Free The Midwife's Apprentice by Karen Cushman

eyes.
    When the moon shone through the misty clouds and two owls hooted in the manor yard, Edward and Alyce slept, each comforted by knowing the other was safe and warm and sheltered and not too very far away.
    The next day being the day the woolly black-faced sheep were washed before shearing, Alyce and Edward ate their bread-and-beer breakfast down by the river to watch the great event.
    Edward finished his breakfast first. “I’m still hungry, Alyce, and there is nothing about here to eat but grass. Do you know if grass is good for people to eat?”
    “Try it.”
    He did. “It be good for exercising my teeth and making my mouth taste better, but it tastes like… grass, I would say.”
    “Then do not eat it.”
    “What is the best thing you ever ate, Alyce?”
    “Hot soup on a cold day, I think.”
    “Once long ago a monk gave me a fig. It was a wonderful thing, Alyce, soft and sweet. After that I had nothing to eat for three days but the smell of the fig on my fingers. Are you ever going to finish that bread, Alyce?”
    And Alyce gave him her bread, which is what Edward wanted and Alyce intended all along.
    Part of the river had been dammed to form a washing pool. Men stood in the waist-deep water while the hairy shepherds, looking much like sheep themselves, drove the woolly beasts into the water to have their loose fleeces pulled off and then be scrubbed with the strong yellow soap. The river was noisy with the barking of dogs, the bleating of sheep, the calling and cursing of men, and the furious bawling of those lambs separated from their mothers. Edward soon took on the job of matching mothers and babies. He snatched up the bawling lambs and ran from mother to mother until he made up the right pair, whereupon they would knock him out of the way in their hurry to nuzzle each other.
    As the day grew hotter the river looked cooler, and finally Alyce tucked her skirt up into her belt and waded in. The weary men were glad of another pair of hands and soon had Alyce helping. First she held the woolly black faces while they were scrubbed, but one old ewe took offense at Alyce’s handling and, standing up with her front feet on Alyce’s chest, pushed the girl into the water. Alyce, coughing and sputtering, traded jobs with the man who was lathering their backs. Fleeces clean, the sheep swam to the bank and scrambled out of the water, nimble as goats and hungry as pigs.
    By midafternoon they were finished. While Edward and the shepherds drove the sheep to their pens across the field, Alyce stretched and wiped her wet hands on her wet skirt. What a wonder, she thought, looking at her hands. How white they were and how soft. The hours of strong soap and sudsy fleece had accomplished what years of cold water never had—her hands were really clean. There was no dirt between her fingers, around her nails, or ground into the lines on her palms. She sat back against a tree, held her hands up before her, and admired them. How clean they were. How white.
    Suddenly she sat forward. Was the rest of her then that white and clean under all the dirt? Was her face white and clean? Was Will Russet right— was she even pretty under the dirt? There never had been one pretty thing about her, just skinny arms and big feet and dirt, but lately she had been told her hair was black and curly and her eyes big and sad and she was mayhap even pretty.
    Alyce looked about. The washing was done and the sheep driven to the barn to dry off for tomorrow’s shearing. The river was empty but for great chunks of the greasy yellow soap floating here and there. Alyce found a spot a bit upriver from the befouled washing pool, pulled off her clothes, and waded in. She rubbed her body with the yellow soap and a handful of sandy gravel until she tingled. Squatting down until the water reached her chin, she washed her hair and watched it float about her until she grew chilled.
    Alyce stood up in the shallow water and looked at herself. Much cleaner,