Magia Posthuma ✓

Eleven

*WARNING: Some potentially triggering stuff for anyone who's been through either miscarriage or abortion coming up towards the end of the chapter.

Hermannstadt, mid December 1769

"While you're over there, Fiebe, can you fetch me a little lavender?" Irina asked as she lifted the lid of her still and stirred the boiling herbs, a cloud of steam erupting into the air.

"Yes, Ducesa," Fiebe replied, her fingers tiptoeing over the jars cluttering the shelves in Irina's closet – labelled jars filled with dried leaves and flower heads, as well as seeds and spices, all hidden by hanging cloaks and petticoats.

Irina swiped the back of her hand across her sticky forehead and popped the lid back onto the still. "...It's the one with the purple flower heads," she elaborated, waving a hand at one of the higher jars.

When the cook complained that her pantry stock of herbs was mysteriously running low, Irina decided that it was probably time to buy her own. She discreetly sent one of the maids out to the market with a scribbled list of essential herbs, spices and other medicinal ingredients, as well as the parts she'd need to make a simple still based on a diagram she'd seen in a Botanical Medicine Book. Sure, the finished product was a little rickety and she'd suffered several minor burns touching the metal parts during the test run – but it would do. It would be perfect for extracting the essential oils she needed to make the balms and ointments she'd promised to various women.

The steam seeping from the still clouded the windows and filled the room with a pungent and rather sour stench. The combined oils from the herbs that were bubbling away were to make a balm to soothe menstrual pain, but unfortunately one of those herbs gave off the most horrendous smell as it boiled. Even Folie had found it intolerable and trotted out of the room with her nose twitching and her tail between her legs.

Hopefully, a little lavender would help to mask it.

Fiebe sighed and dropped her hands to her sides. "I not know this thing," she complained.

Irina wiped her hands on her apron and then went over to help. She reached up onto her toes and brought down the jar that was full of dried lavender. "This one," she said with a smile as she opened the lid and released the perfume of high summer into the closet.

Fiebe reached into the jar and plucked out one of the purple heads. "Ah!" she exclaimed as held it under her nose. "Yes, I put this in your, uh... cufăr?"

Irina raised an eyebrow as Fiebe patted down her skirts and then pointed to the large clothes trunk in the corner of the small room. Swirls of coloured muslin and cotton were creeping from its jaws. "Oh! My clothes trunk, yes. Aveţi dreptate," she replied with a nod. "Lavender is very good at keeping away moths – uh, insectă."

Fiebe shook her head. "Molii," she corrected.

Irina tried to commit the word to memory. "Molii. And, what do you call this?" she asked, teasing the small spear of lavender from between Fiebe's fingers. "Ce numești asta?"

"Levănţică," Fiebe replied, grinning.

"Levănţică," Irina repeated as she dropped it back into the jar with the others. She whispered the word to herself a few more times as she carried it over to the small side table she'd set up near the fireplace where she'd been preparing the herbs.

Despite her attempts to be discreet, news of Fiebe's remarkable recovery had spread, and soon the women of Hermannstadt had begun to wonder whether Irina could help them too. After the laundress and then Liesl Fleischer, the notary's pale and fragile-looking wife had come looking for help – pouncing on Irina one Sunday after mass when the Archbishop and her husband were far too busy talking to notice. Having been told by Doctor Tarsus that the intense pain she was experiencing when her 'monthly visitor' arrived was a woman's burden and that she should read the bible to ease her pains, the poor woman had decided that she had little choice but to look elsewhere for answers. Enraged by what she'd heard – and frustrated that her patients weren't being as discreet as she'd asked them to be – Irina had quietly promised to help on the condition of her silence on the matter, and had done a little reading to find some herbs that might help with the pain.