by Helen Slavin
“Rest me...” Lordship paused, breathless at the sound of rending wood, like a forest toppling from above. “Rest me by herepath and ridgewayed rampart. Make me at last the watchman of the western gate.”
“Lordship.”
Tiercel, with his courtier bow.
“You know where? How to travel there?”
Tiercel, he had that map written into his head by his father and grandfather before him.
“By Havoc Wood.” Tiercel’s confirmation sealed by a handshake and then they were out of her sight, into the smoke and fray.
Ailith breathed through the slat in the roof, the smoke rising around her, disguising and deterring warriors from entering except to snaffle and snatch at the smoked fish with greedy hands and ravenous mouths. Ailith, above them, barely breathing.
She never saw a sword carved with symbols. That had been a tale told for the Ways. She was not witness, not brave. She had stayed in the smokery until the pipes and drums began, the drums sending a rumble through her they were so loud, so hard, the sound knocking at the castle walls. What Ailith witnessed was the pennants set aflame, the smoke curling away into the sky, telling all the news of the end of their world.
It was dark and quieted when she crept down out of the rafters and wondered where she could go. The castle, her home since she didn’t know when, a home no more. A thought struck her that she must go with Tiercel, go to Havoc Wood because Grandam Orla had knitted the tales of it into her head and maybe there was a meaning in that now. She could help. She could cook and sew and skivvy for him on his journey. She could trap rabbits and fetch water and perhaps find, somewhere on the other side of Havoc Wood, a new life.
She knew the quiet ways of the castle, how to move through like a mouse so no one saw or cared. She used that now.
Under the ribs and joints of the castle she moved, wandering because she had no notion where Tiercel might be. Might be long gone from here. But her feet led her to the masters in the Great Hall.
There was a strong smell of ale, the air fuggy with it, breathed out from the snoring nostrils, farted out from the slumped arses, drooled out through the drunken mouths of the sleeping soldiers who littered the room.
The smell of burning meat that was Tiercel, his fat spitting in the dying fire.
Somewhere distant there was shouting, singing, bawdy noises, so Ailith hid herself under the table, crouching. Afraid. From this shelter she saw where the Lordship was, a makeshift crown on his head now, the head on a pike at the top end of the hall above the chair where his body sat, the bones out, an eagle made out of him.
She looked at the Lordship’s face a long time, her thoughts a ravel. Only when a soldier stirred and pissed did she understand that it was more dangerous to hide under the table and do naught. She didn’t think then, she just did. Her feet moving up onto the dais, taking the pike down, the head sliding into her hands, and she reached for the tatters of Lordship’s battle shirt and wrapped the head like a loaf of bread. An errand, that was all. She was the errand girl.
She did not have Tiercel’s map in her head. The paths she followed to and through Havoc Wood were the back lanes and the greenways that her Grandam Orla told her of, and as Grandam Orla had always said, she kept eyes in the back of her head for the rogues and cutpurses that come after.
21
Apple Day
Charlie did not have any qualms about Ailith being hired for the Castle Inn Apple Day pop-up stall. Since the Bone Resting they had been trying to work out where Ailith could go and what she might be able to do. With Seren the answer had been obvious: she was a seamstress, a dressmaker. Ailith’s possible future career was proving more trying. For one thing, Ailith had come out of Havoc Wood and, the sisters suspected, might be subject to different rules. As yet the wood had not offered up any solution for them and so Ailith remained a guest at Cob Cottage.
The Ways were happy to have her company, but it was clear to them all that Ailith needed something more. At mealtimes she picked at the food, hardly eating. She was quick to excuse herself in an evening, refusing an offer of hot chocolate and leaving the Ways sitting on the porch night after night, pondering.
“She’s on the edges,” Emz said, pulling her blanket a little tighter around. All their conversation had been about Ailith, their hot chocolate going cold in the chill air. “She keeps herself to one side of us.”
Charlie was aware that Ailith did not sleep in the bed in the guest room, she slept in the little recess by the windowsill in a sort of nest made of the feather pillow and the duvet.
“It’s not home,” Charlie mused, thinking of her own former flat and how it had felt to finally move into Cob Cottage, to come home. “That’s what she needs.”
“She needs a future,” Anna said. “It’s up to us to help her find one.”
The week of the Apple Day dawned, and it was Anna who found a small solution to Ailith’s problems. She needed some assistance at the Castle Inn pop-up and after all, Ailith had the skillset.
“It will just be helping to serve food and drink. Clearing up, collecting rubbish.”
Ailith was pleased at the offer.
“Yes. Thank you.” Her face took on a little more colour, her eyes brightened.
At the table at Cob Cottage that evening they all noticed Ailith’s improved appetite.
* * *
Apple Day dawned. The weather looked good as Charlie, Anna, and Ailith headed out at the crack of dawn to their respective tasks.
At Drawbridge Michael and Charlie had selected several kegs for the event alongside a special barrel of Charlie’s Blackberry Ferment for a random taste test. So far, those at the brewery who had tasted the first decoction of it had loved it. Better than vodka, had been Kevin the maltster’s view and his girlfriend, Lola, who had come in one afternoon thought it was ‘lush’.
When Charlie parked up, Michael and Jack were loading up the wedding apple beer that had been left behind at Hartfield.
“Should we be doing that?” Charlie queried. “I mean… aren’t they going to come back about it? Claim it or something?”
Michael shook his head.
“Is it sorted?” As Charlie said the words she was struck by the authority in her voice and the fact that, for once in their professional life, Michael Chance did not prevaricate or walk around the centre of the story.
“Yes. I’ve written it off.” Michael opened the van door. “The way I see it the Hillmans had a terrible wedding and we can step back from it.”
Charlie agreed.
“We can always sell the wedding beer,” Michael said as they rolled out the first keg. “They, unfortunately, can’t rewind their wedding day.”
There was a moment then, a pause where Michael seemed deep in thought as he looked at her. Charlie looked into his eyes. Honeyed sugar. The rattle of Jack and the forklift heading across the yard broke her thoughts.
“I feel sorry for them,” she said, Michael nodding.
“Yep. Anyway. This stuff,” he patted the keg at his feet, “is one of your best concoctions so we should make a mint at Apple Day.”
They were not destined to make any kind of mint as it turned out. The next keg rolled off the forklift and down into the river. As Jack and a couple of the work experience lads attempted to retrieve it Michael and Charlie loaded up the next two. They loaded the ordinary brew and their other bits of kit and attached the trailer with the gazebo and trestle table folded into it.
The van blew a tyre before they were out of the brewery car park.
“We’ve got time to change it. I’ll tow the trailer into town and set up while you and Jack sort the van… okay?”
As Charlie unhitched the trailer from the van and re-hitched it to the rusting tow bar on her own car Michael made several attempts to release the spare tyre from the van.
“It’s like it’s welded.” His face was purpling with strain. Charlie tried with her slightly smaller fingers and was sliced in the process. Jack brought the WD40 and sprayed
the clip liberally so that Charlie left him and Michael coughing in a cloud of vaporised grease.
In town Charlie drove to their appointed pitch and began to set up the gazebo. She’d done it a hundred and one times before, and she had a system now that was failsafe and foolproof. With a bit of luck and a following wind here she might actually be able to set up the pop-up and then head over to the Castle Inn to scrounge a bacon butty off Anna.
The gazebo had transformed itself into a Chinese puzzle. Where usually the struts would clip and click into place and the top slide itself over the corners, today nothing would fit. Charlie examined all the poles which had been jumbled into a crazed order. One or two seemed bent and she was struggling to remember the last time they’d used the gazebo. She’d put it away herself according to her system. What on earth had happened to it? As she unfolded the canopy there was a pitiful tearing sound and a frayed slash appeared along the central seam.
“You can’t set up here, Charlotte.” It was Mr Bolton, the Chair of the Apple Day committee. Charlie looked bewildered, firstly by being addressed by her given name of Charlotte and secondly by being told she couldn’t set up.
“Oh? Why not?” She was wary now. Mr Bolton was already turning his tablet to a landscape orientation and swiping at the screen. While he dressed in tweeds and a waistcoat and had a handlebar moustache to rival any Victorian gentleman, Mr Bolton was a gadgeteer. As she looked at his face she saw the Bluetooth headset clipped into his ear. His wrist bore a Fitbit; he was training for a multi-marathon.
“No, look… here’s the orientation map. You — Drawbridge that is — need to be much further down, right at the end up there, by Poppy Cottage and the old garage… See?” He was tapping at the screen showing her the map in such minute detail she could see what the residents of Poppy Cottage had had for breakfast.
“But at the orientation meeting this was our spot.” Charlie was foxed, the map on the screen seemed fuzzy and bewildering and as she watched it appeared to adjust itself into another map entirely, somewhere familiar, little red roads spreading out, where was that? It blurred and vanished. It must have been something to do with the screen resolution, or possibly this bright sunlight she was now having to squint into. “We were… here, at this corner with Laundry Lane.” She looked about her. Yes. This was where they had agreed to be.
“I don’t recall that meeting. You can’t just alter your pitch to suit, months of planning goes into this, Charlotte, months, to get the right balance of food, drink, and craftsmen. I don’t just sit down with the map and a load of little flags you know. This is all paced out for maximising footfall according to a retail software programme I’ve been developing…”
Mr Bolton owned three antique furniture shops in Castlebury, Woodhill, and Kingham, not to mention having a share in the teashops in Knightstone and a new one opening at Tower Gardens in Kingham.
“Well, where have you put us?” Charlie could not disguise her impatience. Mr Bolton pointed.
“Down there,” he said. Charlie looked down Laundry Lane to where it met Red Hat Lane and the dead-end junction of Smithy Row. Poppy Cottage sat on the corner of Smithy Row. Who else was setting up down there? There was some activity. Oh. Just the postman with his trolley.
Mr Bolton gave her a hand with the faulty gazebo and her other bits of kit. As they passed down Laundry Lane other stall holders were already up and busy: bakery, jam makers, cheese merchant, everyone had their shelter or waggon, their signage, their tables and chairs even. The activity thinned out the further they walked. Finally, as Mr Bolton strode off to harass another stallholder, Charlie looked around. It was very quiet at Smithy Row. There were cars parked the length of Red Hat Lane and she watched as the people currently parking there locked up and then headed straight back up Red Hat Lane to join the main drag of town at the corner of Dark Gate Street. No one was even getting lost down Red Hat Lane. She set up their table, and, as she did so, her mind wandered once again, flashing images of that lost map of Hartfield, spilling itself into the paving stones beside Castle Inn. It was distracting. Charlie began to feel a little bouncing ball of panic start to thump inside her.
The Castle Inn pop-up was positioned on the main street and they had a range of foldaway tables and umbrellas that Casey and Ailith were putting out. As Charlie approached she could see Anna, already busy with the hog roast sited to the side, her hands stuffing herbs and sliced apples under the skin of the pig as the heat of the charcoal beneath flushed her face. Already the roasting pork smelt savoury and delicious.
“You started early,” Charlie commented. Anna didn’t turn, she was adjusting the spit.
“Casey started cooking last night,” Anna turned, wiping her hands on a cloth. “She’s done a wonderful job.” Anna smiled. “What do you want?”
“Emergency rescue,” Charlie confessed. “My gazebo’s bust. I wondered if you’d got any spare umbrellas?”
Anna was already nodding and moving towards her stash of equipment. “Ailith can help you with them… Ailith?”
Charlie found Ailith useful and practical as they abandoned all hope of sorting out the gazebo and instead arranged a delightful sheltered spot with the borrowed umbrellas. It proved a two-woman job to set up the trestle tables, Charlie feeling like a fumbling buffoon.
“This is such a load of bollocks,” she half said to herself. “What is wrong with everything today?” She held up a spare bolt. Should there be a spare? Charlie hunkered down to try to find the spot where the fixing bolt should go and saw it at once. She slotted the metal into place, almost pinching her fingers before the trestle table gave a slight easing creak. As she stood up Ailith was looking at her.
“You alright?” Charlie asked. She wasn’t sure what the expression was on Ailith’s face and didn’t trust her own judgement today since everything felt so out of kilter.
“Yes.” Ailith looked charged up, her face bright. “Lots of people. Their energy.” She smiled. “It is good to be busy.”
“Yes. It’s Apple Day. It’s always like this. Brace yourself.” Charlie joked as her phone buzzed into life and Ailith was called back to the Castle Inn marquee.
The phone died as soon as Charlie heard Michael’s voice, but she had enough instinct to know that it was probably time to get back into the car and head up to Drawbridge once again and solve whatever new problem had popped into the vacuum left by the last one.
The suspension on her car would not take the weight of more than two kegs at a time. She was going to have to run a short relay back and forth while Michael took the van for a new spare. The current spare wheel, once it had bounced free of the clip, proved to have a nail in it.
By nine o’clock Charlie had improvised a new set up for the Drawbridge pop-up, asking Michael to bring the bunting. Despite the early hour she poured a couple of samples into the shot glasses and tried not to look as if she was waiting for the first of the Apple Dayers. She could see most of them, walking by in the distance at the far end of Laundry Lane.
“Why did you move us?” Michael asked as he pulled up in Smithy Row. “No bugger is going to wander down here.” He looked up and down the two lanes.
“We were reassigned by Mr Bolton,” Charlie told him. “So don’t blame me.”
There was activity in the distance towards the main streets. “I just don’t understand why we’re here…” He looked miserable and Charlie did not have any patience with him.
“Look. You man the fort. I’m going to hand out some freebies and tell people we’re in a lovely shady spot down Smithy Row. I’ll get them down here if I have to kidnap them.” She poured a tray of shots and headed off up Laundry Lane.
The weather was being exceptionally kind; the warm autumnal sunshine burnished Woodcastle town centre with a lush golden early morning light. The air was sweetened with the scent of apples. The Two Hills Farm orchard had pyramids of apples arranged around a central table where the venerated senior owner of Two Hills Orchards, Mr Welbeck, was waiting ready to ide
ntify anyone’s apples from their garden tree. The signs around him declared ‘Huxton’s Pippet’, ‘Woodcastle Russet’, ‘Knightstone Blusher’: the three heritage varieties only grown in their orchard.
Other stalls offered apple sauce on pancakes, apple speckled muffins redolent with cinnamon and sultanas. There were dried apple pomanders and potpourri. Apple conserved, preserved, brewed, decocted, pickled, dried.
Actually, if Charlie was being honest, the general sweetness of the scent was starting to make her feel a bit sick. There was something underlying it all, a sourness, as if the only apples that had been picked were the windfalls and the wormy.
The feeling grew worse and worse, the tray of Blackberry Ferment shots grew heavier and heavier. No one was interested. She paused for a moment, rested the leaden tray on a garden wall. She took in a deep breath; the thick apple scent rushed her but it was cut with the aroma of Blackberry Ferment. If she was being honest, there was nothing she wanted more now than a shot of that Ferment. It must be the sunshine. With a shaking hand she reached for the nearest shot glass. Oh. The cooling sensation in her mouth, a crisp green of leaves, a prickling of thorns, and the bright blackberry itself. It carried quite an alcoholic kick. Charlie felt better, but still the Ferment tickled at her nose. She swigged a second shot and the effect was even more pleasurable. It tasted of summer and of sunlight and earth and… oh. She stood for a few minutes recovering her composure. She had been feeling stressed lately. Oh, what the hell. She took a third shot and then, since no one was interested at all in her boozy wares, she gave up and headed back for the shade of the borrowed umbrellas at Smithy Row.
* * *
By lunchtime Anna was thoroughly smoked, her face flushed red with the heat from the hog roast. It had been a task to cook the beast, Casey and Anna working in shifts, but it had been worth it: the Castle Inn pop-up was proving a great success. At the moment she could hear loud voices from within the marquee itself, voices raised in conversation, and a lot of laughing. She basted the meat a few more times, enjoying the scent of it and feeling that she was, in fact, rather hungry, before she rolled the lid back down on the roaster and looked about her.
