The Alchemist's Daughter by Eileen Kernaghan Page A

hushed sickroom voice. Sidonie turned her head, saw Alice tiptoeing into the room. “Oh, mistress, I am so happy to see you returned to your senses.”
    â€œTruly, Alice, I have been asleep for three days?”
    â€œâ€™Struth, Mistress Sidonie. But it was no proper slumber. All the while you threshed, and flung yourself about, and raved like Tom o’ Bedlam.”
    â€œRaved, Alice?”
    â€œAye, mistress, you had a great deal to say, and not a jot of sense in any of it.”
    â€œOf what did I speak, Alice?”
    â€œOh, of everything, and nothing. Of mirrors, and moons, and ghosts, and all manner of nonsensical things.”
    Sidonie felt a sudden release, a weight lifting from her chest. The world, after all, was a rational place, where the dead lay quiet in their graves. Sir Philip’s ghost had been nothing more than a fever-vision, that would soon fade like the other chimeras crowding her overheated brain.
    She took a few sips of the barley water that Alice had brought her, let Alice wash her face and comb her draggled hair, then lay back on the pillows and drifted into dreamless sleep.

    â€œWhat a fright you gave us, Mistress Quince!”
    It was Adrian Gilbert, no longer wearing workman’s garb but elegantly clad in chestnut hose and a doublet of tawny velvet. He was smiling broadly, and carrying a pewter posset cup on a tray.
    Sidonie, now propped up with a surfeit of cushions and wrapped in a brocade dressing-gown, accepted the cup, and took a cautious sip. ’Til now she had recoiled at the thought of food, or any drink but barley water. But this concoction, smelling pleasantly of flowers and spices, seemed at once to settle her stomach and clear her head.
    â€œTell me, what is this magic elixir, Master Gilbert?”
    â€œWhy, it is my own invention, Adrian Gilbert’s Cordialle Water, an infallible remedy for colic, consumption, fevers, measles, pox . . . not to mention swooning and disorders of digestion.”
    â€œAnd may I be told what it contains?”
    â€œMistress Quince, you are far too curious — but this much I will reveal: roses, cinnamon, gillyflowers, peaches and sundry other ingredients, distilled and mixed with civet, musk, and ambergris . . . but the secret is in the powdered unicorn’s horn.”
    Sidonie laughed, not sure whether he spoke in jest. “Certes, it is the unicorn’s horn that is restoring me to health. Are you then a physician as well as a gardener and a chemist, Master Gilbert?”
    â€œNay, the diagnoses I leave to Dr. Moffett — but chemistry too is a branch of medicine.”
    â€œAnd besides the swooning, from which of that long list of ailments have you cured me?”
    His smile faded. “At first Dr. Moffett feared smallpox, or worse yet the plague, but by God’s mercy, it proved not so. He suspects you may have taken some fever from the poisoned breath of the beggar who accosted you.” He drew up a chair to the bedside and sat down. “Giddiness, headache, an excess of perspiration, all are symptoms of the sweating sickness, though Dr. Moffett swears there has been no case in England since Edward’s time. If in truth it was sweating sickness, you have had a miraculous escape.”
    â€œIndeed,” said Sidonie, “I sweated so much it is a wonder there is anything left of me but a dry husk.” She held up the empty posset cup. “And I have a fearful thirst. Perchance, is there any more of this wizard’s brew?”
    Gilbert laughed. “In good time, Mistress Quince. Too much at once, and we will have you dancing the volte in your bed-slippers. I’ll be back this evening. And see, you have another visitor waiting.”
    Sidonie glanced round, saw Lady Mary hovering in the doorway, looking more than usually forlorn. “My lady!”
    â€œDr. Moffett tells me you are much improved.”
    â€œIndeed she is, Lady Mary,” Gilbert said. “A