The Witches’ Kitchen

by Cecelia Holland

  Conn faced him easily, boldly, with a smile. Raef thought he bad never seen Conn so happy before, and certainly he answered as if he had nothing to fear. “No, not at all. But a mystery. At home, sometimes, my father would go into a fury, and tell us that god was everywhere, in the trees and the rocks and in us, too, and that to pray, and put up altars, that was madness, because it meant the opposite, it meant you believed that god who was of you didn’t know you were there and had to be reminded, or that god that is the world might not do best with all the world, so why pray, as if god were someone else than you yourself, who could be haggled with and argued with and won over? And Raef and I never understood it, until now.” His face settled now, his eyes direct. “We are not Christian. We don’t know Thor. God is what is, that’s all, to us.”

  Sweyn gave a shake of his head. “That sounds like wizard’s talk to me. Odin holds sway over wizards, and he’s beyond my grasp.” He put out his hand again. “I would have you in our brotherhood. I like your way of speaking, and I have never felt such a strength in a man as I just did wrestling you, and I see your heart is sound to the core.”

  Conn looked around him, at the other young men, and they rose up a rumble of agreement. Turning back to Sweyn, he gripped his hand in a strong clasp. “What about Raef?”

  Sweyn gave a brief, piercing look at Raef, standing on Conn’s right side. “Your brother is one of us, too, if he agrees, although all I’ve seen him do is eat and stare. But he’s impressive at both of those, and I see he’s stout enough, and in his time he may come up to Palnatoki himself for height. If he will take my hand, he’s one of us.”

  He shook Conn’s hand first, and then reached out to Raef. Raef saw no other course, since he would not leave Conn; he took hold of Sweyn’s hand. Then Sweyn turned and said the names of the other men, and Raef understood that this was the brotherhood they entered into, and he shook their hands, too. But he could not remember their names a moment after he heard them, and their hands in his grasp felt cold and dead.

  Sweyn said, “Palnatoki says I should be King of Denmark when my father dies. He’s a good man, he raised me faithfully and he’s been my truest friend since, so I do as he bids. But I am gathering a company of my own around me, as you know now, being one:’

  “You mean, you don’t want to be King?” Conn asked.

  They were sitting back on the corner bench. Everyone else had gone to sleep around them. The hall was a deep hollow full of murmurous snores and breathing. The fire was banked and gave off no glow, and only one torch burned still, by the empty high seat. Sweyn spoke in a murmur, barely audible.

  “Do I look like someone else’s subject? Of course I must be King. But I have a little more in mind than my foster-father can comprehend. He’s a good man, but he’s nothing but a farmer, as he himself will say.”

  Conn grunted, startled, and pleased. “Tell me what you want.”

  “So I will; you are apt as I am, I see that.” In the dark Sweyn’s eyes caught the distant gleam of the torch. His voice sank to a whisper. “Have you ever heard of the great work?”

  “What? No.”

  “It is to bring under one crown the whole of Midgard. Denmark and Norway and England, the lands that bound the sea.

  “The whole world,” Conn muttered. Except, he thought, his father’s island.

  “Well, not all, but all that matters.” Sweyn was smiling in the darkness. “The King who ruled it all would have no fear of German Otto or Frankish Charles, certainly.”

  “Who are they?” Conn said.

  “Nobodies. So you are with me?”

  “I am.”

  They gripped hands together. Conn was remembering what Ulf had told him, to find a great chief to follow, and thought he had done that. Soon after they, too, lay down to sleep, but he did not sleep; he imagined himself storming cities and leading ships into battle, with Sweyn beside him—often, just behind.

  Unwillingly he thought about Raef. Thus far Raef had been like a wet rag thrown over all of this, mumbling and groaning and staring at his shoes. Maybe Raef would not fit into Sweyn’s company. Maybe Conn would have to make a choice between Sweyn’s company and his cousin. Like a chilly draft, that crept into his sweet warm daydream, and he lay down on the bench with a fur rug over him and tried to sleep.

  Wrapped in a robe of marten fur, Corban slept in Palnatoki’s hall, on a bench near the fire. Around him the rest of Palnatoki’s men slept, and the fire died down, so that the hall was quiet and dark.

  He dreamt that he woke, and the hall was still around him, dark and quiet, the air breathy. He dreamt that he saw the door open, and that Benna came in.

  His heart leapt. He saw her little heart-shaped face in the darkness, and he sat up in the bed—in the dream—and stretched out his arms to her, his throat tight with all his feeling, and his eyes brimming. She came to him, she came into his arms, and they embraced, and she was warm and soft in his arms—in the dream. And they lay down together, in each other’s arms, and he drew the marten fur around them, and kissed her, and they slept in one another’s arms.

  In the morning, when he woke, he was alone. He shut his eyes again, a great crushing ache in his chest, and hugged his empty arms against himself.

  C H A P T E R T W E L V E

  They went north to Jelling in two of Palnatoki’s great dragons, coasting up the narrow channels between the Danish mainland and the islands, past villages built out over the water on wooden stilts, broad lowland meadows gilded in the fall sun, where people worked back and forth, back and forth, their blade arms sweeping down the hay into long serpentine heaps. They turned into a narrow vik on a waterway that took them some way up a steep-sided valley. Up the river, where a mass of other ships clogged the way, they left Palnatoki’s dragons and followed a wooden causeway off across the valley. The fenland on either side buzzed with insects, and the stalky reeds clacked together in the wind. The causeway shook under their feet. After them came Palnatoki’s men, hauling along crates and benches.

  The causeway ended at the foot of the north bank of the valley. A worn road led steeply up through a rain gully in the bank; coming to the top of that, Corban stepped onto a wide flatland, stretching away north and west to the limits of his sight.

  Ahead of him, across the tableland, a spread of brightcolored tents stained the pale stubble of the fields. At the center of the tent stood two hillocks, perfectly even, like two breasts rising out of the flat countryside. Palnatoki, walking that way, called his name, and Corban followed him.

  He wondered if the two hills were the work of men: There were such barrows in Ireland, even bigger, some of them, and many of them hollow; Christian monks had taken some of them over. Lines of well-spaced standing stones connected these two. A little old wooden church squatted between them, but it sat ill at ease and out of place between the barrows and the lines of stones.

  He said, “What is this place?”

  Palnatoki said, “It used to be one of the holiest places in Denmark, until Bluetooth—” He broke off, and his hand chopped the air. “See that stone?” He changed course suddenly, striding in between the two barrows, to one side of the church.

  There at the true center of the place stood a fist-shaped boulder, taller than a man. The deep grainy gray stone was trickled through with streaks of pink, like flesh turned to rock. Its flat even sides were painted bright blue and yellow and russet like dried blood. Some sheaves of wheat lay at its foot.

  Lines and images covered the painted sides of the stone. Corban frowned, puzzled; used as he was to seeing Benna’s drawings, he could not fathom these. The lines were only lines, and the images were so rude he could hardly make out their meaning. He said, “This is no more holy than anything else, this rock.”

  Palnatoki gave a sharp grunt of surprise. After a moment, he said, “In older times this stone was sacred to the harvest mother, Freya, and people brought her first cuttings here; as you see, some still do.” He laid his hand on the stone and leaned on it, as if
he might be able to push it away. A spasm of hatred crossed his face. “But Bluetooth has cased up this stone with writing and Christian signs, as you see driven her out, and given us this instead.”

  “Unh.” Corban moved around the stone, understanding it better; the splayed figure on the other side, he realized, was an image of the god Christ. His hand moved a little, in spite of himself. In his childhood his father had worshiped Christ, although the family had gone seldom to the church, the nearest one being days away, but they had signed themselves everyday. He turned and looked from one of the smooth grassy barrows to the other, and now he saw that the two lines of stones running between them were like the gunwales of a great boat, with one barrow at the bow and the other at the stern.

  He imagined those piercing lines of power singing in the air around him. Here, at the center, at this stone, netted around with Christian words and signs, nothing. But he looked down at the Christ again, and again, to his surprise, his hand began to move to sign himself, and he knew that Christ was winning.

  He thought, I make up worse stories than Benna’s. He said, “Is someone buried here?”

  Palnatoki said, “That is Gorm’s howe, there, who was Bluetooth’s father. And that is Thyra’s howe, his Queen.” His voice dropped. “What do you make of it?”

  Corban laughed. “What does that matter? I know much less than you do. What do you make of it?” He turned away from the baffled anger on Palnatoki’s face. The simple farmer. Through the corner of his eye he saw Palnatoki smooth his features kind again. Corban looked around, seeing nothing of his son and his nephew, only crowds of people pushing out onto the broad flat highland plain around these monuments. Red and blue, striped and solid, flapping tent cloths patterned the yellow stubble of the fields on either side.

  Someone was walking toward them, coming in between the stones. Palnatoki said, low-voiced, “Here is one to make something of it.”

  The man coming toward them dragged after him a trail of lesser men. At their head he tramped along with an air of great confidence, as if nothing could withstand him. On his arms and ears, in his yellow beard, and all over his chest, gold glimmered, flashing here and there when the sun struck it, so that Corban knew at once who this was.

  He stepped back, off to one side. Palnatoki squared himself up, his hands on his belt, and said, “Well, Harald Knutsson, are you looking for me?”

  Gold-Harald planted himself before them. He wore a shirt of fine workmanship, stitched all over with designs. Gold chains hung around his neck, some with crosses on them, two or three with the little iron emblems that looked like crosses but were really Thor’s hammers. The men trailing after him came up close behind him. He said, “Well, here you are again, Palnatoki—still haven’t given up, have you?”

  Palnatoki’s long shaven jaw clenched tight. He said, in a measured voice, “I have some rights left here, one of which is that the King must listen to me. And the King must do justice, someday, to his son.”

  “His son! Your son, more likely, as everybody thinks.”

  Palnatoki was rigid, his hands flexed, but his voice was steady. “The boy is of your blood, Gold-Harald, as anybody looking at you both knows.”

  Gold-Harald sneered at him. “When I am King of Denmark, neither you nor he will be anything to anybody, Palnatoki.” He puffed himself up, his eyes pale and empty as bits of glass. Abruptly he poked his gaze at Corban. “Who is this?”

  “That,” said Palnatoki, “is Corban Loosestrife.”

  Gold-Harald looked Corban up and down and dismissed him with a shake of his head. “I’ve never heard of him.” From among the men attending him somebody stepped forward, but Gold- Harald thrust out a hand and shoved him back. “You tell that boy of yours, Told, not to be putting himself around too much. Hah?” He smiled suddenly, showing gappy peg teeth, yellow as gold. “Then maybe you and he will get through this alive.” He turned and walked away, and his crew split neatly down the middle to let him through and followed after. Each of them wore gold on his arms and his belt, gold on his sword scabbard.

  Palnatoki muttered something under his breath. His eyes glittered. He jerked his head at Corban. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  They walked out past the larger of the two howes. Palnatoki spoke in a low harsh voice. “You see what Denmark’s come to. Gold rules even the King. Nobody thinks what the right or wrong is. People have forgotten that it even matters.”

  They came around the foot of the howe and saw spread out before them the broad fields, with their clustered tents like huge flowers shaking in the wind. Corban said, “There are a lot of people here.”

  Palnatoki spoke in a low, intense voice. “When I was a boy there were gods in everything. Every village had its altars. Every stone had a name, a story, every tree. But this was the holiest, Jelling, these stones, this place. When I was a boy, this harvest gifting was a great festival. There were sacrifices every day for nine days. People came from every farm and village, it seemed, to lay the first sheaves of their harvest at the foot of the sacred stone. There were constant feastings, everyone danced, there was always a lot of fighting, men made plans for voyages, there were marriages agreed—they said a marriage arranged at Freya’s Gifting would be lucky and long.”

  Corban said, “It seems a great festival now.” They had gone past the round shoulder of the howe, out onto the plain. The flat fields all around were choked with streams of people and little makeshift buildings, stalls, and awnings. All around him the hubbub rose of voices and banging laughter and stamping feet; somewhere out there a sudden whoosh of a cheer went up like smoke, and then a rush of laughter. A stream of girls went by him, all in bright gowns and stiff white headcloths, each carrying a sprig of some dead plant. Every few steps somebody shouted Palnatoki’s name, and he called some name in answer.

  Corban watched the crowds for his boys, remembering Gold-Harald. Palnatoki was right; something was going on. Gold-Harald himself seemed like a long brass horn, loud with somebody else’s wind. Yet that wind blew in from somewhere. They loved to plot, these people, and as Palnatoki said, right or wrong had nothing to do with it.

  Beside him Palnatoki called out to someone, and waved, and Corban wondered where in this plot Palnatoki stood, and which threads he pulled, and why.

  His heart pricked him. Palnatoki had treated him no other way than well; it seemed shameful to suspect him of an underhanded purpose. Yet the tall man had brought him here, was pushing him into this. He felt a sudden overwhelming urge to sleep, to let this all drop away, to sleep and dream of Benna.

  They came to an open space, near the middle of the field, where Palnatoki’s men were raising the awnings up to make a flimsy shelter. Conn and Raef were nowhere. Corban had no idea what he would say to them if he did see them. Under the center of the awning, Palnatoki’s crew had brought a bench up, and a tub of ale, and at once people appeared from all sides to drink, and hail Palnatoki with their dripping cups.

  Across the broad meadow toward the howes, a thunderous shout went up, a clatter of hands beating together, and whistling. “What’s going on over there?” Corban said.

  “Throwing hammers, or stones, or spears, or each other.” Palnatoki settled himself on the bench; a slave brought him a cup with the foam still rising above its edge. A big curly-bearded man came up out of the passing crowd and greeted him boisterously, and Palnatoki bellowed back, clasping the other man’s hand. Corban drifted away. The awning shuddered in the wind, loud in his ears.

  Behind him the curly-beard’s voice brayed out. “Are you going to this council, when Grayfur gets here?”

  “Grayfur’s not here yet?”

  “No, he was supposed to get up yesterday, and now today, and now tomorrow, so you know how that goes. But you have to sit on the council, certainly—there’s talk the King will settle the succession then. That priest is here.”

  “Poppo,” Palnatoki said. “Is he giving his sermons away or selling them?”

  Corban had moved a li
ttle away from them. By the edge of the awning’s shadow he saw a tuft of grass, wound together, and he went to pick it up. Someone had made a little doll out of the grass stem and the blown seedhead, comical splayed legs frayed out into feet, the wild awn for hair. He tucked it into his sleeve. Palnatoki was deep in talk with a steadily increasing number of men, and Corban turned his back on them and went off into the fair.

  Sweyn had seen the wizard go, but he said nothing to his fosterfather; Palnatoki anyway was dealing with some men of Funen, who had come up to him with a dispute to settle. Sweyn stayed away from them, wary of being sent on some errand. He stood drinking ale at the center of the tent, talking with his friends about going viking.

  “We can leave as soon as I get the ships,” Sweyn said. “We should gather in Hedeby, I think—from there we can go either east or west.”

  They gave a great whoop, and then quieted suddenly, wary of drawing the looks of the older men. They crowded closer, their voices low and eager.

  “I say we go east,” said one. “There’s places all along the coast we can hide out and watch for traders.”

  “That’s small talk,” another said. “Let’s take one of the big market towns on the German coast.”

  Sweyn laughed; he loved such talk as this, the planning, and then the proof of the plan, and the fitting of that triumph into another, larger plan, but he had his own ideas where they would go, when he got his ships. Once he got away from Palnatoki, nobody was going to tell him what to do. He marked that Conn and Raef were talking together, a little apart from the rest, and seeing his notice fall on them they came up on either side of him.

  “We are going out—” Conn’s face was vivid with yearning; he waved his hand vaguely toward the fair. “Out there. Have you seen my father?”

  Sweyn said, “He went—hold.” Slim-Odd, one of his fosterfather’s men, was sidling up to him. He said, “Go, Conn. I’ll see you later.”