“Too right,” Ilona confirms wryly, before favoring me with one of her sweet smiles. “Enjoy your rest, Anna. I’m sure you’ll know exactly what to say to keep the lady happy with you.”
Of course I will know, I think to myself as I ascend the spiraling stairs toward the countess’s chambers, my mind bursting with images of the two of us sharing confidences by her crackling fire. My silver tongue is what the lady wants from me, even more than my clever fingers. I am so rapt with these imaginings that even wending through the gloom of the corridors feels less like straying into some gaping maw than it normally does. My step is light for once, despite the keep’s toothy darkness.
But my spirits sink abruptly, like skipping stones plunging when their flight can no longer sustain them, when I find the countess white-faced and ailing, curled up wretched in her bed. Judit and Margareta cower in the corners, wringing their hands, as if afraid to approach their mistress. The kittenish insolence I remember from the day I arrived is entirely vanished, leaving a pair of slinking cowards in its wake.
“A tonic, Anna, quickly,” the countess orders as soon as her eyes fall on me, sinking her teeth into her lower lip to stifle a moan as she huddles with her knees drawn up to her chest. “I fear I may expel my own womb if these cramps do not cease soon.”
“At once, my lady,” I reassure her, already rummaging in my bag. “And may I suggest that your maids draw you a bath? As near blistering as they can make it, without burning you.”
“A bath?” she demands, lifting her bleary head. Despite her fretting over age, she looks tousled and exhausted as a querulous child, much younger than her nineteen years. “Is my womb not inflamed already, with an excess of sanguine humor? Would hot water not make it worse?”
I’m loath to bother her about it now, but I resolve to have her explain these bedamned humors to me as soon as she is well. “The womb is a muscle, my lady,” I explain. “And like any muscle, it pains you when contracted for too long. The tea I will brew for you will help with that, too, but there is nothing like hot water to coax those tight tissues toward coming loose.”
She scrutinizes me with a touch of skepticism, black eyes narrowed, then nods. “As you say, then,” she says, flicking an imperious hand at the chambermaids. “Judit, Margareta—you heard what Anna needs. And make sure to fetch her anything else she asks.”
They dip into twin curtsies, and even incline their heads to me, before scuttling off to do her bidding. My bidding, I think wonderingly with a giddy rush. For the first time in my life, someone else is carrying out my orders, doing as I please. What an intoxicating sentiment it is. No wonder the nobility and their ilk never remove their feet from common necks.
Half an hour later, after Judit and Margareta have hauled in a massive copper tub and filled it with bucket after bucket of steaming water, I help the countess shrug off her robe and hold her hand while she steps in, hissing through her teeth. I try to avert my eyes from her body as the silk slides off her shoulders, but she is captivating, so unmarred by injury or illness that her smooth silhouette seems like it cannot be real. She looks like dessert, I think absurdly, like something fashioned from swoops of heavy cream. Her hair is startling, decadently dark against all that pale skin.
“You aren’t trying to boil and eat me, are you, Anna?” she jokes, as if she’s somehow privy to my thoughts. Fortunately, I’m already so pink from the billowing heat that she doesn’t notice when I redden further. “I would not take kindly to being the centerpiece of a feast, with an apple in my mouth.”
I laugh lightly as she sinks to her knees, steam wafting around her face and curling tight the stray tendrils of hair at her temples. “If it’s too hot, my lady, I can see to that for you.”
“No,” she exhales, resting her head against the rim. Water laps up over her collarbones, pearling the bow of her neck. “No, it feels divine. Just as you said.”
I hand her a goblet of red wine stirred with chaste berry, black cohosh, fennel, cinnamon, and cramp bark, with just a touch of valerian to relax her. I had intended to brew it into a tea, but apparently her ladyship prefers wine to mask the taste of medicine—and in this case, the alcohol will only ease her further, so I complied.
She takes a sip, making a little moue of distaste at the flavor. “It tastes like skunks,” she complains. “It had better do wonders.”
I laugh again, more freely this time. “And have you eaten many skunks in your time, my lady?”
“No, but the woods behind the keep are rife with them, and the stench is unmistakable. And very like this, besides the cinnamon.” Still, she takes another sip, and I can see the strain seep away from her features. “Oh, this is so much better, what a blessing. You have my eternal thanks.”
“And I did not even have to consult a handbook to the humors,” I respond before I can stop myself. As soon as the words are out, an icy flurry of panic suffuses my skin. What if she takes exception to this disrespect?
Instead, she lifts her head and releases a bright, delighted laugh. “Such quiet scorn!” she exclaims almost gleefully. “I take it you’re not a fan of Galen’s?”
“I know nothing of Galen, my lady,” I admit. “Save that his advice has steered you wrong at least twice now. But I would learn, if you abide by his . . . wisdom.”
She surveys me appraisingly, her lips still pressed together with mirth. “I would prefer to abide by yours, given the results,” she says, swallowing more wine. I can see it take effect in the heavy-lidded glassiness of her eyes, the indolent way she rests her head against the rim. “But I’ll gladly tell you of them, while you wash my hair.”
I take the bar of soap from where Judit left it on a silver platter, and dip it in the water. I’ve never touched soap before, at least not a fine-grained bar like this; it coats my hands with silky suds, and releases a fragrance of exotic flowers and some beguiling musk I don’t recognize. It reminds me of the oil she uses for perfume.
“What is the smell, my lady?” I ask, too curious to refrain. “I’m not familiar with it.”
“Plumeria, sometimes also called frangipani. I love its scent. And ambergris as well. I’m told it comes from the entrails of whales, the leviathan creatures that roam the seas.”
“I see,” I murmur noncommittally, keeping my own counsel. The sea is so distant that it’s always seemed more a tale than a truth, but I’ve seen Lake Balaton and the Raba river with nary a leviathan between them. Whales sound like a child’s fancy, a fireside yarn.
“You don’t know of whales, then?” she asks, amused, reading my mind again.
“About as much as I do of Galen and his humors.”
“It was actually Hippocrates, another Greek physician, who discovered the humors,” she tells me as I pour a ewerful of water over her hair, careful that it not sluice into her eyes. “They’re the four bodily fluids that determine one’s character, and cause illness when in imbalance. Blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. An excess of each yields the sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic, and choleric temperaments.”
“How would that be?” I ask doubtfully. “As far as I know, we’re all of us brimming with blood and phlegm. And yellow bile is common when an empty belly purges. Though I’ve yet to see this black bile for myself, unless your Greek sage refers to tarry stools.”