Year of Wonders

Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the source text’s treatment of child death, extreme violence towards women, detailed descriptions of traumatic births, and painful death.

Although some are already rotten, Anna collects the last apples from the fall harvest. She cuts an apple for the rector Michael Mompellion, her employer, and offers to read to him from the Bible, but he says she is illiterate. Anna reminds him that Mrs. Mompellion taught her to read. He doesn’t want to hear the scriptures today, so Anna takes a few apples to the stables for his horse, Anteros. Anna notices the deplorable state of the stables and the stable boy sleeping in the corner. She feeds the agitated stallion the apple, but he prefers his master, who hasn’t ridden him. When she returns to the house, the rector is pacing and hasn’t touched his apple. Anna resolves to make cider from the remaining apples.

Anna walks home through the orchard, bringing back happy memories of when her husband, Sam Frith, proposed to her when she was only 15. Though strict Puritans ruled the town, Anna was content with her life. She and Sam had two sons and enjoyed three happy years together. However, the smell of rotting apples reminds her of the night Sam died working in the mines and his friends, who had rotten apples on their shoes, came to deliver the bad news. After they dug Sam’s body from the rubble, Anna cleaned him with the same soap she used to wash the children. Anna is now alone and cares for Mr. Mompellion in honor of his wife, Elinor, who showed her kindness after Sam’s death. Anna compares Michael’s spiritual darkness to the sunless mines in which Sam spent his days.

Anna admits that nights are hardest for her and she often reaches for her absent children in her sleep. Mornings are better because she spends it with her cow and its calf. Anna found the pregnant cow wandering the town and housed it in her neighbor’s abandoned cottage until she gave birth. Now fat from grazing, the cow provides her with milk, which she uses to make cream and butter for her and the rector. More than the nourishment, Anna treasures it and its calf’s company. As she walks to the rectory, Anna takes in the changes wrought by disaster on her town of Eyam. The streets are mostly empty and covered with grass as nature begins reclaiming the land.

When Anna arrives at the rectory, Elizabeth Bradford, daughter of the wealthy Colonel Bradford, waits for her angrily, demanding to see the rector. Anna once worked for the Bradfords and isn’t happy that the family has returned to the village, as she finds them cowardly for leaving. Anna explains that the rector can’t perform his duties due to his recent devastating loss. Anna finds the rector upstairs, sadly staring out the window at what remains of his wife’s garden. He already knows Elizabeth is there and says to Anna, “Tell her to go to Hell” (15).

Anna tells Elizabeth the rector won’t see her, but Elizabeth refuses to leave. She pushes past Anna, trying to go upstairs, but Michael meets her. Elizabeth pleads with him to see her mother, who is ill with a tumor, but Michael coldly tells her that her mother should pray for her soul and assume God has abandoned her just like everyone else in the village.

Elizabeth collapses in Anna’s arms, explaining that her mother doesn’t have a tumor: She is pregnant from an affair. Still stunned by the rector’s blasphemous words, Anna says nothing. Elizabeth gathers herself and leaves. Anna reads Psalm 103 to the rector, but he asks why she didn’t choose Psalm 128. She drops the Bible, and he holds her hand to keep her from stopping its fall.