The countryside had settled down to the rule of the Normans with hardly more trouble than the dismantled mound. Travelers often came over the new bridge and stayed at the inn on their way to or from London, and there were more than twice as many houses as there had been when Mary's mother was a girl. Older people complained that the country could never endure so much progress. This was a rather remote region, given over mainly to sheep-grazing. On the great extent of "common" still unfenced, the sheep wandered as they liked, and they often came nibbling about Mary's feet as she sat on the mound. There had been a garden about the ancient castle--several, in fact: the herb-garden, the vegetable garden, and a sort of out-door nursery for fruits and berries. The last had been against a southward-facing wall and was nearly destroyed; but herbs are tenacious things, and the old roots had spread into the vegetable patch, and flowers had seeded themselves, until Dame Annis moved into the little cottage and began to make her living. Most of the old-fashioned cottage-garden flowers could be found there. Thrift raised its rose-red spikes in crevices of a ruined wall. Bluebells, the wild hyacinths, made heavenly patches of color among the copses. Great beds of mustard and lavender, in early summer, were like a purple-and-gold mantle flung down upon a field. Presently violets bloomed in orderly rows in Dame Annis's new herb-garden, and roses were pruned and trimmed and trained over old walls and trees. It may seem odd that violets and roses should be among herbs. The truth is that very few flowers were cultivated in the early Middle Ages simply for ornament. Violets were used to make perfume. Roses were made into rose-water and also into rose conserve, a kind of sweetmeat of rose-petals, sugar and spice packed in little jars. Marigolds were brought from the East by returning Crusaders for use in broth. Pennyroyal, feverfew, camomile, parsley, larkspur, and other flowers used to be grown for making medicine. One of the few herbs which grow in modern gardens, which the Conqueror found in England when he came, is tansy. The name comes from a Greek word meaning immortality. Tansy was used to preserve meat, and to flavor various dishes. There were also sage, marjoram, thyme, and many other herbs of which Dame Annis did not know the names. One of the most precious finds that she made in her digging and transplanting was a root of woad. This plant was used for blue dye, and was so much in demand that England did not produce enough and had to import it. It was too valuable for her to use it herself; she cherished it and fed the soil, planting every seed, promising Mary that some day she should have a gown dyed watchet blue, of linen from their own flax. Mary was thinking about that gown as she sat spinning and listening to the hum of the bees. She knew exactly how it would be made from beginning to end.