153 - Excalibur
"Let's make this into powder for now," I said, pulling the mortar toward me as if to cover up the awkwardness of having treated what seemed to be a capable pharmacist like an amateur.
The reason for my failure was the same as Leonardo's. Because I tried to grind too much at once, it was taking forever to become powder.
"Let's do it a little at a time."
It was Leonardo who moved, saying to give him some kind of container. As if he knew someone else's house like the back of his hand, he brought over a deep dish.
"I don't have much strength either, so I'll reduce the amount. Just a bit at a time."
I transferred the sandy grains in the mortar to the deep dish, leaving only a small amount of grains in the mortar to grind into powder. It had been a year since I last did this work, but it seemed my body still remembered the knack.
"How about this? Does it pass?"
I handed the contents of the mortar, which had quickly turned from grains to powder, to Aurelia for confirmation. Aurelia peered into the mortar and nodded once, satisfied.
"I'm troubled with a disciple who can not grind powder"
Murmuring something in English, Aurelia pushed the mortar toward Barbara. Barbara peered into the mortar that had come before her and pressed her lips into a thin line.
"It's the same if you put it in your mouth"
...What is she saying?
Even though I had shown her the difference between powder and grains, Barbara showed no sign of changing her attitude. She was pressing Aurelia about something in English, but surely she still did not understand the difference between powder and grains.
As I looked back and forth between Aurelia and Barbara's faces, Leonardo interpreted their conversation for me. Apparently Aurelia had evaluated her as a disciple who could not even grind powder, while Barbara was insisting that once medicine was in your stomach, it was all the same.
...There is no way it is the same, right?
I stared intently at Barbara's face, wondering what she was saying. It might be the same in terms of ingredients and quantity, but there should be a difference in the quality of the medicine. Even an amateur like me could imagine that much.
"Barbara-san, do you know what sugar cubes are?"
"Of course I do."
Barbara glared at me as if to say "Are you mocking me?", so I decided to try explaining the difference between powder and grains using sugar and sugar cubes.
"Let us say the sugar cube is a grain and granulated sugar is powder. If you put them in tea, which one dissolves completely first? A sugar cube breaks down and dissolves too, but with granulated sugar, every grain starts dissolving the moment it goes into the tea."
The final taste might be the same, but there was a difference in dissolution time. In this case, using sugar as an example led to the conclusion that "the taste ends up the same," but if this were medicine, it would affect the efficacy and the time until it starts working. Something that should dissolve all at once and take effect simultaneously might produce a different effect because one hard-to-dissolve ingredient was mixed in.
"There might be cases where you deliberately make ingredients into large grains to make them harder to work, but right now you are learning from Aurelia-san, are you not?"
To summarize then, if that was the case, it was Barbara's job to prepare the ingredients to the size Aurelia demanded. Upon hearing this, Aurelia rubbed my head round and round. I understood I was being praised, but it made me dizzy.
"...Tina, where did you learn something like that?"
"I did not learn it anywhere," I was called out by Leonardo, who had finished interpreting my words for Aurelia.
This was not some past-life knowledge or anything like that. It was something you would think of if you just considered it simply. After I translated the sugar cube analogy to medicine and explained it step by step, Leonardo quickly understood it was a simple matter. Medicine was not like bad cooking. You could not say it was all the same once it was in your stomach.
Through Leonardo's interpretation, I asked Aurelia if my way of thinking was wrong. Aurelia looked at my face, let out a deep sigh, and said one thing to Barbara.
"What a child understands, but a pharmacist doesn't understand"
I did not understand the meaning, but it was probably a criticism of Barbara. Barbara kicked her chair, stood up, threw open the front door, and ran out of the house.
"The escape seems to be close"
"I know that"
Leonardo interpreted it as "It looks like she is close to running away," and I drove the point home. If you compared me to her, that would be a bit hard on Barbara. In my case, the problem was avoided because my idea of "powder" matched Aurelia's idea of "powder," but I still felt Aurelia's words were a little insufficient.
Barbara was already hardened by her pride as a pharmacist, and she seemed to have trouble returning to basics. Aurelia's assessment was that Paula, the amateur, was far more honest and a quicker learner. However, Paula was someone the Sedovara Church had decided to send on short notice, and she apparently had not mastered English as well as Barbara. Ideally, Barbara would interpret Aurelia's words, and Paula would learn compounding. And then from that process, perhaps Barbara could learn compounding in turn. Since she had two apprentices after all, I thought they could learn by complementing each other. That way, two people who inherited Aurelia's techniques would be born at once.
...But here too, that pride of being a pharmacist already seems to be getting in the way. There is just no helping it.
Apparently Paula, after passing her own test, was also trying to help Barbara. She showed Barbara the powder that had passed Aurelia's inspection and encouraged her with words not much different from what I had said, that it needed to be as fine as wheat flour and that doing it little by little was faster. And Barbara rejected this, sulking.
...When adults who have already grown up try to learn from others, it is tough, is it not.
Barbara quickly memorized the names and quantities of ingredients, but her work was apparently too rough and careless. When I asked how she had managed to work as a pharmacist like that, I was told that most pharmacists nowadays compound medicines using materials prepared by the Sedovara Church. Since they do not start from preparing the materials themselves, they tend to overlook unevenly sized grains.
...Hey, should I not bring that up with the Sedovara Church?
If the pharmacists' skills declined because time spent preparing materials was saved, that would be a problem. If left unchecked, there was a risk of eventually returning to the days when wise women were called witches.
...Well, but it is not something a child like me should point out.
I was thinking of bringing it up with Jasper vaguely at some point, but I would have to leave the rest to Jasper. If Jasper passed it on to someone important at the Sedovara Church, it might improve, but there was nothing I could do.
Aurelia chased us off to the separate kitchen, saying that since we had come all this way, we should at least make some pudding before leaving. The recipe had been sent by letter, and since Kalisa had written it in English, Aurelia should have been able to read it, but apparently she had not made any pudding. When I suggested she have her apprentices make it, it turned out that the two apprentices' cooking skills were not much different from Aurelia's. All three of them were interested in compounding medicines, but they apparently had no interest in cooking at all.
"You just have to follow the recipe, do you not?"
"That is exactly why they cannot do it. That is what makes them bad cooks."
Paula, who had been sent out to help me on the grounds that she could not even compound medicine properly, brought eggs in a basket. It might very well be that Aurelia and Leonardo had chased us out so the two of them could talk.
"Plus I cannot read English, you know?"
"I cannot read it either, but I am studying it now."
When I told Paula to work hard on learning English in addition to studying compounding, she gave a troubled, wry smile. When I asked what was strange, she answered that actually, even reading and writing the characters used on the continent was iffy for her.
Paula, who looked like a girl in her teens, was apparently originally a villager. Since there was no town with a Menhishumi Church nearby, she had never had the chance to learn reading and writing. When I asked why someone like that had decided to become a pharmacist at the Sedovara Church, she told me that last year's Worz disease had taken her family and her fiance, whom she had been about to marry, all at once. That was around the time medicine that could cure early-stage symptoms had started circulating, and Paula herself had not even been infected. Her fiance and family had all died, but seeing other villagers recovering, she was deeply impressed by how amazing medicine was. She wanted to help make medicine so that the next time something similar happened, it could be distributed even a little faster.
Having become utterly alone in the world, Paula was a convenient existence for the Sedovara Church, which wanted to verify Aurelia's report that an amateur like me had proven surprisingly useful. And also in the sense that even if she ran away midway and was disposed of as usual, there was no family to complain.
"...They said you helped make the medicine back then, Tina-chan, right? Thank you. Thanks to you and Master, my village was saved."
Paula said this with her cheeks slightly reddened, and I did not know how to respond, so I closed my mouth. I had only helped a little with preparing materials. I had not done anything worth being thanked for. It would be easy enough to say that, but if I was not careful, "my village was completely wiped out" almost slipped out of my mouth.
...I hate this about myself. Why am I suddenly thinking such self-deprecating thoughts?
To cover up my sinking mood, I decided to drill pudding-making into Paula.
"...What is this?"
When I returned with the completed pudding, Aurelia held out a white envelope. I handed the still-warm pudding to Leonardo and took the envelope. On the white envelope was a wax seal stamped with a crest that appeared to be a staff and medicinal herbs.
...A staff and medicinal herbs... is that Aurelia-san's crest or the Sedovara Church's crest?
I turned it over a few times to look at it, but there was no addressee or Aurelia's signature written anywhere. Just being handed an envelope like this, I had no idea what to do with it.
"Aurelia says it is 'Excalibur.'"
...Is Excalibur not the name of a sword? I think it was some foreign story about the person who pulled the sword from the stone becoming king.
Apparently, even a Black Knight who had mastered English to a practical level could not figure out what "Excalibur" meant. The reincarnator who had spread English as the common language of this other world probably had not passed on the names of weapons from other-world stories. If I searched, maybe I would find it somewhere in the Menhishumi Church as a story from another world, but even then, just as the story of the retired Mito lord had become "Nikubenki," it might not be the same thing.
...Huh? The sword that decides the king?
I felt like I had been entrusted with a rather dangerous envelope. When I could not help but look down at it nervously, the explanation was added that if the royal family's interference became too troublesome, I should use it. Apparently this was a magical item that could silence Ethelbert and Alfred.
"Aurelia-san, you are amazing!"
I hugged Aurelia around the waist with the fullest gratitude I could express. In other words, with this envelope, I could avoid both becoming a bride of the royal family and babysitting Dietfried.
"But how can Aurelia-san do something like that?"
I had heard from Hermine that she had apparently been courted by Ethelbert long ago and had refused him to the very end, but that was just within the realm of rumor. Whether it was true was questionable.
"Aurelia apparently has favors owed by Lord Ethelbert, the current king, and his queen as well."
"I see."
Aurelia, who had inherited the secret arts of Saint Yuuta Hiraga, was highly regarded as a pharmacist. If you were an important figure in the country, you would likely have been in Aurelia's care at some point. Through such connections, Aurelia apparently had influence with the royal family.
...But with this, I am not afraid of Ethel-sama or Diet anymore.
I tucked the envelope safely into my bosom, and we all ate pudding together. We had not had time to chill it, so it was slightly warm, but I had heard of baked pudding before, so even warm, pudding was still pudding. When I said I had left the extra portions cooling in the well, Paula took two puddings and went outside.
...Is she going to Barbara-san's place?
Barbara had made a somewhat harsh impression, but Paula seemed easygoing enough, so it would probably be fine. For some reason, I felt that way. That this time, the apprentices would surely be all right.
It had been a while since the three of us had had snacks together, I thought as I enjoyed the delicious pudding. The pudding that Salisa had perfected by obsessing over the mixing ratios seemed to suit Aurelia's taste as well. She was not saying anything, but her hand did not stop, so she must have been enjoying it.
"...Well then, time to head home, Tina."
"Huh?"
After we had finished the delicious pudding and waited for the used dishes to be put away, Leonardo said this.
Time to head home? We practically just got here!
The title just came to me randomly. There is no particularly deep meaning to it.
These are Aurelia's lines, relying on machine translation.
"I'm troubled with a disciple who can not grind powder"
"It's the same if you put it in your mouth"
"What a child understands, but a pharmacist doesn't understand"
"The escape seems to be close"
"I know that"
Typos and missing characters will be fixed another day. I have found and corrected the typos and missing characters I spotted.