Work Text:
~The First Virtue~
Tart in ymbre day. Take and perboile oynouns presse out þe water & hewe hem smale. take brede &bray it in a morter, and temper it up with Ayren. do þerto butter, safroun and salt, & raisouns corauns, & a litel sugur with powdour douce, and bake it in a trap, & serue it forth.
*
Gaius accounted himself a man of ample means, but he still quailed for a moment when he heard the price young Jehan the spice-grocer wanted for his saffron.
“Of the finest quality, I assure you, sir,” Jehan professed, holding out a bowl of the crimson filaments.
Gaius peered at them and then shook his head. “I think I shall go see what Hugo may have up the street.”
“None so fine as this, I assure you.” Jehan produced a few peppercorns. “And I shall add these in at no charge!”
A few minutes of negotiation ensued, and at last Gaius parted reluctantly with his coin after getting Jehan to add a pennyweight of cinnamon at half-price into the bargain.
Outside the shop, the usual din filled the streets. Stepping round a goose, tied to a poulterer’s stall and honking loudly, Gaius made his way back to the castle. A few snowflakes drifted down amid the pungent woodsmoke clogging the air.
A burgher and his wife waylaid him just as he passed a smithy, and they all stood there a moment, shouting to be heard over the clang of a hammer.
“It is his stomach, sir,” the lady declared, and her husband laid a regretful hand on the organ in question. “He has not been able to keep down aught but gruel these past three days.”
Gaius, eyeing the ample proportions of the burgher in his fur-trimmed surcoat, was inclined to the opinion that such a diet would do the man no harm. He refrained from saying so, however, and recommended rest and perhaps drinking an infusion of the seeds of the spurge laurel steeped in warm water. Had he desired, he could also have added a choice verse from the Health Rule of Salerno:
For water and small biere we make no question
Are enemies to health and good digestion.
But Gaius misliked the odds of the burgher actually taking any of his admonitions to heart.
After a round of bows and expressions of gratitude, he managed to get away. He regretted not bringing his warmest cap to wear. But then, one did not expect to be detained on street corners and pestered for advice. What did they take him for—a barber pulling a few teeth and dispensing dubious syrups for a pittance? Although Gaius often betook himself to the poorer quarters to help those in need, a royal physician could not be treated with the same casual manner that one used with the local barber.
Once in his chambers, he set his purchases down carefully and checked to make sure that Merlin was away tending to the prince. Satisfied that he would have until at least Vespers before Merlin reappeared, Gaius began assembling the ingredients for an Ember Day tart, a particular favorite of Merlin’s and the reason he had been out in the wind and cold procuring saffron.
They had been fasting the last three days in preparation for the Midwinter feasts of the coming week. Thin porridge and no sign of the savory bite of roast pork or the barest hint of a silvery fish scale had left Merlin out-of-sorts. His dolorous countenance had greeted Gaius each evening upon the presentation of a small slice of bread and a weak soup.
Gaius had discovered himself to be quite susceptible to Merlin’s glooms.
Indeed, his efforts to solicit a cheerful smile from Merlin had spurred Gaius on to ever grander culinary achievements. In the days of his solitary life before Merlin’s arrival, Gaius had been content with simple fare. A long-standing feud with the palace cook (due to a sharp and irreconcilable disagreement over the proper use of sow thistles) had necessitated that he make his own meals. Merlin, upon being introduced to the complex hierarchy of palace servants, had come down firmly on Gaius’s side in the debate and had been persona non grata in the kitchens ever since.
Gaius soon found that Merlin might be thin and bony, but he could eat his weight in stews and roasts if given half the chance. Furthermore, restricted to the monotonous diet of the countryside for most of his youth, Merlin had a passion for sweets and spices. A touch of cinnamon, a piece of gyngerbrede, a moist slice of pear—the first taste of such delicacies sent Merlin into rapturous delight.
And so, Gaius could not possibly let an Ember Day pass without treating Merlin to a slice or two of his favorite tart. He grated soft cheese and chopped onions. He took the precious saffron and ground it with a little salt and butter, then beat six eggs and combined them together. All went into a pastry shell, along with currants and parsley, sage and hyssop, and a powder douce, whose mingled scents of ginger, cloves, and nutmeg seemed to fill every corner of the room with an exotic warmth. Then he set it to bake and busied himself with concocting a few infusions to ease hectic fevers. The cold weather and the upcoming feasts—at which all would overindulge on savories and mulled wine—were sure to put people’s humors out of balance, and he would be kept rushing from one patient to another until well into the new year.
He had a candle lit and the tart waiting when Merlin tumbled through the door, juggling three pairs of Arthur’s boots in his hands and complaining bitterly. But Merlin’s dismay vanished upon the instant of smelling the tart, the boots clattered to the ground unheeded, and he rushed to take his place at the table, arriving so quickly that Gaius almost suspected he had used a bit of magic.
“They are sowing the winter seeds today,” Gaius commented, making the first cut into the tart. Merlin hunched a little closer, his spoon at the ready. “Soon the new year will be upon us.”
“In Ealdor we always had a bonfire on Ember Days and roasted nuts in the coals,” Merlin said. “I asked Arthur this morning if he wanted any walnuts, and he said no, but I think he really did. Sir Geraint was standing there, you see, and he needed to look officious.” Merlin took his first bite and dissolved into a murmur of ecstasy. “Mrph til awnlf.”
“Take a breath and swallow, Merlin,” Gaius admonished.
“Sorry.” Merlin took another bite and gave a happy sigh. “I wasn’t sure if you would make this again or not—I remembered from last year, you know, but I didn’t like to say.”
“You’ll be up to your ears in roasts and pies in a few days,” Gaius reminded him. “I hardly think this can compare.”
“Yes, but at feasts I just get the leavings from Arthur’s plate—not that he doesn’t always leave me enough,” Merlin added hastily. “But here, this is just for us, and I’m not being pestered by the spit boys or tripping over the hounds or getting shouted at.”
“Although you may have to put up with an old man’s stories,” Gaius said, but Merlin just grinned and looked eager.
“Will you tell me more about the Diamond Jousts? Or the time you met the dryad in the forest?”
Gaius waved a hand. “I’ve related those before. Today I am in mind of a Midwinter many years ago, when Uther had just taken Camelot. ‘Twas late one night, and the lords were nodding over their wine, when a traveling minstrel appeared at the hall. For the price of a supper and bed, he sang many songs, including one about a fair maiden kept locked in a tower by her father. This nobleman lived in a kingdom by the sea and had declared that he would only give his daughter’s hand to the man who brought him a star from the heavens, for no other object could compare to her beauty. And her name, so the minstrel sang, was Ygraine du Bois, and Uther listened to the tale of her loveliness and was enchanted…”
So Gaius went on, weaving the story to Merlin’s rapt attention, and making sure that Merlin got the last sliver of tart before it went cold.
*
~The Second Virtue~
Wið þæs magan sare genim þysse wyrte þe man cerefolium 7 oþrum naman þam gelice cerfille nemneþ ðry croppas swa grene 7 dweorgedwoslan, cnunca on anum trywenan mortere, 7 anne cuculere fulne améredes huniges 7 grene popig, wyll tosomne, syle ðicgean; hyt þone magan hrædlice gestrangaþ.
*
Gaius owned many fine things but his books were the most precious to him. And one of his most treasured tomes, the vellum brittle with age and the ink faded, recorded the characteristics of many herbs and their uses and how one made syrups and powders and poultices.
The knowledge contained in the herbarium was invaluable. But he had also learned the vulnerabilities of knowledge, and the ease with which all the stored wisdom of the years could be obliterated by torch and sword. And so when he could, he made copies of his books so that they might be distributed, and the knowledge spread and thus kept safer. In order to facilitate their use, he translated the receipts as best he could into the vernacular.
He enlisted Merlin to help him, hoping that Merlin might learn some useful skills and improve his grammar and letters thereby.
Merlin did not care for copying and made a great many errors. Gaius sometimes despaired of his tendency to leave great ink splotches on pages and cram forgotten words into the margins. Earlier that week, Merlin had laboriously copied out a receipt for an infusion of chervil and poppy to cure a stomachache.
For stomachache, take three green sprouts from the plant called cerefolium or chervil, and pennyroyal. Grind them well in a wooden mortar together with one spoonful refined honey and fresh poppy. Simmer them together and give this to eat. It will quickly strengthen the stomach.*
Much cursing and black looks had accompanied the exercise, and Gaius had reminded Merlin that if he preferred, he could clean the leech tank instead. Merlin had subsided to glower sullenly at his quill. He had finished at last, writing at the bottom of the page, with a vindictive flourish: Explicit, Deo Gratias.**
Gaius had raised an eyebrow and refrained from commenting.
But today he had returned from his rounds to find Merlin taking a mixture of simmering chervil, poppy, and honey off the fire.
“I think I might have burned it,” he said anxiously, but Gaius tested it and assured him that he had not.
Proudly, Merlin poured the mixture into a pot and set off to take it to Arthur, who had eaten too many pork dumplings the night before.
Gaius tidied the clutter left behind, and then sat down, picking up Merlin’s copy book with its rough wooden covers. He paged through it—the shaky script in the beginning, the blotches of ink, the little sketches of flowers and birds in the corners from when Merlin had grown bored.
It seemed to him suddenly much dearer than the original, and he made up his mind to keep it, that he might always have something of Merlin’s close to hand.
~Fin~
Notes:
*The recipe for the herbal medicine is taken from the Old English Herbarium, one of the most significant medical texts that has survived from the Middle Ages. The original text would have been in Latin, and then translated into Old English. In Latin it would run:
Ad stomach dolorem. Herbae cerefolium viridis cimas iii colligis et puleium in lingo teres, mellis coclear malaxas, bulliat cum papavere viridi, et inducis in stomachum.
The part “refined honey and fresh poppy” is literally “spoilt honey and green poppy.”
**Explicit, Deo Gratias means “Finished, thank God.” It was often added by medieval copyists to the ends of their work after many long, tedious hours of labor.
The Ember Day tart recipe I found online but is from a 14th century cookbook.
Ember Days occurred at several times throughout the year, including celebrating harvest and also the planting of seeds in the winter, just before Yule. The celebrations dated back to the Roman period but were taken up by the Christian Church.
I just came across the Diamond Jousts in reading Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. In the story, two kings who are brothers kill each other in a quarrel. Many years later, Arthur comes across their bodies and finds a crown filled with diamonds. When he becomes king, he holds jousts every year, the winner of which gets one of the diamonds because Arthur feels like they should belong to the kingdom and not to him. Lancelot wins every year and saves them to give as a present to Guinevere, hoping to win her love.
The subtitles of the fic sections, the virtues, refer to this 1652 book, The English Physician, which has this to say about making syrups:
If you make a syrup of roots that are any thing hard, as Parsley, Fennel, &c. when you have bruised them, lay them in steep some time in that water which you intend to boil them in, hot, so will the virtue the better come out.