The Witch of Glenaster (5 page)

The parlour of the woman’s
house was fresh-scrubbed and light, and there was a kettle warming cheerfully on
the stove. I thought of Alice Pepper, and my eyes stung.

“You’ll have to watch me work,
I’m afraid,” said the large woman, as she scooted back and forth, and I was
surprised by her speed and grace. “That’s what my husband does, and him not yet
fifty, but lazy to the root of his bones, and much less cheerful!” She laughed,
then bent down towards my brother: “Do you like toffee cake?”

He nodded, but then said, his
voice small and far away:

“But I’m not hungry…”

The woman smiled.

“Well I’ll cut you a piece,
anyhow,” she said, “and you can eat it or not, as you choose.”

She did so, and Magnus soon
fetched it up in his soft fingers, a look of guilt stealing across his face at
his enjoyment of it. I ate more out of politeness than anything else, and I
noticed that the woman seemed to look at me pityingly, and I was uncomfortable
at it. Magnus licked his fingers, black with treacle, and burped. Then he cried
again, and I had to console him.

Still the woman asked us no
questions, and after a while I began to wish she would; I wanted someone to
confide in, to share my secret with. Magnus would not speak unless I did, and
what honestly could I say? “We are on our way north. Our village was destroyed
by the fire-drakes, and our parents are gone. I am going to
Glenaster
with my brother, to kill the Witch there, and when she is dead these lands
shall have peace”? I would feel stupid saying it, and regret doing so. So I
watched my brother, and gazed out of the window at the thick-clustered ivy
framing it; and the woman watched us both, as she folded her linen and ironed
her shirts.

Finally, after she had given us
more food and drink, and let us wash in her bathroom, she said:

“You’re going north, then?”

I drew a breath.

“Yes,” I replied, adding
quickly: “We have family there.”

The woman nodded, wiping her
hands on her apron, her arms rippling like dough.

“Well, I won’t try and stop
you, though I worry about you. You’re so young. But if that is where you are
headed… You seem like a sensible girl, though your face has a dark look, and I
worry about that, too. But you’ll be all right while you remain in the valley:
folk are suspicious here, but most are friendly once you get to know ‘
em
. They’ll no doubt give you some food, or let you bed
down for the night somewhere. But once you climb up to the Plateau, and the
places beyond it, you’ll want to be more careful: there are all kinds of
strangers and wilder types about these days, and if I were you I’d find a
guardsman who’s headed your way. They often like company, those that travel
alone, and will lend you their sword if danger presses.”

She sighed.

“Ah, me..! I’d let you stay
here, as long as you wished, if it was up to me…” And my brother’s eyes darted
up at this. “But my husband, he’s not so fond of children, and he wouldn’t allow
it.” She frowned. Deep, fat wrinkles kneaded her face. “He’ll be back from the
forge later, wanting his supper. Old
miserybones
…”

We took our leave of the woman
with regret, as the morning wearied into afternoon, and before we left she gave
us each a small parcel of food – “Just some cakes and pork pie, enough to keep
body and soul together for a while” – and a clean shirt for my brother, and a
summer dress for me (“They belonged to my sister’s two, but they’re long since
grown.”). She also gave me a pair of daps, and I was grateful for them, for my
feet were callused and sore. She folded the clothes carefully in paper, and put
them with our other provisions in a canvas satchel, which she hung carefully
over my shoulder. Then she kissed us both, and wished us a safe journey; and as
we threaded our way through the sunflowers at her gate, I thought when I looked
back that she was crying, though she just waved us on, and smiled. And I
realized she had not even told us her name, and we hadn’t asked.

It was true, what she said,
that people in the valley – some, at least – were friendly, and that night we
slept in the shade of a mulberry tree, outside the house of an old man who,
like the woman, did not ask us any questions, indeed hardly said a word. Magnus
was restless during the night, fidgeting so much I had to tell him sharply to
be still; and then he cried, and I held him, until the sun came up the heavens,
and we had to be going once more.

We breakfasted on apples the
old man gave us, and some of the cakes whose crumbs now dusted the lining of
the satchel; and we picked blackberries as we walked along, an eager brook
babbling beside us most of the morning, until it turned east, and we headed on,
northwards. By lunchtime Magnus was dragging his feet; by mid-afternoon he was
hardly moving at all. Finally he stopped, dead, as the dusk settled, and I
tried to urge him onward. But he refused, shaking his head in that stubborn way
of his, his arms crossed, his face a sulking frown.

“What is it?” I asked, feeling
as stupid as I must have sounded. “We can’t stop here.”

He glowered at me.

“I want to go home. Why have
you brought us here? Mum and Dad will be looking for us. They will wonder where
we are. Take me home.” And he set his feet as firmly as he could.

“Little one… We need to get
help. That’s what Mum and Dad would want. We need to go to the Capital, to
speak to the emperor. Our village has been destroyed, Mag. We cannot go back.
You see that, don’t you…? Here, let me give you a hand…”

He drew away from me, red-faced
and implacable.

“What about these messages?
That you were going to leave for them? In case they follow us…”

“I have left them, mister,”
(and I said this gently). “I put a note in the woman’s bathroom, and one in the
old man’s kitchen…” And indeed I had, though it was more for honesty’s sake, as
a thank you for their kindness, than out of any hope of rescue. “You know I
want to see Mum and Dad just as much as you…” And I held out my arm to him, and
silently, after a few moments, he took it, wiping the rumour of a tear from his
cheek, and we continued on.

Our journey for that first week
or so followed a similar pattern: I always wishing to push forward, to get to
our destination as quickly as possible; my brother hanging back, cautious and
reluctant, increasingly suspicious of me, and of the situation he found himself
in. He was old enough to know when he was being patronized, and to insist on
his privacy when he wished it. There was little enough of that now, however,
and I did not want to be his enemy. As well as the love I had for him, I had an
obligation – I was his parent now – and besides, he might be of help to me when
the time came to kill the Witch. She was his enemy as well as mine, and there was
no reason why we could not kill her together. The victory would then belong to
both of us.

So I did everything I could to
keep him on my side, and sometimes he fought me, and at other times he
acquiesced with barely a murmur; but he never really became anything like the
accomplice I wanted him to be.

Still, God was kind to us in
the valley. The weather stayed warm, and there always seemed enough to eat, and
somewhere sheltered to sleep; and just when we were on the point of despairing,
help would arrive unexpectedly, or something would happen to lift our spirits.

There were enough kind people
to keep us fed and alive, and clean, all the way on our journey through Calm,
and the canvas bag started to grow heavy with things, so that we almost had too
much, and the strap left welts in my shoulder. What concerned me more, however,
was the knowledge – the absolute certainty – that, as we made our way along the
valley floor, past villages and farmsteads and lonely orchards, we were not
alone.

There were other people about,
of course – farmers and labourers going to and from their fields, tradesmen
with packhorses, women labouring under great bags of washing while their men
chewed tobacco and watched them do so - but always they seemed unthreatening,
even if they were not friendly, and we never strayed too far from the track
that
ribboned
its way, mile upon mile, along the
valley floor. Now and again we would see a more frightened look in the eyes of
other travellers – a young family, their cart piled clumsily with belongings,
or an elderly woman, shivering and close to death – but they did not worry us,
nor we them, and we passed each other with barely a murmur. But sometimes we
would spend half the day without seeing a living soul, and we had grown used to
being solitary, only seeking out help when night fell.

It was about the third day that
I noticed it: a movement, small but undeniable, in the high hedge that ran
beside the track. When I turned to look, I could see nothing; but as I moved on
I became sure there was something, like an animal but rather bigger, tracking
us, quietly, on the other side.

My brother was in one of his
fiercer moods, and didn’t seem to notice, trudging on miserably; and indeed I
was relieved when, after about half an hour, whatever it was seemed to
disappear, and there was nothing else strange that day.

However, as the days slid by,
that first uneasiness grew steadily; and, though I could not always see it, and
though I could not always hear it, I was certain something was following us,
and that even the air seemed strange when it was around. I thought my brother
caught some of this, too, though he was too buried in his grief to pay much
attention.

I tried to ignore it, and after
ten days of walking we were almost at the head of the valley, as it climbed
upwards to the Fearless Plateau, that settles for many leagues high above the
hills of
Catherineshire
and the Light Lands.

It was on our way out of the
valley, as the path grew steep and ivy-strewn, that we first encountered Thomas
Taper.

My brother had slipped and lost
his footing, sliding a good few feet down the bank and leaving a trail of
turned earth and crushed bits of creeper. I almost laughed, but bit it back
when I saw his face, and worried he might be really hurt. But it was just his
pride that was bruised, and he fought off my attempts at help with angry tears.

As I pulled him to his feet, I
heard a muffled cry, away in the bushes, and stopped, listening hard; for I was
sure it had been a human being, not an animal or a bird, who had made the
sound. I signalled my brother to be silent, and we drew back as far as we could
into the undergrowth. Across from us, about thirty feet away, a rowan tree
shook violently for a moment, and then was still. And then, as we watched to
see what would happen, there was a rush of noise behind us, and we found we
were surrounded by three men, two of whom had daggers drawn, and the third,
stinking of mould and with breath like tar, his arms crossed, looking down upon
us. He was nearer seven foot than six, and to us he seemed like a giant. Unlike
his companions, who were merely desperate, he had a pitiless look, as of
someone who cannot be bargained or reasoned with, but will do as he pleases
until somebody stops him.

“Well, this is a pretty
scrape…! Two
childers
, all alone, wandering the wild
places… ‘
Tain’t
wise, is it, Mister Rawlings…?”

“’
Tain’t
,”
said one of the men, the one closest to me, who now had my shoulder in a
painful grip.

“I wonder, Mister Rawlings,
honestly I do, how good folk allow young ‘
uns
such as
these to go off all by themselves, what with the dangerous men that you find
nowadays, cutpurses and such, hiding in wait to trap the unwary…”

Mister Rawlings made a sound
that resembled a rat being drowned in mud.

“What do you think, miss?” asked
our interrogator. “Hmm? What would you say to this state of affairs? I’ll wager
you’ve got some pretty things in that bag, eh? Why don’t we just take a look…?”

I struggled slightly, and spat
at him, and the saliva hit him square in the face. He stepped back a little,
and, retrieving a handkerchief from the pocket of his britches, flicked it
theatrically, and then made a big show of wiping it across his cheek. Then he
advanced on me, till I could almost taste his breakfast he was so close.

“Now, please,
please
don’t
be doing that again, miss. Me and my companions here, we’ve gone to an
awful
lot of trouble, and we wouldn’t want to have to cut your young brother’s
throat to make you cooperate, now
would we
…?”

And he squeezed my face till it
hurt. And the other man, who had said nothing up until now, pulled my brother
roughly by the neck, so that he was directly in front of me. He had a dagger to
his throat. The steel was pinching his pale skin. My brother was too stunned to
cry, but the fear in his eyes broke my heart.

“Please! Please. You’re scaring
him. I’ll give you what you want. Let my brother go. Please…”

“Just give us the bag!” said
Rawlings, and made a swipe for it, his beard scratching against my ear as he
did so. But the big man put a hand up.

“Wait!” he said. “She says
she’ll give us what we want. Do you hear that, Mister Rawlings…?” And he licked
his lips, and a strange look I had not seen before came into his eye. “I know
what I want…”

He regarded me for a moment. I
felt a patch of warm drool forming against my skin, and Rawlings, his mouth so
close I could feel his tongue quivering within, laughed his horrible laugh. And
the other man, who was fat and stupid and had a knife to my brother’s throat,
laughed too. It was the most disgusting sound I had ever heard.

But as the big man moved
towards me, his fingers twitching at his belt-buckle and his face flushed and
sweating, there was a loud crack in the wood behind, and as he turned to look,
a dagger thudded firmly into Rawlings’ neck before anyone was aware it had
taken flight, and immediately his hand went slack, and his own blade fell to
the ground. He crumpled like a sack, and I was free. But as I looked up to help
my brother, I saw the big man turn back; and when he did, there was a look of
surprise on his face, as if he was puzzled by something. His left ear was
missing, and there was blood pooling thickly about his temple, and for a moment
he looked at me helplessly, like an enormous child. And as he too collapsed to
the ground, I saw another figure, a tall man, dressed in a dull-brown
greatcoat, his face hidden by a wide-brimmed hat, carrying a sword freshly
used, and staring in our direction. He held up the sword, and pointed it at the
man who had Magnus. No words were exchanged, but the man’s trousers became
suddenly damp, and he immediately let Magnus go, and scampered off into the
trees. I ran to my brother, who was crying now.

“Oh, little one, it’s all
right…” I said, and held him tightly for a good while.

When I finally released him, I
saw that the bodies of the slain men had been buried roughly under a pile of
leaves, and their killer was sitting quietly on a tree stump, wiping down his
blade.

“I’m sorry about that,” he
said, quietly. “They would’ve killed you, you know.”

For a moment I could not find
words.

“I – do not doubt it…” I said
eventually.

“Cowards like that, who prey on
children, they are worth less than beasts…” And he shook his head.

I could see his face more
clearly now. He was a man of about forty, with long, messy hair, grey about the
edges, and a faint beard. He finished cleaning his dagger, and replaced it in
his belt, next to his sword. Then he looked up at us.

“I’m Esther,” I said. “Esther
Lanark. This is my brother, Magnus. We are from
Southtemper
,
in the Anvil Valley. We are on our way to the Capital.”

The man’s eyes narrowed a
little, as if doubtful of my tale, but only for a moment, and he smiled
slightly as he pulled a small cigar from his pocket, and gestured back towards
the valley.

“Well I don’t know what you’re
doing here,” he said. “Calm’s the best place for you – from the Anvil Valley,
you say? – I wouldn’t go any further north, not with things the way they are
now.” And he lit his cigar.

“We are very grateful to you
for your help, sir. I have very little, but if I can…”

He waved this idea away, as if
offended at the very notion of recompense, and we stared at him for a while, as
he smoked. He didn’t look, or sound, like a bandit; nor indeed like a tinker,
or a minstrel, or any other of the kind who might be found travelling the wild
places alone. I thought he might be a guardsman, but he wore no uniform, though
he obviously knew how to use a sword. He finished his smoke, and stamped it out
with his boot.

“God, that was good,” he
breathed. “Deadly, but good.” And he gave a small laugh. “You’ll want a guide,
if you’re heading to the Capital, Esther Lanark. I am happy to offer my
services, for I am also heading that way, and would be glad of the company. But
I won’t press the matter, as I am a stranger, and you have no reason to trust
me. Still, I have some… military training, and as you’ve already discovered,
the roads are not so safe these days.” He looked at us, and gave a small shrug,
as if it didn’t matter to him either way. And so we stared at each other for a
while, until he said: “Well, I’ll be on my way. Don’t stay here long, will you?
There may be others.” And with that he took up his pack, wheeled about, and was
off striding up the hill. I looked at Magnus, and saw by his face, shocked as
he was, that he wanted to trust this man who had saved our lives, and I wanted
to trust him also, except… We watched until he was almost out of sight, and
then I called after him:

“Wait!” And then we scurried up
the hill to join him.

“Perhaps we might travel with
you a little way…” I said.

“You don’t have to, of course,
but I can assure you I’m no thief. What reason did you say you were heading
north for…? Oh, you didn’t give one. Well there are plenty of people about on
the roads these days, for all sorts of reasons, since the Witch awoke, and all
of them with their own sorrow. So I won’t ask you your business, and – I don’t
mean to be rude – but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t ask me mine.”

And he whistled loudly to
himself, and walked along, for all the world like a man out for a stroll.
Magnus and I exchanged a look, and followed after.

We were relieved to crest the
steepest part of the track, and to feel the ground start to level out beneath
our feet, and the way become less stony and less hazardous. After about half a
mile, I saw Thomas stop and appear to sniff the air, before calling back to us:

“This is the beginning of the
Fearless Plateau. It’s all easy walking from here to the
Moonland
.
I hope you are not too weary. I have plenty of water in my canteen. Soon we
will be enjoying the hospitality of the emperor, in the great city of
Ampar
, where the lights burn all night long, and the air is
alive with singing everywhere you go. And the women are
more
lovely
than the sunset…” And his voice trailed off, and he was silent
for a moment. Then he turned back to us. “Come on! Time waits for no man, and
no child, either, they say.” And soon the Plateau was before us, and indeed it
seemed endless: a wide, flat country studded with trees and copses, shallow and
broad to the horizon. Thomas pointed ahead, and smiled.