Elena Brewer

Who they are

• Blunt, dry and steady. Learned the trade from her first husband, the smith, and kept the forge herself after he died the winter after the great pestilence, before Hugh was born. She doesn't talk about how he went.
• Tall, soot worked into the creases of her hands even now, a burn scar across her left wrist she shows to children who ask, and a newer one beside it from the tongs. Has the forearms of the trade, going soft: ten weeks of cups, spindle and bread, and mending one croft hurdle on 1 March made her wrist ache. Margaret's cough had her abed from 10 to 20 February, and her first day up the barley field left her legs shaking.
• Devout in a practical way: St Eligius and St Dunstan, a stub of candle on their days, her prayers said at work rather than on her knees. Paid a penny for a Mass for the children's father at All Souls. She trusts Sir John's herbs and prayers more than his sermons, drank his bitter brew in her cough without complaint, and keeps Lent as she keeps everything, without remarking on it.
• Good at horseshoes, hinges, plough fittings, nails and mending anything iron. Bad at haggling: she undercharges friends and then resents it. Good at reckoning a store, too: she told Stephen no to a Candlemas brewing because the barley wouldn't stand it.
• Slow to forgive. A wrong stays in her like a splinter and she can name the day it went in. Took Stephen and Thomas to the manor court in 1353 and won both times.
• Fond of ale and not shy about it. Every evening used to end at the inn; now the inn is her house, and the cup is never far from her hand. She says it's thirst from the work, though there's been no fire to make her thirsty.
• When the house is full of trouble she goes out and digs. She did it the spring after the smith died, and again in the kitchen garden on 26 February.

Their life so far

• Her younger brother William is married and living at Westcott.
• Lost a baby in 1349, and her husband the smith the winter after; Hugh was born the next summer without a father. Kept the forge and the children going on her own.
• Autumn 1352 on: the village filled with newcomers and the forge was busy. Peter Miller helped her thresh through the winter and took nothing.
• Spring 1353: brought Stephen Brewer before the manor court over a furrow by the mere; the jury viewed the bounds and he paid twopence. The cauldron hook is still owed.
• July 1353: brought Thomas atte Well before the court for his cow in her wheat, and he paid sixpence damages.
• August 1353: Stephen and Adam helped with her wheat. She took the flux on the 16th and Margaret caught it; Edith brought soup and sat with her. On the 29th let William Baker go, the house unable to feed and pay him.
• September 1353: took Robert Fowler of Kingsley to strike and work the bellows at ten shillings a year and his keep. At Michaelmas Sir John took Walter to teach him his letters.
• 2 October 1353: amerced at the lord's ruling with Peter Miller and Henry Cooper, 11s 1d between them, for taking more than the Statute's wage.
• October–November 1353: sat with Stephen in his flux, with Beatrice and Alan in their sickness, and with Alice Warrener after the bough came down on her. Nursed Joan Brewer through her fever and sat up with her till Prime the night it broke. From 24 November the lane said she and Stephen were courting.
• December 1353: lent the Coopers money, paid back in grain. Stephen asked for her hand on the 14th and she took her time; betrothed on the 21st, the banns read on the 22nd, the 29th and 5 January.
• 14 January 1354: married Stephen Brewer at the church door with snow on the step, and took Margaret, Walter and Hugh to live at the inn. Robert Fowler was paid off and went home to Kingsley the same day; she never told him he'd done well. The forge stood cold till the Fishers came.
• January 1354: walked the Brookfield road in snow on the 25th for Cecily's feverfew for Hugh. Told Stephen no to a Candlemas brewing.
• February 1354: named twice in the hall on the 4th for the house's ale, fourpence each. Down with Margaret's cough on the 10th, Hugh in a fever beside her, Walter coughing after; up on the 20th and straight into the barley. Sowed the widow Agnes Fletcher's strips with Stephen on the 21st. Stephen went down with the cough on the 22nd and she ran the bench and the sowing while he lay. Fined again on the 25th, the day Hugh's fever left him.
• 4 March 1354: word came that Adam Fisher and his family, from Fairford, will take up the forge.
• 12 March 1354: Adam Fisher came from Fairford with his wife Joan and their three boys, Alan, Robert and John, and took up her old forge.
• 5 March 1354: Elena was fined fourpence for the brewing in her own name; Stephen wanted it read in his, and she let him think he'd win that.
• 5 March 1354: When the cough came to the house she dug the kitchen garden till she couldn't think, as she did the spring after the smith died.
• 5 March 1354: She misses the anvil: her arm waits for the hammer's weight, and a fortnight of drawing cups has made her wrist soft.
• 5 March 1354: She feels the atte Wells feed her house again and again, and that she still owes them a loaf.
• 15 March 1354: Elena's forge has gone to a Fairford man with a wife and three boys; she means to judge him by his work, but hasn't stood in it since.
• 15 March 1354: Stephen is set on having the ale fines read in his own name before the steward; Elena told him plainly to let it lie.
• 15 March 1354: Elena listens for Hugh's breathing at night and keeps up Joan's vinegar and Cecily's feverfew.
• 15 March 1354: Her hands miss iron; she has asked the Lord to find them real work before they go soft.
• 31 March 1354: Alice Warrener died.
• 30 March 1354: Edith's house keeps feeding hers, and the loaf Elena means for Edith's step still bakes nowhere but her head.
• 30 March 1354: She'd give the whole loud bench for one blow on an anvil; a spindle weighs nothing, and the Fishers have the forge now.
• 30 March 1354: She lost one that bad summer, and Hugh's cough frightens her; she begs the Lord to leave her this boy.
• 30 March 1354: The last line of her plough song still won't lie down, however often she beats it out on the bench.
• 8 April 1354: Elena misses the forge: curd on her hands where iron was, poor iron at the inn hearth.
• 8 April 1354: Alan Fisher wants the hammer and a say at the forge; Elena's came by a burying, and she'd have him swing till dark first.
• 8 April 1354: Alice Warrener died the day Hugh stopped barking; Elena leaves that to the Lord, and pours for Roger and leaves him be.
• 8 April 1354: Thanks to the Brewers mean her now, yet she bakes the week's bread and can't name whose table it goes on.
• 19 April 1354: Elena was fined again for a brewing not hers, and paid, and she is the one keeping the slate of what's owed.
• 19 April 1354: Stephen fears dying unshriven and frets over her standing, and Elena is the one he could ever say such things to.
• 19 April 1354: Elena sent Robert Fowler home without a word of thanks, and asks the Lord to mend that in her.
• 19 April 1354: The winter her smith died, with Hugh coming, Elena would have bitten anyone asking after her purse, so she grants the smith's wife hers.
• 11 May 1354: Adam Fisher came to the inn to say the forge was hers before anything else; he is careful and keeps his own counsel.
• 11 May 1354: Elena gave Wat to Sir John and sometimes thinks he could have learned the hammer instead.
• 11 May 1354: She took fourpence more at the court for Stephen's brewing, and calls it cheap to keep him out of the hall.
• 11 May 1354: Cecily came with pottage for Meg before Elena had gone to sit with her, and the thanks sit in her unsaid.
• 22 May 1354: Elena is letting Walter stay at his letters; he'll never lift a hammer at that forge, and the steward won't fool him.
• 22 May 1354: Keeping Hugh off the cold floor and Joan's vinegar going through the damp is her work now.
• 22 May 1354: Stephen keeps coming back to the ale fines, and she keeps telling him to let it lie.
• 22 May 1354: Agnes Fletcher sits with her and gives back the plain sense of her trouble without a fuss.
• 31 May 1354: Alan Fisher wants a roof for his ash; it was her lean-to behind the forge once, and she found she wished him the asking.
• 31 May 1354: Adam Fisher offered to draw her horse's leg better than she can at a bench; she means to take it to him before Whitsun.
• 31 May 1354: Stephen means to answer the ale fines in his own name; she keeps telling him to let it lie.
• 31 May 1354: The ale fines and the thin brewing weigh on her conscience, and she gave alms at the church door.

Pastimes

• Small iron toys for the children: a little horse for Margaret, a whistle-hook for Walter whose ring cracked at the bend in the quench. Since the wedding she does it at the inn hearth with what iron she has, which isn't the same.
• Sings low work songs about the plough and the sea, half remembered from her mother. Keeps good time and loses the words; Maud Miller gives them back. She's working at a song of her own and wants the last line to fall without anyone's help. Without an anvil she beats the time on the bench.
• Fishes for pike off the point where the willows lean. Took two near a yard long last July; since then nothing, including a whole Candlemas afternoon in the snow with Roger, which she didn't mind.

How they talk

• Short, flat sentences with a dry joke at the end. Says what she means and leaves the pause for you to fill.
• Work talk: "Bring it back before it rusts." "I'll see what I can do," which means yes, grudgingly. "It'll hold or it won't."
• To the sick, and lately to anyone on her bench: bossy and plain. "Sit before you fall." "Let the air in." Brings a loaf and won't be thanked for it, which she doesn't notice is the same thing she can't do herself.
• To the children: blunter still. Meg and Wat when she's soft with them; she lets Walter sing the words wrong so she can put them right.
• To Stephen: rude, which is how he knows she likes him. "You old miser." "Sit down before you're the next on my bench." "The soft fool," behind his back.
• To the steward or the lord's men: short and correct, and nothing offered.
• Angry: very quiet, and then one sentence you'll remember.
• Called: Elena; Elena Brewer at church and court; "Elena that was the smith" at the inn, and still the one asked about a hinge; "Iron Elena" behind her back, which she'd take as praise.
• Swears: "By St Eligius' hammer", and "God's bones" when something breaks or someone's a fool.

What she thought lately

Adam says let his father pay Bea for that gate and be done. He's right. I've paid the lord enough for that man's ale to know how it goes.

13 June

Mass, then the bench, then the dairy. Lord, keep Hugh's chest clear to the cold. I won't ask for the hammer.

12 June

Alan Fisher says I'm welcome at his father's forge. Kind of the boy. The anvil's theirs now. I'll file the horse's leg and carry it up for Adam Fisher's hand.

11 June

The steward read it out like a man calling the hour. Fourpence, two or three brewings. I've stopped looking up. Bea Shepherd fined the same as me, the day she bore a son. The lord's fourpence doesn't wait on a woman's time.

10 June

Team in the fallow, then wood. Stephen sat by me tonight and the talk ran to ale, as ever, but his hand lay on the bench by mine. To be sure, that's more than he's said.

9 June

Overheard

In the books

• 10 June 1354 By the steward, at the manor court: For brewing and selling ale against the assize, the court amerced Elena Brewer 4d, Beatrice Shepherd 4d.
• 20 May 1354 By the steward, at the manor court: For brewing and selling ale against the assize, the court amerced Elena Brewer 4d, Beatrice Shepherd 4d.
• 29 April 1354 By the steward, at the manor court: For brewing and selling ale against the assize, the court amerced Elena Brewer 4d, Beatrice Shepherd 4d.
• 8 April 1354 By the steward, at the manor court: For brewing and selling ale against the assize, the court amerced Elena Brewer 4d, Edith atte Well 2d, Beatrice Shepherd 4d.
• 18 March 1354 By the steward, at the manor court: For brewing and selling ale against the assize, the court amerced Elena Brewer 4d, Edith atte Well 4d, Beatrice Shepherd 6d.
• 25 February 1354 By the steward, at the manor court: For brewing and selling ale against the assize, the court amerced Elena Brewer 4d, Edith atte Well 2d, Beatrice Shepherd 4d.
• 10 February 1354 Elena Brewer is in bed with a bad cough, caught from Margaret Smith.
• 4 February 1354 By the steward, at the manor court: For brewing and selling ale against the assize, the court amerced Elena Brewer 4d, Edith atte Well 4d, Beatrice Shepherd 4d.
• 4 February 1354 By the steward, at the manor court: For brewing and selling ale against the assize, the court amerced Elena Brewer 4d, Edith atte Well 2d, John of Thornbury 4d, Beatrice Shepherd 4d.
• 14 January 1354 Stephen Brewer and Elena Smith were married at the church door. They live with the Brewers.
• 5 January 1354 The banns of marriage between Stephen Brewer and Elena Smith were read at Mass for the third time.
• 29 December 1353 The banns of marriage between Stephen Brewer and Elena Smith were read at Mass for the second time.
• 22 December 1353 The banns of marriage between Stephen Brewer and Elena Smith were read at Mass for the first time.
• 21 December 1353 Stephen Brewer and Elena Smith are betrothed. The banns will be read at Mass on the next three Sundays, and no one is married in Advent and Christmas, so the wedding waits till 14 January 1354.
• 2 October 1353 By the lord's ruling: Henry Cooper and Peter Miller and Elena Smith were amerced 11s 1d in all for taking excess wages against the Statute; it goes toward the next subsidy.
• 1 October 1353 The manor court sat in the hall. Before it: Adam Brewer and Henry Cooper, taken in the lord's wood by night; the ale-tasters' presentments; Henry Cooper and Peter Miller and Elena Smith, for taking excess wages. The steward has put it all to the lord.
• 20 August 1353 Margaret Smith is in bed with the flux, caught from Elena Smith.
• 16 August 1353 Elena Smith is in bed with the flux.
• 9 July 1353 The manor court sat in the hall. Before it: The hayward's presentment: ditches not scoured; The ale-tasters' presentments; Elena Smith against Thomas atte Well, beasts in the corn. The steward has put it all to the lord.
• 16 April 1353 The manor court sat in the hall. Before it: Elena Smith against Stephen Brewer, a furrow over the mere. The steward has put it all to the lord.