Yellowcake (5 page)
I really need a bath,
Billy said to her. Then he blinked.
So do you! And you too, Grandpa Corin. What’ve you been doing to get so dirty?
They thought about that. Then Corin said gravely,
I put the bin out.
Nance laughed.
Yes, and...and a bit of a wind came up.
Billy looked from face to face.
I
told
Shai Cottinden’s Hill wasn’t far enough. Nowhere we could
walk to
would be.
You’ve been all the way to Cottinden’s Hill?
Nance looked horrified.
I know they felt it at Cowper Fen,
Billy said to Corin.
That’s why their mum came and met us.
I think they might have felt it in the Ukraine,
said Corin.
I hope that uncle felt it, and comes running.
He finished his tea.
Another?
said Nance.
Yes, please.
The empty cup gleamed in Corin’s paw.
I know that’s fancier than you’re used to,
Nance apologised, bringing the pot.
It’s good.
Corin clinked the cup onto its saucer.
It’s fine.
His ears popped and the cotton wool was gone from them. The tea clucked and pattered into the cup. ‘And then I’ll get the bath on,’ said Nance. ‘But you’ll want a smackle of something to eat, Billy. A round of sandwiches?’
‘You go up,’ said Corin. ‘I can do that.’
She looked at him doubtfully. But he knew, if he let her feed the boy this time, tonight might as well not have happened.
‘I’ll make him one of my slabs,’ he said in the new low voice. ‘That’ll fill him.’
She smoothed her hair and went. He heard the sounds of Billy climbing into the chair right to the walls of the kitchen, and of Nance’s feet on the stairs reverberating to the edges of the house, and beyond that was the garden and the summer night in all its size, with all its traffic of creatures and breezes and brooks and planetary light. And here he was in the middle of it, for the moment, in this house, in this room, moving from here to there gathering bread, gathering cheese and sausage and pickle, knife, board, plate—though he was not, himself, in any way, hungry at all.
I dismounted as soon as I saw the round tower, its broken crenellations, its warning flag.
I hobbled Goosestep and crept forward. The forest was harmless, sun-dappled, on all sides; birds fought and fluttered in their green houses, and sang soaring above them.
The witch’s horse was not there. I broke from the trees, readying my throat to call.
But, ‘Ah!’ started from me, like a cry from the girl herself. The tower door was open. Light was piled golden before it, motionless fire, a weighty plaited sun.
My horror carried me to this wreckage, and buried my arms to the elbows in it. Was it still warm? Did she lie dead above? Did the witch await me?
Not caring—
daring
the witch, indeed, to present herself to me in my terror and rage—I ran in, I ran up. On a single breath, it felt, I reached the room.
The door stood wide. All was as it should be within, except that I entered this way, and into emptiness, not by the window and into my love’s arms. How plain, how threadbare all this was without her, that had seemed such rich furnishings and so essential; how sad the little pillow on the bed where we had lain and whispered, how poor the rug, covering so few of the cold flags! And the chill! I had never felt it before. She and her hair had warmed this air before, her breath and life, the love we had built between us.
The mad fear seized me, that as I gaped here some animal, some thief, was carrying away that treasure below, and down I ran again. No, there it lay, all sumptuous as it had ever been.
I could not leave it, yet I could not carry such a weight— I had tried, marvelling, laughing, often enough. She herself had kept it coiled on bed or wall, roaming from its weight only so far, like a tied dog. It was a cruelty to her, even as, pegged through on the sill, it had made our meeting possible; it had been my ladder to her and my line.
You can reel me in like a fish,
I had laughed to her. And unsmiling she replied,
Only if you are there below.
I knelt and attacked the gold, unplaiting from the thick head-end, where the witch’s sword or scissors had hacked. The stuff fell apart, slithered side to side, transformed it seemed into other matter: cascading water, rippling cloth-of-gold. Strands of it wandered in the air and at the edges. I fought it and wept; I was in a welter of goldness, up to my knees, bogged in beauty. Perhaps if I dug far enough I would find her, curled delicate as an ear underneath all this richness.
I did not, do I need say? The hair was spread, lacquering path and field like a syrup, materials for a thousand gorgeous bird-nests, and she was gone. It was only as I loosed the ribbon at the narrower plait-end, and unworked the last several yards from there more easily, that cold realization came, and cooled my tears and my sweat, and sat in my heart like stone.
I lay in the slippery whorl of her hair, the spread sun on the ground, trailing and looping out into the green. I smelt, I felt, the grass through the perfumed strands pillowing my cheek. What had the old bitch done: had she killed her? Had she worse? Had she found worse than this tower and this tether of hair?
I could not take all the hair, and I could not leave. I sat up and dashed the last cold tears from my eyes, and of one of the several strands caught in my fingers I chose the strongest and brightest. Back through the labyrinth and tangle I followed it; I found one end, and from there looped it loose around three fingers, and wound it up, the full length, becoming a brighter and a solider ribbon, knuckle to knuckle, fattening, gleaming, scented with her loveliness.
When I had all of the strand, I bound it into itself and tucked it, narrow and bright as a bracelet made to the measure of her small wrist, into my belt-satchel with all the gifts I had brought her: the foods from the palace, a piece of fine lace I had bought her at market, the jewelled comb.
‘Well, this is pretty.’ The voice was cold and clear as October mornings.
I sprang to my feet. ‘I did not hear you.’
‘Ah, but I heard
you
.’
Never had there been a crueller contrast than the sunlit spillage about my feet with the tall woman in the edge of the shadowed wood, white-faced above her black riding-garb, her hand like a knot of bones in her stallion’s reins, himself night-black and leering.
‘I heard you long ago,’ she said, ‘when first you threatened to besmirch my lily. I heard you scrambling and your fondling fingers. I knew exactly and from the beginning what you sought. And that is all that matters: that you should not have it.’
‘Why not?’ said I. ‘Why should I not have her, as my wedded wife? I am a prince, one day to be king of all lands east of here. Am I not man enough to husband her?’
She had been surveying the hair, but she looked up at me, and gave a faint snort. ‘That girl is part of such machinations, boy, your courtly politics are but a May dance, but a nodding daffy-dilly, beside them. Tut-tut! Such a mess you have made.’ She shook her head over the hair again. ‘It will be much less easy to bear away now.’
In the instant I glanced down at the hair myself, she was dismounted and at me. In three strides only she covered that impossible distance—I counted them even as they took no time at all. She pressed some rasping cloth or spell to my nose and mouth, that caught in my throat and closed it; she was muttering in my ear her witch-language; she was strong, all iron and leather. But I barely had time to realise I could not fight her before I was gone insensible.
I woke immured in stone, behind an iron-barred door. I had been installed here who knew how long ago; who knew how long the witch’s spell had lasted? But all my limbs had forgotten themselves, so long had I lain. I could not tell how they were disposed. But as I woke, as I became myself again, a thread of voice sounded in my memory, a strand of sweetness, whispering:
Everything she says is some variety of lying. The trick
—I found my arms and pushed myself to sitting on the gritty flagstones—
the trick is to look to the side of what she says, and find the truth there
.
I was not in the round tower, but a larger place of stone. Poor light, inlet by not much more than arrow-slits, showed me a stairway leading up, turning a square corner and continuing. Was this the witch’s castle? Did she prowl above? Or was this only the place she left her captives, to rot as they might, to scream at the deaf stone, the unheeding forest outside—or the sea, or the mountain steeps? Who could tell?
‘Am I imprisoned alone?’ I called, and no one answered. I crawled to the bars and knelt there listening, but there was no breath or cough or shifting of other persons. Silence poured thick into my ears, such nothingness as might still the very blood, if listened to for too long.
I pulled myself to standing; I was bruised but not in any way broken. I had been flung, perhaps, over her stallion’s haunches, and carried sack-like some considerable way. For days, for months, who knew? Who knew I was not in some other time entirely, in some other enchanted place from which I might never return to my own palace, with its own cells that seemed from here such amiable places, the guards with their bowls and breads ambling about, some ne’er-do-well always protesting, or telling his adventure to his neighbour?
A stone shelf ran low along one side of my cell, that might be seat or bed or place of torture—old shackles lay there, open, chained to the wall-stone. I went to it and experimented sitting; pains bloomed along my thighs and up my back, like lamps igniting blue and red. I drew my knees to my chest to explore the pains and stretch the muscles around them, maybe to ease them, and then I sat, a tiny cloud of breath and beating pulse in the lifelessness.
I still had my satchel at my belt; the witch had left me that, so little did she think of me. The comb inside was broken; the garnet once the centre of a full-blown garnet rose tumbled loose in the satchel-bottom, but this I thought was only from general rough treatment, not ill-will of the witch. The food—that was what would be of use to me. I put aside the comb-parts and the garnet, and the hair-bracelet and the lace, which was now stained with the grease through the cured-salmon cloth, and I took out the foods that had only been for my love to taste and sample, not to sustain her—witch-bread and witch-meat did that. The fish was squashed but not spoiled; the cake was gone to crumbs in its cloth; the stone-fruits I had brought green so as to leave them with my love to ripen in my absence, and give her pleasure of me though I could not deliver it day by day, and they were still green, by magic or by lack of time.