-JUNE-
The Hertfordshire farmer’s market opened every Saturday morning from the first of June to the end of September, and every Saturday morning, Kells was there, with Florian and Grim in tow. She set up her table with all her potions on display and her money box in a drawer by her right hand. Her looseleaf tea blends sat in jars stacked on a little tiered shelf, colourful flower petals showing through the glass: white and yellow for chamomile, orange for dandelion, purple and blue for lavender, rosemary, and sage, and pink for rosehip and nettle.
Grim snoozed by Kells’ feet for the duration, unbothered by the bustling shoppers or the other vendors as long as they didn’t come anywhere near him. For her part, Kells made easy small talk with everyone who passed, not bothering to upsell her wares when she had a steady stream of regulars bolstered by curious first-time buyers.
“You could make a fortune selling this stuff, you know,” Florian said, sitting on her left, shuffling potion vials into discreet paper bags for every sale. “You just need a busier location and some flashier showmanship.”
“I’m getting by just fine, thanks,” Kells replied. “I’m not interested in going to London, or opening my own shop, or hawking things like a snake oil salesman.”
“But you could be doubling or tripling your income,” Florian said confusedly.
“And doubling or tripling the number of potions I have to make,” Kells returned. “There are only so many plants my gardens can grow, and the ingredients I need to outsource can be hard to get hold of. There’s a whole line of production I have to take into account. I don’t need a great splashy income to live my life as I want it. I’m perfectly comfortable as I am.”
“I suppose,” Florian agreed, baffled by the idea that anyone could be satisfied with the amount of money they had. His parents and friends had never worried about money, so neither had he, but he’d never met a person who didn’t want more of it.
“If you want to line your own pockets, you’re welcome to put the effort in,” Kells told him. “Bring your pen and paper to sell your flowers, or offer portraits, or something. You can use the end of my table. I don’t mind.”
It wasn’t that Florian was yearning for pocket money, but he’d never had to work before, and he was rather enamored with the idea. Perhaps toiling in Kells’ garden had given him a taste for it, or perhaps watching her and the other vendors set up their tables and displays with such pride, like merchants in some medieval marketplace, had given him a more romantic notion of the whole thing.
So, Florian did as Kells advised. On the weekday evenings, he built up a collection of flower drawings, which he brought with him the following Saturday to lift from the paper and bring to life with magic there at the table. His tricks gained him a modest audience, proving popular with the younger crowd, and he sold a few flowers before the parents of said enraptured children asked if he could draw their babies’ portraits instead. Naturally, he agreed, though he felt obliged to charge considerably less than he would at a proper art fair in London, and spent the rest of his morning penning the likeness of various small children as quickly as possible before they bounced off to find better entertainment elsewhere.
Despite his low prices, he collected a nice handful of change by noon when the market closed again, and, all in all, he felt fairly pleased with himself for his first entrepreneurial outing.
“I think once a week is more than enough, though,” he said to Kells as they packed up. “I shouldn’t want to do anything like it full-time.”
“Too many rambunctious children to wrangle?”
“None of them know how to stand still! And the parents don’t have any concept of how long a good portrait takes. It’s not like taking a photograph.”
“Weans barely have the patience for that, let alone sitting for a portrait on a weekend morning,” Kells pointed out. “If portraits annoy you, stick with flowers next time.”
“But they kept asking for portraits,” Florian said sadly. “And they were so pleased when I got them in even the vaguest vicinity of a likeness.”
“Well then, I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“It’s fine as long as I’m working in ink,” Florian decided, after another minute’s thought. “I wouldn’t try portraiture in watercolour — I haven’t got the practice doing skin tones like that — but I can draw a face well enough. On the other hand, my flowers and botanical illustrations aren’t all that impressive in pen and ink. So, as long as I haven’t got any watercolours, I might as well yield to the public’s demands.”
“As long as you’re having a good time,” Kells said dryly. “Are you? I can’t tell.”
“Oh, yes. Spectacular. And look: I drew a little Grim for you.”
Florian shuffled the picture to the top of his remaining paper stack, holding it up so Kells could see. In ink, the dog was a mess of scruffy curls and wispy flyaway hairs, with his nose pointing out sharply over his beard and gentlemanly moustache.
“Huh.” Kells broke into a smile. “You see that, Grim? A picture fit for a king.”
Standing up with his front paws on Kells’ chair, Grim gave the drawing a loud, investigative sniff before returning to the floor, looking at the two of them like he wanted to know what was taking so long to get their things together and get in the car. He was a homebody, through and through, and though he didn’t mind the market, he didn’t care to linger. Kells’ preferences seemed to align with his, in most cases, and Florian certainly wasn’t going to argue with either of them.
That evening, Florian counted out the money he’d made, and then, once Kells had gone to bed, he snuck into the kitchen to find her purse. Since April, he’d stolen three contraceptive potions from her collection, and, if he was really staying until summer’s end, would need to steal at least three more. Those future potions, he planned to take one at a time from her table at the market, where he could, by sleight of hand, sneak the money owed into her box while slipping the potion into his pocket, ensuring that she was fairly compensated without catching onto his need for them.
The previous three, he paid for retroactively. One payment’s worth, he slipped into her purse. Another, he dropped into the jar of loose change she kept on the kitchen counter. And the third, beginning to get desperate for options, as he’d run out of known legitimate money-keeping places, he distributed throughout the cottage, leaving a shilling on the kitchen windowsill, a few in various plant pots, and the remaining pound hidden down the back of the couch cushion. It was a little silly, but it eased his conscience immensely, and when he went to bed, it was with the knowledge that his secret debt to her was repaid in full.
On Monday, Kells went into town for routine errands, leaving Florian in the garden and Grim despondent in his abandonment. When she returned an hour later, it was with an armful of groceries and a set of fine watercolour paints and brushes.
“Don’t thank me,” Kells warned, handing Florian the unexpected gift. “I’m doing this so I don’t have to hear you complain about your lack of them anymore.”
“What do you mean, I can’t thank you?” Florian demanded, scooping up the gifts like being reunited with a long-lost friend. “They’re beautiful. I’m going to paint you more flowers than you know what to do with.”
“I’m not sure I’d know what to do with any amount.”
“You’re in a mood. Is something the matter?”
With a sigh, Kells threw herself into the kitchen chair. “I went to meet my supplier for some of the potion ingredients I can’t grow here. Warmer-climate plants that need to be imported. She says there’s a supply chain issue; the place she gets them from in Spain has been hit with some blight that’s killed off half their crops.” Slumping over the table, Kells rested her head in one hand, rubbing her eyes. “It’s not the end of the world, just a headache while I try to find a new supplier.”
“Awful luck,” Florian said sympathetically, rummaging through the grocery bags to start putting things away. “What’s the plant? Will it affect many of your potions?”
“The Purissima Rose,” said Kells, and recognition sparked in Florian’s memory. “I need it for my contraceptive potions, and the like.”
“Oh dear,” Florian managed, his mouth abruptly going dry. “Those have got to be some of your most important ones.”
“There are other, less effective ingredients to get the job done. I don’t prefer them; the results are less dependable. But, they’re better than nothing, and they should tide my clients over until this gets sorted.”
Florian didn’t like the sound of that one bit. “How long is this blight supposed to last?”
“How should I know?” Kells said irritably. “I’m not a clairvoyant, and nor is my supplier. Best brace for the worst, as in all things.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Unless you know any farmers or horticulturalists with an eye for that specific rose, I can’t imagine.” Lifting her head, Kells straightened up, joining Florian to finish putting the groceries away. “No matter,” she said briskly. “I’ll come up with some alternative for that potion, and the bees have been busy; I’ll have enough honey this year to make up for any lost income. This is just the risk of outsourcing business. Shit happens.”
“Right,” Florian said faintly. “Shit happens.”
There was no reason for him to be upset at the sudden shortage of that particular potion. It wasn’t as if he were depending on it to save him from any unwanted pregnancy, or the sort of debilitating period pain he’d heard of other women suffering. For him, losing the potion would be a minor inconvenience and mild discomfort rather than a real trial to struggle through. After all, he’d only been enjoying its effects for a few months. He’d hardly had time to get used to it; he could readjust to its absence just as easily.
That was a lie, but he repeated it to himself all the same.
Kells’ bees lived in a number of domed hives behind the vegetable garden, hemmed in on three sides by native wildflowers. By mid-June, the flowers were out in full force, lacy stems raising their blooms high above the meadow grass to dance in the breeze, under sun or rain, in a rainbow of colours that attracted butterflies and wild bees in addition to Kells’ own honeybees. They were used to her working among their hives, and were perfectly docile creatures that warmed to Florian immediately.
Florian, on the other hand, wasn’t sure he trusted them.
“Don’t you need a suit and mask to do this?” he asked nervously, the first time he watched Kells remove a tray of combs from the hives to harvest the excess honey the bees didn’t need for their own consumption.
“Not with my bees,” Kells replied, pouring the liquid honey into an enormous pot to take back to the house. “They’ve known me long enough to trust my intentions. I’ve only been stung once in all the years I’ve kept them, and that was due to sheer dumb clumsiness on my part. I deserved it.”
“They don’t know or trust me, though,” Florian said, holding the pot steady and smothering his discomfort at the nearness of so many potential stingers.
“You haven’t done anything to make them mistrust you, either. Here, watch.” Replacing the emptied honeycomb in its hive, Kells took Florian’s arm, bringing his hand up near the hive’s entrance. Trying not to flinch, Florian bit his lip as two black-and-gold striped honeybees buzzed over to investigate. One landed on the back of his hand and the other on his shirt cuff, tapping him all over with their prickly little feet as they got a sense for who and what he was.
“Now they’ll go back and tell the others you’re perfectly harmless, and that there’s nothing to worry about.”
“And they don’t mind you taking their honey?” Florian asked, moving his fingers under the bees’ feet as his nervousness gave way to curiosity.
“They don’t need as much as they make. And they understand that I’m giving them somewhere safe to live. They appreciate that.”
“Do they?”
“Bees are a lot more intuitive than you think. Come out and talk to them sometime. You’ll find them surprisingly good listeners. They give decent advice, too, if you know how to hear it.” Finished with her honey collection, Kells hefted the pot up, hugging it in both arms. “We provide for each other, like neighbours do.”
“That sounds nice,” Florian said tentatively.
Kells snorted, bumping into him as she headed back to the cottage. “You’re their neighbour now, too. It can be as nice as you make it.”
“Don’t try to trick me into thinking you’re living in a perfect utopia up here,” Florian teased. “All your pretty flowers and talk of neighbourly kindness is just trying to seduce me into doing all this endless hard work for you.”
“Of course it’s hard work. Folks like me don’t get to have a nice, peaceful life without working for it every day of our lives. And for the record,” Kells added over her shoulder, “if I were trying to seduce you, you’d know it. No question.”
With a startled laugh, Florian hastened after her, a few curious honeybees bobbing along in his wake.