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My Grandmother would sit in her kitchen as I watched and she would talk and stir and talk some more. I was young and impressionable and in the gathering dusk she would tell me stories about witches and wise men and the world she had known.

‘Why do you make two stews, Grandma?'

‘Animals in the ark, Paul. Men and women, boys and girls, herbs and spices, up and down, light and dark. You know the rhyme, Paul, you know the rhyme.'

And I did know the rhyme although until that day I hadn't put two and two together.

‘Sing it, Grandma.'

‘We'll sing it together.'

Sage, sage the wiseman's wage,

Cardamom, passion shapes

Thyme to stretch to fine old age

Nutmeg and the mind escapes

Dill to quell the heated voice

Cinnamon the heart of greed

Willow helps to make the choice

Cumin stimulates the need …

And so on we sang. When I was a child everyone seemed to know it but now I know there are too few who do. Herb and spice. Naughty and nice. Each one was a character to me.

‘Grandma, why are herbs good for you and spices do such bad things.'

The creases in her face melted into a smile and then wrinkled again as she looked thoughtful.

‘Time might come when you don't think so, young Paul. Now your Grandpa, may the Gods look after his soul, he would have said that Herbs were for those who want a long and dull life but Spices get things done.'

She didn't talk of Grandpa Camlin very often. He went off to the fighting and never came back, dead or alive we never knew. It was no surprise to Grandma.

She was right in a way, I did come to spices as boys do, but she was wrong too because I never forgot herbs. I sat at her knee too long for she had no other family and neither had I.

She had nearly understood the old rhymes. Nearly but not enough. She stirred her stews and breathed in the fumes but Spices were for the men, such as they were, not for women or boys and so she took only herbs.

We were the travellers' rest in the village, the house set aside for hospitality, but few passed through and so when someone came on hard times, illness, or just bad luck we put them up too. Sometimes a matron would call in to keep company and leave with the pots full of stew that were the real, unspoken reason for visiting. In return the village gave us what we needed and our garden provided the rest.

But the rhyme … because the rhyme is important. The rhyme is in pairs, and triplets and quartets, sextets and octets if you know how to read it. Like a good stew the more you stir it the tastier it gets. Thyme and sage: who wants long life without wisdom. Dill and willow: meditation with a purpose. The rhyme fascinated me then and I have spent a lifetime understanding it.

I could not stay with my Grandmother as I grew older. A man should not work with Herbs alone and this I did not need to be told. On my last night she gave me Spices and sat and watched me eat. The next day I set off early, with the zeal of a young man, into a world that waited for me with it's grasping insanity.

The first town I came to seemed to me, innocent as I was, to be full of lunatics. Men and women rushed from house to house, apparently without purpose. They took no time to meet with one another and yet they spoke all the time. I stopped at an alehouse and asked for hot water to brew some herbs in. To my relief he took a few agrimony leaves in payment. The poor man was jaundiced and even agrimony would not relieve his pain for long I thought.

I came across a group of men in the square listening to another man who was telling them how he wished to help them run their town. Lord knows they needed help, but they heckled and shouted him down. Women were shouting names at each other across garden fences while the gardens themselves were rough earth with no plants growing in them.

Finally a long-haired man crossed the street and hailed me. He was dressed in ragged cloth but seemed spritely and full of energy.

‘You aren't from these parts, young man.'

It was a statement not a question. He was the first person to seem to notice me at all.

‘I'm a … traveller.'

‘You will be out of town by sunset I hope?'

‘I have nowhere to go but no reason to stay.' I was cautious, as I could not tell whether he was giving me a warning or a threat.

He took my arm and led me to the edge of the town where a neat plot of land had been cultivated, the only one in the town that I had seen. At one edge was a small shed and he took out a key and opened a heavy padlock although the shed was flimsy enough for anyone determined to break in.

He took out a pot and lit a fire and he made a clear broth. The shack was neatly ordered and jars of familiar spices were set out on one shelf. He was a garrulous man and told me that this was the finest town he had lived in. He could not settle to any single line of work but the townspeople didn't seem to mind. Each day he would walk the streets and offer advice and the people respected him because he was always active, always practical. In return they would give him little things for the shack. He grew what he needed in the garden and occasionally took rabbits from the woods outside the town.

He said he slept only two hours a night and I could see that he was using up his life too quickly. In return for his hospitality I gave him dill to bring calm to his life. The next morning I left the town hoping to find something better.

I found that the world was bigger than I knew, perhaps bigger than anyone knew, and that it was full of people scratching for a living. They lived too fast or too slow, fighting for they knew not what or daydreaming through their lives. Occasionally I would meet a wiser man, or more often woman, who was respected, and who brought a certain peace, to the local villages. I would swap thoughts and trade the precious herbs and spices, which if truth be told were plentiful in the fields and hedgerows wherever I travelled.

I walked for many, many years and then I found at last some peace in a big town where they had a meeting place for people who wanted to learn and to help each other. They called this place a University and, to my surprise, I found that my reputation had arrived before me.

I stood looking at the well-ordered buildings and the people walking and talking purposefully together and when someone asked if they could help me I told them, as I always did, that I was a traveller. The young woman looked at me intrigued, her eyes catching mine.

‘Do you know the Rhyme, sir? Do you know the uses of Dittander and Vervain, the properties of King Henry and St John's Wort?'

I smiled at her, as it had been a long time since anyone had used those names to me. Then I nodded slowly and she broke into laughter.

‘You are Paul Herbmaster? Paul Allseason? The Spiceman and the Herblord! I had thought you were a story and now you walk into our University and you are no older than I am!'

She took me to a room and gave me all I asked for, which was little enough: a wash bowl, a fire, a pot for stirring. Her name was Elvira and I stayed with her for a long time. She was in fact perhaps twenty years younger than I although no-one ever asked my age or thought it strange that I should come to them a young man when they had heard stories of me for thirty years or more.

Each morning she would ask me, ‘Are you leaving today, Paul?'

And each morning I would think about the madness of the world outside and how perhaps by teaching these people, who would stay for a day, or a week, or a year, or ten years, we were doing some good and I would reply.

‘Not today, Elvira. Perhaps tomorrow.'

She would smile and kiss me and I would take two pots and make stew all day and a steady stream of visitors would come to talk, to swap stories and ideas and ask my advice.

One day Elvira came to me and sat before me.

‘Paul, I am getting old and yet you go on. I don't come to ask how this can be or how I can learn it from you. You have told us time again that to each is allotted a space in the world and we use it as it falls to us. I only fear that my time is nearly over. I want you to know that I feel that I am so fortunate to have lived this life with you.'

I looked down at my young girl and saw that on the surface she had indeed become an old woman. I had been at the University for perhaps fifty years and of those who had first greeted me only Elvira was left. I was ninety years old at least and my time had been so full at this place that I had not noticed the passing years.

That Spring Elvira passed away and I determined to go away and see whether our teachings had made a difference to the world. I walked many miles and yet it seemed as though no time had passed at all. I walked, as always, with a purpose. Always learning new things, but I had a direction too.

I came to the village across the hilltop where I had played as a child. Of course, no-one would know me there now but I wanted to see again the old herb garden and I wondered whether another wise woman was sitting stirring and talking at the hearth.

I knocked on the old cottage door and heard a quiet ‘Enter'.

There was a fire, just like there used to be. And there was my Grandmother with two pots in front of her.

I sat at the floor opposite her, just as I used to and she took a bowl in her hand.

‘Herbs, Paul, or Spices?'

‘Herbs, Grandmother. It's always been herbs.'

She ladled the broth into a bowl and one for herself, then she took up a root that I recognised and broke the stem.

‘I have waited many years for this moment, Paul. As Camlin used to say, life without spices can be a dull thing. You still have much to offer and you have my blessing.'

She reached over and kissed my cheek, and then she took a single bite of the root.

We sat and talked as the dusk wore on and she got quieter and her eyes drooped as the Cowbane did its work. The next morning I carried her to the garden and began to dig.