They walked in silence for a while until they heard a shout from behind and turned to see a farmer with a wagon piled high with fleeces, his wife sitting up beside him with baskets of cheeses.
“Going to market?” he asked as they paused on the side of the road and turned to him. “Ah, Mrs. Reekie, I didn’t recognize you, out of your way, on the Birdham road. Are you going to Chichester market?”
“Yes,” Alinor said, smiling brightly. “And this is my girl, Alys.”
“Grown like a weed,” he said. “I remember you when you were a little tot. Would you like a lift?”
“Come up and sit on the bench beside me,” his wife said to Alinor. “Alys can go in the back on the fleeces if she doesn’t object.”
“Thank you,” Alinor said gratefully, as the goodwife leaned down and offered a hand to help Alinor up to the driver’s bench and Alys put one foot on the hub band, the other on the spokes, and clambered up.
“Are you selling some of your oils?” the woman asked, looking at Alinor’s basket.
“Yes,” Alinor said. “And buying some lace for Mrs. Miller, if there’s anything good to be had.”
“Terrible dear,” the farmer’s wife said. “I wonder she doesn’t make her own.”
Alinor, knowing that anything she said would be repeated, smiled and made no comment.
“But I suppose they’re doing so well, she can afford to buy,” the woman said.
“I don’t know,” Alinor said levelly.
“Oh, weren’t you there at harvest home? Didn’t we all see the best wheat harvest they’ve ever had? And don’t they sell half of it for profit and send it out of the county? And her yaddering away all dinnertime with Master Walter’s tutor from Cambridge, as if she were as good as him? As if she would have anything to say to him that he would want to hear!”
Alinor blandly smiled again.
“Still, she’ll make no ground there. I hear he’s going back to Cambridge when Master Walter goes. Taking the young lord back there, to teach him all about law or whatever it is that they do.”
“I don’t know,” Alinor repeated.
“Such a handsome man!”
“I didn’t really see,” Alinor said, thinking that the thudding of her heart was so loud in her own ears that it must be audible to the woman sitting beside her.
“You must have done! He went right up to you after dinner. We were all wondering what he had to say to you.”
“He was telling me about Rob. My boy is taking lessons with Master Walter. He is his server.”
“Did you hope that they would send Rob as a companion to Cambridge?” the woman speculated. “Was that why you walked away from him at the dinner without a curtsey? Did you ask for Rob to go, and did the tutor refuse you?”
“No, no,” Alinor said. “Nothing like that! I was unwell. I was so afraid of being sick before the company. I had to get myself home. I begged his pardon and dashed for home.”
“She doesn’t cure her hams properly, for all she’s so proud of them,” the goodwife said. “I felt queasy myself.”
“What brings you on this road, Mrs. Reekie?” the farmer interrupted his wife. “Will you be wanting a lift back this way after the market?”
“No, we’ll take the usual road home,” Alinor replied. “We’re only out of our way because we were visiting.”
“Visiting who?” the wife asked curiously.
“Stoney Farm,” Alinor replied.
“Aha!” The goodwife was thrilled at finally extracting a nugget of gossip. “I saw the two of them dancing at harvest home. They made a lovely pair. Am I to listen for the banns?”
“Yes,” Alinor conceded. “Yes. Alys and Richard are to be married.”
“In our church at Birdham?”
“Ours. St. Wilfrid’s.”
“Well, what a catch for you!” she said with unintentional rudeness. “The Stoney boy! And that beautiful farm. Just as well she inherits your looks, as you’ve got nothing else to offer.”
“I think they’ll be very happy,” Alinor said repressively. “It’s a love match.”
“Best sort,” the man said.
“I daresay Mrs. Stoney’s not too pleased. She’s had a rich match in mind for her boy from the day he was born.”
“She was very welcoming,” Alinor said, praying that Alys, in the back among the sheep fleeces, could hear none of this. “We’re all very happy.”
They got to Chichester within the hour and jumped down from the wagon with thanks.
“Ridiculous old woman!” Alys said, smiling and waving as the wagon rumbled away from them on the cobbles. “And now I stink of sheep.”
“Hush,” Alinor said.
Alys laughed. “Who cares what she thinks? Shall we buy lace first?”
“No, first I’ll sell my oils.”
Alinor led the way to a stall specializing in dried herbs, crystal stones, oils, ointments, and charms. She knew the stallholder well and he greeted her with a leering smile. “Ah, Mrs. Reekie, I was hoping to see you today. Have you brought me something good?”
“A dozen bottles of mixed oils,” Alinor said.
She put her basket on the stall and looked at his stock while he lifted out each bottle and read the handwritten label. “Very good, very good. I didn’t know that you had wolfsbane? You’ve never brought me any before.”
“I found some growing wild,” Alinor said. “And I thought I’d make some oil. It’s a useful physic, but I doubt that there’s much call for preventing wolves on Tidelands!”
“It’s a very potent poison,” he remarked. “Strange to see a wisewoman selling poison in the broad light of day!”
“It’s a cure for fever too. One drop in a big beaker of ale is a mild treatment against fever. And you can use it on a scorpion bite.”
“We don’t suffer from many scorpions in Chichester,” the man said sarcastically.
Alinor shrugged. “I’ll take it back home if you don’t want it. I can use it for treating fevers.”
“No, no, I’ll buy it. It’s good to have it in stock, even if there is little call for it. What shall I give you for the water of aconite and the other oils?”
“Six shillings,” Alinor said boldly.
“Now, now, I have to pay rent on my shop, and a servant to keep the shop. I can’t spare that. But I will give you four shillings for them all.”
“Six shillings,” Alinor insisted. “For the twelve bottles. And the bottles and corks returned to me.”
“You drive a hard bargain,” he conceded. “As a beautiful woman may do.”
Alinor unpacked the bottles onto his stall and he produced empty bottles from a basket at the back.
“Here, I’ll give you a couple of extra bottles and corks,” he said. “For the wolfsbane.”
“Thank you.”
“Bring me some more next monthly market,” he said. “And I’ll buy dried herbs by the ounce, also.”
“I have some drying now.”
He leaned towards her. “Can you make me something to restore manhood?” he whispered. “I have a customer who would be glad of it.”
“I don’t have a recipe for that,” she said, discouragingly.
“You will have, I know you will have. It’ll be horny goatweed and bull pizzle, ginger and something like that, boiled up together.”
She shook her head. “I don’t have a recipe. I can’t get hold of such ingredients and if I could, I would not,” she said. “I don’t do anything of that sort.”
He snorted disbelievingly. “Don’t tell me that you turn away good business?”
“I do,” she said steadily. “I make the herb remedies because I know what they do. The goodness, the God-given goodness, is in the plant, a gift from God Himself. But anything with charming and special words is halfway towards magic. My mother’d never have anything to do with it, and neither will I. She taught me to use the herbs that we all know, and not dabble in things that are mysteries—if they work at all.”
“And you a midwife!” he said nastily. “I don’t see why you would put yourself above the act. You pull the baby out, why don’t you help the father to put it in?”