The Minister's Daughter

by Julie Hearn

• ISBN13: 9780689876905
• ISBN10: 0689876904
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-05-17
• Publisher: Ginee Seo Books

Summary

"Powers of the air, be here now. So mote it be."

Conceived on May Morning, Nell is claimed by the piskies and faeries as a merrybegot, one of their own. She is a wild child: herb gatherer and healer, spell-weaver

Author Biography

Julie Hearn, a student of Philip Pullman, was born in Abingdon, England, near Oxford, and has been writing all her life. She has worked as a features editor for a chain of weekly newspapers and has written freelance articles for magazines and the national press. The Minister's Daughter is her first novel to be published in the United States.

Excerpts

Chapter 1: April 1645 The cunning woman's granddaughter is chasing a pig when she learns there is to be no frolicking in the village on May Morning. Minister's orders."Bogger...that," she pants. "And bogger...this...pig. There's no...catching...him...."Clutching her sides, she gives up the chase and collapses, laughing, against the gnarled trunk of a tree. Above her head pink blossoms shake like fairy fists. Spring has arrived. A beautiful time. A time when it feels absolutely right to think of dancing barefoot in the dew, and absolutely wrong to dwell on the new minister, with his miserable ways and face like a trodden parsnip."That's what they be saying," the blacksmith's son tells her. "No pole. No goin' off into the woods. No nothing.It ain't godly, Nell, to frolic so. That's what the minister reckons."Nell picks a blade of new grass and begins to chew it. Her stomach rumbles beneath her apron, but she is used to that. Out of the corner of her eye she can see the pig rooting around. It is a bad pig. A bothersome pig. Her granny will sort it out. This is how: A SPELL TO SOOTHE A TRUCULENT PIGFirst, catch your pig. Do it on a Monday,on a waning moon, when the time be right for healing.Point him to the north, and hang on tight.Rap his snout three times with a wand of oak, and call: "Powers of earth, tame and soothe this creature that hemay become docile and no longer a bogging nuisance."Wait seven beats of the heart, then let him go.So mote it be. A light breeze frisks the orchard. There are things Nell ought to be doing, but she stays where she is, squinting up at the blacksmith's son and thinking about May Morning."And who be you wishing to frolic with, anyway, Sam Towser?" She chuckles. "As if I couldn't guess..."The lad reddens. He is a month short of sixteen and all swept through with the kind of longings that can tie up a boy's tongue and have him tripping over everything, from clods of earth to his own great feet, twenty times a day. He has a mop of corn-colored hair and a cleft in his chin so deep, it might have been pressed there by his guardian angel. He is too ungainly; too unfledged, as yet, to be truly handsome. But he will be. The promise of it is all about him, like the guarantee of a glorious day once some mist has cleared."No one," he mumbles. "I got horses to see to. No time for fumblin' around with some daft maid on May Mornin', nor any other time.""Pah! That's a fib!" Nell flings both arms wide and twists her face to look like a parsnip. "Beware, sinner! Beware what you say! Repent! Repent! For Satan loves a fibber and will carry you off to burn in Hell. In Hell, I tell you, where fibbers go. And frolickers. And women who wear scarlet ribbons or sweep their hearths on Sundays -- ""Hush...Hush up, you daft wench.""Repent! Repent! For I am your minister. God's representative in this heathen place. Repent! For though my nose drips, and I do not know a hoe from my -- ""Nell,hush!"" -- elbow, I know a sinner when I see one. And a fibber. And a frolicker. All rolled into one vile, wretched -- ""Right!"" -- body and a...yieeek!"He has pounced and is tickling her -- tickling her to what feels like a giggly death -- while the sun pours down like honey and the truculent pig looks on in mild surprise."You two! Have a care! Mind that tree, and stop your messing."A woman has entered the orchard. She stands some distance away, almost in the nettles. Her face, beneath a bonnet the color of porridge, is grave."What?" Nell scrambles to her feet. "What is it, Mistress Denby? What's happened?"The blacksmith's son gets up. There are twigs and fallen petals in his hair. He looks like Puck. He looks drop-dead frolicsome."Gotter go," he mutters. "I got horses to see to."The woman and the girl pay him no mind. They have already jumped the stile and are hu