from Hellas. Every day, I would enter the workshop and he would either gesture to a new object on the table or he would pull something from underneath his jacket – a piece of wood, an earring, lace, grains of dirt, salt or spices; seemingly innocuous, they were like plunging myself into a vat of experience.
He also kept his promise to the Maleovellis and taught me that which he did not wish to – the tricks of his former trade. I learnt how to crush the petals of certain flowers and herbs to cure fevers, make a laxative, create feelings of great well-being and aid sleep. I also discovered how these same flowers, when mixed with the ground root or bark of other plants, could be malignant.
At first, I found it difficult to work with these powders and pastes. I found myself gasping for air, becoming lethargic, euphoric or breaking out in a sweat and shaking so badly that I couldn’t wield the pestle against the mortar. We’d have to stop and I would flee outside and breathe in the cold air.
It took a few days to discover the source of the problem.
‘You’re extracting while you’re mixing,’ complained Baroque. ‘If you keep doing that, there’ll come a time when you’re no longer able to prevent the effect it has on your system. What if you’re mixing a poison and you’re overcome? What use is a dead Estrattore to anyone?’
Desperation entered his eyes.
‘You’re right,’ I said slowly. ‘I am extracting. Not deliberately – I do it instinctively because it helps me understand what it is I’m handling.’ I ran my hands over my face. They came away damp. ‘It’s how I used to make the candles.’
Baroque frowned. ‘I thought as much. Some of the potions we’re making, the essences we’re creating – there’s a huge difference between the effects of what a little can induce and what a larger amount can do. You must be more careful. We must be. You need to understand how to work these, the balance required before you can even think about distilling the effects into your own body, let alone the candles.’
He placed his hand against my forehead. ‘Hmmm. You have no fever, but you’re clammy. Would you like to stop for the day? Rest?’
I glanced through the window towards the small patch of sky above us. Although it was cloudy, the light was still bright. It was only early afternoon. ‘Can we keep going? I am so close to being able to understand what it is this plant can do.’
And so we’d resumed.
It was a relief to lose myself in the pure essence of plants such as comfrey, the sweet-scented melissa, periwinkle and the beautiful tri-coloured flower, heartsease.
Whether grinding these plants into potions or ointments or simply studying them to extract their properties, they offered me an escape that being in the casa didn’t allow. Over the weeks, I’d learnt to mine the essence of the plants and distil them to their most rudimentary form. Whereas Baroque told me that comfrey was used as a poultice to mend broken bones, I was able to discover that when I drew on its essential components alone, I could distil its quintessence in different ways. Candles infused with a little comfrey worked to heal broken relationships as well, to make whole what had once been fractured emotionally or physically. Once the Maleovellis realised the effects of these candles, they began to burn them whenever they had the chance, working hard to re-establish old friendships, encourage partnerships. As the candles melted, so had the hardened hearts of those who once swore never to associate with the Maleovellis again.
Periwinkle, used to staunch blood, became valuable for expelling negative thoughts. Burning a comfrey candle beside one infused with a concentration of periwinkle made an irresistible combination. Nobiles entered into colleganzas with the Maleovellis, banishing their lack of enthusiasm for an association, keen to establish new and fruitful relationships with a house and family they once thought all but finished.
When tiredness overcame the household, I burnt candles suffused with a new seed that had been brought back from the provinces of Phalagonia and which Signor Maleovelli believed would make their fortune – the cacao plant. Baroque had managed to smuggle a few back from the docks to the casa for me to experiment with and I discovered that they banished fatigue, providing those who inhaled the candles with unnatural energy. As the days flew by, I relied on these more and