The Peace Offering

A gypsy caravan trundled slowly through meadows bespeckled with pinks and yellows, whites and blues. The sun shone its warm face upon the green earth, and cherry blossoms floated gently across the hills and dales on zephyr breezes. Wildflowers grew in pretty clusters along the hedgerows, and large white trees buzzing with bees dotted the meadows through which Puzzle haphazardly pulled the wagon.

“Nobody plants the may,” Granny Kneebone said, slapping the reins against the pony's back. “It grows wherever it pleases. May trees are fairy trees.”

The hawthorns, as they were properly called, certainly seemed magical. Their creamy blossoms smelled of honey, and the sun danced all over them in a thousand happy ways.

“Oh, do make Puzzle stop, Granny!” Pip said. “I want to go and touch one.”

“Nobody lingers beneath mayflowers, child,” Granny Kneebone said, driving Puzzle on. “They're enchanted.”

They approached a crossroads where three may trees grew, intertwined delicately together, and Granny bowed at them with respect as they went past.

The caravan arrived at a tiny village – it was really only four buildings gathered around a fiveways intersection, with a bent sign that read 'Easingwold' – and Pip pointed. “Look, Granny! Look at all the little crosses!”

Hanging on cottage doors and leaning against stone walls were small painted white wooden crosses, covered in flowers and greenery. Pip thought they looked enchanting.

“Aye, those are May garlands,” Granny said. “It's May Eve tonight. The villagers are celebrating.”

Pip gazed at a charming cottage with diamond-pane windows. Five little straw bee skeps sat amidst lavender bushes in the garden, all in a row, and a white cross hung on the picket fence gate. At that precise moment, Puzzle stopped and noticed the garland, too. She decided it looked delicious, and began pulling off large mouthfuls of lilies-of-the-valley in sloppy chomping gulps.

“For goodness' sakes, Puzzle! That's quite enough nanty-narking,” Granny said, slapping the reins, but Puzzle ignored her. “Griffith! Hop down and pull her away before somebody tells us off.”

It was too late. The bee-keeper had already appeared to tell them off, and he looked very grumpy about it indeed.

“See here!” he bellowed, banging out of the front door with a plum-coloured face. “If I wanted my flowers eaten, I would have put up a sign: 'Free pony food here'.”

“We're dreadfully sorry,” Pip said, peering around Granny's elbow on the wagon seat. “It's Puzzle, you see. She has obstinance disease.”

The bee-keeper made a horrible face, twisting up parts that Pip didn't know could be twisted. “I won't be made a fool by the likes of you!” he thundered. “Dirty old tinkers! Clear orf my road.”

Red-hot blood rushed to Griffith's head and he moved to jump down into the street, but Granny pinched him.

“Ignore the old sod. More money than manners,” Granny Kneebone said, and gave Puzzle a final hard slap. This time the fat pony trotted exactly twelve ells down the lane, then stopped on a grassy verge. She turned her head and looked back at Granny scathingly, putting her ears on backwards.

“Impertinent beast,” Granny said. “I need a cup of tea.”

They made an outdoor fire and boiled the kettle, sipping pennyroyal tea from chipped cups. Pip admired the pretty hamlet that lay behind them, resplendent with crabapple trees.

“Well, if we're not moving, we might as well be spring-cleaning,” Granny announced, and sprinkled her tea leaves all over the caravan door in order to sweep up the dust. The three of them polished and washed, laundered and scrubbed, and by evening the caravan was sparkling clean.

“Tomorrow is the first day of summer,” Granny said. “The farmers will be moving their flocks up to the summer pastures, and the children will be dressed in bright colours with flowers in their hair.”

Pip wished she had a bright dress to wear. Her thin, faded grey frock was all she owned and it was growing rather tight around the armpits – although Pip didn't dare mention that to Granny. Flowers cost nothing, however, and when she was awakened by a cock's crow at dawn, Pip hurried outside and picked primroses from around the caravan wheels to weave into her hair.

Singing came from the village – “Here we come gathering knots of May!” – and as the sun rose above the merry knoll, a group of children came jauntily down the road, arm-in-arm. They, too, were scouring the hedgerows for flowers. They picked buttery cowslips and marsh marigolds, wood anemones and cow parsley, and many other pretty blooms of which Pip did not know the names. One little girl in a shell-pink dress waved at Pip, and Pip stepped forward, shyly.

“Hullo!”

“Good morning,” Pip said. “I like your doll.”

The girl was holding a hoop-garland, in which bent willow boughs formed a cage shaped like a globe. The globe was covered entirely with flowers, and on top sat a little doll.

“That's the May Doll,” the girl said. “Would you like to hold her? My name's Rosamond. What's your name? Is that your pony? I say, it's got a rather fat tummy, hasn't it? Are you tramps? It's the first of May today, and we're may-dolling. Well, I am. My brother Lewis won't touch the doll. He says dolls are for babies, but I rather like this one, don't you?”

Pip didn't have time to answer this interrogation, but Rosamond didn't appear to require responses. She had already grasped Pip by the hand and begun to drag her down the lane. All the village children were gathering armfuls of may in their baskets, and they didn't stop until the sun was high in the cloudless sky and the sound of a little brass bell could be heard ringing through the lime trees.

“That's Mother, calling us for dinner,” Rosamond announced. “You'll come, won't you?”

Pip had never been to known to turn down an invitation to dinner, so she followed all the children inside a white cross-gabled cottage, where a lovely lady was rolling out great slabs of yellow dough with a ceramic rolling pin, whistling Country Gardens while she worked. Pip's mouth fell open when she saw all the good things to eat on the wooden table: jammy buns and teacakes, clotted cream and sausage rolls, lemon curd tarts and giant mincemeat pies and a large bottle of chutney.

“Welcome to Easingwold Cottage,” the lovely lady said to Pip. This must be Rosamond's mother. What green eyes she had! Like the colour of the deepest parts of a river, Pip thought. Her sleeves were rolled up above her floury elbows. “Would you like some milk?”

“Yes I jolly well would,” Pip answered, and everybody laughed. The woman poured creamy milk into enormous blue-and-white mugs, and told all the children to eat as much as they liked. Farmhouse kitchens must quite similar to heaven, Pip decided; endless plates of delicious food, fresh cold milk and baskets of scented flowers. Everything felt too good to be true, except that Rosamond's brother Lewis ate all the sausage rolls before she had a chance.

Rosamond’s mother began clearing everything away, and then opened a box filled with leftover cuttings of wallpaper. Pip couldn't speak, the patterns were so lovely: forget-me-not garlands, silken stripes, wreaths with sage ribbons and rose-and-gold leaves.

“Cut yourself out a marvellous big square, like this,” Rosamond said, expertly wielding a knife, “And curl it into a cone – you see?”

Ribbon handles were attached to the cones, and each one filled with a posy. Soon the table was covered with beautiful cones of fresh flowers, and Pip clasped her hands together at the beauty of it all.

“What are they all for?” she asked.

“Why, for hanging on the doorknobs of all the cottages in the village, of course! Haven't you had a May Day before?”

“I come from an island in the middle of the sea,” Pip said. “There were no may trees there. Only pink sea thrift... and a lighthouse.” A sudden aching sensation formed in her stomach, most unexpectedly; she saw her father's face hovering before her own, with his grey whiskers the colour of the ocean after a storm. Today, amidst all these children, I feel like an orphan, Pip thought. Tears pricked her eyes.

“An island!” Rosamond said. “Did you have sea serpents, then?”

“Probably,” Pip answered, swallowing the lump in her throat. “But they stayed under the water.”

Outside in the street, Pip watched as Lewis tiptoed towards a neighbouring cottage, hung a posy from the door knob, knocked and then gleefully ran away. Everyone hid behind a box hedge while an old lady with snowy-white hair and a starched apron stepped on to the threshold, looked around and tutted. Then she saw the flower cone hanging from her door, and happiness radiated from her weathered old face like an angel's light. She picked up the cone, gazed up at the sun and kissed it, and went inside.

Pip watched as all the children took turns sneaking up to cottage doors, leaving their posies, knocking and running away. It was tremendous fun. They left flowers at every single farmhouse in the surrounding countryside – including a wainwright's yard and the tiny school house – until there was only one posy left.

“What about the bee-keeper?” Pip asked, pointing to the cottage where Puzzle had eaten the garland.

“Shh! That's nasty old Mr Grigg,” Rosamond whispered. “He never gives out free sweets on Collop Monday, and if any child wanders too close to his garden, he thrashes them with a rod. We never leave him flowers on May Day.” She thrust the little paper cone into Pip's hands. “Here – you keep this one! A present for my new friend from the sea, from Easingwold parish.”

Pip walked slowly back to the caravan. There were so many new things in her head, she wasn't sure she had enough time to consider them all properly.

Later that evening, while Granny's tremendous snores shook the walls of the caravan inside, and Puzzle's deafening snores vibrated the caravan walls outside, Pip sat up in bed.

“What are you doing?” Griffith grumbled. “You've pulled the eiderdown off my neck. It's freezing!”

“Thinking,” Pip said, and she rubbed her nose very hard. The may cone was hanging from a nail on the wall, making the caravan look pretty; but something felt wrong.

“Griffith – have you ever met somebody terribly nice, who's also a little bit mean?”

“Of course,” Griffith said. “Puzzle.”

Pip shook her head. “No, no! You don't understand.” I was thinking of Rosamond. She threw back the eiderdown and took the posy off the wall. It smelled fragrant in the cool night air.

“I think we ought to gift this to the grumpy bee-keeper.”

Now Griffith was out of bed, too. “Are you half-rats?” he demanded.

“He's never had anything lovely on May Day,” Pip said. “And I know how nasty it feels to be left out of things.” She told Griffith how every year the children of Easingwold left posies for everyone in the village but him.

“He deserves it,” Griffith said. “He shouted at Granny. I wanted to hit him.”

“Maybe...” Pip began softly, “Maybe, if more people gave him flowers, he wouldn't be so quite so cross.”

“Pip! Where are you going?” Griffith called, but Pip had already slipped through the half-door and down the wagon steps, and was hurrying barefoot along the starlit lane. Silently, Griffith followed her. The unending cosmos twinkled beneath a curved pale moon, and the hawthorns glowed so bewitchingly in the moonlight that Pip almost turned back – but suddenly, she was at Mr Grigg's picket fence gate. Holding her breath, she pushed it open gently. There was no doorknob, so she lay the cone of blossoms on the tired old doorstep.

The sound of terrible, wheezing coughs woke Pip. Sunshine streamed across her yellow eiderdown, and Granny Kneebone sounded like she was choking on a fishbone. Pip and Griffith burst outside and thumped her on the back, but she shook her head at them.

“It's the pollen,” she said, gasping for air. “The Queen of the May is snatching my breath away.”

Something flashed in the corner of Pip's eye: a piece of glinting, glossy, golden magic in the sunlight. She leapt on it.

“Granny! Griffith! Look!”

It was a sizeable earthenware pot of honey, with an enormous chunk of honeycomb suspended therein.

“Well, I never,” Granny wheezed. “The pixies must have left it. Just the thing for my throat!”

Pip looked at Griffith, and they both grinned knowingly.