The Absolute Book

by Elizabeth Knox

  Our party paused in the place of vantage until we caught sight of the witch, moving between her outdoor oven and a goat skin she had spread on the ground. The skin was littered with objects that sparkled like lumps of coal. She spotted us and straightened, a hand shading her eyes, but for once she didn’t call into the hut to send the boy running.

  Of all of us, Geff the archer had the keenest eyesight. He pointed at a patch of garden near the margin of the marsh. The witch had never gardened. Like the sidhe, the people she was kin to by birth or marriage—no one was sure which it was—she gathered throughout her territory, from the long flats of eelgrass nearer the sea, up to land high and dry enough for fruit trees. She kept a goat, but it seemed the animal had respected the narrow flowerbed. The blooms in the bed were blue and yellow, spring irises, though it was late summer. These out-of-season flowers were a shocking demonstration of her famed power—if pointless, and purely for her own pleasure. I remember making a mental note to caution my men against carrying this sight back to court. Our king often sent for Adhan’s help, because she made a particular potion that brought on a deep and dreamless sleep. But he was twitchingly afraid even of the idea of her. He might enjoy the fealty of a woman who could perform great feats of magic, but wouldn’t want to be reminded that her magic belonged to her, not to any king with the power to command her presence.

  We followed a sheep track around the side at the hill. As we descended, a small wood hid our view. It was a willow wood, tangled, the blackberry bushes flanking it stripped of fruit between elbow and shoulder height. We leaned from our saddles to pick the higher berries. We weren’t in a hurry. Our king’s problem was not one that could be remedied quickly, and we knew he had one more plan in place before he resorted to magic. But he was an impatient man and wanted the next remedy to hand. Our instructions were to return with the witch, and her son. I was to tell Adhan that her presence was required to confirm that the king’s builders’ current solution was correct, and that his troubles were not a curse, merely ill luck. I was to tell her that she and her son could bide awhile in comfortable seclusion at the court, and if the king’s tower continued to crumble, and workmen kept being crushed, Adhan might then help the king find a magical solution.

  But my king had a secret plan. His seer had told him he must sacrifice the orphan child of a virgin at the tower’s foundations to make it stand. Everyone knew the witch’s boy had no earthly father—so perhaps the child had not been conceived in the usual way. And a rumour had come to the ear of the king that the witch had died. ‘There’s no one left to protect the orphan,’ the king said. ‘No one to mourn him, or avenge him. It can be done kindly. The child can join my court. We can pamper and entertain him. He’ll not know he’s in danger before he’s dead.’ I argued with the king: ‘What if the rumour is false and we find the witch alive?’ And he said, ‘Bring them both. The witch might have a better plan than my engineers. It is said that her unearthly paramour built the bridge that floats on the Gwy above Cleddon Falls. And, if it turns out she has no useful magic, then the child can become an orphan if an orphan is what we really need.’

  We ate our berries and licked our fingers. Young Anselm, a newly made monk, had filled his round felt hat with fruit. ‘For later,’ he said.

  ‘Like heaven,’ teased Geff. ‘Later. Always later.’

  We came around the far end of the wide water-meadow, and on to the goat-clipped grass that surrounded the hut. The witch’s indoor fire was alight. We could see a patch of smokeless heat against the blue air above its roof. But since the weather was hot the witch was cooking medicines at her open-air hearth, and the glitter on the skin was deer horn containers, filled with unguents and stoppered with beeswax. The witch’s bees were wild—their hive in a dead tree at the edge of the wetlands. There was a hole in the hive, and honey was dripping out of it into a bark bowl.

  Adhan stood straight and pulled her long hair in front of her, perhaps to preserve her modesty, since her linen dress was damp and clinging. She looked well—vital, bold, supple and strong. I looked at her, then suddenly had to look away. I wasn’t afraid the witch could read my intentions, or that she’d be offended by my gaze. It was something else, something strange. Though striking, she was hard to look at, to fix on and contemplate, and I had to force my eyes to return to her.

  She stood wringing the rag between her long lean hands. When I met her stare one eyebrow kinked, and she glanced sidelong at her anomalous spring garden. I followed her gaze and saw that the garden was a grave mound.

  My heart lifted and went soaring. Death had saved me from murder.

  ‘I am alone now,’ the witch said. Her voice was low and rough—the voice of one who weeps every hour she’s idle. ‘There was so little the boy could stomach. Neither red meat, nor grain.’ She paused and added, ‘Imagine a life without bread.’

  I had had a younger sister who’d eaten every meal and only grown thinner until finally seeming to die of hunger and thirst, as if none of the food and drink the family gave her could quench or nourish her. I wondered if the boy’s trouble was something similar.

  ‘How old was he?’ I asked.

  ‘He would now be twelve years of age.’ Adhan stooped to the skin, threaded a thong through the eyelets around its edge and drew it closed. The containers rattled. ‘That,’ she said, ‘is the last of that batch bottled.’

  ‘It is good that your work is done,’ I said. ‘For the king wishes you to come with us. Though we should stop here for a night to rest the horses.’ I was in no hurry to face the king’s displeasure, desperation and despair.

  Adhan said she’d feed us, and promised to instruct the midges to stay away.

  ‘As I recall you have a potion for that.’

  ‘The potion stinks. Better I persuade the midges to respect the rules of hospitality.’ She laughed, either at her own joke or her own power. Her laugh had changed. It was four years since I’d seen her. On my last visit I was not a captain, only a promising guard. On that occasion the king’s men had come to collect a consignment of medicines crucial to the king—most of them sleeping draughts. We stayed a night and the witch asked us if we might give her an account of every fatal illness and injury we’d seen firsthand. She plied us with questions, until she’d summoned even memories as light as summer butterflies. Even what was foolish or funny was of equal interest to her. And now and then she laughed, her warm, mirth-sharing laugh. And now and then she turned her head to listen to the sound from the edge of the marsh where there was, improbably, from one spot, the cry of a fox, an owl, an eagle, a curlew, a badger. Badgers, who liked dry dens; eagles, who should be asleep. The calls were her son reminding her he was there, maybe hungry for the fish, fruit, vegetables, milk and honey which were all he could eat.

  Now the witch’s laugh wiped my mind clean. It wasn’t an ugly sound, only it made me think maybe she was mad. What did madness look like in one who communed with waterfowl, and water spirits? I studied her face. Her skin was the brown of flaxseed, shades darker than most people I knew. She had only a shallow dip where the straight bridge of her narrow nose met her forehead. This, and her wideset eyes and smooth brow had the effect of making the top half of her face seem semi-human: half raptor, owl or eagle. But only when it was in repose. And there was a tiny muscle above her left eyebrow which, contracted, made her look keenly interested and then by degrees questioning and sceptical. Her eyes were wonderful, a clear hazel. Hers was a friendly, open, fearless gaze. I saw no madness in her eyes, only sadness. I saw her clearly for a moment, then it was as if my own seeing forced me to turn away.

  We dismounted and the witch at once said, ‘And you must be tired too, my brothers and sisters. Go into the meadow and eat your fill.’

  She was speaking to the horses. And, quite naturally, the animals turned away and clip-clopped into the long grass. Their heads vanished, ears deep.

  Young Anselm had produced his missal—a gift from a rich aunt. He clutched it, blushing, and said, ‘Can I
say a rosary for your son?’

  ‘That would please him,’ the witch said.

  Anselm picked up his hem and made his way over to the flower-covered mound. The witch ducked into her wattle and daub hut and emerged dragging a bunch of hassocks. My soldiers hurried to help her. They arranged the hassocks around the fire. The witch pointed to her woodpile, and my men picked out kindling and larger logs.

  I settled against a horsehide bolster. Once I was comfortable I looked around, over the heads of the men laying new wood on the smoking ashes. It was then I saw the other extraordinary thing. A miles-long path ran straight from the hut’s door, through the marsh to the sea. It was as if a giant had run a comb through the reeds, parting them and pressing them down. A notch of ocean was visible through the parting, the water sparkling, beige-lilac.

  The witch came out of the hut again and sat to pull on boots—felted wool, stinking of goose grease. She said, ‘I’ll check my eel traps—there should be enough for a good feed.’ She lay on her back to pull her boots up her legs. It wasn’t something I had ever seen a woman do while surrounded by men. ‘What does your king want?’ she asked, sitting up again.

  ‘Is he not also your king?’ I asked.

  ‘Is he my king?’ The witch sounded more curious than quizzical.

  I couldn’t think how to reply. To whom could this wild power owe fealty? Not the haunted, sleepless man who’d sent me.

  The witch got her feet under her and stood up in one graceful movement. She pointed at the strange timber column by the wall of the hut. ‘There is the water barrel.’ It wasn’t a barrel made of staves, but a hollow log with a dipper balanced on its rim. I got up and took a drink, and when next I looked the witch was moving away into the marsh, no doubt to some seaward channel where she’d laid her traps.

  Over our meal, the witch asked again what the king wanted and I told her that he was trying to rebuild the fortress below the roman road but that the tower of the keep wouldn’t stand. The ground shook sometimes, and the stones gave way. It was like standing on a headland hollowed out by the sea. Holes kept appearing, and a surf could be heard beating deep inside the hill.

  ‘Nowhere near the sea,’ Anselm said, and made the sign of the cross.

  I said, ‘The king has considered the People Under the Hill.’

  ‘And rather than build elsewhere he wants to treat with them?’ The witch naturally supposed that the king wanted her as an envoy. She had a tie to those Ladies and Gentlemen, even if her unhappy child was now dead.

  ‘The fortress commands several passes, the river and the high Sarn,’ I said. ‘The King must rebuild the keep if he wishes to hold his kingdom against the Picts and Jutes, even if the Saxon choose to honour his treaty.’

  ‘Is the treaty in question?’ the witch asked, but didn’t wait for a reply. Instead she turned to Anselm and asked to see his missal. She spread her shawl on her lap to receive the book, and wiped her fingers clean before opening its boards. As the twilight turned a deeper blue she tilted its pages to the firelight, and bent close. When there was no longer enough light to read she passed the missal back to its owner and remarked, ‘My hut is no place for books. I will leave it soon and go somewhere where I can keep papers, and a pen and ink, and a table with candles.’

  ‘Do you mean to become a scholar?’ The monk could not hide his tone of disparagement.

  ‘Adhan can be a wise woman, but not a scholar?’

  Anselm blushed and stammered. He said the Abbess Monacella at Cwm Pennant was considered a fine scholar. Of course the fool didn’t stop there, but added, ‘In her own right.’ This elicited another of the witch’s hair-raising laughs. She got up and said goodnight.

  I told her I’d post a sentry.

  ‘I’m here every night without a guard.’

  ‘Still,’ I said.

  ‘Tell your sentry I must venture out again before sunrise,’ she warned. ‘When the mist comes, I will go into the marsh to speak to my ghost. I must tell my ghost I will be going away for a time.’

  I felt my whole scalp move, as if someone had run their fingers from my nape and up over the top of my head, tugging my hair.

  ‘You will have noticed it’s a new grave. It is too soon for any loving ghost to have left the one they love.’

  I thought of the shaggy, sturdy brown boy. I couldn’t imagine that boy’s ghost. I thought of the privations of illness, and how the boy would have looked before he died, and how his body might look now, after weeks in the marsh’s wet soil.

  The east turned silver. The rim of a full moon appeared above the sea horizon and for a moment seem to melt and pour its light into the ocean. Then, as it continued to climb, it gathered its silver back into itself, and its round reflection. I saw that the moon was rising directly above the miles-long parting in the rushes, as if it was the moon that had made the path by rolling across the sea and reeds to finally bump at the doorway of the witch’s hut.

  ‘Yes,’ Adhan whispered, as if she’d caught my thought. ‘The path is for the moon. It was moonrise when my dear one was dying and wished to see, one more time, the moon come up from the belly of the ocean. The reeds were tall and I was afraid the moon would take its time while death would not. So I parted the reeds. Autumn storms will restore them. Then everyone will forget again what I can do, even when I can do nothing.’ She wished me goodnight and disappeared into her hut. I posted my unnecessary sentry as per my gallant promise. Then I wrapped myself in my cloak and slept. I didn’t see the witch walk out in the morning but, when the soldiers were bundling up their bedrolls and tightening their girth straps, the sentry of the second watch reported that Adhan had headed out along the path of the moon—a channel for rolling sea fog. She’d gone into the whiteness and not returned until sunrise.

  When the horses were saddled Adhan appeared, her dark skin reddened by a wash in night-chilled water. She’d dressed for the journey, and for an audience with royalty. She wore a fine wool gown, the shade of ripe wheat. It was girdled by a belt of thick felted wool, in the shape of a wreath of oak leaves, spring green to autumn brown. Her cloak was roughly made and in several shades of undyed lambswool, and the way she kept twitching at it showed her consciousness that it didn’t fit with her finery. Her dark hair was in a single braid. At her throat she wore five claws of rose gold, a glove made to fit the fingers and thumb of her right hand. The claws were in hinged sections, like armour. It was too rich and crafty to be anything other than the work of the sidhe.

  Geff held the palfrey’s bridle for her to mount and passed her the reins. She leaned forward to gently pull one of the horse’s ears. ‘Sister,’ she murmured. ‘You are my teacher. Teach me horse.’ As she drew back she let one fingertip trail across the iron ring of the bridle’s cheek strap. Her nostrils quivered.

  On the second day of the journey, towards sundown, we noticed the smoke, an even brown film over the sky in the west. The sunset was fierce orange and, as the dusk deepened, the fire glow beyond the mountains became visible.

  Adhan joined me at the head of our small column and asked if that’s where we were going. I told her not to be afraid. It wasn’t the king’s camp on fire. It was the tower. The king’s builders wanted to fuse the foundation stones. When we left they’d had men cutting timber and piling logs ten deep around the curtain wall.

  ‘What kind of trees?’ asked the witch.

  ‘Just timber,’ I said. ‘Our King is clearing the forest to the east of the tower, to make everything visible from the keep to the river. The river is how attackers would come, since the forests are thick everywhere, except the tops of the mountains.’

  ‘Alder and Elder, Ash and Beech, Gean and Whitebeam, Oak, Rowan and Yew, Black Poplar and Wych Elm. A host and a legion,’ she said. Then, ‘Sometimes attacks come from the sky above the tops of the mountains. And there’s not a thing anyone can do.’

  Sweat pricked cold at my hairline.

  ‘The king has sent for me even though he already has a plan to make his walls
stand?’

  I was pleased to have a question I could answer. ‘The Builders have had several ideas. All so far proved unsatisfactory. Now they mean to melt and fuse the stones, like the walls of the Pictish forts in the far north. Walls without mortar. Heaps of stones in shells of green and black glass.’

  ‘I’d like to see that,’ said the witch.

  At dusk, the wind picked up and turned to the west. Our party made camp. The night thickened. After we’d kicked earth over our cooking fire we could still smell smoke. The horses snorted and sidled and tugged at their picket. Adhan got up to see to them and stood, her hands on the muzzles of two animals, little finger and thumb curled around the edges of their quivering nostrils. I joined her. She glanced at me, then back over my shoulder, her face brightening. I turned and saw that the fire glow seemed wider, though the outline of the range of hills before it was no longer as clear.

  ‘The king’s fire has got into the forest,’ the witch said, calm.

  Our party had been in thick woods for part of that day’s ride, on a winding trail that would be very difficult to retrace in the dark. I asked the witch if she could make a light. With the forest so dry and smoke in the air, I didn’t trust torches.

  Adhan tucked in her chin and began to spit air. A greyish phosphorescence appeared at her lips, sparkled along her jaw and down one side of her throat to pool along her collarbones. It ran down her arms, above her clothes, a cloud of gold and silver sparks floating a hair’s breadth from her skin. She moved closer to me and touched my arm. Light poured around my body, heatless and intangible. Coated with this seething radiance my booted feet provided enough illumination for me to see the ground where I stood, a softly lit circle. ‘We should go back the way we came,’ I said. ‘Get to open country.’