The Witches’ Kitchen

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The Witches’ Kitchen Page 27

by Cecelia Holland


  Just behind him stood another man, short, with a neat black beard. His dark coat was splendid with gold, and a great gold chain hung around his neck. Raef started; he had seen this man somewhere before. He slowed, but Conn went straight up toward them, jaunty as a prince.

  “Hail, there, fellow, maybe you could help us. We’re looking for horses to take us to Hedeby.”

  The man in the dark coat moved back, out of the way, and the smith straightened. “Who the hell are you?”

  Conn put his hands on his belt. “We’re fighters. We’re looking to get into the service of some great captain and go viking.”

  The man in the dark coat was staring at them hard. The smith snorted. “Go back to your plows. There’s no fighting in Hedeby.” Stooping, he picked up the horse’s hoof again; the horse groaned, and shifted its weight, and swung its head around and bit bad-temperedly at the air.

  The man in the black coat said suddenly, “Who are you? Where exactly did you come from? Some farm around here? Who’s your father?”

  Raef grabbed Conn’s arm and pulled him. Conn was saying, “Just—we’re just—from down the way a little—” Waving his hand. The smith shook his head.

  “Never seen them before. I know everybody around here.” He took a rasp between his hands and scraped at the hoof on his knee.

  “Come on,” Raef said, and towed Conn off back toward the shore. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the man in the dark coat watching them intently, and now suddenly that man was circling around the forge, coming after them.

  Conn at last had caught the urgency in the situation. They went out of the town and down the beach to the dragonfly, tipped on its side on the beach like a cockleshell. The man in the dark coat was no longer following them but as they were shoving off Raef looked down toward the golden dragon and saw the men down there suddenly bustling around. He bounded into the ship and ran the front oars out.

  “Come on. They’re after us.”

  Conn pushed them off the beach. “Who is that?” He climbed over the side and sat down on the second bench.

  “I don’t know.” Raef began to row. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Conn thrust his oars out. “Think we can beat that ship?”

  “I don’t know.” Raef put himself into the swinging rhythm of the work. The tide was coming in, and the ship fought the water a little; he concentrated on keeping them on the straightest course for the channel to the sea. Looking back, he saw the golden dragon sliding down into the pond, and the men climbing into their benches.

  “Come on, you sea-pigs,” Conn said, “let’s race.” His back bent; Raef saw the muscles of his arms bunch, and the dragonfly shot forward through the water, across the pond and into the mouth of the narrow channel.

  The way twisted and turned through the marsh, sometimes narrow, sometimes opening into wide stretches of water. Over stands of blown reeds the prow of the golden dragon trailed steadily after them. Because of the turns of the channel sometimes they passed close by one another and Raef saw the man in the dark coat, standing in the bow of his ship, staring at him. A wallowing overladen merchant craft coming up from the sea blocked the channel and the dragonfly had to pull over and let it pass, and the great golden head swept closer; it came on the merchant in a wider part of the channel and went by it without pausing.

  “What’s in front of us?” Conn called.

  “More ships.” Raef did not have to turn and look; he felt the channel ahead of them as a thick clog of wooden vessels, blocking their way to the sea.

  On the dragon, a voice bellowed, “You! In the small ship! Lay to!”

  “Is there a way through the marsh?” Conn asked.

  “I don’t know,” Reaf said. “I’ve never—I don’t know it.” The marsh felt to him like a watery web, twining deeper and deeper, another trap.

  “You in the small ship!”

  “Take us in there,” Conn said, and leaned forward to thrust his oars down for the drawing stroke.

  Reaf pushed one oar into the water and pulled the other; the dragonfly turned neatly and darted across the channel, almost under the bows of another merchant ship. The little craft nosed into an inlet of the marsh. At once the thick clumps of old reeds closed in around them, their butts bulbous above the gnawed banks. He could feel the muddy bottom shelving up, almost to their keel already, and even shallower ahead, but to their right was a slit of an opening, and he felt deeper water that way.

  “Oars up,” he said, and put one of his oars into the ship, and stood up with the other in both hands. Conn shipped his oars. Raef worked them through the inlet, pushing them along with the oar against the slick mud bank under the stalky dry reeds. The marsh stretched away featureless and brown before them. Great hummocks of mud formed tiny islands above the scummy surface. Like broken gray bones, driftwood lay heaped in the slack water. Here and there the tide ran suddenly fast.

  The golden dragon was not giving up. It could not follow into the marsh, but in the channel it kept pace with them, keeping them in sight. Raef saw an opening through the reeds that probably led back to the channel, but if they tried it the dragon would catch them as soon as they emerged. He turned the dragonfly away, going southerly, working through narrow passages and across wide shallow pans of water that would be bald mud when the tide went out. The keel touched something, and then lodged amidships, and he and Conn walked up into the bow and rocked the ship free.

  They poled along the side of a long narrow island, dense with dead reeds like broken flutes poking out of the ground. A ridge of driftwood lay all along the far side of it. “All right,” Conn said. “He can’t catch us here.” He leaned out and grabbed a handful of reeds and pulled them snug with the muddy bank.

  Raef turned, his oar in his hands. The golden dragon was well away across the featureless flat waterland, only one shape among the constant stream of ships moving down the channel to Hollandstadt. The dragon was not leaving. He said, “I don’t know if we can get out of here except by going back.” He thought if he were that man in the dragon, by now he would have sent for a small ship. Maybe for people to walk along the shore and come at them that way.

  “Wait,” Conn said. He climbed out onto the island and walked around it, pushing with his feet; the ground looked solid under him. Raef got cautiously out of the dragonfly, and they hauled it up onto the end of the island. Conn dragged a chunk of driftwood up and sat on it. He squinted at the sun, reached into his coat, and pulled out a chunk of bread. “Do you want some of this?”

  Raef sat down on the driftwood, and they ate the bread. “Wait for what?”

  “The sun to go down:’ Conn said. He licked the crumbs off his fingers and got up and started hauling driftwood into a pile.

  The sun rolled slowly down the sky; just before it sank into the sea the hawk appeared, circled once over them and the golden dragon, and then stooped down to land on the prow of the dragonfly.

  “What are you doing here?” she said. “And what is Hakon of Lade doing loitering out there in the channel?”

  Conn turned to Raef. “That’s who that is.” He bowed to the hawk. “Welcome back, Queen Gunnhild. We ran into Hakon in Hollandstadt. He’s after us. Did you find my father?”

  The hawk was settling herself, folding her wings carefully, and fussing with her beak at her feathers. She said, “I did. He is alive and well but heavily guarded. What’s more important, there is a huge fleet gathering in the eastern bay of the Limfjord.”

  “Where’s that? Whose fleet?”

  “Up at the top of this mainland. The Limfjord runs in across the whole land from the German Sea. It’s Bluetooth’s fleet, of course. From there he can keep watch on Sweyn in Jorvik and Palnatoki in Funen. We have to get back to Jorvik and tell Sweyn what’s going on. Your father can wait.”

  Conn said, “Where is Corban?”

  “He’s at Hrafnsbeck. He’s safe and well, as far as I can see.”

  “We should go rescue him,” Conn said. But he turned to lo
ok out at the dragon, out in the channel. “What’s he doing here, then?”

  “Hakon has his spies everywhere,” the hawk said. “He probably gets news here from Jorvik every day.” She walked along the gunwale of the ship into the shelter of the prow’s curve. Her harsh red eye turned on Raef a moment and then back to Conn; Raef saw she knew that Conn was the one to convince. She said, “Sweyn’s only chance is to attack before Bluetooth is ready. There is no time to go get Corban, who can take care of himself anyway. Do you have some plan for getting us out of here?”

  Conn said, “Yes. But I—”

  “Then I suggest you do it,” she said. She stretched one foot out, the claws gathered up in a loose ball, shook herself in a soft rustle of feathers, and settled down onto the gunwale and closed her eyes. The sun was going down. She was going to sleep.

  Conn said, under his breath, “Yes. Look.”

  Raef looked around, wondering what he was seeing. With the sun down, the night seemed to creep up out of the marsh. The flat reedy islands were already featureless shadows, but the open water caught the last of the light in shining streaks and sheets. In the air above the water, wisps of mist were forming. Just above the band of fog to the west, one of Corban’s drifting stars began to gleam. The vault of the sky was deepening to night blue, but the western rim was still red and pink; he could see the dragon’s prow against it.

  The prow faded a little; the fog was growing up around them, thickening, cold.

  “Come on,” Conn said. “Help me light this.” He knelt beside his heap of driftwood. He had shaved up tinder in a little pile. Raef cupped his hands down around it while Conn struggled to get a spark out of his tinderbox. The sparks flew and died at once, without even making smoke.

  “Wait.” Conn got up and went over to the nearest patch of dead grass. His hands idle, Raef sat back, lifting his head; a cold warning shiver went down his spine. His eye caught other lights, across the marsh on the opposite side from the channel, fuzzy through the fog: a train of torches, coming along the shore.

  “Look over there.”

  Conn came back with handfuls of grass. “Think they’ll come out here by night?” He bent down to his fire again.

  “Who knows? Local men would know this place.”

  “Well,” Conn said, “we’ll be long gone.” He bent, and blew a tuft of fire gently alive under the driftwood. The fire crackled along a dry branch. “There it goes.” He sat back on his hams, pleased.

  Raef said, “They’re coming closer.” He squinted, trying to keep track of the lights; hazy in the thickening fog, they blended into a single glob.

  Conn’s fire leapt high, crackling. Conn said, “Let’s go.”

  “Where?” Raef turned, startled.

  “Give me your shirt, so I can muffle my oars.” Conn was stripping off his own shirt. “Can you get us back out of here?”

  Raef looked away toward the dragon. “We’ll come out right by—” He stopped. The blaze of the fire turned the fog into a woolly wall; he could see nothing through it. He realized what Conn had known all along, that the fog could cover their escape.

  “All right,” he said. He went to the ship. “Let’s go.”

  They pulled the ship into the water, careful to keep from getting between the blazing fire and the dragon. Standing in the stern, Raef poled them along, slow and quiet, following the thready pull of the tide going out. He steered well wide of the light. The fog bundled around him, clammy, smelling of rot. Conn sat on the back thwart with the oars cocked up, waiting. Up in the bow, the hawk slept on.

  The fog began abruptly a few feet above the water; below that was clear air. Everything else was a thick muffled blank. Raef kept his strokes slow, lifting the blade carefully up and letting the water drip before he swung it forward. He stood with his feet widespread in the hold of the dragonfly, keeping the ship steady with his weight. Behind them the great fire blazed bright even through the fog; in all the marsh it was the only thing to look at. He manuvered them carefully around a great snagged tree trunk and into deeper water beyond. He felt the dragon ahead of them like a vast lump in the night, and now, threading through the damp and dark, a voice reached them.

  “How long do you suppose this war will last?”

  They were only a few yards from the dragon. A narrow inlet between hummocks of reeds separated them, but the dragon was at the far end of the inlet, like the cat at the mousehole, and the inlet was barely wide enough for the dragonfly. Raef gripped the oar but could not move, frozen with uncertainty. In the middle of the ship, Conn sat utterly still, but Raef could feel his gaze on him.

  Another voice came from the heart of the fog, from the dragon. “I don’t know. Not long, I hope.”

  Raef recognized the voice: That was the man in the dark coat. Hakon of Lade, Bluetooth’s warrior. His hair stood on end. He thought of the hawk. Of what she would think of him if he failed. Of Conn, who trusted him. Silently he dipped the oar into the water and nudged the ship forward. He could feel the gentle lapping of a current against the hull of the dragonfly, and he was sure the men on the dragon heard it, too, up there ahead of him. He eased the ship past the reeds, barely moving, the fog soaking his face and his bare chest. His new shirt, he thought, belatedly. His new shirt, wrapped around Conn’s oar. The ship nosed down between two eaten hummocks of the mud, and suddenly, above them, the prow of the dragon loomed, a vague tall shape in the fog, closing down over them.

  They were near enough almost to touch the stempost, carved with twining serpents. Raef eased the ship along with a little waggle of the oar. Over their heads in the dragon, Hakon of Lade said, “Damn. They’re all just sitting out there.”

  “You don’t want to go rushing around in a marsh like this at night. Be patient, sir. I know the island they’re on, and there’s a good way out through the marsh to it. My boys will get them.”

  The prow slipped away above them, fell behind them, fading into the gloom. Raef brought the oar carefully up out of the water. He saw Conn moving, now, putting his oars out; Raef sat down on the second thwart and reached down for his other oar.

  Conn leapt up, onto the thwart; he had something in his hand. He yelled, “Hakon! Hakon! My name’s Conn Corbansson, and don’t forget it!” He cranked his arm back and threw the chunk of wood in his hand toward the dragon.

  Raef swore; he grabbed his oars. On the dragon a yell went up. The ship was rocking hard under Conn’s vigorous leaping. “Why did you do that?” Raef thrust the oars out. “Why did you do that? We were safe!” Conn was laughing, lowering himself down to his oars again. At least they were in open water now, and between the dragon and the sea. A sharp voice back there called orders, and the rumble of oars going out sounded in the fog. Hakon was coming after them. But he was too far behind already; in his mind, Raef saw the dragon falling back, losing the race. He concentrated on steering them the shortest way up the channel through the dark and the fog.

  In spite of what he had told Arre, Euan knew he would have trouble with the Archbishop. Oswald was shrewd enough, but he was a very devil on sin, and consorting with pagans for him was direst sin. Euan waited a few days, to let the word get around that his nephews had gone, before he went up to the church.

  The church in Jorvik had been burned and thrown down and rebuilt any number of times; now Oswald had in mind to raise a minster church, fitting the diocese’s high status as the oldest Christian community in England. Behind the church, which stood on the high ground, on the flat near the fountain, the land was already cleared, and a shape laid out with a single course of unpointed stones. Here Euan found Oswald, walking slowly around, and looking up at the back of the old church, black with age and mold.

  The Archbishop of Jorvik was tall, with a round belly heaving up his cassock. His short-cropped gray hair grew out in a shock like a straw roof above a face shorter on one side than the other. His small clear eyes were the color of ale. His prominent nose wore a lacing of dark veins. He had been poking with his staff at the grou
nd in front of him, but when he saw Euan he straightened and gripped the staff before him with both hands and leaned on it, solid.

  “Well, Wrightson, you again?”

  Euan bowed deeply. He was glad he had found the Archbishop here; part of the mending of their quarrel, when he came back, had been a promise to give Oswald money for building his minster. But at first he said only, “God’s grace to you, Father, I am happy to see you back in Jorvik. I beg your blessing on me and my household.”

  Oswald drew a cross in the air in Euan’s direction. “God have mercy on you, Euan. And your wife, wrong-headed as she is. Word has it you’ve been down in London, attending on the King.”

  “I’ve been, my lord Father,” Euan said, wondering if there were currency in this, if he could parlay some of what he knew into a better position. Oswald was studying the ground around them once more, as if he had lost interest already. Euan edged a little closer, and saw some lines drawn in the dirt there, and realized it was the plan for Oswald’s cathedral.

  He said, “This is a grand scheme, here, Father.”

  Oswald poked the stick at the drawing in the dirt. “This is the apse, see. And here, the choir.” His voice slowed and dropped to a murmur, as if he talked to himself. “I saw a church in Rome, when I was there, as fine a place as I have ever been. I would make that here.”

  Euan squatted down; the lines of the drawing were smudged, and he straightened them with his forefinger. “Father, if it please you—” He drew the round outer wall of the choir larger, until his eye told him it married better with the rest of the building.

 

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