Chapter 18 (1/2)

(6)

TN: I don’t know if I’ve said this but I’m reading this novel as I translate. This part was just so interesting, I finished it! I don’t do audio books (and this is in Korean…), sadly, it just doesn’t work for me.

A few days passed by and Jerome continuously hung around Lucia.

“Your Grace, I don’t about other things but about whether you are pregnant or not, it’s be good to be sure.”

Eventually, Lucia agreed to receive treatment from Anna.

“It is not pregnancy.”

In contrast to Lucia who accept it naturally when Anna raised her head and said this, Jerome had a slightly disappointed expression. But before Lucia could raise her head and see this, he quickly hid it. He didn’t want to take the chance of let his disappointment hurt her.

“Did her Grace have any symptoms that made you suspect pregnancy?”

Since Anna was suddenly called to verify if Lucia was pregnant, she was a bit suspicious. If Lucia was truly suspected of pregnancy and Anna couldn’t verify it, she would be slightly worried about her ability as her primary doctor.

Jerome made a promise with Lucia. After they verified if it was pregnancy or not, he wouldn’t mention things about the state of her body and the task of informing the duke about the situation would be left to Lucia.

“No, Anna. Her Grace seemed more tired these days so…”

“In my opinion as a doctor, there’s a different reason as to why her Grace is tiring easily. A woman’s body is not steel. Head Butler, let me speak to his Grace once. Anytime is fine. Her Grace is already needing restorative medicine at such a young and energetic age. After I finish working, I take a break from work. This is just the same thing.”

Anna was only giving her opinions as a doctor, however the more she spoke, the stranger the mood became. Jerome stared at the air uncomfortably while Lucia looked down.

“Isn’t your Grace having a hard time? Please pass my words onto the Duke.”

It wasn’t like she was having a hard time but Lucia’s face was currently dyed red and she couldn’t say it. Especially not with the current mood in the room.

‘I like him coming to my room everyday’

She couldn’t say it at all.

“If it is hard for the head butler to say then, I can tell him myself” [Anna]

“Ah, no. I…will tell him. So…to what extent..?”

“Five days. And with a day of rest.”

“…Yes.”

Even though Anna could sense the embarrassment in the air, she remained brazen. If a doctor was talking about a patient’s condition and got embarrassed, they wouldn’t be able to treat them properly.

After they all left and Lucia was alone, she went to the bedroom, opened the big windows and went onto the balcony. A tender breeze gently passed by her.

Just for an instant, when Anna announced that she wasn’t pregnant, Jerome’s voice lost its energy.

Lucia felt a bit bad. In her dreams, she was 15 when she started menstruating. No one was around to teach her that those were the signs of becoming a woman. Usually, the inns taught those things but in the palace there were no inns and the palace maids did not care if it was not their business.

The orphan-like young princess, to the palace maids, was not a master that they had to serve but a burden they had to take care of. Whenever she had menstrual blood on the bed, the maids would have increasingly annoyed expressions as they changed the bed sheets.

After entering the palace, Lucia had lost almost all of her youthful cheerfulness. She became more timid and spoke fewer words. The young Lucia of that time did not learn how to call the people under her or act majestic and with dignity.

‘I might die soon’

The fact that she was continually losing blood from her body was horrifying to her. She became extremely obsessed with her fears.

‘I have to stop the blood. Then…medicine. I have to take medicine…’

Drug that stops bleeding. At that time, an herb accurately appeared in her mind. It was an herb called mugwort. Mugwort was a very common herb with three leaves. It could be seen growing here and there, and even in the palace it could be seen growing around.

When mugwort was boiled hard, dried, ground and then sprinkled onto the wound, it would have a hemostatic effect. It was an emergency medicine that the common people used for first aid when they could not find or afford a doctor. Its effect was incomparable to a doctor’s work but it sufficed.

Lucia had learnt first-hand that it had the ability to stop bleeding. In the past, she, with the village children had run around the neighborhood, digging up grass here and there. She had fallen and scrapped her knee and it was sprinkled on her injury. At that time she had thought it was fascinating the way the blood had stopped flowing after a while.

Hence, Lucia started taking the mugwort herb from the garden. She didn’t know how to make it for eating so she just ate it raw. She simply thought that because the blood was flowing from her body, it made sense to eat it.

Surprisingly, the effect was immediate. Her period did not come.

So, the next month when she bled again, she took it and in that way, continuously for half a year, after which she completely stopped bleeding. At the time, she had no idea what had happened to her. She didn’t even know the word infertility itself.

Later, while she was married to Count Martin, she found out the truth of her body.

‘Thank goodness.’

That was the first thought that came to her. The moment she learnt that was no chance of her giving birth to a child for the Count, she felt as though she had stopped walking towards the edge of a cliff and her heart felt completely at ease.

After the marriage with the count ended and Lucia became free again, she started to look at her body. Apart from her abnormal infertility, there was nothing wrong with her body.

But for a woman, she knew it was a fatal problem to have hence, she started to look for a cure. Every doctor that visited her shook their head. They all said that mugwort was poisonous herb that should have never been eaten.

“I’m not sure if the infertility is rooted…oh, you ate it?  Just why would you do such a thing…”

Even then, usually, the doctors couldn’t understand Lucia’s symptoms. Therefore, she was rather amazed when she found out a new fact.

It was rare but there were competent doctors who had seen symptoms similar to Lucia’s before.

“I have seen a woman who stopped menstruating because she ate something unknown during menstruation, however this is the first time I have seen someone in a long term infertile state from eating something…but have you gotten married?

Pregnancy can happen even if your period is irregular. It may not be infertility.”

But her period was not irregular; it never occurred. However, she had never tried to have a child before so couldn’t answer with certainty as to whether or not she was pregnant.

Then a more knowledgeable doctor came along and gave Lucia new information.

“A long time ago, when we lost the war and women were caught by the enemies, there was a story that they would eat mugwort on purpose to avoid having children for the enemy. It seems that they thought that if the menstrual cycle was stopped then naturally, it would serve as a form of birth control but it has been proven that mugwort has no effect on contraception.”

The doctor’s answer was pretty ambiguous. Lucia did not give up and in her spare time asked about any skilled doctors then visited them. But time had continued on and she was growing older.

She was about to give up. She was old enough and there was no discomfort in her life without her fertility so she was going to act like nothing had happened. Then one day, a wandering doctor chanced upon the town she lived in.

At first, none of the villagers believed the dirty old man’s claims that he was a doctor. However, as the doctor remained in the village and gave treatment, more people began to see the positive effect and were swayed to believing him.

Lucia went to visit the doctor since she had nothing to lose. The doctor was temporarily staying at a room that someone in the village had left, and just like when he first arrived, he was dressed shabbily.

However as they conversed, an image different from his outward appearance was revealed. His expression and manner of speaking were gentle and somewhat dignified.

“Did you really eat the mugwort herb? And then your menstruation stopped?”

When she told other doctors about her symptoms, they would look at her as some kind of rare animal which made her embarrassed but this doctor was different. He was both surprised and intrigued.

“Why? When? And to what extent did you eat it?”

Because he had a different reaction from all the doctors she had met till now, she grabbed onto one last hope and answered all his questions diligently.

“From my first menstruation onwards…” [Lucia]

Right after she said that, the doctor’s eyes strangely lit up.

“By any chance, are you a virgin?”

“No. I’ve been married before so I’m not a young maiden.”

Truthfully, she was pretty much like a virgin but she didn’t want to tell the doctor things to that extent.

The doctor was somewhat disappointed and gave a bitter laugh.