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 persistence as a pampered house cat. It also left its scent on the garden plants. Rilca would hardly miss it. Ilsabet crouched down and held out a piece of the fresh bread. "Come," she called. "Come and take it."
The fox moved close, and as it bit into the piece, Ilsabet grabbed it. Struggling to get loose, it bit through her glove, nearly to the bone. Nonetheless, Ilsabet held on until she smeared a bit of the black nettle infusion onto the bottom of the animal's paw, then let it go.
The fox limped off with as much dignity as it could muster to the sunny side of the stable and stretched out on the ground. She followed at a distance and waited. When the nettle began to pain the animal, it began licking the tarry residue from its paw until, satisfied, it rolled over and went to sleep.
Ilsabet had experienced a number of nettle poul-tices in her life. She knew the drawing quality took time to appear, so she crouched some distance away from the animal and waited.
It paid little attention to her as it dozed off. She began to think that she hadn't given it enough, but then the fox rolled onto its stomach and gagged as if trying to spit up a bad piece of meat. It looked up at her as though it knew she was the source of its pain, and disappeared into the thick brush of the untended field.
Now she would never know the outcome! Furious, she tried to follow the fox, but the brambles stuck to the hem of her cloak, and the animal's coloring blended too perfectly with the golden shoots of meadow grass. Stamping her foot in frustration, Ilsa-bet returned to the house, stealing in a side door and back to her room.
The next day, she went down to the kitchen just as Rilca went outside to pick herbs to season the evening meal. Ilsabet followed her. "Would you like me to rinse the greens for you?" she asked.
"No. It rained this morning. I kept an eye out for that cursed fox, but it seems to have run off." She stood up and rubbed her knees. "I wonder if I'd miss the pains of growing old if they disappeared."
"I wouldn't," Ilsabet said.
"Well, Baroness, you know quite a lot about pain for such a tiny thing, so I suppose you can talk."
Talk, Ilsabet thought, and considered that Rilca knew far too much about black nettles. She followed Rilca inside and watched the woman open a bottle of dark brown tonic-a mixture of honey and water and the concentrated essences of bedstraw and feverfew, along with an ample amount of alcohol, Ilsabet assumed. The woman wrinkled her nose at the taste. "It's a curse to have to drink something as bitter as this," she said with mock exasperation.
"Lord Jorani tells me that people tolerate anything that works," Ilsabet replied. Midway through the comment, she had a marvelous revelation and could not help but smile. "Since I'm getting hungry and you're making goulash, I'll leave you to your work," she said, then went upstairs.
The next day, Rilca's tonic tasted more bitter than usual. She washed it down with a cup of bee balm and tansy tea and followed the evening dose of tonic with tea as well. In spite of the stomach-soothing herbs, she woke in the middle of the night with terrible pains deep inside her, as if someone had poked needles into her stomach and was pushing them deeper inside her.
"The tonic's gone bad," she thought, and sipped the remnants of cold tea in the pot by her bedside. It alleviated the agony somewhat but in the morning Rilca did not have the strength to make breakfast. The other servants waited on her with the same care they would have given their lord; perhaps even better since Lord Jorani was not the one who fixed their meals.
For a week she stopped eating, drinking only the soothing tea when her thirst became unbearable. Gradually, the pain subsided, and she went back to her duties, bearing the stiffness in her joints without tonics.
Rilca never once suspected Ilsabet, for the little baroness sat often at her bedside, reading aloud to her or simply holding her hand, an expression of such intensity on her face that it seemed to Rilca that Ilsabet was trying to take on the agony for her through an act of will.
It also appeared that the child's own health was improving. Though she still had a trace of her cough and had gained no color to her complexion, there was a glow about her that had not been present before, making her pallor seem exotic rather than sickly.
A few days after Rilca was able to resume her duties in the kitchen, Ilsabet received a letter from her sister.
"Peto tells me you are quite recovered," Marishka wrote. "I've told him I will not plan my wedding unless you are here with me. I'm frantic without you. Come soon, Ilsabet. I miss you."