2.5

I am very angry at Marketa. She lies here in front of me, and I should be thinking how to help her, but instead I am thinking, “Fool! You should have rested, as I told you.”

For Marketa, being a fool, kept laboring on the third test until the sun was almost touching the horizon. She ate no food and drank no water and hissed like a cat when I tried to feed her. It was not until the shadows grew long and the women made as if to leave that she threw down her papers and shouted, “Silica!”

And when the women said this was correct, she went very still, and then fell like a stone.

The cold and damp of our travels has induced fever, which she tried to keep hidden from me.

Now the heat rises from her as if she is an oven, and she thrashes and murmurs, though I do not understand what she says. The women are preparing remedies, but my grandmother says that when fever takes such a deep hold, only the strongest tinctures can cure it.

And the only person who would know how to make such a tincture is Marketa.

A new woman has arrived. Not a woman of the clan, but another, wild and strange and wrapped in sheepskins. Her hands were callused and her feet blistered. She looked as if she had not seen another soul for many weeks.

She spoke to the women in Latin, which I do not understand, and they led her to Marketa. Her face went white.

“Her compendium,” she said to me, and then I knew I was a fool, for Marketa’s compendium lay in her satchel all the while. I brought the woman the compendium and she touched it with a careful softness that made me like her. The others began setting their remedies around the room, but the strange woman said at once, “Not the honey. Bees swell her throat and tongue,” and they removed them. She turned to me. “Frida,” she said, and I did not think to ask how she knew my name. “You must document for me.” And she told me this, which I documented faithfully:

- We must determine the method of administration.
- We must determine the base.
- We must determine the two active ingredients.

Now she is reading aloud from the compendium. She tells me that we must take care to craft a tincture that not only cures the fever but staves off any additional unwelcome effects, for we cannot afford to make things worse.

I will say there is something about her that calms me and relieves my anger. She has not spoken her name but my heart knows who she is, and I am surprised to feel no hatred towards her. Now I must lay down my pen, but presently I will document the name of the tincture that we create, so that Marketa may see how we saved her.

For I swear it: Hannah and I will save her