talk.'
He led Marishka into his tent and had a servant bring her food and wine. Until it was set in front of her, she hadn't realized how hungry she'd become in her hours on the mountain. She ate feverishly while Peto sat, content to watch her and say nothing.
When she'd finished, he took her hand again. 'When you turned up missing, I realized how much I cared for you. I've asked your brother for permission to wed you,' he said. 'He has pledged you to me. He said that arranged marriages are your custom. They aren't mine. So I ask you, will we wed?'
Yesterday, she would not have known how to answer. She did now. 'Of course,' she said. 'At summer solstice. The priests will have no choice but to see the union as a hopeful sign.'
TEN
Jorani's house, called Argentine because of its white stone facade, was far smaller than Nimbus Castle, but far more beautiful. As the elixirs Jorani had sent with Ilsabet slowly brought her old strength back and added to it, she roamed the estate gardens where early spring flowers poked their heads through the frost-covered soil. At her request, the marble fountain was turned on during the day. As she stared into its swirling water, she contemplated revenge. At night before she went to bed, she would unwrap her father's clothes. The first time she did so, she shuddered, recalling the terrible vision she'd had before. But there was no repeat of it. The blood on the cloth had all dried, and it would flake off in her hands and dust the thin white cotton of her nightdress.
As the days grew longer, her isolation grated on her. 'Is there a library here?' she asked her maid.
'In Lord Jorani's private chambers.'
'Take me to it,' Ilsabet ordered. When the girl hesitated, Ilsabet added, 'I was told to treat this estate as my home. Am I not allowed in every room of it?'
'Of course, Baroness. Come this way.'
Ilsabet followed her to a small room, well-lit and warmed by the sun streaming through the windows. The books were not at all the sort to further her education.
As she idly occupied her time with a book of statesmanship, her knee bumped the bottom of the table, and she felt the board move. She knelt and looked up at it, discovering a hidden drawer. Inside it she found a written journal. There, in Jorani's precise hand was a guide to the cultivated plants in the garden, and to the wild ones that grew in the woods around the estate. Some of these were starred, devil's cup among them, she noted with interest. In the back of the book, she found a listing of the starred plants, each followed by a series of letters that she soon understood meant the part of the plant to be used as a drug.
Her body shook with excitement. This was why Jorani had sent her here. Here she could learn without any need for more than the most rudimentary caution.
'Thank you, Jorani,' she whispered as she noted the place on the shelves where books on botany were kept.
Soon the sight of the little baroness in knee boots and leggings became familiar to the servants. Ilsabet found the land a marvelous source of poisons and cures. Devil's cup grew in the marshy soil of the forest, along with castor trees, monkshood, poisonous yew, and an assortment of deadly berries much prized for their more mundane use as a bright red dye. Rilca, the cook, would sometimes see her digging in the garden or in the woods beyond it and think with some amusement what an odd hobby it was for a girl of noble birth. Nonetheless, she found herself pleased to be questioned in such depth about every herb and spice on her shelves.
'Why do you keep this dried black nettle in the back of the cupboard?' Ilsabet asked one day.
Rilca, absorbed in thickening a stew, glanced down at the jar. 'I wouldn't want anyone to mistake it for a cooking herb.'
'What happens if you brew a tea from it?'
'A tea?' Rilca put down her spoon and stared at the girl. 'When I was young, I was told to never eat black nettle.'
'But why?'
'I asked a healer the same question. He said the power of the nettle is in its sting. You've seen the effect of its poultices often enough, I suppose, since your father was a fighter. The wound reddens and blisters, then begins to seep as the poultice draws out the poisons. But if you drink it, a difficult matter if black nettle tastes half as bad as it smells, your stomach is burned on the inside in much the way your throat was from devil's cup poison. Eating becomes painful, and the food does not nourish. If you drink enough of the tea, you will die in great agony the way a fighter might from a stomach wound.'
'Is there an antidote?' Ilsabet asked.
'I don't know. I've only heard how poisonous the plant is from just one person, never anywhere else, so the man may have been wrong. But to be on the safe side, I keep it in the cupboard rather than on the shelf with the other herbs, where someone might use it to season a dish by mistake.'
Ilsabet had learned enough. She changed the subject. 'What about marjoram? Is it true that the plant causes unhappy marriages?' she asked.
'I don't know, but I wouldn't test it at a wedding feast. There's others you might want to know of.' Rilca damped the fire and went to the cupboard, pulling out a number of jars of dried herbs and oils. She opened a jar of amber-colored leaves and handed it to Ilsabet. The smell was sweet, almost like the incense that her father used to import from the east to burn in the hearths during the annual winter feast.
'It is called the constant plant, and its tea has been drunk each night by many a faithless wife to assure that no child will come from a love affair,' Rilca explained.
Ilsabet laughed. 'Do I look as if I need it?' she asked.
'It has another use as well. Drunk every night, it prevents children. But if a woman stops using it, she will conceive within a week. Many women use it to time their pregnancy. With your breathing problems, it would be better to deliver a child in late autumn before your winter cough sets in. If you marry a warrior who sleeps in his castle one night out of ten, it will assure you a family.'
'I'd rather the warrior stayed at home,' Ilsabet said. 'Do you have an herb for that?'
Rilca laughed and lifted three more jars from her collection. 'Mix these together and put them in a small jar filled with flax oil. The scent is said to be an aphrodisiac.'
'Rilca!' Ilsabet laughed. 'Does it work?'
'I've had four husbands,' the old woman confessed.
It occurred to Ilsabet that a simple question had yielded so many marvelous responses. 'Can I go with you when you gather herbs?' she asked.
Rilca banked the fire under her pot and pulled the sweetbread from the oven, slicing off a piece for Ilsabet. 'Of course you can. I'd be pleased to share what I know. Would you like a cup of tea?' she asked.
'Not now, but I will take a pot of water upstairs and heat it on my fire. I'll brew my own and lie down after I drink it. Jorani says I must rest.'
'A good idea.' Rilca said. 'You look so much better, though.'
'I feel better,' she replied. 'It's all the marvelous care.' She slipped the bread into her pocket and carried the pot upstairs.
When the water was boiling, she fixed a cup of tea.
As it was steeping, she poured a bit of water into a little earthen bowl she had found in Jorani's chambers, pulled the jar of nettle leaves from her pocket, dropped a handful into the water, and set both on the coals. By the time she'd finished her second cup of tea, the nettle water had darkened and evaporated by half, leaving a tarry liquid in the bottom of the bowl.
Ilsabet sniffed it. If it tasted half as disgusting as it smelled, she could well understand why no one would accidently swallow it. Nonetheless, she had to know its effect. She dipped the corner of a piece of cloth in the liquid and folded it onto itself, being careful not to touch it. With it in the pocket of her cloak, she pulled on a pair of thick leather gloves and went outside.
The sky had darkened. It would rain soon. She hadn't much time. Rounding the corner of the stable, she spied the lame brown fox that Rilca had taken pity on years ago. Now it was nearly tame and begged with as much
