Chennek set up a sharp excited yipping when we came to Liv’s home. We weren’t worried about being secret anymore. A head leaned out from an upper window to call down, “Did you find someone?”
“Best in the city,” she called back excitedly and grabbed one of the doorpost rings to tie the boat up.
I saw Celeste shrink a little inside herself, thinking what they expected of her.
The man from the window—I think he was Liv’s brother—came down to meet us, wading through the water that turned the lower story into another part of the river. He reached to lift Liv out of the boat, but she shook her head.
“Take the chest up first. That’s most important.”
He slipped his arms into the carrying straps and disappeared into the house, then returned as Celeste and I were hitching our skirts up to an indecent height and slipping over the side of the boat. I scooped up Chennek, though he squirmed and wriggled. Liv’s brother lifted her as easy as a feather to sit on the edge of the boat while it dipped and bobbed, then turned and let her grab on to be carried pick-a-back up the stairs.
I wondered if that was how she always went up and down stairs here. Did she mind? Or would she rather make her own way on crutches like she did when we went exploring? Maybe it was hard to break family of that if they’d been carrying you since you were a child.
The apartment at the top of the stairs was fuller than last time I was there. One of the downstairs families was crowded in as well. There were pallets rolled up against the walls and damp clothing draped over every piece of furniture. A space had been cleared on the table for Celeste’s chest. But all the attention in the room was on a woman sitting on the edge of the bed, holding a naked baby in her lap and smoothing it over and over with a wet cloth. I recognized the woman lying behind them in the bed as Liv’s mother.
Celeste caught her breath and turned to go back out to the tiny landing at the top of the stairs. I followed her.
“Is something wrong?”
“Did you see how they all looked at me? They want me to give them a miracle.”
“All they want is for you to try.”
“Roz, this isn’t charming bloodstains out of a handkerchief! This is a baby’s life.”
She’d known all that before we came, but facing them all was different.
“You’re not alone,” I said. I wasn’t even certain if I believed what I was saying, but it was the sort of thing I’d heard Maisetra Talarico tell her. “God is with you. Our Lady always offers hope. Saint Mauriz talks to you—you told me that. And Mama Rota saved that last bottle for this. Ask them. They’ll guide you right.”
Celeste squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry. I won’t run away.”
I think some of what Celeste did at first was for show, to settle her mind and think about what to do next. She opened up her chest of things and lifted out the trays, then set out a candle and carefully unwrapped the statue of Saint Mauriz to stand in the middle of everything. She lit the candle and began saying prayers, first familiar ones and then more like she was talking to the saints friendly-like.
I remembered how Celeste kept poking at ideas for the fever charm during the summer, when she knew she could go back and get more water from the well if she needed to. I recognized bits of that as she built the charm now. But it was different, like she’d try a little something and then watch how it worked and maybe change it a little. Sometimes she stopped suddenly and smeared the marks on the paper or untied the colored threads. It was like what we’d done with the washing charms, but all in a rush, one try after another. I wasn’t thinking about time but it took hours and hours. Then the baby stopped whimpering and cried more normal-like.
Celeste closed her eyes and took a long breath. “Once more. I think I have it now.”
This time she started from the beginning, drawing up the charm-paper with its circles and verses, then repeating the prayers as she dripped a bit of holy water on the baby’s lips. She pressed the charm paper to its brow, calling on Saint Rota to draw out the fever and pulled it away sharply to burn it in the flame. My stomach fluttered and cramped—not like I’d eaten something sour, but not quite like my magic feeling either.
When Celeste was done, the baby went quiet and its mother kissed it on the forehead and started crying and rocking back and forth. I was afraid that maybe it had died after all, but then she was thanking Celeste over and over again.
Celeste turned back to the table where her charmwork was all laid out. “Now it’s your turn, Mefro Hald.”
Liv’s mother tried to protest that she’d be fine in time. “There’s others need your help more.”
But Celeste wouldn’t take no and set to work again writing out the charms and verses. After the hours working over the baby, it went quick this time. I knew it had done its work when the woman’s face turned soft and relaxed and some of the flush faded.
“You did it, Celeste,” I whispered, though no one needed my say-so.
“I didn’t do anything,” she answered. “It was Saint Rota made the cure.”
There was a murmur of voices blessing Mama Rota and a quiet plea from the doorway.
“Could you help us? Please? Please, Nana Celeste?”
I turned to see a crowd of people was watching from the dark of the stair landing. The rumor must have gone around to all the rivermen families. Celeste looked uncomfortable. I don’t think anyone had called her Nana before. It was what you called a charmwife for respect, but it was hard to imagine her as anyone’s granny.
“Please, Nana, my boy…”
“My wife…”
“Please, my children…”
Celeste looked down at the bottle she was tucking back into her chest. It was a third full now. “I…I need more of the holy water. More of the water from Saint Rota’s well. That’s all I had—the last of it.” There was still a little bit. Enough for a handful of cures but not enough even for those crowding the doorway and stairs. “I need to get more.”
Celeste looked around like she was afraid they’d keep her from leaving. Hope was a knife with two edges. “I promise I’ll come back if I can get more. I swear in Saint Rota’s name.”
Maybe they would have tried to stop us, but Liv spoke up, saying, “False dawn’s coming. We need to go now if I’m to get you back across the river with no one giving the alarm.”
I’d almost forgotten about that part. About going home again. Except I didn’t have a home to go to. We latched up the chest and the crowd pressed back against the walls of the stairway to let us through, reaching out as Celeste passed, to touch her and beg her to return.
* * *
Liv said we couldn’t come back to land at the iron bridge. She could see lights there and didn’t dare risk that someone had seen us before. We knew there were soldiers at the Nikuleplaiz and the bridges with the public docks at their footings. But there was a lot of riverbank and not enough soldiers to be everywhere. Where the streets were low enough, a boat as small as Liv’s could find a place for us to climb out and wade through the dark water. It helped that no one expected the rivermen to go against the law. I hoped Liv wouldn’t have her boat taken away for it.
It was light enough to see by the time we came back to Mefro Dominique’s door. She’d left it unlocked. We hadn’t even had time to strip off our wet clothes there in the cold kitchen before she was on us, hugging Celeste like she’d returned from overseas instead of across the river.
We must have cleaned up as best we could so we wouldn’t track mud upstairs, but I don’t even remember tumbling into bed beside Celeste. The next I knew, I was waking up confused about where I was and why it was full day. When I remembered, I closed my eyes again and lay there for another hour. I didn’t want to wake Celeste by getting up, and being there next to her was the only thing left in the world that felt right.
Had Maisetra Iulien gone to help nurse the alchemist’s baby? Had one of the other girls already taken my place looking after her? Had Tavit been able to speak to her? D
id she hate me for leaving? I didn’t want her to hate me. I wish I could have made everyone happy.
Celeste stirred beside me and I finally got up to use the chamber pot and find us some clean dry clothing.
“Roz?” Celeste sounded as confused as I’d been when I first woke up.
“You did it,” I told her. “You made a charm to cure the river fever. It worked.”
She sat up and rubbed her eyes while I laid the clothes across the foot of the bed, like I would have for Maisetra Iulien.
“Roz, what do we do now? The water’s nearly gone. And there’s no way back.”
I knew what she meant. We’d been able to go up the hidden chanulez because of the drought. The outlet was beneath the river now. “There must be a way. Liv said that stream must come in to the city somewhere outside the walls.”
Celeste shook her head. “How long would it take to find it? And how would we travel down the tunnel? The well must be right there under the Plaiz, right in front of the palace gates. And no way to dig down to it in time, even if they let us.”
Right in front of the palace gates. I remembered that other gate beside the well. Not the steps on either side that ended in brick walls, but the dark tunnel with the wooden door.
“We go through the palace,” I said. “We find another way. And I know who can help us.”
Celeste stared at me like I was mad. But when I explained, she started to believe it was possible.
Chapter Twenty-Three
October 1825—Daring
Mefro Dominique was still frightened—more frightened than Celeste and me—but she didn’t try to stop us. When you have a true charm against fever, it isn’t right to keep it to yourself. Celeste packed up her basket with what she needed to go with that bit of water still in the bottle. We didn’t need the whole chest this time. Maybe we wouldn’t need any of it. Maybe no one would believe us enough to let her try.
I’d been to the house where the vicomtesse and Mesnera Chazillen lived twice before with Maisetra Iulien on errands. There was no flooding in the upper town to block our way. The streets felt empty, like summer before folks came back for the season. Lots of them must have left the city like the Pertineks had. We were out of place in that quarter with our muddy skirts and market basket, but the folks who passed didn’t stop to question us.
I led the way down the side path between the houses to knock on the servants’ door. Celeste would have gone to the front door. She wasn’t used to going to rich folks’ houses and didn’t know. The door was opened by a maid who took one sharp look at us up and down and said, “We don’t need what you’re selling.”
“I’m here to see Maisetra Iulien,” I said quickly. “Maisetra Iulien Fulpi. I have a message for her.” I knew I only had a few moments to convince her. “I’m Roz, who was her lady’s maid. You’ve seen me here before.”
Her eyes narrowed as she looked at me more closely. When I’d been there before, I’d been dressed neatly, not tired and muddy. “Please, Mefro—” I scrambled for her name, but it had gone out of my head if I’d ever known it. “Please could you ask if she can speak to us? It’s important.”
I shifted the basket from one arm to the other but didn’t set it down. She might take that amiss.
“If she isn’t here, could you ask Mesnera de Cherdillac? Tell her it’s Roz from the dress shop.”
An old man came in from the door to the family rooms—it had to be Mesnera Chazillen’s butler—to see what the noise was about. He thought the same thing the maid did because he set his nose in the air and said grandly, “This is a house of illness. Be off with your noise and whatever you’re selling.”
I glanced over at Celeste. She stood silently beside me with her eyes cast down. It was up to me to convince them.
“I know, Mefroi,” I said. “Maisetra Iulien told me she was coming here to help with the sick-nursing. That’s why we came—because Celeste has a charm to cure the fever and we need Maisetra Iulien’s help to get the things we need to make more.”
He misunderstood what I meant, because he drew himself up all proud and stiff and said, “The royal alchemist has skills and amulets of her own to treat fever. I scarcely think she needs the help of market-charms.”
I was starting to worry. I didn’t think they’d let us wait out in the street in hopes that Maisetra Iulien might come out some time. I matched him for pride and said all bold-like, “If her amulets were as good as Celeste’s charms, then her baby wouldn’t be sick any more!”
Celeste protested, “Roz!” in a pained voice and pulled at my arm.
“So,” the maid snapped, “you are peddling something after all. Be off with you.”
The door swung open again and this time Maisetra Iulien came through saying, “Hush! The vicomtesse has finally closed her eyes and I’m hoping she’ll sleep a little before Mesnera Chazillen comes home.” Then she saw me and said, “Roz?” all worried but also sounding a little happy. Maybe she wasn’t mad about me running off the night before. It wouldn’t get me my position back, but I didn’t want her to be mad.
I opened my mouth to explain it all once more when we heard a door closing at the front of the house and everyone froze for a moment at the hurried footsteps tapping down the hallway toward us.
If I hadn’t seen her before at Tiporsel House, I might have thought the tall woman who came through the doorway was the housekeeper. Her face was worn and thin like she hadn’t slept for days. Her hair was pinned back under a plain cap and her gray woolen dress looked like a working woman’s, even to the stains and burns scattered across it. But even if I hadn’t known her, you couldn’t miss how everyone turned like they were waiting for orders.
She put a dark wooden box on the table and demanded in a sharp voice, “What’s all this? Where is everyone? What’s happened?”
Maisetra Iulien said quickly, “There’s no change. The vicomtesse is sleeping and Nette is keeping watch upstairs. Marien has gone to see if there’s any ice to be had.”
“At least we’ve solved that part,” the woman said, laying a hand on the box. “So what’s all this?” she repeated.
“I beg your pardon, mesnera,” the butler said. “We’ve been trying to sort things out with these—” I could tell he’d changed what he wanted to call us, given that Maisetra Iulien had called me by name. “These women who came to see the young maisetra.”
I know I’d have one chance, so I gave the barest of curtseys and turned back to Maisetra Iulien. My explanation came tumbling out all in a rush. “Celeste made a charm that cures river fever—she made it for Liv’s brother’s boy and cured him and her mother as well.” And what if someone asked how we’d done that when no one was allowed to cross the river? “She made it using the water from Saint Rota’s well, but now that’s almost gone and we need to fetch more. There’s so many people sick and we can help. But we can’t get to the well because the hidden chanulez is under water so we have to get there through the door from the palace and you’re the only person we know who knows people in the palace.”
“A cure,” Mesnera Chazillen said with a flat, quiet voice. “For the fever. What makes you think you have a cure for the fever.”
“Celeste is—” Maisetra Iulien began, but she was silenced by a sharp wave of the alchemist’s hand.
“It’s true,” I said. “She’s been working on it all summer, ever since we found the well. And last night—”
“Girl, I wasn’t asking you, either. Celeste, is it?”
Celeste raised her eyes at the mesnera’s command. I knew why she was frightened. It was a daring thing for a charmwife to claim a cure. But she nodded and said, “Yes, mesnera.”
“Tell me about your charm.”
Celeste started talking, slowly at first, about the bits and pieces she’d put together: the blessing she’d worked out when we found Mama Rota’s well, how she’d changed it around to protect against the river fever, the fever charms she’d had from Nana Charl, and how she’d poked and picked at it
through the night until it worked. It was like how she talked to me when she was figuring out charmwork. I never thought it made much sense, but I could see Mesnera Chazillen nodding and frowning.
“And you believe this water is the key to the cure?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Celeste said in a low voice. “But it’s what I used and what I used worked. So I don’t dare wait to see if something else might work as well.”
“Indeed” came the answer. “A wise approach. And now all you need is to find this hidden passage under the palace. It could be bricked up or fallen in, and God only knows where it might come out.”
“I was thinking,” I said, “that maybe someone who grew up in the palace might be able to figure it out. Maistir Brandel is a friend of Mesner Aukustin…” How many secrets was I giving away? I don’t think anyone knew about Mesner Aukustin exploring around the city with us.
“You have an exaggerated notion of how much Aukustin has been allowed to run wild in the palace,” Mesnera Chazillen said all sour-like. “But I doubt you’ll find anyone else willing to chase after such a wild hare. And you have the good fortune that he defied his mother and refused to remove to Akolbin when the flooding started.”
I hadn’t thought of that—that of course the palace folks would leave the city if they could. I turned to Maisetra Iulien again. “So could you ask Maistir Brandel if he—”
She shook her head. “He’s at the academy down at Urmai. All the students’ families that were flooded out are being boarded there. He won’t be back next until tomorrow late.” Her face changed like she’d decided something and her chin came up. “We can’t wait for that. We can go to the palace ourselves and say we have a message from him for Aukustin.”
“We?” I asked.
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