Story: Be a Helper (part four)

Be A Helper

(part four)

All these matters of a household, and the people in it, made difficulties for Bede. He had stuck to not having a servant, in the years following his mother’s death. It was his resolve that commanding a person stole one’s joy and peace. And in the Pocketlands, the itinerant knock tended to be a sprite’s (unthinkable), or a goblin’s of the Reformed Order (who, for their Renouncements, produced a grim, rebuking tidiness). He wanted his mornings to begin with cats, dogs, slow breakfasts, and meanders around the garden.

He had kept a corner of the house to himself, swept it, dusted it, tried not to let books and the Fairy Realm Daily Reporter clutter his chairs…at length, his floors. (This was a fault of needing to fetch the Reporter from his postbox, while only going to town once a month.)

Then Jorinda took over. His kitchen, and larder, and workroom, were under Jorinda’s supervision; also the barn and animals, the smithy and tinkering shed.

Bede had to ask when he sought for things.

“What do you want that for?”

“Oh,” [say the thing had been a sewing needle] “the heel is out in one of my socks.”

“Have another. The sprites have made one hundred and thirty-two scarves, fifty-seven pairs of mittens, twenty-four knit caps, and seventeen pairs of socks. Socks are in scarcity by that reckoning, but you can well afford to take four. Take six.”

If Bede had thought of a slice of cheese and a hunk of bread to eat it with, Jorinda knew better than he the locales of plates and knives, and which loaf needed to be finished, was dry and wanted a slather of honey…

“Honeyed bread is excellent with cheese, but also we have soup, if you have a taste for salt.”

With sprites required to help (even with, Bede might have said), soon they were sitting down. Soon it was growing dark. Then, tea by the fire, and bed.

Jorinda knew the better way, and was brisker setting a job in motion than Bede. Under her management, he lived provided for, without feeling that he did his share of the work.

“You’ll make a hash of it,” was her answer. “Whatever it is. Go dig your herbs.”

Hill farmers are long lived. Once having reached the Age of Contentment, fifty or so, they carry on, young of face and grey of hair. Jorinda might be fifty or a hundred. One day she had left her house, and come to live in Bede’s.

The house sat empty now, the roof out. An accident undiscovered, a spark, had blazed it up. When they’d stood together in the night, hushed not to wake Bunting and Finch, Jorinda had said, “Leave it. I built it myself, but I haven’t got the energy anymore to do the fixing and keeping.”

He could not believe this of her. But the Queen’s Revenue counted the remains’ derelict condition “non-useable for a residence”, and that was boon enough.

His western neighbor was Langham.

North, he had no one…the northern way ran to the Fells. South lay the river, and the road that followed it—through royal meadows, so Bede understood. He made use of its waters, driving down his pony and cart to fill barrels. He made use of the mill, which belonged to Langham. On the road he might see caravans and odd companies of soldiers, who under royal colors never strayed a foot onto the verge left or right, or hailed the farmers they saw watching them.

5

 a Helper

Be a Helper (part five)

(2021, Stephanie Foster)