Maybe she could get herself used to being in green at the same time.
Meanwhile, while the tunics soaked and her experiment in bleaching worked - or didn’t - there was the garden to tend.
She left all the windows open as well as the door, even though it was a little nippy, for the bleaching solution gave off fumes she was suspicious of. In her oldest and shabbiest tunic with a canvas smock over it, she went into the herb garden and knelt down beside the rows of seedlings, a bucket beside her.
Immediately, she felt good: calm, happy, and productive. The garden had that effect on her nearly every time she worked in it. These sprouting shapes under cones of cheesecloth loose enough to allow them sun but heavy enough to protect from frost and heavy rain were from the new seeds she’d gotten from Steelmind. Since she hadn’t known what they were going to look like when they came up, she had very carefully dyed handfuls of splinters and stuck one into the ground right next to each seed before she covered it with earth. Now as she worked beside each row, she pulled out anything sprouting that didn’t have a colorful little splinter beside it. Of course, this was far more work than anyone would want to do normally, but it was only for these new plants. Her perennials, of course, were already well-grown, and it was no work to pick out the annuals she knew from the weed sprouts.
I’m just glad these new ones are all perennials, she thought, as she pulled out sprouting weeds that were barely visible and dusted them into her bucket, replacing the cones over her precious new seedlings as she worked. There will only be one season of this kind of care.
She pulled weeds until her back ached, and her hands had grime ground under all the nails. Then she judged that she’d done enough, and called it a done task. She dumped the bucket of weeds onto her compost heap and took the empty bucket into her workshop.
The fumes weren’t as bad as she’d expected, and the experiment in bleaching was a qualified success. Once she’d rinsed out the tunics and wrung them dry enough to dye, she looked them over carefully and judged that the dye she’d prepared would probably cover the faint stains that were left. Even if if didn’t, she wasn’t any worse off than she’d been before.
The dye itself simmered in a big pot over the fireplace; she’d left it there all night to strengthen. Now she built up the fire a bit and dumped the first tunic in, stirring it with a peeled stick until it reached the color she wanted. Shortly after that, a line of gray-green tunics flapped beside the line of white underthings, and Keisha had replaced the pot of dye with one of soup fixings.
That was when she got her first patient of the day.
A knock on the doorframe made her look up, as Ferla Dawkin came in with her five-year-old in her arms, blood splattered liberally all over both of them.
By now, Keisha was a shrewd and instant judge of situations. Ferla wasn’t hysterical, wasn’t running, wasn’t even out of breath. Therefore, the situation wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it looked.
Ferla’s words confirmed that. “If you’re not busy, Keisha, Dib’s gotten into a fight - ”
“Bring him over to the fire and lay him down on the rug,” she said, and his mother put the boy down while Keisha got clean rags and a fresh bucket of water. The boy had been quiet right up until the moment that Keisha sat down on the floor beside him; then he set up a howl like a Pelagir monster before she’d so much as touched him. He was a sorry sight, face red, blood in his hair and oozing from his nose and mouth, angry tears running down his fat cheeks. Keisha ignored the tears and the howling, she was used to them; she went straight to work, gently washing off the blood until she could make an accurate assessment of the damages.
“Well, Ferla, he’s lost a tooth, he’s got a nosebleed, and he’ll have a fine black eye in a bit, so I’d say he was the loser in this battle,” she finally told the anxious mama. “Here, Dib - ” She made him lie down on the floor and pinched a rag over his nose. “You lie there and we’ll see if we can’t get your nose to stop bleeding. Who’d you take on?”
“Maffie Olan,” came the muffled reply. “He called me a dumbhead.”
“Well, that’ll teach you to ignore people who are bigger than you are when they call you names, won’t it?” she asked matter-of-factly as one big brown eye gazed at her around the rag held to his nose. “Do you know what I used to say when my brothers called me a dumbhead?”
“Huh-uh,” the child replied.
“I’d say, ‘It takes one to know one, so what are you, then?’ Try that instead of tearing into a bigger boy next time.” She winked at him. “Maffie’s not so dim that he can’t work that one out for himself, and it’ll make him madder than you. Remember, if he comes after you and hits you first, then he’s a bully picking on you littles, and you can tattle to his mum, for she won’t put up with Maffie turning into a bully. And you know his mum will tan his hide for him.”
“Keisha!” the mother said, half laughing and half aghast. “Is that anything to tell him?”
She cocked an eye at Ferla. “All I know is it worked for me. My brothers stopped calling me names because they got tired of getting a licking from Mum that was worse than anything they dealt out to me. They couldn’t complain either, because they’d started it by name calling.”
Her bit of advice had certainly silenced the child anyway; he seemed to be pondering it as they waited for his nose to stop bleeding. When Keisha judged that it had been long enough, she had him sit up and cautiously took the rag away from his nose. There was no further leakage, so she got up and mixed him a quick potion; chamomile for the ache in his eye and nose, marsh-mallow and mint to counter any tummy upset from swallowing blood, and honey and allspice to make it into a treat.
“Now,” she said, handing him the mug. “Here’s a sweetie for being brave and doing what I told you.” His face lit up, for every child in the village knew that when Keisha told them something was a “sweetie,” it was worth eating or drinking. She never lied to them about the taste of a medicine; if it was bad, she told them, and advised them to get it down fast so they could have a sweet to take away the bad taste.
He seized the mug and happily drank down the contents. She made up a poultice of cress and plantain, and gave it to his mother.
“Have him lie down a bit more with this on his eye, and when he can’t keep still any longer, let him go play. It’s a pity about the tooth, but at least it’s a baby one.” She looked down at Dib, who stared solemnly up at her. “And mind what I said about fighting.”
“Yes, Keisha,” the boy said, with a look as if he was already contemplating mischief, as his mother helped him to his feet. The two left with Dib trotting sturdily along beside his mother, battered but unrepentant.
Keisha went out to check her drying laundry and found it ready to bring in; a distant growl from above made her glance quickly up at the sky to the west, and she frowned when she saw how quickly clouds were building in that direction. Thunder-towers, for certain sure. No telling how long it would last, either; a spring rain could be over before sunset, or linger for days.
She gathered in her clothing without folding it as she usually did; she just unpinned it from the line and dumped everything in the basket, anxious to beat the rain and get her things inside the workshop. She made it inside before anything came down, but the first drops started plopping into the dust just as she closed the door. It was as she was doing the folding inside the workshop that she heard thunder rumble again, much nearer, then heard the rain suddenly strengthen, rattling the thatch and pelting the path outside.
A moment more, and it wasn’t just a few drops, it was a downpour - a downpour without much thunder, just more growling now and again. There wasn’t much wind, which didn’t augur well for the storm blowing past in a hurry. She shut all the windows as some rain splashed inside, then lit her lanterns to ward off growing darkness; when she cracked the door open and peeked out, what she saw confirmed that this was not going to be a simple cloudburst, over quickly.
Not with the amount coming down
, the slate-gray of the clouds overhead, and the relative lack of lightning and thunder.
I’m glad the seedlings are up and they’re in drained beds, she thought with a sigh. And I’m glad I put those gauze cones over them to protect them. This is likely to last for the next three days. If she hadn’t put the cones over them, her precious new plants would be flattened before sunset.
With that in mind, she considered going out now and collecting some foodstuffs; she might be spending a lot of time in the workshop or tending flus and colds. I’d better; I can’t just live on vegetable soup.
Getting out her waterproof rain cape, she put the hood up, slipped on a pair of wooden clogs, bowed her head to the storm and plodded out into it. Beneath the hood of the cape, she watched her footing; already the rain had pooled into some deepish puddles - deep enough that her clogs wouldn’t keep her feet dry if she blundered into one. As she came to the hedge around her house, she looked up, wondering if her brothers had the sense to bring the clothing in. The line at her house was empty, so her brothers had saved their laundry from a drenching, but the righthand neighbor hadn’t been so lucky. Tansy Gelcress struggled with wet clothing, flapping rain cape, and a basket she didn’t want to put down - Keisha couldn’t simply go into the house with that going on next door. She stopped long enough to help Tansy gather in her things, then went on up the path to her own house.
Everybody will be coming home - they can’t work in the wet. I’ll get the fire going, so they have a warm house to come back to. She built up the fire in the kitchen, then surveyed the kitchen stocks, deciding what her mother wouldn’t mind her taking. Ham, cheese, eggs, butter, a jug of cider - that‘ll do. I have beans, flour, basic staples at the shop. I have a quarter of a loaf of bread, and I’ll be out enough that I can get more bread from the baker. We’ve plenty more of what I’m taking at the farm; she can send Da after more if she needs to. People will start bringing barter stuff like eggs and milk around here as soon as I start handing out cough potions. That was part of the arrangement with the village, after all; since Keisha wasn’t a single male who needed to be cooked for and looked after, the family got foodstuffs on an irregular basis. Things usually started appearing when Keisha had done a lot of work in a short period of time.
Gathering her spoils up into a basket and covering it with a fold of her cape, she went out into the storm again, only to see the neighbor waving frantically at her from the door of her house.
She splashed across the yard, fearing that someone had already gotten sick.
But Tansy handed her a bundle wrapped in a clean dishcloth. “I made seedcakes, and I thought since you’ll probably be busy in this nasty weather that you might like to take some to your workshop to nibble on in between emergencies,” she said as she patted Keisha’s hand. “There, just a little thanks for being a good neighbor.”
“Thank you,” Keisha replied, touched and pleased, and a little dumbfounded. “Thank you very much. They’ll be appreciated - ”
“Now don’t let me keep you standing here, go!” the woman told her, making a shooing motion. “I don’t want to be the one responsible for drowning you!”
Keisha left, making her way through the growing runnels of water, protecting both sets of provisions under her rain cape. People are noticing! They’re really noticing what I do! It wasn’t just a reward for helping with the laundry; the neighbor had specifically said “I thought you’d probably be busy in this nasty weather.”
Somehow, she felt immensely better than she had a few moments ago and quite ready to meet whatever the weather brought with a steady spirit.
The wind picked up, sending the edges of her cape flapping, and there was a definite edge to it that there hadn’t been before. It was getting colder, and that wasn’t good.
Cold-teas, sore-throat syrups, cough syrups, fever-teas, herb-and-garlic packets for chicken soup - she started cataloging all the things she was going to need as soon as she got through the door. Her workshop seemed doubly cozy after the bitter weather outside; she shook out her cape and hung it up, then slipped her clogs off and padded around in her stockings, knowing that she’d have to put the clogs back on as soon as someone called on her. Quickly stowing her provisions in her food cupboard, she put beans to soak for soup tomorrow; if the rain lasted, tomorrow would be the day when the first colds made their appearance, and she’d be busy all day.
She took long enough to eat her vegetable soup with sliced bread and butter; if things got bad, it might be bedtime before she had another chance to eat. Then she set about inventorying her cold medicines, and putting together batches of whatever she thought she’d need more of.
Her hands flew as her mind worked; was it likely that anyone would get caught by flooding? With the way this rain was coming down, it was a possibility, though people tended to be pretty sensible about rising water this time of year. It was only in the summer that people got lazy, were too busy, or were having too good a time to pay attention to the possibility of flash floods.
Last year had brought a fine honey harvest and she had plenty stocked away for making soothing syrups. With a surplus of extra jugs, she’d gone ahead and made more decoctions of comfrey, lobelia, hyssop, and horehound than she usually did. Now her preparations paid off; it didn’t take long for her to mix those four ingredients, chamomile, and lemon-balm tinctures, plus the honey, for cough syrup. Work didn’t stop just because people got colds; it was up to her to make certain they could do their work even with one.
Late afternoon brought the first of the emergencies; people might be sensible about flooding, but unfortunately, cows were as stubborn and stupid as rocks. Some of the water-meadows started getting knee-deep and several folk had to wade in to lead their cattle out - the floods were too deep for the herd dogs to work in, so each fool cow had to be caught and led to safety by hand. So a handful of people came home chilled to the bone and blue around the lips - and Keisha was there with hot medicinal teas and packets of preventative herbs to go into the evening soup or stew. No harm if the rest of the family got the medicines either; all that would happen was that everyone would get sleepy earlier, and go off to bed. A warm bed was the best place anyone could be on a night like this one.
The cattle had to be treated, too, for the results of their boneheadedness, so out she went to three different farms, making sure each silly cow got her drench.
Keisha had her villagers well-trained; at the first sign of a sniffle, mothers came to the door for syrups and teas for their littles. There was a steady parade of them just after suppertime, as children who’d gone out healthy came home sneezing, because they would play in the puddles and not come in until they were as soaked and blue as the men who’d rescued the cattle.
These weren’t the things she charged for; she’d early come to the conclusion that if she took her “pay” for run-of-the-mill Healing in the things the villagers were already supplying her, it was more likely that they’d come to her early rather than waiting until the illness was truly serious. Doses with enough sleepy-making potential to make people stay abed a candlemark or two longer when they were mildly sick would keep them from getting sicker - keeping a cold at the level of sniffles and coughs in a child kept it from turning into something that could kill. She’d charge the farmers for the cattle-drenches, but only after the rains were over, and only because they had asked her to give the doses herself.
Then again, she thought wearily, after she’d trudged back to the shop from what she hoped would be the last call of the night, I can get the stuff down their throats without themfighting me; when they do it, more of it goes on the cow than in it, poor things.
Absolutely, positively, no point in going home to sleep; everyone knew that in weather like this, she’d be at the shop where everything she might need was at hand. I’m just glad I got the laundry done, she told herself, as she closed the door behind her, and surveyed the wreck of her workshop. I hope they give me some time to get this cleaned up in the morning before they ha
ul me out again.
She followed her own prescription and added a packet of her herbs to the last of the soup before she ate it - as she’d anticipated, she hadn’t had a chance for a meal after that first bowl. The she put the beans, seasoning, and some ham into another pot and put that over the fire to cook all night. She managed to wash up the dishes and the first soup pot, but ran out of energy, and took two seedcakes and a mug of cider up to the loft where she snuggled into her bed, leaving them on the little table beside the bed for a quick bite if someone pulled her out in the middle of the night.
But that night, at least, her sleep was unbroken, and the cakes and cider made a perfectly good breakfast. It was an unexpected luxury to eat breakfast in bed, with the rain drumming down on the roof outside and the savory aroma of bean soup filling the workshop.
She didn’t linger long, though; she was up and washed and clothed quickly, dressing for the weather. No telling when she’d be called out again.
I could do myself a big favor by getting baskets ready to snatch up, she decided, and lined up four on the workbench. Into one went standard remedies for minor human ailments, and into the second the same sorts of things for animals. Into the other two went medicines for more serious complications. She didn’t think she’d have to use the one for people - but the Fellowship beasts were so sensitive -
She’d no sooner finished the fourth basket when someone knocked on the door, then came in without waiting for a reply.
It was Alys, from the Fellowship.
Keisha grabbed the fourth basket without waiting to hear what brought her. “It’s the sheep, right?”
Alys nodded. “Cough,” she said anxiously. “It’s odd, a dry, hacking sort of cough.”
“Hah!” Alys didn’t recognize it, that was clear, but Keisha did. Her own family flock had gotten the illness in a rainy spring like this one. She turned to get a different jar of heavy concentrate down off the top shelf and put it in her basket as well. “No worries, I’ve got what we’ll need; they’ll be fine as long as we get them warm and dry and get my stuff into them. Come on.”
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