Lavender drops

June is the month the lavender is cut, and for two hundred years the apothecaries kept a bottle that smelled of that cutting. The compound tincture of lavender, the old lavender drops, is lavender and rosemary oil in spirit with cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg steeped in it, and a little red sandalwood for the colour of a good wine. It was given by the teaspoon in water for faintness, for a stomach knotted by nerves, for the wind that follows a meal eaten in a hurry. Everything in it is warm and aromatic, and that is the whole idea: the volatile oils reach the gut and the mood in the same minute. It is a summer cordial, best made when the flowers are fresh and kept for the winter that will need it. In the sky these stars are scattered wide, because every one of them was a traveller before it was a medicine.