SUDDENLY IT WAS SUMMER and leaves erupted on every tree and bush in the village, and you could see flowers blooming by the road, in the churchyard, and in the hair of the young girls as they swung down the path to the village square. And just as the world burst into flowers, the midwife’s cottage burst forth into bread—soft wheat bread for dinner and crunchy brown oat bread for supper and crusty rolls to dip into cool ale on a warm summer morning. Even Beetle shared in the sudden blooming of bread and didn’t care to ask why until, her stomach finally full, she found her mind empty and casting about for something to figure out. She hit upon the mystery of the sudden
abundance of bread. Where from? And how? And why?
And as she thought and watched and listened, Beetle noted that the midwife had taken to mysterious errands.
“Beetle, I must to the miller to have my oats ground to flour. Crush the bitter milkwort and boil the wormwood syrup while I am gone.” And off the midwife would go. Without the oats.
Or, “Beetle, I am taking the comfrey tonic to Joan At-the-Bridge. See you finish boiling the goose grease for ointments.” And off the midwife would go. With no comfrey tonic.
Or, “Beetle, I am going to feed the hens. Strain the nettle tea and pour it into clean flasks.” And off the midwife would go, although Beetle knew the last hen had made soup weeks before and the hen house lay empty except for an occasional hopeful hungry dog.
Curious about this unusual behavior, Beetle began to follow the midwife when she went on these errands, creeping behind trees and under fences, careful to keep out of sight, and the cat stalked along behind her, so they looked like a Corpus Christi Day procession on its way to the churchyard— the midwife, the girl, and the cat. Each time, the midwife made for a field near the Old North Road, and each time, Beetle feared to creep closer lest
she be caught, so she could not discover what was happening in the field and whether it had anything to do with the bread.
One bright morning three days before Saint John’s Eve, Beetle said, “Mistress, Meg from the manor dairy has asked for some of your goose
grease ointment, for her legs ache from child carrying and she says nothing soothes like your goose grease ointment. She will pay you four eggs and a tot of butter.”
The midwife, pleased both to be praised and to be paid, sent Beetle on her way, without telling her to return straightaway or setting chores for her to do after.
Beetle raced to the dairy, thrust the greasy ointment at Meg, grabbed the eggs and the butter, tied them in her skirt, and ran by her secret hidden way to the field by the Old North Road. She put the butter and eggs carefully in a hollow log and climbed a tree from which she could see the whole of the field. In no time there came Jane Sharp from the village and, from the other path, with a basket of bread steaming and warm, came the baker. Jane Sharp and the baker fell to such furious hugging and kissing, and him with a wife and thirteen children in their cottage behind the ovens, that the startled
Beetle fell right out of that tree.
The baker caught her by her hair, and the midwife began shouting about how apprentices with nothing to do but spy needed a beating and more work. Then Jane hissed, “And don’t you be telling anyone, Beetle, or I’ll turn you out in the cold again and break both your knees before I do.”
“And who would I be telling, then?” Beetle responded. “I don’t talk to no one but the cat. And he don’t care who you are kissin’.”
With that, which had taken all her courage, Beetle gathered up the butter and the eggs, only one of which had broken, and marched away. The cat marching behind her heard Beetle mumbling, “You do not want to hear of this, for it is not mysterious at all, and was not an adventure, and there are no butterflies in it, or rats or mice or cream or moths, which is all you really care about.”
Beetle muttered to the cat all the way back to the cottage, where she sat in the yard throwing green apples at the cow and waited for the midwife to return and give her a beating and more work.
When the sun was high in the sky, there came the miller running into the yard.
“We need the midwife!” “She is not here.”
“Where is she?”
“I cannot say.” And Beetle could not, for she had promised she would not.
The miller grabbed Beetle’s arm—“Then you, Dung Beetle, will have to do”—and off he dragged her by the arm to his cottage.
“I cannot,” she said. “I am afraid. I do not know what to do. I cannot.”
But he continued grabbing and dragging and soon Beetle was inside the miller’s cottage. At any other time she would have enjoyed the visit, for never had she been in such a luxurious dwelling, with two rooms
downstairs and a loft above and a high soft bed all enclosed by curtains such as the king or the pope must sleep in.
But this was now and not any other time, and on the high soft bed lay a large, pale woman, waiting for the midwife and getting Beetle instead. The miller thrust Beetle toward the bed. “The midwife’s apprentice is here to help you, my dear. Things will go easier now.” And he was gone.
The miller’s wife lay uneasy in her great bed. She grabbed Beetle’s arm and cried, “I no longer want this child. It was a mistake. Make it stop. I will do this no longer.”
“I cannot,” said Beetle. “I am sore afraid.”
At that the miller’s wife’s cries increased in frequency and volume.
Beetle tried to think what the midwife had said at moments like this. “Two eggs and a laying hen” and “Push, you cow” were the words that occurred to her, but when Beetle spoke them they did not have the same effect as when the midwife did.
“By the bones of Saint Cuthbert, they have sent me a nitwit! You lackwit!
No brain! You think to touch me!” Screeching still, the miller’s wife let go of Beetle’s arm and began to throw at the girl whatever she could reach from her bed—a jug of warm ale, half a loaf of bread, a sausage, the brimming chamber pot. The terrified Beetle huddled in the corner as the woman rose from her bed to find more weaponry. Side of bacon. Bowl of stew. Walking stick. Soft felt hat and someone’s breeches.
Half the village, it seemed, then pushed into the chamber to see the cause of the turmoil. The summer sun, the press of the curious crowd, and the
exertions of the reluctant mother-to-be warmed the room to the point that Beetle felt she was in Hell, being attacked by demons, and her screams joined the rest.
Suddenly the door flew open and there stood the midwife, steam rising from her skin in the heat of the room. A pea-and-onion pudding landed at her feet. She was not smiling. “Out,” she shouted. “Out!” she screamed. “Out!” she bellowed, and the room fell empty.
The midwife grabbed the miller’s screeching wife and slapped her— once, twice, three and four times. Beetle lost count. Finally both the screaming and the slapping stopped. The midwife led the miller’s wife back to the high soft bed and, holding her bruised face in her hands, poured a mug of wormwood tea down her throat.
When all was quiet, the miller’s wife began her labors again, and finally, as Beetle told the cat later, “There come a baby.”
It was then the midwife spied Beetle in her corner. “Idiot,” she shouted. “Clodpole!” she screamed. “Nincompoop!” she bellowed. And she dragged Beetle out of the room, across the yard, and back to her cottage, by the very arm the miller had used to drag her away.
Beetle did not mind so very much. She was just grateful to be out of that room.
For weeks after, the midwife called her not Beetle but Brainless Brat and Clodpole and Good-for-Nothing, and Beetle worked twice as hard and talked only half as much, for she feared being turned cold and hungry out of the midwife’s cottage.
