Chapter Eighteen Parsnips #2
“You are an odd one, Anne,” Alice said. “You sound like a Lutheran, and I’m afraid you will be hanged for heresy.
In the company of others, you should keep such thoughts to yourself.
” Some of Anne’s hair had slid out from her cap, and Alice reached out and tucked it back in place.
“Though I won’t tell a soul you’ve spoken them,” she added mischievously.
“A change is coming,” Anne said. She caught Alice’s hand in hers and held it for a moment. Alice let her. “The true religion. You shall see, Alice. Even here to the fens it will come.”
“You may be right, and I suppose if it does, I can thank you for better preparing me, but, at this moment, we need to pick some parsnips. Come.”
She let go Anne’s hand, nodding playfully to the reedy marsh, to which she walked.
There, she grabbed one of the tall, leafy stalks, and, with two fists, pulled.
Out came the lumpy root of the plant. She held it up, like a prize.
“Now I shall teach you something, Lady Anne. This is a water parsnip,” she explained proudly.
“The root here is the edible part.” She snapped the root off its stalk.
“Come, hold out your skirt and I’ll add it to your bounty. ”
Alice added one after another of the parsnips to Anne’s skirts, joining them with the small pile of mushrooms that dwelled there.
As she worked, she whistled calls back to the birds that sang in the trees and marshy waters.
Here and there, she cracked a joke, as when she held a hairy parsnip root up to her chin and exclaimed, “Look! I’m the old lady in the woods growing whiskers from my chin!
” What a delightful woman, Anne thought.
Here was Alice in her element, finding food, making merry, chattering with birds, not at all concerned with what anybody might think of her.
When Anne’s skirt was full, the two women headed back. Alice again led the way. Anne trailed behind. The more they walked, however, the wearier Anne grew. Eventually, she had to stop and lean her hand against an oak to try to catch her breath.
“Are you well, my lady?” asked Alice. “You’re flushed and sweaty.” Alice walked over and placed a hand on Anne’s forehead. “And hot. Here, give me the vegetables.” Alice moved the mushrooms and parsnips from Anne’s skirt into her own.
“I’m fine,” Anne replied. But she worked hard to pull in a full breath and shivered, as though chilled. “I’m just a bit lightheaded. Perhaps ’tis all the exertion?”
Ahead of her on the path, she thought she saw a man, dressed in black velvet, walking away.
Could it be Cromwell? She rubbed her eyes and looked again.
No, it was just a tree; there was no man there.
She felt dizzy. In her ears, the same buzzing that had overtaken her in the chapel on London Bridge.
“Let’s get you back to Ethel’s,” said Alice, and Anne could hear the worry in her voice. “You do not look well at all.”
When the two returned, Alice emptied her skirt of the mushrooms and parsnips and then she and Ethel helped Anne into the dwelling’s sole bed.
“Here, madam,” said Ethel, fluffing the single pillow and placing it below Anne’s head, “you lie down and rest. The fenlands can overwhelm an uplander. There’s so much nature here, so much splendor.
For some, ’tis too much.” She tucked the blanket up to Anne’s chin and told her to close her eyes.
Anne obeyed, and the sleep that overtook her was dark and dreamless.
—
Anne woke, some hours later, to the sound of children screaming.
Was there a crisis? A fire? No, Anne realized, the children were screaming for joy.
She rolled to her side, still tucked into the warm blankets of the bed, and watched them.
They were playing charades. One by one, each child got up and mimed an action or pretended to be an animal.
The other children shouted their guesses.
The child up now, a girl about the same age as Alice’s daughter, squatted low and strutted about the room, shaking her bottom and flapping her arms like wings.
She darted her head forward in a pecking motion.
“Goose!” Martha guessed.
“Duck!” said Constance.
“Loon!” called the tow-headed boy.
“No!” replied the girl. “I’m not a waterfowl. Do I look like I’m swimming?”
Anne propped herself up on an elbow. “She’s a chicken,” she croaked.
Startled, the children turned and looked at her, letting out another round of screams.
“The dead lady is awake!” Robert shouted.
“The witch has risen!” shrieked Constance.
The girl who’d been pretending to be the bird said, “You’re all bad at this game. I was pretending to be a woodpecker.”
“Now, now,” said Ethel, “she’s not a witch or a dead lady. Are you feeling better, Anne?”
“I’m thirsty,” Anne replied. Sweat beaded on her brow and dampened her undergarments.
“Drink this,” Alice said, offering her a cup of water.
Anne hesitated. “Is it from the fen?”
“ ’Tis from the rain barrel outside,” Alice explained, rolling her eyes. “I wouldn’t give you swamp water to drink.” She felt Anne’s forehead, her touch cool, pleasant. “She’s still hot,” she said to Ethel. “Do you think it could be swamp fever?”
“Maybe,” Ethel said back quietly, so that only Anne and Alice could hear her. “Though it doesn’t usually come on this fast. Didn’t you just arrive in the fens this morning and come straight here?”
Alice nodded.
“I don’t know what this is,” Ethel said. “Likely ’tis something she contracted before coming here. Has she been acting strangely? Has she had dizzy spells? Vomiting?”
“This lady does nothing but act strangely,” Alice replied.
Ethel gave her a vexed look. “I’m not here to get in the middle of whatever lies between you and she. You’ll have to sort that out yourselves.”
Alice blushed. “Sorry. Yes, she fainted two days ago, when we stopped in the church on London Bridge to pray. The priest had to carry her upstairs to his quarters. He loosened her bodice a bit and that seemed to help. Then he fed us a good supper, and she recovered some. She mentioned having heavy courses, and he seemed to think she was weak from losing blood.”
“Maybe,” replied Ethel. “Though this fever concerns me.” She looked over at the children, who were clustered around the table, pushing and shoving each other and laughing.
“Constance,” she called, “fetch me the dried feverfew from beside the hearth so I can make this woman a tea.” Constance untangled herself from the passel of children and brought her minder the herb.
“Now go outside and pick some brookweed,” Ethel instructed the girl. “She can have that with her supper.”
“Isn’t brookweed for scurvy?” asked Alice with some skepticism.
“ ’Tis, but who knows what this lady’s got. We’ll treat for all and hope that something shall take effect.”
Alice nodded. “I’ll go wet a cloth to cool her head.”
By the time Alice came back with a wet rag and Ethel had brewed the feverfew into a rather bitter tea, Anne had sat up in bed, propped against the wall.
The girl from the charades game and the tow-headed boy climbed into the bed with her, snuggling up at her sides as she drank from the steaming mug.
Anne realized how much she had missed the feel of a child beside her, cuddled into her, relaxed, as though just the presence of her body, the body of a mother, of any mother, was a powerful sedative.
A third child, the youngest of Ethel’s brood, tried to climb onto the bed, but her little legs were too short.
She looked about the same age as Elizabeth—two, maybe three.
Anne extended a hand and pulled her into the cozy nest.
“I’m Martha too,” said the child, smiling sweetly at Anne.
“Well, that must get confusing, having two girls named Martha in one home,” said Anne.
“We had three Marthas,” said Ethel, “but one died of fever in April.” Ethel crossed herself and looked down at the floor, wiping away a tear. Alice drew her own Martha to her side and kissed the girl.
“Oh,” said Anne. “I’m so sorry. To lose a child. ’Tis a loss too big to bear.”
“So it is,” replied Ethel. “I hope it is a loss you’ve not had to bear, yourself.”
“No, I haven’t lost a child,” Anne said, then found herself continuing, to her own surprise.
Something about the cozy dwelling, these women, put her at ease.
“But I lost a pregnancy in winter—I was far enough along to tell the baby was a boy, and to be able to make out a bit of what he might have looked like, had he lived.”
“The loss of a pregnancy is still a loss, my lady,” Ethel said.
“I imagine giving your husband a son might have prevented some of his violence toward you,” Alice added, looking at Anne sympathetically.
Anne nodded, for certainly that was true.
“And you, Alice? I hope you’ve not had to suffer the pain of a lost child,” Anne said.
“No,” replied Alice. “I’ve been lucky. I’ve had two babes and two is all I want, and two is what I’ve kept.” She pulled Robert toward her as well, hugging both children.
“Well,” added Ethel, “you’re from strong stock.
Just look at your brother, strapping lad, never one to take sick for more than a day or two here or there, and your good father, still active at his age, tending his little garden and shooting enough geese to keep his family and the next family over flush with meat. Has a keen eye for an older gentleman.”
“Ethel,” said Alice, slyly, “if you want me to ask old Nathanial if he fancies you, or tell him that he ought to, you know you can just say the word.”
Ethel laughed, shooting Alice an embarrassed look. “Alice, you troublemaker! Always have been, even when I was wiping your bottom for your ma, God rest her soul, while she was off to work.”
“Oh, Alice, I’m sorry to hear that your mother has passed,” Anne said, and she was.
“Thank you,” said Alice. “ ’Twas a few years ago. She went peacefully in her sleep. And what of your mother, my lady?”
Anne thought carefully about her answer to this question.
“My mother and I were close for many years. She lived with me and my husband.” This was all true.
Anne’s mother had lived with her at court.
She’d carried Anne’s train at her coronation and cradled the babe Elizabeth in her arms after her birth, cooing at her lovingly.
“But as the marriage soured, my mother and my father cowered in fear because of my cruel husband, refusing to take my side over his. I think they thought to do so to protect my daughter. They both live still.”
Alice looked at Anne intently. “That’s an awful story, my lady. A mother should love her daughter to the end, as you do yours.”
Suddenly, the children perked up and ran to the doorway of the little home. Anne could hear a paddle breaking the water outside and a man whistling. “George! George!” the children shouted.
“George?” said Alice, getting up from the table. “Now that’s a surprise.” She headed out the door. From the bed, Anne could hear her greeting, then chatting with, George. Anne wanted to go out too, but a deep fatigue had settled in her bones. She waited in the bed.
When the two returned, Anne could see George had brought a fiddle with him. “I thought I’d come back,” George said, shrugging, “for a little feast and festivities, and to better know the pretty lady you brought with you.” He winked at Anne, a playful grin on his face.
“George, you’re a scamp,” said Alice. But she hugged him warmly.