VI
The path below the meadow is less steep, the brook less leap and tumult, more eddy and swirl. Here Nora and the cow could walk companionably side by side, Nora’s quick hands braiding a buttercup wreath for the cow to match her own. They had nearly reached the place where the path divides, one branch continuing along the stream bank to the farmsteads surrounding the village, the other over a clattering wooden bridge leading to the village gate, when Nora heard voices whispering earnestly to one another. There at the fork stood a young man and a milkmaid, her hands clasped fervently in his, her pail resting precariously at their feet.
“Your father must listen! You don’t need a dowry. What a silly, pointless tradition! I don’t care about a dowry.”
“But your father does. Yes, he’s fond of me, but with no dowry … well. And besides, my father has some little pride. I’m no charity case that he needs to beg someone to take me. Perhaps when this year’s calves are grown -”
“Bah! Every year it’s the same, ‘When this year’s calves are grown.’ But there’s never a calf to spare! Let’s leave together, tonight. We can travel, find a place of our own -”
The milkmaid laughed sadly and bent to retrieve her pail, “We’ve not been raised to the gypsy life. In a month’s time – no, less – we’d be home, hungry and a laughingstock. Or worse, disowned. No, we must find another way.”
Nora cleared her throat. “I have a cow.”
The lad and lass whirled about and blinked at her.
Nora took a step forward. “I have a cow.”
The lad and lass stood rooted to the spot, mouths agape, milk sloshing onto the ground.
Perplexed by the Medusa-like effect of her appearance, Nora turned back to the cow, and clasping her arms around its neck spoke softly into its ear. “Though I was of a mind to sell you in the village, you were really never mine to keep. So if you will, those two would be better for your company.” She nodded her head towards the silently staring pair and delicately rearranged the cow’s buttercup wreath while she waited for the roan cow’s reply. After a moment’s rumination, the cow rubbed her head against Nora’s skirt in farewell, tickled the milkmaid’s ear with her nose in greeting, and gave the young man a determined shove with her head to start him down the path towards home.
Nora laughed at the roan cow’s insistence, disentangled her buttercup wreath from her hair, and gingerly held it out to the milkmaid who beamed at her. Taking the wreath, she dropped Nora a dainty, self-conscious curtsey, and placed it on her own head. With another smile, the milkmaid kissed Nora lightly on the cheek in thanks, and skipped and danced down the path after her husband-to-be and the cow.
“Thank you, thank you!” called the young man as he turned and waved heartily to Nora. The roan cow gave him another gentle shove, and they passed from sight around a bend.
Nora touched her cheek in surprise, still feeling the milkmaid’s gentle lips, and coming to her senses, noticed the pail of milk standing abandoned in the middle of the path.
“Oh! You’ve forgotten the milk.” As she bent to catch up the pail’s handle, something slipped from her pocket and landed with a plop into the froth below. In an instant, her hand flew to her pocket and encountered a single stone; in another, it plunged into the pail to retrieve the other. But there was no stone.
Instead, she withdrew a frog, green as moss after spring rains, golden eyed, a tiny frog no bigger than her thumb, and dripping with milk.
“What a fine frog you are! A noble frog. I’ve never seen one of finer color or brighter eyes.”
She deftly wiped the milk from his eyes with her kerchief, and he settled comfortably in the palm of her hand under her gentle ministrations and the soothing croon of her voice. Thinking that while a milkbath might be fine for a noblewoman’s complexion, it might be somewhat less healthful for a frog’s, and with apologies to him for the ensuing indignity, she tied him gently in her kerchief and headed for the brook.
more to follow …
© Magdalen Jago 2008
