The Third Witch

by Rebecca Reisert

  “You need to be swift, moving back and forth from the kitchen and up the stairs,” Master Steward informs us, swaying back and forth. “When his lordship is in attendance, I do not expect to see any of you moving at a pace less than a run.”

  “When does His Lordship get here?” I ask.

  Master Steward looks down his broad nose at me but does not answer. Instead he shows us where the planks and trestles are stored and makes us practice setting up the long wooden tables and thebenches. There are a great many tables, but they do not completely fill the room, which is the biggest room I have ever seen. Even the fireplace is huge. If I were to stand in the middle of it and stretch out both arms, my fingertips would not even reach the sides.

  Master Steward climbs to the dais at the far end of the room. He waves his hand back and forth over the raised platform. “The lord and lady and highest-ranking guests sit up here.”

  On the dais stand two large chairs with the heads of dragons carved at the end of each armrest. “The first table you set up will be the one on the dais,” he says.

  “I’ll do it!” I flail my arms about, hoping to catch Master Steward’s notice. This can give me a way to reach Him.

  He stares down his nose at me again, sways, and then snaps his fingers at Ban and Alpen, the newest lads. “You two will set up the dais table.”

  He next shows us the wooden chest in which the long, snowy white cloths are kept to be spread over the tables.

  “Before each meal you must cover the tables with these cloths.” He shows us how to place three across the dais table—one longways and then two across the ends. He looks speculatively at restless little Mungo, who is jiggling from foot to foot. Then he turns to me. “This will be your task.”

  He adds, “But on the tables on the floor, use only a single cloth each.”

  He leads us to a barrel. “Before every meal, you will sprinkle the rushes on the floor with this sweet-smelling mixture.” I sniff it. My nose makes out lavender, bee balm, moth bane, dragon’s tongue, woodruff, and pine needles.

  He shows us another chest in which the goblets are kept.

  “You will give each person at the high table up on the dais a goblet. To the people in the middle tables, the warriors and such, you will give one goblet to every two people. At these tables in the back, the servants and foot soldiers will share one goblet among every four people.”

  He explains that the first meal of the day is served at nones, the ninth bell after daybreak. “Each meal is served in two shifts.” At the first meal, the principal servants will eat after the lord, the lady, the guests, and the men at arms have finished. “Then you will clean up the cloths and wash the dishes.” The last meal of the day is served just after sunset. “The servants will eat first at day’s end. After they finish, you will tidy the tables and set them with the cloths for the warriors and high-born folk. You need put down no cloths for the servants.”

  “Please, Sir Steward,” Mungo pipes up, his fingers jiggling against his leg, “will we be eating with the servants?”

  “You kitchen folk must eat catch as catch can.”

  I grow impatient with all these boring details. “Where are His Lordship’s chambers?” I ask.

  Again Master Steward ignores me. His unfocused eyes slide over the tops of our heads. “All of you must learn to set up the tables as quickly as you can. If you are not nimble and quick, I will whip you myself.”

  He assigns special duties. The biggest lads, Ban and Alpen, are to hand out the goblets as well as set up the dais. Little Mungo is given the easy task of scattering rushes and herbs. All of us must set up the trestle tables. Master Cook tells Ban and me to set out the trenchers.

  “What be trenchers?” Ban asks.

  Brude snorts with laughter. “What a pinchbrain!” he jeers. He wallops big Ban across the back of the head. “Empty as a witch’s heart!” he calls out, and the rest of them jeer and laugh.

  Master Steward frowns at our merriment. “After you set up the tables, you will run to Master Baker. He will have a basket of slices of bread from the day before. You will run back here and portion them out in the same manner as the goblets.” He frowns at Brude, who is making faces at us. “When we return to the kitchen, Master Baker will show you how to slice the round loaves into the square trenchers.”

  “Where do we find the knives to give the guests?” I ask.Perhaps I can find a better knife than the broken-blade dagger tucked in my girdle.

  He tells us that we need not bother with knives. “Each guest will bring his own.”

  He stresses that we are to run everywhere. “If the food grows cold, I will whip you.”

  My eyes keep slipping back to the bigger of the two chairs on the dais.

  “If you drop even a morsel, I will whip you,” Master Steward says.

  I can picture Him there. In just a handful of days, I will be beside Him. How easy it will be in my guise as a scullery lad to step in from behind, my dagger in hand, and—

  “Please, Master Steward, “ I blurt out, “I will be glad to serve at the high table.”

  Master Steward gives a bark of sound followed by several more. It takes me a moment to understand that he is laughing at me. He reaches out his long arm and hits me on the left ear. He turns to the lads.

  “This boy thinks he can wait on the high table.” The tone of his voice invites them to laugh. They all do, all except Pod, who has been silent the whole time.

  I hate them all. If I were a true witch, I would turn them all into slimy creeping things.

  “Boy!” Master Steward grabs both my shoulders. He shakes me till my teeth chatter. “You will have naught to do with the high table or any table. Scullery lads are lower than the lowliest dung beetle in the castle.” He releases me. Over the ringing in my ears, I hear the sound of Brude’s snickering. Master Steward says, “Lads who are training to be men at arms will serve at the tables. We have a lad who is being fostered who will serve at the high table.” He sways back and forth silently for a moment, as if mustering strength to train such a hopeless band of servers.

  “You kitchen lads will carry the dishes up the stairs to the doorwayto the hall,” Master Steward continues. “They will be taken from you there by the serving boys. If you drop a morsel, I will whip your legs with a willow wand so they ache for a week.”

  Then we are put to work scrubbing out the Great Hall. I do not know which is harder, scrubbing so long it wears your knees to pulp or running up and down the stairs with buckets of water so heavy they near pull your arms from their sockets.

  There is no proper supper that night, just bread, green cheese, and ale. This night’s bread is fresh and hot. Lisette motions us over to a corner of the kitchen, far from the fire but cozy enough, where she has a pile of crusts and a bowl of broth. We take turns dipping the crusts into the fragrant broth, while Lisette tells us about her three living children—Jimmie, the wafer maker, Donal, the ship’s master, and Doatha, the mother of six fine sons. “For many years they have begged me to make my home with them, but I have always preferred the bustle of a castle to the peace of a village. Of late, however, I have felt the desire to be among my kin.”

  Although my head is thick with sleepiness, I force myself to keep awake because it feels so good to be warm and have a belly full of food. My ears grow just as full of Lisette’s tales about her good children, especially wild, impish, good-natured Donal, who is quick with the jokes and even quicker to protect his mother and little brother and sister. As I listen I try to imagine what it would be like to grow up with a mother like Lisette in a home full of wafers and broth.

  T H I R T E E N

  THE NEXT MORNING Master Cook clangs pots together to rouse us. We grab crusts from a heap on a table, and as we gnaw on them, Brude struts about, assigning tasks. I hope to be working today as a scribe, but Master Cook is grinding some roots into a pulp and ignores me.

  “ ’Tis a good two days at least till his lordship reaches us,” Brude says, tossing back
his pretty curls. “So Master Cook has offered his kitchen lads to help out elsewhere.”

  Brude’s smile is tinged with poison. “Ban and Alpen will assist Master Poulterer by mucking out the poultry yard.” I rejoice at my escape. Brude turns to me. “I have a special task for you, Gilly.”

  I do not like the look of his cold eyes above his smiling rosebud mouth. “Gilly, you and your brother are such little muck-babies, I find it fitting to send you both to shovel out the night soil from the latrine pit.”

  I press my lips together, not letting out the refusal I long to spit in his smug, pretty face.

  My life is an arrow, and His heart is my home. Let me say nothing, do nothing, that will remove me from my destiny. I am too close to mytarget to risk being cast out now. My chance, once squandered, may never come again.

  The backside of the castle squats at the edge of a cliff looking toward the mouth of the sea. We servants relieve ourselves in a closet along the northernmost castle wall. The hole of that closet’s shaft is directly over the waters of the firth. When I sit in that latrine, I seem to hear the panting of the sea beneath us. The highborn folk find it too long a walk from the keep to the back castle wall, so the masons built them a latrine closet in the back corner of the Great Hall. The shaft of the closet is atop the mound at the rear of the keep.

  Brude tells Pod and me to get shovels and sacks. “No dinner for you until you finish the task. I think ’twill suit the talents of you both.”

  I hate him.

  Pod and I tie scraps of cloth about our noses and mouths to keep out the smell. All morning, we wrestle with the unwieldy shovels, lifting out shovel after shovel of the foul-smelling stuff and emptying it into the sacks. Pod works hard, the tip of his tongue sometimes poking out of his lips, his brows knitted in concentration. He keeps peeking over at me and struggles with his big shovel as he tries to use it just the same way I use mine. To pass the time, I teach him some of the songs I learned as a child. He is not quick at picking up the words, but he bobs his head in time to the tune, and whenever I stop, he begs me to keep singing. His favorite is the ballad about the knight and the wizard’s cat. He has me sing it five times.

  Although the spring air is chill, the work keeps us from feeling cold, and the night soil itself is warm like banked embers. Partway through the morning, Lisette bustles over.

  “My little cabbages, this will help against the smell.” She has strung bay leaves on threads, and she ties a garland about each of our throats. It makes the work a little less smelly . . . but only a little.

  The one good side to the messy business is that we are out of sight of the other workers, especially Brude. Halfway through the morning, I have an idea.

  “Keep working,” I tell Pod. “I must go to relieve myself.”

  He nods. I must say, although the boy is not clever, he is as fine and faithful a worker as I have ever seen.

  I nip round the keep. No one from the kitchen is in sight. I start up the stairway to the Great Hall. I hear steps coming down. I begin to flee, but then I decide to brazen it out.

  A strong-bodied gray-haired man appears, perhaps a guard or an armorer. He carries a long dagger in his belt. He snatches the dagger out of his belt and holds it in front of him. His nose wrinkles as he smells me.

  “Where do you think you are going, sprout?” His voice is scornful,-but his eyes are wary.

  I make my voice soft and humble. “My brother and I, we’re mucking out the garderobe. I’ve been sent to run up to the top to look down and check that we’ve made it all clean and sweet.”

  After a splinter of time, he says, “Then do not dally. Up and do the business and nip right down again.”

  As I dash past him, he presses himself against the wall so I will not soil his clothes. He calls after me, “ ’Tis not safe for lads to wander about the castle. You are lucky indeed that I did not mistake you for an enemy spy come here to scout out the castle.”

  Instead of stopping at the Great Hall, I climb up another floor. Surely this must be where His chamber is. My heart stops for a moment when I reach the top of the stair.

  Although the first chamber is empty of any furniture, my blood begins to quiver. I am come so close. But I know that no one as important as a lord would lodge in the outermost chamber, so I move to the next. Almost in an enchantment, I wander from chamber to chamber. In one of these chambers, He will lie. I can picture myself, my broken dagger in hand, wandering to find Him late at night.

  “Hey!”

  Another man approaches, twig broom in hand.

  “Lad, you have no business up here!” He looks at me closely. “Areyou one of the cook’s lads? I need to warn him that his lads should never—”

  I turn and gallop down the stairs. I hear the man thundering behind me, but I am too fleet for him. I run back to Pod.

  My heart sings. How easy it will be.

  HOWEVER, AS NETTLE SAYS, what is woven under the sun unravels under the moon. It is not as easy as I imagined.

  Supper that night is bread, cheese, and a sticky porridge flavored with almonds. Lisette makes us saffron wafers and peels them off her griddlestone, one by one, and tosses them to those of us who crowd before her, clamoring for a treat. Each eager prize winner must juggle the wafer from hand to hand for a minute or so, letting it cool before taking a bite. Mungo gets too eager and chomps down on his as soon as he catches it. He gives a wail and rushes to the water bucket to plunge his whole head down into the water. The folk roar with mirth. As soon as he lifts his dripping head out of the water, he takes a second bite of the fresh wafer and a smile cracks his face.

  Midway through, I notice Pod is not in the crowd. I slip outside.

  “Pod?” I call. “Pod, there are treats.”

  I find him sitting on the side of the well, looking very small in the huge purple shadows of the falling night.

  “Pod, what are you doing out here all alone? Lisette is making wafers.”

  He sighs, sounding more like a tired old man than a young boy. “I don’t like it here, Gilly. When do you think Momma will come for me?”

  In spite of myself, my heart flies out to him. I well know what it is like to be abandoned and small. Yet I am angry at him for feeling this. It’s fatal for me to divide my heart now. No. I will be singlehearted or I will be nothing.

  So when I answer, my voice is edged like the small stone axes I find from time to time in the wood. “Boy, well you know that yourmomma has a hurt foot. ’Twill take her a goodly while to reach this castle. I doubt not but she will need to rest along the way and baby her foot so it can carry her the entire journey.”

  To my horror, his lip begins to tremble and tears roll down his cheeks. God’s blood, but he is a tender shoot. “What ails you now, boy?”

  He ducks his head low and whispers, “I do not like to think of Momma out there hurt and all alone.”

  My breath escapes in an impatient puff. “You found someone to take care of you. Your momma will find someone to tend to her along the way.”

  He looks up eagerly, his face like a May Day sky breaking through the rain. “I had not thought of that. But it could happen. It could, could it not, Gilly?” Before I can answer, he begins to cloud up again. “But what if—”

  Tongs of the devil but I am weary of his questions. To distract him, I quickly say, “Lisette is making wafers in the kitchen. She will be sad if you do not eat some.”

  His face is sunshine again. “She says that I could learn to make wafers.”

  She also said she does not have the time to teach you. It is a foul thing to raise this hope in you and then refuse to teach you. But I do not say these words to him. The words that come from my mouth are “There are many good things about living in a castle.”

  To my surprise he gives a little snort and rolls his eyes as I have seen Lisette do. It tickles me to see such spunk in him. I keep my voice as grave as an untithed parson’s. “Think, Pod. Here we are safe from both beast and outlaw.”

  E
xcept for the great beast and outlaw who must soon arrive!

  “But,” he says, “not from that mean lad, Brude, or that bad man in the kitchen.”

  “Here we are warm.”

  He considers this for a moment, then nods.

  I press on. “Here we have good, plentiful food.”

  He nods again. In a solemn tone he says, “When I have become a maker of wafers, I will live with my momma in a castle.”

  I look at him, little and brave and alone, and in my heart I make a new vow. I will find a way to make Lisette agree to train you as a wafer maker.

  I must do this quickly, for despite my fine boastings, I do not really expect to survive my battle with Him.

  TWO DAYS LATER, He comes with all His retinue.

  Once He is spotted on the road, the castle throbs with excitement. The bell begins to ring wildly, and Mungo comes clattering into the kitchen, screaming, “The guards in the tower see the lord and his party approaching. They say he comes with more men at arms than an abbot has prayers.” There is more shouting and running and twitching of garments than I could ever imagine. Like spit on a hot griddle, I jump this way and that with excitement and nerves, desperation and fear.

  In no time at all, I hear the sound of the gates shuddering open, but when I start to run out to join the others to watch the approach, the alewife grabs me by the neck of my gown.

  “Not so fast, laddie.” She thrusts a paddle in my hand. “His lordship will want a welcome cup. I have set the ale and the spices to warm o’er the fire. Set yourself to stir them until his lady sends for the cup.”

  No! He is supposed to be alone. She cannot be with Him. I swallow hard and make my voice deliberately casual.