He Left My Rejection on His Desk, So I Signed It Myself novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Cup

I took the cup out of Maud's hands before Hetta could lift a finger.

"Tilda," Maud said, and laughed, and looked around for someone to share it with. "It's only tea."

"Then you drink it."

"I made it for her."

"I know," I said. "She drank your tea at dusk last night and woke up with a man at her bed."

Maud's smile stayed where it was.

"She slept hard because she's old and tired. Chair, tell her. I have brought tea to that woman for weeks. I'm the one who's been kind."

"Drink it," I said.

I held the cup out.

Maud did not take it.

The chair of the Moot had come up beside the cart, and behind him came a wide, white-haired woman in a plain brown shawl.

She was the eldest of the women's circle, who tend the sick at every Moot, and the whole field went quiet for her.

She took the cup from me, dipped one finger, and touched it to her tongue.

She stood still for a moment.

"Poppy milk," she said. "And valerian root. A heavy hand of both."

"It's willow bark and honey," Maud said.

"There is willow in it. There is enough poppy under the willow to put a horse down." The old woman turned the cup in the light. "Whoever mixed this knew the dose for a woman Hetta's size."

I reached into my cloak.

I had taken the small tin out of Hetta's bag that dawn, the minute she said the word tea.

It had Maud's neat blue label and Maud's own handwriting on the lid.

"She gave this to me at the Fen," I said. "Willow tea for Hetta's cough."

The healer shook a pinch of dry leaf onto her palm, smelled it, and held it out to the women behind her.

Three of them bent to sniff, and straightened with their mouths set.

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