‘Who are you?’ the woman asks.
‘You heard what Master Piers said. I am a physician’s wife. My name is Bianca. I am also an apothecary.’ She glances back to the locked door. ‘They seem to believe I may be able to help your mistress. I don’t know about saving her life, but I think she may have saved mine.’
‘Can you help?’ asks the other.
‘I can try.’
Bianca approaches the bed. She lifts a finger to her lips to signify caution. Then she gestures to the woman to come closer. When they are shoulder-to-shoulder she whispers, ‘Is this the daughter of Don Rodriquez Calva de Sagrada?’
The dark face beside her hardens. Bianca can see the battle between the desire to trust and the fear of betrayal playing out in the woman’s eyes. She studies Bianca with a cautious but penetrating gaze, as though inspecting a treasure she thinks might be a fake.
‘I fear the man her father came to Ireland to meet is dead,’ Bianca whispers, deciding that blunt honesty is the best approach. ‘I am a friend. But you must behave as if I know nothing at all of this matter.’
She waits a moment, fearing the servant will shout for help. Take this person away! She is trying to entrap me. She seeks to entice me into conspiracy!
‘I was at the site of the wreck. I found your mistress’s lace mantilla. I think I know how you came ashore,’ she breathes, hoping that detail might convince. To her relief, the iron hardness goes out of the other woman’s body.
‘I am Cachorra,’ she says. ‘I am maid to Señora Constanza.’
Bianca grins at her. To her joy, she receives one in return, a grin bright enough to lighten anyone’s mood – even one who, at this exact moment, has not the slightest idea how she is going to a cure a sick girl of a malady she has yet to diagnose, and then spirit them all out of a rebel castle.
Start with something you can handle… Start with what you know.
Bianca says loudly enough to be heard beyond the door, and in a tone that suggests competence, ‘I need to observe the patient. I need to note the symptoms.’
‘Stomach cramps and pains,’ Cachorra explains. ‘Sweating, nausea, periods of insensibility that have grown longer as the days pass.’ She drops her eyes as she speaks, as though she holds herself guilty for not protecting her mistress well enough.
A bowl of water and a cloth lie beside the bed. Bianca wipes away the sweat gleaming on Constanza’s brow. Another soft moan escapes her plump lips. Her eyes open, fill with vague, watery interest, then close again.
Bianca asks, ‘What treatment has she received while you’ve been here? Who has attended her?’
A small procession of old men claiming a knowledge of ancient physic, Cachorra tells her. And women even older, including one who had rolled her eyes alarmingly at the ceiling until Cachorra thought she was more in need of relief than her patient, and had then called down spirits to assist her while she rubbed Constanza’s body with the pelt of a dead mole. Constanza had complained bitterly, as was her habit – well or sick. Where are your qualified men of medicine, like our fine Spanish physicians, who have studied at Zaragoza and Madrid? It had been politely pointed out to her that Ireland did not possess such temples of learning, or the attractions to lure physicians who had studied in them. This news had served only to steepen Constanza’s decline.
‘When did your mistress first fall ill?’ Bianca asks.
‘Soon after we arrived here. First was pain in the belly. Then the sweating.’
‘You have eaten the same food, drunk from the same jugs?’
‘Always,’ says Cachorra.
‘Is there anything she has taken that you have not?’
Cachorra’s brow furrows. ‘Nothing. Only that she takes more of it.’
Bianca leans over and sniffs Constanza’s laboured breath. ‘When these people came to attend your mistress,’ she asks, ‘did they give her any liquids to revive her – decoctions perhaps?’
‘What is decoctions, please?’
‘Herbs crushed and boiled in water or wine.’
‘Ah, decocción. Yes, several. But they make no difference. My mistress still ill.’
‘When was the last time?’
‘Many days ago. Now she has only the remedio I give her.’
‘What is that?’
‘Is to make stop her being angry all the time. Is same as what her niñera give her when she is little girl. I make for her the same here.’
‘In Padua my mother made much the same thing,’ Bianca says with a smile. ‘Whenever I would grizzle, out would come the acqua prezzemolo. I suspect she put grappa in it. What do you put in yours?’
‘I put in perejil,’ says Cachorra proudly. ‘Is growing beside river.’ She takes a small bronze bowl from beside the bed and holds it out for Bianca to inspect. The bowl is empty. Bianca sniffs it. A musty smell rises into her nostrils. To be sure, she inspects the chamber for mouse droppings. But it has been kept spotlessly clean.
‘You must show me where you find this perejil.’
‘Now?’
‘Now is as good a time as any. Are you allowed to leave this chamber? When I arrived, I noticed the door was not locked.’
‘We are permitted to come and go as we please,’ says Cachorra. ‘But we wish to walk beyond wall, we must have guards – in case the heretic English come.’ Peering at Bianca as if heresy might be determined by the colour of the eyes, she adds, ‘Are you also heretic English?’
‘Certainly not,’ Bianca tells her indignantly. ‘I’m half-Italian. And a Catholic.’
‘Una hermana en Cristo!’ gasps Cachorra, throwing her arms around Bianca. ‘You are sister in Christ, yes?’
‘I suppose I am,’ Bianca says laughingly as she gently prises herself loose from Cachorra’s crushing embrace. Still in a whisper, she adds, ‘What’s more important, I know why your master came to Ireland. And I can help you fulfil his wishes. But first we must find out if I’m right about what’s ailing his daughter.’
And with that, she calls out to whoever has their ear to the keyhole, ‘Fetch the Earl of Tyrone! I need to see what plants and herbs may be gathered, to replace the medicines his saucy fellows stole from my tent.’
In a shady spot that slopes down to the river the two women begin to explore the wild plants growing amidst a stand of willows. Insects thrum in the dappled shade. Dragonflies skid over the gleaming water. The two guards that Tyrone has appointed to keep watch sit a little way off. Bored by their unsoldierly task, they throw stones into the water. Suddenly Cachorra drops to her knees. She runs her fingers through a thick mass of green leaves.
‘Here,’ she says. ‘See? I notice very first time they let us walk here.’
Bianca reaches down beside her and plucks a leaf. She rubs it between her fingers. At once the musty tang from the chamber affronts her sense of smell. ‘This is perejil?’
Cachorra nods proudly. ‘Yes. I pick, to make remedio – in castle kitchen.’
‘You think this is parsley, don’t you?’ replies Bianca. ‘I can see why you might. The leaves are very similar.’
‘Is not perejil?’ asks Cachorra, her face suddenly full of doubt and fear.
‘No. It’s hemlock. In Italian, cicuta. I’m not sure about the Spanish.’
Cachorra leaps to her feet, her hands flying to her mouth in horror. ‘Cicuta! Santa madre de Dios!’