Free An Appetite for Violets by Martine Bailey Page B

Ladyship said she liked it. I tasted a little of the dregs by offering to carry the posset pot back to the kitchen. It was light and sweet and warmed the body as a brass pan warms a chilly bed. And so, having no other duties that night, I went to my closet and unknotted my bundle and took some sad pleasure in looking over my goods. Not being sure yet what I should write down I began with this list of all I had in the world:
A comb
A petticoat
A flannel gown
My nightcap and another day cap
One shift
A pink ribbon given me by Jem at Chester Fair
Lady Maria’s silver knife on a chain
A Prayer book inscribed by Widow Trotter
A picture cut from a newspaper that recollects my mother’s face
The Household Book called The Cook’s Jewel wrapped in a fustian piece
Quills and ink a gift from Mrs Garland
My sewing bag containing precious locks of hair wrapped in a linen cloth
Stockings and strings
One pound, three shillings and threepence halfpenny
The Red Silk Gown and petticoat given me by Lady Carinna
    Next I wrote the making of the Brandy Posset down. Then, laying down I thought of Jem so far away back down the benighted road and wished sorely I had left him on better terms. But in a few blinks of an eye I slept as sound as a dormouse.

X

    Loveday blinked and then closed his eyes, feeling water stream down his cheeks like unstoppable tears. He was perched on the back footboard of the carriage, shaken by every rut and rock in the broken road. The rain was dripping inside his collar, chafing his old wound so it ached without end. This was the coldest place he had ever known. Sometimes he was sure he would die soon, but his bones did not fail, nor his hair turn white. For some strange purpose his ancestors were keeping him alive in this terrible place.
    He had already been soaked while he waited, standing to attention by the carriage door while the others fussed around. His only moments of warmth were with Biddy. She didn’t call him names but talked to him eye to eye like a friend or cousin. True, her eyes were horribly pale, but they did not, as he had once believed, have the power to penetrate his skull with dangerous spirits. And she laughed with him, teasing him when he talked about home.
    ‘In my country the rain is warm as tea,’ he confided, as they huddled beneath the overhang of a roof, waiting for their mistress.
    ‘You are having me on there, Mr Loveday. How can rain be warm?’
    He told her how he would pick a tray-sized lontar leaf to carry above his head, to shelter from the tea-warm rain. She shook her head again.
    ‘I don’t know how you think it up, Mr Loveday. Sheltering under a leaf. You must think I were born yesterday.’
    Mr Loveday. He liked that. It made him feel for a moment like a solid man and not a fluttering ghost. Then she reached out and touched his arm. Leaning back against the dripping carriage Loveday’s eyes grew suddenly hot. It was the first time since passing to this strange world that any person had reached out to him in friendship. He could still feel Biddy’s fingers on his arm, and it warmed him more than a thousand fires. If only she knew him as he once had been; a hunter, a warrior, a man!
    As the carriage shuddered and swung, the spirit that lived inside him, his manger, felt like a bird caught in a net. Commanding his limbs to balance on the narrow board, he released his spirit to go where it chose. Soon, somewhere else there was rain, pain, and misery – here in the limpid turquoise water the waves sucked and broke, with the rhythmic sound of the ocean’s heartbeat.
    He was hunting with his clan; standing high on the harpoon platform, a warm rush of air refreshing his body each time the boat crested a wave. They were skimming just behind a vast bělelā, a black ripple-edged devil ray speeding beneath the water. Fear and excitement mixed in his veins. It was a monster, the length of three tall men, its wingspan even wider. It was an easy strike – he raised his right arm and