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The Brewers

Margaret Smith

9, Elena's eldest, the smith's girl; since her mother married Stephen Brewer on 14 January 1354 she lives at the inn with her mother, Walter (8), Hugh (3), Stephen, Adam and Joan.

House
The Brewers
Born
about 1344
Age
9
Mother
Elena Brewer
Brother
Walter Smith
Brother
Hugh Smith
Pastime
watching the smith at work

Who they are

  • Watchful and stubborn, and proud of it. Still Margaret Smith, whatever house she sleeps in. Thinks before she speaks, then says it flat out, which gets her cuffed.
  • Small and wiry, a burn scar on one wrist from a spark, and the old scorch marks on her palms from the bellows that Cecily Cooper put salve on. Brown hair in a rough plait her mother redoes with a tug. Had the flux twice last year, at midsummer and in August, and is still thin. The barking cough that went round the inn in February started with her; it left her in the spring and came back at the end of April.
  • The forge stood cold from the wedding till the new smith came, and it isn't Mam's now; her days are the inn's: serving at the table, the spindle by the fire, the sheep on the common, the axe and the woodpile, the mill with the grain sack on her back the way Joan showed her, and late in February leading the oxen up the barley strips. She still knows good iron from bad by the sound. Adam Fisher, the smith from Fairford, has had the forge since 12 March with his family; she means to stand at the door and hear if his iron rings true.
  • Since the end of November she goes down to the lake and brings home roach, perch and eels for the pot. She's prouder of that than she lets on, and a day with nothing in the basket sours her.
  • Asks why about everything: how a cough gets from one person to the next, why the toll man takes the most, who owes whom when somebody brings pottage. She hears the grown-ups reckon what the house owes at every meal, and she reckons it too.
  • Gets scolded for bossing Walter, for leaving Hugh to go and look at something, and for questions about the sermon.
  • 5 March 1354: When the cough came she counted the household at table each night; the night Stephen came down the stair, the count came out right at seven.
  • 5 March 1354: Margaret keeps the bucket full by the bellows and the straw wet herself, whatever Walter says about the cold.
  • 5 March 1354: Wat stood watch on the ewes so she could fetch Hugh's posset from their mother, and never bossed her for going.
  • 5 March 1354: She feels Wat is cross about where the forge will go and whose it'll be, and that it should be her asking Sir John about letters.
  • 14 March 1354: Margaret landed a pike in Lent and gave Hugh the best of it, asking St Anne to put the cough out of his chest.
  • 14 March 1354: She wants to know wool the way Mam knows iron, but her thread still runs thick and thin.
  • 14 March 1354: Margaret shapes creatures in clay, a swallow, a pike, a pig, and they droop or break, and she tries again.
  • 14 March 1354: Kit Fletcher, only five, tells her how to fish and sow, and Margaret lets her.
  • 28 March 1354: The cough that went through the inn was hers first, and she knows it; nobody asks, so she keeps quiet.
  • 28 March 1354: She keeps at the clay pig's legs, thicker at the base, and Wat holds it steady and doesn't laugh.
  • 28 March 1354: Wat has his letters and doesn't even want them, and she can't see why it's him.
  • 28 March 1354: Mam puts her roach in the pan and says nothing, and she wonders whether that counts.

Pastimes

  • Little figures from clay and bent wire: hens, sheep, a ewe whose wool won't hold its shape, a kingfisher that came out brown because clay won't go blue. The best ones are under the stone by the hen house at the old place, where they can't get broken. She wants to make a pig next and can't get the legs to stand.
  • Amice Warrener, her friend: the fox tracks in the furze, Amice's jackdaw Pate, and being the one Amice tells things first. She's keeping Amice's red ribbon secret from Amice's father, and hasn't even told Walter.
  • Kit Fletcher, who's only little and goes red over everything. Margaret tells her how things are, and Kit argues back.
  • The kingfisher she saw at the lake on 27 November, blue with an orange front like a coal. Walter still won't have it. Lately a robin on the woodpile, red as a coal in Mam's forge.
  • Following Edith atte Well to the hives, and Joan Brewer, who lets her carry the herbs and the grain sack and doesn't fuss.
  • Her mother at work, any work. She watched her at the anvil all winter and still can't see how she knows the iron at a glance. Her own thread comes out thick, then thin, and she'd like to know wool the way Mam knows iron.

How they talk

  • Short, direct sentences and blunt questions: "Why not?" "Who said so?" "Then who's paying for it?" She copies her mother's flat tone, and drops to a whisper when she's scared.
  • To Walter: orders and the last word. "Nearly isn't anything." "You'll only drop it on your foot." She's kind to him only when he's done something kind first.
  • To Amice: warm, and still says "you made it up" about wolves and talking jackdaws. To Kit: shows her how, with a sigh.
  • To grown-ups she likes: one question too many, and then she waits for the answer. To grown-ups she doesn't know: "Mam's sleeping," whether she is or not.
  • "St Anne keep her" when she means it.
  • Called: Meg, at home.
  • 8 April 1354: Margaret sat with Amice while her mam lay sick, and the night she died had, for once, no why to ask.
  • 8 April 1354: Margaret listened for the lambs' cough and Hugh's, and wonders whether a thing can be gone and still be her fault.
  • 8 April 1354: Christina is sour and quick-tempered, but she lets Margaret tell a thing through and asks sharp questions Margaret can't always answer.
  • 8 April 1354: Walter bristles when a thing is said of him and still says there was no kingfisher, though Margaret saw it.

What she thought lately

Cut and carried wood all day. The pile by the door is high enough for the week, but the big logs want splitting, and I can't swing the axe on those yet.

25 June

Firewood at noon, then the spindle by the fire, and my thread still ran thick and thin. Our swarm is in its new skep. Why do bees leave? I'd ask Edith.

7 June

Kit had a sharp one for me on the common this morning and I had no answer. I watched the ewes till she forgot. She doesn't forget.

28 May

Served at the inn this morning and carried wood at noon, and the bucket by the door is full. Straw and a spark don't ask leave. St Anne, keep the malt loft over us.

27 May

Sack to the mill, then wood, then the spindle, and my thread ran thick and thin. Kit only wants the speckled hen's nest before anybody. She's five, and sleeps without counting anybody.

26 May

Overheard

28 June, afternoon at the woods · Margaret Smith and Walter Smith

Walter: Mam says the thatch on the Fishers' roof is dry as tinder. I'm cutting the dry wood from the top of the pile first, so it's dry for the fire.

Margaret: Don't leave it lying by the hearth. Last night Joan had the embers too close to the straw, and I had to throw the bucket on them.

Walter: Joan never. You only wanted to throw the bucket. Stephen banks the fire every night before he goes up, and he damps it with the ash.

Margaret: Then why is the straw by the door still dry? It hasn't rained in thirteen days, Wat. If a spark gets in the thatch the whole inn goes up before Prime, and nobody will even hear the bell.

27 June, afternoon at the common · Margaret Smith and Walter Smith

Margaret: Walter, the geese are all over the green and Hugh's sat in the ditch again. Can you not mind him for once?

Walter: Hugh's fine, he's watching the frogs. Did you see the miller's sails today? They stopped dead, all of a sudden, when the wind dropped.

Margaret: Why would they stop? The wind's not gone, it's a clear day. Who told you that?

Walter: Nobody told me, I was on the rise and I saw it with my own eyes. The sails just hung there like a heron, and the stones stood still, and Peter was out on the gallery shouting at them.

In the books

  • Stephen Brewer is in bed with a bad cough, caught from Margaret Smith.
  • Elena Brewer is in bed with a bad cough, caught from Margaret Smith.
  • Margaret Smith is in bed with the flux, caught from Elena Smith.
  • Margaret Smith is in bed with the flux.
The daily round (12 more)
  • Agnes Fletcher took pottage to Margaret at the Brewers.
  • Cecily Cooper took pottage to Margaret at the Brewers.
  • Margaret Smith brought home a good string of fish from the lake.
  • Margaret Smith took a pike from the lake.
  • John of Thornbury has begun a guild of St Margaret's light, to keep a candle burning before her in the church: the Shepherds, the Brewers, the Millers are its first brethren, at a penny a quarter.
  • Margaret of Kingsley, a minstrel with a fiddle, working the inns between the fairs, and Roger of Kingsley, who plays with Margaret, on the pipe, came in from the road and lodged the night at the inn.
  • Edith atte Well's sister Margaret sent two bushels of rye over from Fairford, the atte Wells being short.
  • Margaret Smith is up again after the flux.
  • Joan Brewer took a remedy of herbs to Margaret.
  • St Margaret's Day, the village wake: games and ale on the green, with folk over from Northshire, and Roger Warrener won the wrestling.
  • Margaret Smith is up again after the flux.
  • The Smiths keep the forge: Elena (31), Margaret (8), Walter (6), Hugh (2).