The Wilde Flower Saga: A Contrary Wind (Historical Adventure Series)

by Schulz, Marilyn M

  Fluttered off, just like the moth, Kate thought. But by then, she had already figured that the old woman was not about to tell her about the priest who had left the liquor. Maybe it was the one back in the other village, maybe not. If so, she wondered just what the priest had been up to then.

  Kate got the liquor and poured some in a cup. Then she set her small blade to clean off any apple or pitch or cheese from her regular use. Meanwhile she searched for the best of her goodies.

  There were special berries, not quite mature, but still effective. They were precious, from the Caribbean, and she would never waste them on herself for just a blistered hand. Before she left on the excursion, she had bartered some lace hankies from a sail maker in Plymouth who knew their worth—the berries and the lace hankies too.

  The man drove a hard bargain, but he was sweet on a pretty woman who had an eye for pretty things. Kate only had a few berries, but there would be no better day and no better use.

  Still she only used half, crushing them with her thumb there in the palm of her undamaged hand. Kate turned up the lamp, then pulled the blade from the cup of whiskey and held it over the flame. It flared just a bit and smelled a bit acrid with the smoking of something still leftover there.

  She said, “I need a clean cloth.”

  The old woman reached into her sewing basket, handing over what looked to be a napkin for someone’s Sunday dinner table. She said, “I do mending, some sewing for coin. I’ll wash it up before I hand it over. They have the cloth to spare and I don’t. Besides, they will never know the difference.” Then under her breath, “I hope.”

  Kate said, “No, I don’t suppose they will.”

  The old woman inhaled deeply, then again. So did the dog, and Hector rubbed at his nose.

  “What is that?” the old woman said.

  “What does it smell like?”

  She closed her eyes; it was habit. She took another deep smell and let it out slowly. “Cinnamon. Pepper. Juniper. Perhaps clove? Burning spices, nice first, now foul. Hector doesn’t like it.”

  As if to prove the point, the dog began to whine.

  The old woman said, “Off with you then, go and find what trouble Yollie has found once again.”

  Kate chuckled as the dog happily trotted away. She said, “They are berries called allspice, from islands in the Caribe. They help ease all sorts of pain.” She struggled to remember before she began to recite:

  “Allspice in powder for cooking and food,

  but allspice in oil is good for the tooth.

  Use not for babies or old folk it seems,

  and try not to swallow . . .”

  Kate had to stop.

  “Go on,” the old woman said.

  “I haven’t figured out the rest of the rhyme. I am not as quick with words as my mother on such things. I have smashed the berries and will apply them as paste, I think. And there are other things to remember, but I would have to look in my mother’s journal to get the rhyme right. I know what needs to go in, I think.”

  The old woman nodded, “I trust you, and God guide your hand.”

  Kate wiped the blade on the linen, and then lanced the sore on the old woman’s foot. The old woman flinched, and Kate held her breath as she quickly squeezed at the pustule between her finger and thumb. The old woman stiffened, but the thorn shot free, and the wound oozed until it finally ran clear.

  Kate poured part of the whiskey from the cup over the wound, and then gave the rest to the old woman to drink. Then she mixed cinnamon, clove, and some honey from the kitchen with the allspice pulp and packed the crushed berry mixture on the wound. She then wrapped it with the clean linen from the old woman’s sewing basket.

  “We’ll look again in the morning. We might need to lance it, and if it’s worse, then we will have to cauterize it.”

  “It feels better all ready. We have a small lean-to out back. There is a cot with clean blankets and some hay for your mule if the weeds aren’t enough. You will stay as long as you must.”

  Kate went to bed and fell into a deep, quiet sleep. She didn’t dream about terrible things, only floating on a calm sea with the sun upon her and gulls calling out lazily. She heard a “Land Ho!” in her father’s voice, and rolled over with a sigh.

  The next day, bright and early, there were several people already at Nana’s door. Kate didn’t realize that the confession about her goodies would start such a landslide. She spent a good part of the day tending the ills of the local folks.

  During the afternoon, she roamed around the houses and yards, collecting more goodies. Many of the plants were ornamental, not really native for here, but also quite useful. Kate figured with the village being on the pilgrim trail to the shrine, perhaps they got all sorts of things coming through.

  There was plenty of horehound. The leaves and flower tops were used as an expectorant to clear up coughing. She used that with honey to make a kind of lozenge, and showed the old woman and Yollie how to do that. It would help with the old woman’s smoking cough, she hoped.

  There was also juniper for joint aches and pains. She found barberry for pinkeye, basil for intestinal parasites, and many types of mint, which was helpful to ease pain, bad digestion, and inflammation.

  She also found comfrey, which could be poisonous if you ate the wrong parts.

  “Comfrey for poultice and comfrey for skin,

  best on the outside for it kills on the in.

  Comfrey is hardy, the root is quite long,

  it spreads easy and wider, for it’s really quite strong.

  Use the leaves when the flowers bud,

  the roots in the fall,

  but toss out the stems,

  for they make a mess of it all.”

  Kate avoided eating any for she forgot just which parts were edible and which parts were deadly. But she used the roots for external treatment of wounds.

  Pennyroyal repelled fleas, so she made Hector a collar which at first he scratched at. But Yollie liked it very much and made herself a sort of crown of the same. She took to weaving all manner of branches and brush after that, intertwining some with flowers as well.

  There were nettles by the stream, which made good tea for gout. And many of their culinary herbs could also be used for medicinal purposes as Kate had used the French chef’s.

  This was a garden spot, like Eden, Kate decided, and perhaps the hand of God and the goodness of Germaine truly touched it.

  She sighed in contentment as she looked at the now-full pantry in the town’s little church: jars of seeds, racks set for sorting, and hooks draped with bundles of drying plants.

  Mama would be proud, she thought. But Kate suspected that she would not be so welcome if the new priest was still in residence here, for she also learned that while the old Padre was quite tolerant, the new priest was younger and mistook austerity for devotion.

  “Witch, vile harlot,” he would say, and blame her for circumventing God’s will to make everyone suffer. More than just the old woman had said that, and none had spoken of it too loud. Kate dreaded his return and asked the old woman, “When will he be back?” Kate wanted to be gone long before that.

  “Do not know, do not care,” Nana said. “Don’t worry about the pantry, he seldom goes in. I’m not even sure that he knows that it’s there, and even so, what it’s for.”

  Yollie said, “I pray for Nana, but the Padre says she must pray for herself.”

  The old woman said, “I pray, just not to his God.”

  “There is another?” the little girl said.

  Kate pointed to the little boy coming down the walk. “Peres comes to see you, Yollie.”

  Peres was a year or two older and quite a handsome child. He had very dark hair and olive skin, but his eyes were a startling blue.

  “Some Viking raider from a long time ago,” Nana said with a wink and a smile.

  Yollie loved Peres as much as he loved her, which is why they threw stones at one another. They made quite a striking pair as they
often walked side by side. Yollie have woven him a collar of young, thin willow switches and honeysuckle vine, which he had worn for a little while. But she chose to ignore him now and turned her face away from his brilliant little smile.

  “I must move the mule,” she said and bumped into him as she brushed by on the dusty path. The motions made little swirls of dust rise at their feet. He dropped the paper he held, but didn’t pick it up until he watched her go around the corner of the house and out of sight.

  “What have you got there?” Nana said. She could hear most everything, even is she couldn’t quite see it.

  “It is a picture that I made for the lady,” he said and held it out to Kate.

  Peres was the youngest child of many, though most of his nine brothers and sisters were much older and had long ago left home. He was an uncle many times over and took great pride in that.

  His mother was not doing well with her woman’s change of life, and Kate had offered the woman sage, red clover and dandelion tea to help with the instant bouts of heat and sweating. His mother thought Kate should have a shrine of her own.

  But the picture Peres had drawn was of the shrine of Germaine at Albe San Marie. The name was carefully labeled underneath, and Kate knew he must have had help there.

  “You have seen this place?” Kate said.

  The little boy said, “I will take you there.”

  Kate glanced back to the old woman, and the old woman nodded as well. But it didn’t make Kate feel any surer of her path. Was this really the right thing to do?

  She followed the boy, thinking this was her reward for helping these folks. God had forsaken her mother all those years ago, but maybe He wasn’t so cruel after all. Then she thought of her brothers, and her father who had suffered for so long with his guilt. And of Louis dying, which is really why she was here.

  She felt like crying, and they walked along in silence.

  It didn’t take long, less than an hour of slow going in the rocky steep path. When she saw the shrine, she did cry.

  The little shrine, such a pathetic, yet hopeful thing in the landscape here, had been completely destroyed. And worse, the little boy did not seem surprised at the mess.

  The short walls of stones that must have been stacked around the small bubbling spring for over a hundred years had been pulled down and scattered. The large carved wooden cross that had been set in nearby was now burnt so that only charred stubs were left.

  Many smaller crosses, offerings of all sizes, were destroyed: the wooden ones broken and splintered, the metal ones bent and cast away. Some clearly had been hanging from the short and stunted scrub-trees here, but those branches had been singed as well.

  There were other offerings that had been long left: a few poorly-minted copper coins, dried old flowers and petrified rinds of lemons and dried-up apples, other modest tokens that someone held dear. All ground into the dust and stone with a violent vengeance that thoroughly defiled any hopefulness of the place.

  Kate suspected the best and valuable offerings had been taken away. Stolen. Still the spring babbled on, as if nothing had happened around it, as if nothing had been seen or was out of place . . . nothing that mattered.

  Maybe the water was right.

  If Louis had left something here, it was no longer clear what it might have been. Nothing was clear anymore. She dropped to her knees and raked at the dirt, she didn’t know what else to do. The little boy knelt there beside her, and together, they set in a few stones around the stream again, trying to rebuild the shrine.

  It was then she saw a small sort of underground chamber. It had been at the foot of the stone walls at the stream, not far from the large wooden Cross, now charred. The space was only the size of a large book, no more. It was regular, constructed, not just a hole. It was also empty. That was probably where Louis hid something, possibly papers or a book.

  She said nothing to Peres, but the small gapping hole there in the dirt looked very much like her heart felt just now. She had to make this right, but how? The least she could do, the very least, was try to fix some of this damage.

  She began to rebuild the primitive stone walls. Eventually, her fingers were bleeding with the effort. The little boy put a hand gently to her shoulder and said, “Come away. There will be others.”

  It was true, others would rebuild where she had failed. She sighed and put her hands in the stream to wash them, rubbing them slowly as the water flowed and splashed up her arms and onto her face. Very cold, almost painful, and though she still felt deep sorrow—even loneliness for Louis Dumars, for her father, for all her crew who had become her friends—for some strange reason, she began to feel . . . hopeful.

  She sat back, letting the breeze dry her face and hands. The cold was now gone, the blood had been washed away, but the hope remained.

  Peres said again, “Come away, lady.”

  When she got back, Kate accused the old woman: “You knew of this.”

  “I did. We all did. All but the new priest for he is gone, and I doubt if he cares anyway.”

  “What happened? And when?”

  “Weeks before you came, and what happened seems quite plain.”

  “They were looking for something. I think they found it. I have failed Louis.”

  Kate slumped onto the porch step beside the old woman’s chair.

  The old woman just shook her head. “You can only fail yourself in this life, my sweet girl. You are not responsible for others. You are not God to say this must be so, and that must go one way, but this must go another, and all else is meaningless. This is how it is for all of us.”

  Peres sat down next to Kate, his legs sticking out straight on the stairs. He had skinned his knees helping her at the shrine. She reached for her pack and started mixing some ointment. As she rubbed it on, his eyes were searching for Yollie, whom they could still hear singing, but not see.

  Kate started crying, but she wiped the tears away with angry hands. She took out her map then and looked once again. She was glad this was the copy, for seeing Louis blood would have taken her over the edge. How could they do such a thing to something so harmless as the shrine?

  How could they do such a thing to the man?

  If they could do it to a human body, to a living spirit, they could do such things to anything. She sighed, but it came out raggedly. Then a word caught her eye she had never quite noticed before.

  It was in the corner of the map, all by itself, but clear for anyone really looking. It said pax, Latin, which meant peace. The writing was hers, but did she make it from the heavy thoughts in her mind when she copied, or was it copied that way from Louis’s original map?

  It was true, she felt at peace here. It was over, her feeble quest, and maybe she had failed. Maybe it was too late for those souls whom Louis cared for, those he wanted to save. But still she felt some sense of finality while that hopefulness lingered on. It felt familiar, though long gone. She had felt it when her mother read to her before she fell asleep at night. The last time she felt this was . . . in the arms of Edward Lindsay when he pulled her from the tree.

  It was Fate.

  “It’s over,” she whispered. “Something better will come.”

  The old woman touched her hair. “Perhaps you are on a pilgrimage after all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Perhaps what you sought was not at the shrine, but in yourself all along.”

  “How can you say that? The shrine has been destroyed, ruined, defiled. The priest will blame me, I’ll wager. They don’t burn witches here any more, do they?”

  The old woman shook her head. Yollie came around the house and stood staring at the little boy. He wiped at his knees, as if the ointment only showed his weakness. They said nothing, but he got up and walked past her. She followed him away.

  “She knows what she’s about anyway,” Kate said.

  “She does, but her choices are simple. You still do not understand.”

  “Explain it to me.”
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  “The shrine is a place for those who believe in places. It is no help to those who really believe. There is no need for places for the truly faithful. Did you put your hands in the stream? How did it feel? Cold, cleansing, same as any mountain stream.”

  Kate understood that home was not a place, but home is in the heart. She knew that well enough; she learned it from her father. Maybe Louis had meant for her to find peace in these mountains, with these people.

  A pilgrimage after all, the old woman had said.

  Louis knew she felt guilty as she watched him die. She blamed herself for his pain, even his death, and he knew that too. Perhaps this was a way, a final gift that he gave her to forgive herself. Kate knew that she had to believe that or she would go mad.

  And this time she didn’t have her father, or the O’Malleys, or her crew, or the rest of her family and friends to help pull her from the pit of despair. Kate did cry then. She cried for a long time, finally going around the back of the house to be alone.

  By the next morning, she had decided she would stay in the village for a little while longer. Even from the first, they had not treated her like a stranger. Kate wondered if that was because of the old woman. Was it because of that one little thorn? She grabbed Friendly Jose by the bridle and leaned her head on his nose, scratching his chin as she spoke.

  “Jose, my closest friend Joe, never look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  He shook his head and followed her without being led.

  * * * * *

  CHAPTER 21 - The Papers

  It had been almost a fortnight of waiting. Finally he had to act, it was as much from frustration as necessity. The ship wasn’t anchored out in the harbor, though the storms out at sea affected the waves even here. At least he didn’t have to find a boat and row out himself—hard to sneak up on the water and even harder to get away.

  Not like in the forest, he thought, and then cursed himself for thinking like a Red Skin. He shrunk back into the shadows when he heard a woman laughing, then the sound stopped abruptly.