11 - The Lammas Feast Read Free Page B

‘I hadn’t planned to take on any extra work, but for such good friends and customers . . . well, I’ll make an exception. Just as long as your order isn’t a big one.’
    ‘The present state of our purse won’t allow us to make the order a big one,’ Adela responded drily, knowing nothing about the two gold pieces I had hidden under the cottage floor. ‘Just a couple of loaves for Lammastide, Master Overbecks, if you could manage them.’
    If that were all, the baker was happy to oblige.
    ‘So what will it be?’ he asked. ‘Rose-petal bread? Saffron bread? Parsley, thistle, violet, plum? Lemon bread? I can do you all the colours of the rainbow. The plums are very ripe this year, and will tint your dough a really deep shade of purple. And the saffron will give a lovely rich golden-orange brown.’
    Adela knew better than to take such an important decision on her own. Elizabeth and Nicholas were consulted, with the result that a loaf of rose-petal bread and one of plum were eventually decided upon.
    ‘A wise choice,’ Master Overbecks told them, though I suspected he would have said that whatever they had chosen. He rubbed his hands together gleefully. ‘I love this time of year; the blessing of the grain and the harvest. Loaf-Mass-tide, to give it its proper, old-fashioned name. The procession around the town, the open-air games . . .’
    ‘The rain,’ I cut in gloomily, and was scolded by my wife for putting what she called a damper on things.
    ‘An apt phrase! A very apt phrase,’ chuckled Master Overbecks approvingly. ‘Now, is there anything else I can do for you good people while you’re here?’
    We could see he was anxious to get back to his baking, so we dragged Nicholas and Elizabeth away from the trestle table, where they were eyeing up some buns, sticky with raisins and honey. We were about to take our leave when the bakery door burst open, and we were confronted by Jane Overbecks, holding the little black and white dog in her arms. There was a wild look about her. Her almost jet-black hair was unconfined by any cap, and lay loose across her shoulders. One of the sleeves of her blue linen gown had come unstitched from the bodice, and I noticed that she was barefoot. She wore a golden hoop in one ear, but seemed to have lost its fellow.
    She stopped abruptly as soon as she saw us, and was poised for immediate flight when her eyes lighted on Adam. She at once released the struggling dog – the poor animal was then seized and smothered by an ecstatic Nicholas and Elizabeth – and fell to her knees beside the little pull-along cart. She put out a finger and began stroking the baby’s downy cheek, an even stranger, wilder look on her face than before. I saw Adela take a hasty step forward, before making a great effort to check herself. But the lioness was ready to spring to the defence of her cub, and who could blame her?
    ‘Jane won’t harm him, Mistress Chapman,’ John Overbecks said quietly. ‘She’s very fond of children.’ He went across to his wife and touched her gently on the shoulder. ‘Let the little one be, my love. He’s sleeping sound. You don’t want to wake him.’
    But at that moment, with his usual bad timing, Adam opened his eyes, squinted up into Jane Overbecks’s face and started to scream; the special ear-splitting scream that he normally reserved for nights, just as I managed to nod off after a hard day’s peddling. (He had the most powerful set of lungs I’ve ever heard in a baby, and still has today.) Adela was beside him in an instant, snatching him up and cradling him in her arms.
    Jane Overbecks sprang to her feet with a wail like a lost soul and fled from the bakery in tears.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Adela apologized ruefully. ‘That was foolish of me.’
    John Overbecks was understanding.
    ‘Natural enough, Mistress Chapman, that you should wish to protect your child. But, like I said, Jane wouldn’t have hurt him. It’s men she fears. I fancy she may have