The Curse of the Giant Hogweed (7 page)

That set them off again. Dan, normally the most decorous of swine experts, rose up to laugh and leap with them. At last they managed to rouse Torchyld.

“Oh, my head!” he groaned, then he realized what was going on and joined the roaring roisterers.

“I’faith, hag, ye knowest well how to maken merry. This be funnier than when I made Owain eat the boiled eels.”

The only one not laughing was the hag. All that male guffawing appeared to terrify her as perhaps no threat of physical violence could have done. She was cowering away from them and beginning, Shandy thought, to shrink.

“Come on, old sow,” he yelled boldly. “Put on your clothes and join the party.”

Peter danced over and picked up the garment she’d thrown off in her ghastly transformation. “Phew, this is ripe. I’ll wash it for you.”

He sloshed the reeking rag through a pool in the cave floor, and flung it at her.

“Squee-ee-ee!”

As the sopping, cold cloth hit her, the sow sorceress squealed a horrendous squeal. Then came a mighty explosion. Loathsome fragments flew around them. A direful stench filled the air.

“Great balls of fire,” yelled Tim. “What happened?”

“She brast,” said Torchyld matter-of-factly. “Good show, druids.”

“What do you mean, she brast?” Tim insisted. “Where is she?”

“Around,” said Peter. “Let’s get out of here. This place stinks like a bunkhouse full of lumberjacks.”

Daniel Stott was inclined to stand and ruminate on what had occurred, but Peter hurried him off. “Come on, Dan. You can think on the way.”

“On the way to where?” Tim wanted to know.

“I wish I knew. As far as I can tell, we’re still inside the cave.”

“Not for long,” said Torchyld.

“How do you know?”

“It standeth to reason. Ye hag had firewood and herbs and a fresh-killed rabbit. I be no great and wisdom-stuffed druid like ye, but to me these things grow not in caves.”

“But she was a witch, or some damned thing,” Peter argued. “Maybe she conjured them up.”

“Conjured, hell,” Tim snorted. “The kid’s right. Come on, Pete, quit dithering. You’re the one who said we’d better leave.”

“I know I did. I’m only wondering if we’d better take some torches to light our way. Our ambulatory flashlight doesn’t seem to be around.”

“I be here.” This was the prissy voice they recalled from their weary trek through the cave. “Only I fear I glow no more. I be disenchanted, ye see.”

The voice’s owner stepped forth from the cave. They found themselves faced by a man not more than four and a half feet tall. He was dressed only in a rude loincloth or kilt of something that looked like worn-out burlap, and his feet were bare. What hair he had was badly in need of a trim; his beard was so straggly it hardly seemed worth the bother of growing. He looked to be well on toward middle age, but that meant nothing, since middle age here could be anything. He was skinny and downtrodden-appearing. This was no doubt to be expected in a gone-out glow.

“She disembodied me so she wouldn’t have to feed me,” he was explaining. “I must say it feeleth good to be back in mine own shape, such as it be.”

“You’ll never be hung for your beauty, that’s for sure,” said Tim, rather pleased to have somebody in the group less physically prepossessing than himself. “Mind telling us who you are and how you got here?”

“What care we how he got here?” Torchyld interrupted with that suave courtesy they’d learned to expect from a king’s great-nephew. “Can he guide us out?”

“Oh yes, no problem,” said the ex-glow. “Just follow me, please. If ye don’t mind joining hands—mine be a bit grubby, I fear—and making a chain, it will be easier for me to lead you without a light. I ken every puddle and pothole in this weary, weary cave.”

“But why should we trust you?” Shandy demanded. “Look where you landed us last time.”

“Ye be all-wise, great druid, and I be ye lowliest wretch that e’er groveled along a cave floor. I perceive now that I erred by not leaving ye and thy co-mates to perish in ye dark or be crushed by ye hogweed. I most humbly crave pardon.”

“M’yes, neatly put. What were you before you got disembodied? A lawyer?”

“I was clerk to my liege, Lord Mochyn.”

“The chap who became the—er—gentleman friend of that whatever-she-was?”

“She was a cruel enchantress, great druid. If she had a name, I wot it not. She spared my life and that of my liege lord only on condition that we do her every bidding. We were the last of a band of ten travelers who had been caught like yourselves by ye giant hogweed and herded into her clutches. By ye time she tracked us down, she had already eaten two and salted down ye others for her winter’s store. Hence she was not enhungered, otherwise we had been devoured like them.”

“How did you happen to be the last ones caught?”

“Lord Mochyn had fled into ye remote fastnesses of the cave, thinking to escape her fell design. I followed him as was my duty, so we were caught together. She made him her leman and me her guide, to lure ye unwary to her lair and save her ye bother of having to chase them through ye darksome caverns.”

“I see. It never occurred to you to lead them elsewhere?”

“Nay, sire, I wot my responsibility to my employer.”

“I see. You’re not—er—working for anybody else now?”

“Not I, great druid. My liege be gone, ye enchantress be brast. At last I know what freedom meaneth. To be free is to be out of a job. Mayhap ye will allow me to guide ye out of ye cave on approval? Perchance, gin I give satisfaction, ye will then keep me in mind should an opening come up.”

P
ETER SHRUGGED AND TOOK
hold of the little man’s hand. “Lead on, then. We can’t stay here. What’s your name, by the way?”

“Medrus, your druidity.”

“All right, Medrus. Come along, everybody. We’re moving out.”

The three others, numb from the witch’s brew they hadn’t had time to sleep off as well as from their incredible awakening, clasped hands in turn and stumbled along behind. It wasn’t very far to the real cave opening, perhaps a quarter of a mile, but it was tough going with no light whatever. Tim minded the trek most.

“Damn it, Medrus,” he grumbled, “can’t you even glimmer a little?”

Medrus couldn’t, but he did keep up his running patter like Emma Woodhouse’s neighbor, Miss Bates. “Prithee mind ye stalagmite here. Observe ye puddle.”

Tim was still feeling the damp in his bones, the horror of their narrow escape from the hag, and a hangover the like of which he hadn’t experienced since his late wife Jemima made him try her elderberry wine.

“How the hell do you expect us to observe what we can’t even see?” he snapped.

After that, Medrus maintained a hurt silence until at last they emerged into bright sunshine. Then he collapsed, writhing on the ground and screaming, “Aagh! ’Tis not to be borne.”

“Now what’s eating you?” Tim snarled.

“It’s the daylight,” said Peter. “God knows how long the poor bugger’s been crawling around inside that cave. He’ll need a while to adjust.”

“How long a while? Damn it, Pete, we can’t lollygag around here for the rest of our lives waiting for this pipsqueak’s eyeballs to settle down.”

“I myself would be content to lollygag awhile,” said Daniel Stott, propping himself against a conveniently situated beech tree. “We might employ the interval in cogitation upon which direction we ought to proceed in when we resume our march.”

“Straight to King Sfyn’s castle,” said Peter.

“But we can’t,” Torchyld howled. “We haven’t found ye griffin yet. Gin I go back there without old Ffyff, they list to hurl me from ye parapets and boil me in oil. Or boil me in oil and then hurl me from ye parapets. I forget ye protocol. I feel not well.”

“I’m tired myself,” Peter admitted. “It’s been a rough night. I move we find a good place to camp, and sack in for a while. Here, Medrus, sit up a minute. Let’s see what we can do about those eyes.”

He ripped a narrow strip off the hem of his still-sodden robe and bound it around the clerk’s forehead. Then he plucked a few short, leafy twigs and thrust them under the headband so that the leaves hung down to serve as a primitive visor.

“There, that ought to help a little. Try opening your eyes for just a second at a time, until you begin to feel comfortable.”

Medrus ventured a quick squint. “Gramercy, great and bountiful sir. Such munificence is astounding. Now gin I could only have some small morsel to eat. I have not tasted food since I entered ye cave with my liege, Lord Mochyn, in times agone, and I must say I begin to feel a trifle peckish.”

At the word “food,” Daniel Stott started up in alarm. “Dear me, this is indeed a parlous state of affairs. We are totally unprovisioned. Let us temporarily thrust aside our own discomforts and seek sustenance for this luckless wight. Medrus, would you settle temporarily for roots and berries in lieu of more substantial fare?”

“Marry, I would not,” grumbled Torchyld. “Up and to ye hunt. Who hath my sword?”

“Great Scott,” cried Peter, “haven’t you?”

“Would I be asking if I had?”

“Then it must still be back in the cave, drat it. Why in hell couldn’t you have hung on to it? Your sword was the only weapon we had, except Tim’s golden sickle, and that won’t cut hot butter.”

“There’s the harp,” Tim wheezed. “Why don’t you try charming a few partridges out of the trees, Peter? Give ’em one of your song-and-dance routines. God, that was funny.”

He began to chortle at the memory. At once a shower of beechnuts dropped from the tree, pelting Tim on his bald head and caroming off his beard. Torchyld found this hilarious and laughed also, only to get zonked by an even heavier fall. At once he fell to cracking the fine, fat nuts in his fingers.

“Here, clerk,” he said, handing Medrus the first handful of kernels.
“Noblesse oblige.
Chew them slowly, lest they give ye a bellyache.”

“Thankee, noble bard,” the clerk replied humbly. “I cannot chew other than slowly. I possess but two teeth, and they not in line with one another.”

He began mumbling beechnuts while the others cracked and munched. Peter rapped his nuts cleanly with a rock and got out a perfect kernel every time. Daniel Stott carefully and deliberately opened a fair-sized heap, then settled down to concentrated mastication. Torchyld went at the job with such energy that he was soon surrounded by crumbled shells and squashed kernels, which he scooped up and gave to Medrus.

“Eat these, clerk. They will save those two teeth some grinding.”

Tim cracked and ate a few, then said, “Oh hell, that’s too much like work.” He’d never been a big eater, anyway.

Peter soon lost interest in the beechnuts, too. He gazed up into the branches, his brow furrowed in thought. After a while, he crowed. “Gentlemen, I think I’ve got it.”

“Whate’er it be, I want some,” said Torchyld.

“You have all you want right now.”

“All of what? Fleas? Nay, druid, of those I have more than I want.”

“You and me both,” growled Tim. “That cursed sheepskin must have been crawling with ’em. I move we find ourselves a swimming hole and take a bath.”

“A what?” said Medrus.

“A bath. Like when you get into water and wash yourself all over.”

“For what purpose, great archdruid?”

“To get the dirt off, dang it.”

“Ah. Vast is thy wisdom, though strange thy customs. Prithee, sir bard, be there any more nuts?”

“Be my lowly guest.”

Torchyld considerately mashed another handful for him. “I might perchance also give ye some of whatever else I have in such abundance, gin I knew what it be.”

“Very funny,” said Peter, and laughed.

His wasn’t a particularly hearty laugh, barely more than a snicker, but it fetched another small shower of beechnuts. “See,” he said, “it happens every time.”

“That nuts fall from trees?” the young giant scoffed. “Vast indeed is thy wisdom, druid. What else can a nut do?”

“It happens whenever we laugh, is what I’m driving at. Don’t you get it? Laughter, that’s our most effective weapon. Remember what happened to the sorceress?”

“She brast.”

“I know she brast. I’ve still got a few reminders scattered over my nightshirt. I’m all for the swimming hole, too, Tim. But what I mean is, she brast after we’d begun to laugh. Don’t you remember? First she began to cower away and shrink.”

“But it wasn’t till you heaved that wet rag at her that she brast,” Tim argued. “Busted. Whatever the hell she did. I say it was the cold water that finished her off.”

“I incline toward Timothy’s thesis,” said Dan Stott. “I believe I mentioned before that in the case of the trifids, water proved to be the effective dissolving agent. A similar incident was described in a book to which my daughters were much addicted during their formative years. I must say I found the narrative a trifle farfetched in spots, though the character of the lion was subtly drawn. In any event, this took place in a region known as Oz, when a child named Dorothy effected the demise of a wicked witch by pouring a bucketful of water over her. Hence we have well-documented evidence that witches recoil from the threat of water.”

“She’d already recoiled before I sloshed her,” Shandy insisted. “I grant you the cold water may have triggered the final explosion, but it would be unscientific to overlook the preliminary effect of the laughter.”

Dan pondered awhile, then essayed an experimental chortle. He got one beechnut and a much put-out starling.

“Ye tree knew ye didn’t really mean it,” said Torchyld.

“You fooled the starling, though,” said Tim.

The bird gave him a dirty look and flew off.

“The salient fact,” Stott decided, “is that I did in fact get a result. This bears out Peter’s argument and means we are less defenseless than we might have supposed. He who can laugh in the face of adversity is in sober fact thrice-armed, it appears. I find myself greatly heartened by this knowledge.”

“Urrgh,” said Torchyld. “I still wish I had my sword. Mayhap I should go back and get it.”

“Mayhap you shouldn’t,” said Peter. “I have a feeling that would be a remarkably stupid thing to do. Would you settle for a quarterstaff ?”