Free The Hearth and Eagle by Anya Seton Page B

while the doves cooed accompaniment from their cote.
    “I’ve milked Betsey many times, milady,” she said very low, and pulling on the halter, she began to lead the cow up the path from the dock to her wigwam.
    Arbella followed. “Will the animal not be a great care?” she asked gently. “And how will you feed it?”
    Phebe considered. “I’ll arrange with little Benjy, the herd, to take her each day to the common to graze with the other stock. At night I can tether her by my door. ’Twill be well worth it, if I can coax her milk back.”
    “For butter?”
    Phebe nodded, “If I can borrow a churn, but mostly for milk. That will do us good. You too, my lady.”
    Arbella looked so astounded that Phebe smiled. She knew that except on farms neither milk nor plain water were considered wholesome. Arbella like all the gentry drank wines, often diluted. The lower classes drank strong liquor, beer or cider or mead. But milk was considered valuable only for its ability to produce cheese and butter.
    Nor did she ever persuade Arbella to try it. By the time the cow had adjusted herself to her new home and the coarse pasture land on the common so that Phebe’s persuasive handling would fill a night and morning pail, Arbella was confined to her bed again with a mysterious illness. And the
Arbella's
physician Mr. Gager was in attendance.
    Those were grim days that set in after the middle of July. Many were sick besides the Lady Arbella, some with the ship fever which swelled mouths, loosened teeth, and sent cruel pains through the body. Others like the Lady herself were afflicted by excessive languor, headache and colic, and these though often able to get about seemed to grow burning hot towards evening, and day by day to lose strength. The weather too ceased to be pleasant. There was much heavy rain. The lanes turned to quagmires. The reed thatching on Phebe’s wigwam leaked in a dozen places, and when there was no rain, the mosquitoes swarmed through the new-made crannies and attacked voraciously. Phebe set her teeth and settled to day by day endurance as she had on the boat. The friendly Naumkeag Indians came and went in town. She had quickly become accustomed to their nakedness and dark painted faces, and she learned to barter with them as did the others. A little of her meal she had exchanged for corn and pompions, the great golden fruit which might be baked or stewed into good food.
    Sometimes she dug clams or made a hasty pudding from the corn, but mostly she lived on corn cakes baked on a shovel over the flames—and Betsey’s milk. She grew very thin, and sometimes felt light-headed, and that the wigwam and the rain and the mosquitoes, the heavy-eyed people in the village, the close pressing forest—and even Arbella lying white and silent in her house, were all painted on smoke. Shifting figures without reality that a strong breath might blow away. Still Phebe had few pains. She even found a way of lessening the surface discomfort from the mosquitoes. On the lane to the common she had spied a small herb, pennyroyal, much like that which grew at home. Well instructed by her mother in the making of simples, she had gathered a horde of it, and distilled it over boiling water. The pungent mint odor, when rubbed on the skin, repelled fleas at home, and did discourage the mosquitoes here.
    She carried some of it to Lady Arbella on one of her daily visits. There was now no need to knock. Molly, the impudent maid servant, was herself ill and lay groaning in the loft. The manservant and the other maid gave only grudging and frightened service, held from actual escape by the knowledge that there was no safe place to go.
    Phebe’s daily arrival was heartily welcomed for she did much of the nursing.
    Today Mr. Gager, the physician, was there, bleeding Arbella. He acknowledged Phebe’s quiet entrance by a curt nod, and went on with his task. Phebe took off her muddy shoes and placing them in a corner of the room, came to the