The Beekeeper's Promise (Page 3)
Eliane’s job, as kitchen assistant at Château Bellevue, meant she would be on hand each day to check on the bees and to top up their sugar supplies, if necessary, to see them through the winter if it proved to be another hard one. Monsieur le Comte had agreed readily to her shy request to house the hives. He’d noticed that she had a way with nature, coaxing her bees to produce generous slabs of dripping honeycomb, as well as working miracles in the kitchen garden with her herbs and neatly tended beds of produce. Even the château’s cook, the formidable Madame Boin, seemed delighted with Eliane’s work and had been heard humming contentedly of late as she bustled between the scrubbed kitchen table and the range.
Back in the mill’s cavernous kitchen, Eliane filled a small pitcher with water and arranged a posy of wildflowers in it, setting it in the middle of the worn oilcloth that covered the table. Her father, who was dipping a hunk of bread into his bowl of coffee, paused to ask, ‘It’s done? The hives are well sealed?’
Eliane nodded, pouring coffee from the enamelled pot into her own bowl. The morning sunlight began to creep its way across the table as she pulled up her chair.
‘They’re all ready. Is Yves awake?’
‘Not yet. You know what he’s like on a Saturday morning.’ Her father pretended to disapprove of her brother’s indolence.
‘We need to move the hives soon. It’s not good for the bees to be held inside as the day heats up.’ She traced the line of light – stronger now – that had reached the jug of flowers and was continuing to steal silently towards her father at the head of the table.
Her father nodded, wiping his moustache on a crumpled handkerchief that he stuffed back into the pocket of his blue overalls.
‘I know.’ His chair scraped on the stone flags as he pushed it back and hauled himself to his feet. He was a sturdy giant of a man, with the well-filled belly and muscular build that a life’s work of running the flour mill had endowed upon him. ‘I’ll wake him now.’
‘Where’s Maman?’ Eliane asked, cutting a slice from the fresh-baked loaf of bread sitting on an oak board beside her father’s newly vacated place.
‘She’s gone to see Madame Perret. Apparently her contractions started in the night.’
‘I heard the phone ring in the early hours. Is that who it was? But she still has a month to go . . .’ Eliane paused, breadknife in hand.
Her father nodded. ‘Your mother thinks it’s probably a false alarm. You know what Elisabeth Perret is like; she jumps at the sight of her own shadow.’
‘Well it is her first baby,’ Eliane reproached him gently, ‘so of course she’s nervous.’
He nodded. ‘Hopefully your mother will calm her down with one of her tisanes and the little one will decide to stay put for a few more weeks.’
He pushed a dish of white butter and a jar of cherry jam towards her and then she listened to his heavy footsteps, which made the wooden staircase creak as he went to wake Yves.
Seeing her mother, Lisette, wheeling the bicycle into the lean-to by the barn, Eliane picked up her bread and jam and went to help carry in her bag of instruments and the basket of herbal preparations that her mother always took with her on her rounds. As the local midwife, she knew most of the inhabitants of the homes in and around the little village of Coulliac.
‘How is Madame Perret?’
‘She’s fine, just a bad dose of trapped wind. That’s what happens when you eat a whole jar of cornichons in one go! Nothing that a few cups of fennel tea won’t cure. That baby looks to me as if he’s going to stay right where he is for a good few weeks more. She’s carrying him high and he’s far too comfortable to want to move. A typical boy!’ Her mother was uncannily accurate in her predictions of the gender of the babies she was to deliver. ‘Speaking of boys, where’s your brother? I thought he was going to help you and Papa move the beehives this morning before you go to the market?’
Eliane nodded, setting the wicker basket beside the sink and reaching for the coffee pot to pour a bowl for her mother. ‘Papa’s gone to wake him.’
‘And here he is!’ Yves announced his arrival with a grin for Eliane and a hug for his mother. ‘As soon as he’s had his p’tit-déj, he’ll set to work.’
At sixteen years of age, Yves had just left school that summer and was very much enjoying the relative freedom of working with his father at the mill in lieu of the rigours of the classroom and exams. He was taller than his mother and both of his sisters, even though they were older than him, and his handsome mop of dark curls and easy-going manner made him popular with his peers. And, indeed, of late it seemed that an increasing number of girls were eagerly offering to help their parents bring the bushels of wheat to the mill for grinding and coming back to collect the bags of soft flour when it was ready, trying to pretend they weren’t watching out of the corners of their eyes as Yves heaved heavy sacks on to the back of his father’s truck for delivery to the baker.
The Martins’ truck crept up the steep, dusty drive of Château Bellevue, Gustave navigating around the worst ruts and potholes carefully in order to agitate the bees as little as possible. The hives, secured firmly in place and covered with branches of elder leaves to shade them from the sun on their short journey, reached their new home in the walled kitchen garden behind the château, where Eliane directed her father and brother to place them close to the western wall, facing east so that they would be warmed by the first rays of the rising sun each morning through the cold months of winter. A large pear tree, its branches weighed down with fruit almost ripe for the picking, shielded them from above.
‘You’d better get back in the truck and close the windows,’ she told Yves. ‘They might be a bit confused at finding themselves in their new home and you know how they like to sting you!’
‘I don’t get it,’ he grumbled. ‘You don’t even wear a veil half the time and they never sting you.’
‘They’re bees of discerning taste,’ teased Gustave as he clambered into the driver’s seat and made sure his window was firmly secured.
With deft fingers, Eliane untied the cords and gently lifted off the laths that had sealed the hives shut. After a moment or two, the first bees began to emerge from the narrow opening at the base, sensing the air and then launching themselves in dizzy, zigzagging flight. She smiled as she watched them. ‘That’s right – you explore a bit, mes amis. And then make sure you come back and do your dance to tell the others where everything is. There’s plenty for you all to feast on here.’
Already they were starting to cluster around the deep-blue stars of the borage flowers; and one or two of the more adventurous ones were soaring towards the dazzling yellow suns of the Jerusalem-artichoke blooms, intent on seeking out the treasure trove of nectar among the rich brown pollen that dusted the centre of each flower.
At the entrance to the walled garden, Monsieur le Comte stood watching, leaning on his silver-topped cane. ‘Good morning, Eliane. Safely installed? They look quite at home here already.’
She smiled at her elderly employer. ‘It’s perfect. It’ll be less damp for them up here away from the river and the walls will give them shelter. Merci, monsieur.’
‘I’m pleased,’ the count nodded. ‘And Eliane: word has got around already, as it does so quickly in these parts. I’ve been approached by Monsieur Cortini, the vigneron at Château de la Chapelle. His sister-in-law has another six hives, but she’s getting too much arthritis in her hands to be able to work them properly these days. He’s heard you are going to tend your hives up here and he asked if we could accommodate those others as well.’
Eliane’s calm, grey eyes – the colour of the clear dawn light – widened in surprise and pleasure. ‘Nine hives! Just think of all the honey!’
‘Is there enough space for them all here in the kitchen garden, do you think? We don’t want swarms of warring bees on our hands.’
‘Mais oui, bien sûr. We’ll place the new hives a bit away from mine, over there nearer the far corner, and angle them slightly so that the flight paths don’t cross. There shouldn’t be any conflict then.’
‘Very well. The Cortinis will contact you at the market stall this morning to make the arrangements for transporting them up here.’
‘A thousand thanks, m’sieur. And now, speaking of the market, I’d better get going.’
The Comte de Bellevue raised a hand in salutation as the Martins’ truck headed back down the hill. He paused for a few moments longer in the gateway of the walled garden, watching Eliane’s bees, more sure of themselves now, as they went busily from flower to flower in the neat beds she’d helped the gardener to establish there, earlier in the year.
The marketplace in Sainte-Foy-la-Grande was already abuzz with Saturday-morning chatter by the time Eliane arrived. Her progress was slow as she made her way through the crowd, greeting friends, neighbours and stallholders as she squeezed past the colourful displays of produce. Late-summer berries glowed ruby-red alongside amethyst plums in wicker baskets. Beneath their striped awnings, the vegetable stalls were hung with plaited chains of golden onions and tresses of garlic like strings of pearls.