Alys Clare: The Tavern in the Morning

* * *

The shack now had hangings at its tiny window, and over the door. Mag had been hardier than Joanna was, and, although Joanna was working diligently at toughening herself, she still keenly felt the draughts which whistled and wheezed their way through the many gaps. Joanna also felt a residual need to wash herself, a hangover from her old life, and, while Mag had been content with the cold water of the stream that ran along nearby, Joanna preferred to heat water over her fire and wash inside the hut.

It made Lora laugh uproariously to see her go through what Lora referred to as ‘all that fussing and fretting’, carrying and heating water when there was a perfectly good stream not twenty paces away.

But Joanna knew that Lora, wisest of teachers, equivalent to Mag herself, was well aware how hard Joanna was finding her new life. And how earnestly she was trying to adapt to it. If warming water and washing indoors helped, Lora’s attitude seemed to say, then what of it?

* * *

Sitting outside her shack now, watching the last of the sunlight fade from the clearing, Joanna reflected on how much she had learned in the seven months she had been there.

I can look after myself, she thought wonderingly. Just about. I have vegetables growing in my little patch next to the herb garden. I know which woodland plants I can safely eat, and I am beginning — just beginning — to understand their medicinal uses. I keep chickens, and I know how to snare rabbits and tickle trout. When I have to, that is, for Lora has taught me that all of life is to be respected, and that we only take another creature’s life when it is truly necessary.

But then Lora had also said it was wrong to hesitate, when other factors indicated that there was a real need in the diet for the meat of a fellow creature.

Joanna stretched, putting a hand to her belly. I’m well, she thought. Thanks to Lora, I think I’ve got the balance about right.

Lora had taught Joanna much else besides how to attend to her physical needs. Sometimes, looking back over the months of intensive instruction, Joanna’s head reeled at all the new information she had acquired. Some of the secrets Lora had revealed to her had been, quite literally, breathtaking — Joanna had never even dreamed there were such things in the world.

And Lora, to Joanna’s delight, had pronounced her an apt pupil. ‘Carry on this way, my girl,’ she had said recently, ‘and, come Imbolc, I’ll take you with me to the Great Festival. You’d be ready come Samain, I reckon, but, by the look of you, you and I will have other things on our minds round about then. Aye. Samain night, I reckon.’

Then she had gone, leaving, as she always did, with neither a farewell nor any indication of when she might be back. But she always came back. And that was all that mattered.

‘Come Imbolc,’ Joanna murmured aloud. ‘The Great Festival.’

It was a thrilling thought. Imbolc would be next February, and everyone would get together to celebrate the very first stirrings of the new year’s life, deep under the ground. They would give praise for the coming into milk of the ewes, Lora had said, rejoicing in the distinct swelling of the udders that betokened new life within. They would make a huge fire, and prepare small bunches of the first flowers — snowdrops, crocuses — to wear in their hair. It was only right and proper, Lora said, to dress up to celebrate the Goddess’s return.

And, most important for Joanna, Imbolc would be when she would meet the others.

She was very anxious about that.

‘Don’t you fret,’ Lora had said. ‘Stands to reason you’ll be nervous, and that’s as it should be, being as you’ll be presented to the great and the good of our world. But they won’t turn you away. That I do promise you. You will come to them with honest heart and pure intent, and, besides, you were Mag’s special girl, you were. And Mag’s memory is honoured. Now you’re my pupil, and I will speak for you.’

It was heady stuff. Sometimes, anticipation of the feast haunted Joanna’s dreams.

Just as well, she thought cheerfully, that it’s still four months away. Before it comes Samain.

When, as Lora says, we’ll have other things on our minds …

She stroked her belly again, saying to herself the ritual prayer which she had been chanting, both silently and aloud, several times a day since Lora taught it to her. Lora had understood why she was so desperate, understood and, as was her wont when she supported a desire for something, had instantly offered her help.

Finishing her plea, Joanna thought suddenly of Ninian. Well, it was only natural, really, one thought leading to another. Getting up, she fetched the dark-coloured bowl she used as a scrying mirror, filled it with water and, crouching over it, emptied her mind as Lora had taught her.

Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

This evening, it did.

There he was, and, as he’d been the last time she had seen him, he was laughing. He was with that same red-haired lad again, and they were playing some silly game with sticks, trying to trip one another up by thrusting them between each other’s ankles. Not that Ninian was always playful — once she had seen him on horseback, sitting so erect and elegant, and a voice had said, ‘He has a princely bearing, that one.’

If only they knew!

Ninian looks happy, she thought now. Josse, bless him, has carried out the duty I placed on him more than well.

On one occasion, watching Ninian, she had seen Josse, and that had been almost as hard to bear as seeing Ninian for the first time had been.

She returned to herself — Lora was strict about limiting her far-seeing times, since it took a heavy toll on the strength which Joanna needed for other things — and carefully emptied, dried and put away her bowl, saying aloud the appropriate words of gratitude.

Returning to her seat outside the door of the hut, her thoughts returned to Josse.

Was he happy? She hoped so. It was true, what I said to him, she thought. We would not have been right for each other, and it’s better this way, so that our time together remains a pure and wonderful memory, heartening us when we lie awake, far apart, on a dark night.

He would not have adapted to what I want. To what I am becoming. And, besides, as I very nearly said to him, he had already given his heart away before he and I met. Although I doubt if he knows it.

I understand, now that I have met her.

Her belly suddenly moved of its own volition, and, putting her hand to the little bulge — an out-thrust knee, or elbow — she whispered, ‘Be patient! I know it’s a tight fit in there, but wait only a little longer, and you shall have all the room you want!’

A girl, she thought. You’re a girl. I have prayed for that every day since I knew that life quickened within me, for I should have to treat another boy as I treated Ninian. But a girl, now. A girl is different. A girl I can raise to be wise woman after me.

She murmured her prayer once more.

But, in her heart, she knew there was no need. Josse’s child within her was a girl. There was no doubting it. Lora had said so, and Joanna herself knew it, in her very bones.

I shall call her Margaret, she thought.

I shall love her, care for her, teach her.

Oh, it was such a prospect! Such a miracle, to have conceived, to have carried the baby through the months of pregnancy, to be assured, by Lora and by her own instinct, that both the child and she herself were healthy, well, thriving.

‘A little girl to love,’ she whispered wonderingly.

I won’t ever be alone again.