Chapter Eighteen Parsnips
Chapter Eighteen
Parsnips
The inside of the hut was cozy and warm.
A bed stood against one wall, a pile of rolled-up mats stacked next to it.
Those must be where the children sleep, thought Anne.
On the opposite wall was a hearth, with a low fire burning, and something delicious-smelling bubbling in a pot over the open flames.
There was also a small table, with two large chairs and four little ones, still cluttered with wooden plates from breakfast.
“I’ve got rabbit stew on for supper,” said the woman. Seeing Anne’s gaze settle on the cluttered table, she added, “Constance, go fetch some water from the rain barrel as I told you to, and wash these dishes.”
A tall girl scampered outside to fetch the water for her chore.
“Alice, ’tis good to see you,” the woman said, turning her attention back to the two women. “And Robert and Martha’ll be glad to have a visit from their mother. Who’s this you’ve got with you?”
“Ah,” said Alice, gesturing toward Anne, who stood awkwardly beside her. “ ’Tis my new friend, the Lady Anne.” She leaned forward and whispered mischievously, “She’s on the run from her husband.”
“Oooh, Anne, like the dead queen?” the woman asked. Anne was surprised that the news of her execution had reached even this forgotten corner of England.
“Yes,” said Alice. “Isn’t that a coincidence?” She shot Anne a loaded look.
“Well, madam,” the woman spoke to Anne, “you’re welcome here. I’m Ethel, and this is my brood.” The woman swept her arms out, motioning to the children who played around her.
“Ethel is a child minder,” Alice explained. “She watches babes for three or four mothers who must leave for work.” Anne wondered what work meant. Were they all prostitutes, like Alice?
“That I do,” said Ethel. “Love ’em all like my own too.” As if on cue, a tow-headed boy came up and threw his arms around Ethel’s ample waist, smiling contentedly and closing his eyes.
“Ethel, I have your payment.” Alice rummaged in her purse, pulling out two crowns and handing them to Ethel, who walked over to a wooden box on the table and placed them inside it.
“We’ll stay the night here, if you don’t mind, and then take the children back to my father’s house in the morning.
I shouldn’t need to leave again for work for a while. ”
“Will we get to see Uncle George?” Robert asked, pulling at Alice’s skirts to get her attention.
“Ah, you’ve just missed him, love, but he’ll be back again to fetch us in the morning.”
“Hooray!” shouted Martha, jumping in a circle around Alice’s legs. “Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!”
“Mama,” asked Robert, grinning, “did you bring us anything?”
“Ah yes, of course,” Alice said. She reached into her purse and pulled out a small wooden fox, which she handed to Robert, and a small wooden winged horse, for Martha.
“This is a Pegasus,” Alice said, kneeling down by her daughter.
“That’s a horse that has wings to carry it wherever it wants to go.
” Anne hadn’t realized Alice had gifts for the children; she must have bought them before Anne joined her.
Martha threw her arms around her mother’s neck and covered her face with kisses. Then she took the winged horse in her hands and zoomed around the little hut, pretending to make it fly from table to chair, chair to bed, bed to hearthside.
“Well then,” said Ethel, “why don’t you take your dark-eyed beauty out and gather some parsnips for the stew.”
Anne looked around herself, wondering for a moment if Ethel meant another dark-eyed woman.
“Don’t call her a beauty,” Alice responded, chuckling, “or she’ll get an even higher opinion of herself.” Turning to go, she looked at Anne and said, “Come on then.” Anne blushed and followed Alice out of the hut.
The island the hut sat on was bigger than Anne had realized, and heavily wooded.
“This is where Ethel snares rabbits,” Alice said as they traipsed through the woods.
Anne ran her hands along the rough-barked tree trunks they passed, noticing the ferns that sprang up along the forest floor, between rocks, and the moss that covered one side of everything.
“That’s how you can tell which way is north,” Alice explained.
“Moss grows on the north side of the trees.” Here and there, downed trees decomposed into richly colored crumbles.
The whole place had a dank, earthy smell that pleased Anne, who’d always been comfortable out of doors, on a hunt or a ride.
The two women walked in silence. Alice led the way, and Anne followed, grateful for the quiet.
Near one fallen pine, Anne spotted a cluster of pale-stemmed mushrooms with amber caps. “Look at those,” she said. Alice turned. “Aren’t they lovely?”
“Yes,” said Alice, “they’re jewel mushrooms.”
“Jewel mushrooms! Shall we pick some and eat them?” Anne asked. This was as close as she was likely to get to jewels in the fens.
Alice laughed. “Not if you value your life, my lady. They’re poisonous.
” Alice looked around. A few feet away, a patch of orange fungi grew, each mushroom fringing out like a veil.
Alice bounded over to them. Anne followed.
“Now these,” Alice said, “are chanterelles. These are delicious, and not a bit deadly. Here, use your skirt to make a pocket, and let’s fill it up.
Ethel will be pleased with these.” Alice picked five or six and deposited them in Anne’s skirt.
“Why not pick them all?” Anne asked. “Surely more would be better.”
“My, you noble folk are greedy,” replied Alice. “If we pick them all, there’ll be none left for later. Ethel doesn’t have another island to pick mushrooms on, another patch of land to annex and call her own. She must live off what’s here.”
“Oh,” said Anne, embarrassed, again, by her lack of awareness. “I suppose I hadn’t thought about it that way.”
“I suppose you hadn’t,” said Alice, standing and dusting her hands off, then continuing down the path.
—
The two walked a short while before they got to a marshy shore on the opposite side of the island. The same reeds Anne had seen throughout the fens grew bountifully here, interspersed with tall, leafy stalks.
“Where are the parsnips?” Anne asked. She’d only ever seen parsnips cooked, on her plate, peeled, buttered, and dusted with herbs.
She had no idea what a parsnip looked like before it passed through the hands of a cook and then a servant and was placed before her on a table set with fine linens, plates, and cutlery, but she was pretty sure they grew in gardens, and no garden was in sight.
“The parsnips are right here,” said Alice, who seemed confused, and pointed to the reedy area, as though their location were obvious.
“Are the reeds a different breed of parsnip?” asked Anne, realizing that her knowledge of the world, so specific to a life of intellectual study and court politics, was relatively useless in the fens.
Even her knowledge of the outdoors, gained mostly through hunting expeditions, was paltry, as those events were organized for her, by someone else.
She just needed to show up, and a horse would be saddled, a basket packed and transported for lunch, a bow strung, ample arrows provided and ready to use, a guide there to lead her through the woods, and servants to carry home her kill.
“Oh, my lady.” Alice chuckled. “What do you learn about with your tutors and books?”
“Well,” Anne replied, “philosophy, theology, mathematics, theories of governance. Of course, Latin and French. And I’ve been reading Tyndale’s English translations of the scripture. Have you read them, Alice?”
“Anne,” Alice said, looking her straight in the eye, her expression amused but also tender, “my question was one asked for effect, and did not necessitate an answer, though your learnedness is impressive, and something I wish I’d had access to, smart as my father always said I was.
But, no, I haven’t read ‘Tyndale’s English translations of the scripture.
’ I don’t know who that is, for one. And, though I have learned my letters some, enough to read and sign a contract or read and write a letter, I do not possess any books, nor can I imagine having the wealth to do so.
Besides, I rather enjoy having the scripture read to me, in Latin, at mass. Preserves the mystery.”
Anne thought, a bit embarrassed, of the large volume of books she owned.
What would it be like to be so poor as to own no books?
Anne owned forty volumes by the French theologian Jacques Lefèvre alone.
Nevertheless, she persisted. “I could recite some of the scripture for you in English, if you’d like,” Anne said.
“For example, listen to the beginning of Genesis: ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth. The earth was void and empty and darkness was upon the deep and the spirit of God moved upon the water. Then God said: Let there be light, and there was light.’ Isn’t that lovely? ”
Alice pondered Anne’s recitation, asked her to repeat it, then went silent, thinking.
“ ’Tis strange, my lady, and makes me a little sad.
‘The earth was void and empty and darkness was upon the deep.’ I think of the sea beyond the fens, deep and wide and terrible.
On a calm day it seems like a person could walk across it, ’tis so smooth, but on a stormy day it can crush a ship like that, and where do the men go who were on the ship?
I imagine the icy deep they sink to being, as you say, void and empty and dark. Sends a shiver down my spine.”
“Yes,” said Anne, “but ’tis also our salvation. The Lord God’s spirit moves upon the water and brings light. We do not have to live in darkness, scared. We can find His glory. ’Tis there for all of us, equally.”