A Bed of Spices by Barbara Samuel

she swallowed. She shifted away, twitching her skirts from a pile of refuse in the gutter.
    He bowed, his heart pounding hard in his chest, and led them through tiny alleyways and past stone dwellings with walled gardens. Another turn took them into a dark, deserted stretch near the east wall.
    Once they had passed through the city gates, Solomon felt his tension begin to fade. The east gate was busy with the traffic from the river. Soon he and Rica were able to peel apart from the crowd to seek shelter in the trees.
    They walked some distance in silence, Leo trotting happily alongside. It was a bright day, humid and filled with insects. Rica waved at a flurry of gnats that swirled around her face and swatted at mosquitos. “I have never seen a year with so many bugs,” she said with annoyance.
    “It is the decay to the south that breeds them so thickly.”
    She looked at him with horror in her wide eyes. “I had not thought—”
    He glanced over his shoulder. They had left the main road, and the path they followed toward the grove of trees was deserted. He took her hand. “You could not know, Rica.”
    For a moment, she let him hold her hand, then gently eased free of him. “I wonder how long it will be until Strassburg is laid low with this pestilence.”
    “Perhaps it will not come at all.”
    With a bitter twist of her lips, Rica looked at him. “Perhaps, Herr Doktor, the peasants might believe your soothing noises. I do not.” She plucked a silvery leaf from the low-hanging branch of a beech tree. “It will come.”
    “No, Rica, it may not.” He gestured toward a sun-dappled stretch of grass. As she settled, he went on. “We do not know why or how the plagues come, or why they leave one place alone and destroy another. Perhaps Strassburg will be fortunate. We have been untouched thus far.”
    “Perhaps.” Rica broke a hank of bread from the loaf. “Will you eat with me?”
    He smiled and nodded, taking the bread she offered. “You do not believe me. Why?”
    “I do not trust the word of any of you.” She tore into the bread with her fine white teeth and chewed lustily. “Do you know what the physician from the city said about my father’s condition?”
    He chuckled. “Tell me.”
    “He wanted to bleed him when the moon was in Jupiter.” Her gaze showed the idiocy with which she regarded this suggestion. “I didn’t let him. Now he will not come to us.”
    “How did you come to such odd ideas about medicine?”
    “Odd ideas?” She fished a chunk of beef from the pie with her fingers and held it ready near her lips. “Do you, Solomon, believe in the practice?”
    “There is nothing that will break a fever more quickly,” he said, “though I see little else it helps.”
    He shifted, stretching his legs out before him. On the river a barge passed, and the strong afternoon sunlight glinted on the coppery head of an oarsman. “You did not tell me where you came by your ideas,” he prompted.
    “I came by mine as you did yours—by thinking.”
    He grinned. “Such a strange pastime for a girl.”
    “So it may seem.” Brushing crumbs from her skirt, she answered him more seriously. “I read what I could procure from the priest and watched my father to see when he grew ill. He cannot take much exercise, nor heavy foods. He improves when his diet is light and filled with fresh foods. He gets very hungry for berries.”
    In her voice he heard the same sense of puzzlement he himself felt over the mysteries of illness and cures. He leaned forward eagerly. “It is no secret that fresh foods are better than salted and dried, but I’ve not heard of berries in use for a problem of the heart.”
    “Heart?”
    He glanced at the bread in his hands, cursing himself for talking freely. It was, after all, her father about whom they spoke. Restlessly, he pinched out the soft center of his bread and mulled his reply.
    “Do I seem to you a fainting maid? What do you mean?”
    He lifted his head and