Page 58 of Night of the Witch
“Toss them all to me!” he says loudly. “For soon Peter shall take my spot in the market!” The crowd roars with laughter as the man dances his stilts over some cobblestones marked with paint—the place wherethe archbishop plans to install a grand fountain in honor of Saint Peter. Paid for, in part, with bribes from the rich who do not wish to be accused of witchcraft. A fiddler dances past us, bow gliding across waxed strings. “Kerzen!” a woman calls. Hand-dipped candles are draped by their connected wicks across her arm. “Kerzen for sale!” Nearby, a man stands over a cauldron bubbling with hot oil, dipping mushrooms into it. “Champignons,” he calls in a French accent.
Fritzi starts toward that stall. “More food?” I ask.
She shakes her head, and something in the furtive movement makes my muscles tense. When she approaches the stall owner, she points to the mushrooms that are plucked and white in his basket, not yet fried in the oil. “Can I purchase three?” she asks.
The man scoops some fried mushrooms up.
“No,” Fritzi says, shaking her head. “Three of the raw ones.”
I step forward. “Nous voulons trois champignons frais,” I say in French.
“Voulons?” the man asks.
I nod. “Ma femme est étrange,” I say with a shrug.
The man looks at Fritzi and barks in laughter. She scowls—she’s probably picked up at least a bit of what I said, but her expression changes as the man tosses her three fresh mushrooms. She slips them into the pouch at her skirt as I pay the man.
“‘Your wife is strange?’” Fritzi whispers to me, so soft only I can hear. She snorts. “As if I would marry you.”
So, the witch is more offended by being called my wife than by being labeled strange.
After several more stops, Fritzi tells me she needs only one more thing. She takes me to a building along the square. A painted sign declares itLöwen-Apotheke—the Lion’s Apothecary.
“Don’t talk,” Fritzi says in a low whisper as she steps inside.
The building is brightly lit with both lamps and a fire in the hearth. A man looks up as we step inside, but Fritzi makes a show of looking away, seeking past him. To a woman—his wife, I think, or a sister.
Fritzi rushes to her. The apothecary scoffs, waving his hand in a dismissive way as he turns to a different customer.
“Have you any rue?” Fritzi asks the woman in a low voice. When the woman hesitates, Fritzi drops a hand to her belly. “Please,” she says, her voice cracking over the word.
Grumbling, the woman steps behind the apothecary counter. She bends down, opening a small wooden box and shaking out a sprinkling of dried herbs into a piece of scrap cloth, which she wraps up.
“You didn’t get that here,” the woman says, passing the herb to Fritzi.
“Of course,” she murmurs. Then she elbows me. Hard. I drop coins in the apothecary woman’s hand, and Fritzi strides out of the building.
On our way back to the house fort, I question Fritzi’s last purchase. “What was that?”
“Rue,” she says. In a low voice, so no one else can hear, she adds, “It’s generally banned—too close to witchcraft, ironically—but it’s too useful to get rid of entirely.”
“What’s it for?”
“Menstruation cramps,” Fritzi says matter-of-factly.
A flush creeps up my cheeks.
“Ironic, that,” Fritzi goes on. “An herb that specifically helps only women, and it’s associated with crime. If rue was an herb to make your”—her eyes rake over my body, lingering on my midsection—“staffstay firm,” she says, smirking, “every apothecary would sell bushels of it on the corner.” She shrugs. “But it’s not. It’s an herb for women, so it must be hidden and sold in secret. Especially here.”
“Is…er…” I pause. “Is it an herb you need now?”
“Yes.”
I feel my flush deepen as we leave the market and walk through the shadows toward the house fort.
Fritzi rolls her eyes. “For thepotion. Just because it’s helpful for cramps doesn’t mean it’s not also a useful ingredient in potion making.”
“Oh.”
