The Winter King by Alys Clare Page B

Edmund’s chapel above Hawkenlye Abbey, a sword in her hand, facing a short, stout stranger who promised to teach her to fight and whose charisma, even now and merely a remembrance, still had the power to make her tremble …
    Enough
, Meggie said silently. ‘Tell me how you helped Lady Richenza,’ she said firmly.
    ‘Yes. Sorry,’ Sabin muttered. ‘Well, she understood nothing, as I’ve told you, and at first she said,
“I don’t want him hurting me like that,” and then, “I am very afraid of pregnancy and childbirth,” as if the two matters were not connected. Do you know, Meggie, she told that stinking old man that she thought kissing led to babies! Imagine those fat, slobbery lips kissing you –
euch
!’
    ‘I’d rather not,’ Meggie said soberly.
    Sabin’s face grew serious. ‘He gave her a lesson, the night she said that to him,’ she said. ‘It’s so deeply unpleasant that I don’t want to tell you.’
    ‘I don’t want to hear.’ Meggie was afraid she could imagine, all too well, what the old man had done to his child wife. ‘What did you prepare for her?’
    Sabin sighed deeply. ‘For Lady Richenza herself, I made an emmenagogue of pennyroyal, houseleek, thyme and rue, to strengthen her menstrual flow and induce her courses. From what she told me, it seemed unlikely that she had already conceived, but, just in case, I prepared a concentrated decoction of birthwort and raspberry leaf, hoping thus to render her womb inhospitable. I also prepared a fleabane poultice for her to bind to her belly.’
    ‘You were very thorough,’ Meggie observed.
    ‘The lady was very desperate,’ Sabin replied.
    ‘What about him?’
    Sabin frowned. ‘Lady Richenza said he was fat, lazy, and regularly overindulged on both rich food and fine wine, and I thought that such a man’s four humours would be so gravely unbalanced that he would probably not produce healthy seed. I did, however, prepare a distillation of seaweed, which, I’m told, makes a man’s seed thin and useless, added to a very few drops of tincture of fresh yew needles, to slow the heartbeat.’ She glanced down, as if suddenly unable to meet Meggie’s eyes. ‘I added some drops of my strongest soporific, comprising woodruff, valerian and a very small amount of poppy milk, since a very sleepy man is hardly likely to want to mount his reluctant wife. I also advised her to keep him drinking plenty of wine, and, if possible, to mix in with it some
eau de vie
. Do you know what I mean by that?’
    ‘I do,’ Meggie said. ‘It is a distillation, is it not, from some form of alcoholic drink? The distillation makes it very strong, I believe.’
    ‘Yes, indeed.’ Sabin gave a shrug. ‘Really, Meggie, I was at a loss, for in all the years I’ve been practising as an apothecary, and the many years before that when I was my old grandfather’s pupil, I can’t remember ever before being asked for a potion to make a man impotent. The opposite, yes, all the time.’
    Meggie smiled. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever encountered it, either,’ she agreed. She was thinking hard. ‘So, other than a large amount of alcohol, the only unusual items that your potion introduced into Lord Benedict’s body were the yew tincture and the strong soporific. Is that right?’
    Sabin was looking at the ground again. She muttered something.
    ‘What was that?’
    She met Meggie’s eyes. ‘I put a tiny amount of aconite in the mixture.’
    ‘You –
what
? Monkshood? Why?’
    Sabin looked away. ‘It reduces the beat of the heart and they say it induces numbness. I thought it’d keep him flaccid.’
    ‘But it’s toxic, and you’re a healer.’
    ‘I
know
,’ Sabin wailed, ‘but, Meggie, the poor girl was desperate, and I had to help her.’
    ‘Yes, of course you did, but not at the cost of risking harming somebody else!’
    ‘But he was brutal to her!’
    There was a short, awkward silence. Then Meggie slowly shook her head. ‘Oh, Sabin.’
    ‘What is