Tender Morsels (11 page)

‘Come help me, Urdda!’ Branza shook her sleeping sister’s shoulder. ‘There is something I want to try.’

Urdda curled tighter away from her and grunted.

‘I need you.’ Her sister poked her with all the authority of a five-year-old over a sister of four. ‘I need a person with two arms.’

‘Use Mam’s,’ said Urdda indistinctly.

‘Mam is busy sewing. Come on, you will like it.’

At last Urdda crawled out of the bed, and they dressed and sat to their sopmilk, and then Branza took two stale bread-ends and off they went. It was not far, only to a clearing a little way from the house where Branza came to see deer sometimes.

‘Now, stand,’ Branza instructed, ‘like this.’ And she stood with her arms stretched out from her sides.

Crossly, still not properly awake, Urdda did as she was told.

‘No, here, in the sunshine. Keep very still. Put your hands flatter. Yes.’ She broke off a piece of bread crust and put it on the back of Urdda’s hand.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Shh. They will not come if they hear us squabbling.’

Patiently she moved up Urdda’s arm, laying crumbs all the way. Then, to the great amusement of both of them, she placed crumbs
on top of Urdda’s head, and then moved on to the other shoulder and along the other arm. A finch flew down and landed on the first hand. ‘Do not move,’ Branza whispered. ‘I want to see you quite covered.’ And she withdrew into the forest shadows in sight of Urdda, and stood there and watched, pale and excited.

Already several birds had come—they must know this place; Branza must have fed them here before. The air began to fill with the light, dusty sound of their wings, and the pips and peeps of their calls. They landed and landed, and Urdda’s arms rocked at each landing. When the first bird arrived on her head, she managed not to cry out, but she made such faces at the catching of their claws in her hair, at the small blows of their pecking on her scalp, that she saw Branza cover her mouth to keep the laughter in, off there among the trees.

The birds were bright in the sun, and the busyness of them flaunted and flapped the sunlight so that Urdda felt radiant with them, as if they were a kind of fire flaming across the top of her. What a grand idea this was! She could see why Branza had needed her; on her own she could only have organised bread along one arm. Of course it was better to have a whole person given over to birds this way, for them to perch on and feed off.

At the same time, Urdda wanted more than anything to laugh aloud, to shake herself and explode the birds away and run. She would not, but the desire to do so itched in her bones and made her stretched arms wobble under the combined weight of the birds.

She stood straight and still, not frightening a single bird away, and Branza, hands clasped, watched her from the wood-edge until the birds had pecked up all the crumbs from Urdda’s person, and all the spilled crumbs and pieces from the grass around her feet, and one by one had flown off, leaving widening breaks in the flaring line of sunlight. Two sparrows must sit and preen awhile once they had fed, but when they were done they, too, darted away, and then Branza ran out of the trees in delight and satisfaction, waving the other bread-end. ‘Now me!’ she said. ‘That was quite wonderful!’

Once I left St Onion’s, life were both kind and cruel to me. First chance I had, I grew myself a fine beard, for very early I tired of being mistook for a child, however much advantage I could get from it in terms of irresponsibilities, and I never shaved nor trimmed it, but grew it until it was well longer than myself eventually, and my head-hairs to match it, right down to the ground. Luxuriant they were to begin with, and dark, and I tell you the ladies could not keep their hands off them for a time there, however slight and warped were the body they hid.

I never managed a trade or profession, but I had some luck at cards, and in fine company, due to the oddity of my small stature and the inscrutability of my features to most men’s eyes. There were a certain type of rich feller liked to use me much as a doll is used, to dress me up in tiny clothes and have me pop up around his house, spreading scandal and scampery. And many a year passed in this merry type of employment.

But I put all of my eggs in one basket with one lord, and off he went and died, didn’t he? And what I thought I had coming to me
through him, his family felt I ought not to gain—for certainly I had done as he said very well, and their names were all muddied about the place most satisfactory. I got barely a worm-squidge out of them. By dint of being inscrutable, though, I built and built that squidge up, to the point where it all exploded around me in a mess of thieves and cheaters—myself included, I don’t deny that—and bills for liquors I and my fellows had drunk but not paid for, meals unremunerated that we had long since shat out.

I took myself to the country very quietly upon this disaster. I had heard a while before that Hotty Annie were doing her worst out of some hedge nearby St Olafred’s somewhere, and now that I were so downcast about my fortunes, I aimed for there.

And a cheerful town I found it, though a little overdecorated with flags and shields of rampant black bears. The guard were not nearly so toothful and clawsome, though, and on the way up the street I were teased and flirted with by some most robustious young women of the laundry trade; they slapped their work very promising on the slabs along that lane. Should my fortunes turn, there will be good pickings along that lane, I thought. Heavens, I might find a lass so amiable, so amused by me, she would turn me her tuffet gratis, out of no more than curiosity. One never knew one’s luck in a strange town, I had found.

‘Annie Awmblow?’ said the wool-hag in Olafred’s market, and chewed the inside of her cheeks awhile. ‘I non’t know that name.’

‘She were a bit touched, as I remember,’ I says. ‘Had something of a talent as a charmer.’

‘Ah!’ Her friend, who had several more teeth but was none the prettier for it—oh, I was spoiled from my time of fine living, when pretty women were provided me as natural as bed and board—her friend leaned over and said, ‘A charmer called Annie? That will be Muddy Annie Bywell and no other, roun this districk.’

‘He says Awmblow,’ says the first.

‘She may’ve married,’ pointed out the second. ‘Even witches marry, you know.’

‘She may,’ I said, ‘though she were not exactly the marrying type, if I recall her right.’

‘Well, if it is her, she is widdered now. She lives by herself out by Gypsy Siding somewhere,’ said the first hag.

‘Yes,’ said the second. ‘Find the muddiest spot upcreek of the willows and strike east up the hill from there.’

‘Aye,’ laughed the other. ‘You will smell her, and her preparations.’

I followed their directions, and indeed there were a right mire a little way along from the willows, and there were also whisper-ribbons hanging out the trees’ summer leafage, and crotch-stones if you looked for them, and these told me someone were practising mudwifery hereabouts.

‘Annie!’ I struck up through the trees. ‘Annie Bywell that was Awmblow! I of come to visit you—your old friend.’

She came to the door—was it a door? Was more like the mouth of a weasel-hole. Gawd knew I would not like to go in there to look—or to sniff any deeper, blimey.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Of course I must have been almost as old as she, but Gracious the Lady knew my years had treated me better than hers had. She had bugger-all teeth left, and so her face had shrunk into itself that I remembered as so full and handsome—how jealous I’d been of her strong jaw! And now I had the stronger.

‘You rekkernise me?’ I said, and I struck a pose, the kind of lackerdee-day thing that makes the ladies think I am a good sort, to get amusement out of my stature instead of embarrassment.

‘Ach.’ She shows off her teeth, such as they are. ‘Collaby Dought the Short-stump, and no less. Behind and under all that hair like a fall of snow.’

‘This is what twoscore years will do to a man, Annie.’ I gathered my beard forward and stroked the full length of it. ‘But you were short as me once, I remember. Do you remember that, Annie-Belle?’

‘I do well,’ she said, and clacked her tongue or her gums or her throat or Gawd-help-me. ‘Things were desprit back in them days.’

‘
You
were desprit,’ I said. ‘You would jump on anything that moved, and a few things that didn’t.’

‘I weren’t desprit. I were bored. Bored, bored. Bored of coalscuttles and thin porridge and cat-soup and chilblings and blankets made of paper. A bit of pokelee-thumpelee were something to sparkle up my day.’ She sucks on some bit of mouth—a toothache, maybe. ‘And yours too, I recall.’

‘Indeed,’ I say, although ‘sparkle’ is not the word. I was mad in love with this oul witch when she were young and a looker, the way a man always is, they say, with the first one as lets him have at her hind end. It was nothing to her, of course. She grew up out of me—she just grew past me and there were other, bigger beggars for her to fry, including the biggest of all. ‘Do you hear from God-man Shakestick lately?’

‘No, he likely finds it difficult to send word to me from where he is burning, much I’m sure as he’d like to.’

‘He died?’ The very thought made me cheerful. Well I remembered the sting of that stick of his, and the bruises rising. ‘That’s a blessing, then.’

‘Except I had him paying by the end, so my livelihood took a beating. Still, change from my bottom. What you wanting, Collaby? I’m guessing it’s not a leg-over unless you of fallen on
very
hard times. Although, as I remember, you were of a decent size down there, anyway.’ Her laugh was all rattles and wheezes, like one of them bear-flags flapping on a wall. ‘Could of hired yourself out and made a fortune by now, a certain class of lady. But you hadn’t no sense of enterprise ever, did you, my duck? Just a moper-around and “poor me, poor me”. Take a seat out here and I will bring you a drink. Tea or dandwin?’

‘Make it tea,’ I said. ‘I can’t abide dandwin.’

And I sat and swang my legs and sulked awhile that she had seen me so quickly, that she knew me so well and all that story of me, because it were her story too.

‘So what piece of poor luck have you fell on, stumpet?’ Annie put down two cups between us.

‘It is too dull to go into,’ I said. ‘But some thief from Middle Millet
have took my moneys for a ride, all I had, and I’ve no way to make it back, having burnt some bridges to get it in the first place.’

‘Is always about coin,’ she said, ‘isn’t it? ’At’s what the sun and the moon is there to remind us, with their roundness and their flatness.’ This had a worn sound, like words she dragged out for one customer after another.

‘Exactly, so dull. Every day coming up and going down, like someone’s fortunes. Like someone’s bottom above a laundry-girl, so reg’lar.’

She woke up and laughed at that.

‘All I can hope,’ I went on, ‘is that my fortune will wax again. Ack-sherly, I was thinking you could help me in that.’

‘Ah, here it comes, Collaby’s scheme.’ She arranged her lips for listening.

‘I have never forgot that day at haytime, after we had done romping, you and me, and you performed that thing to my forehead and I seen—you remember, I told you all about it?’

‘You told me and told me! Jumpin alongside me like a flea in a hotpan.’

‘And you said you could get me there, to that place, if you just had but a little more powers, and I could probably stay there, or at least come and go as I pleased.’

‘Hmm.’

‘So I am wondering, did you come by them powers? Did they grow as you grew? So that now that would be possible?’

‘No, they did not. Especially they did not if you have throwed away all your money and are expecting actual sorcery for no cost. I am not such a Gormless Gussie as that.’

‘You are not,’ I agreed, ‘but I thought you had some kind of a heart.’

‘Oh, I’m all heart, where is not whiskers,’ she says, very dry. ‘But a woman must think to her own welfares. What do I get out of your proposition? A headache and half my bits and bobs used up—and you gone? But I have had you gone for most of my life, at no particular cost. You are going to have to plague me something dreadfully to make that a factor to decide me. Which, seeing you were never that
offensive—to me at least, even if you made of yourself a pig and a pain to others—I am not thinking you’re capable of it. I reckon I could still best you if it came to an out-in-out battle. There’s other things I can resort to, even if these old strings should give out.’ Or wires, she might have called those scrawny muscles, standing out from her sticks of arms.

She looked down at me. I tried to see in that saggy bag of face the little strumpet that bounced on me that day in the hay when I was in heaven, when it all was new and life turned to fey-tales for a moment. Certainly she did not look on me so superior then. We were eye to eye, snuck away together from the God-man’s toil and picnickery. That were years before she were sucked in by his power and purse.

‘Have you done such, then, for people as
do
have money?’

‘Of course I have,’ she said.

‘You dint look me in the eye to say that, Annie. I don’t believe you have.’