The Witches’ Kitchen

by Cecelia Holland

  “Grayfur never came,” Corban said. “What with him not there, and Gunnhild not, it was very boring.”

  “Did you see that Bishop? Poppo, his name is.”

  “Yes.”

  Eelmouth dropped his voice to a whisper; Raef had to strain his hearing to make out what he said. “If you ask me, that’s why Gunnhild didn’t go. She can put up with Bluetooth but not Popp°. He says evil things about her, worse even than the truth. These Christians, they can’t abide women, I don’t know how there will ever be very many of them.”

  Corban laughed. “I don’t think Christ does that much below the gut.”

  “I don’t think Christ does much,” Eelmouth said. “The whole issue is a puzzle to me, why people like him. Did you ever hear the story of how Bluetooth was converted?”

  “No,” Corban said. “Tell me.”

  “Well, he had decided to do it long before, Gunnhild thinks, for reasons of his own. Anyhow he needed a show, for the people. So he told Poppo he would be a Christian if Poppo would hold hot iron in his hand and his God would protect him.” Eelmouth grinned. “So one day we all gather at the forge, and Poppo is out there with the King, and the smith heats up a chunk of iron in his forge and with his tongs lays it down on Poppo’s hand, and a moment later takes it off, and Poppo holds up his hand, as lily white and soft as any maiden’s. And so Bluetooth was converted, and supposedly everybody else in Denmark.”

  He drank of his ale and held it out to Corban, who drank a little and passed it on to Raef. Eelmouth was watching Corban with a grin, and finally Corban said, “Well?”

  “Nothing. Except when the smith put the iron down, Poppo was standing next to the anvil stump, and that has a burn in it three fingers deep now.”

  Corban grunted. “So he doesn’t even believe it himself.”

  Eelmouth shrugged. “Who believes in anything anymore? With Bluetooth, you never know. Poppo has a great air of holiness, but it’s his holiness, not God’s, if you get me.” The men on the beach were shouting to him to come down and throw the axe, and he waved them off again. “Have you fallen in with Palnatold, now? That’s a long weak limb, there, Corban.”

  Reluctantly Raef gave him back the cup. He liked the way the ale felt in his stomach, sour and fat. On the beach, two men came up to the line, each holding two axes in his left hand. Twenty paces down the beach, the barrels were slivered, shards of wood among the rocks. One stave stuck up above the rest, hardly thicker than a finger. The taller of the two men at the line took his first axe in his right hand, squinted down the beach at the barrels, and cast.

  His axe sailed away over the barrels and missed entirely; the boys behind the target leapt nimbly out of the way. All the men watching broke into hisses and jibes. The tall man flung his hands up, turning away, his face twisting.

  Still at the line, the shorter man stepped back, his eyes fixed on the target. The jibes and laughter of the other men sank into a hush, expectant, intent. The short man strode smoothly forward and flung the axe sidearm, and the flying wedge clipped the stave neatly in half.

  The onlookers burst into full-throated cheers. The short man held up his arms and swung around, enjoying the applause. Beside him, the taller man straightened, his face fretful, and with his second axe took a nasty little swipe at the other.

  The toe of the axe grazed the shorter man’s forearm. He wheeled, his arm coiling, and without a pause sank his second axe into the tall man’s neck.

  The tall man went down like a hewn tree. Raef gasped. Over the rest of the men a silence fell. The tall man sprawled on the ground, his head all but lopped off, blood pouring out of his neck. The men closest to him shifted backward a little, away from the spreading puddle. Eelmouth said, “Oh, hell. That’s not going to sit well with Hakon.”

  The short man said loudly, “He attacked me first. You saw it.” The other men gathered around the corpse, stooping to peer down at it.

  “With Hakon,” Corban said, looking startled. “Whose men are these?”

  “Oh, they’re Hakon’s warband,” Eelmouth said. “They were supposed to have some work to do, but now that’s off, and they’re going a little mad. That’s the second one killed fighting since they got here.”

  Corban grunted; he said, under his breath, “Well, that’s interesting.”

  Raef realized he had thought these were Eelmouth’s men. He jerked his gaze away, not wanting to know any of this. He thought of the yellow-haired girl, and her hands on him, and the yearning began again in his groin. He leaned against the pier, half delirious.

  Eelmouth said, “When were you thinking of coming down to Hrafnsbeck? So I can tell Gunnhild. She’ll want to make a nice welcome for you.”

  Corban snorted at him. “I have somebody else to talk to first, and I may not survive that.” He looked up at the sun, then turned to Raef. “Let’s go get your shirt.”

  Eelmouth said, “Who else?” Corban ignored him. Raef followed him down the street, running a few steps to catch up with him; behind them, there was a loud yell of anger. Raef wheeled, looking back; they were all fighting, down there.

  “Whose men are those?”

  Corban’s eyebrows jacked up and down. “The question is, why are they here, and not up in Jelling, with Hakon?” He stretched his legs, walking fast around a little knot of arguing people at a crossway. “I wish I could figure this out, Raef.”

  Raef bit his lips together; everything Corban said made him uncomfortable, and he wanted his uncle to shut up. It was midafternoon. They went along the streets, from one little market to the next, and Corban bought a jug of milk at one of them and a pottery oil lamp at another, not saying why. They came to the cloth shop, and Raef said, “I’m not going in.” If he saw her again, he would wreck himself.

  Corban laughed at him. “Whatever you say. Stay here, then.” He went in, and came out again in a few moments, with the new shirt and a linen undershirt also, neatly folded. Raef stiffened himself against the temptation to bury his face in the cloth. They crossed the city to the nearest gate, and there Corban stopped.

  “Go back to Palnatoki’s,” he said. “Be careful.”

  “What?” Raef said, his hands full of the stacked shirts. “Where are you going?”

  “Go up to the hall, show off your shirt to Conn. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” Raef said, astonished. “Wait!” But Corban was already moving away, back into the city.

  When dark was coming, Corban went down through the streets of Hedeby to the Lady’s house.

  Where the Lady’s house had been. The dark, overgrown plot of land stretched away from the boardwalk into the fog. Even in the thick dark he could make out the gallows shape of the remaining piece of wall with its hanging eave. Nobody else passed by along the street. The dank vapors of the fog drifted around him in the air, and the night slid in over him like the lid of a trap.

  He drove himself down off the boardwalk into the high saw grass; the ground was slick and stinking under his feet. Something slithered away from him, and he heard splashing, up ahead. An owl called. He thought he saw the great bird slide silently off beyond the next fence, its pale breast luminous in the dark.

  Behind the standing wall he found a place sheltered from the street, and sat down, and lit the lamp, and put down the jug of milk beside it, and waited.

  His heart churned and heaved in his chest. He wore the red and blue cloak wrapped all around him but he could feel the cold of the night air. Even in the dark the city was loud, but it all sounded far away, indistinct and blurry. The fog muffled down around him. In the hollow behind the wall, the little flame in the lamp burned clear and straight.

  Abruptly the upright fire guttered over flat. The jug tipped over and the milk spilled. A cold gust blasted over his face and his hands.

  “What is this? Do you think me a house fairy? Why are you here? Isn’t it bad enough what you did to me that you have to come to trouble my sleep?”

  He was trembling all over, his stomach
plastered to his spine. Coming at him so suddenly she had scattered his wits, and he could not gather himself. His eyes ached with staring, but he could see nothing; there was only the horrible voice.

  He said, into the empty cold, “We didn’t mean to hurt you. You were trying to kill me. I am here to offer you my amends, anyway, to pay you wergild, if you will, and close the thing between us.”

  “Amends. What use are you to me now? You are a man, and the other one is already dead.”

  His teeth began to chatter. He pulled the cloak tighter around him, but the cold seeped in around him, a casing of ice. He said, “I was handy to you once.”

  “You betrayed me with Bloodaxe. Then you stole your sister from me.”

  His fingers were numb, his lips, his cheeks. The cold wrapped itself around his throat. His eyes glazed over, as if his tears froze. He could see nothing but the faint blur of the flame in the lamp. He said, reaching for the only thing he knew, “Bluetooth betrayed you worse.”

  The icy air froze his lungs. His veins were like wires in his arms. He could not move. His lungs had turned to stone. Yet the little flame burned still in the circle of the lamp. He fixed his gaze on it, struggling to breathe.

  The frozen silence gripped him. His lips were stiff and numb. Then, abruptly, the pressure eased around his chest. “Yes: Bluetooth.” The voice had changed: milder. “You were at Jelling. You saw.”

  He said, “What is he doing?” He drew in a deep, ragged, grateful breath, his fingers tingling alive. He felt the rush of blood hot under his skin. He pushed on. “At first I thought he was setting Gold-Harald on Sweyn, which seems pretty obvious. But then Bluetooth’s own man broke that fight up. Then when the Bishop started in on me, he stopped that, too, although he wanted not to. And where is Hakon in this?” The cold filtered away from him through his cloak, leaving him soft with relief.

  “Never mind Hakon. Just get Bluetooth.” The lamp grew stronger, its light trapped in the fog, and in that vaporous glow for a moment he almost saw her. “Do you want to even things with me, Corban? Keep going. Bring Bluetooth down.”

  “Then tell me what’s going on!”

  His voice fell flat. Before him was only empty space. Nobody was listening. She was gone. The lamp burned steady and clear. The spilled milk gleamed whitely in the high grass.

  He put his hands over his face, exhausted. He had no more ideas what to do. She had not killed him, if that was what she had meant to do at first, but she had given him nothing, except more trouble. Getting to his feet, he walked up to the boardwalk, and went down to the waterfront and along the edge of the lake to his ship, to sleep until the next day.

  He slept well into the morning, curled in the sheltering belly of the little ship, dreaming of Benna. When he woke he could not rise right away. In quiet like this, alone, he could feel her there beside him, more and more. He hardly dared acknowledge that she was there.

  But she was.

  He remembered what the Lady had said the night before and knew what price she had paid to come to him. He ached to see her, touch her, not just yearn after the shadow of her, only half in the world, visible to him only when he slept.

  At last he got up and waded into the lake and washed his face and hands. He went up into the city, losing her again in the racket and bustle around him. It was nearly midday. In the big market by the waterfront, in among the stalls of fruit and cloth and whiskey, he watched a dowdy woman in a long red dress juggle colored balls and listened to someone play an instrument like a long two-stringed harp. The musician had a deformed face, flat and yellow. Corban gave him one of the last two silver pieces in his purse, and with the other bought himself some bread, and while he was eating it, Eelmouth came up to him.

  “Well, now,” he said. “You’d better get to Hrafnsbeck quickly, things are happening. Grayfur is at last come to Denmark, and Gunnhild will surely agree to see him, and there will be a great falling on each other’s necks and sobbing for forgiveness, and we’ll be going back to Norway in a week, mind.”

  “So he did finally get here,” Corban said. “Will they have this council now?”

  “Oh, like as not—Hakon’s men have gone, anyway, so something is happening.”

  “Really,” Corban said.

  “Somebody came in the middle of the night and they were all over each other getting into their ship. Gunnhild says come soon, Corban.” Eelmouth kissed his finger at Corban and sauntered off, slouching, his grizzled hair a nimbus around his head.

  Corban watched him go, trying to fit this into what he already knew. He felt the thing turning and turning around him like a wheel of fate. Yet he could make no sense of it. The day was fine, and the waterfront was crowded with people; some new ships had come in from the east, and they were hawking goods right off the beach, glass and honey and wax. He stood among all the people crowding around, each after his own end, wondering what he should do.

  Around noon he left the city and just outside the gate came on Raef sitting on the grass, half-asleep. When Corban nudged him with his foot the boy leapt awake, his eyes popping. The new gray wool of his shirt was still clean and uncrumpled, only a little grass-stained on the elbows.

  “Uncle.” He jumped up. “I mean Pap. Where were you? I’ve been watching for you all day.”

  “Well, here I am,” Corban said. He walked on up the road toward the woods. The trees with their leaves shed looked like claws in the air. They went down the path to the hall. A couple of saddled horses stood riderless in the yard; a dog lying in the sun by the threshold lifted its head and stared at them. The hall door stood partway open, but there seemed nobody around. Likely Palnatoki had gone hunting, to get some meat on his table. Corban started toward the hall, and Raef twitched and said, “No!”

  “What?” Corban swung around toward him.

  The boy was standing rigid behind him, his arms out in front of him, holding something off. His eyes bugged out of his head. He said, “No, oh, no, don’t go in there, don’t you see it’s on fire?”

  Corban reached him in a stride, grabbed his shoulder, and shook him. A quick glance around showed him nobody watching them but the dog, still intent. He said, “Raef. What is it?”

  Raef reached up and clutched his arms, as if he needed help standing, and turned to stare wildly at him. He said, “It’s on fire.” But the fit was ebbing; his face settled, and when he turned and looked back at the hall, a frown puckered his forehead. “It was, I swear it.” He relaxed; Corban saw the tension flow out of his body as if some spirit left him.

  Corban turned and looked back at the hall. His heart began to pound; he had a quick, vivid feeling of seeing everything whole, in one piece, and he realized in a flash why Bluetooth had stopped the fight between Gold-Harald and Sweyn, and why Hakon’s men had suddenly disappeared from Hedeby, and what was about to happen all over Denmark, and he got Raef by the front of his new shirt and shook him, hard.

  “Pay attention to me. It isn’t burning, not yet, but it will, soon. We probably have until sundown, they’ll wait until everybody’s inside for the night, but we don’t have much more than that. You’ve got to stop ducking and dodging this, Raef. I need your help.”

  Raef said, “No. Yes.” He straightened himself up, drawing his arms together; his eyes glistened. Corban thought he saw the leaping of flames reflected in his eyes. He said, “Tell me what to do, Uncle. Pap.”

  “Good.” Corban let go of him, stepping back. “Quick, find Conn, and find Sweyn and Palnatoki. Try to make them run for it, but certainly don’t let them go back to the hall.” He looked Raef quickly over, from head to toe. “Find a weapon, a stick, an axe, I’ve always liked axes.” He gripped the boy again by the arms, looking him in the face. “Be careful. If they don’t believe you, keep on telling them. Don’t wait for me. I’ll find you.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to Hrafnsbeck,” Corban said. “I think now I have the price of the wergild I owe Gunnhild.”

  C H A P T E R
F O U R T E E N

  Cold under his warm new shirt, Raef watched Corban go off down the road to Hedeby. He looked around him for some way to do what his uncle had told him. He had to find Conn first. Once he found Conn, his cousin would lead him on from there.

  He could not go into the hall, his feet would not carry him even a step toward it, although now under the great thatched roof the place looked solid and sound. He wandered around the yard a while, as a few slaves went in and out, trying to see in the door. Nobody came out but the slaves.

  Finally he went off looking through the horse barns and the sheds and pens, but still he could not find Conn. When Palnatoki and eight men came back at the middle of the afternoon, with two deer and some waterbirds, Conn was not one of them. Raef kept looking. Moving around eased the rustling of his nerves. His mind stirred up images of flames shooting up out of the hall; once he thought he heard a scream, and turned, and looked around, and saw only the yard, where the men were breaking up the deer, tossing bits of offal to the dogs. Maybe it was a dog he had heard.

  Then toward the end of the afternoon he heard a steady thudding, somewhere behind the horse barn, and he followed it around the corner and found Conn, in his red shirt, beating with a long sword at a rotten chunk of wood.

  “Where did you get that?” Raef stepped forward; the sword flashed in the air, streaming light. Conn wheeled, lowered his arms, and grinned at him.

  “Isn’t it wonderful? I found it, up on the Danewirk.” He held the sword out, the hilt in one hand, and the tip lying on the other palm. The edge of the blade was nicked. “It was all rusted, it took me all day to clean it up.” He lifted his head suddenly, remembering. “Did you find Pap?”

  “Yes. He says—” Raef licked his lips. “Come on. We have to warn Palnatoki. And where’s Sweyn?”

  “About what?” Conn strode along beside him. Awkwardly he stuck the sword in through his belt, and then walked with one hand holding the blade carefully away from his legs. “What’s going on?”