Виктория Холт - The legend of the seventh virgin

"What brought you to me?" she asked.

"Chance?"

She shook her head. "It was a long way for little ones to come, but you didn't doubt you'd find your Granny, did you? You knew if you went on walking far enough you'd come to her, didn't 'ee now?"

I nodded.

She was smiling as though she had answered my question.

"I'm thirsty, lovey," she said. "Gk) get me a thimbleful of my sloe gin."

I went into the cottage. There was only one room in Granny Bee's cottage, although a storehouse had been built on and it was in this that she brewed her concoctions and often received her clients. The room was our bedroom, and living room. There was a story about it; it had been built by Pedro Balencio, Granny Bee's husband, who was called Pedro Bee because the Cornish people couldn't pronounce his name and weren't going to try. Granny told me how it had been put up in a night to fit the custom which was that if anyone could build a cottage in a night they could claim the ground on which it was built. So Pedro Bee had found his ground—a clearing in the copse—had hidden in the trees the thatch and poles, together with the clay which would make the cob walls; and one moonlit night, with his friends to help him, had built the cottage. All he had to do that first night was make the four walls and the roof; gradually he would put in the window, the door, and the chimney; but Pedro Bee had built what he could call a cottage in a night and satisfied the old custom.

Pedro had come from Spain. Perhaps he had heard that according to legend the Cornish had a streak of the Spaniard in them because so many Spanish sailors had raided the coast and ravished the women, or having been wrecked on the rocks had been befriended and settled down. It's true that although so many have hair the color of Mellyora Martin's, there are as many again with the coal-black hair and flashing dark eyes—and the quick temper to go with them, which is different from the easy-going nature that seems to suit our sleepy climate.

Pedro loved Granny who was named Kerensa—as I was; he loved her black hair and eyes which reminded him of Spain; and they married and lived in the cottage which he had made in a night and they had one daughter who was my mother.

Into that cottage I went to get the sloe gin. I had to pass through it to reach the storehouse where her brews were kept.

Although we had only one room we also had the talfat which was a wide shelf about halfway up the wall and which protruded over the room. It served as a bedroom—mine and Joe's; and we reached it by means of the ladder which was kept in the corner of the room.

Joe was up there now.

"What are you doing?" I called.

He didn't answer me the first time and when I repeated the question he held up a pigeon.

"He broke his leg," he told me. "But twill mend in a day or so."

The pigeon remained still in his hands and I saw that he had constructed a sort of splint to which he had bound the leg. What surprised me so much about Joe was not that he could do these things for birds and animals, but that they remained passive while he did them. I had seen a wild cat come to him and rub her body against his leg, even before she knew he was going to feed her. He never ate all his meals but kept some back to carry about him, for he was certain to find some creature who needed it more than he did. He spent all his time in the woods. I had come upon him laying on his stomach watching insects in the grass. Besides his long, slender fingers that were amazingly clever at mending the broken limbs of birds and animals, he had an extra sense where animals were concerned. He would cure their sickness with Granny's herbs and if any of his charges needed something he would help himself from her store as though the needs of animals were more important than anything else.

His gift for curing was a part of my dream. I saw him in a fine house like Dr. Hilliard's, for doctors in St. Larnston were respected; and if people thought more highly of Granny Bee's remedies, they wouldn't bob a curtsy or pull a forelock for her; in spite of her wisdom she lived in a one-roomed cottage, whereas Dr. Hilliard was gentry. I was determined to raise Joe up with me; and I wanted the rank of doctor for him almost as passionately as I wanted that of a lady for myself.

"And when it's mended?" I asked.

"Well then he'll fly away and feed himself."

"And what'll you get for your pains?"

He didn't take any notice. He was murmuring to his pigeon. If he had heard me he would have wrinkled his brow, wondering what he should get beyond the joy of having made a maimed creature whole.

The storehouse had always excited me, because I had never seen anything like it before. There were benches on each side and these were laden with pots and bottles; there was a beam across the ceiling and attached to this were different kinds of herbs which had been hung up to dry. I stood still for a second or so sniffling that odor which I had never smelt anywhere else. There was a fireplace and a huge blackened cauldron; and beneath the benches were jars of Granny's brews. I knew the one containing sloe gin and I poured some into a glass and carried it back through the cottage and out to her.

I sat down beside her while she sipped.

"Granny," I said, "tell me if I'll ever get what I want."

She turned to me, smiling. "Why, lovey," she said, "you talk like one of these girls who come to me to ask me if their lovers will be true. I don't expect it of 'ee, Kerensa."

"But I want to know."

"Then listen to me. The answer's simple. Clever ones don't want the future told. They make it."

We could hear the shots all through the day. It meant that there was a house party at the Abbas; we had seen the carriages arriving and we knew what it was, because it happened at this time every year. They were shooting pheasants in the woods.

Joe was up on the talfat with a dog which he had found a week before when it was starving. It was just beginning to be strong enough to run about; but it never left Joe's side. He shared his food with it and it had kept him happy since he had found it. But he was restless now. I remembered how he had been the year before and I knew that he was thinking of the poor frightened birds fluttering up before falling dead on the ground.

He had banged his fist on the table when he had talked of it and said; "It's the wounded ones I be thinking of. If they're dead, there's nothing 'ee can do, but it's the wounded ones. They don't always find 'em and ..."

I said: "Joe, you've got to be sensible. Don't do no good worrying about what can't be helped."

He agreed; but he didn't go out; he just stayed on the talfat with his dog whom he called Squab because he found it the day the pigeon whose leg he had mended, flew away and it took the place of the bird.

He worried me because he looked so angry and I was beginning to recognize in Joe something of myself. Therefore I was never sure what he would do. I'd told him often that he was lucky to be able to roam around looking for sick animals; most boys of his age were working in the Fedder mine. People couldn't think why he wasn't sent to work there; but I knew Granny shared my ambitions for him—for us both—and while there was enough for us to eat we had our freedom. It was her way of showing them that there was something special about us.

Granny knew I was worried, so she said I was to go into the woods with her and gather herbs.

I was glad to get away from the cottage.

Granny said: "You mustn't fret yourself, girl. It's his way and he'll always grieve when animals suffer."

"Granny, I wish ... I wish he could be a doctor and look after people. Would it cost a lot of money to make him a doctor?"

"Do you think it's what he want, m'dear?"

"He wants to cure everything. Why not people? He'd get money for it and people would respect him."