The cook eyed Louise’s entrance with suspicion. He lunged his face toward her and when she didn’t flinch back, he grunted and pointed to the pile of platters and a large pot. “Wash,” he muttered. He kept an eye on her, however, for it would be very like his Master the Count to set a spy over him. He shuddered over the memory of the cook he himself had replaced. No servant lasted for very long at Castle Montenegro. This thought brightened his countenance and he let his mind wander to more pleasant musings. Like the buxom young woodsman’s daughter. She certainly knew her way around a woodshed. He idly rubbed his large butt, still imagining the heat she’d given it with a hickory switch last Sunday after Mass. He began preparing the soup and -- still daydreaming -- reached to grab a jar from the shelf. Suddenly his fingers closed around thin air. He looked to the side to see the new woman holding the jar and looking at him angrily.

“What the devil…!” he shouted. ‘Give me that. It’s for the soup”

Louise looked at the jar then back to the cook’s bloated face. “Not this, you idiot.” She pointed at the scrawled lettering on the jar. “It’s Aconitus. You want to kill everyone?”

The cook snatched the jar away and looked at it. “Wolfsbane. It’s a good herb. A lot will kill rats. But a little? It just adds flavor to the soup.” As he turned to pour the jar into the soup pot, his hand was gripped and yanked aside. “Now, who the devil…” he sputtered.

The Count of Montenegro twisted the cook’s wrist and nearly broke his hand. “You are an idiot, as she says!” The Count took the jar and put it in the voluminous fold of his tunic. He grinned wolfishly at the cook. “I suggest you make that very tasty, you’ll be eating a lot of it..before I take a sip.”

The cook shook like a wet dog as the Count released his wrist. He cringed backward.
Count Montenegro looked at Louise, as if appraising her anew. “You,” he said, smiling, “are more than you seemed.” He fumbled in a bag at his hip and brought out a curling strip of parchment and held it out to her. “What does this say?”

Louise’s eyes widened. It was never wise to let on that she had too much knowledge. She read the strip quickly, it was in simple enough Latin, but she pretended to slowly look at each letter and mouthed the sounds. “It is something about a relic, Lord. And the…the darkness of…I don’t know some words. A relic though. I believe.”

The Count grabbed the parchment back and stuffed it back in the bag. For a moment his eyes blazed at Louise, into her eyes, and then slowly his gaze slid downward to her firm breasts. He sucked at his upper lip noisily and rubbed at his forehead. Suddenly, he grabbed Louise’s arm and pulled her close. His words came out in an animal’s snarl, ‘There are pleasures to be sucked out of your body, woman, but first I need your mind…Come!”

He propelled Louise out of the kitchen with a shove, then, dragging her by the shackles chain, he pulled her along to a small hidden passageway and up a long tedious flight of steps, muttering to himself. “I will have it, I swear…” He stopped short and turned, his eyes glazing slightly. He grabbed at Louise’s breasts and twisted, kneading the flesh painfully. “Like ripe apples to be beaten from the tree,” he growled. “Did your father beat you, Kitchen? Did it make you…”

“Alphonso!” cried a voice from below. “Alphonso! I found it! I found the iron box!”