FortunesSharpAdversity.PDF by Elemental Alchemy

Author:Elemental Alchemy [Alchemy, Elemental]
Language: nld
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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More rumors circulated about Mother Celsa than there were herbs in her market stall. Wilder ones said she was a sorceress, one who ate the occasional child, or that she was over a hundred years old, or at night she flew through the air with her spinning wheel.

But these were children’s rumors and no one truly believed them.

She was a good Christian woman who tithed to the church and attended mass faithfully.

The believable stories said she had married a rich wool merchant. When he died, he left her a young widow with a sizeable fortune who, so the story went, swore never to marry again. She had lived in the stone townhouse for as long as anyone could recall, and so, while she couldn’t possibly be a century old, she was surely over sixty, easily the oldest person Philippe had ever known.

He picked his way up the curving, narrow street, careful of the midden piles. It was safest to walk up the center of the street where one could avoid the possibility of a slop bucket being emptied on one’s head from a second floor window, but he moved so slowly that any cart or horseman who came up the street might flatten him. When he reached Mother Celsa’s door, he hesitated, uncertain of the proprieties. He wasn’t expected. Perhaps he should have sent a boy with a message to see if she would agree to meet with him.

Still, it had taken him an hour to hobble to her door. Simply turning and hobbling back again seemed absurd. A knock on the door brought no response, so he limped around to the alleyway and 53

FORTUNE’S SHARP ADVERSITY

on to the back of the house. As he suspected, she had a little garden there, rows of clay pots stacked on tiered wooden stands from which herbs of all descriptions sprouted, crept and climbed. In her black shawl, Mother Celsa bent over a larger pot of some evergreen plant.

Unwilling to startle her, Philippe stopped at the waist-high wooden gate and tapped with his crutch.

Without turning, she said, “Come in, Philippe. The gate is open.”

He gaped. “How did you…?” Perhaps the rumors are true.

“Come, boy, there’s no mystery.” She straightened and turned to face him, her gray eyes twinkling. “I know the sound of your crutch by now.”

“Ah.” He had planned what to say to her, all the necessary words to ensure a hearing, and now they had all fled in his embarrassment.

She huffed a breath through her nose. “By your face, I would say this is not about your leg. Come inside, Philippe. Some things are best not discussed in the open.”

He allowed himself to be led and settled in a chair beside the fireplace in the stonewalled kitchen. Mother Celsa poured them both tea and settled on a stool on the opposite side of the hearth.

“Now, while I do enjoy having handsome young men come to call, and it does not happen nearly as often as it should these days, I think you came here for a reason, my boy.

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