘My fire's already lit and only needs stoking,' she said, making her come-hither eyes wider than ever you saw upon a dewy horse, all brown and watery and as deep as the well. 

I nearly choked on my breath. ‘Gracious mercy,' I whispered. Their young affair had already gone well beyond the point of simple courtship.

‘And a coin for riches, so you may never want for anything,' Dufflin finished.

‘What does a girl need of riches,' she said, ‘when she's the wealth of love waiting for her?' 

He reached out a hand to touch her cheek and, with that, their lovemaking was about as much as I could stand. What would have happened if my Lady had come back in upon us at that moment?

‘Right, my girl!' I spluttered. ‘We need… salt…' 

I plucked the word from the air. 

‘Salt… from the larder… down there, right away and fetch me some up.' I was clutching at straws to keep her busy, before her dilly-dallying got the better of them both.

‘But Morgan,' she complained. ‘Must I? Now?' She looked at me in disbelief.

‘Aye, you must, Alford. Now!'

She turned away from me sullenly, to make her way down the cellar stairs.

‘Well met my sweet, this New Year's Day,' she said to him as she slouched out, disappearing down the staircase. No sooner was she from my sight, than she set off on an endless stream of twittering that climbed the stairs from down below like the song of skylarks rising from the meadow.

I myself have never liked to venture into the cellars more than needs be. It frightened me to go down there alone. So much like a crypt. The stairway's dim, even when you carry a taper and I'm too tall for the low ceiling. Many times I've cracked my head upon the low-slung vaults. The smell below is also awful: dank and ripened by the odour of the ordure pit which, on hot days, drifts through the wall from the garden beyond, bringing your stomach right into your mouth. It's no real place for storing food, but that's the only place we have to stock the salt jars and keep them, more or less, dry. Those and the barrels of salted meats. There's simply no other storage space. But it becomes damp in the cellar in the early months and the wretched stuff cakes solid in the barrels. 

It was, perhaps, harsh of me to break the lovers up at that moment, what with so needless a task as fetching salt, but I felt that if I didn't part them there and then, we might have witnessed the very motions of loving performed before our eyes and never mind who's watching.

‘Now, master Dufflin,' I turned to him. ‘Thank you kindly for your visit and all the best to you for the year but, if you wouldn't mind now being on your way and make your rounds, I'm sure you can see we have
work
to attend to?' 

I made that one word particularly clear but, with it, let him have a swallow from the jug of last season's cider, still standing on the table from my Lady's breakfast. 

I like to think he left our door quite satisfied on all accounts. 

If everyone afforded him such hospitality, by the time he'd finished his rounds of the village, he would have been crawling drunk.

Later that morning my Lady hung her New Year's almanac on the great hall's wall. Meanwhile, Alford and I busied ourselves with our essential chores. One pleasant task I undertake each New Year's day is to embroider my Lady a new pair of gloves and a new pincushion for her needlework. One evening after her supper, my Lady gave me back a gift of a pincushion of sorts – a dried Royal Russet speared with rosemary and cloves that she'd prepared herself in hours of leisure. You've tasted nothing like it, not in your God-given days. But mostly there's little time for apple fancies, what with the great load of dusting and scrubbing and all the Holy season's revels near their end. ‘Rake out the ashes if it please you Morgan. Sweep the hearth Morgan. Change the rushes on the floor. The air in the hall needs cleansing, Morgan,' my Lady would tell me, as if I didn't know my own work to take a burning branch of juniper and brandish it around the hall for freshness.

She kept an ordered, open house, my Lady and always shared her husband's generosity and fortune with other landed folk from round the shire. The Barton is the largest of its kind in our district by a good measure. The rooms are spacious and many, with well-lit galleries and wide lattice windows. It makes for busy work with constant cleaning and endless preparation at the hearth, with beef, mutton and pies, venison and river fish, conserves, gingerbread and a sugar loaf to be prepared for table most weeks. As servants, we also ate well and for that I cannot grumble.

My Lord Ponsford came to be the gentleman of the estate by inheritance through his father and with it came some considerable wealth. The Manor has stood since the days of the French Conqueror, my Lady told me in one of her history lessons. That must be some very long time ago, generation upon generation, since I've often been asked to sit and listen to my Lady recite the names of those who've overseen our land these ages past. The roll of names is long:
Guillaume de Quarrenden, Barthelme Dupont, Cerif d'Or
and on and on… not much by way of good English names there, until my Lord's family came to the inheritance.

He himself was a knight of reputation, although he hadn't been involved in actions away from home for some years now. He was a straight-backed man and broad, neither tall and imposing nor short and insignificant, but vigorous, a natural born horseman and an excellent shot with the bow. They said he was able in combat, although a little round bellied. He looked rather younger than he was in truth, with a handsome face, bright eyes, flax hair and a short pointed beard that I was often called upon to trim, or singe with the irons. He was neither handsome, nor its opposite, but gave an air of dignity in his doublet, hose and bombast breeches. I've seen him govern his domain with a strong hand that, while generous, was sometimes exacting, yet never prejudiced. This is, of course, among the fortunes of a Lord, to make decisions lesser men must live by in difficult times as well as fair.

My Lady, in comparison, was always kind and knowing. She played the lute proficiently, to accompany her pretty voice and I often watched her dance, or sing and play. She was as fair a maid of Devon as any in the county's noble houses; tall, demure, well-balanced. Many times I saw her in quiet contemplation in the knot-garden, or wandering beneath the trees of the orchard, as handsome as the day in her dark bell dress, her fitted bodice and fashionable sleeves, a modest veil to shield her ample hair. Because she sometimes treated me with certain confidences, now that Polly was gone, she made it known she wished to learn something of the herbal arts and I would give her counsel on these matters. From roses, lavender and hyacinth, she learned to distil some perfumes for herself. Sometimes we also prepared soothing lotions together, for the headaches she was prone to in the broiling days of summer. It was nigh on impossible for her to withhold her ailments from my eyes, attuned as I am throughout these years of waiting on her needs.

Throughout the weeks of Advent, then of Christmas, my Lady supervised a month of revels. Visitors and guests came by to take part in amusements, in masques of dressing up. But Twelfth Night saw our greatest entertainment. Time for wassailing, time for dancing, time for the Queen Pea and proud King Bean to master our carousal. 

The Barton's yard was made up with proscenium and stage, for a show of mummery. The minstrels played and a scene was put on for the village by the visiting players of Manning and Byerd. ‘Tale Sweet' they called their piece. What with the happy reunion of the main players – two lovers who had been parted by war and strife – the play was aptly named by its conclusions. We had games on the green around the fire, lit early that evening against the sinking cold.

In the hours before the carnival began, sweet Alford and I had made the village supper, hiding charms to find for luck in a pudding we presented to my Lady. The great hall was still finely decked with branches and flowers from Christmas. It would have been no wonder to find birds of the field building nests in there. Following festivities, there would be more work for us, taking down the greenery and turning it back to the earth. But poor Alford, my Lord almost knocked her senseless for trying to take the decorations down early, thinking they looked tattered and beyond repair. 

Far be it for me to pass judgment on his ways, but he could sometimes be like that – too quick to discipline; reasoning only about things after they had passed, much like my own father.

‘If you must take them down a day early – and I tell you you do not! – then turn them back to the soil you stupid, thoughtless girl!' he shouted over and over, as he took a strip off her for trying to burn the branches on the fire. 

‘Burning?' he yelled. ‘You'll bring ill-luck and plague on us all!' 

I came to Alford and helped her pull most of them out of the fireplace, while my Lord stamped up and down the hall. No doubt her deeds had brought sweet Alford bad luck. How was she to know the decorations went out upon the compost heap, behind the barn and not upon the fire, being in my master's service as she had no time to speak of?

Her luck, at least, had altered by evening. I think my Lady must have arranged it, in recompense for her husband's harsh treatment. 

The hall was spruced and wreathed with swags, the old rushes swept out and new ones mixed with sweet dried herbs strewn across the floorboards in their place. My Lady herself looked nothing less than royal in a gown of brocade and red velvet, a satin underskirt, lace ruff and satin cap; a crimson Queen to rule beside my Lord, in his red satin breeches and doublet, cut deep with sashes and sewn with decorations, the crimson King. 

All the village were assembled to see young Alford dressed up as the Queen Pea herself, no longer in her fustian and kersey, but dressed up in the greenest gown, a paper crown with feathered plumes and a dark, beguiling mask. She could almost have passed for my Lady herself, in brocades, velvet and grogram, but for her serving girl's hands, which roughly jutted from the sleeves of her dress. No mistaking those for a Lady's delicate fingers.

And who should be her King Bean for the night? To assist in the choice, my Lord bade me fetch a token from the kitchen. 

‘Good wife,' he began. ‘Young Alford plays the part of Queen, but yet she lacks a King, to complement and guard her.'

‘Indeed, my husband. Then let's choose,' my Lady replied. 

The men in the room looked on hopefully, wishing for their chance to join with Alford, if only for an evening of dances.

‘Hurry to the kitchen, Morgan and bring us a platter,' my Lady demanded, ‘and the choice shall be made.'

‘Yes, ma'am,' I replied and hurried to the kitchen to fetch the platter and the choosing bean, a great dried pea that would serve for the task of deciding her suitor. 

I took the wide platter back to the great hall and presented my Lady with the token.

‘A handkerchief!' my Lord then declared and produced, with a flourish, a long, cream silk from his own sleeve, as if her were a conjuror conducting a show of enchantments.

‘My Lady,' he advised quietly, upon which his wife bowed her head before him, so he might make the silk secure around her eyes.

‘Thank you, Morgan,' she said, taking the bean from the plate. I backed away so she could step forward to the centre of our circle. 

With a flurry, she was spun around three times by her husband and all the assembled began to clap, as her hands reached out to alight on some happy young suitor. For a moment there was scurrying and dodging, a blind grasp here, another lunge made there. But I'm sure she must have taken note of where the blacksmith's boy was standing, before her eyes were wrapped in silk, for she stumbled upon Dufflin very quickly and made her loud pronouncement.

‘I choose this fellow as our King Bean,' she announced, unveiling her eyes from the silk. Dufflin stepped forward in disbelief, flicking his hair from his flushed face.

We dressed him in the Green King's worsted jacket, a calf-length cape of forest colour. It was the perfect match for the young lovers and in view of the whole, engrossed village. 

That evening, Alford and Dufflin sat above the salt for the first and only time in their lives, at the head of the long elm dining table, upon which the evidence of my master's generosity was laid out for all: some leftover spiced beef, spitted rabbits, meat pasties and honey cakes with almond nuts. There was also a barrel of ale, another of cider and a sip at a cup of honeyed mead for each of us, passed around the circle. Then Alford and Dufflin, the King and the Queen, danced for the company with such a whirl, to bagpipes blown and tambours beaten by the visiting players.

When the eating and drinking were finished, my Lord gave the call that took us outside. 

‘Wassail and good health!' he caroused, banging a tankard three times on the table and rising to make his exit to the orchard. ‘To the apple trees you men and women!' 

We cheered and hollered as we spilled out behind him, through the hall and into the coldness of the night air.

How my own good man then proved his mettle. Never has there been a better cider master than John Toucher. John Toucher, king of the Wassail Bowl. John Toucher, lord of the Lambswool. He who carried the great wooden vat of spiced cider from my Lord and Lady's door, with its bobbing boats of toast and crab apples, down to the orchard by torchlight. He who made libations on the tree trunks. He who was a figurehead to lead us. Good John, your year's best moment, your face aglow in lamplight.