1760: a Blandy house-keeper
Mallard House
Snow still lying on the orangery roof, though the sun stands higher now and shows every smear of winter soot upon the glass. I have taken the day to prepare the Aqua Mirabilis, as is my duty each Lent tide. It is not for vanity, nor pleasure, but to hold back mischiefs of the blood and soften the grief that gathers about the joints in damp weather.
The recipe was my grandmother’s before she was a Blandy’s maid, copied neat on calfskin and still faintly smelling of burnt orange. The paper crackles but the words remain steady as a prayer: If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. I read it aloud, as though the sound kept the ingredients in obedience.
Into the copper basin go first the dried heads of papaver somniferum, bruised in linen, the seeds whispering like fine sand. Brandy to quicken it, wine to soothe, the green milk of celandine as bright as jealousy. Then the warming spices—cloves, mace, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, ginger—all singing their midwinter hymns in the vapour. Sweet clover, rosemary, cowslip, and a pinch of spearmint at the end to remind the body what freshness means. Twelve hours they steep beneath a flannel cloth, the colour deepening from straw to amber to that secret tint between gold and sin.
When I was younger, I used to think the scent a promise of some paradise nearer than Heaven. Now I think it smells of things that have been too long contained: weddings, tears, the hush that follows the funeral pudding. Old Cook used to say there’s a spirit in the steam that knows the thoughts of whoever tends it. I therefore take care to keep my mind plain and unoffending—no envy, no idleness, only work.
They call it miracle water, though I am sure nothing is miraculous that requires so much scrubbing afterwards. Still, all Mallard House depends on it in one way or another. Mistress takes it for her nerves. The young maids dab it behind their ears in hope of suitors. The steward keeps a flask in the cellar for rheumatism, though it is the taste that cures him most. Even the gardener sprinkles the dregs on the border, saying it drives off blight, which may be true, for plants and people both thrive on company.
I distil it now in the glass still—the alembic fogging like old eyes at Compline—with the slow patience of salvation itself. The vapour rises, drips, cools, and falls; the heartbeat of hours. Out of bitterness comes sweetness, out of confusion, clarity. It is said that, if you hold a finger over the first drop, it burns blue as faith. I will not risk proof of that—what need to test what one believes?
There are stories told about its making. One says that the first Blandy housekeeper distilled it so perfectly that the Duke’s dog, dying of fits, licked the residue and lived to bark again. Another that the second drank too freely of its comfort and saw angels in the coal ash. Both may be true. The strength of this cordial lies in measure, not miracles.
Some of the younger servants say the world is changing; that newer medicines, gentler and bought from the apothecary by the ounce, will replace such home-workers’ science. Let them. If progress means leaving one’s duties to another man’s bottle, I will have none of it. God put labour into the world to keep us grateful. The smell of poppy and spice on my sleeves is the nearest thing to prayer I can manage.
There is talk that they mean to sell the upper orchard next year—to the Mallard cousins, who fancy themselves improvers. They say the trees are old, unprofitable, sour. But I know those trunks; I have scoured their bark of greenfly and gathered their blossom for drying. Everything ripens once, and only once; it is the waiting that holds the holiness.
I remember Mistress as a bride when we first bottled the cordial together—how she laughed to see her reflection doubled in the glass, one sweet, one sorrowful, as though the spirit of the mixture were announcing its price. She seldom laughs now. The cordial still runs as it always did, clear but a little slower, like memory gone viscous.
It is said (by scholars in London who print their fancies at great expense) that all matter contains a divine pulse, and that to distil it properly is to free a portion of the soul. I am no philosopher. I know only that when the last cup of vapour clears and the liquid settles into its golden calm, I feel the evening air ease upon my skin as though the house itself were breathing better.
Tomorrow I shall strain it through muslin, bottle it in green glass, and tie each neck with ribbon. The bottles will gleam in the storeroom like truth in hiding. One must have something to believe in between dustings.
As the Bishop then preaching in Oxford wrote, “God’s hand turns our bitterness to salve, if we will but stir.” True enough. For myself, I stir and I wait, keeping watch over the kettle until the flame dies down. All things, given time, clarify. All but one—why the world, having such cures in it, should still fall ill.
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