Tender Morsels (54 page)

I woke up feeling as if I’d put in a good night in Keller’s alehouse. Anders was shaking my shoulder, and Ousel stood by the crib, out of which Bedella’s wail rose, thin as twine, miserable as a kitten down a well.

‘Bab wants her nurse, Da,’ says the little man.

‘I think I hear that, Anders-lad. Which one of you dropped that anvil on my head i’ the night?’

They both of them eyed the bed for it, which made me laugh. ‘Come along, then, my lads, let us go and put her at Lissel’s.’

The moment we stepped out the door, I thought: Annie. The air stank of twitten-magic and streambank-magic and all that stuff of those Cotting women and that widow. What’s she been up to?

It did not take long to find someone who wanted to tell me. A little longer and I had several tellings, which, when put one beside the other, the true tale began to emerge. Further on, my cousin-inlaw Arth Barrens gave me a good accounting. What have Annie got against those five? I had to wonder.

I left Bedella with Lissel; she were now crying full and lustily, convinced she would die milkless. Then up my boys and I went to Annie-Urdda’s, as they called it. They fair danced up the town, and despite my thumping head I felt the cheer in my own step, and the burnt air had the same effect, I felt, as the clean air at the summit of the Mount when the first snow has fallen.

The Widow Cotting opened the door, and straight away, by her pallor and her nervous manner, I knew I had come to the right place. She embraced the boys, distracted, and stood back as they ran on into the hall. ‘Come in, Davit,’ she says.

‘Good morning to you. Is that leddy at home, or is she still flying about, spelling people?’ I said jovial, walking in.

‘Oh, Davit.’ She shook her head and shut the door. ‘’Tis not Annie! Come in the workroom; we are all huddled there.’

My, they were a picture, the three faces that met me from around the table.

‘Davit!’ cried Annie happily. ‘You will never guess how this has come about!’

‘I think I will,’ I said, because Urdda had flushed red as soon as she saw me, and Branza was giving her that look, part awestruck and part glad it was not herself that was at fault. Anders and Ousel were sat along the bench with them already; they loved this room, but were seldom allowed to enter it. ‘But perhaps you had better tell me, rather than me waste your time guessing.’

‘Ooh, little mens!’ Ousel danced a white figure cut of cloth upon the tabletop. I saw both Branza and Urdda restrain themselves from snatching it from him, and all the women stiffened, or tried to disguise that they were stiffening.

‘How many is there, Ousel?’ I said.

He counted them up from the bench beside him. ‘
Five
mens!’

‘That’s fine counting,’ I said. ‘Five, eh? And what would Miss Urdda Cotting have against those five particular men?’

She were gazing down the table, away from me, but Branza was not so embarrassed. ‘They hurt Mam,’ she said, ‘once upon a time.’

Now Liga reddened, and Annie was no longer so amused. And it all thunderclapped together in my mind: the word ‘hurt’ and what it could mean, coming from Branza’s mouth; the sudden seriousness; the extent of what had been done to the five townsmen. Then, with a littler concussion, the black figure Ousel was making to walk along the table: of the five, that must be Hogback Younger. No one but Branza and Anders would meet my eye.

‘How long have you been witching, Urdda-girl?’ I said, to move myself off such thoughts.

‘A single night,’ she said with a bitter laugh. She looked up, and clear as a clanging bell Hogback’s lineaments marked her face. I felt as if I were seeing her for the first time as her mam must see her.
They hurt Mam
. That would be Hogback’s way; he would never do anything without assistance, without an audience.

‘And even then, I did not know I was doing it,’ Urdda went on. ‘I did not know I
could
!’

‘She have just come into it,’ said Annie with quiet pride. ‘She have just reached the right age, for her, and the right pitch of feeling.’

‘That must be quite some feeling,’ I said. ‘Widow Fox, it’s said, has lost her senses, seeing its effects upon her son.’ Urdda hung her head. ‘Hogback has sent for his physician at High Millet.’ I spoke gentler, seeing how she sank under my words. ‘And there are fears for Joseph Woodman’s life, he is bleeding so badly.’

Urdda’s nose was no more than a finger-width from the tabletop. Ousel walked the black cloth-figure and a white one up to her head. ‘This is a big rock, fallen in the road,’ he made the white one say, and then he laid the black one down and had the white man scratch his head. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘What
are
we going to do, Ousel?’ I said.

‘We are going to have some breddamolk,’ he said decisively. ‘Because we are
too hungry
to lift it now.’

‘I think we have done enough,’ said Liga; she had sat forward so that her face were hidden from me by little Annie. ‘Are you saying we should go and
tell
, Davit? Admit what Urdda has done, and have the constable up here again? Explain to
him
? Go through the whole . . . Go over all the reasons, past and present?’

‘Of course not,’ said Annie. ‘’Tis too late for that. Urdda have took matters quite into her own hands and accomplished them. I say we should keep our heads well down.’

I thought of Constable Whinney’s laborious face, the embarrassment it would show as he was being explained to. Crimes against women he had no sense at all of; powers other than fists and blades he did not want to acknowledge. ‘I think you are probably right, Annie, for your own peace’s sake. But what are we to do with our new sorceress here, to keep her feelings running off from her again?’

‘I think there is nothing else in the world,’ said Urdda to the tabletop, ‘that would make me as angry as what Mam told me yesterday.’

‘Ah, but you will not always require that degree of feeling,’ Annie said, ‘now that you are woken. Much slighter annoyances will set you off. I had to move out of town to that mudhole of mine, I had tripped up so many people here or made them fall in fires, just for being born luckier than I was, or speaking harsh to their wife or child. You will call down who knows what for some fleeting irritation—
unless
!’ Here Annie slapped the table, making us all jump, making Urdda lift her head and look hopefully across, making Liga sit up and lose some of her worried look.

‘Unless what, Annie?’ said Branza, for Annie would only sit there with her eyes flicking back and forth, watching her own thoughts, a smile showing more and more of her fine teeth.

‘Why, unless she is proper instructed, of course,’ she said, beaming. ‘And there is no need for her to manage on gypsy scraps and dares-and-do’s as I did, and made such trouble. We know exactly where to send the girl for teaching—and very gladly she’ll be taken
on, to keep her away from my dangerous urgings and influence!’

And she rocked and cackled there in her seat, like a little black hen so pleased with itself for having at last, and after much struggle, squozen out its first egg.

The carriage stood in the road outside St Olafred’s gate, dark and glossy and stern as the woman who owned it; the horses, the black and the dapple-grey, tossed their heads and stamped and made rich sounds with their harnesses; the coachman waited, dapper and solemn in his seat; the footman stood neat at the door. Miss Dance’s house-woman, Goodwife Marchpane, who would companion Urdda on her journey to Rockerly, strolled in the roadway, somewhat apart from everyone so as not to intrude on the goodbyes.

‘Here he comes at last!’ said Liga, and there indeed was Ramstrong, carrying little Bedella down from the town gate. Anders and Ousel ran ahead.

‘Oh, is this
your
coach, Urdda?’ Anders marvelled.

‘It’s splendid, isn’t it?’ Urdda was glad to be distracted from the thought of bidding everyone goodbye.

‘Horse!’ Ousel skidded up behind. ‘One horse, two horse!’

Urdda caught him up and kissed his soft face. ‘Oh, I shall miss you!’ she said, and she could not help it; the tears started to come. ‘Who shall do my counting for me?’

‘Bedella were in the middle of her breakfast,’ Ramstrong explained to those waiting. And as if to prove it, the baby hiccupped a posset of milk onto her chest and looked aggrieved.

‘Now I must go,’ said Urdda fiercely, putting Ousel down. ‘Goodbye, Anders; come and hug me. Look after your family for me, won’t you?’

Ramstrong twinkled, standing by Branza and Liga. Urdda kissed the baby, and tears for Todda were all mixed in with goodbye tears, and she could not tell one pain in her chest from the other. ‘Bear!’ she said to Ramstrong, and they embraced as well as they could,
with the bab held to one side. Urdda could not speak to Ramstrong’s kind face beaming down on her.

‘You are off to such adventures, Urdda!’ he said. ‘Just as you always wished! Don’t worry, I will watch your mam and sister.’

‘Please do!’

‘They will not come to harm.’

Before her whole frame should start to dissolve with misery, Urdda turned to Lady Annie.

‘Ah, you big sop-wet,’ Annie said unsteadily, and reached up out of her tininess to hang on Urdda’s neck. ‘Do me proud, Urdda. Mebbe you can make up somehow for the poor kind of witch I was.’

‘You were a wonderful witch, a
wonderful
witch!’ Urdda wept into the mudwife’s silk-and-lace collar. ‘’Tweren’t for you, I would never have known this true world existed!’

‘You ask Miss Dance how wonderful I am,’ laughed Annie, tears creeping back and forth down her wrinkles. ‘I am sure she will tell you exackly.’ And she kissed Urdda on both cheeks, very wet and firmly. ‘Goorn, now, before your mam goes to pieces.’

But Liga had already gone; she and Urdda could neither of them speak, but held to each other tightly. ‘My little . . . wild girl,’ Mam managed to get out into Urdda’s ear, through sobbing. ‘Of the forest.’ And Urdda could not release her.

‘Come, Urdda, come,’ said Branza, but all Urdda did was reach out and enfold her with them.

‘Oh!’ Urdda wailed into the middle of them. ‘I cannot go! How could I think—’

‘Of course you can,’ said Liga brokenly. ‘You
must
,’ said Branza.

‘You must make proper use of this gift of yours.’

‘She’s right, you must.’ Lady Annie patted Urdda’s back. ‘Else whenever you take a temper, all St Olafred’s must watch its arse, ha-ha!’

‘Annie!’ said Liga, and now Urdda had laughter to contend with as well as tears and sobbing.

‘We ought to make our start, Miss Cotting,’ said Wife Marchpane quietly, to one side.

Urdda released Liga and turned upon Branza the full force of her emotions. ‘I shall miss you so!’

‘And I you, daft sister. You must send word when you can, whenever anyone is coming this way from Rockerly.’

Urdda stood back. ‘Take care of Annie,’ she said earnestly. Both their faces were warped with the crying. ‘And of our mam.’

‘You know I will,’ said Branza.

It was terrible, holding Mam for the last time, and then pulling away, feeling as if, yes, she were truly tearing her own heart into two pieces, with all the pain and mess you would expect. Up into the carriage people organised her, almost by force, she was so disabled by her grief. She tried to dry her eyes and look seemly out the carriage window, but the faces out there, some distraught and all beloved, undid her again. Then the coachman’s tongue clicked and his whip flicked, and Urdda leaned out and clung to the sill, and wept her family and her friends out of sight.

Wife Marchpane did not try to console Urdda, but only patted her knee every now and again, and before long—now that the goodbyes were done, the faces gone—Urdda breathed somewhat freer, and her tears slowed, and she could lower her handkerchief more often to let the fresh breeze cool her face.

It was early autumn, all the light and the forest leaves proclaiming the end of things, even as Urdda’s life, her own life, shaped and impelled solely by her own powers, was just beginning. Outside was a festival of warm colours: the dark branches bore past their lading of brass and rust, of gold and startling red. The sky was clear blue through them, with a white puff here and there of cloud. Past Marta’s Font, with the glint of always falling water and the battered cup on its chain, the carriage rushed, and the coachman slowed the horses only slightly for the narrow place, just above the dell where the ruined cottage continued to crumble away.

I used to sit in that house
, Mam said in Urdda’s memory, her voice fine and chill through the scraping and squeaking of branches against the carriage, through the coachman’s muttering outside.
My da would not let me go up and look, but I would listen, when a coach came by. Where was it going? And who was in it, I would wonder, flying by me so
fast, rich enough for a coach, and free enough to go where they pleased? And now look at me, in a house in town myself, a reputable sempstress and a mam, a mam of two grown girls!

It was me, Mam
, Urdda said now, in her memory.
It was me, Urdda, off to learn my magic properly. There was some accident of time, maybe, and it was this carriage, and me rich and free inside, that passed above you, that you heard
.