It takes a long, long time to creep upward. Every few inches I pause and listen hard. Is that the sound of someone up above? My heart pounds loud as a battledrum. Although out in the air the day is cool, inside the shaft I am too warm. Halfway up, a stone falls loose and I start to slide. I scrabble madly and push my hands hard against the wall and press hard with my feet. If I were to fall now, I would break my bones—perhaps even my neck. But for once luck is on my side, and I slide no more. I let myself hang there until I have mastered my breath.
I do not let myself think about what my hands and feet are touching.
Soon a faint, water-gray light begins to seep in from above. The air grows less clotted with stink. I hold still for a few breaths, listening, but I hear no sound from the chamber above me. I inch up silently until the top of my head brushes against the underside of a wooden lid. I balance carefully and use one hand to push up the lid. I then hold very still.
No sound.
I push the lid all the way up. It makes a soft slap when it hits against the wall. I hold still and listen.
No sound.
My arms snake through the hole, and I scrabble up till I can roll onto the floor. I curl up like a clenched fist and listen.
Silence . . . except for my breath.
My arms ache. My brow is sweaty. I am afraid the stink I smell is not just the night filth from the latrine but on my clothes as well. After a little while, I uncurl and look around.
This is His world, His private world, and I am in it.
Bring me three pieces of His heart, Mad Helga told me. I have puzzled over this but I have not been able to determine what Mad Helga meant. She cannot mean for me to kill Him because my reward for bringing the pieces of His heart is to be her help in bringing about His death.
Could the heart of a buck have done just as well? Suddenly I feel very silly. Perhaps I could have taken the heart of a buck to Mad Helga and pretended it was His. Then I need not have endured all that I have endured here at the castle.
Nonetheless, since I am here, I decide to look around. Perhaps something here will help me unravel Mad Helga’s riddle.
If not, I will take the heart of a buck to Mad Helga.
I am in a small room, the garderobe. A basket filled with straw sits nearby on the floor. It is meant to be used to clean oneself after using the latrine.
I chuckle. I could surely use some cleaning. I grab a handful of the sweet, scratchy straw and scrape it back and forth on one hand, then the other, then drop it down the shaft. With another handful I scour my legs. Another handful scrubs my feet. I scour my face with one last handful. I know it is daft to waste my time cleaning up, but still I do it.
Why do you still delay, girl? Could it be that you are afraid to do what you have come to do? Your life is an arrow . . .
On my hands and knees, I crawl to the door and nudge it open.
On the other side is a grand chamber, the grandest that I have ever seen.
In the center stands a bed near as big as Nettle’s whole hut. It stands high off the floor, like a ship with a carved pole at each corner. A frame of carved poles sits atop the poles, just the same width and length as the top of the bed. Fine woven blue cloth drapes across it, making a bed-roof like an upside-down sea, and blue curtains hang from the frame, falling down each pole like a silken waterfall. At night, I reckon, they can be pulled so that the whole bed is hidden behind the curtains.
A lot of things seem hidden in this castle.
On top of the bed itself lies a thick bearskin, looking so soft and warm that I long to curl up in it and take a nap. Several wolfskins are scattered across the floor as rugs, so finely tanned and silky that my old wolfskin seems but a snot rag. At one end of the chamber is ahuge fireplace, big enough for me to stand in without my head’s touching the top. The stone around it and on the mantel is carved with vines and leaves. In front of the fireplace are two oaken benches, one with a carved wooden back and one without. At the foot of the bed is a wooden chest, near as wide as the bed. Its lid also is carved with vines and flowers, which have been painted red, green, and yellow. Underneath the narrow window there is a smaller chest that looks to be made of carved ivory or a fine, smooth white stone.
Pounded into the far wall are several pegs for clothing. From one hangs a gown of heavy silk, as red as holly berries or fresh blood. Its sleeves, bodice, and hem are embroidered with green and gold vines all twisted and wound round each other in a beautiful dance of pattern and color. From the shoulders hang loose oversleeves of silver, no heavier than a whisper and as transparent as frost on a brook. They are like wings of a magical moth, although they are boneless and could never fly. I am drawn to that wondrous gown just like a moth to rushlight. Before I realize it, I am stroking the gown with my rough, dirty hand, and then I have plucked it from its peg and am holding it to the front of my body. For an instant it transforms me from a warrior—a thing of revenge and hate—into a princess who is leading a dance in a torch-lit Great Hall. How Pod would stare could he see me in this bit of fancy.
Go to the looking glass, I order myself. Look into it and see how monstrous you look, stubble-head, peacocking about in—
I cannot bear to see my matted hair and boy’s face peeking out above this enchantment of silk and broidery. I will shut this gown up in the long chest so it does not call to me. I bundle it up in my arms and move quickly to the chest by the bed. I lift the lid—which is very heavy—to drop the bewitched gown inside.
Then I hear voices and approaching footfalls.
T W E N T Y - O N E
QUICK AS A FINCH’S WHISTLE, I tumble into the large chest and ease the lid back down. I am lying on top of the silk gown. The inside of the chest smells of lavender, woodruff, golden cat’s paw, and oak. To my relief, the weight of my body presses the gown and the cloth beneath it flat enough so that the lid shuts entirely. Should I be discovered, I will be killed. I am stiff and scared.
“Must you indeed leave so soon, my lord?”
At the sound of her voice, I begin to shiver. My muscles pull so tight they shake. My stomach twists within me like a wrung-out dish clout. Focus, Gilly. Think of your revenge.
A deep voice answers. His voice.
“Aye, lady, I must. I have stayed here more than three weeks. ’Tis past the time I should be gone. Now near Fife, the messenger tells me, the rebel army gathers.”
Her tone is scornful. “Then let the Thane of Fife deal with the traitor who camps in his pasture.” Her voice softens. I hate her seductive tone. “You have been away at war so much during the past few years, my love. Stay with me. Fife can handle Fife.”
“Fife!” The word is more the snarl of a beast than the speech of a man. “I am told Fife has come to the north.”
“Indeed? I had not thought him to be a coward.”
“He claims he has come north only to visit his wife and his brood of children, who have sought sanctuary in her brother’s castle. He says he will return to the south once he has seen to them.”
“If Fife can neglect this war to see to the well-being and pleasure of his wife, cannot the lord of Glamis do as much?”
“Fife holds his duty to the king as lightly as milkpod fluff. He is a silly light-minded man—”
“But if he cares so little about the enemy in his own lands, then there is no cause for you to leave. I say again, let Fife deal with Fife.”
“My dearest love, ’tis not the enemy at Fife that draws me. There are also battles to the east.”
I wonder briefly if Nettle and Mad Helga have begun again to glean the battlefields. Focus!
His voice grows harsh. “Today I receive tidings that Macdonald has marched an army of Irish mercenaries toward the camp of our king. My place is there, my love, defending good King Duncan, not passing my days here in luxury and idleness. I am not Fife.”
“Am I luxury? Am I idleness?” Although her voice is soft and clear, I am shocked by the hunger underneath her words. “Let all of Scotland melt into t
he Western Sea and let good King Duncan rot to dust! I am your place. Stay with me.”
He, too, seems to hear her hunger speaking, for He is silent. After a while, I hear her light steps tapping angrily over to the fireplace. There is a pause in which I fear my jagged breath will give away my hiding place. Then I hear His heavy footsteps lumbering over to her.
When at last she speaks, her voice is a bowstring pulled too taut. “You play me false, my lord. Before God you do. You claim to love me, yet you love war more than you love me. I have sacrificed all for you—I have given you everything—and yet you leave me for your true mistress, the true love of your heart—”
“God help me, lady, but ’tis true, I do love battle. And even should I not love fighting, I owe fealty to my king—”
Swift as a falcon, she swoops down on his words. “Your king! King Duncan! What right has that white-livered upstart to claim to be King of Scotland?”
“Of the Scots, my love, not of Scotland. The land is free, but we Scots—we loyal Scots—serve the high king.”
“You are better fitted to be king than the silken-spined Duncan. Your blood is as royal as his. My blood is more royal. My poor, dead babe whose little body molders in the ground—even the blood of my babe—gnawed by worms and other crawling things of the darkness is more royal than our greedy king’s.”
“Lady, for all that, he is our king—”
“ Your king, not mine!” Her voice rises higher and higher like a wind in a gale.
I want to put my hands over my ears, I want to shut out her voice, her witch’s voice, a voice that seems sweet at first hearing but grows more and more deadly the more you listen. Can I squirm my dagger out of its pouch, can I spring out of the chest and drive my dagger into His heart now, can I have as my ally the element of surprise, and could I kill Him now, but now, in this instant of time? If I could know that with one blow I would drain Him of His life, I’d risk eternal damnation.
But even as I think this, I know it is a fool’s thought. He is the greatest warrior in all Scotland. Thus far my finest feat of arms was to frighten some village louts with a fence post. I can climb a latrine shaft well enough, but I doubt not that He would overcome me in any contest. He could crush me like a beetle, the breaking of my bones no more to him than the faint crack of a crushed beetle’s shell.
Still her voice whines on and on, a harp whose strings are tuned too tight. “. . . He is a poor excuse for a high king, never setting so much as his little toe onto a battlefield for his crown, his kingdom, but asking that you risk your life and your fortune, no, nor sending his sons neither—”
“They are but lads!”
“Lads big enough, I whit, to be learning how to be men. At your age, my lord, tell me, did you not wield the sword? Did you not shoulder the battle ax?”
“They say the king’s lads are scholars, not warriors—”
“Scotland needs a warrior king, not some mewling scholars. You have a better claim to the throne than Duncan’s cubs. I have a better claim. My dead babe—”
I wriggle my hands to cover my ears, but I can still hear her screeching. “—my dead babe’s blood is more royal than that of the king’s pair of cubs.”
Again there is a little silence before He speaks. When He does, His voice is slow and reluctant like the steps of a beaten ox being dragged to harness.
“What would you have of me, lady? I have sworn fealty to my king.”
“Aye, lord, that you have. And even now you fail to understand how ill you have used me. I give up everything for you, but you love your fighting and your king and I know not how much else more than you do me. You give them the high hall of your heart, and you cast me in some dark chamber, better fitted for—”
“No!” His voice thunders. I wonder if it can be heard down in the Great Hall. “ ’Tis not the king I love, although he is a good man— for all his weakness—who has borne himself both meek and mild. But I love that I have never forsworn my oath nor word. I love that the strength of my word is as strong as the strength of my arm.”
Liar. Will you lie even to the she-wolf you wed?
I expect her to thunder back at him, but when she speaks, her voice is the coo of a well-fed dove. “Oaths, kings, but you say nothing of your love for your wife. Where do I rank, lord, in the heraldry of your loves?”
His answer comes quick and strong.
“Wife, there is nothing in this world or the next that I love so much as you.”
She laughs in her throat, low and soft and secret . So would a serpentlaugh if it could laugh. “Then, lord, do I still sit in the seat of honor in your heart?”
His voice is so tender that my stomach twists. “Lady, you do not have the seat of honor because you are no guest but the very ruler of my heart itself. ’Twould give you a moment of pleasure, I would tear my heart from my chest and offer it to you on a golden platter.”
She laughs again. But I lie there, swaddled in hatred for both of them, as they continue to prattle on about the details of his parting—who will go with Him and when to plant which field and such.
Yet I pay this talk little mind for now I know how to get my revenge.
T W E N T Y - T W O
AS SOON AS the chamber is empty again, I am down the latrine shaft as quick as a cat. My heart sings. I have what I need to destroy Him. I am drunk with impatience to be gone, to take my treasure back to Mad Helga. When I reach the courtyard, it is nearly time for the castle gates to be shut for the night. If I am not gone at once, then I must wait till the gates open again at dawn. I will go mad if I have to wait the night through, so I dart into the kitchen where the bustle to prepare supper has begun.
Master Cook glares at me. “Gilly, get yourself—” and then he staggers back from the stink I give off. “Out of my kitchen! Wash yourself, clodpole, and then march back in here fast as can be. I’ll deal with you then.”
I grab a sack of nuts and cast my eyes about the kitchen, but I do not see Pod or Lisette. Ignoring Master Cook’s outraged screams, I dart back out to the courtyard. I wish I had time to get more food for the journey, but I must be out the gates before they close.
What about Pod? If he were handy, I would take him with me, even though he would slow me down, but if I take time to look forhim, I will lose my chance to be out the gates and on my way this very night. He will be fine. No doubt this is all for the best, for surely Lisette will take him on as her apprentice now that I am out of the way. Indeed, my departure will be the best possible thing to happen to him. In fact, my leaving will be a gift. Staying here, I cannot change Lisette’s mind, but by sneaking away, I assure him of a fine future. I begin to feel puffed up with virtue, but there is a nagging bit inside that makes me feel guilty for not even bidding him farewell. He has gotten over his mother’s leaving just fine, I tell that nagging voice, and he will have no trouble getting over me. It will do him good to toughen up. Let him learn to be a man. He cannot always stay a helpless child. My leaving will be good for him.
Then I am out the castle gates and on my way home.
I BURST INTO THE HUT, filthy, exhausted from my days of traveling, my skin scratched by thorns and brambles, with twigs in my hair. But I am elated, too.
There is no sign of Nettle. Mad Helga cowers behind the churn as if she is expecting the armies of Scotland to arrest her and drag her to her execution.
“I have the three pieces of His heart.”
Mad Helga stares at me for a moment. Her face is as blank as new cheese. Then she hobbles back to her old place by the fire hearth, singing a wordless little tune to the tiny bones in her bony hand.
I shriek like a drowning sailor, “Did you not hear me, old woman! I have them.”
When she still fails to respond, I stomp over to her and jerk her chin up so I can stare into her good eye.
“Mad Helga, I have what you asked me to get.”
I let go of her chin and stand there, triumphant as God on the seventh day of creation. To my frustration, she looks
back down to her handful of bones and shakes them back and forth, singing in a reedy voice:
Dragon’s blood, revenge, and the heart of stone—
These are things best left alone.
Seek high-low,
But if you go—
I stamp my foot and screech, “Leave off, old woman! Bring me the three pieces of His heart, you said. Bring them and I will give you the means to destroy Him, you said. I have done my part of that dark bargain. “ ’Tis your hour now.”
From behind me I hear Nettle’s voice. “ ’Tis you who should leave off, Gilly. Stop plaguing Mad Helga.” Her voice sounds tired.
I whirl around. Nettle stands at the door of the hut. On her arm is a basket filled with weeds and herbs. “Gone for more than three spans of the moon,” she says. “Now no word of greeting, but—”
“Leave off!” I shout. “When I have risked my life, sacrificed my dignity—humbled myself in the kitchens—letting a pullet paddler scold and shame me, when I have endured the jeers and japes of a rabble of unwashed bullies, when I have crawled through filth and worse than filth, when I have endured every foul thing—and now you dare tell me to leave off! Do you know what you ask, Nettle?”
Nettle sighs and moves past me to set her basket down in the corner. “Do you know what you ask, Gilly?”
I nod so hard my head rattles. “I know what I ask. My birthright!”
Nettle lowers herself to the floor. She puts the basket on her lap and starts to sort out its contents, putting each herb and grass in a different pile. I move angrily to stand in front of her. When she takes no notice of me, I knock the basket out of her hands.
“My earned birthright. I have made my life an arrow, and I shall not relax the bowstring now that I’ve pulled it taut.”
Nettle looks up at me. “Child, be you as single-eyed as a mountain troll and as brain-empty as a drunken parson’s hen that you fail to see that to carry out this mad dream would make you not a jot better than him you seek to destroy?”
The Third Witch Page 11