“It’s true that some cases are too delicate to receive the full delegation of ladies,” said Agatha. “But they do good work and are not to be mocked, Hugh.”
“Last summer, Mrs. Fothergill gave her prune jam to a dysentery patient and nearly killed him,” Hugh said with a laugh.
“It might have been the bedside lecture rather than the jam,” said Agatha in an equable tone. “But without such visits, many a sickly child would go without beef tea and milk pudding.”
“My aunt is ever the diplomat,” said Hugh. “When she knows you better she will tell you tales to stand your hair on end.”
“Dr. Lawton has been visiting old Maria Stokes for several years,” said Agatha. “She is considered a healer among Romanies in the county, and Dr. Lawton sometimes asks me to bring her supplies. They don’t trust most people.”
“Dr. Lawton is the only doctor for miles who will come to them,” said Hugh. “And none of the other ladies would stoop to visit.” The small clan of Romanies showed up reliably every summer to camp in Little Hollow and work the various harvests, beginning with strawberries and ending with the hops. Then they left as quietly as they came, and Hugh had often wondered why no one seemed to know what paths they took, or to what distant parts they traveled.
“The farmers could not do without their help,” said Agatha. “But most of the town treats them like thieves and vagabonds.”
“You do not think them thieves?” asked Beatrice.
“Dr. Lawton jokes that the Stokeses’ annual arrival is the start of the poaching season for locals,” said Hugh. “He says when they start blaming a Gypsy you can be sure they have a rabbit stuffed down each trouser leg.”
“Hugh!” said Agatha. “There’s no need to be crude.”
“Sorry,” said Hugh.
“The truth is that I would not leave my silver lying about when any stranger comes selling heather at the back door,” said Agatha. “But they are no less Christian than Bettina Fothergill, and Maria Stokes is a particularly impressive woman. Were she not a Romany she would have made a fine district nurse.”
—
Little Hollow was well hidden from the road by a slight fold in the cliffs from which the road turned away. Beatrice noticed that Hugh had some difficulty finding the narrow dirt path and coaxing the nervous horse between thick trees and undergrowth. In a small clearing, two lean dogs emerged barking from under a dark wooden caravan with a black tar roof. A shaggy horse tethered to a long rope looked sideways from one large eye but did not bother to take his mouth from the long grass. The old woman sitting on the caravan steps was as wizened as a dried apple and, though the day was hot, was wrapped in several shawls. Yet her hands were swiftly stripping lavender buds from their stalks into her apron while her eyes, squinting from the smoke of a black pipe, met Beatrice’s with a piercing stare. Nearby, an iron pot sat on a tripod above a small, smoky fire and a small child slept on a straw pallet under a primitive tent of canvas draped over bent tree branches. Further down the path, a glimpse of another caravan roof and the smoke of another fire indicated others were nearby.
Calling the dogs to heel by some strange word, the old woman carefully shook the contents of her apron into a basket and stepped forward to meet them as Hugh helped his aunt down from the trap.
“Good day, Mrs. Stokes,” said Agatha. “How is the poor child?”
“Middlin’ fair,” said Mrs. Stokes. She looked pointedly up at Beatrice.
“Glad to hear it,” said Agatha. “I have brought you some of my cook’s best junket and some beef jelly.” Mrs. Stokes said nothing but continued to stare at Beatrice in silence.
“We rescued our young friend, Miss Nash, along our way,” Agatha continued. Beatrice thought she detected a note of uncertainty in Agatha’s voice, as if she were conscious that bringing Beatrice might undo some delicate relationship. “She fell off a bicycle and banged her ankle quite severely.”
“We would be grateful for your assistance,” said Hugh. “I want to get the swelling down and we are far from home.”
“Best be setting her down then,” said Mrs. Stokes. She pointed at a fallen log set beside the caravan. It was covered with a thin cotton rag rug, the colors almost washed and beaten out of it. “I’ll have the boy see to the horse.” With that she set off towards her caravan without a backward glance. Agatha was left to hoist the baskets of food, and Beatrice had to submit once again to the less than dignified operation of being lifted down from the trap and carried by Hugh.
The ankle’s throb had merged into a continuous ache, and Beatrice felt her boot like a vise squeezing at the leg. She sat down and bent to undo the long rows of laces, but her ankle was so swollen that the pressure of her fingers on the tight knot made her flinch.
“It hurts,” she whispered.
“The boot needs to come off,” said Hugh. “Aunt Agatha, hold her comfortably please and I’ll do it.” Agatha sat on the log beside her, and Beatrice felt the pressure of her enfolding arms.
“I’ve got you,” she said. As Beatrice turned her face, like a child, into Agatha’s broad bosom, she could not hold back a sudden welling of tears. She could only hope they would think it from the pain and not the exquisite and almost forgotten sensation of being held. It had been so long since her father’s last embrace, reduced to a tentative stroking of her hair, his hands papery and blue-veined. In the months since his death, she now understood, she had enjoyed no human touch beyond the occasional shaking of gloved hands.
Agatha supported her while Hugh, with no thought for his clothes, sat cross-legged on the ground and took her foot gently across his lap, stripping off his driving gloves to work the stubborn leather laces through their tiny brass grommets. Beatrice felt pain and then relief as, inch by inch, the boot released its grip from her flesh.
“I’m going to manipulate the foot now to make sure it is not broken,” said Hugh. His voice was low and kind. She could feel his warm fingers through her thin lisle stockings, pressing gently as he moved her foot slowly in multiple directions. “I don’t think it’s broken.”
“We’ll be needing to get that stocking off,” said Maria Stokes, coming back with a boy who carried two large buckets of water on a yoke as if they weighed nothing. The lean dogs gave him a raucous welcome, and Beatrice recognized, with some shock, that it was Snout, the boy she was to tutor. He seemed not at all pleased to see her. He set down the buckets hard enough to make the water slop.
“I’ll want to look at the bruise before we bind it up,” said Hugh.
“I’m sure you will,” said Maria Stokes in a way that made young Snout grin and Hugh Grange turn red.
“Well, perhaps if Snout will see to the horse, I should check on the child,” said Hugh. He handed the boy a coin, and Snout whistled to the dogs and slopped away to the trap with one of the buckets.
—
Beatrice soaked her foot in the cold spring water and drank strong, hot tea out of a porcelain cup and saucer which, though of florid design, were edged thickly with gold and obviously costly. Maria Stokes preferred to drink from a large tin mug she kept at her belt. When the tea was done, the ankle was examined in Maria Stokes’s rough hands and pronounced to be only badly bruised.
“I got a salve for that if ’ee care to take it,” she said.
“Oh, I’m sure…” began Beatrice.
“That would be most kind,” said Hugh, as he returned to them and peered at the ankle from a respectable distance. “Mrs. Stokes is famous for her remedies.” And so Maria Stokes produced from her caravan a small wax-sealed jar of a thick, pine-scented salve, spread it liberally on Beatrice’s rapidly darkening bruise, and covered it in tidy fashion with rough strips of linen bandage.
“It’s quite pungent,” said Hugh, who peered with a frown of professional interest at Maria’s ministrations. “Do I smell rosemary?”
“Maybe you do,” said Maria. “Be sure to use it dawn and dusk,” she added to Beatrice.