Adair smiled at him. “I am going to prepare one of my evil potions to give you,” she said. “You are to remain where you are. I won’t be long.” Adair turned and left the bedchamber. Down in the hall she found Duncan Armstrong and young Murdoc. “Your brother is sick. It was being out in that storm yesterday. Have none of you any sense that you did not return home when it began to rain?” she demanded of them. “Eat your food, and then you must take the men hunting again. Conal tells me the game has been scarce.”
“He’s not well enough to hunt?” Duncan asked.
“He’s burning with fever,” Adair said. “He must remain in bed, and I must dose him to rid him of the evil humors that plague him.”
“If he has agreed to remain abed then he must really be ill,” Duncan noted. “Tell him not to worry. Murdoc and I will take the men and do the hunting.”
“I will need your help,” Adair told the brothers quietly. “This is not a simple thing, and Conal must remain in bed for several days. He will be more at ease if he knows you have been successful. The cold larder is empty, but it is just September. There is time yet to fill it, but if you should find a deer today I know Conal would rest easier for it. Now I must go to my apothecary and brew a potion for him to ease his cough and his fever.”
“He loves you,” Duncan said.
Adair flushed. “He has not said so.”
“Oh, but he does!” young Murdoc added.
“Then he had best say it, or I shall have to go,” Adair replied. Then she went off to make the medicines she would need for the laird.
“We can’t let him lose her,” Duncan said. “She loves him too. I see it.”
“She’s with child, Elsbeth says,” Murdoc replied. “But we cannot tell.”
“Jesu!” Duncan swore. “Why not?”
“Because Elsbeth wants Adair to tell Conal,” Murdoc said.
“She’ll say nothing, and she’ll leave him if that block-head of a brother of ours does not admit how he feels about her.” Duncan groaned.
“There’s a little time,” Murdoc soothed his older sibling.
Duncan stood up from the high board. “Come on, youngling, we had best go hunting while we figure out how to bring the two most stubborn people in Scotland to reason. Neither of them, it would appear, knows how to compromise, and they must.”
The two brothers left the keep with a part of their men, and spent the day hunting. Good fortune rode with them, for when they returned that evening they brought with them two roe deer and three strings of grouse. Adair was delighted, and praised them for their efforts. Her news, however, was not as good. The laird was no better. In fact, she was certain that his fever was higher now than it had been in the morning.
“We have kept cold cloths on his head all day, but the fever is stubborn. I will have to make a fever reducer of yarrow, oil, and honey,” she said. “I have already made a syrup of lemon, mint, and honey for his cough.”
“You look tired,” Duncan said to her. “You must take care of yourself as well, Adair. You cannot get sick, for who then would care for us?”
She looked sharply at him. What did he know? And who had told him? “I will be all right, Duncan,” she replied to his concern.
At the evening meal she sat with them, and both Duncan and Murdoc kept sneaking looks at her. Adair didn’t know whether to be angry or laugh. They knew.
Of course they did, or their concern wouldn’t have been so great. As the meal ended Adair knew she had to do something to relieve the tension. “If either of you tells your brother,” she said, “I will find a way to repay you in kind. And I am a patient woman,” she warned them.
Then Adair left them, going down to the kitchens, where Elsbeth was kneading the bread that would be bakedvery early in the morning. “Which one of them did you tell?” she demanded. “Murdoc, probably. He adores you. And who else have you told?”
Elsbeth looked up from the table, her arms floury.
“Your secret will be out soon enough, my lady. Aye, I told young Murdoc because I knew he couldn’t keep the secret. That way when one of the brothers tells the laird you can’t blame me.” Elsbeth plopped the dough back in a large bowl and covered it with a towel before placing it in the warming oven to rise. “So you had best tell Conal Bruce before they do.”
“You’re a wicked old woman,” Adair said, “and I will blame you. I hope the three of you will at least wait until I have cured him of his illness.” Then she left the kitchens, pausing halfway up the stairs, as she was certain she had heard Elsbeth chortling. As she walked through the hall she asked Duncan Armstrong to see the keep was secure for the night, and thanked him when he agreed. Then she hurried up the stairs to the chamber that she shared with the laird.
Flora arose from his bedside, where she had been seated. “He is restless, Adair. And the fever burns hot in him,” she said. “I’ve been changing the cloths for his forehead, but they do not seem to help.”
“Stay with him then awhile longer,” Adair said. “I was going to wait until morning to mix this new remedy, but I will go and do it now.” She left the bedchamber, going downstairs again to the little room that served as her apothecary.
She had a basket of fat yarrows, and, selecting one, she cut it, scooping the seeds out first, and then the soft flesh. She spread the yarrow onto an earthenware dish, mixing it with a bit of olive oil and some very thick honey. She took dried mint leaves and put a few into her mortar, grinding them with her pestle into a very fine power that she blended well into the mixture. Then with her fingers she rolled the ingredients into little balls, setting them onto an iron rectangle. The little chamber hada small oven built into the wall. Adair lit a fire in the firepit beneath the oven. Then she slipped the flatiron into the oven so that her remedy would bake. While she waited she cleaned up the apothecary and got down a small stone jar with a quartz lid.
When the little medicinal spheres had been baked dry, Adair removed them from the oven and set them on the counter to cool, removing several and slipping them into her pocket. Then, blowing out the candles by which she had worked and making certain the firepit beneath the oven was banked, she hurried from her apothecary and back upstairs to the laird’s bedchamber.
