Tea, Lycanthropy and Other Virtues

Chapter One

Miss Constance Anne Allen balanced precariously on a stool atop the hewn table in her battered family cottage. Dust and globs of mud covered her head to toe. She had no business plastering the ceiling but there was a leak near the kitchen fireplace and doing it herself was as good as it was going to get. Most girls her age were courting eligible gentleman and taking tea. Constance was not most girls even if she wished she was.

The door screeched open. She'd have to fix that before it got too loud for her little brother. She glanced down as Gran came in and dropped an armful of dirty potatoes in the dry sink and then stretched her back. It was looking more bent than usual. Constance worried her bottom lip between her teeth. In the ever shifting sands of her life, this plump old woman was her foundation. She could not lose her.

"How's it going Constance?"

"Well, it's not pretty, but it should do the job." Her arm burned as she smeared another dollop of the horsehair muck over the crack that had appeared between the two big beams.

"Almost done?"

"Nearly."

There was a pause of silence. Constance glanced down again. Gran was leaning over the table both her hands on the stool to steady it.

"Your mother's wandered off again," she said, looking up at Constance a note of resignation lacing her words.

"I thought you were watching her?" Irritation nettled Constance, making the burn in her arm even more annoying. She took a deep breath. Mother had always said her emotions were unseemly, which was ironic, her mother brought out the worst ones in her.

"We were in the garden. She was gone before I even had a chance to weed one row of carrots. I went down the lane, hoping I'd find her but I don't move as fast as I used to." She almost sounded defeated, almost.

Constance sighed. Gran shouldn't be bent over weeding, or needing to watch her daughter-in-law. Constance shouldn't be plastering the ceiling either, but here they were.

"And where is Simon?"

"He left this morning to look for more mushrooms for his journal. You know how your brother is."

Constance clenched her teeth. Then she took Gran's hand and climbed down. She pulled off her apron, which had only managed to keep a little dust off her dress, and lay it on the table.

"I'm sorry Constance."

"It's not your fault. I think I'm done here, anyway." She wiped her brow with the back of her hand.

"Should you wash up before you go?"

"There won't be anyone there except Mr. Franklin and he's the one that helped me make the plaster in the first place."

"Well take your cloak, it gets cold fast this time of year. I'll have tea ready when you get back."

Constance wanted to argue, Gran did so much to help keep the household going, but she was exhausted and dirty and after she dragged her mother back from Bunsall Abbey she didn't want to have to make dinner too.

"Thank you," she said, pulling the red cloak on over her dingy dress.

Constance's spirits rose as she stepped into a spring day like only those the Yorkshire dales can produce. Little yellow and blue crocuses dotted the green fields, and the pear trees were just blossoming. There was an earthy smell in the air, a promise of warmer temperatures to come.

She followed the swollen river through the band of forest that separated the Allen cottage from Bunsall Abbey.

The cottage had been about the only concession Constance's maternal grandfather, Sir Huntsman, had made when his daughter had married a villager with no title and no wealth. As the story went, Sir Huntsman had disowned Constance's mother, banishing her from the main house to the tiny cottage on the edge of his property. It was hard to know how much of that was true, Mother made little sense these days.