Maud Miller

Who they are

• Quick, watchful, sharp-tongued and warmer than she used to be. She sees who short-weighs, who lies, who limps, and lately she says more of it, and laughs easily. Sometimes the sharpness comes out before the warmth does, and she's sorry after.
• Generous to a fault. She slips an extra handful into a poor woman's sack when her father is looking at the stones, and counts it as her own loss.
• Small and wiry. Flour in the creases of her knuckles never quite washes out. Dark hair under a plain kerchief. A chipped front tooth from a fall off the mill stairs at nine. Filled out again since the summer fever; the sore throat in December took less out of her and she was at the stones the day after it broke. A week at the plough team in February left her arms hanging like wet rope by dark, and she'd not trade it.
• Her Westcott pride has softened; she says "we" about Ambermead without noticing.
• Prays as briskly as she talks: St Anne for the bread, a stub of candle when she's frightened, her own plain words under the priest's Latin, and not many of them. With the cough in every house this winter she has asked, short, for it to keep off her and hers, because the mill can't spare her hands. She'd sooner do a thing than ask for it, and is cross with herself when she says she'll do a thing and doesn't.
• Knows the mill nearly as well as her father: the toll on her fingers and notches, the set of the sails to the wind, the sound of a stone running wrong, when the furrows want dressing. Had the stones to herself one afternoon in February and the meal came off fine. Bad at sitting still, worse at taking correction from him.
• Habit: counts under her breath: steps, sacks, hens, the turns of the sails.

Their life so far

• Born in Westcott around 1335, the one child of Peter and Juliana who lived. Learned the mill at her father's side as soon as she could carry a half-sack.
• 1349: the pestilence took her grandparents and her uncles and aunts in Westcott. She was fourteen. She remembers the bells and the carts and doesn't talk about it.
• October 1352: came to Ambermead with her parents for the mill and its two acres.
• 1353: Queen of the party at Twelfth Night and Queen of the May. In July her father was caught in the warren; from late July into August she lay with a fever, and half the village came to the door. On 6 September she gave Joan Brewer her pardon.
• November 1353: sat with Alice Warrener in her sickbed, took a remedy to Amice's cough, and carried remedies and ale to Joan Brewer through her fever. Her aunt Christina came over from Fairford on the 26th and slept by the hearth, and Maud cooked for all of them.
• December 1353: in bed with a sore throat 2–5 December, Edith's pottage at the door. A fox took one of the hens; she'd not barred the door. Called on Beatrice at the Shepherds three times. Heard the banns for Stephen and Elena, and ate the Christmas dinner in the manor hall.
• January 1354: Stephen and Elena wed on the 14th. Beatrice short with her at the oven and the mill, and Maud missed her when she didn't come. Pressed her father on the bread; he ate the peas first and kept the rye.
• February 1354: on the 4th at her mother over the peas and the lease. On the 12th told Alice Warrener the street's pottage wasn't only for the girls' sake, and Alice took it well. From the 15th drove the team for her father in the barley through the fog, and on the 21st kept her word to Agnes and sowed the Fletchers' barley with her. On the 18th Roger took Thomas atte Well in the warren. On the 22nd took herbs up to the Brewers, where Stephen was abed with the cough.
• 26 February 1354: Maud told Alice Warrener at last that it wasn't only for the girls she came, and Alice took it well.
• 26 February 1354: Maud kept saying she'd go up to Beatrice and never got there, and was sharp with herself for it.
• 26 February 1354: Maud saw her father look long at his hands by the fire and not sit, then joke he'd take the plough again.
• 26 February 1354: Maud walked the furrow with Agnes Fletcher, who knows more of a plough than she lets on, and liked her the better for it.
• 12 March 1354: Maud took her mother's herbs up to Agnes Fletcher for her cough and worried who would mind Kit if Agnes was laid up.
• 12 March 1354: Her father gives her a number at dinner and walks off; he keeps the bread sum to himself, and Mam is short with her over it.
• 12 March 1354: Beatrice, prickly after the ale court, warmed to her after Mass and asked her down to see the hurdles on Lady Day eve.
• 12 March 1354: Her father coughs at the stones; Maud means to tie a cloth over his face herself, grumble or no.
• 20 March 1354: Maud wanted her father to say the bread sum aloud before Lady Day (it went by unsaid), and wondered why a lease never carries a daughter's name.
• 20 March 1354: Cecily talks low to Maud about her lost boy at the stones, as she won't with anyone else; Maud only lets her talk.
• 20 March 1354: Old Isabel watches the priest's toll at the hopper, and Maud measures it slow under her nose.
• 20 March 1354: Maud means to sing Stephen Brewer the fourth verse of the carters' song and ask where the turn goes wrong.
• 31 March 1354: Alice Warrener died.
• 31 March 1354: Maud wanted to stand by and hear her father say the bread sum out at the stones before Lady Day (it went by without).
• 31 March 1354: Alice's talk of a bigger pike stayed with Maud; when she took a good pike herself, Alice was the one she wanted to show.
• 31 March 1354: Maud promised in February to go up to Beatrice, said it again in March, and fretted that with Alice down nobody else sits with her.
• 31 March 1354: Maud saw Henry was ashamed of more than he'd tell, and let the toll he owes lie.
• 9 April 1354: Maud keeps saying she'll go to Beatrice or sit with Cecily, then stays home: her tongue goes where her feet don't.
• 9 April 1354: Beatrice was civil at church and said nothing of the lane Maud never walked; Maud would sooner she'd shouted.
• 9 April 1354: Cecily is quick to notice a kindness, slow to take credit, and sees the newcomers as Maud does; Maud is glad of her.
• 9 April 1354: Hearing Henry wants a Mass for his dead, Maud wondered who said any for theirs at Westcott, the summer of the carts.

Pastimes

• Has a good hand with horses. Last winter she talked a carter's lame, bad-tempered mare quiet and held its foot while he pared the hoof; now she's sent for when the carrier horses fret, and she saves crusts for them. The horses go quiet under her hand the way a sickroom does when her mother comes in. This month she's had the plough team, and kept it straight in the fog.
• Whittles small animals from willow, and lets the wood dry under the eaves first so the backs don't go crooked. Her hares are good and her hens look like turnips, as Cecily likes to say. Gives them to the children; carved a hare for Amice Warrener while Alice lay sick. Works at the inn bench beside Adam, who twists a halter better than he carves.
• Sings the Westcott work songs while she sweeps the mill floor, low. Knows more verses than anyone here: Beatrice has the whole carters' ballad from her, and Elena keeps asking for the words. The fourth verse of the carters' song halts at the turn, and she means to sing it through to Stephen, who'll say where.
• Fishes the lake and sets the eel nets under the willows in the winter, and brings home more than her mother does, most weeks.

How they talk

• Brisk and dry, short sentences, a question back as often as an answer. "Is that so?" "Count it again." "I'm only saying what I saw."
• Softer with children and animals, and quick to laugh at herself.
• To the priest and her elders: careful and polite, and she watches their faces while she talks.
• When she's angry she goes very quiet and very exact, just like her father, which neither of them would admit.
• Called: Maud of the mill; the May queen, still, to the young men.
• Swears: "By my faith", and her father's "God's bones" when she forgets herself.

What she thought lately

Ground all morning with the dust standing in the light, thinking of Father's chest. Lord, let that cough go no further, and let him never hear I asked.

19 June

Ground at the mill, then the team in the fallow, then whittling. My arms are heavy as wet sacks, but the team pulled straight and John said so. A good tired.

9 June

Too weary from the lye tub to sit with Agnes after dinner, and not too weary for the inn by dark. Lord, set my feet where my tongue goes.

28 May

The cuckoo called from the wood all the time the stones ran, and I stopped to hear it twice. It's a cheerful bird for a day at the hopper.

27 May

Stephen spoke warm of our steady hand at the stones. It's Mam's hand at a sickbed I'd sooner hear praised, and I won't be saying so to her face.

26 May

Overheard

In the books

• 1 May 1354 May Day: the young ones were up before dawn bringing in the may from the woods, and Maud Miller was Queen of the May. There was dancing on the green all afternoon.
• 24 July 1353 Maud Miller is in bed with a fever.
• 1 May 1353 May Day: the young ones were up before dawn bringing in the may from the woods, and Maud Miller was Queen of the May. There was dancing on the green all afternoon.
• 21 October 1352 Peter Miller came from Westcott with his wife Juliana and a daughter, Maud, and took up the lease of the mill.