The Witches’ Kitchen

by Cecelia Holland

  “Pick up some more men,” Sweyn said. “Raise an army.”

  Conn said, “And wait for Palnatoki.”

  Sweyn smiled at him, his eyes glittering. “Palnatoki, where’s he?”

  Conn gave a snort; he liked how Sweyn was taking this on. “Good. I didn’t see he knew what was up.”

  “Right,” Sweyn said. “I’m glad you’re with me.” He clapped Conn on the arm. “We’ll get to Jorvik, then we’ll decide what to do next.”

  With only Conn and Raef on their oars, Sweyn brought the ship down into the mooring at Jorvik, where the hulls lay so thick together there was hardly room between them. The rest of his crew sat gape-mouthed looking up at Jorvik, climbing its low embankment above them, a clutter of high roofs and steeples.

  For once they weren’t fighting or threatening him or refusing to work. He thrust off the whole issue of now having to pay them, glad just to have reached Jorvik.

  He knew he would not have gotten through the last few days but for Conn. That was the way of fate, he thought: Fate would send him what he needed for his destined task. But Conn was more than a trick of fate. Sweyn loved his strength, his endless confidence; most of all he loved that Conn understood him almost by his looks. Somehow under the blood, he and Conn were brothers.

  The ship was nosing in against the bank. He called out, and the men slid over the gunwales on either side and lifted the hull up onto the river bar. Sweyn sat a moment, one arm draped over the handle of the steerboard, looking up at Jorvik above him. Since his babyhood he had drunk up the old stories, not from Palnatoki, who never thought of anything but scheming, but from the skalds who favored his hall—stories of Ragnar and Ivar and Hastein. Now here he was, ready to make his own saga, and he thought Jorvik was an excellent place to start.

  The men were gathering up their gear, which had scattered around the ship during the days of rowing. Raef and Conn shipped their oars and stood up, stretching, and Sweyn considered again the inconvenience that Conn already had a brother. Sweyn watched them, the fair head and the dark, the shambling misfit and the warrior, and wondered once again how he could get rid of Raef.

  The two brothers were looking up at the city, nudging each other and talking; now Raef turned his duck-white head to look around the river bar. Sweyn lowered his eyes, regretting his evil impulses. If he was going to be a king he had to act like one.

  Then Raef shouted, “Conn! Look!”

  Sweyn swung his head up, startled; the two of them were staring into the ships packed along the river bar and out in the shallow water, and suddenly they were talking an incomprehensible stream.

  “That’s Euan’s ship,” Conn said.

  “They’re here,” Raef said. “Why are they here?”

  “Come on.” Conn wheeled toward Sweyn. “We’ll be back.”

  He grabbed Raef by the arm and shoved him on down the ship, toward the shore. “Come on, Raef!” They plunged away, up the river bar.

  Sweyn watched them go, amazed. He turned and looked at the ships around him, wondering which had set them off. A moment later, looking at the ships around him, he was thinking he could use a lot of these vessels, and every one came with a crew.

  His own crew had vanished, sucked up into the city. They would come back, with them problems, but Conn and Raef would come back, too, proof of his destiny. He got off his ship, onto the river bar swarming with oarsmen and Vikings, and considered how to harvest all these men.

  Too happy to be silent, Arre was singing, as loud as she wanted because Euan who sometimes complained she sang too loud or badly was gone off to London. She cast her voice forth like a lark’s, in snatches of songs.

  The servants sang with her, when she got into something they knew. They were airing the whole great hall out, carrying linen and blankets to the garden, and sweeping out the old musty rushes from months before. In the garden, she paused, her face lifted to the wintry sun. To be home again contented her past speaking, and she was frankly glad that Euan was gone.

  He had driven her wild on the long voyage back across the sea, when she was wild anyway, with the two little girls suffering so. Now they were out of the narrow confines of the ship, they had plenty to eat, the children were thriving, and she had her own boys back, and Euan was away doing what Euan liked best, conniving at something.

  That thought left her silent for a moment. What Euan connived at added often to her usual troubles.

  “Mama!” Her son Edward stood in the door. “Should we move out the chest?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s too heavy.” She went back into the hall, to get them doing what she wanted. On the threshold she stopped to slip her arm around her tall son’s waist and hug him. “I’m so glad to be back.”

  “Mama,” he said, and eeled away from her, his eyes downcast.

  He had grown much in the months she had been separated from him, turned stringy as a bean. In his face he had her looks, her eyes, everybody said, her mouth. He wanted to be a priest. Euan would not allow it and forbade him to talk of it. In fact he seemed too worldly already for a priest, too curious, too easily seduced. She wondered at his coldness, if it was only because of the long separation, or the influence of his grandmother. Euan’s mother and Arre did not get on.

  “Come with me,” she said to him. “I’ll show you what I want done.” She led him into the hall, which was now smelling considerably better. The windows were open wide, and the door opening onto the street, and the smoke holes in the slate roof— Euan’s pride, that roof, higher and safer than their neighbors’ gross vermin-ridden fire-prone thatches. Arre put Edward to cleaning out the hearth, although he wrinkled up his nose and tried to wiggle out of it, and herself led the two women servants to hauling in new rushes for the floor and strewing them around. Gradually they spread rushes back into the end of the room, to the broad bench where the two little girls slept, Aelfu with her thumb in her mouth like a plug and her other arm around Miru.

  Arre sat down on the bench and touched them. “Aelfu. Miru. Wake up.”

  Aelfu’s eyes opened. At the far end of the hall, Edward called, “Mama.” Arre looked around over her shoulder and saw someone had come into the hall. The two servants went up there; probably it was nothing for her. She turned back to Aelfu and Miru, wanting to coax them awake, to feed them more, cheese and fresh bread and apples.

  Aelfu sat up, her hair in her face, and looked around.

  “I was dreaming . . .” She turned to Arre, her arms reaching out, and Arre took her into her lap. “I dreamt of the ship again, Ama, I dream we’re on the ship again.” She pressed her face against Arre’s breast.

  “No, no,” Arre said. “We’re safe now. Go sit on the pot.” It touched her the child had made this little name for her. She let Aelfu slide down off her lap to the floor, and bent over Miru, murmuring the little girl awake; she had suffered more than anybody on the long trip. Then Aelfu screamed.

  “Conn—”

  Arre started, clutching Miru against her, and the baby let out a whine and burrowed down into her arms. She watched Aelfu run straight down the hall and fling herself on one of the men who had just come in.

  “Conn!”

  Arre swallowed hard. She felt turned to stone, although somehow she had gained her feet, in that first startled rush. Even from here she could see that the newcomer really was Conn, Corban’s son. Benna’s son.

  They had gone on before her, of course, coming back here; she had known they might meet. She dreaded facing him, with the news she had to give him. Miru buried her face against Arre’s breast. Arre went down the hall, Conn’s sister in her arms.

  He had swung Aelfu up in his arms; she was talking in a spate of words. “Conn—they have so much to eat here—look at my dress—” Everybody in the hall had turned to stare at them. Over his shoulder Conn was watching Arre approach, and he called to her, even before she reached him.

  “Is my mother here? I—we—” He glanced back, at the other man with him, who she saw was Raef, the oth
er boy from the island, startlingly older and taller, both of them very worn from travel. Aelfu ran out of breath and words and looked from one to the other, wide-eyed. Conn said, “We’re here with—with—any_ way, we saw your ship—is my mother here?”

  Arre reached him and, holding Miru against her shoulder, put her hand on his arm. “Conn, your mother is dead.”

  Aelfu twitched and put her thumb in her mouth. Conn’s eyes widened, white-rimmed. Under Arre’s fingers the hard muscle of his arm trembled. “No,” he said. “No—how can that be?”

  She went on, helplessly, knowing he hardly heard her, unable to stop babbling. “She missed Corban, so much—and she needed him, I think, somehow. She fell sick, I could not—I tried to make her well, I prayed—but she did not waken—it was months ago.”

  His face was stunned and his jaw slack; Aelfu bent her head to his shoulder, her mouth curled down, and his grip tightened around her. Arre floundered on.

  “Without her there, we had to come back, I could not endure it, without her—the devils on the mainland were attacking us, we could hardly hold them off.” She looked among the other people around the room, all motionless, rapt, staring at them. “Is Corban with you?”

  Raef had come up beside him. “Where is my mother?”

  “On the island still—she would not come with us.” To her surprise, he lowered his eyes, obviously relieved.

  “Is Corban with you?” she said again. It came to her that their appearance here in Jorvik was connected to the word come fresh that morning from Denmark of treachery and murder and uprising, the King of Norway dead, the nephew of the King of Denmark dead. She looked from Conn to Raef, marking the sword at Conn’s belt, the knife in Raef’s, the silky virgin beard on their jaws, the rasp of their voices, something in the way they stood, their shoulders set, their heads a little forward. Everything about them had altered. They were part of this man’s thing now, this war thing. They had grown up.

  “We don’t know where Corban is,” Raef said. He had put his arm around Conn, as if to hold him on his feet, but now Conn broke roughly free of him, and still with Aelfu in his arms went toward the fire, and sat down on the hearth there and wept. Miru stirred in Arre’s grasp, lifting her head.

  Raef said, “There was big trouble in Denmark, and Corban went off on his own somehow. We came to Jorvik with Sweyn Haraldsson.”

  “Well, you got here at the right moment,” she said. “The Archbishop is gone and so is the Jarl and the Jarl’s reeve, too, because the King is sick, down in Wessex. No one will bother you, not for a while, except maybe the Archbishop. Of course you and Conn should stay here, with us.”

  Raef stood looking over his shoulder at Conn. He turned back toward her, his eyes soft, and his attention went to the small girl in her arms. Uncertainly he said, “Sweyn will want us with him.”

  He reached out one finger toward Mines tangled damp curly hair. She shuddered, creeping deeper into Arre’s embrace. Raef’s voice sank. “She was as much mother to me, too, as I ever had—” He stopped abruptly, his mouth gripped tight, his eyes swollen. His finger brushed the baby’s hair. His head bobbed. “We should stay here for a while.” He went to sit by Conn on the hearth, and put his head in his hands.

  Arre stepped back. Mint’s eyes popped open; she had been awake all along, Arre saw, just hiding. Clever baby, Arre thought; she saw much in this to hide from.

  Largest of it was that the mess in Denmark had spread to Jorvik. She knew nothing of this Sweyn, but if he was part of what was going on he would draw the city deeper into it, maybe a new war, all the kings attacking one another. Smaller, closer, there were her own nephews in the middle of it. She pressed her lips to Mint’s forehead. “Clever baby.”

  Miru said, under her breath, “Raef. Raef.” She turned and looked toward the hearth. Arre went to get her a sop. Her mind leapt to Euan, away in Wessex doing man’s work among the high men of England. Much as she wished him away, she needed him to deal with this. She began to think how she would get word to him to come back at once to Jorvik.

  Aelfu had thought, at first, when she saw Conn, that surely her mother was coming back, too. Now she saw that he didn’t know where she was either.

  Conn believed Arre when she said that their mother was dead. Carefully Aelfu drew away from him as he slumped on the bench, staring into the fire, his eyes brimming. Raef sat with his hands over his face. She went away up the hall, swerving out of the way of the servants bringing out a table as big as a ship.

  Soon they would sit down to eat, eggs and sweet things to drink, roasted meats and good turnips and onions and bread. Things they had never eaten back on the island. She sat down on the corner of the bench beside the table and looked around. The whole place smelled deliciously of the herbs and fresh straw on the floor. Her fingers stroked the ribbon along the front of her dress, so smooth it made the hair stand up on her arms to touch it. The feel of the fine clothes on her body made her skin tingle all over. All around her was the clatter of other people, two maids putting candlesticks out, the boys whooping outside. Off up the hill the church bell began to toll, and for a moment everybody stopped and made some motions with their hands, and then went smoothly on with whatever the bell had interrupted.

  Everybody thought her mother was dead. She had forgotten why she thought differently. She knew, though, that Benna had only gone away. Maybe she had gotten lost. Euan might have driven her off; Aelfu disliked Euan, and so she thought this often. Maybe she was just still there on the island, with May. But she was just gone, she wasn’t dead, no matter what Arre said.

  In any case, Aelfu hoped a little that her mother wouldn’t come back very soon.

  That made her feel bad. She was bad to want her mother gone. Maybe that was why Benna had gone, because Aelfu was bad. Her thumb had gotten into her mouth. She wanted to shut her eyes and stick her fingers in her nose and make this all go away.

  Not the soft delicious bread, the warm beds here, the many kinds of clothes. That she wanted, more even than there was, every day. When she thought of the island she remembered mostly the bitter cold, and being hungry. It was so much better here.

  She hunched up her shoulders. If her mother came back they would go home back to the island.

  She blinked against a sudden gush of tears. Maybe her mother had gone away because she was so bad, wanting all these things.

  Around her the room bustled with people making ready for their supper. She slid down off the bench and went toward the back door, looking for Miru and Ama Arre. Then, just outside the door, she heard Edward’s voice.

  The sharp tone warned her, even before she drew nearer and heard what he was saying. The edge in his voice put her hair on end. He said, “This is mad! You can’t let them stay here, Mother!”

  She froze, one foot on the threshold. But Arre answered him hard, in a stout voice. “They’re my sister’s children, sirrah, don’t you tell me what I am to do!”

  Edward cried, “But they’re pagans. Mother, you’re mad. Wait until Father—”

  The crack of a hand striking skin made Aelfu jump. She shrank back against the wall. Edward’s voice had broken off abruptly as if his mother had knocked it from him. Maybe she had. A moment later Arre came into the room, and her face was red as fire, her eyes brilliant and her hair tumbling down from her headcloth. She had Miru on her hip. Aelfu went after her, took hold of her skirt, and followed her.

  “All this time, you know, I’ve been supposing they were just back there, on the island,” Conn said. “As if nothing could happen to them there.”

  They were walking down through the Coppergate, the long steep street of shops that led from the upper part of the city to the riverside. Raef was still getting used to being on the land. There was a sharp wind coming up from the river, and he drew his new cloak against it. Arre had fed them a warm lamb pie and given them new cloaks, and it saddened him to leave her. He thought of Benna and his mind slid off the surface of the memory and he thought again of the warm pi
e.

  He said, “Arre is good. And she brought back the little girls?’ He thought of Aelfu’s face when she saw them, her whole face wild. “I don’t see why we can’t stay up there.”

  “Clayhead. Clamface. Here we are in the middle of a war, my mother is dead, and all you can think of is your stomach. Because we are Sweyn’s men, that’s why. We have to help him.”

  Raef said, “I loved her, too.”

  Conn was silent, not looking at him. They went on down the slope, here and there threaded with wooden walkways, its hollows foul with scummy water. Raef bunched his hands in the new cloak; he felt Conn pulling away from him, leaving him alone.

  At last, his cousin said, “We are Sweyn’s men. We have to stay with him.”

  “I like Sweyn,” Raef said, although he didn’t, really. They went down a steep mucky bank to the river’s edge, where a broad gravel bank made a long bar. Here a dozen ships or more were hauled out, many of them unloading their cargoes. From the little height of the roadway they could see out over all of it. A crowd of men moved along the line of ships, a thick dark moving tangle; above them, on the higher ground of the river bar, several little fires burned, and men milled around there also, oarsmen from the ships, some idle townspeople.

  “There he is,” Conn said, and turned off toward a little group of men sharing a cup there on the shore under the curling head of a big dragon. Sweyn was arguing with them, but as Conn and Raef came up, he broke away, with a shrug, and walked toward them.

  He saw Conn, and his face relaxed into a wide grin. “Good, I’m glad you’re back.”

  Conn said, “We went to my aunt’s. My sisters were there.” He shut his mouth tight, reddening, avoiding Raef’s eyes.

  Sweyn gave him a quizzical look, seeing his mood. In silence they walked on down the beach a little, Conn beside him staring at the ground. Raef trailed after them, where he could stay out of it and still hear. Sweyn said, “That ship there just got in from Denmark, they say that Grayfur is dead and Gold-Harald is dead, and Hakon is now lord of Norway.”