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    The night's rain had given way to a softened sky streaked with thin clouds.  The air was bright with spring, and the wind had a kindness that was not there yesterday.  In the fields the early corn was a haze of green across the dark soil, and along the sheltered southward side of a hedgerow Margery found a dandelion's first yellow among the early grass.  The young nettles and wild parsley were up, and in a few days would be far enough along to gather for salad, something fresh after the long winter's stint of dried peas and beans and not enough porridge.
    Margery paused under a tree to smile over a cuckoo-pint, bold and blithe before the cuckoo itself was heard this spring.  Farther along the hedge a chaffinch was challenging the world, sparrows were squabbling with more vigor than they had had for months, and a muted flash of red among the bare branches showed where a robin was about his business.  As she should be about hers, she reminded herself.
    She had set out early to glean sticks along the hedgerows but there was not much deadwood left so near the village by this end of winter; her sling of sacking was barely a quarter full, and all of it was wet and would need drying before it was any use.  But she must go home.  Jack would be coming for his dinner and then Dame Claire at the priory was expecting her.
    Though she and Jack were among the village's several free souls and not villeins, Margery's one pride was that she worked with Dame Claire, St. Frideswide's infirmarian.  They had met not long after Margery had married Jack and come to live in Priors Byfield.  In the untended garden behind the cottage she had found a plant she could not identify despite the herb lore she had had from her mother and grandmother.  With her curiosity stronger than her fear, she had gone hesitantly to ask at the nunnery gates if there were a nun who knew herbs.  In a while a small woman neatly dressed and veiled in Benedictine black and white had come out to her and kindly looked at the cutting she had brought.
    "Why, that's bastard agrimony," she had said.  "In your garden?  It must have seeded itself from ours.  It's hardly common in this part of England and I've been nursing ours along.  It's excellent for strengthening the lungs and to ease the spleen and against dropsy, you see."
    "Oh, like  marjoram.  Wild marjoram, not sweet.  Only better, I suppose?" Margery had said; and then had added regretfully, "I suppose you want it back?"
    Dame Claire had regarded her with surprise.  "I don't think so.  We still have our own."  She looked at the cutting more closely.  "And yours seems to be doing very well.  Tell me about your garden."
    Margery had told her and then, drawn on by Dame Claire's questions, had told what she knew of herbs and finally, to her astonishment, had been asked if she would like to see the priory's infirmary garden.  One thing had led on to another, that day and others; and with nothing in common between them except their love of herbs and using them to help and heal, she and Dame Claire had come to work together, Margery gathering wild-growing herbs for Dame Claire's use as well as her own and growing plants in her garden to share with the infirmarian, as Dame Claire shared her own herbs and the book-knowledge Margery had no way of having.  And for both of them there was the pleasure of talking about work they both enjoyed, each with someone as knowledgeable as herself.
    Now, this third spring of their friendship, the soil would soon be dry enough, God willing, for this year's planting.  Margery and Dame Claire had appointed today to plan their gardens together, so that Dame Claire could ask the priory steward to bring back such cuttings as they needed when he went to Lady Day fair in Oxford.
    But Margery had to hurry.  Her husband Jack wanted both her and his dinner waiting for him when he came into the house at the end of the morning's work, and his displeasure was ugly when she