The Witches’ Kitchen Page 8

  “But he is not English.”

  “No,” Arre said. “He is Norman, I think.” She cast her eyes around them, toward the water.

  On the slope below them, Aelfu and Mint were chasing the rabbit, which was eating the grass; it let Aelfu come close, but when she bent over to pick it up, the little thing hopped away again, just enough to get away from her. This happened over and over, the children and the rabbit turning a slow circle around the grass. Arre turned to look up the rise, toward where the house stood, in the lee of the great rock.

  “You live very well here. I have seen, Corban has no difficulty finding meat for all these men.”

  “It will not go on so,” Benna said. “He will send Ulf away as soon as he can. This is a time of plenty, but in the winter it’s very hard. And he will fret over losing so many of the deer. The people over there”—she gave a jerk of the head toward the shore—“they go away, even, it is so hard, in the winter.”

  “Who are they?” Arre asked, swiftly. “I saw the smoke—are there villages out there?”

  “Several villages, around the water here. The people there are not like us. They’re much darker, and of very strange customs. We stay away from them, and them from us.”

  “Christian people.”

  “No.” Benna laughed; she saw her sister had no understanding of it. She said, “They have their own ways. They manage well enough. There are many of them, not as many as at Jorvik, but a good number, men and women and children. Sometimes I think they aren’t as different from us as they seem. In the winter, Corban says they go north, to hidden camps.”

  “Ah. And what do you do?”

  “We stay here. It snows, sometimes, days on end, and so high it piles above the eaves and we have to dig a tunnel through it out of the house.”

  Arre’s dark eyes were wide. “But how do you live then?”

  “All summer we store up food and wood,” Benna said. “We have some warning before the storms come, and everybody has a task to hand, and we keep the fire going and tell stories.”

  “How do you have warning?”

  Benna looked up toward the great gray rock crowning the ridge above them. Brush overgrew its foot, a dense skirt of green blotched with red. There among the tangled leaves she could just make out Mav, sitting wrapped in Corban’s old red and blue cloak, in spite of the summer heat.

  Some of the men of the crew had already approached her. She had dealt with them hard, and they would not try again. Benna wondered what she made of this, and thought she was probably angry.

  “Corban’s sister tells us.”

  Arre was silent for a while. Benna went back to the drawing, trying to capture the shadow in her sister’s eyes. Under her breath, Arre said, “I didn’t realize how far from home you had come.”

  Benna leaned out and put her arm around her, and Arre bent toward her and hugged her. The girls were following the rabbit hopping slowly across the sunny slope. On the cove, the little ship was running before the wind now, swift and light; over Arre’s shoulder, Benna watched it sail away across the sky-blue water. Arre was warm in her arms, and yet there seemed so much between them now. Still her heart rose, to have her sister beside her again, and she cast away the rest and hugged her tightly back.

  Burns-His-Feet took the pipe from Tisconum and smoked of it; behind him, ignored, Miska sniffed the burning leaf and suffered a hot stroke of longing. He would get nothing of this pipe, even though he had led them here, even though they could not do this without him. Burns-His-Feet held the pipe in his hand and gave it to none of the other Wolves at all. He lifted it to his lips again.

  Tisconum was still angry, his lips pressed together and his eyes narrow almost to slits. They had sent Lasicka to him when they arrived here, just before sundown, and he had come straight back to meet them, striding out of the woods with just a few of his own men, to show how little Burns-His-Feet scared him, Miska thought. And also to show he was angry and would do the Wolf sachem no honor. Now, sitting straight up in the deep hue of the firelight, he spoke in a harsh voice.

  “There are more of them now. I think you should turn around and go back where you came from.”

  Lasicka, sitting to the left of Burns-His-Feet, let out a startled hiss. He turned quickly to look at his sachem, who sat unmoving, unmoved, the pipe to his lips, taking in the smoke. Burns-His-Feet lowered the pipe; after a moment he let out the smoke in a stream that boiled in the orange light above the fire.

  “How many?”

  Tisconum’s gaze did not waver, but he swallowed, and his mouth twisted. His eyes scanned the crowd of the Wolves. “Not as many as you.”

  All the Wolves stirred at that, turning to one another, nodding; Miska, behind them all, kept still. He had brought them here as straight as if to his home fire, and with each step of it the feeling had grown heavier in him that he was doing something wrong. He thought of the heaving water, and the whirlpool, but he had no way to speak of these things to Burns-His-Feet and the others; no one gave him the opening. He watched as Burns-His-Feet handed the pipe back to Tisconum.

  “Where are they coming from?” Burns-His-Feet asked.

  “From the world-water,” Tisconum said.

  “That is impossible. We have to get rid of them. We will surprise them in a rush, and destroy them. Come with us. We shall do it together, and do honor to our people.”

  Tisconum sat straight in the copper light, his eyes gleaming, and the corners of his mouth curled down. “I will not do so. He has become my friend.”

  “You are afraid,” said Burns-His-Feet, and the Wolves all gave a low laugh. Miska twitched suddenly, a ripple in his gut, like a fish tail.

  Tisconum stiffened and got up onto his feet. “I came here as one who belongs here,” he said. “To speak to you, and to offer you some guidance. But I see it is wasted. You are a fool, Burnt Feet”—he said the name oddly, in his own twisted speech—“and you shall suffer for it if you try to attack him.”

  Burns-His-Feet said steadily, “You’re afraid. We will show you how to be men.”

  Tisconum turned without a word and went off into the darkness of the forest. The three young men who had accompanied him went silently away after him. Miska got to his feet, his chest tight. He thought of the island; he tried to think how to attack it, and always as he thought about it the dark green water rose up before him like a wall.

  Tisconum was gone. Around the little fire the Wolves gathered close, all but Miska. Burns-His-Feet leaned in among them.

  “Lasicka! You went into the village, when you told Tisconum we were here. What did you see there?”

  Lasicka rubbed his hands together, his eyes glittering. “They have no wall. Their houses are spread out. They have much food, and many women.” His hands’ crossed and gripped each other.

  Some of the other men grunted. Miska sank down on his heels behind them, where he could follow everything that happened. Over Lasicka’s shoulder he saw Burns-His-Feet cock his head back.

  “That would be good to know if we were attacking Tisconum. We have to get out to that island. Did you see any boats?”

  Lasicka looked confused, but on Burns-His-Feet’s other hand, Anatkwa said, “Yes, not good ones. Just dugouts.” He turned toward the others, laughing. “They can’t even make a good boat.” Everybody else laughed, too. In the firelight they were a shifting circle of faces, turning this way and that, leaning forward, ducking back, appearing and disappearing, one after another.

  Miska put his hand to the amulet bag, with its charms and powers. He said, as loud as he could, “The water is not passable:’

  Here and there, in the mass of men around the fire, a head turned abruptly, and eyes poked at him He waited for one to answer, so that he could speak more. Two by two, the staring eyes turned toward Burns-His-Feet.

  The sachem said, unperturbed, “Where are these boats?”

  Miska said, “No, listen to me—”

  Directly in front of him, Lasicka turned and struck him hard
across the face. Miska went down, even more from surprise than the blow. He heard, through the roar in his ears, “Speak when you are spoken to!” He cringed against the damp ground, sure they would all now leap on him.

  Nobody else struck. He heard, as his ears cleared, Anatkwa’s voice.

  “The boats are drawn up on the riverbank, this side of the village.” Anatkwa’s tone smoothed out, moving on into the next bend of this. “We can take them easily enough. Just walk down through the trees there, along the riverbank.”

  “Then let’s go,” said Burns-His-Feet.

  Euan said, “What is of value here? The timber, surely, if it could be gotten to Iceland—they have much need of timber in Iceland. Hides, from your hunting.”

  “Furs,” Corban said. Clamshells, he thought. Birch syrup. He saw what Euan wanted, things of trade; he saw these things stretching like a chain between here and Jorvik, and he looked away, furious.

  Euan was watching him steadily. “You mean to stay here forever.”

  “I had some thought of that.” Corban moved on down the shore, the soggy ground squelching under his feet. They had brought Ulf’s ship down to the more sheltered anchorage deep inside the cove; beside it the little hide boat bobbed like a seed. The boys had taken the new ship off down the strait.

  With the awnings off his big merchant ship, Ulf’s crew had made tents on the open slope, spreading out below the flat bench at the foot of the rock where Corban had his house. Most of them had gone back into the forest to hunt, and two or three were fishing down in the cove. Corban pulled his gaze away from them. Every place now seemed crowded, trampled on, not his anymore.

  Euan followed him like a tracker after a deer. “But there is nothing here. How can you live in a place with no other people?”

  “There are other people.” Corban was still walking, as if he could escape.

  Euan dogged him. “What? These creatures who live in the woods? They are nothing to you. You were a great man, in Jorvik.” Euan caught up with him, peering into his face. “You saved us from Eric Bloodaxe.”

  Corban laughed, not happily. Every mention of Eric jarred him farther along on some course he recoiled even from thinking about. Eric had been a wicked man, he thought, a wicked man. A walking proof that murder never went unpunished. Corban saw no reason why he himself should be different, and his murder.

  Euan said, “What about your family? Your sons? Your daughters? Do you expect them to stay here, too?”

  He had thought about this, coming to no certain answer. He stopped at the top of the rise between the cove on the right and the tilted stretch of grass below the rock, where his house stood, dug into the ground. As he always did there, he looked out over the strait, reaching out his eyes into the indefinable distance. The sky was clouding over, and the lapping water looked cold and uneasy. From here the opposite coast stretched away, green with cattails, into the north; the island’s shore bent away south, so that the western bay widened out before him, its myriad small islands breaking the flat water.

  Euan said, “How can you live by yourself, like some kind of hermit?”

  “I’m Irish.” Corban was looking at the coast just across the narrow neck of water here, where a gathering of people seemed to be doing something. He frowned. He thought they were pushing boats out into the water.

  “Bah.” Euan’s voice ground remorselessly on. “A man is nothing except in the society of other men. You are wasting yourself here.”

  “I was nothing there,” Corban said. He turned suddenly, scanning the grassy slope by his house. “Where is my sister?”

  “Ah, that one,” Euan said. “She’s mad enough, she could live here by herself. Talk about Irish.”

  Corban wheeled back, squinting to see that far shore. He said, “They are coming here.” He remembered suddenly what Tisconum had said: Someone is watching you.

  “Who?” Now Euan pushed up beside him and stared away. “I see nothing.”

  Corban strode up higher on the slope, his gaze pinned to that far shore, where now he could see boats in a swarm, pushing out over the water. Euan was following him, still talking, and Corban grabbed him by the arm and shook him.

  “See—out there—many boats. I don’t like this. They have never done this before. Go get your men, with their bows.”

  Euan’s face went long, and his mouth dropped open. He gave a single glance out over his shoulder at the bay and ran off, around the western edge of the rock, toward the woods. Corban thought of the boys out sailing, of Benna who had gone with the children to pick berries. Of May. He broke into a run, heading toward the great rock that rose above the long grassy roofline of his house.

  Burns-His-Feet had painted his face with streaks of white clay, and his eyes gleamed as if through a mask. “There don’t seem so many people there at all, to me. This will be easy.” He brandished his warclub in one hand. “Let’s go. Move! Into the water!”

  A yell went up. Around them the Wolves grabbed the dugout boats and hauled them into the bay. Miska grabbed one end of his boat and Lasicka took the other, and they ran out through the shallows. Dropping the boat into the water, they straddled it and began to paddle it forward. Miska’s heart began to pound; all around him were other boats, other Wolves, swarming out onto the bay, driving swift and potent through the water. In their midst, one of them, he could do anything. He flung himself into the work, whining under his breath.

  On either side of him the rough-barked logs surged forward. The paddles lashed the shallow choppy water to a foam. Miska stroked with all his strength; the dugout rolled like an egg in the little waves. Part of them all, he shouted and whooped and dug his paddle down into the water.

  The other boats were crowding up around him, all racing, all wanting to be first. Burns-His-Feet waved his warclub again and nearly dumped his boat. Miska could see people on the island, turning now, seeing them come, and one ran off, already frightened. He screeched. He would frighten them all, one by one, before he killed them. He strained with the rude paddle, forcing the boat on. Burns-His-Feet was so close to him their boats banged together.

  Suddenly, directly in front of them, a great fish leapt, an arc of spiny gray, that hung in the air before them for a long heartbeat before it plunged back. Miska froze, startled; a yell went up from the other Wolves. The fish splashed into the bay and vanished. The wave of its passage rose up, and up. Burns-His-Feet shouted, flailing out with his club, and his boat tipped and he went into the water. The wave came on, rising, higher, whitecapped. Burns-His-Feet was trying to get back onto his boat; the other dugouts were banging together, no longer moving forward, the men confused, unsure, and the wave mounted, climbing up before them, curling over.

  Miska screamed, “Get back!” He swung his paddle around to the other side, trying to keep the dugout straight across the oncoming wave, and then the water was rising under him, the boat was tipping upright on its butt end, he was falling. Someone crashed against him, driving him down under the water. He slid past another desperate thrashing body, scrabbled out with his hands, trying to catch hold. His foot touched the rocky bottom and he strove upward again and his head hit something and he gasped and sucked in salty water.

  Desperately he floundered toward the shore. Around him men shrieked and wailed. A hand seized his arm and dragged him down. He kicked out, trying to free himself. His knee scraped on gravel. On hands and knees he scrambled up through the shallows and back to the shore.

  Sobbing and gasping, the rest of the Wolves were struggling up around him, crawling out of the water onto the slick muddy shore. Lasicka sat down abruptly on the mud, his mouth agape, staring out at the bay.

  “That fish,” he said. “It had a man’s face. I saw it.”

  “Help,” someone called. “Help “ Miska leapt up and rushed back into the bay and helped Anatkwa drag Burns-His-Feet, half conscious, in through the shallows to the shore.

  The other men lay or sat on the mud, panting. Miska sat down with a thud, his heart racing. H
e put his hand to the medicine bag around his neck and looked over toward the invulnerable island. Someone was watching them from the top of a big rock above the shore. He shut his eyes, humiliated.

  Burns-His-Feet coughed up water. Braced on his arms, his head hanging, he got his breath back, while Anatkwa and the others crowded together in silence. The boats were drifting away.

  Burns-His-Feet pushed himself up on his arms and sat heavily, the smeared white color flowing down along his cheek and his throat, and his hair plastered sodden to his head. His breath sucked up under his ribs; he looked like an old man suddenly. Everybody was staring at him. Miska felt the first ripple of the feeling that Burns-His-Feet had done this to them, that Burns-His-Feet should suffer.

  The sachem’s eyes gleamed through the drying muck. He said, “Lasicka, you said Tisconum’s people had no wall around their village?”

  “No,” Lasicka said. “We can walk right in.”

  “Then let’s go,” Burns-His-Feet said. “Or do we want them laughing at us tomorrow?”

  From the other Wolves a harsh growl went up, a gritty edge, as if they had been cheated. They shuffled to their feet, collecting their weapons. Miska had no warclub yet, but he had his knife. He thought of Tisconum, and his heart beat heavily in his chest. That old dread came back to him, that he was doing something wrong. It was not Tisconum’s fault they had been humiliated. Yet with the rest of them he moved forward, back through the trees, following Bums-His-Feet back toward Tisconum’s village.

  Corban shaded his eyes with his hand, his heart racing; he saw the people there on the shore get up and start off, not back into the water, not to attack the island again, but along the shore, and toward the river. In the distance, he heard their yells.

  He scrambled down the side of the rock, slipping from foothold to foothold, down to the tangled brushy ground. May stood there, wrapped in his red and blue cloak, staring away toward the shore; her face was gaunt and taut and fierce.