The Third Ingredient
Each of the empire's three princesses had been granted a palace of her own, a seat from which to keep her household.
It was possible only because the reigning emperor had all but stamped out the imperial bloodline on his way to the throne. The staff of each palace looked to no mistress but their own and worked as her hands and feet, and Minster Palace, where Anais resided, was no exception.
"I'd like you to take a hand in this."
"......"
"Think about it. The product is called Mrs. Chandler's Healthy Syrup. If the real Mrs. Chandler steps forward herself, imagine the response."
That was Anais's invitation. Trouble settled over the face of the old maid standing before her, hands folded neatly.
The maid's name was Dorothy Chandler. For forty years she had served imperial kin of every line, direct and collateral alike. In her youth she had cleaned, laundered, and sewn; for the past ten years she had held the post of head maid, directing the others. Her reputation was so sound, and she was so well liked, that even ladies-in-waiting of noble birth did not dare treat her lightly.
This old woman really is the best fit.
Anais narrowed her eyes and looked Mrs. Chandler up and down. It was a face so kindly that she could have walked the slums with a market basket on her arm and, far from coming to harm, would more likely have been shown the way—eyes so gentle she seemed never to have spoken a harsh word in her life, and dress that was modest without being shabby. Yet for all that kindly look, she had a capable hand. She had steered an unlettered husband all the way to retirement as a sergeant of the military police.
To Anais's eye, there was no better candidate.
"Of course I can call on plenty of servants. But they're all so stiff. They just stand there awkwardly in front of the stall."
"Your Highness, I've spent my whole life working inside the palace."
"You can do it, can't you? Just speak to them the way you'd chide your own children and grandchildren."
"......"
"I only need you out there yourself until the thing finds its footing. You know as well as I do that my sister made a success of the morphine business. The money is one thing, but what I envy more is the way so many people cheer her on. That's what I need most right now."
"But I'm no apothecary."
"A history is only a matter of how you dress it."
Even under that pressure, Mrs. Chandler gave no firm answer, only a smile. There was no sign she was cowed.
Order her outright and she would obey, of course. But Anais wanted more than obedience. She needed someone who could steady the dozens of servants and maids she had pressed into service as sellers and drive the syrup's sales steadily upward. Until Healthy Syrup caught on, at least, someone had to sell it in earnest.
She really doesn't want to.
Of course she didn't. Told out of nowhere to go and sell medicine, who would? So Anais decided to supply a motive.
"Come to think of it, Mrs. Chandler, I borrowed your name without asking."
"Please don't trouble yourself over that. I don't mind in the least..."
"No. It bothers me. I want to make it up to you somehow. Oh—what about this? If the Healthy Syrup succeeds, I'll compensate you properly. To start, I'd like to give you fifty thousand thalers as an encouragement. How does that sound?"
At that, a different light came into Mrs. Chandler's eyes. Even the kindest person is not free of the hunger for money, and an old maid staring down retirement, all the more so.
Yes. This is the best way.
This, too, was a method she had learned from Sienna. Sienna gave her close retainers hard work and then paid them for it. The prime example of someone broken in that way was Allan Madoff, that man. Watching a piece of garbage who used to take pocket money to beat innocent people to death now strut about as a businessman was enough to leave her hollow. Imitating her rival Sienna was not something Anais relished, but if she meant to fight those venomous creatures, compromise was necessary.
"If you'll give me a little time to prepare, I'll try."
At last Mrs. Chandler seemed to have found some will for it. The moment a maid who had spent forty years seeing every sight worth seeing, and every sight better left unseen, was thrown in as a seller of syrup, her performance exceeded even what Anais had expected.
Sunday. People loitered around the Healthy Syrup stall set up in front of a general store—some fifty of them. Mrs. Chandler stepped out before the crowd with a kindly smile and began to speak.
"When I was young, I received some training as a nurse. Before I entered palace service, I even worked briefly at a hospital. And after I became a maid, I used what I'd learned then to make syrup for my fellow servants and have them take it."
"A maid, making medicine?"
"I am the head maid of Minster Palace. For forty years I have served four members of the imperial family."
"Oh?"
Little by little, attention began to gather.
"Until recently, it was only a syrup I made to look after people I knew. I felt sorry for the younger maids who came down with colds and body aches every time the season turned. Then, not long ago, Her Highness Anais happened to learn of it. She told me this wasn't a medicine meant only for palace folk."
"The princess...!?"
"In the end she said we ought to try it as a business, and she gave me all sorts of support. Have you heard of morphine? I suppose her heart was moved when she learned that the medicine Her Highness Sienna invested in has been such a help to the soldiers."
"They say that morphine is terribly expensive."
"This isn't so expensive. And it wasn't made only for soldiers."
At once every eye fixed on the bottle Mrs. Chandler held up in both hands. An ordinary bottle of Healthy Syrup, at seventy-nine thalers. More than twice the price of the same quantity of ordinary syrup.
Syrup itself had never been a sweetener the middle class could enjoy whenever they pleased. Thought of as medicine, though, the price was not outrageous. They were all hesitating, flinching, when Mrs. Chandler spoke again.
"You only need two or three teaspoonfuls. One bottle will last a whole family for several days. Wouldn't it be good to keep as a household remedy?"
"Oh...!"
At those words, people finally began to draw out their purses. Just then a cough rose from somewhere in the crowd, and the number grew.
Healthy Syrup.
Sienna tried to ignore her half-sister's adorable little flailing. Honestly, it was easy enough to dismiss. At most it was a syrup medicine sold from a stall in the street, and the price was on the cheap side. She didn't know the exact cost of making it, but surely it would be hard to clear even four or five thalers on a bottle. It might even be running at a loss. Set against morphine's overwhelming profitability, it was truly negligible.
And yet I can't set my mind at ease.
The thought that ignoring Anais would leave her in serious trouble later, the thought that she must not simply stand by, welled up in her chest. Mixing medicine into syrup and putting a kindly old woman out front to sell it—that simple strategy felt, somehow, as if it might actually work.
The truth was, Sienna had once had a similar idea herself. It wasn't even long ago. A mere two months? She had meant to dissolve a great quantity of opium into port and present it to the empress, believing the sweet wine would mask opium's unpleasant flavor. Allan had offered an alternative and she had dropped the plan, but at the time she had been certain it would work. And syrup was far sweeter than wine. If it tasted good on its own and also took the pain away, there was no reason anyone would refuse it.
I can't just leave it.
It might harm the morphine business, great or small, so she had to stop it. Of course she also wanted to step on Anais for the sport of it. First, though, she had to understand the Healthy Syrup.
Sienna decided to send people out to learn what it actually did. It had only just begun to sell, so the work wouldn't be easy, but it wasn't impossible. She only had to track down someone who had taken the syrup and find out how well the medicine worked. She would look into it. Right now.
But that thought was soon put on hold.
"Your Highness. I have something to report."
A knight in full dress had come to her office without warning. There was only one knight who would dare act this way.
"Allan?"
Grey hair, a somewhat irritable look. Allan as he always was, and yet Sienna tilted her head. There was a syrup bottle in his hand.
"Don't tell me that's the Healthy Syrup. The one Anais made?"
"Yes. I looked into it myself."
It was an initiative he had rarely shown. Even after he made a fortune on morphine and became a name bandied about in society, his response had been lukewarm. Why, then, was he reacting so sharply to the syrup alone? Afraid of losing a potential market? That couldn't be it.
"Allan? What's gotten into you all of a sudden?"
"I needed to look into it properly. I had Jacob find customers who had bought the Healthy Syrup at least once. Someone like that has already felt what the syrup does, and has even been taken with it."
"With that much zeal, you must have gone through the apothecaries who supplied the ingredients, too."
"Yes. Of course."
If Allan was going this far, she ought to hear him out.
"There are three medicinal ingredients in the Healthy Syrup. Opium, jimsonweed root juice, and one herb that goes by a different name at every apothecary. Even the merchant who supplied the ingredients to Her Highness Anais's company didn't know its exact effects."
"Is the third herb why you're on edge?"
"On edge... yes. You could say that. If it were only opium and jimsonweed, the syrup would have done nothing but dull pain and sedate. Abuse it, and a person would be sedated so deeply they might never get up again."
"......"
"But when I caught someone who had taken the Healthy Syrup and asked, they said their heart beat terribly fast. They said a burning fever broke overnight while they broke into a cold sweat. That has to be put down entirely to the third ingredient."
"Do you know what it is?"
"I do now. Only just."
Allan answered only that far, then closed his mouth. Sienna did not press him. She was curious. It was the first time he had shown this much worry, and the first time he had offered information of his own accord. But reading his face, she thought he needed time to settle his own mind. Then waiting was the right thing.
After a stretch of silence, she finally heard the answer.
"It's a plant called ephedra. In the East, I expect it's widely used as a medicinal herb."
Sienna had no way of knowing what ephedra was. The feeling that rose on Allan's face, though, was not hard to read.
"That Healthy Syrup is about to start selling like mad."
It was certainty, and nothing else.