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ERNEST visited the witch’s shop once more, one day before he was scheduled to. Perhaps it was because of the secret that they’d bonded over, but she didn’t threaten him or try to run him off as she had before.
“Afternoon, Miss Witch. How’s the job coming along?”
“Oh, it’s almost done. I can bring it to you if you’ll wait here for a moment.”
“No need to worry, I’ll come for that tomorrow. I have some of the tea in question with me and thought you might like to see it.”
A doctor who served the nobility was now in charge of securing the tea and testing it for poison. With his permission, Ernest was allowed enough for one pot, and so he placed it into a small flask and brought it with him.
Yuuri brought out a small saucer and they shifted the bottle’s contents onto it. She squished up the tea leaves with her bare hands and smelled them to ensure they were in fact tea.
“…Was it all right to do that? Do you suspect the tea leaves themselves might be poisoned?”
Naturally, Ernest wouldn’t have given the tea to her if he did not think it safe, but it was clear that she had some suspicions of her own.
“Many people drank it and did not fall ill, and Xingka is a friendly nation, so they wouldn’t knowingly mix poison into it, right?”
“That’s true…”
Yuuri brought out a pair of tweezers and sifted through the tea leaves one by one. As Ernest looked more closely, he realized there were light yellow and red bits mixed in with the brown leaves. Once she finished sifting, Yuuri wrote several words on a sheet of paper.
“This tea is what we call flowering tea. The jasmine tea you love, Count, is also generally considered a flower tea,” Yuuri explained in response to Ernest’s confused head tilt.
Flowering teas like jasmine tea were a common delicacy in Xingka and came in many varieties. Some were made by simply mixing the flower petals directly into their cup, while others relied on a premade bundle of dried flower petals and tea leaves.
The tea the ambassador had brought as a gift was indeed flowering tea, as was the tea mix Yuuri had prepared for Watoh Company a few days earlier.
“This mix has a lot of petals, don’t you think?”
Now that the tea leaves and other pieces were separated, it was clear that the light yellow and red bits were dried flower petals. There was an especially high concentration of the light yellow petals.
“These are chrysanthemum petals.”
“Oh, yes, like the ones you showed me the other day, right? …Does that mean something to you?”
“Just that, maybe, the Queen wasn’t poisoned.”
Yuuri clearly wasn’t one for jokes, yet Ernest found this hard to believe after seeing the Queen collapse firsthand. How could it be anything but poison?
“She wasn’t poisoned?”
“You’ve never heard of someone falling ill because of something they ate or drank?”
Yuuri held out a Hylantian medical journal. It was opened to a page discussing people who, as soon as certain foods touched their lips, broke out into hives and had trouble breathing. And though they hadn’t been able to prove this was the cause, it was believed to be linked to several deaths.
“The tea leaves themselves are the same in Xingka as they are in Hylant. The difference is that, here in Hylant, we don’t normally blend chrysanthemums into our tea.”
She handed Ernest another book. This one he recognized. It was one of the medical books he had borrowed from her originally, but returned after being unable to translate the text. There was a picture of a chrysanthemum on the page she had bookmarked.
“Here. I only translated the section about chrysanthemums.”
Indeed, she had exclusively translated the pages describing the chrysanthemum and its effects, color, and characteristics. At the very end was a warning that chrysanthemums could cause hives, itchiness, or, in severe cases, asphyxiation, in some people.
“There are many foods that can cause this condition, both in Hylant and the East as well. And it isn’t just food. Makeup has also been linked to similar illnesses.”
“So you’re saying it’s not a poisoning! Have we wasted all this time trying to research poisonous plants?”
“No, I am not willing to assert that much yet. Just that, your people should explore other possibilities outside of a targeted poisoning…and that, if this is the cause, it explains a lot.”
Those words were clearly her honest opinion.
Ernest also had his doubts about this being caused by poison. They hadn’t been able to detect any in the Queen’s tea or on her cup, so he had at least suspected it was not a poison common to Hylant. Poison was just one possible explanation, so they couldn’t rule out the other possibilities just yet.
“May I borrow this book? I’d like to hear what the royal physician has to say on the subject.”
“Of course. I thought you might ask.”
“If you’re right, then both the Queen and the maid will be spared. It would be a matter of happenstance and not the maid’s fault.”
The maid had insisted she had no reason nor desire to poison the queen. Since the Queen’s faith in her was so great, she had only been placed under house arrest for the duration of the investigation. It was fortunate that the matter had been kept quiet.
“Still, it’s important to remember that, even though no one meant for this to happen, substances that can cause these types of reactions are still considered poisons by many.”
“You are right. People who know about the Queen’s weakness to such substances, such as yourself, could use it against her…”
If trade with the East continued to increase and flowering teas continued to increase in popularity, there was no guarantee something like this wouldn’t happen again. Only a small amount of chrysanthemum petals had been in the tea that caused the Queen to collapse. A larger amount could kill her. In order to prevent that from happening, palace servants and cooks would need to be made aware, at the very least. But who needed to know beyond that? And how much should be revealed? And then, there was the one person who knew every last detail, and probably shouldn’t.
“What are you scheming?”
Yuuri was a commoner and thus, one of the last people who should know the Queen had such a weakness.
Ernest was carefully considering how he could ensure her silence. “Ah, well, I’m a bad man, so I must be planning something nefarious. Do you really want to know what I’m thinking?”
“…Is it about how you’re going to roll me in a bamboo mat and toss me into the ocean?”
“Of course not! What a horrid thing to say! You’re the daughter of a wealthy merchant; you must have more faith in your position and our relationship than that. And let’s not forget we have our secret to bind us.”
“That is true.”
She had unwittingly stumbled onto this royal family secret. And being as clever as she was, she likely understood the danger that entailed. If the king or queen were the malicious sort, it wouldn’t be unthinkable for them to want to silence her. And yet, she discussed the matter with such detachment, as if someone else were in the danger she currently found herself.
“My, you’re in quite a bit of trouble, aren’t you, my little witch?”
The mother that bore her wanted nothing to do with her. The grandmother that had lovingly raised her was dead. She was truly alone in the world. And yet her flagrant disregard for her own life troubled Ernest.
If only you could boost your social status, eh? …It won’t be easy though…
Ernest smiled to himself. He knew if he told her how he intended to protect her, she would throw him out in a panic. He would be heartbroken if she did, so he elected to keep it to himself for now, at least until she asked him.