Chapter Six
THE WITCH
She was Berma. She was not Berma. In the clear light of memory that now seemed to fill the cavern like cool daylight, three of the Punchkins saw her sitting in a chair, leaning forward, gazing at them with knitted brow. Her eyes were deep, her lips broad; her face was grimy and there were cobwebs in her black, straggling hair. She wore one garment, a coarse black gown, stained and soiled and only half-secured by the girdle, so that her throat and upper chest were all bare, her breasts partly visible. She also wore a necklace of white beads. She leaned forward with her left elbow on the arm of her stone chair; her bare feet, black with mud, were planted on another block of stone like a footstool. They looked as strong and secure as the roots of two great trees. The toe-nails were black and jagged. And the massive knees were held some distance apart, a careless distance; reluctantly, with a mixture of curiosity and horror, Aldred’s attention was drawn to the hem of her gown and to what lay below it, but only black shadow could be seen. She seemed (as they agreed later) considerably younger than Berma, and yet ageless.
Behind her the cavern opened out to a vast extent, larger than the Erumar, with a profusion of plinths, pillars, reredoses, internal flying buttresses, festooned pinnacles and aumbries. Back and back it receded, and no far end could be ascertained; and yet this great space was but a beginning, a mere vestibule for the caves of Erynvorn.
‘Thank you, Lady Fuindis,’ said Fortinbras.
Still leaning forward, clenching her fist on her right knee, she spoke with harsh intensity. Again Bryd interpreted. ‘And what do you suppose the price of her help will be?’
‘Lady, we do not know.’
Another speech.
‘She needs you to say more. I don’t think she can understand yet.’
‘Lady, what more can I say?’ said Fortinbras bravely. Bryd translating sentence by sentence, he went on: ‘Our homeland, as I have said, is threatened. Evil is abroad in the North. We would lay down our lives to save our land. But that seems pointless. Yet when it was in danger before, a Punchkin saved it. He knew what to do. He had a Wizard for his friend and the Wizard explained what was necessary. We have no Wizard. We do not know what to do. But we met a Witch, and she told us to come here. We believe, perhaps a Witch can help us if we have no Wizard.’
Fuindis’s frown became even sterner and sharper. She seemed to be peering between the Punchkins, or through them, or perhaps at something beyond them. Then she nodded. She seemed to understand. She sat back in her chair and spoke.
‘You already have what you need,’ said Bryd, ‘but it’s in a shape that is no use to you.’
Another brief utterance.
They kept their eyes on Fuindis as Bryd explained. ‘She will help you: she will put the power into a useful shape. But there is a price to pay first. She charges for her service. One of you must lay down his life.’
A grey drop of water fell from the roof of the cave, on to the crown of the Witch’s head. A moment later another drop ran along one snakelike lock, down the side of her throat and on to her bosom, where it left a tiny clear trail.
‘Now?’ said Fortinbras.
‘Now,’ said Bryd. ‘You may have heard something of the custom of this land,’ she added. ‘Every year the people offer two pairs of sacrifices to the Goddess, the willing and the unwilling. And Fuindis requires the same.’
Tiny drops were dripping, dripping, dripping endlessly throughout the dim recesses of the caverns.
‘Tim, your comrade there, is acceptable as the unwilling sacrifice. But one of you must freely offer himself.’ She asked a question of the Witch, who answered with a short word. ‘She has no anger against you, and so you are all free to depart, whenever you will. But for your errand to succeed, one of you must now die.’
Endless the pause, unspeakable the despair, inexorable the fate that now closed in on the four wretched suppliants, crushing and obliterating their last hope. Many were the moments, many the blinked-back tears and silent water-drips before one looked up and made reply: ‘Very well,’ said Fortinbras Dyer.
‘You’ll do this?’ asked Bryd.
‘Yes.’
‘Fortinbras,’ gulped Hodgekin: ‘why?’
‘No-one else was about to volunteer, were they?’ His tone was calm, free of bitterness. ‘I want to save our people. I thought only I could do it. It was a heavy responsibility. It always felt too heavy for me, really. But now I find I’ve got a brother, so there’s someone to hand the burden on to. And…you’ll say I’m wrong, I’m foolish, but I do blame myself for poor old Tim. I was too impulsive. I should have spared some thought for him. He was my servant, and I caused his death, and I want to make atonement for that.’ He turned to address the Witch. ‘You want me to come up to you?’
This time she seemed to understand him directly. She nodded, then spoke.
‘Go to the stone,’ said Bryd. ‘Lift your friend and carry him to the chair.’
Neither Aldred nor Waltrot was able to speak. Fortinbras embraced and kissed them. Then he turned to Hodgekin, and the two hugged each other, strongly, fiercely, for the first and last time. ‘The burden is mine now, brother,’ Hodgekin said. ‘You can trust me with it.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Fortinbras, turning his back on them. Hodgekin saw him walk forward, go down the ramp and disappear. The other two saw him go to the slab, kiss Tim’s forehead, slide his hands under Tim’s shoulders and body and lift him up; then go round the side of the block and advance towards the Witch.
She looked down expressionlessly as he approached with his burden. And soon Aldred and Waltrot found that another strange thing was happening to their eyes. They had had them on her for some time, unable to unfix their gazes; and it seemed that their sense of size and distance had become deluded, as may happen when one has stared at the same object, perhaps in a dim light, for too long. Fuindis now appeared to be enormous, like a monumental figure on a hill of stone, while the complex stone-formations behind her drew off into a remote confusion like the play of sunset in a sky full of clouds. Meanwhile, however, the figures of Fortinbras and Tim dead in his arms, seemed to be advancing into a distance that was real, as if the path that climbed up to the chair led up the slope of a small hillside. Minutes passed; Fortinbras effortfully stumbled on, slowly getting smaller and smaller as the distance increased. Once he sat down on a boulder, laid Tim down and took a breath and a rest before gathering him up and setting off again.
At last, working his way round from the side, he arrived on top of the stool. He laid the body down before the huge feet and then faced her. His small figure was erect and resolute. She would take the living victim first. She reached forward, the lapels of her gown falling away from her bosom: a great hand seized Fortinbras around his middle and carried him up to the open mouth. The teeth came together, biting into his neck. There was a tiny spurt of dark blood, and his limbs twitched. Then she held up his body so that all the blood would run from the half-severed neck, tilted her head back and directed the squirting stream into her mouth. The watchers saw the valve of her throat go up and down. She drank their friend’s life. After some time the flow ceased. She put Fortinbras’s head into her mouth and bit it off. She pulled up her gown on one side and dropped his body into a black pocket. Then without any ceremony she picked up Tim’s body, beheaded it in the same way and stowed it in the pocket on the other side.
She looked across the distance at the Punchkins and smiled at them. Her lips were bloodstained and they moved against each other as she smiled: she was chewing at the things in her mouth, chewing and working at them with her tongue, and sucking at them, and scraping them against her teeth. While still chewing she raised her hands and unexpectedly lifted up the necklace she wore. She passed it over her head, placed it in her lap and began to undo the string. There seemed to be no clasp. Working at the knot with her fingers, she smiled again and said something.
‘She means both, “he was brave”, and “his blood was good”,’ translated Bryd. ‘You’ve certainly got her favour now.’
Aldred found speech. ‘I don’t think we want it any more,’ he mumbled. ‘Do we?’
Hodgekin, not having seen, was able to insist. ‘Yes,’ he said.
Fuindis bent her head forward and spat something into the palm of her hand: two things: two small things, pinkish-white. She picked up one end of the unknotted string and threaded it, with heavy-breathing concentration, through Tim’s and Fortinbras’s skulls. They looked small and delicate beside the others, presumably human, of which the necklace was composed. She retied the knot and put the necklace round her neck.
Once again she gave the Company her stern frown. ‘Tulo,’ she said.
The Punchkins stood frozen; the Woman continued impassively to attend; to whom else could the command have been addressed?
To him who now trotted eagerly forward on four black paws, going the same way that Fortinbras had gone, down and round the square rock and up the opposite hillside. Meanwhile Fuindis was undoing her girdle and opening her gown. The ghastly necklace hung down between the heavy, dirty, naked breasts: the belly bulged out, its lower creases overgrown by a dark thick forest, darkest and thickest of all the woods of Midyard. Yet even this self-exposure did not seem to be sufficient. She frowned at herself, got up and then sat down on the stool, spreading her legs wide, fully revealing her dark cleft, her tall hairy lips. She reached into her crotch with the fingers of both hands, shifted herself on her buttocks and pulled the outer lips apart. She thrust herself forward a little, splaying herself still wider.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Hodgekin. ‘What’s that smell?’
Aldred and Waltrot had scented it, yes, thick and powerful, fishy, earthy and salty-sweet. The small figure of the fox was still trotting forward. Helplessly the two Punchkins gazed into the depths of the cunt of Fuindis, the glistening walls of skin, the red inner lips and the hole. Stomach-turning terror and bowel-loosening nausea contended, within Aldred, against something almost impossible to acknowledge: a lust of desire, complete with the most straightforward of bodily signs! Straining, gasping, unable to look away, he saw the fox approach the scarlet portal, put his paws up to it, sniff at it; and then disappear swiftly and snugly, as though it were the entrance to his own den.
Aldred opened his eyes. Doubtless, thought he, more sights remained to be seen; but he had had as much as he could cope with. Bryd and Waltrot still held the lamps. Waltrot’s eyes were closed, his hips jerking and mouth dribbling. Hodgekin glared impatiently.
‘What did you see? What’s happening?’
Aldred ignored him. He slapped Waltrot’s cheek. Waltrot opened his eyes. ‘Come on,’ said Aldred, ‘there’s nothing more to be done here.’
‘You had better thank her before you go,’ Bryd said quietly.
This Aldred was in no mood to do, but the others shouted words of thanks into the darkness. Bryd translated again. ‘As she said, you are free to go.’
‘Right,’ snapped Aldred. ‘Come on.’
‘But why?’ said Waltrot, surprised.
‘You’ve no right to boss us about!’ exclaimed Hodgekin.
With an inarticulate cry, and a gesture of dismissal, Aldred left them and started to run back up the tunnel. He barged against the walls a few times and slipped over twice, but at last he saw the light beyond the iron gate. Through the second chamber, up the second stair, through the first chamber and up the first stair, through the hall and out of the dreadful house he ran: down the side of the mound, across the pasture and back to the woods. As he went he told himself that this anger and rapid flight were no more than appropriate natural responses to the slaughter and obscenity he had been forced to witness. The tall hedge rose up before him. Unable to see the wood-path, he staggered among the bushes, ran a few more paces, stumbled and fell over. He began to cry. The crying became a flood of passionate tears. He stayed where he was, weeping and weeping, until darkness had fallen.
A few hours later, sitting up, calm and exhausted, he saw someone emerge from the house: one of the girls. She carried a lantern. ‘Mr. Sherling,’ she called softly, ‘Mr. Sherling!’ He hailed her. She came to him through the darkness. She was carrying the lantern on a tray, along with a jug of water in a bowl, a towel and a cup. He thanked her gratefully, slaked his thirst and washed the dirt from his face and hands.
‘Come,’ she said. ‘They’re going to have dinner.’
On entering the room – the same room where they had drunk the beer of memory – he saw Bryd and Waltrot and Hodgekin grouped about a tall old Man, a stranger. A bright fire burned in the hearth and the table was laid for supper, but no food was on it yet.
Aldred came forward. The old Man rose from his feet and tentativelybheld out his hand. The others were smiling. His handclasp was strong. He wore a long robe that came down to his feet. The robe was reddish-brown. His hair and beard were also brown, and his deep eyes were dark brown with a glint of green.
‘Well, here’s our Wizard,’ said Hodgekin: ‘well and truly disenchanted!’
‘But he can’t say who he is,’ said Waltrot.
‘We’re trying to jog his memory,’ added Hodgekin.
The old Man’s attention seemed to be particularly taken by Aldred.
‘He likes you,’ said Hodgekin.
The old Man turned his face from Aldred. He gazed at Waltrot enquiringly, and then at Hodgekin, and then at Aldred again.
‘Three,’ he said at last.
They applauded him, with merry words of encouragement.
Aldred asked Bryd: ‘Is this right to be made a game of?’
She had a compassionate smile for him. ‘In this house, my friend, the right and the wrong are sometimes quite different from those you are used to.’ She left him and went to ring a small silver bell.
‘Three Punchkins,’ said the stranger.
‘Quite right, good sir! Aldred, Hodgekin and Waltrot at your service,’ said Aldred, joining in the fun, and thinking: what a comical trio of names!
‘Three,’ said the old Man with a slow smile of his own. ‘Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land…’ They waited eagerly to hear whatever words might follow. ‘Three of you! There’s something mighty queer behind this.’
The Elf-maids came in with the first course of what promised to be a splendid supper. Aldred paid them no attention. He had remembered a reference: something he had once read in the library at home. His mind was whirling. So many books, so many pages –
‘Ah,’ he said suddenly.
‘Yes?’ asked Bryd, pausing with a ladle in her hand. The others were all seated at table now.
‘I believe I can tell our Wizard his correct name,’ said Aldred. ‘But for now, I think it might be wiser to call him Mr. Brown.’
Author’s note – Aldred’s second book, Light and Darkness, though more than twice as long as his first one, Glimpses, must be regarded as unfinished. It appears that he planned it to consist of ten Parts, but the narrative breaks off abruptly at the end of Part Nine. In the later stages of Light and Darkness he makes a few allusions to a personal mood of despair, and it may be this despair that made him unable to finish the work; but by the time of his writing Part Nine he had also become busy with important duties that occupied him for many years.
The tale itself is continued, though in a summary form, in a series of extracts from the Book of the Acts of Kemendil. This work, attributed to Quendil the Scribe, carries to a reasonably clear conclusion the stories of those persons who, as Aldred says, ‘were caught up in the recent War’ and in whom the Reader may have become interested. It must be emphasized that the Book of the Acts of Kemendil deals with events following Aldred’s narrative despite its archaic scriptural style. This affectation of literary bluntness and archaism is best understood as a reaction from the then prevalent style of historical writing, well exemplified in the Araquenta of Lord Engwe Parmandur – urbane, sceptical and atheistic.
To complicate matters further, the extracts from the Acts of Kemendil have been separated, by Aldred himself, and slotted in between the Parts of his own second narrative, thus presenting the Reader with a puzzling sequence or separate layer of later events. Aldred’s reasons for doing this may be guessed at, perhaps, by the Reader who is prepared to encounter the material as it is presented. The less patient Reader, who very naturally prefers to follow the events of the story simply as they happened, may use the links to skip all the sections of the Acts and then return to read through them after reaching the end of Aldred’s tale.
Continue to the First Extract from the Book of the Acts of Kemendil
Skip that, go straight on with the story: go to Part Two, Chapter One
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