Once in a Blue Moon by Penelope Williamson Read Free Book Online

of the pages. It was beautiful and expensive and one of the few gifts anyone had ever given to her.
    Yet she yearned suddenly to preserve the memory of today. It would be like pressing the first primrose of the new year between the covers of a book to take out later, during the coldest, darkest day of winter. The petals would be dry and flattened, and the bright gold of spring would have faded to a dull yellow. But the memory would be there still—in the soft whiff of a lingering scent and the shape of the flower, a starburst of petals frozen forever in time.
    After a frustrating search through the bureau, she found a pen and standish that still had a bit of wet ink left in it. She gathered this up, along with the journal and candle. Settling onto the bed, she wrapped her arms around her drawn-up legs. She was content just to sit for a moment and watch a blister of grease run down the candle and into the dish. She dipped the pen in the inkwell and scrawled out the date in appalling penmanship.
    She brushed the soft quill across her cheek, back and forth. She thought of him walking out of the sea, naked, strong, and beautiful. And she smiled.
    The night was still and quiet now, except for the scratch of pen across paper.
    I met a man today...

CHAPTER 3
    "I got a pain in one of me motors."
    Becka Poole opened her mouth wide and stuck a grimy finger inside. "Rith hereth." Tilting her head, she pulled aside her wren brown hair to show off the roasted turnip parings she had tied behind her ear. "I've tried turnips snips, as ee can see. An' I did rub me feet with bran at bedtime. But them cures bain't workin'. The motor, she still be throbbin' something fierce. I bin prostitute with un for nigh on a month now."
    The mountebank stared at Becka, blinking rapidly. His eyes slid over to Jessalyn a moment, and he cleared his throat. "Afflicted with the toothache, are we? I have here a paste of fish eyes that has had miraculous results. Though others prefer a fumigant of rosemary and sage..."
    The man rummaged among the nostrums and remedies laid out on the tailgate of his gaily painted wagon. He had a lopsided-looking face, for his nose was crooked and his right eye drooped. But he was dressed splendidly, in a laced hat and a gaudily embroidered waistcoat.
    While he argued with Becka that fish-eye paste had it all over turnip parings when it came to curing toothaches, Jessalyn studied the mountebank's other offerings. There were corn plasters and cough drops and trusses for any kind of rupture one might experience. Jalap and wormwood for fever, rotten apple water for pox marks, and a perfumed pastille to overcome the stink of tooth decay. A small dark green bottle with a cork stopper claimed her attention. The label said it was a cure for the...
    Jessalyn peered more closely at the handwritten label. "What is the Secret Disease?" she wondered aloud.
    Becka pulled Jessalyn aside, juggling her paper-wrapped medicines. "That ye hadn't ought to be askin', Miss Jessalyn," the girl said in a loud whisper. "'Tesn't proper for a lady to be askin' sich things."
    "Why is it that the very things one most wants to know about are the very things one isn't allowed to know?"
    "Eh?"
    Jessalyn was about to elaborate further on this injustice when Becka shrieked in her ear and pointed behind her. She whirled to see a trio of runaway pigs bearing down on them. The pigs, their little trotters slashing through the sand, their dewlaps swaying in the wind, were being chased by a man in greasy leather leggings, who was bellowing and brandishing a staff. There was only one place for Jessalyn and Becka to go, and that was backward... into the mountebank's wagon.
    As Jessalyn tried to explain afterward, nothing would have happened if the mountebank had had the foresight to set the wheel brake. She and Becka struck the tailgate hard with their hips, sending cures and nostrums flying and the wagon rolling and swaying like a drunken sailor down the grassy slope and