Gathering Apples
His Lordship harvested the apples this year, like last year, and the year before.
The Mistress would have said, “Hugh, let one of the stable hands do it. Come and sit by me, instead.” But she’s dead three, long years, and now there’s only him.
“Bring that snivelling child with you, Lizbeth,” he said to me after breakfast. “She can hold the bucket.”
He meant Annie, our newest scullery maid, barely fifteen and full of homesickness and sorrow.
Striding to the garden, he propped the rickety ladder against the old apple tree — Mistress’s favorite. Goodness, how many hours she spent beneath that tree in her wicker chair, whiling away her sad, last year of life.
His Lordship’s mood was foul, as ever. “D’you expect me to throw the apples in there?” he growled at Annie, and pointed to the wooden bucket clutched in her hand. “You must line it with muslin, girl, or the apples will bruise when I toss them in. Did your mother teach you nothing?”
That set her to crying again, and I shushed her and sent her to the kitchen to ask cook for a cloth. “Quick, now,” I said, but she needed no encouragement to escape his Lordship’s wrath.
The storm passed quickly enough, as it always does, though there’s ever another brewing beyond the horizon. He rubbed his scalp and stared at the spot where the Mistress used to rest in the cool shade of the tree, with a view of the estate: her rose gardens, then fields of barley and rye, cows grazing in the distance, and rich, green pasture rolling to the far seashore.
“Do you know what we need, Hugh?” she’d say on days when the sky was blue and cloudless. “The falconer. Have him bring the goshawk. I want to see it fly.”
Oh, how I hated that sharp-eyed bird. It would have eaten us all if it could. But when the falconer pulled off its stitched, leather hood, and sent the bird skyward with a flick of his arm, why, what beauty, what wondrous miracle of flight when the hawk plummeted earthward like an arrowhead. Her ladyship would clap and laugh until the coughing came and wracked her into silence.
All gone now, the falconer and hawk, and the roses bolted and unpruned. Only the fields of grain remain, cultivated with furious efficiency by his Lordship.
* *
When Annie returned with her bucket in good order, our master climbed high upon the creaking ladder, leaving me to brace its foot, though he asked for no such service.
He plucked the apples — red and spotless — mindlessly; tossed them over his shoulder for Annie to catch as best she could. If she missed one — no tell-tale thud of apple in bucket — he shouted, “Pay attention, girl. They’re tuppence each and I’ll dock the bruised ones from your wages.” At least the chasing and catching distracted her from thoughts of her mother so far away.
His Lordship climbed too high, like last year, and the year before. He climbed to the very top of the ladder, feet on the highest rung, and leaned sideways to pluck the plumpest apples from atop the tree. How my back ached, bracing the ladder that seemed set to topple at any moment. It was as if …
“Take care of him, Lizzie,” the Mistress said on her last day beneath the tree, when she and I were alone. “He doesn’t know how to live.”
“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but it’s not my place. And he needs no help, not from me nor anyone.”
She laughed her soft, sweet laugh and said, “Can you not see? Haven’t you eyes in your head?”
* *
When the Master stretched for the topmost apple, and the ladder pushed so painfully against my shoulder, and he reached, reached up to the high tree crown, his body wavered. His weight, as if yearning for the deep, dark earth, tilted the ladder alarmingly and all I could think to do was cry out, “Sir! You’re scaring the child.” In truth, poor Annie had dropped the bucket and stared at him wide-eyed and teary.
He steadied himself. The ladder settled again to its balance point, and the weight lifted from against my shoulder. Slowly he descended.
“Take them to cook,” he said, pointing to the apples, and he strode to his study and the piling up of profit in his ledgers.
* *
Next day was the Mistress’s birthday, and like last year and the previous year, long before the sun arose, I carried her wicker chair and cushion to beneath the old apple tree. Set it in the holes left by the chair legs when her Ladyship sat there, day after day.
I left her favorite shawl, too, and a small bouquet of late summer dandelions: “Do you see the beauty in everyday things?” she always liked to say.
Near dawn, his Lordship arose and waited by the chair, waited in the dark for the sun to appear, for some small hint of warmth to ease the chill.
Then he came indoors and demanded his breakfast and cursed the dog, and cursed the falling price of grain. But when Annie dropped a plate and tears welled in her eyes, he laid his hand upon her shoulder and said, “Come, come, child. There are worse things than broken crockery.”
