Chapter 187

In the upper ranks of Westerosi society the tomato was held to be a deadly poison, and it had in truth killed no small number of lords and princes. When men first discovered that brightly coloured fruit they found it not only fair to look upon but pleasantly sour-sweet to the taste. Seeing that smallfolk ate it without harm, the tomato at once became the fashion among the highborn of the entire continent. Even royal palates weary of every other dainty could not have enough of it.

Not long afterward, however, certain lords who had eaten tomatoes were found dead. Word that the fruit was poison spread like a plague; highborn folk spoke of it with fear. How, then, had so small a tomato slain so many nobles?

Domeric, who came from another world, knew the answer well enough. The true cause lay in the plates from which the lords of Westeros ate. Most were of metal, and because the art of smelting was still crude those vessels contained a great deal of lead. Lead is more active than hydrogen; the tomato, rich in what another world would call vitamin C, turned the lead upon the plate into a soluble poison that entered the body. Many highborn men died of that heavy-metal taint. The smallfolk, who ate the fruit raw from their own hands, showed no such sickness.