I watched Brother Wigbert as he finished with one row of beds and moved across the ward to the women’s section, and I could see that I would not get anywhere. But I was also aware that it would be difficult to persuade the abbot to allow a lay woman around who was not a cook. I turned away, not wishing to fight a futile battle, but I vowed to come back to it again.
Outside, the first drops of rain were falling with a muffled sound on the dry earth beneath the wilting summer plants. I went back to the workshop to make a rubbing oil for Brother Wigbert’s creaking joints. It was a new medicine I had learned about from a peasant woman who had brought me a basketful of aconite roots and flowers. It was the same patient who had stayed in the infirmary with a hernia the previous autumn and heard the infirmarian complain about his aches flaring up in chilly weather. Since then, she had been bringing me a supply regularly.
Aconite was an unusual plant. While it apparently grew in abundance across the Glan, I had never seen it on the abbey side of the river. In fact, I had never heard about it before. According to the woman, despite the herb’s unassuming appearance—it had common-looking palmate leaves and purple flowers that resembled a monk’s cowl—aconite was extremely dangerous if used improperly. She had warned that it could prove fatal if ingested. Even when rubbed on a painful area, it could cause more harm than good if too much was applied at once.
I set up the alembic. As soon as Brother Wigbert had felt the oil’s effect, he offered the treatment to the abbot who suffered similarly. As a result, I was now free to make the medicine, although the abbot had been careful to impress on me the importance of keeping quiet about its provenance. “Praising the benefits of herbs will only stoke the peasants’ superstitions. They already hang amulets everywhere instead of praying to God for health,” he had told me.
I was still working when Brother Wigbert returned, his bald head glistening with the moisture of the now steadily falling rain, and announced that we had a patient.
“A case that requires an overnight stay?” I inquired practically. The new building was not officially open yet, though exceptions could be made if necessary.
“Yes. Young Volmar.”
“Volmar!” An image of a terrible accident flashed through my mind, and I dropped the knife I was holding. It hit the edge of a mortar bowl with a clang. “Is he all right?”
“Just a cough and a bit of a fever.” The infirmarian did not seem to notice my agitation. “The season is starting early this year.”
I composed myself quickly. “And we are keeping him?” I asked to cover my embarrassment.
He nodded as he set out to warm some elderberry wine. “The cough seems benign enough, but I want to keep an eye on him for a few days to see if it is not a more serious affliction of the lungs.” I shivered at the specter of consumption, even though Volmar had never shown any signs of it. “Besides, we might as well see how everything works before we open up.”
“Good idea.”
“When you are done, take this wine to him with one of your throat pills.”
I smiled behind his back. Brother Wigbert still would not dispense them himself, but he was happy enough to see my herbal work.
It rained for the next three days. Grumblings began around the abbey that the grape harvest would be ruined, but I was content. Volmar was doing well, and with nobody else for me to take care of—and Brother Wigbert either in the workshop or in church—we spent hours together. I showed him the lump of salt from Alzey that I always carried in its little box in the pocket of my robe so I could look at it whenever I missed my mother. In the five years it had been in my possession, it had not changed in any way I could discern; it was still hard and smooth, and white as a freshly fallen snow. Volmar told me about the Church Fathers they had been reading in the school, and we practiced Latin conjugations, at which he was considerably better than I.
On the fourth day the rain ceased, and I came in at midday with a message from Brother Wigbert. “You have been coughing up no blood, so you will be released today.”
Volmar leaped from his bed; three days of enforced rest was probably as much as any fourteen-year-old could take.
“Here.” I opened a medicine box Brother Wigbert had ordered for me from a carpenter in town and produced a cloth-wrapped bundle. “A few more horehound pills. I added a little lemon juice to them. My nurse used to say that the juice of lemons is good for colds, although the fruit is expensive and hard to come by.” Indeed, at a silver mark a pound, Brother Wigbert would only let me buy one at a time from Renfred.
Volmar took the pills. For a moment it seemed as though he would give me a hug, but then he stepped back and pressed the bundle to his chest in a gesture of gratitude. To my annoyance, I blushed fiercely.
“Come, I want to show you something before you leave.” I turned around, calling over my shoulder more brusquely than I had intended. I wished the ground would open and swallow me whole.
I
