Mary Brown - Unicorn Ring 02 - Pigs Don't Fly- But Dragons d.pdf - Mary Brown - margozap

Pigs Don't Fly

This one is for my little brother,

Micky-Michael, and my half-sister,

Anna, and their families.

Acknowledgments

Thanks, as always, to my husband Peter, for his care and patience.

Belated thanks—sorry, folks!—to Bobby Travers and his daughter

Joanna for smoothing our way out here.

Thanks, too, to Margaret and Barry Shaw for their help with

Christopher.

I am also grateful to our alcalde , Don Carlos Mateo Donet Donet,

for his assistance and encouragement.

Last, but never ever least, thank you Samimi-Babaloo, my

Sam—just for being yourself!

Part 1: An End

Chapter One

My mother was the village whore and I loved her very much.

Having regard to the nature of her calling, we lived a discreet distance away from

her clients, in a cottage up the end of a winding lane that backed onto the forest.

Once the dwelling had been a forester's hut, shielded by a stand of pines from the

biting winter northerlies, but during the twenty years since she had come to the

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Pigs Don't Fly

village it had been transformed into a pleasant one-roomed cottage with a lean-to

at the side for wood and stores. Part of the ground outside had been cleared and

fenced, and we had a vegetable patch, three apple trees, an enclosure for the hens,

a tethering post for the goat and a skep for the bees.

Inside it was very cozy. Apart from the bed, which took, with its hangings,

perhaps a third of the space, there was a table, two stools, hooks for our clothing, a

chest for linen and a dresser for the pots and dishes. Above the fire was the rack

for drying herbs or clothes, beside it a folding screen that Mama sometimes used

when she was entertaining if it was too cold for me to stay outside—though as I

grew older I preferred to sit among the pungent, resinous logs in the lean-to,

wrapped in my father's cloak, thinking my own thoughts, dreaming my own

dreams, where witches and dragons, princes and treasure could make me forget

chilblains or a runny nose until it was time for Mama to call me back into the

warmth and the comfort of honey-cakes and mulled wine in front of the fire.

Then Mama would sit in her great carved chair in front of the blaze—a chair so

heavy with age and carving it couldn't be moved—a queen on her throne, me

crouched on a cushion at her feet, my head against her knee, and if she were in a

good mood she would talk about Life and all it held in store for me.

"You will be all I could never be," she would say. "For you I have worked and

planned so that you may have a handsome husband, a home of your own, and a

dress for every season. . . ."

That would be luxury indeed! Just imagine, for instance, a green dress for spring

in a fine, soft wool, a saffron-yellow silk for summer, a brown worsted for autumn

and a thick black serge for winter with fresh shifts for each. . . . A man who could

afford those for his wife would have to be rich indeed, and live in a house with an

upstairs as well as a downstairs. Even as I listened the dresses changed colour in

my mind's eye as quick as the painted flight of the kingfisher.

Mama's planning for me had been thorough indeed. On a Monday she entertained

the miller, who kept us regularly supplied with flour and meal for me to practice

my pies, pastry and cakes; Tuesday brought the clerk with his scraps of vellum

and inks for me to form my letters and show my skills with tally-sticks; on

Wednesday Mama spent two hours with the butcher and once again I practiced my

cooking. On Thursday the visit of the tailor-cum-shoemaker gave me pieces of

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Pigs Don't Fly

cloth and leather to show off my stitching; Friday brought the Mayor, who was

skilled with pipe and tabor so I could display my trills and taps and on a Saturday

the old priest listened to me read, heard my catechism, and took our confessions.

Sunday was Mama's day off.

She had other visitors as well, of course, besides her regulars. The apothecary

came once a month or so, sharing with us his wisdom of herbs and bone-setting,

the carpenter usually at the same interval, teaching me to recognize the best woods

and their various properties, and how to repair and polish furniture. The thatcher

showed me how to choose and gather reeds for repairing the roof, the

basketmaker, also an accomplished poacher, instructed me in both his crafts.

All in all, as Mama kept telling me, I must have been the best educated girl in the

province, and she covered any gaps in my education with her own knowledge. It

was she who taught me plain sewing, cooking and cleaning, leaving the

refinements to the others. She insisted that as soon as I was big enough to wield a

broom, lift a cooking-pot or heat water without scalding myself, that I kept us fed,

clean and washed, and throughout the year my days were full and busy.

During the spring and summer I would be up before dawn—taking care not to

wake Mama—and into the forest, cutting wood, fetching water, looking to my

traps, gathering herbs and then home again to collect eggs, feed the hens, and

weed the vegetables. Then I would milk the nanny and lay and light the fire, mix

the dough for bread, sweep the floor and empty the piss-pot in the midden, so that

when Mama finally woke there was fresh milk for her and a scramble of eggs

while I made the great bed and heated water to wash us both; then I changed her

linen, combed and dressed her hair and prepared her for her visitors. Once the

ashes were good and hot they were raked aside for the bread, or if it was pies or

patties I would set them on the hearthstone under their iron cover and rake back

the ashes to cover them.

Once Mama was settled in her chair by the fire it was away again for more wood

and water and once I was back there were the hives to check, a watch on the

curdling goat's milk for cheese, digging or sowing or watering in the vegetable-

patch and perhaps mixing straw and mud for any cracks in the fabric of the

cottage. Then indoors for sewing, mending, washing pots and bowls, followed by

any other tasks Mama thought necessary.

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Pigs Don't Fly

Once the gathering, storing and salting of autumn were over, my outside tasks

during the winter were of a necessity curtailed, although there were still the wood-

and water-chores, even with snow on the ground. There were the stores to check:

jars of our honey, crocks of flour, trays of apples, salted ham, clamps of root

vegetables, strings of onions and garlic, bunches of herbs, dried beans and pulses.

That done, it was time for candle-dipping, spinning, carding wool, sharpening of

knives, re-stuffing pillows and cushions, sewing and mending, mixing of pastes

and potions and repairing of shoes.

Then came the time I liked best. While I dampened down the fire and made us a

brew of camomile flowers, Mama would comb her hair and sing some of the old

songs. We would climb into bed and snuggle down behind the drawn hangings for

warmth, and if she felt like it my mother would either tell me a tale of wicked

witches and beautiful princesses or else, which I like even better, would tell once

more of how she had come to be here and of the men she had known. Especially

my father.

I had heard her story many times before, but a good tale loses nothing in the

retelling, and I would close my eyes and see pictures in my mind of the pretty

young girl fleeing home to escape the vile attentions of her stepfather; I would

shiver with sympathy as I followed the flight of the pregnant lass through the

worst of winters and sigh with relief when she reached, by chance, the haven of

our village, and my heart filled with relief when I re-heard how she had been taken

in by the miller and his wife. Once her pregnancy was discovered, however, there

was a meeting of the Council to decide what should be done with her, for now she

was a Burden on the Parish and could be turned away to starve.

"But of course there was no question of that," said Mama complacently. "Once I

had discovered who was what, I had distributed my favors enthusiastically to those

who mattered, and all the important men of the village were well disposed to heed

my suggestion for easing their . . . problems, shall we say? Of course much was

tease and promise, for there is nothing more arousing to a man than the thought of

undisclosed delights to come. . . . Remember that, daughter. You had better write

it down some time. Of course I was far more beautiful and accomplished than the

other girls in the village, though I say it myself, even though I was four months

gone. I still had my figure and my soft, creamy skin, and of course every man likes

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Pigs Don't Fly

a woman with hair as black and smooth as mine. . . .You would say, would you

not, child, that my skin and hair are still incomparable?"

"Of course, Mama!" I would answer fervently, though if truth were told her hair

had grey in it aplenty, and her skin was wrinkled like skin too long in water. But

she had no mirror but me and her clients, and who were the latter to notice in the

flattery of candles or behind drawn bed-curtains? Besides, those she entertained

were mostly well into middle age themselves and in no position to criticize.

"So by the time the meeting of the Council came round it was a foregone

conclusion that I would stay. It was decided to offer me this cottage and food and

supplies in return for my services," continued Mama. "Of course I laid down

certain conditions. This place was to be renovated, extended, re-roofed and

furnished. I was also to entertain six days a week only: Sunday was to be my day

of rest.

"At first, of course, I was at it morning, noon and night, but eventually the novelty-

value wore off and my friends and I settled to a comfortable routine. Your elder

half-brother, Erik, was born here and three years later your other half-brother,

Luke. . . ."

Erik now was a man grown with a shrewish and complaining wife. Dark, long-

faced, with tight lips, he had teased me unmercifully as a child. Luke I

remembered more kindly. He was apprenticed to the miller and had the same

sandy hair, snub nose and gap-toothed smile. It was obvious who his father was

and he even resembled him in temperament: kind and a little dim.

And now came the part of Mama's story of which I never wearied.

"Some dozen or more years ago," she would begin, "your half-brothers were fast

asleep and I was all alone, restless with the spirit of autumn that was sending the

swallows one way, bringing the geese the other. It was twilight, and all at once

there came a knocking at the door. It had to be a stranger, for there was fever in

the village and I had forsworn my regulars until it had passed. . . ."

"And so there you were, Mama," I would prompt, "all alone in the growing dusk. .

. ." Just in case she had forgotten, or didn't feel like going on. So vivid was my

imagination that I felt the shivers of her long-ago apprehension, imagining myself

alone and unprotected as she had been with the October mist curling around the

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Mary Brown - Unicorn Ring 02 - Pigs Don't Fly- But Dragons d.pdf

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