The Witches’ Kitchen Read online

  Curse you, Corban, Tisconum thought, and felt something clench in his heart. Corban had done nothing, had asked nothing, had come to help him fight off Burnt Feet. Had instead cleaved him apart, his people falling apart, dead, dying, or leaving, and all hating him. There was some terrible import in that, which Tisconum did not care to fathom. He felt as if he had walked down a path all his life, every day, and then one day it took him to some utterly new and terrible place, which all innocently he had entered into before he saw what he had done. New and evil and out of his grasp. His gaze pinned to the place where the red sail had gone, he wished bitterly that Burnt Feet had won.

  C H A P T E R E I G H T

  With Corban gone, everything seemed easier to Euan. He was thinking differently about this place, anyway; he could see now why Corban liked it here.

  The house was good enough, set well down into the sod, with stout walls and a deep, solid roof. A narrow passageway separated the two rooms and kept the wind out. He and Arre slept in the lower room, where the two boys had slept. Benna and the little girls had the upper room, which was bigger and had a small window to let in some light; Euan liked this room better, although it was crowded with Benna’s drawings, which annoyed him.

  The only other building was the storeroom, hunched down into the ground beneath its hairy roof of sod. Euan had been loath to search around in it when Corban was there, but now that he was gone, he felt free.

  Mostly, he discovered quickly, the storeroom was full of dried fish, of which there was a great quantity, even after Corban took a lot of it with him for the sea voyage. Behind the strings and baskets of the fish, he came on other food, tiny sour apples and nuts, little bark containers of the delicious sweet stuff that flavored Benna’s potions, baskets of dried herbs, a pile of excellently worked hides, and, in the very back, two wooden chests of dansker make, full of furs.

  Euan sank down, lifting out the top layer: Even in the dark he could see these were thick, deep-piled stoat pelts, brown spotted with white, furs to adorn the robes of kings. Just touching them made his mind whirl.

  He buried his hands in the softness of the fur and considered all this. Corban’s land was full of riches. Besides the game, the fur, the fish, there was timber here such as was no longer seen in England. And no one ruled here. In all his years here Corban had seen no other men save the dark creatures on the coast, who were hardly men at all. Euan’s fingers curled into the dense silk of the fur. Corban didn’t know what he had.

  Corban should not have it.

  He sank down in the dark, crushing and stroking the fur in his hands. Everything seemed different suddenly. He saw a real danger now that Corban might get one of the kings involved—or worse, some adventurer who had no land of his own. Once someone else saw this place—anyone else, Corban being as mild as he was—

  Or Corban could fail. Die, perhaps, at sea.

  Euan’s mind leapt past that, to a time when he, Euan Woodwrightsson, ruled here. He could bring in some people from Jorvik—he knew who might come—not many, enough to work a farm or two. Haul some sheep across the water, some horses and cows.

  His mind skipped lightly over the sea, which now seemed narrow as a little stream, and the people he might get from England. He lifted the fur to his cheek. Actually, he thought, if he could master them, these dark native people would be happy enough to give him tribute and do the necessary work. He would build a hall, not here, this place was too cramped, but perhaps somewhere inland, on a hill. There, far from the troubles in England and the greed of the Norse and Danish kings and the ships and swords of Vikings, he would be master. Lord of everything, with power over everybody.

  His head swam. He wondered how far the land went on from here.

  A sharp prickle along his neck jarred him. Somebody was watching him. He turned, looking, his fingers still buried in the long dark fur, and saw, his eyes now open to the dimness, over by the foot of the wall there, Corban looking at him.

  His skin heated in a sudden rash of guilt. His belly heaved. But it was only one of Benna’s infernal images, painted on a stone. He tore his gaze away from it and threw the fur back into the chest. Quickly he stumbled back into the front of the room, where some light came through the door.

  Benna could not draw. Everything that she had looked upon was gone, lost under the clutter of new feet, new faces.

  She had made a mistake, letting Corban go. He was part of everything she did. She had thought it would be enough to be here, in her home, on the island, but it wasn’t. His absence was like being unable to breathe.

  And he was going into danger, although he seemed not to think so, yet everything in her prickled and tingled with it. She had let him go alone into some terrible danger. He needed her, and she was not there.

  She couldn’t even busy herself with the little girls, although Arre, missing her own children, delighted in caring for them, and they loved Arre very well and didn’t seem to mind that their mother was so low.

  But there was Euan.

  She had known from the beginning why Euan loved her sister. Arre had enough deep feeling for both of them, while Euan had none of his own. Where his feeling should have been there was a great hole, which he filled with schemes.

  Now Euan walked around shouting at them all to work, and thought he worked; he had bitter words for everybody.

  “Why do you sit here doing nothing, when we must build the wall?” He himself did not build, only harried all the rest of them to it, driving them to haul rocks and place them one on the other in a ring around the house and yard, a ring growing higher every day, shutting out the water and the shore opposite. In this wall was an opening, where everybody had to go in and out, and there Euan stood guard.

  Every day the rocks were harder to find, had to be hauled from farther away. Benna’s hands were bruised and raw. She went to Arre, who said, “He’ll fret himself to rags if he has nothing to do.”

  “He could hunt.,” Benna said, thinking of Corban. “He could fish.” Thinking of Corban and her son and Raef, her heart aching.

  She should have gone. She had done it, too, what he had gone to make amends for. Maybe that was why she felt so bad.

  “Euan?” Arre said. “Hunt and fish?” She laughed. “Well, we need the wall, you know. Those people could come back.’

  So the wall grew higher and higher around her. Euan made her work, shouting at her until she got up and dragged herself over to lift stones. When he was gone she stopped. She went into the house, to the far corner of her room, where in a hole in the wall she kept her charms, and found the looking glass.

  Its face was dirty, and she cleaned it with the edge of her skirt until it shone again. Corban had given it to her, long before, in Jorvik. Then she had not known its true worth, and it looked like nothing much now, grimy and chipped. She hung it by its string around her neck, found a flat rock by the door, and went off behind the house, to a quiet place where Euan would not find her.

  Sitting on the ground, she drew Corban, as she had drawn him a thousand times before, the flare of his cheekbones, his clear pale eyes. She made no shoreline behind him, no place for him, because she had no knowledge of the place he was. Then beside him she drew herself, using the looking glass.

  This comforted her at once. She sat looking at the two of them together, and a deep peace stole over her. Somewhere beyond the house Euan shouted in a cracked voice. Suddenly he seemed somewhere else entirely, inside his own wall. Carefully she laid the rock against the side of the house, and went back to work.

  The trouble was, Euan thought, he had not enough hands. Making the wall was going very slowly, because so many of the men had to be off hunting or curing the meat or hauling in the fish or doing some other necessary chore. He began to think hard about making the people across the water, whose village they had, after all, saved, bring them the food they needed, so that he could put all Ulf’s men to finishing the wall.

  He had not gone to fight, when Corban called them across the water
to rescue those others. He talked to some of Ulf’s crew who had, and what they said heartened him. He thought those people were probably just waiting for him to come over there and give them his protection.

  He got most of the men together and told his wife, “I will go over to the village, where those other people live.”

  Arre gave him a sharp look, but said only, “See if they have some sort of bread—I am starving for bread.” She was plucking out the feathers from a duck; a great flock had arrived that morning to settle down on the cove and feed in the marshes and devil everybody with their constant uproar. Euan watched her a moment, the quick hard motions of her hand with the clumps of wet feathers; he wanted to say something, to bind her while he was gone, but she was already busy, and she would not look at him. He took his men and went down to the water’s edge.

  The tide was slack and the water very low; they crossed in the wretched leaky hide boat and a strange thing made of an old log that floated, nonetheless, and so got men over to the mainland. They reached the shore just above the mouth of the river, clogged with rocks and driftwood, and made their way back through the wood toward the village.

  Euan saw the trail at once and led the way. The men following him were silent and kept close; he could smell old smoke in the air still. They skirted a marsh, also overrun with ducks in a flapping, quacking swarm. Where the trees began another swarm attacked them: thousands of biting flies. Euan gasped and clamped his lips shut and, blindly windmilling his arms, barged through them, stumbled on a root, and nearly fell.

  Ulf caught him by the arm and held him. “Move, come on, keep moving,” he said, and shoved him, and they rushed and staggered along until they had escaped the insects. Euan’s neck and hands itched. Now Ulf was leading them, and he followed grimly along on the old captain’s heels and wished he had bade Arre make a salve against stings.

  They thrashed on up through spiny dark woods and into a broad meadow. Euan reached out and caught Ulf’s shoulder and held him, and stood looking around him, seeing the overgrown gardens here, the plants heavy with long pods, and then, ahead, a great burnt-out place, a black hollow in the green wood. He went a few steps on and realized that this devastated place was the village.

  He grunted. Somehow in the back of his mind he had imagined these people would have real houses, with daubed withy walls and thatched roofs, like the ones at home. As if he could just walk over the hill and be in Jorvik. A premonition washed over him; he wondered if he could trust what his eyes saw. With the other men on his heels, he went out across the fields toward the burnt place.

  The fire had destroyed much of the village, but some round huts were left, near the far end of the meadow. Before these a few people sat on the ground, glowering at him. They wore shawls of hide and kept their black hair all gathered up on top of their heads; their skin was dark, almost coppery. They were barefoot and filthy. As he stared around more people came crawling out of the huts, and one was the tall man who was Corban’s friend, all but naked, around his neck a chain of white beads.

  Euan straightened, glad to see him; if Corban had talked to this man, surely he could. He had prepared several different speeches to begin this, and now he chose the most cautious. He said, “Good day, fellow. I am Euan, I am in charge here now, and I have come to help you.”

  The dark man standing before him showed no signs of comprehension. He frowned at Euan, gave a long look at the men following him, and then said something and made motions with his hands, and there was the rising note of a question in his voice, and Corban’s name.

  Euan fumbled with his hands; he remembered Corban doing this, but he had paid no heed, thinking it only some nervousness. He said, more loudly, “We will help you rebuild your village here, and then you will help us, as is only right.” The perfect logic of this gave him confidence; he nodded at the tall man, and smiled.

  From behind the tall man, suddenly another of the strange creatures burst up off the ground. Startled, Euan realized this was a woman—her naked dugs hug down like empty purses—and she was screeching like a cat with its tail caught. She screamed at the tall man, who drew back, frowning, and then she wheeled and shrieked at Euan, full in his face, only a few feet away.

  Ulf rushed up beside him, a knife in his hand. “Here, you hag—” Euan flung his arm out to hold him back.

  “No—wait—”

  But now everybody was shouting. The tall man had turned and was calling out to his people, but nobody heeded him. All the other villagers were crowding up toward him, their voices high and sharp. Euan stepped back, away from the harridan, whose ruddled cheeks were seamed with fresh scars. Then from somewhere a stone struck him on the arm.

  He yelled. Instantly Ulf sprang past him, slashing with his knife, and the old woman went down. “No,” Euan cried; he stooped down, his hands out to protect her, but the others rushed forward, armed with sticks and rocks, and Ulf’s men lunged to meet them. Caught in the middle, Euan hunched down, his hands raised to ward off blows. The old woman who had started it all huddled whimpering at his feet. People banged into him from all sides. A bare foot stepped down hard on his toes. He shoved back at a great panicky blur of colliding bodies, and then abruptly the squeeze around him eased. The others were running off. He stood up, by himself, gasping for air; the old woman, blood all over one arm, lurched to her feet and paddled away after the rest of them, wailing, and Ulf’s men, belling like hounds, gave chase down through the burnt village.

  “Come back, you idiots!” Euan took a step after them, watching their backs rush away from him as they ran away into the unknown forest, and this time they heard him. Ulf turned, and the rest of his men, and they all came jogging back through the ruins. Euan looked around again for ‘something to take back to Arre. There was nothing. Certainly no bread. He barked a laugh. He saw now how stupid that was. He lifted his eyes toward the dark trees looming all around. Those dark devils owned that forest. In there, how many of them lurked? His scalp tingled. Nothing was as he had expected. Suddenly he knew this place enormous, beyond comprehension, and full of evil. He licked his lips and turned to Ulf and said, “Come on—let’s get back to the island, now.”

  One morning, when Corban had been gone a whole month or more, while Arre was outside in the dooryard stirring up the fire, Aelfu came to her and said, “My mam is gone.”

  Startled, and seeing the fear in the child’s face, Arre went swiftly after her into the house. Benna was not gone, she was there, in the bed, but she lay still, her eyes shut, her face glistening with sweat.

  Arre’s heart leapt into her throat. She sank down beside her sister and laid one hand to her cheek. Benna did not stir.

  Aelfu leaned on Arre, her gaze on her mother. “Is she all right?”

  Arre put one arm around her. “Yes. Yes. Go out and play with Miru.” A low terror gathered in her belly like a lump of ice.

  She wrapped her sister up in warm blankets and gave her sips of broth; Benna would not waken enough to drink, and her hands were cold even under the blankets. Arre knelt by the bedside and prayed to Jesus and his Holy Mother for help. All around her, ranged along the foot of the wall and in the chinks and corners, were Benna’s drawings; she saw Corban’s face there, over and over, and she thought of what Benna had said when he left and was briefly jealous of such a love as that.

  Aelfu came back in, cast a single look at her mother, and turned to Arre. “Will she come back?”

  “Yes,” Arre said, stout as she could say it. “Yes.” She stroked the little girl’s face and sent her out again.

  She did everything she could. She stroked Benna’s hair back, bathed her face, made a tea of herbs she had brought with her from Jorvik, and slipped it drop by drop onto Benna’s tongue, but Benna never moved. Arre could not see that her sister swallowed anything. She prayed. She wondered if Jesus and Mary even heard her, so far from home and the church and the priest, but she begged them anyway to help her sister.

  Outside she could hear the men moving ba
ck and forth, the distant careless sound of voices, the clump and thump of their work. She made a little cross of twigs and put it by her sister’s head. Remembering what Benna had said, that she did not pray anymore. Thinking this place might be beyond the reach somehow even of Jesus. Yet God was everywhere; she pushed herself toward that, pleading for her sister’s life.

  Aelfu hung in the doorway. “When will she come back?”

  “Soon,” Arre said. “I hope.” She wiped the tears from her cheeks with the hem of her apron. She had journeyed so far, and they had had only this short time together, and now Benna was sinking away from her. She laid her head down on the bed and sobbed.

  The sun vanished down over the hill; the men roasted meat over the fire, and ate the last of Benna’s little patchy garden; she had never been good with a garden. Aelfu came to the doorway, her face crumpled and gray, and said, “I want my main.”

  Arre held Benna’s cold hands and looked into her face, and could not speak. Behind her the little girl began to cry miserably. Arre reached out blindly, for comfort and to comfort, and gathered Aelfu into her embrace. The child understood, and wailed and shrieked, and the men came running, and Arre had to tell them all that Benna was dead.

  Aelfu went wild when they took Benna’s body to bury, crying over and over that Benna would have no place to come back to, and Arre bundled her up and took the sobbing baby and carried them off into the forest. When they got under the trees, Aelfu squirmed to the ground and went ahead of Arre on the path, leading the way.

  Arre’s heart was numb in her breast; she carried little Miru even when she stopped crying, as much for her own sake as the tiny girl’s. Aelfu took them on a winding way through the woods, stopping here and there. Finally she came out on an outcrop of rock and stopped.