Chapter 2

Chapter 2

N

ELLIE LEARNED

the next morning what Zelda’s business entailed.

She rose before dawn, and when the women woke up, she distributed tasks among them. For example, it was Mina’s task to cook while Lise and Emmie went to get water at the well. When they came back, they distributed the water into two pots. One was for cooking; they placed the other in the corner of the warehouse for mysterious purposes.

After a brief breakfast of watery porridge, Zelda handed out further tasks.

Gertie, Hilde and Josie were to go to a place referred to as “the shop” and had to work there. Before they left, Zelda handed them a wooden box that looked like a drawer from a herb cabinet. Inside lay a soft brown-orange object that resembled a large egg, but was not as evenly shaped.

This morning, Anneke had brought this thing down the ladder, the first delivery of dragon poop.

“Spread it out over the bench to dry,” Zelda said to Gertie. “Then put the powder in a jar. We’ll use it in salves. You might want to visit the butcher for sheep’s fat.”

Zelda said she would look after Nellie herself. She told Nellie to get changed into something warm but not too shabby. She then took the donkey out of the pen.

Young Koby was coming, too, but the others were all staying in the warehouse.

The morning was freezing. An icy mist hung in the streets, turning all the buildings varying shades of grey.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Nellie asked Koby as the two of them followed Zelda and the donkey. Zelda was not one of the most forthcoming people about her plans. When Nellie had asked her the same question, she had only said, “You’ll see.”

“We’ll be seeing Zelda’s patients. She visits sick people at home and gives them remedies.”

First, they went to a small workshop that lay behind an empty shop front in the main street of the artisan quarter. The building that faced the street had been empty for some time. All the windows were boarded over and the wooden door showed signs of rot.

Many of the surrounding shops were abandoned, too.

Inside the workshop, it was cosy and dry. The space was small—it had probably been a storage space for the shop—and the fire easily kept it warm.

A big metal pot hung over the fire, bubbling steam.

Gertie, Hilde and Josie were already at work at the benches. Gertie was scooping big blobs of paste from a pan into glass jars. Hilde was grinding dried leaves into powder and Josie was cleaning jars in a tub of steaming water.

A tray on the bench held orange-brown bits of dragon poop. It was quite rough and contained little bits of what looked like chewed sticks. What did dragons eat?

Zelda pushed a tray into Nellie’s hands, pulled many jars and bags off the shelves that filled one end of the workshop and loaded them onto the tray. When it was full, she sent Nellie to the cart that stood in the small courtyard outside the workshop.

The poor donkey stood waiting, its ears drooping and head close to the ground. It didn’t even look up as Nellie deposited the heavy tray into the cart.

Koby brought another tray.

There were three boxes, and when the cart was ready Zelda came out, dressed in a woollen cape. She led the donkey by the reins out of the courtyard.

They went into the main street and turned left toward the merchant quarter of the city.

It was still misty—the type of air that made droplets of moisture on everything and seeped into clothes until it penetrated the warm cocoon inside and went to the bone. Nellie looked with envy at the smoke rising from the chimneys of the houses they passed. Once she had been warm and comfortable like that. She remembered standing inside and looking at the poor milkman, the poor baker’s son and the man with the grocery cart who were out in the weather every day.

When she stopped the cart, Zelda explained about the first person they would visit.

“This woman always complain about bad airs. She complain, complain, even if it make no sense what she complain about.”

“So you can’t do anything for her?”

“I still give her herbs.”

“But if there’s nothing wrong with her—”

“Her wrong is all in the head.” Zelda tapped the side of her head. “My medicine make her happy.”

Goodness, what was in those jars? The only ingredients Nellie had seen were the collection of herbs.

“Do you want me to carry the basket?” Koby said.

She had prepared a pretty basket with a cloth lining and all manner of jars.

“Yes, carry it to the door. Then you wait, look after donkey.” Zelda pointed at Nellie. “You come with me.”

“But I know nothing about herbs,” Nellie said. “I just know some of the minor remedies. I don’t know anything about salves and potions.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Zelda said. “Your part will be easy. Let me do talking. When I ask you question, you answer question.”

They went up the steps, where Koby was already halfway with the basket, to the door which was painted in rust brown. When Zelda knocked, a fresh-faced young maid opened it.

The girl smiled at Zelda. “Come in. The mistress is waiting for you in the parlour.”

They entered the house. It was strange. At one point Nellie would have been that maid.

She didn’t know the people who lived in this house, but she knew the type. They were merchants who had recently come into some money and wanted to show it off. The house was every bit as elaborate as Mistress Johanna’s had been, but all the furniture was new and had not yet been passed through the generations.

The maid opened a door to the left and led them into the parlour. It was a splendid room, with glass-fronted cabinets containing porcelain statues, beautiful matching chairs and a couch with green and white striped fabric with tiny pink embroidered roses, and huge paintings on all the walls, depicting idyllic forest scenes and a castle by a river.

The lady of the house sat on the couch next to the fire. She was rubbing her hands as Zelda and Nellie came in.

“Oh, Zelda. I am so glad to see you. You have a new helper.”

“Yes madame. Did you remember that I was talking about well-known local herb woman? You told me that you would rather use local remedies, so I found someone for you. She has even worked in the palace. Well, this is her.”

The merchant’s wife regarded Nellie with renewed interest.

Nellie’s cheeks glowed.

She definitely did

not

agree with this. What was this about doing the talking?

She opened her mouth to protest, but one sharp look from Zelda stopped her.

Zelda settled the row of jars she had taken from the shelves that morning and explained what each of the concoctions was for. Every now and then, she would ask Nellie a question to which only yes or no would be inappropriate answer, like is that right? Or didn’t you tell me so this morning?

The woman looked Nellie, but never once questioned Zelda’s implausible stories.

And there were many.

Nellie had seen what Gertie, Hilde and Josie were doing in the workshop, and hadn’t seen any of the ingredients that Zelda claimed to have put in.

Not only that, but Nellie knew for certain that chamomile extract did none of the things that Zelda told the woman it did.

But the woman listened to all of it.

Zelda’s so called secret ingredient was a tea, which supposedly cured everything.

It consisted of several herbs. When Nellie took it to the kitchen to have the servants prepare the extract, Nellie recognised bits of chamomile and dandelion and some other local herbs which grew plentiful in the surrounding meadows and road verges.

There was no secret ingredient in any of it.

When she carried the teapot back into the parlour, she almost felt like throwing it into the hearth.

This was the reason so many people distrusted wayfarers like Zelda. Because this was not proper herb medicine. It was a swindle.

But the merchant’s wife drank the tea, and she said she already felt much better.

Then the time came to leave, and Zelda flapped her hand at Nellie to pack all the jars and go into the hallway to wait there. Nellie did so, anger growing inside her. She wanted no part in this quackery and didn’t want to be the “local woman” face to Zelda’s business. She wondered if Zelda had tried the same trick with the other women.

As Nellie waited in the hallway, the maid came past and opened the door to the room. Zelda crouched on the carpet at the merchant wife’s feet, while the woman counted out coins. Nellie spotted at least two silver florins. Quite a lot of money.

Nellie didn’t see what Zelda did with the coins, but presumed she put them in her coat pocket before coming to the door, bowing profusely and stating that she would come back next week.

Then it was on to the next patient, only a few houses down the street. Here they met another woman complaining about sore feet. Her feet did indeed look terrible, red and blue and swollen, but Nellie had a suspicion this had more to do with the expensive shoes she bought which turned out to be a bit too small.

Instead of suggesting she wear more comfortable shoes, Zelda sold her a jar of salve, and also some of her secret tea, which in this case would soothe pains of sore joints and feet.

In the next house, an elderly woman complained about constipation. Zelda again gave her herb tea. She encouraged the woman to share it with her entire family, because the grandkids were making a racket in the kitchen, and the woman complained that her daughter would never shut them up. If they ran out, Zelda would bring more because, while food might get scarce in the city, herb tea was in plentiful supply.

Each conversation developed along a pattern.

Zelda told the merchants’ wives that the tea did everything they wanted it to do and then got paid lots of money for it.

At the end of her round through the merchant quarter, Zelda knocked on a few doors where she went up herself and instructed Nellie and Koby to stay with the cart and the donkey.

Each time a bewildered servant opened the door, Zelda did her sales pitch. She appeared successful most of the time. The servant would talk to her, and sometimes they took the free sample she offered. A few people made arrangements to see Zelda later.

One man shouted at her. “Get out of my sight, you filthy thieves!”

Zelda sped back to the cart. She snorted as she climbed back onto the driver’s seat. “A very rude man that,” she said. “I come to help him, and he yells at me? Very rude man.”

But Nellie wondered what she herself would have done when faced with a peddler wanting to sell remedies for ailments. She probably would have told the person to go away, too, especially if she was peddling a chamomile tea for exorbitant prices.

When they got back to the shed, they unpacked the cart and put it away.

Gertie, Hilde and Josie had left, but all the items for the next day of trade lay ready on the bench: the bags of samples, the large jar of dried leaves, and the jar with dragon poop which she had no doubt would be sold for ridiculous prices.

Two silver florins for some chamomile tea!

Zelda’s pocket was jingling with coins, and when they walked back through the main street in the artisan quarter, Zelda gave Koby some coins to buy sweets for the children.

She also bought a bag of flour for porridge, but the rest of the coins still jingled in her pocket.

Nellie wondered what she did with it, and why she didn’t give it to Koby.

“You can be my local woman now,” Zelda said. “We make good team.”

Nellie didn’t want to do any such thing. “Where do you get that special tea?” she asked.

Zelda smiled. Her teeth were brown. “Is very special indeed. I buy it from a man in town who gets it from up the river. Herbs grow where the water is clean and free of filth from dirty cities.”

“Who is this man who sells such valuable things?”

“Mr Oliver, but he rarely has tea. You have to ask for it, and then it may be out of stock. Only very special times of the year you can get it.”

That was not the answer Nellie had suspected, and she wondered how much of it was true. Judging by all the rest of Zelda’s stories, probably not that much. But Mr Oliver was a well-known merchant of all kinds of foodstuffs. From his warehouse in the harbour quarter, he sold fine sausages and jams and other confectionery. He would sell tea, too, if there was any tea to be had. Now that the ships had stopped coming from across the ocean, the normal teas and exotic spices had become rare.

Nellie felt tempted to ask Zelda about what she did with the money in her pocket, and whether this was just a good day, but she guessed the feeble relationship could probably not withstand those questions. Besides, the women might not have much chance to make a living otherwise, even if Zelda held back earnings from them.

Back in the warehouse, the other women were cooking the midday meal. The flour Zelda had brought received much appreciation. Nellie felt sick because she knew two silver florins could have bought so much better food.

She spoke to Mina when they were both collecting new wood from the pile outside the door.

“It’s all quackery,” Nellie said. “Everything she tells those women is a lie. She is deceiving nice people and saying I am a well-known local herb woman.”

Mina shook her head. “Don’t worry, she has done that to all of us. If any of the merchants worked out that we are just poor women, she would use someone else as the next new local herb woman.”

“But it’s unsavoury.”

“It’s not the most honest of ways to make money, but it keeps us fed.”

“Were you already doing this when you lived in the church?” Nellie was getting a queasy feeling about this. She remembered the time she had come into the church when Jantien was out, “doing a job”. Was this what she had been doing? Selling quackery to unsuspecting honest citizens?

Would Zelda have used the innocent children as well?

“It doesn’t make much money,” Mina said.

“Have you been with her inside the merchant houses?”

“I can’t go with her. Everyone in town knows I am just a poorhouse woman. She takes Jantien’s children to help her and mind the donkey. She says children make people nicer to her.”

“It’s no wonder she prefers to take children. She is deceiving all of us. I saw how much money she was making. She gives you the bag of porridge, but she keeps most of the money for herself.”

Mina shrugged. “Isn’t that the case for all people who make lots of money? They let us do all the work and they get the harvest.”

“Aren’t you angry about that?”

“We have no other way to survive. Tell me how else we can get food.”

And that was the ultimate problem. Nellie felt sick. She did not want to rely on this thievery to make her living.

She might have another solution so that the women didn’t have to do this. It might be dangerous to her, but she could sneak into the kitchens and Dora could give her food. If she waited at the gate until Henrik was on duty, he would let her through. Then she just needed some way of carrying all the food out here.

She didn’t like begging either, but would rather that than rely on thievery to make ends meet.

The plank that formed the door to the warehouse slid aside, and Agatha came into the courtyard.

“I’m going to the warehouse to make potions,” she said. And she disappeared into the alley.

Mina said in a low voice, “Whatever you do, be careful around Agatha. She is a very angry woman, and she is a strong friend of Zelda’s. She believes that all rich people are evil and should be scammed out of as much money as possible.”

“Is there anyone in this group who isn’t angry?”

“It’s very hard not to get angry when you’re always worried about where your next meal is coming from and whether you will have a place to sleep.”

That was true, and Nellie felt ashamed of having asked the question. “I’ll be your friend, Mina, whatever happens.”