Mary Lavender lived in a garden. That seems really the best way to say
it. The house of Dame Annis Lavender was hardly more than four walls
and a roof, a green door and two small hooded windows. Instead of the
house having a garden the garden seemed rather to hold the cottage in
a blossomy lap.
A long time ago there had been a castle on the low hill above the
cottage. It was a Saxon castle, roughly built of great half-hewn stones,
its double walls partly of tramped earth. Nearly a century had passed
since a Norman baron had received the "hundred" in which the castle
stood, as a reward for having helped Duke William become William the
Conqueror. His domain was large enough for a hundred families to live
on, getting their living from the land. The original Saxon owner had
fled to join Hereward at Ely, and he never came back.
This rude Saxon castle was not what the Norman needed, at all. He must
have, if he meant to be safe in this hostile land, a fortress much
harder to take. He chose a taller hill just beyond the village, made it
higher with most of the stone from the old castle, and built there a
great square frowning keep and some smaller towers, with a double wall
of stone, topped by battlements, round the brow of the hill, and a ditch
around all. No stream being convenient to fill the moat he left it dry.
Here, where the Saxon castle had been, was nothing but a dimpled green
mound, starred over in spring with pink and white baby daisies, and
besprinkled with dwarf buttercups and the little flower that English
children call Blue Eyes. Mary liked to take her distaff there and spin.
The old castle had been built to guard a ford. The Normans had made a
stone bridge at a narrower and deeper point in the river, and Dame Annis
and Mary washed linen in the pool above the ford.
The countryside had settled down to the rule of the Normans with hardly
more trouble than the dismantled mound. Travelers often came over the
new bridge and stayed at the inn on their way to or from London, and
there were more than twice as many houses as there had been when Mary's
mother was a girl. Older people complained that the country could never
endure so much progress. This was a rather remote region, given over
mainly to sheep-grazing. On the great extent of "common" still unfenced,
the sheep wandered as they liked, and they often came nibbling about
Mary's feet as she sat on the mound.
There had been a garden about the ancient castle--several, in fact: the
herb-garden, the vegetable garden, and a sort of out-door nursery for
fruits and berries. The last had been against a southward-facing wall
and was nearly destroyed; but herbs are tenacious things, and the old
roots had spread into the vegetable patch, and flowers had seeded
themselves, until Dame Annis moved into the little cottage and began
to make her living.
Most of the old-fashioned cottage-garden flowers could be found there.
Thrift raised its rose-red spikes in crevices of a ruined wall.
Bluebells, the wild hyacinths, made heavenly patches of color among the
copses. Great beds of mustard and lavender, in early summer, were like
a purple-and-gold mantle flung down upon a field. Presently violets
bloomed in orderly rows in Dame Annis's new herb-garden, and roses were
pruned and trimmed and trained over old walls and trees.
It may seem odd that violets and roses should be among herbs. The truth
is that very few flowers were cultivated in the early Middle Ages
simply for ornament. Violets were used to make perfume. Roses were made
into rose-water and also into rose conserve, a kind of sweetmeat of
rose-petals, sugar and spice packed in little jars. Marigolds were
brought from the East by returning Crusaders for use in broth.
Pennyroyal, feverfew, camomile, parsley, larkspur, and other flowers
used to be grown for making medicine. One of the few herbs which grow
in modern gardens, which the Conqueror found in England when he came,
is tansy. The name comes from a Greek word meaning immortality. Tansy
was used to preserve meat, and to flavor various dishes. There were
also sage, marjoram, thyme, and many other herbs of which Dame Annis
did not know the names. One of the most precious finds that she made in
her digging and transplanting was a root of woad. This plant was used
for blue dye, and was so much in demand that England did not produce
enough and had to import it. It was too valuable for her to use it
herself; she cherished it and fed the soil, planting every seed,
promising Mary that some day she should have a gown dyed watchet blue,
of linen from their own flax. Mary was thinking about that gown as she
sat spinning and listening to the hum of the bees. She knew exactly how
it would be made from beginning to end.
The flax would be soaked in the brook until the strong stem-fibers were
all that were left; it would be hackled and washed and spun and finally
woven by their neighbor, Dame Garland, for Mary's mother had no loom.
This neighbor was as poor as themselves, but they would pay her in herbs
and dyestuffs. The leaves--not the flowers, which were yellow--from the
woad, would be crushed into a paste and allowed to ferment, and finally
made into little balls that would keep until needed.
Neither perfume nor dye could be bought in shops thereabouts, and there
were no factories anywhere for making either. Dame Lavender had been,
before she was married, maid to a great lady who had taught her women
how to make such things out of the plants in the castle garden. Now,
when her husband failed to come back from the wars in France, she
turned to the perfumer's trade as the one which she knew best.
There are a great many ways of making perfume at home. If she had had
a still, Dame Lavender could have made almost any sort of ordinary
perfume, flavor or medicine. In this process, a mixture of blossoms,
spices and drugs, or the blossoms alone, or the leaves, is cooked in a
glass bottle called a retort, with a long glass tube fitted to it so
that the steam must pass through the tube and cool in little drops.
These drops run out into a glass flask and are the perfume. Another way
was to gather flowers when perfectly fresh and put them into a kettle
of alcohol, which would take up the scent and keep it after the flowers
are taken out. Strong-scented flowers or leaves were put with salve in
a jar and covered, to perfume the salve. Dried plants of pleasant
fragrance, mixed with salve, could be left until the scent had been
taken up, then the whole could be melted and strained to remove the
herbs. Each herb and flower had to be gathered at the proper time, and
dried in the little attic. With this business, and the honey which the
bees made, and the spinning done by both mother and daughter, they
managed to make a living.
One day when they were at their busiest an old man came to the door and
asked for a night's lodging. He had a gentle way of speaking, although
his cloak was threadbare, and he seemed much interested in their work.
He knew some of the plants which they had never been able to name, and
told what they were good for. He seemed so old, poor and feeble, that
although she really needed all the money she could earn, Dame Lavender
refused the coin he offered her. She felt that if he fell ill somewhere,
he might need it.
The Norman castle on the hill had not been really lived in for some ten
years. There was a company of soldiers in it, with two or three knights
who came and went, but that was all. It had been built as a fortress,
and was one; and the situation was such that it could not easily be
made into anything else. The baron who owned it was in attendance upon
the King.
Then, one day, a rumor went floating about the village, like the scent
of growing hedges in spring. It was said that the castle was to be set
in order for some great lady; and that she would bring with her two or
three maids perhaps, but most of the work was to be done by the people
of the village. This was rather mystifying. Mary wondered why a great
lady should not rather choose to stay at the nunnery, where the Lady
Abbess had all things seemly and well-planned. It was an old Saxon
religious house and not at all rich; but Mary always liked to have an
errand up Minchen Lane. The lane had got its name from the nuns, who
were called "minchens" a long while ago. Sometimes they sent to get
some roots or plants from the garden of Dame Lavender. She had some
kinds that they had not.
It was nearly certain, at any rate, that the housekeeper at the castle
would want lavender and violets, and Dame Annis told Mary to get the
besom and sweep out the still-room. This was a shed with a stone floor,
the only room they had which was not used for living or sleeping. The
room they had given their strange guest, Tomaso of Padua as he called
himself, was the one where Mary and her mother usually slept, and they
had made up a pallet in the attic.
Mary worked briskly with her besom. It was just such a broom as English
people still use to sweep garden walks, a bundle of twigs tied on a
stick handle with a pliant osier. While she was at work she heard the
gate shut, and saw old Tomaso coming in.
It cannot be said that she was exactly glad to see him. She felt that
they might have all that they could do without a lodger just then. She
spoke to him courteously, however, and he smiled as if he read her
thoughts.
"I have not come to ask for your hospitality this time," he said,
"but to bring your good mother something in return for her kindness."
Beckoning to a boy who stood outside, he opened the gate, and the boy
led in a little donkey laden with the basket-work saddle-bags called
paniers. From these Tomaso took all the parts of a still, some fine
earthen and glass jars, flasks and bowls, and bundles of spice which
were like a whole garden packed into a basket.
"These," he said, "will be of assistance to your mother in her work. I
see her coming now, and I will talk with her awhile."
Mary felt as if the earth had turned inside out when she heard the
outcome of that conversation. The lady who was coming to the castle
was Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of England, and her coming was a
considerable responsibility to every one concerned. She had been found
just ready to join her sons, Richard and Geoffrey, in Aquitaine, where
they were fighting against their father, and she was to be shut up
in this remote fortress, in charge of one of the King's most trusted
knights, until he had disposed of the rebellion and had time to consider
the case. She would not, she declared, spend her days in a nunnery,
and the nuns of Minchen Lane were anything but anxious to have her.
There was a room in the Norman castle which could be fitted up as a
still-room, and it was desirable to have whatever was needed made within
the walls if possible. Would Mary undertake to go there and make herself
useful, either in ways that might aid the cook, or in any other duties
that she saw? The cook was an Italian. The maids of honor were daughters
of Norman-French families. Barbara Edrupt, the wife of the wool-merchant
who owned Longley Farm, was also, it appeared, going to lend a hand with
the spinning and train one or two country girls for the rough work. It
was no small task to maintain a royal lady in fitting state, even though
she was a prisoner. It was more difficult here because there was little
or nothing to do it with, and peddlers, merchants and other purveyors
from distant London or Paris might be a source of danger.
Dame Annis Lavender was rather doubtful, but she had confidence in Mary,
and it was settled that Mary should go. She was to have the gown of blue
sooner than she thought. The flax was already spun, Dame Garland did the
weaving, and she and Mary's mother dipped and dipped again until the web
was a deep exquisite blue like a summer sky. Barbara made Mary a gift of
a fair white linen cap and kerchief. The two girls, Barbara with her
black eyes and hair, Mary with her gold-brown braids and calm blue eyes
and wild-rose coloring, made a pretty picture together.
So at least thought the troubadour who came riding by and saw them. He
was in attendance upon the castellan, Thibaut of Toulouse, and a little
group of maids and pages coming to make ready for the Queen, who was
expected to arrive the next day. Thibaut's wife had been a Provencal
lady, and his daughter Philippa, by whose side the troubadour was
riding, was a trifle homesick for her childhood speech. She was very
glad of Ranulph's company.
As they came past the garden she bent sidewise in her saddle and looked
eagerly toward the gate. "Do you see--there?" she cried. "That is a
Provence rose."
"I will bring you some," the troubadour answered, and a moment later he
was striding toward the two girls among the flowers. They had never seen
any one like him,--so gay, so courteous and so straightforward.
"I come to beg a rose," he said. "Are not these the red roses of
Provence?"
"Surely," answered Barbara. "I brought the bush from my own home, and
gave Mary a cutting. There never was such a rose for bloom and
sweetness, we think. My husband he says so too."
Barbara blushed and smiled a little when she spoke of Robert, and she
and Mary quickly filled a basket with the roses. The next morning
Ranulph came again with the Provencal maid of honor to get more flowers,
and "strowing herbs,"--sweet-scented plants that gave out their
fragrance when trodden upon. The rushes used for floor-covering were
often mixed with these on festival days, and when new rushes were to be
put down the whole might be swept into the fire and burned. The maids of
honor made garlands for the wall, and thus the first breath of air the
Queen drew in her grim, small stone rooms high in the castle keep, was
laden with the scent of the blossoms of the South.
It was a cheerless abode, Mary and Barbara thought. There were no
hangings, no costly dishes nor candlesticks, no weapons or anything that
could be made into a weapon, nor any jewels or rich clothing.
Mary wondered a little that certain richly embroidered tapestries which
belonged to the nuns had not been borrowed, for she knew that the Lady
Abbess had lent them now and then. Philippa could have told her.
"It is well," said the Queen haughtily when she had seen her apartments,
"that they have given me no gold-woven arras for my prison. I think I
would burn it for the gold--if any of these jailers of mine could be
bought perchance."
The captivity of the royal prisoner was not, however, very severe. She
sometimes rode out under guard, she was allowed to walk upon the terrace
and in the walled garden, and she talked sometimes with the troubadour
and with old Tomaso. In one of the older towers of the castle the
physician had his rooms, and here he read in ancient books, or brewed
odd mixtures in his retorts and crucibles. He taught Mary more about the
management of a still, the use of herbs and the making of essences than
she had ever dreamed there was to learn. Physicians in those days might
be quacks or alchemists. Here and there one was what we call an
experimental chemist. Nearly a hundred years later some of Tomaso's
papers proved most valuable to the University of Padua.