Page 16 of Time's Fool

“Well, ‘o course it hurts! He has gout, don’t he? But if he wants to get strong again, that’s the price. And your price is thruppence.”

“A bargain, if it helps him,” the woman said, handing it over. And then leaned in slightly. “And even if it doesn’t. I needed to get out of that house!”

She and the shop girl shared a laugh, and the woman left, sparing me a curious glance as she did so.

There were several more people in line ahead of us, and the vampire politely waited his turn. That was unusual enough to cause them to look back at him more than once, and not because of the fangs they couldn’t see. But because of his clothes.

He was in dark blue today, with fine linen at his throat and wrists and silk stockings on his legs—the latter an almost unheard-of luxury. Even the queen, it was said, was constantly running out, despite the fact that they had been invented by her own silkwoman, Mistress Alice Montague. But once she’d tried them, she’d sworn that she would never use anything else.

Mircea wore them casually, as if they were the coarsest wool, although his own wool was some of the best I’d ever seen, with a sheen to it that was almost as lustrous as silk itself. Probably a product of Italy, where a lot of the wool that grew on the backs of British sheep ended up to be finished. Although there was nothing ostentatious about his clothes today, none of the frills or expensive touches that made a haberdasher’s eyes light up, but everything was of the finest possible quality.

Which was why the old gaffer in front of him, with the stained slops and sagging, woolen hose, kept trying to give way to him.

But Mircea reassured him with a murmured word and the man turned around again. But he and the woman in front of him looked tense. Fine gentlemen made them nervous, and there were few finer.

I left them to their shopping and glanced around, still looking for tell-tale signs of trouble. There was a curtain behind the counter I didn’t like, which made it impossible to see into the back room. Judging by the smells drifting out, that was where the tinctures, teas and possibly potions were made up, although the only thing witchy about this place so far was its concealment.

Otherwise, it could have been any herbalist shop in London.

There were piles of greenish brown willow bark, still fresh and juicy, on a nearby table, along with off-white, oddly shaped mandrake roots, some with the dirt they’d grown in still clinging to them, both of which were used for pain. They were stored in reed baskets, where you could take as much or as little as you liked. But bright green rosemary, for digestion, and purple lavender, for insomnia, were in large bunches, as they were also strewing herbs, bought in quantity by housewives to scatter among the floor rushes for insect control and to add nice smells to a home.

The brilliant yellow flowers of elecampane, for respiratory problems, and soft green sage leaves for sore throats were mixed in a hamper, as if they’d just been brought in and hadn’t been sorted yet. Pale purple fumitory, on the other hand, which treated nausea and vomiting, and blue bugloss flowers, good for inflammation of the eyes, had been laid out on reed mats as if to start the drying process. Or as if brought in quickly from some outside area before it started raining.

I knew them all, because the same sort of remedies were distributed in Italy by the same sort of women; at least, they had been. The Catholic Church was cracking down on that, seeing the so-called “wise women” who dealt in herbal medicine as witches, or so they claimed before burning them at the stake. In reality, they were competition for the church’s universities, where medicine was taught and then dispensed by church-trained men.

But not everyone could afford such expensive care. The lofty, university-educated physicians who crowded into London charged ten shillings for a consult, which was two weeks wages for a carpenter. Common laborers made even less, and most of that went for food, considering the prices these days. That forced many people into the arms of the charlatans and half-educated types who preyed on the poor—physicians with no credentials, rogue apothecaries, astrologers and bone-setters. And, if you were lucky, wise women who might actually help you.

The latter operated illegally, as women could not obtain the education required to be licensed, unless it was in the one field where women had always predominated.

I moved on to a separate section of herbs.

Midwives attended most births except for royal ones, which were considered too high status. Not surprisingly, royal births had many more complications than normal, as the male physicians were less practiced. It was said that Queen Jane Grey, one of Henry VIII’s wives, died from an infection caused by afterbirth that did not expel itself and was not removed for her, as any good midwife would have done.

But even with experienced midwives, childbirth killed more women than anything else, and took them from all social classes. Men fought their wars on the battlefield, it was said; women in the birthing bed, and many did not survive the struggle. Others did, but were never the same again.

Lady Margaret Beaufort, Henry VIII’s grandmother, was married at eleven and gave birth at age thirteen. She was small and frail, and suffered a long, excruciating delivery and a prolapsed womb. She never had another child, setting up the Tudor problems with fertility that persisted to this day.

Yet she was one of the lucky ones. Women commonly made out their wills as soon as they discovered that they were with child, knowing the odds against them. Which explained the next group of herbs.

They weren’t delineated in any way from the others, not even here, in a hidden enclave. There were no signs saying what they did, or instructions on how to use them. That information was illegal and was given in whispers, to be carried out in secret.

Rue or herb-of-grace, with its blueish leaves and yellow flowers; hellebore with its small, white blossoms; lovely, sturdy calamint, in profusions of white, red, pink or purple; and a host of others: mugwort, stinking gladdon, southernwood, pennyroyal . . . they were all here, and they all did the same thing, if you knew how to use them.

“Juice of rue drunk with wine,” a soft voice said, apropos of nothing.

I looked up to see another shop assistant, a light blonde with eyes so pale that they were almost white. She was making a show of rearranging flowers that did not need to be rearranged. She did not look at me.

“Or leaves of calamint crushed small in a mortar and given in a pessary. Or birthwort drunk with wine, pepper and myrrh. Or Savin boiled in wine. All have the same effect.” She glanced at me. “You understand?”

I stared back for a moment, caught off guard. And then nodded. She moved away.

I stood there after she left, my fist clenched around some petals, smelling the sickly-sweet odor they gave off and yet unable to let go. A feeling I couldn’t quite identify had swept through me, causing my hand to spasm. It felt like anger, although not at her.

Women and men were treated very differently when it came to intimate matters in England, as they were anywhere else. Brothels were technically illegal, but men visited them all the time, along with the many taverns spread throughout the city that often served the same purpose. And while the punters were occasionally fined, the prostitutes were paraded through the streets, taken down to the river, stripped naked, and beaten before the public.

Men could be punished as well if the “crime” was particularly egregious, like in the case of Dr. Christopher Langton, a Cambridge educated physician, who had been caught in bed with two women at once. He had been paraded through the streets of London in his finest clothes, with someone running ahead of the cart to cry out his sins to the masses. He wasn’t physically harmed, however; the humiliation was considered punishment enough.

Others were not so lucky, being dragged behind the cart and beaten until the blood flowed and the gouges left by the unrelenting leather were as deep as a finger. But it was often difficult to prove that a man was at fault, unless he was found in flagrante delicto like Dr. Langton. Otherwise, it was his word against the woman’s, and the woman often lost. Men frequently carried on affairs, then, while adulterous wives were forced onto “cucking stools” and dunked repeatedly into a body of water, to “cool their immoderate heat.”

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