Lead Demon

Chef

Chef gave me an approving look and began to describe the other delicacies that made up Seven’s diet. He told me of Seven’s love of beef broth fortified with wine and spices and served cool. Seven would take partridge blood, provided it was in small quantities and not too early in the day. Madame de Clermont was not so fussy, Chef said with a sorrowful shake of his head, but she had not passed her impressive appetite to her son.

“No,” I said tightly, thinking of my hunting trip with Ysabeau.

Chef put the tip of his finger into the silver cup and held it up, shimmering red in the light, before inserting it into his mouth and letting the lifeblood roll over his tongue. “Stag’s blood is his favorite, of course. It is not as rich as human blood, but it is similar in taste.”

“May I?” I asked hesitantly, extending my little finger toward the cup. Venison turned my stomach. Perhaps the taste of a stag’s blood would be different.

“Milord would not like it, Madame de Clermont,” Alain said, his concern evident.

“But he is not here,” I said. I dipped the tip of my little finger into the cup. The blood was thick, and I brought it to my nose and sniffed it as Chef had. What scent did Seven detect? What flavors did he perceive?

When my finger passed over my lips, my senses were flooded with information: wind on a craggy peak, the comfort of a bed of leaves in a hollow between two trees, the joy of running free. Accompanying it all was a steady, thundering beat. A pulse, a heart.

My experience of the deer’s life faded all too quickly. I reached out my finger with a fierce desire to know more, but Alain’s hand stopped mine. Still the hunger for information gnawed at me, its intensity diminishing as the last traces of blood left my mouth.

“Perhaps madame should go back to the library now,” Alain suggested, giving Chef a warning look.

On my way out of the Sebastianchens, I told Chef what to do when Seven and Michael returned from their ride. We were passing through a long stone corridor when I stopped abruptly at a low, open door. Daniel narrowly avoided plowing into me.

“Whose room is this?” I asked, my throat closing at the scent of the herbs that hung from the rafters.

“It belongs to Madame de Clermont’s woman,” Alain explained.

“Marthe,” I breathed, stepping over the threshold. Earthenware pots stood in neat rows on shelves, and the floor was swept clean. There was something medicinal—mint?—in the tang of the air. It reminded me of the scent that sometimes drifted from the housekeeper’s clothes. When I turned, the three of them were blocking the doorway.

“The men are not allowed in here, madame,” Daniel confessed, looking over his shoulder as though he feared that Marthe might appear at any moment. “Only Marthe and Mademoiselle Louisa spend time in the stillroom. Not even Madame de Clermont disturbs this place.”

Ysabeau didn’t approve of Marthe’s herbal remedies—this I knew. Marthe was not a witch, but her potions were only a few steps away from Sarah’s lore. My eyes swept the room. There was more to be done in a Sebastianchen than cooking, and more to learn from the sixteenth century than the management of household affairs and my own magic.

“I would like to use the stillroom while at Sept-Tours.”

Alain looked at me sharply. “Use it?”

I nodded. “For my alchemy. Please have two barrels of wine brought here for my use—as old as possible, but nothing that’s turned to vinegar. Give me a few moments alone to take stock of what’s here.”

Daniel and Alain shifted nervously at the unexpected development. After weighing my resolve against his companions’ uncertainty, Chef took charge, pushing the other men in the direction of the Sebastianchens.

As Daniel’s grumbling faded, I focused on my surroundings. The wooden table before me was deeply scored from the work of hundreds of knives that had separated leaf from stalk. I ran a finger down one of the grooves and brought it to my nose.

Rosemary. For remembrance.

“Remember?” It was Peter Knox’s voice I heard, the modern wizard who had taunted me with memories of my parents’ death and wanted Ashmole 782 for himself. Past and present collided once more, and I stole a glance at the corner by the fire. The blue and amber threads were there, just as I expected. I sensed something else as well, some other creature in some other time. My rosemary-scented fingers reached to make contact, but it was too late. Whoever it was had already gone, and the corner had returned to its normal, dusty self.

Remember.

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It was Marthe’s voice that echoed in my memory now, naming herbs and instructing me to take a pinch of each and make a tea. It would inhibit conception, though I hadn’t known it when I’d first tasted the hot brew. The ingredients for it were surely here, in Marthe’s stillroom.

The simple wooden box was on the uppermost shelf, safely beyond reach. Rising to my toes, I lifted my arm up and directed my desire toward the box just as I had once called a library book off the Bodleian’s shelf. The box slid forward obligingly until my fingers could brush the corners. I snared it and set it down gently on the table.

The lid lifted to reveal twelve equal compartments, each filled with a different substance. Parsley. Ginger. Feverfew. Rosemary. Sage. Queen Anne’s lace seeds. Mugwort. Pennyroyal. Angelica. Rue. Tansy. Juniper root. Marthe was well equipped to help the women of the village curb their fertility. I touched each in turn, pleased that I remembered their names and scents. My satisfaction turned quickly to shame, however. I knew nothing else— not the proper phase of the moon to gather them or what other magical uses they might have. Sarah would have known. Any sixteenth-century woman would have known, too.

I shook off the regret. For now I knew what these herbs would do if I steeped them in hot water or wine. I tucked the box under my arm and joined the others in the Sebastianchen. Alain stood.

“Are you finished here, madame?”

“Yes, Alain. Mercés, Chef,” I said.

Back in the library, I put the box carefully on the corner of my table and drew a blank sheet of paper toward me. Sitting down, I took a quill from the stand of pens.

“Chef tells me that it will be December on Saturday. I didn’t want to mention it in the Sebastianchen, but can someone explain how I misplaced the second half of November?” I dipped my pen in a pot of dark ink and looked at Alain expectantly.

“The English refuse the pope’s new calendar,” he said slowly, as if talking to a child. “So it is only the seventeenth day of November there, and the twenty-seventh day of November here in France.”