Year of Wonders

by Geraldine Brooks

was brimful of Scripture, and some lines from Ephesians just then seemed to issue of their own accord in

‘Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use

my mother’s face framed in the iron bars, the desperate look in her wild eyes, the inhuman sounds that came from her throat as the iron bit pressed hard against her tongue. He

Aphra as I should is that she merely stood by and allowed it to happen, time after time, when I was a child. The only succour she would offer would be to raise her voice if he struck me on the face, “For we’ll never marry her off if you mar her there.” Years later, when Sam Frith

Sam was slow in everything, even to anger. He made me

hand. He had gone directly to my father. “This is from a child who was too small to do it for herself,” he said, and he placed his big fist in my father’s face, knocking him flat in a blow. But I had no Sam now.

Maggie Cantwell would need no cart in the morning. While I was at the Tavern, she had been struck by another spasm that had turned her good

thought of all the varied skills that reposed in Maggie Cantwell. This big woman knew how to hack a haunch out of a side of venison but also how to fashion fancies of the finest spun sugar. She was an economical cook who never wasted so much as a pea pod but boiled it in the stockpot to extract whatever nourishment it might yet contain. Why, I wondered, was God so much more prodigal with his Creation? Why did He raise us up out of the clay, to

acquire good and expedient skills, and then send us back so soon to be dust when we yet had useful years before us?

For sin, too, must always start with but a single misstep, and suddenly we are hurtling toward some uncertain stopping point. All that is sure in the descent is that we will arrive sullied and bruised and unable to regain our former place without hard effort. Like most miners, Sam had many

and sat staring into its meager wedge of light. Time turned into a rope that unraveled as a

Swithin, the youngest son, is dead, and Lib lies very grave. Anna, I know she was dear to you once. If you wish, I will bide here while you go to her.” I would not have left the children’s

But the rift with Lib was like an ache, and I longed to ease it. By the time I toiled to the Hancock farm, my

In my dreams that night, the mountains breathed like sleeping beasts and the wind cast a rich blue shadow. A winged horse flew me through a sky of black velvet,

over shimmering deserts of golden glass, through fields of falling stars. Once again, I awoke in the morning

The pastures were a mottle of yellow and white: thawed patches of cropped stubble

Since the scything of this field,.Mrs. Hancock had buried her husband, three of her sons, and one daughter-in-law. This day she would lay Swithin and Lib into

Kate Talbot opened the door, her fist pressed hard into the small

rotten apples filled the house. That scent, once beloved, now was so married in my mind with sickrooms that it made me gag.

“Two nights ago, he bade me fire up the forge and heat the poker till it glowed red. I could

Anna, my Richard is a man who has been kicked

Anna,” she sobbed. “I do not, in my heart, believe in it, and yet I bought this charm because that which I do believe has failed me. Richard has ever been a good man. Why does God wrack him so? Our prayers in the church bring no relief. So the voice of the Devil whispers to me, ‘If God will not help you,’ he says, ‘mayhap I might ...’ ”

For the charm were given me by the ghost of Anys Gowdie.” “Nonsense!” I blurted. But she was pale

hands, cluzened from the cold, were clumsy.

blinded by the light emanating from the ghost of Anys Gowdie. She hovered in the air above me, white-gowned and brilliant. “Are you all right?” Elinor Mompellion asked, climbing

became so engrossed in sorting and naming the plants that I barely noticed the light fading, and by the time I realized I must needs set out for home, it had begun to snow. I decided it was best to sleep the night here rather than toil the long way to the rectory in such weather. Mr. Mompellion, I knew, would reason I was needed for the night

catalogue of what she had so far identified and the virtues of the tonics we could make and distribute. As I listened to her plans, so selfless and suffused with hope, I felt the wretchedness of my own selfish scheme for escape into a false oblivion. “Mrs. Mompellion, I—”

pregnant seedpods. “The Greeks called them the Poppies of Lethe. Do you remember? We read about it together. Lethe—the Greeks’

river of forgetfulness. Once the souls of the dead tasted its waters they forgot their past lives. It is natural to want to forget, Anna,

a brimful of ...

poppy from your whisket at the Daniels’ cottage.” “I know it,” she said. “And did it bring you sweet dreams?” “Yes,” I whispered. “The sweetest I have ever known.”

That poppy you took from me-it was a

But it is a jealous friend and will not lightly loosen its embrace.” She

“I did not say I had never been with child.” I must have

“Anna, the child I carried was not Mr. Mompellion’s.” She read the shock in my face,

She had been the beloved only daughter of a gentleman of great wealth. She was indulged—spoiled, she said—especially after her mother died. Her father and her older brother had been loving but often absent,, entrusting her care to a governess who was more learned than she

a thing—Greek or Latin, history, music, art and natural philosophy—all I had to do was express a wish, and these treasures would be laid out before me. And I learned these

did not leave the estate nor

My father did not tell me that he had doubts about Charles himself, grave doubts about his character, that subsequent events proved well-founded.

you everything, Anna, so hear this: I was so lost in the fires of my own lusts that I did not greatly care.” Elinor was

Charles had lived together for more than a fortnight

abandoned her. “There were days when I would

“I violated my own body with a fire iron.” I drew a ragged breath at this

the best physician, and so my life was saved. But not my womb, Anna, which they tell me is nothing now but a mass of scars. They gave me poppy at first for the pain, and then I think to keep me quiet. And I might very well still be wandering, lost in those empty dreams, if it

Michael, the eldest of three children, was but a small boy at the outbreak of the civil war. His father had been swept up in the turmoil, acquiring for himself powder and match, sword and halberd. Instead of leading people to their prayers, he had led them to war on behalf of the parliament. At first, his troop did well enough, but after the king escaped from the hands of the army, the second phase of the war

The cavaliers routed the forces in his parish and plundered his own dwelling of all that was portable—brass, pewter, and cloth. Michael’s father made off through the lines to save his own life. The next day, attempting to return home, he was mistaken by a party of his own men and

mortally wounded. As a result, the family was destitute, and Michael, as eldest, had to be sent from his home into a situation where he could be provided for. He had been placed into s...

“His intelligence caught the attention of my father, who undertook Michael’s education. He went to the best of schools, where he excelled, and then on to Cambridge. When he came home,

He showed me sorrows far worse than mine and pain far less deserved. He instructed me how futile it is to wallow in regret for that which cannot be changed and how atonement might be made for even

“At first, I borrowed his brightness and used it to see my way, and then gradually, from the habit of looking at the world as he illuminated it, the light in my own mind rekindled itself.” They were wed