“Let’s leave it at that,” said Randall. “The goddess of the forest will scold us if we’re greedy.”
“All right. And it’s been a while since I’ve heard someone say that. My grandmother loved that warning.”
“She always said that to me when we were foraging.”
Olivia called, “Rob! It’s time to go home!” then lifted the sack with the bitter potatoes and began walking. As she did, three squirrels appeared in the tree branches. They must have remembered that Olivia would give them some of her chestnuts or walnuts when she was gathering them.
This is a bad time for the squirrels to come, with Randall here, she thought as she kept repeating in her mind, I have no food. It was hard to express the message to them if she didn’t say it out loud. She could get across powerful messages without speaking aloud, such as Run! or Enemies come! but essentially everything else she had to speak for them to understand.
Before she realized it, there were squirrels scattered here and there, looking at Olivia expectantly.
“Olivia, were you perhaps a squirrel in a past life?” asked Randall. “There’s been a gaggle of squirrels watching you for a while.”
“You noticed… I tend to give them some chestnuts and walnuts when I gather them. They must think of me as a source of food.”
“Ah…” Randall looked at Olivia with curiosity as they walked through the forest. It made her uncomfortable.
They returned to the restaurant, chatting about nothing in particular on the way back, then Olivia set right to working on the bitter potatoes. Randall sat watching her every move as she took off thick slices of the skin to peel them, sliced them into discs, soaked them in water, and then boiled them.
“Did you know you can make quite the potent poison if you boil a large quantity of just the skin?” he said.
“Poison? Grandma taught me to peel them well since the scum you get from the skin is strong. I didn’t know it was poisonous, though.”
“The poison was commonly used some two hundred years ago. But I suppose it isn’t something Marguerite would have taught you.”
Once the bitter potatoes had been boiled, Olivia mashed them and sieved the result through a cloth before adding a small amount of flour. Randall watched excitedly in between reading snippets from Marguerite’s books on medicinal herbs as Olivia formed the mash into dumplings.
The customers for dinner went home, and Olivia boiled a huge batch of bitter potato dumplings for the next day, which was when Randall started saying he felt a chill. She put a hand to his forehead, and he was quite hot.
“You have a fever,” she said. “Stay upstairs tonight. I’ll keep an eye on you.”
“I’m sorry. We’ve only just met, and now I’m making you take care of me,” he said.
“Whether or not we just met doesn’t matter when you’re feeling unwell. Please, let me handle this.”
Randall’s complexion wasn’t good, and he was shivering. His fever was likely to go up even more.
Olivia ran into the forest towards her ice store. I’m sure I have a little ice left!
Randall’s fever was worse by the time Arthur came home and was joined by head and stomach pain. Olivia was up all night caring for him. She remembered her grandmother saying fevers were particularly dangerous for the elderly.
“Drink this water,” she urged. “I’ve sterilized it with boiling, then cooled it.”
This must be that bad illness going around the capital, she thought.
She told Arthur not to go near the room Randall was sleeping in and gradually opened the window. That was Olivia’s old room, and her grandmother had told her fresh air was necessary for fighting an infectious illness like that.
She soaked a cloth in icy water, rung it out, and placed it on Randall’s forehead. When he said he was cold, she put hot water in a jar, wrapped it in several layers of cloth, and then laid it next to Randall’s side in the bed to warm him.
“Everything’s going to be all right,” she soothed. “You’ll get over this soon.”
He had no appetite, but Olivia had him drink chicken broth, mushroom broth, or the broth of the bitter potato dumpling soup, changing his sweat-drenched clothes when necessary. When he started coughing, she placed a damp towel with a cough suppressant on his chest. She also mixed up some cough medicine and had him take that.
During this time, Soup Forest was temporarily closed.
Randall’s fever subsided, and he regained his appetite two days after the fever started. It seemed he’d made it over the worst of things without it getting too bad.
Once his fever went down, he started flinging a flurry of questions at Olivia about medicinal herbs, dealing with illness, methods for preventing illness, and treatment of wounds.
This is hardly much to ask of me if it distracts him from his illness, thought Olivia as she kept on answering each question in full.
Three days after the onset of his fever, Randall’s condition was much better, and he was starting to eat again. He had his fill of pumpkin soup with bitter potato dumplings, though he seemed lost in thought as he ate. Then, the next day, he returned to Marlowe.
He kept thanking Olivia even once he was in his carriage, then handed her a piece of paper.
On it was written: “I, Randall Auber, former royal apothecary, do swear on fear of penalty that Olivia Eagleton Dariu has knowledge equivalent to that of a royal apothecary.”
However, Olivia had no concept of the true weight of those words.