ENGLISH READING
July

1^st day of July, Feast of Saints Julius and Aaron, British farmers, who suffered horrible physical tortures at the hands of the Romans

I was at Meg's father's cottage before light this day to bring her the gift of my second-best blue kirtle, her only one being old and patched and green, a color sure to bring bad luck to a bride. I then went to the church to await everyone at the church door, where William Steward and I would represent my father on this occasion. Meg said it would bring them great honor and great luck. I think the luck is that my father did not come himself.

Soon I heard the sound of laughter and singing and the strumming of gitterns as Meg and Alf led the villagers up the path to the church. Meg's yellow hair, usually tightly plaited and pinned up so as not to hang in the milk or become tangled in the butter churn, fell loose in a river of gold to her knees. A circlet of bluebells and cowslips and day's eyes crowned her shining head. My blue kirtle matched her eyes. Morwenna says beauty and rainbows soon pass away, but I know for the rest of my life when I look at Meg I will see her like this.

Alf looked much the same as always except he had no flour in his hair.

After exchanging vows at the church door, Alf gave Meg half a penny and kept the other half for him so that, he said, they would always remember they were two halves of one soul. It was very pretty. Then mass and, with church bells ringing, to the alehouse for the bride ale. Since the sky was the same clear blue as Meg's eyes, John Swann had set up tables outside, strewn with rosemary, bay, and the petals of the wild white rose.

The afternoon was gay with music and dancing and much ale drinking, with the pennies paid for the ale to go to Meg for her new cottage.

Now it grows dark and I am in my chamber writing. The party continues and will all night---some will even have bride ale for breakfast---but Meg and Alf have gone home to the cottage God sent them, with help from Perkin's granny and me.

2^nd day of July, feast of Saints Processus and Martinian, Roman martyrs, whose relics cure the sick, reveal perjurers, and cure lunatics

I have been thinking about my own marriage. Once I dreamed of a handsome prince on a white horse decked in silks and bells. Now I am offered a smelly, broken-toothed old man who drinks too much. I would rather even Alf! But it occurred to me that what actually makes people married is not the church or the priest but their consent, their "I will." And I do not consent. Will never consent. "I will not." I cannot bed or wed without my consent, can I? They cannot bind me with ropes and force my mouth open and closed while my father says in a high voice, "I will." I am told this has happened, but even my father could not be so cruel. I will not consent and there will be no marriage. Amen.

4^th Day of July, Feast of Saint Andrew of Crete, stabbed to death by a fanatical Iconoclast

I spent this summer evening lying in the fields, watching stars come out in the sky. Free. Free. Free! After my harrowing days locked away, I rejoice to be free. It was like this:

The evening after Meg's wedding, I encountered my father near the buttery.

"Now we will get on with it, daughter." he said. "It is time to make good your promise and consent to marriage with Murgaw."

"Never." I said. "Your villagers are allowed to marry where they will, but your daughter is sold like a cheese for your profit! Never."

He blinked three times, opening and closing his mouth. Then his face grew purple and he choked out disconnected words: "Meg…cottage…promise… marriage."

"I promised to consider such a marriage, sir, and I did", I said. "I considered it and I reject it. I will not consent."

So there was shouting and slapping and stomping away, which ended with me locked in my prison of a chamber without my inks in an attempt to break my spirit.

Earlier this evening he came to my chamber, the only person I had seen in two days except Morwenna and Wat. Standing in the doorway, he said, "Your mother has prevailed upon me to let you out. You are to go down to supper. You will be quiet, agreeable, and obedient. And you will wed the pig." He left the door open. I am free. And I will not wed the pig.

5^th day of July, Feast of Saint Morwenna an Irish maiden who worked miracles

This morning I strewed the bed with flowers for my Morwenna, who irritates and torments me sometimes but whom I love. Hers is the first face I ever saw.

6^th day of July, Feast of Saint Sexburga, wife of Erconbert, mother of Erkengota and Ermengild

Aelis' baby husband has died and she is a widow without ever really being a wife. Since she met him but seldom, I think mayhap she is none too sad. I wonder if George knows.

7^th day of July, Feast of Saint Willibald, who wrote a book called Hodoeporicon about his travels to Rome,

Cyprus, Syria, and the Holy Land

        My father left this day for London. The manor is already quieter and cleaner, and I can breathe more easily.

8^th day of July, Feast of Saint Urith of Chittlehampton, killed by jealous haymakers

After Mass this day I walked over to Perkin's granny's cottage, now home to Meg and Alf. Parsnips and mutton were boiling on a pot over the fire, making the July day inside the cottage much hotter than outside. The air was gray and smoky; the dirt floor was fresh swept but still dirt; the small straw bed, Perkins mat on the floor and the table where Perkin's granny served meals all her life and was laid out the day of her death were still the only furniture, but the small dark cottage seemed different, somehow lighter and smelling young rather than old. There was such a feeling of love in there, of Meg and Alf and their babies and their grandchildren to come, all together in this cottage living their days together.

Meg offered me some of the parsnip and mutton but all sorts of sad and happy feelings were stuck in my throat like a lump and I knew I couldn’t swallow. So I went home alone to the hall.

10^th day of July,Feast of the Seven Brothers of Rome, martyred with the encouragement of their mother, Saint

Felicity, who was also martyred

I am overhot and as limp as dirty linen. This heat promises a good harvest but sore distresses my mother. I sit each day with her, embroidering clothes for the coming babe and telling stories to take her mind from her body. I fear for her.

12^th day of July, Feast of Saint Veronica, who wiped the face of suffering Jesus with her veil, where His image remains to this day

It is too hot to write. Too hot for cats to even chase mice.

13^th day of July, Feast of Saint Mildred, who became a nun to escape the attentions of an unwelcome suitor.

There must be a better way .

In this heat my mother suffers much from swelling of her legs, which means the baby likely will be a girl. I applied a paste of bean meal, flour, vinegar, and oil, but the dogs kept trying to eat it. So I washed her off and have been rubbing her legs with sweet-smelling oils and singing her sweet songs and it seems to help.

15^th day of July, Feast of Saint Swithin, who wept in Heaven and caused forty days of rain

As I rubbed my mother's legs late into the night, she talked again about her first meeting with my father. I am amazed how soft and sweet her voice grows when she speaks of that big, dirty, rude, greedy, drunken beast. I told her it is as if we see two different men. She said marriage can do that. "Marriage" I said to her, "seems to me to be but spinning, bearing children, and weeping."

Smiling she said, "Marriage is what you make it, Birdy. If you spit in the air, it will fall on your face. Patience, gentleness, and a willing heart will make the most of any union. It helps, of course," she added softly, "if the man you marry is the fine kind of figure that your father…"

God's thumbs, enough of this talk of my father's virtues. She must have caught warble fly from the cows and it has gone to her brain.

17^th day of July, Feast of Saint Alexis, who lived as a slave in his father's house and slept under the stairs

I met Aelis this day in the meadow. She is giddy and relieved to be married no longer. She says when she married the baby duke, her father promised her that if she ever married again she would have more choice about the man. Now that the baby duke is dead and Aelis a widow, she is determined to love and be loved as well as wed. I know she is speaking about George, but I do not know what will come. My aunt Ethelfritha may be a bit mad but she is definitely alive.

18^th day of July, Feasts of Saints Edburga of Bicester and Edburga of Winchester but not Edburga of Minster.

The northern shaggy-bearded pig has sent me betrothal gifts, which I, of course, refused since I will not consent to marry him. He sent me a silver toothpick, a sewing kit, a gauze headdress in a stinking green that is my least becoming color, and a pouch of silver. Corpus bones! His gifts are as unromantic and unwanted as he is. His son Stephen sent me a bronze knife engraved on the blade with vines and leaves and the words "Think well on me," a most excellent gift.

20^th day of July, Feast of Saint Margaret of Antioch, eaten by a dragon who then exploded. Protector of

women in childbirth

O dear Saint Margaret, protect my mother when her time comes. She is old -over thirty-and delicate. But you were strong and stubborn and I can be as tough as boiled bear, so mayhap together we can sustain her.

21^st day of July, Feast of Saint Victor, Roman soldier and martyr.

George and my aunt Ethelfritha have come again. He still does not smile and his eyes no longer flash green fire. He drinks too much ale and closes his eyes whenever someone mentions Aelis' name. I could feel his pain as if we shared one heart, so I left the table and went out to pester Perkin.

22^nd day of July, Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene, who was betrothed to John the Apostle.

Morwenna, Meg and I have been gathering summer herbs and flowers for tonics. I love walking the fields in the morning sun, the smells in the stillroom where the herbs hang to dry, the wondrous glass vials and leather bottles arranged on the shelves ,the old book where my mother's mother and her mother wrote recipes and hints and warnings for the doctoring.

Many of the older remedies call for lark's wing or boiled raven. I will not use them but use instead fish bones or nail trimmings or extra rue and sneezewort. No one here at the manor has died since I have been doing so and I expect my remedies doctor just as well as the originals. And they are much kinder to the birds.

24^th day of July, Feast of Saint Gleb, stabbed in the throat by his cook

26^th day of July, Feast of Saint Ann, mother of the Virgin Mary

I have noticed lately how many male saints were bishops, popes, missionaries, great scholars, and teachers, while female saints get to be saints mostly by being someone's mother or refusing to marry some powerful pagan. It is plain that men are in charge of making saints.

27^th day of July, Feast of the Seven Sleepers, early Christians who were walled up in a cave by pagans,

awoke two hundred years later to find their entire city Christian, and died

A traveler sleeping in our hall last night said Brother Norbert and Brother Behrtwald, the monks sent to Rome to find the remains of saints for our abbey, have returned. The holy relics they found will be installed with great ceremony in the abbey on Sunday. My father being from home and my mother too big with child for traveling, George, Ethelfritha, and I will appear for our family. I am rapturous with holy feelings to think I will see pieces of actual saints, whose souls must be with God although their bodies lie in Croydon Abbey.

We leave at dawn tomorrow.

28^th Day of July, Feast of Saint Samson, Welsh bishop, whose arm and staff are at the monastery at Milton Abbas

After dinner in the abbey guesthouse, I looked for Brother Norbert so I might hear more about the saints he found in Rome and his adventures on the way. Brother Norbert, I was told, was weeding the herb garden. Brother Norbert, I discovered, was sleeping between the lavender and rosemary bushes. I cleared my throat several times loudly and soon he awoke.

The relics the monks brought from Rome, it seems, are the earthly remains of Felix the Roman and his brother Projectus. They were tax collectors, converted to Christianity by a bath attendant and betrayed to the authorities by their evil servant, Polycarp, who was later struck by lightning.

Ordered to sacrifice to Roman gods, Felix and Projectus agreed, in fear for their lives and those of their families. A sudden rainstorm, however, put out the sacrificial fire. The Romans were enraged, thinking the brothers had lied to them and doused the fire deliberately by magic.

Their explanations were ignored and the brothers were condemned to be beheaded, but the soldier sent to carry out the sentence was struck by lightning. Finally they were set upon by a maddened bull, who, after goring them to death, was also struck by lightning. Other Christians collected their body parts and buried them on a farm outside the city.

This summer Brother Norbert and Brother Behrtwald met a soldier in an inn yard, who told them the story and then, for only twelve silver pennies, led them to the martyrs' grave on his mother's property. It was fortunate, said Brother Norbert, that they had the soldier to guide them, for the grave was hidden and unmarked in any way. The good brothers left Rome with the martyrs' bones, and fingernail clipping and a thread from Felix's best tunic. Glory be to God.

29^th day of July, Feast of Saint Lupus, a bishop who persuaded Attila the Hun to stop ravaging Gaul

This morning the relics of Felix and Projectus were carried from the abbot's office to the church by a great procession of monks in a cloud of incense fumes and the smoke from a thousand candles. The procession wound around the abbey grounds and into the church, where we all waited. After mass, the abbot blessed us and we were allowed to come to the altar to kiss the holy relics. When it was my turn, I found that Felix and Projectus were two tiny glass jars of dust, set into large gold and jewel-encrusted holders. Felix's jar was much fuller; he must have been the taller brother. I said a prayer, asking the Roman brothers to help me get free of Shaggy Beard, and then we left for home.

30^th day of July, Feast of Saint Tatwin, archbishop of Canterbury and maker of riddles

At dinner I saw my aunt Ethelfritha whisper something to George. He patted her fondly on her new sleeve and smiled. My heart fell to my stomach. I was so distressed to see him love someone not me. But then I rejoiced to see him smile again. Thank you, God. Bless my aunt Ethelfritha and strike me dumb before I ever meddle with love again.

31^st day of July, Feast of Saint Germanus, the only saint I know who was a lawyer

Tomorrow is Lammas. Harvest is near. My mother grows larger every day. I will not consent.