by Lynne Jonell
He forced his eyes open and found he was staring up at the rough stone arch overhead. Then his head snapped forward and there was a glimpse of Ranald’s lumpy face, brows drawn together in a thick line like a hairy caterpillar, lips twisted in a snarl more angry dog than human.
Abruptly Ranald changed his shaking motion, and Will’s head whipped sideways long enough to catch sight of Cook’s face, red and enraged.
“I’ll thank you to keep your paws off my pot boy, ye daft bahookie!” Cook’s roar was at least the equal of Ranald’s.
“He’s your pot boy?” Ranald’s grip loosened; Will twisted violently and freed himself with a jerk.
Cook stomped up until her face was level with Ranald’s breastbone. She shook her fist, and Ranald took a step back.
Will rubbed the back of his neck as Cook let loose with a barrage of furious words, her accent growing thicker with her outrage. He made a mental note to ask Nan what bahookie meant and gripped his arms in an attempt to stop their sudden trembling. He didn’t have time for the shakes, not if he wanted to search for Nan and Jamie.
But there was no getting away from Cook. Will found himself being marched back down the hall to the kitchen. “Would you mind letting go of my ear?” he said as politely as he could through clenched teeth.
“I don’t want you lagging,” Cook snapped. “We’ve supper to serve.” She released his ear and turned curiously. “Whatever did you do to Ranald to get him so wickit?”
Not surprisingly, Will couldn’t think what to say. It didn’t matter, because Cook just went on talking.
“Well, it doesn’t take much to anger Ranald; he thinks the worst of everyone. Maybe that’s a good thing in a castle guard, but it’s a mite annoying to those of us that aren’t thieves, murderers, or Stewarts.” She cackled, a high crack of laughter. “Of course, if you’re a Stewart, you’re already a thief and a murderer, most likely.”
She propelled Will through the kitchen door with a firm hand. “Now, get in and stoke up the fire, and fetch more wood, and after that—well, I’ll tell you more when you’re done with the wood. If you’re like my old pot boy, you won’t be able to remember three things together.” Cook snorted like a horse. “In fact, he had trouble remembering just the one. But he’s gone now, and you’re here, so let’s see how well you can work.”
The kitchen looked familiar, with its massive fireplace and stone walls, but it was no longer the silent, cold room Will had seen in his own time. Now it was ablaze with light and warmth, filled with the good smells of baking bread and roasting meat, and bustling with kitchen helpers rolling out pastry at a long wooden table.
It took him some minutes to locate the wood stacked outside the castle walls, and he made three trips with his arms full before someone took pity on him and pointed to the leather carrier. He could carry more split logs that way, but each load was heavier, too.
Where should he put it? Cook was busy yelling at her helpers—big girls with sturdy arms—and Will didn’t want to interrupt and get yelled at himself. He saw a few pieces of wood stacked along one side of the huge fireplace. The last pot boy had let the woodpile dwindle to almost nothing, and new as he was, Will could still see that whatever was bubbling in the big cauldron—stew, maybe—had to be kept on the boil.
He quickly shoved a few more pieces of wood under the cauldron and arranged them so the fire got plenty of air. He was glad that his dad had taken him camping and shown him how to build a proper fire. The thought of his father was a sudden pang, but Will shoved it quickly into a back corner of his mind. One problem at a time.
It was fun, in a way, to figure out what to do. Will had never stacked wood before, but after two logs rolled onto his foot, he began to see that if he took a moment to adjust each piece of wood slightly, he could fit the logs on the stack so they wouldn’t roll.
It was almost a relief to have a clear task ahead of him. He might not be as quick with his tongue as some people, but he could figure things out, and he knew how to work. If he could do the job well enough, Cook would keep Ranald from pounding him into the ground. It was clear that she was a privileged person—that much had become obvious when Ranald had backed down so suddenly. Will had almost laughed aloud when the snarl on Ranald’s face had changed to slack-jawed confusion and he had backed away like a whipped puppy.
Of course Ranald would probably try to get even later on. Will told himself that he didn’t care. With any luck, he would be safely back in the future by that time.
The afternoon went slowly past as Will worked harder than he ever had before. The only break he took was when he went to the garderobe—which was what they called a toilet—and he didn’t stay there long. It was only a hole on a stone pedestal, and it smelled so bad he held his nose the whole time. He looked for a place to wash his hands and found a pitcher of water and a bowl. The bowl was the sink, he realized, and the drab yellow lump at the side was the soap. He poured water into the bowl, washed his hands, and dumped the bowl’s contents down the toilet hole. He wasn’t sure he’d done it right, but he wasn’t staying there any longer; he was ready to gag as it was.
Somewhere between stoking the fire, stirring the stew, and scraping the grates, Will must have proved to Cook that he was a good worker. When one of the kitchen girls went out to draw the ale, Cook put Will in charge of pitting cherries. It was tedious work, but at least he could sit down to do it, and she was in a talkative mood.
Unfortunately, Cook wanted to talk about the Stewarts, especially one she called “the Wolf.” Apparently the Wolf liked to get rid of his enemies (he had a lot of these) by hurling them over the battlements of his castle to the rocks a hundred feet below. Rumor had it he’d burned down a cathedral (just because he felt like it) and had a nice deep dungeon especially equipped for torture. Worse yet, he lived in the next glen—close enough to do a night’s raid and get back again before dawn. Will was worried at first, until Cook mentioned that the Wolf had lived over a hundred years before.
“But his great-great-great-grandson is chief of the Stewarts now, and he’s near as bad as the Wolf, that accursed whelp.” Cook measured flour and spices into the largest bowl Will had ever seen, and added honey from a crock. “Neil Gointe Stewart is young yet, and hasn’t come into his full measure of wickedness. But you mark my words, he’s on his way. Why else do you think they call him ‘gointe’?”
Will pitted his last cherry and wiped his fingers on a rag, leaving red streaks. “What does it mean?”
“Bitter and twisted, that’s what it means, and you’d know it if you saw him face-to-face—a little runt of a man, with a thin, sour mouth and a nasty squint on him that would do justice to a forest wildcat.”
For a moment Will’s breath stopped. He remembered, all too clearly, the murders he had seen through the time window—the two men spitted like chickens and lying in their blood, the little boy who looked like Jamie flung onto a horse and taken away. The leader of the raiders had been a small, thin-faced man, with a vicious squint that had seemed to pierce Will like a spear.
Will let out his breath cautiously. “Has he ever murdered anyone?”
“Who?” Cook scraped the pitted cherries into the bowl and stirred vigorously. “Ellen, hurry up with that pastry. Will, mend the fire and stir the stew.”
“Neil Gointe. Has he ever murdered anyone?”
Ellen, elbow deep in pastry dough, lifted a plump, pale face. “He’s going to be angered enough to murder once he hears about the new charter!”
Cook chuckled richly. “Aye, that he will. It was a good day for Sir Robert when the king granted him those lands about Loch Rannoch.”
Ellen giggled. “The Stewarts wanted them, but the Stewarts didn’t get them!”
The cook waggled her spoon in the air. “Serves them right, the wicked, ranting lads, they with their cattle stealing and their murd—” Cook stopped, sniffing the air. “Blessed Saint Cuthbert, the bread! Pull it out of the oven before it burns, girl!”
Ellen lo
oked up from the mound of dough. “My hands are all messy!” she wailed.
“You, then, William! Haste ye, now!”
Will couldn’t see anything that looked remotely like an oven. But then he remembered how Nan had taken them on a tour of the castle, and Jamie had run inside the great fireplace to stick his head in a hole in the wall.
Will dashed inside the massive fireplace, avoiding the fire and big pot of bubbling stew in the center, and lifted the long-handled bread peel off its peg on the wall. Carefully, he shoved the flat wooden peel into the baking hole and under the first well-browned loaf, and then the next.
He slid the round, crusty loaves onto the table and went back for more. When he had emptied that oven of bread, he saw another baking hole and emptied it, too.
Cook nodded, her fat face satisfied. “You’re a canny lad. Now put the bread in the basket—no, the big one.”
Will picked up the warm round loaves and tucked them into the massive basket. “So have the Stewarts murdered anyone lately?” he persisted. “Like, in the last year or so?”
“Och, aye,” said Cook, “there’ve been terrible murders in the last years, and raids, and thieving, and Neil Gointe Stewart behind it all—or so they say.”
Ellen thumped the rolling pin onto the pastry. “Under his hair they say he has devil’s horns!”
Cook snorted. “That’s just your imagination, girl. He’s got no devil’s horns.”
“Well, he acts like twenty devils, ye can’t deny that.” Ellen waved her rolling pin. “Everyone knows he was the one behind those murders when young Master James first came. Those two men-at-arms were murdered in cold blood, and young James got such a blow on the head he was half-mad for months.”
“Half-mad?” said Will.
Cook shot him a look. “He’s fine now, ye understand,” she said. “But at first he was out of his head. Thought he was some other boy, from some other place—and kept raving about things that made no sense at all. Carts on wheels that go with no oxen or horse to pull them, and great silver carriages in the sky that fly like birds!”
“Pictures that move and talk, too,” Ellen added. “And lamps that light when you push a magic button in the wall!”
“The laird and his lady were that worrit,” Cook said, lowering her voice, “they thought of sending for the boy’s parents, away off in France. But we had a good leech here, a doctor, who opened a vein and bled him—”
“Nay,” Ellen interrupted, “it was after the good monk brought him water from the holy well—”
“And then the folk healer was about to feed him a mouse from a horn spoon, when all of a sudden, young James sat up, said he must have been mistaken, and that it had all been a wild dream when his head was addled. Ever since he’s been just fine, except he’s forgotten how to speak French.”
Will choked slightly. Eating a mouse? No wonder Jamie had decided to agree that his memories of life in the future were nothing but crazy dreams. He’d gone along with what everyone told him was true, and after a while, he had even come to believe it. Most five-year-olds probably would, in the end.
But still—wouldn’t Jamie remember the truth, at least a little? Especially once he saw his own brother? And what had happened to the real laird’s nephew, the little boy who had been taken away by Neil Gointe Stewart?
A sound of tramping feet and the clash of metal filled the long hall, and Cook whirled around. “Get in another two loads of wood, boy—they’re about to bar the gates for the night, and I want plenty on hand.” She pointed with her ladle. “Scoot!”
Will ran to get the wood, glad to see that the rain had stopped. Still, he scurried past the guards with his head low; he didn’t want to catch Ranald’s attention. On his second trip, he was stopped to wait outside the castle gate with several other latecomers. The sun was setting over the Tay river valley, peeking out from beneath a curling cloud, and golden light like long fingers lay across the green land.
To Will’s surprise, the gangly teenager, Cook’s old pot boy, was waiting to be let in as well. The boy stood awkwardly in line, shifting his weight, his gaze flicking to the guard at the door and then down to the ground.
Will moved a step nearer. “Are you going to try for your old job back again? That’s okay if you are,” he added hastily. “I’m probably leaving soon.”
The teenager started, nearly dropping the wooden cask he carried. “N—no.”
“Are you working someplace else, then?” Will hoped the boy was getting enough to eat. He looked awfully thin.
The teenager swallowed hard, and his Adam’s apple moved convulsively up and down. His eyes seemed to bulge a bit, like a rabbit’s, as the guard turned to him.
“And what’s your business at Castle Menzies, this late in the day?” The guard was not Ranald, Will was glad to see, and he looked friendly enough.
“I bear a gift for the guardhouse,” the teenage boy said rapidly, as if repeating a memorized speech. “My master’s heard of the new lands come to the Menzies, an’—an’ is well pleased. He wishes that the guards should celebrate as well.” The boy lifted the keg in his arms a little, as if to show it off.
“Ho! Water-of-life!” The guard’s face split in a wide grin as he reached forward to take the keg. “Who is your master, boy? For we should surely thank him.”
“M—Mungo Menzies. But he does not want thanks. He asks only that I return the cask in the morn and that you give me shelter this night, for the sun is almost down.”
“That we will, and welcome!”
The teenage boy shuffled over the threshold without a backward glance. And soon enough Will, too, was inside and unloading the wood in the kitchen.
“JANET!” bellowed the cook.
A blowsy-looking girl stuck her head around the corner.
“Tell Dougal to get that ale up now. And you bring the cheese. Ellen, aren’t you done with that pastry yet? Bess, hurry up, fill the tureens with that stew—by our Lady, can’t you dafties do what’s needed without being told every minute?”
“And if we did anything without being told,” Janet muttered under her breath as she passed Will, staggering under the weight of a large wheel of cheese, “she’d be just as crabbit. Watch out, here comes the steward.”
A man with a long nose, high cheekbones, and an air of command entered the kitchen, carrying a ledger.
“I’m getting supper up now,” said the cook, her face redder than usual. “Can accounts wait until after?”
“Yes, yes,” said the steward, shooting a keen look around the kitchen full of activity. “In fact I came to tell you that it will be some time before I come to do an accounting; the laird has some other business for me, having to do with the new land grant, that will keep me busy for some days. Please keep a list of the stores you use in the kitchen until then.” He took a sheet of paper from his ledger and laid down a stick that looked like a squared-off bit of gray, soft stone.
“Keep a list?” The cook snorted. “That’s all well enough for those who know how to write. I’ll keep the list in my head, where it’s always been.”
“Ah.” The steward looked taken aback. “Well, it might be several days. Can you really remember that long, or shall I send my clerk down to write for you?”
“I can write,” said Will without thinking.
Cook stared at him. “You? A pot boy?”
The steward looked at him sidelong. “Let’s see you do it, lad. Write this: ‘twelve pounds of oaten flour.’”
Will picked up the gray stick, which, as it turned out, was like a piece of pencil lead without the wood around it, and wrote the sentence.
The steward smiled down at him. “The monks taught you, did they? Did they teach you how to figure, as well?”
“Sort of,” said Will cautiously.
“Here,” said the steward, “try this sum. If I bought an oil cruet for three groats halfpenny, a firkin of soap for a half-angel, and a silver saltbox for two gold nobles, how much would I have spent altogether?�
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“Um…,” said Will. How was he supposed to know what a half-angel or a noble was worth? And what on earth was a firkin? He scratched his head and said, “I can’t add Scottish money.”
The steward laughed. “What other coin would you use? Never mind,” he added kindly. “Just write down the stores Cook tells you, and how much of each, and I’ll do the adding.”
“What should I write?” Will asked Cook as the steward disappeared down the hall.
“Nothing now, you daftie!” said Cook. “Put that paper away and hurry up, lad, what are you dawdling for? Take the bushel of bread up to the Great Hall, and mind you don’t drop it!”
Will folded the paper and stuck it inside his plaid along with the gray lead stick. “Where’s the Great—” he began, but Cook pointed at Janet’s disappearing backside. Hefting the basket by its withy handles, Will followed the kitchen girl down a hall, through a storeroom, and up a narrow stair he had never noticed before. Then suddenly the noise of voices increased and he was in the Great Hall.
It was different than he remembered. Oil lamps flared and smoked in their hanging cressets, and the great central fireplace blazed with a cheerful crackle. Banners, red and white, hung at intervals, and candles cast a warm glow on the long tables that ran the length of the room. But darkness hung in the corners of the hall and gathered in clots overhead between the heavy oaken beams.
“What are you waiting for?” Janet clumped back from the massive sideboard where she had deposited her cheese. “Hurry, now, put that bread on the table, and then get back to the kitchen. Don’t dawdle, boy!”
Someone had put smaller baskets on the tables, and Will went around to every one, filling them with the round, heavy loaves. He tried to avoid stepping on the dogs that whined underfoot, but someone’s foot got in his way and he tripped. Will caught at the basket, but one loaf fell out. It was instantly buried under a swarm of yelping dogs, and Will scrambled to his feet.