“Need medicine,” she repeated.
He shook his head. “You shouldn’t take too much laudanum.”
She frowned. Was he speaking of opium? “No opium. Medicine. Need…” She didn’t know the English word. “Plant? Small plant.”
His eyes widened. “What plant?”
She didn’t know how to explain, which meant she would have to get it herself. Gritting her teeth, she swung her feet out. She would find it and make the tea herself. It was her only chance.
“Woah!” he cried out, obviously alarmed. “You can’t walk!”
It was this or die horribly. She set her weight down on her right heel and nearly howled. The pain was excruciating, and he grabbed her as she swayed, gently laying her back on the bed.
“You can’t,” he repeated. “You must rest.”
But she’d die without the plant. “Need medicine,” she repeated.
He frowned, his gaze quickly scanning the messy room. “Can you draw it?” he asked, miming writing with his hand. Then, once he was sure she wasn’t going to fall over, he crossed to awriting desk and pulled out paper and ink. He brought it over to her on a lap desk, setting it carefully across her body.
But what was she supposed to use? The hardened feather seemed very strange to her.
“Do you understand?” he asked. He dipped the quill in the ink and scratched it across the page.
Ah, of course. But when she reached for it, her hand was too unsteady, the weight of the quill too light, and the ink blobbed and botched. Her face heated with fever and embarrassment. How was she going to draw what she needed?
She set the quill down in disgust. “I go.”
“You cannot walk.”
“I go!”
“Where?”
An excellent question. She did not know this place where she was held, and she knew even less of London. If she walked around, she would likely be able to find it soon enough, but she couldn’t manage it on her feet. Meanwhile, his gaze traveled from her to something across the room. His brows abruptly narrowed, and he got up.
Curious, she watched him cross to a messy bookshelf. He grabbed something rolled up in fabric and brought it over. And then he set it before her.
“Maybe this will help,” he said as he untied the fabric.
Brushes appeared before her, set neatly in soft cotton. These she knew how to handle. She picked one up. It settled nicely in her hand, and she was unexpectedly grateful for something familiar in so strange a place. The ink was difficult to manage, but she figured it out soon enough.
But what was she to draw?
She started with a building. She didn’t want to draw an outhouse, but that was always a good place. Pigpen? There hadto be places like that here, except the window out the other bedroom had shown her trees, cobblestone, and stately houses.
“Is that an apothecary shop?” he asked.
She had no idea what that word meant.
She drew pigs, but she was very bad at that. Then people. Little better.
“A stable? Is that supposed to be stable?”
Oh! Of course. Horses. That would have dark, dank corners. She hoped. Now how was she to draw mold? Her grandmother had taught her that when all else failed, a tea made from the mold that grew on the sides of buildings could save a life. Her father had disdained such wisdom, of course. He would not lower himself to go to such places. But the women knew, and they taught each other through the generations.
And now, Yihui prayed it would work for her.
She darkened a corner of the building she’d drawn.
