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Her eyes widened as I spoke, and at my last words a look of horror came over her face. I fell silent and felt the sharp awkwardness again. “How do you know such things?” she demanded breathlessly.
“I . . . I heard an old traveling midwife talking to our midwife up to the keep,” I improvised. “It was . . . a sad story she told, of an injured man given some to help him rest, but his baby got into it as well. A very, very sad story. ” Her face was softening and I felt her warming toward me again. “I only tell it to be sure you are careful of the root. Don’t leave it about where any child can get at it. ”
“Thank you. I shan’t. Are you interested in herbs and roots? I didn’t know a scribe cared about such things. ”
I suddenly realized that she thought I was the scribe’s help boy. I didn’t see any reason to tell her otherwise. “Oh, Fedwren uses many things, for his dyes and inks. Some copies he makes quite plain, but others are fancy, all done with birds and cats and turtles and fish. He showed me an herbal with the greens and flowers of each herb done as the border for the page. ”
“That I should dearly love to see,” she said in a heartfelt way, and I instantly began thinking of ways to purloin it for a few days.
“I might be able to get you a copy to read . . . not to keep, but to study for a few days,” I offered hesitantly.
She laughed, but there was a slight edge in it. “As if I could read! Oh, but I imagine you’ve picked up some letters, running about for the scribe’s errands. ”
“A few,” I told her, and was surprised at the envy in her eyes when I showed her my list and confessed I could read all seven words on it.
A sudden shyness came over her. She walked more slowly, and I realized we were getting close to the chandlery. I wondered if her father still beat her, but dared not ask about it. Her face, at least, showed no sign of it. We reached the chandlery door and paused there. She made some sudden decision, for she put her hand on my sleeve, took a breath, and then asked, “Do you think you could read something for me? Or even any part of it?”
“I’ll try,” I offered.
“When I . . . now that I wear skirts, my father has given me my mother’s things. She had been dress help to a lady up at the keep when she was a girl, and had letters taught her. I have some tablets she wrote. I’d like to know what they say. ”
“I’ll try,” I repeated.
“My father’s in the shop. ” She said no more than that, but something in the way her consciousness rang against mine was sufficient.
“I’m to get Scribe Fedwren two beeswax tapers,” I reminded her. “I dare not go back to the keep without them. ”
“Be not too familiar with me,” she cautioned me, and then opened the door.
I followed her, but slowly, as if coincidence brought us to the door together. I need not have been so circumspect. Her father slept quite soundly in a chair beside the hearth. I was shocked at the change in him. His skinniness had become skeletal, the flesh on his face reminding me of an undercooked pastry over a lumpy fruit pie. Chade had taught me well. I looked to the man’s fingernails and lips, and even from across the room, I knew he could not live much longer. Perhaps he no longer beat Molly because he no longer had the strength. Molly motioned me to be quiet. She vanished behind the hangings that divided their home from their shop, leaving me to explore the store.
It was a pleasant place, not large, but the ceiling was higher than in most of the shops and dwellings in Buckkeep Town. I suspected it was Molly’s diligence that kept it swept and tidy. The pleasant smells and soft light of her industry filled the room. Her wares hung in pairs by their joined wicks from long dowels on a rack. Fat sensible candles for ships’ use filled another shelf. She even had three glazed pottery lamps on display, for those able to afford such things. In addition to candles, I found she had pots of honey, a natural by-product of the beehives she tended behind the shop that furnished the wax for her finest products.
Then Molly reappeared and motioned to me to come join her. She brought a branch of tapers and a set of tablets to a table and set them out on it. Then she stood back and pressed her lips together as if wondering if what she did were wise.
The tablets were done in the old style. Simple slabs of wood had been cut with the grain of the tree and sanded smooth. The letters had been brushed on carefully, and then sealed to the wood with a yellowing rosin layer. There were five, excellently lettered. Four were carefully precise accounts of herbal recipes for healing candles. As I read each one softly aloud to Molly, I could see her struggling to commit them to memory. At the fifth tablet, I hesitated. “This isn’t a recipe,” I told her.