With gratitude to all those who read early drafts of anything to do with this.
DOG STAR RISING
I'D BEEN following the white pestilence for half a year when I came to Holm's Steading. Someone had buried a lead tablet under the crossroads shrine along with a knot of bindweed and a bat's bones, recently enough that the bindweed was still green, and sure enough there the herbman still was. I found him sifting through a mess of leaves and twigs and unripe berries in a frightened alewife's kitchen and telling her about the malign constellations he'd seen in the sky the night before. He was older than I'd expected, and bonier too. His grey wisp of a beard quivered almost as much as his cracked old voice.
I pretended not to notice him. "Goodwife," I said to the woman, who was eyeing my unshaven face and filthy boots, "have you a bed and a bite to eat? I'm on the road to the Temple of the Twins at Alba."
Everyone likes a pilgrim, especially when there's pestilence about. She jumped up at once and wouldn't hear of taking my money, if I'd only do this one thing for her. There was (she lowered her voice) sickness in the village, did I know? so she wouldn't be surprised if I just kept on walking, but if I would take an offering to the great sanctuary at the city...
I had a sackful of offerings for the goddess and her brother. "Be pleased to," I said. "I'll dedicate it as soon as I can."
And I meant it. I was going back to the city just as soon as I was done here.
I let myself notice the herbman sitting on the kitchen bench with his herbs spread out around him. I'd been hunting him since the winter and here he was. I couldn't believe it. "Is that deadly nightshade?" I asked.
"Eye-drops for the ladies," said the old herbman. He stroked his wispy beard and put on an expression that he probably thought looked wise, rather than slightly constipated. "Among other things."
The alewife poured me a tankard. "Alric's been here a week," she told me. "Eafa would be dead if not for him! And Cearl's wife too, and little Sexburg -"
"From the sickness?" I said.
Alric's nod was glummer than I'd have expected. "From the sickness," he said. "It's the Dog Star, y'know. He rose two weeks ago and he's breathed sickness every dawn since. We sacrificed one of Ricbert's hounds, but nothing changed. It's going to be a bad summer."
I nodded as though I believed him. He sounded sincere and he looked harmless, if more than a little weary, but the pestilence followed him. There wasn't any, except where he was or where he'd been. Often his herbs seemed to cure it. Sometimes they didn't. It was all young men who died. By now I was sure he was a poisoner and I'd begun to think he was a witch.
It was my cousin who died. That was the first time anyone had ever seen the white pestilence. He stopped talking one day and after a while he stopped eating or moving as well. He lay on his bed and rotted from the inside. They called it the white pestilence because all the colour went out of him, in patches. Then other people started to fall sick and someone else said they'd seen a white ghost hovering over a sick man's bed, the night he breathed his last. After that, everyone saw white ghosts everywhere, and the white pestilence too.
I found a lead tablet under my cousin's mattress. That was common enough; my aunt had made it. Her youngest son stole the lead from a temple gutter and she'd scratched a prayer to the White Lady and all the gods below using a nail scavenged from a piece of driftwood. She said a herbman had shown her what to do. He'd read the stars, she said, and sold her drugs that hadn't worked and left Alba the day before my cousin died.
So I followed him. Or rather, I followed the white pestilence.
I was still nursing my ale in the alewife's kitchen and watching Alric the herbman out of the corner of my eye when a girl came in. She was as fair as a Raider's byblow, which wasn't uncommon on the coast but stood out in these parts, and she carried a string bag full of leaves and other odds and sods. She didn't look at me. "Here," she said to Alric. "I find what you want."
I already knew the herbman travelled with a girl who fetched and carried for him, if she didn't warm his bed as well. She was young enough to be his daughter, or even his granddaughter at a push, but I didn't think she was. I'd guessed she was an indentured servant, though there was nothing particularly servile about the way she spoke.
"Thank you," said Alric, carefully, almost like a man talking to an acquaintance who'd done him a favour. He took the bag and started to remove its contents, laying the leaves down on the bench one at a time. The girl stood there with her arms folded and her head to one side, watching him expectantly.
I took a longer look. She was tall and slim, though her tunic was cheap and hung like a sack over hints of pleasant curves. Her face was as fair as her hair, from her creamy skin to her kissable lips, and I thought she was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen. I was sorry she belonged to a man like Alric, because nothing good was going to come of being a poisoner's apprentice. And she couldn't help being indentured to him.
Alric held up a mushroom with a bright red cap. "What's this?"
"Fly agaric," she said promptly. "To ease cold fevers."
"That's right. Very good. And this?"
It was a long and hairy leaf. "Arction. With wine, for a tooth hurting, or drink for sciatica or strangury. Or apply to burns or chilblains."
The sharpness of her accent was marked. I couldn't place it, although there were always plenty of outlanders in Alba to visit the great sanctuary or the Archduke's court. I sat and drank and listened as the herbman sorted through the plants his girl had brought him and she went through the litany of their names and uses. He wasn't a charlatan, I'd give him that. As far as I could tell, he knew what he was doing with herbs as well as poisons. To be honest, I'd wondered sometimes if the whole thing wasn't just a way to drum up trade.