The Seal on the Still

The water of the Oreb broke in clear foam against the three cutwaters of Puente Viejo and made the black oak piers tremble beneath the hanging workshop of the Apothecary of Three Wishes, so called for the three that Jacinta's grandmother had painted above the door, and that nobody on the bridge could read any more because the rain had washed the paint away. In the workroom suspended over the current, where the cracks in the floor let you watch the water flow past, the air smelled of fresh-cut mint, of elderflowers drying on cane racks and of the steam from the great copper still that Jacinta Durán fed with pear-wood kindling.

Jacinta lifted the distilling glass with turned olive-wood tongs and checked the clearness of the wild chamomile spirit against the morning sun. Through the greenish leaded window she saw the black carriage of the provincial medical chancellery coming down the cobbled river road. From the box stepped a young man in a black wool frock coat buttoned with military rigour up to the Adam's apple, pearl-grey kid gloves and a tooled leather folder under his arm, which he held like a coat of arms against the peasant world.

"Gabriel Noguera, first-class inspector of the Royal College of Physiology," Jacinta murmured to herself, recognising the great red wax seal stamped into the leather of the folder. "They turn up on time, like worms in ripe fruit, once summer warms the roads."

When the inspector set the brass bell at the entrance jangling insistently, Jacinta didn't even turn on her stool. She went on pouring the hot syrup into little hand-blown green glass bottles, letting the thick smell of wild honey, orange blossom and willow bark fill the front room of the apothecary.

"Miss Jacinta Durán," said Gabriel, taking off his short-brimmed hat with a sharp, practised movement and setting the heavy folder down on the oiled walnut counter. "I bring the fourteenth provision of the Viceroyalty's Chancellery of Health. This riverside apothecary has no metropolitan pharmacy licence and operates a continuous-draught river still not approved by the experts of the court guild. I have a court order to seal the nozzle of the coil and draw up a record of seizure of the raw materials."

Jacinta set the bottle down on the beam scale and turned round with deliberate slowness. She wore a linen skirt dyed with marigold flowers, a velvet waistcoat embroidered with mullein leaves and her sleeves rolled above the elbows, and her freckled arms were not afraid of splashes of boiling oil.

"Take a seat on that rush stool, Inspector," she said, pointing to the corner by the window. "And drink a sip of this gentian-root and mint infusion before you waste any more breath on articles and decrees nobody on this bridge has ever needed to read in order not to die."

Gabriel eyed the earthenware bowl with obvious metropolitan suspicion, but three days by stagecoach on dusty, sweltering roads had left his throat as dry and rough as a mutton bone in the sun. He took a cautious sip; the sharp, wild bitterness drew an involuntary grimace of distaste, followed almost at once by a clean, balsamic coolness that cleared the heaviness from his temples and the tiredness from his eyes in one go.

"This is a completely irregular preparation," he said, clearing his throat to recover his academic composure. "It does not appear in the official pharmacopoeia, nor does it keep the proportions of the university codices."

"A law written in the capital has never cured a winter cough or understood the miracle of a leaf steeped in dew, Mr Noguera. If you seal that copper still, forty children along this river will get through the summer fevers with damp rags on their foreheads, because the illustrious doctors of your college won't deign to cross the mountain passes until the October grape harvest is over."

Gabriel held the apothecary's gaze. He was used to elderly city apothecaries who bowed to his wax seals, not to a young woman who served him bitter tisanes while defending her copper boilers the way you would defend a well in a drought.

"Civil law admits no sentimental exceptions, Miss Durán. Public order rests on the regularity of credentials."

"Then get ready to spend the night here, Master Auditor. Because this still doesn't go out while there's fever in the valley, and the only bed free for two leagues around is right above this steaming boiler."

Gabriel never got to answer. Under the bridge, the current was carrying something that had no business being there at the height of summer: brown, thick foam with a sickly-sweet smell of stagnant water. Jacinta watched it pass through the cracks in the floor and lost all wish to argue. The last time the Oreb had come down like that, the Tanners' quarter had buried four children.