Then she looked at the woman.
Iona was perhaps fifty, broad-built, with the unhurried stillness of someone who had nothing to prove and knew it.
She was watching Catriona approach with the particular expression of a practitioner watching another practitioner enter their space. Measuring, calibrating, not yet decided.
Fergus peeled away to a discreet distance without being asked. Catriona gave him credit for the instinct.
"Iona." She set her basket on the edge of the stall.
"Catriona," Iona said it like she'd already known the name. "I'd wondered when ye'd come by."
"I had a patient."
"Aye. Ye did." Iona's eyes moved to the basket, the salves and dried bundles Catriona had brought to trade.
She picked up the nearest salve jar, removed the cloth seal, and smelled it. Said nothing. Replaced the seal and set it down.
"Yarrow and comfrey," Catriona said. "For joint inflammation. The base is rendered tallow, nae lard, it holds better in cold."
"I use lard."
"I ken. It works well enough. The tallow holds the active compounds longer in low temperatures." She said it without apology or emphasis, the plain exchange of information between people who both knew the subject. "It's a small difference."
Iona looked at her. Then at the jar.
"Aye," she said, in a tone that neither agreed nor disagreed, and set it to one side in the way of someone putting something away for later consideration.
They moved through it, herbs traded, questions exchanged with the testing quality of a professional interview neither of them acknowledged as such.
Iona asked about her compounding method for chest complaints. Catriona answered directly.
Iona asked about the steam treatment. Catriona explained the rationale, the humidity loosening the congestion, the compound in the water working on the inflamed tissue directly.
Iona listened without commenting, which was, Catriona was learning, Iona's version of paying close attention.
"The lungwort," Catriona said finally. "I have none and I need it. Do ye have any, or do ye ken where I might find it growin' near here?"
Iona reached under the stall without comment and produced a wrapped bundle. "I have some." She set it on the surface between them. "For the boy's lungs?"
"Aye. It's the third stage of the treatment. The steam clears, the elecampane strengthens, the lungwort maintains."
Iona was quiet for a moment, looking at the bundle. "The old healer used a two-stage method."
"I ken. It's a sound method." Catriona met her eyes. "I think he needs three."
Iona regarded her for a long, flat moment.
Then she named a price for the lungwort that was fair, and Catriona paid it, and the transaction was concluded without further negotiation, which was its own kind of agreement.
Iona began sorting through the remaining stock on her stall, unhurried, her hands moving with the automatic efficiency of long habit.
A silence settled between them. Not uncomfortable, the silence of two women who had said what needed saying professionally and were deciding whether there was anything else.
"The boy's mother," Iona said finally, to the herbs rather than to Catriona. The tone of someone thinking aloud rather than making a statement. "Margaret. She had weak lungs, ye ken. Since she was a girl. Cold winters were hard on her." A small pause. "The old healer always said the boy likely inherited the tendency."
Catriona looked at her. "Is that common knowledge? In the village?"
"Those who were here then ken it." Iona turned a bundle over in her hands. "Those who werenae only ken the fire."
