Throw some laudanum at the problem

By the time the stove was hot enough to boil a kettle, I had everything assembled and measured out properly. Hoping that the anise wasn’t a critical component, and that the laudanum’s properties might do most of the heavy lifting, I hung the lamp on the hook by the stove and set to stirring the kettle while watching it keenly in the lamplight, lest anything unexpected take place. It became very obvious once the stuff was ready, for after coming to a boil the mixture became suddenly heavy and syrupy and offered more resistance to stir. I took it off the heat and tasted it, to get some idea how much he might complain about taking it.

The syrupy stuff tasted less terrible than I expected, and left my tongue a little numb, which said much for its promise to sooth a nasty cough like Curry had. On impulse, I melted a generous spoonful of Nan’s lemon marmalade into the mixture, tasted it again, and decided this was a considerable improvement and that he probably wouldn’t fuss too much now. A funnel from the pantry made it a much easier job to decant the kettle into an empty bottle, and I started to cork it except it was still warm and that kept the cork from wanting to stay in the bottle. I put the cork in the basket for later.

I got the other things I wanted, for tea and whatnot, and then rinsed the kettle so I could take it upstairs and hang it in the fireplace and keep water boiling in it to moisten the dry air a bit. Then I picked up the things, wrapping a kitchen towel round the warm bottle of cough remedy, slipped one arm through the kettle handle and the other through the basket, and picked up the lamp in my free hand. I was to the kitchen door when I realized I needed a spoon, so I went back for that and then climbed the stairs slowly, taking care not to drop any of it.

If anything Curry’s cough had worsened in the short interim. He was still shivering, but I decided the first matter was to get him to take a spoon of the cough remedy since I hoped the laudanum might help him feel better overall, and perhaps make it easier to rest while I saw to other things.

It took a lot of encouragement for him to sit up enough to let me spoon some of the heavy syrup down his throat, and after I did I still had to hang onto him to dissuade him from trying to lie down again right away before properly swallowing it. On impulse I decided to give him a second spoonful, since he was a very big person, and I had an inkling Mothers’ Remedies might have been written chiefly for full-blooded humans rather than people with partial orcish ancestry. Nowhere was I able to find it specified how a human person was supposed to tell whether an orcish person had fever, when they naturally ran hotter than elves and humans to begin with, so I had resigned myself to watching for the other signs of fever mentioned in the book.

“There you are, that’s good,” I soothed, when he dutifully swallowed down the second spoonful, and let him burrow back into the covers. I pulled the blankets back over him, then stoked the fire again to settle the piece of wood I’d added earlier, and put two more pieces on top to warm the room better. Then I went and filled the kettle with cold water from the bath tub, which I hung on the fireplace hook, and placed the cough syrup bottle on the mantel where I was less likely to knock it over with general clumsiness.

Nan kept two hot-water flasks on hand so I went and fetched up both of those, filled them from the hot water tap on the tub, then dried them and wrapped them in their soft cloth covers before sliding them into the bed with Curry. He mumbled something unintelligible and nestled up against them, which I took to mean he approved. At that point I remembered I ought to wash my hands again, so I fixed his bedclothes, then went and did that, and by the time I came back it seemed his coughing had grown a little less violent than before.

He seemed to be settling in to rest for a while, so I decided I ought to use this opportunity to gather up the other things I’d need, send a message to the watch house, and get a few things done so I’d be ready. It was barely three-thirty by now, so none of the shops would be open for hours yet, but the watch guard kiosk for our neighborhood was staffed round the clock, so I could at least get word to the captain since I knew Curry certainly wasn’t going anywhere today.