He's at it again.
He’s a clumsy oaf, and indiscriminate, too. If it's green and broad-leafed, he wrenches it from its stems, rips the roots right out of the earth. I don’t know that he sees that purslane’s teardrop leaves are not like the rosettes of lamb’s lettuce, that the pale blush shading the stems of spinach is distinct from the bold scarlet of chard. Lucky for him that rhubarb's not in season. Luckier still for his pretty wife.
She's no plump-cheeked, wide-hipped milkmaid, but slight and fine-boned as a bird. Hair like winter butter, skin like twice-skimmed milk. A swollen belly like a sickness, draining the very marrow from her bones. Her blood must be thin and tired. No wonder she begs him to seek out greens.
I’ve seen him with her at the market, the stall piled high with wares. Pots of thick clotted cream, butter both sweet and salt in stone crocks, cheese in great golden wheels ripened beneath a rind of beeswax. He has a word for each passer-by, but she doesn’t speak. He looks as her desperately, as though he were afraid to look away. As though she might vanish from his sight if his back were turned.
Market day comes once every week in the village square, at the place where the road ends. This was once the last settlement before a hostile border, before the mapmakers brought out fresh parchment and ink, and allies and enemies changed places with the stroke of a quill. There was once a garrison here, and it left an empty watchtower after the soldiers departed. A lasting legacy: an edifice fashioned from great hewn blocks of unyielding stone, a stark column against the horizon.
The road runs all the way to the far west in a long meandering line. There is one village where it passes by a river. There was plague in that village some seasons ago.
It came swiftly and suddenly, like a change in the wind. It carried away the butcher and the baker and the blacksmith and all his brood. The gravediggers worked their shovels until their hands left bloody marks upon all that they touched. After the priest expired, there were no more funeral rites. After the midwife succumbed, there were no longer enough living to bury the dead.
The midwife’s apprentice did what she could. She spooned broth and tea into parched mouths and laid cool poultices on feverish brows. She held trembling hands and listened as cracked lips whispered empty prayers. They perished all the same.
At the end, the village was silent save for the buzzing of the flies. The midwife’s apprentice walked to the riverbank and peered into the water. Her face was no longer that of a child’s. There were new hollows in her cheeks, and her dark hair was shot through with silver.
She stepped onto the road and began walking. She stopped only when the road came to an end.
The old watchtower stood abandoned. Too small for a family, too isolated in winter, too silent save for the howling wind. Nothing but the woods and meadows for company. When I came to the village, I claimed it for my own. The village did not want me, for I could neither bake bread nor sew a seam, and the tavern had no need of another pair of hands. Instead I foraged in the woods, and sold what I could at the market.
He thinks he's being stealthy, the fool, crossing from his back meadows to my garden. As though I would blame wild animals for the crushed lace of the wild carrot flowers and the fragrance of bruised mint. Deer eat all plants, wolves eat none, and only a man embosses the soft earth with the stark prints of hobnailed boots.
When I made my home in the tower, the villagers were wary, but their children weren’t afraid. They came to the watchtower for a glimpse of the stranger. All ragged urchins, the ones too young to work in the fields and too poor for schooling. They came to me, and I taught them to find beechnuts in the woods and trout in the brook. Their families ate the better for it. The children laughed and told me their secrets. Some even called me Mother Gothel.
I did not fear all All Hallows Eve. Only winter frightened me. Still, I had done a steady trade in herbs and nuts, and careful thrift had brought me a goat and a speckled hen. When the children came to me, breathless with stories of bonfires and mulled cider and ghost stories, I felt a thrill too.
There were apples in the woods, and nuts for the taking, and I thought to make caramel apples as a treat for the children. A traveler at the market had paid me a small sack of sugar for a rare basket of penny buns and hen-of-the-woods. All I needed was a little butter.
Butter, though, was more luxury than my purse afforded, and I ate my daily bread and wild onions dry. I had never paid a visit to the dairy before the day I crossed the meadow to the farmhouse.
An iron horseshoe hung above the lintel, and sage grew by the door. Old superstitions. I waited a long while after I knocked. When the dairy farmer’s wife finally opened the door, she did not ask me in, but stood on the threshold. Her hair was unbound and spilled in a long fine fall almost to her knees. Her hands and arms were smooth and soft, as though she had never clutched the heavy dash of a churn or hoisted the wide wooden frame of a cheese hoop. She held a young babe – a son – in the crook of her arm, and she looked at him desperately, though she were afraid to look away. As though he might vanish from her sight if her back were ever turned. Seeing her closely, she was not that much older than I.
I told her I had come for a lump of sweet butter. I had no silver, but I had made a goat's cheese for barter, fresh and sweet, wrapped in chestnut leaves and bound with sedge in the way of the village by the river. She eyed it, and wrinkled her nose in distaste. I told her I could bring her a sack of walnuts or hazelnuts from the woods. She looked at me as though she’d bitten into an apple and discovered a worm.
I pressed on; if she wouldn't barter, would she wait two days, just until market day? I could have silver with which to pay her then. I told her about the apples, thinking that perhaps she would think of her son, and show a little kindness. She pursed her little rosebud mouth and told me she didn't provide goods on credit.
I left. I was upset. More than that, I was angry with myself. I should not have been counting my chickens before they hatched, but I had let myself think about dipping tart apples in coats of glossy caramel and rolling them crushed nuts. I was not so far removed from childhood that I did not remember the rare pleasure of sweets, and I would have joined the children in their delight.
All the same, I made do. I toasted whole hazelnuts with sugar, and the children’s faces were still bright with joy. In the days following, I foraged in the woods, laying in supplies of gingerroot and willow bark for the winter, and so it was several days before I learned that the dairy farmer’s wife had lost her son.
A fever. A fall. No two stories were alike. After his death, the whispers began.
It was one of the children who brought me fresh news, with an honesty that was all the crueler for its innocence. The dairy farmer’s wife had told another story. I had come to her for butter, and she had refused me because she had no more to sell. In my rage, I had cursed her son, and he had sickened and died.
Cursed him to death. A laughable idea. I knew no magic. If I had magic, wouldn’t I be fat and prosperous? Wouldn’t I dwell in a fine house in the village, and not a chilly tower of stone? Wouldn’t I have my own cow - nay, several cows - to give milk for butter?
The villagers didn’t laugh. They called me a witch, and some of the older children threw stones. One of the tavern girls came to me for a love potion. She left, hissing angry words, when I told her I could lance a boil and set a broken bone, but I could no more give her a love potion than I could charm lead into gold. The tower took on a new name. Not the watchtower, but the witch’s tower. Some claimed that I had made my home there because I could perform dark magic in its lookout.
I spent the winter in the tower with my goat and speckled hen, waiting for spring. When the snows melted and the ground thawed, I cleared stones from the earth and turned the soil, sowing seeds and bringing whole plants from the meadows and woods to make a garden. When I brought baskets filled with pea shoots and rhubarb to the first market of the new season, the villagers’ words were kind, their memories softened by the long dark months. A fear that had been banding my chest loosened and slackened.
The dairy farmer’s stall displayed pots of cream quark and muslin-wrapped cheeses, flecked with herbs or rolled in ash. The farmer cut morsels for passers-by to sample, but his gaze kept returning to his wife, his eyes hungry enough to devour her whole. Her eyes were on the crowd, and when she saw me, she opened her mouth. Witch, she called. Stay away. I’ll not let you take this child too.
Then I saw it, the swelling beneath her gown. The farmer’s eyes changed when he looked at her belly, turning hard like flint. As though he could vanish away that swelling if he only wished it hard enough. I am no more a fortune-teller than I am a witch, but I looked at them both and saw nothing but an ill-omened end.
I found my speckled hen with a broken, bloodied wing today. The farmer’s wife stirred up the villagers’ memories, and a stone found its mark. The damage was more than I could mend, and I put a knife to her throat for mercy's sake.
I can still hear him, scrabbling in the dirt. Trampling my radishes and uprooting my thyme. After each and every visit in the night, I've spent the morning mending the damage he has wrought. It wears upon my patience, this petty thievery. He is fat and prosperous, and I could not even begin to beggar him, not even if he paid me twice over for all the harvest of my garden.
If it's a witch they want, it's a witch they'll get. I don’t need to threaten him. If I walk up from behind while holding a knife, still bloody from butchering my poor speckled hen, his uneasy mind will do the rest. If I whisper, he’ll cower and piss himself in fear.
I wonder what he'll do, what he'll say. What might a gibbering man promise me, to deliver his beloved wife from harm?
He’s a clumsy oaf, and indiscriminate, too. If it's green and broad-leafed, he wrenches it from its stems, rips the roots right out of the earth. I don’t know that he sees that purslane’s teardrop leaves are not like the rosettes of lamb’s lettuce, that the pale blush shading the stems of spinach is distinct from the bold scarlet of chard. Lucky for him that rhubarb's not in season. Luckier still for his pretty wife.
She's no plump-cheeked, wide-hipped milkmaid, but slight and fine-boned as a bird. Hair like winter butter, skin like twice-skimmed milk. A swollen belly like a sickness, draining the very marrow from her bones. Her blood must be thin and tired. No wonder she begs him to seek out greens.
I’ve seen him with her at the market, the stall piled high with wares. Pots of thick clotted cream, butter both sweet and salt in stone crocks, cheese in great golden wheels ripened beneath a rind of beeswax. He has a word for each passer-by, but she doesn’t speak. He looks as her desperately, as though he were afraid to look away. As though she might vanish from his sight if his back were turned.
Market day comes once every week in the village square, at the place where the road ends. This was once the last settlement before a hostile border, before the mapmakers brought out fresh parchment and ink, and allies and enemies changed places with the stroke of a quill. There was once a garrison here, and it left an empty watchtower after the soldiers departed. A lasting legacy: an edifice fashioned from great hewn blocks of unyielding stone, a stark column against the horizon.
The road runs all the way to the far west in a long meandering line. There is one village where it passes by a river. There was plague in that village some seasons ago.
It came swiftly and suddenly, like a change in the wind. It carried away the butcher and the baker and the blacksmith and all his brood. The gravediggers worked their shovels until their hands left bloody marks upon all that they touched. After the priest expired, there were no more funeral rites. After the midwife succumbed, there were no longer enough living to bury the dead.
The midwife’s apprentice did what she could. She spooned broth and tea into parched mouths and laid cool poultices on feverish brows. She held trembling hands and listened as cracked lips whispered empty prayers. They perished all the same.
At the end, the village was silent save for the buzzing of the flies. The midwife’s apprentice walked to the riverbank and peered into the water. Her face was no longer that of a child’s. There were new hollows in her cheeks, and her dark hair was shot through with silver.
She stepped onto the road and began walking. She stopped only when the road came to an end.
The old watchtower stood abandoned. Too small for a family, too isolated in winter, too silent save for the howling wind. Nothing but the woods and meadows for company. When I came to the village, I claimed it for my own. The village did not want me, for I could neither bake bread nor sew a seam, and the tavern had no need of another pair of hands. Instead I foraged in the woods, and sold what I could at the market.
He thinks he's being stealthy, the fool, crossing from his back meadows to my garden. As though I would blame wild animals for the crushed lace of the wild carrot flowers and the fragrance of bruised mint. Deer eat all plants, wolves eat none, and only a man embosses the soft earth with the stark prints of hobnailed boots.
When I made my home in the tower, the villagers were wary, but their children weren’t afraid. They came to the watchtower for a glimpse of the stranger. All ragged urchins, the ones too young to work in the fields and too poor for schooling. They came to me, and I taught them to find beechnuts in the woods and trout in the brook. Their families ate the better for it. The children laughed and told me their secrets. Some even called me Mother Gothel.
I did not fear all All Hallows Eve. Only winter frightened me. Still, I had done a steady trade in herbs and nuts, and careful thrift had brought me a goat and a speckled hen. When the children came to me, breathless with stories of bonfires and mulled cider and ghost stories, I felt a thrill too.
There were apples in the woods, and nuts for the taking, and I thought to make caramel apples as a treat for the children. A traveler at the market had paid me a small sack of sugar for a rare basket of penny buns and hen-of-the-woods. All I needed was a little butter.
Butter, though, was more luxury than my purse afforded, and I ate my daily bread and wild onions dry. I had never paid a visit to the dairy before the day I crossed the meadow to the farmhouse.
An iron horseshoe hung above the lintel, and sage grew by the door. Old superstitions. I waited a long while after I knocked. When the dairy farmer’s wife finally opened the door, she did not ask me in, but stood on the threshold. Her hair was unbound and spilled in a long fine fall almost to her knees. Her hands and arms were smooth and soft, as though she had never clutched the heavy dash of a churn or hoisted the wide wooden frame of a cheese hoop. She held a young babe – a son – in the crook of her arm, and she looked at him desperately, though she were afraid to look away. As though he might vanish from her sight if her back were ever turned. Seeing her closely, she was not that much older than I.
I told her I had come for a lump of sweet butter. I had no silver, but I had made a goat's cheese for barter, fresh and sweet, wrapped in chestnut leaves and bound with sedge in the way of the village by the river. She eyed it, and wrinkled her nose in distaste. I told her I could bring her a sack of walnuts or hazelnuts from the woods. She looked at me as though she’d bitten into an apple and discovered a worm.
I pressed on; if she wouldn't barter, would she wait two days, just until market day? I could have silver with which to pay her then. I told her about the apples, thinking that perhaps she would think of her son, and show a little kindness. She pursed her little rosebud mouth and told me she didn't provide goods on credit.
I left. I was upset. More than that, I was angry with myself. I should not have been counting my chickens before they hatched, but I had let myself think about dipping tart apples in coats of glossy caramel and rolling them crushed nuts. I was not so far removed from childhood that I did not remember the rare pleasure of sweets, and I would have joined the children in their delight.
All the same, I made do. I toasted whole hazelnuts with sugar, and the children’s faces were still bright with joy. In the days following, I foraged in the woods, laying in supplies of gingerroot and willow bark for the winter, and so it was several days before I learned that the dairy farmer’s wife had lost her son.
A fever. A fall. No two stories were alike. After his death, the whispers began.
It was one of the children who brought me fresh news, with an honesty that was all the crueler for its innocence. The dairy farmer’s wife had told another story. I had come to her for butter, and she had refused me because she had no more to sell. In my rage, I had cursed her son, and he had sickened and died.
Cursed him to death. A laughable idea. I knew no magic. If I had magic, wouldn’t I be fat and prosperous? Wouldn’t I dwell in a fine house in the village, and not a chilly tower of stone? Wouldn’t I have my own cow - nay, several cows - to give milk for butter?
The villagers didn’t laugh. They called me a witch, and some of the older children threw stones. One of the tavern girls came to me for a love potion. She left, hissing angry words, when I told her I could lance a boil and set a broken bone, but I could no more give her a love potion than I could charm lead into gold. The tower took on a new name. Not the watchtower, but the witch’s tower. Some claimed that I had made my home there because I could perform dark magic in its lookout.
I spent the winter in the tower with my goat and speckled hen, waiting for spring. When the snows melted and the ground thawed, I cleared stones from the earth and turned the soil, sowing seeds and bringing whole plants from the meadows and woods to make a garden. When I brought baskets filled with pea shoots and rhubarb to the first market of the new season, the villagers’ words were kind, their memories softened by the long dark months. A fear that had been banding my chest loosened and slackened.
The dairy farmer’s stall displayed pots of cream quark and muslin-wrapped cheeses, flecked with herbs or rolled in ash. The farmer cut morsels for passers-by to sample, but his gaze kept returning to his wife, his eyes hungry enough to devour her whole. Her eyes were on the crowd, and when she saw me, she opened her mouth. Witch, she called. Stay away. I’ll not let you take this child too.
Then I saw it, the swelling beneath her gown. The farmer’s eyes changed when he looked at her belly, turning hard like flint. As though he could vanish away that swelling if he only wished it hard enough. I am no more a fortune-teller than I am a witch, but I looked at them both and saw nothing but an ill-omened end.
I found my speckled hen with a broken, bloodied wing today. The farmer’s wife stirred up the villagers’ memories, and a stone found its mark. The damage was more than I could mend, and I put a knife to her throat for mercy's sake.
I can still hear him, scrabbling in the dirt. Trampling my radishes and uprooting my thyme. After each and every visit in the night, I've spent the morning mending the damage he has wrought. It wears upon my patience, this petty thievery. He is fat and prosperous, and I could not even begin to beggar him, not even if he paid me twice over for all the harvest of my garden.
If it's a witch they want, it's a witch they'll get. I don’t need to threaten him. If I walk up from behind while holding a knife, still bloody from butchering my poor speckled hen, his uneasy mind will do the rest. If I whisper, he’ll cower and piss himself in fear.
I wonder what he'll do, what he'll say. What might a gibbering man promise me, to deliver his beloved wife from harm?
Golden Couscous Salad
Beets are rich in both folate and iron, both important nutrients during pregnancy. This salad uses golden beets for their color, but normal red beets are fine if you don't mind that they'll turn the couscous pink. I serve this salad cold during late summer, but it can also be eaten warm during cooler months.
(Serves one, with leftovers. Recipe scales up well.)
Preheat the oven to 400F. Scrub two medium-sized golden beets, pierce them all over with a fork, and wrap them in tinfoil. Place them on a baking tray or in a cake tin, and roast for an hour or so, or until the beets are tender when poked with a knife. Uncover them carefully, and set aside to cool. Meanwhile, zest half an orange and cut it into segments.
In a microwave-safe bowl, cover half a cup of couscous with half a cup of water. Let stand until water is fully absorbed. Cover and cook in microwave for five to six minutes, or until tender and fluffy.
 |
| Photo above is not my work. |
Take the beets and rub them to slip them out of their skins. Cut them into dice. Finely chop a quarter of a red onion. Stir the beets, onion, and orange segments into the couscous.
Before serving, stir in a quarter-cup of flaked almonds and a generous quantity of chopped fresh mint. Garnish with additional chopped mint (and extra oranges, if you like.)
Note: If you're making this salad to serve cold, let the couscous and the beets cool completely before combining everything. Add the almonds and mint until just before serving.
