The Ravens’ Banquet

by Clifford Beal

  And still she held my hand as we journeyed back to camp, so happy was she that the treasure was found again.

  “Stay and be one with our company,” she said to me as we walked down the sloping floor of the forest. “You and your comrade may share what we hold and share what Our Lady has given to us.”

  To say that this invitation was not tempting would be too bold a lie. Any man who had seen with my eyes would not have thought twice at the offer before accepting. Fortuna had taken me on a merry dance during the last seasons gone by; leaving me with nothing but the clothes on my back and a sole comrade that I could no more trust than a Croat. Here, in this wood, I was offered the chance to make good the pain of the war and the disillusionment of my great Cause. For like the Turk who takes the veil from his bride's unseen face, I too had suffered surprise in full at the ugliness of the choice I had made.

  I thought about Balthazar, Andreas, Jacob, and all the others. What had they gained for the life of a soldier? Death or ruin, it seemed. The Devil’s work that I had witnessed had been played out by all: Imperial and Dane, Roman and Protestant, German upon German. Death himself was the only gainer from our labours and I had grown weary of his company. So too did Samuel’s shade now haunt me. Whether he offered salvation or treachery, I knew not. Yet he had bidden me to stay with these women, to discover Fortuna who dwelt among them. And I had done just that. I looked into Rosemunde’s weathered face.

  “For a share of the silver I will stay with you,” I told her. And even as I spoke the words, something nagged away at me, whispering a warning. Maybe it was Anya’s words of Telling, or else the keen sense of distrust that every soldier nurtures, but I knew there was yet a secret not revealed. Even so, like Christoph, my love of treasure spoke the louder and it was this that I followed.

  “Then we shall share with you what we possess,” replied Rosemunde, smiling as she regarded me. “And share all our fortune, come what may.”

  “Come what may, goodwife,” I repeated, nodding and grasping her hand.

  An old woman tended the fire as we walked into the camp, and I was taken aback to see that it was the Oma. She rose up at our approach, leaning upon her crutch.

  “Ah, well, all of my children back, safe and sound!” she croaked.

  I beheld the crone’s face in the fading light, though still brighter than the previous night in her hovel. She looked not half as menacing as yesterday eve, head like a dried old apple, cheeks ruddy and brown. Indeed, she was just an old woman now, bent with the infirmity of many hard years.

  The sisters gathered around her as she cooed at them, and Rosemunde, Christoph, and I stepped towards her, Rosemunde taking us on each arm.

  “We have done as you said, Oma,” she said, “and the soldiers have opened Our Lady's bounty to us once again. All shall be well as it was before.”

  Oma nodded. “I told you that these men would be of service, did I not?”

  She shuffled forward, craning her neck upwards to look at me and then to Christoph.

  “Ah,” she said, “It is these two Kerls that have stayed behind. One in Light and the other in Darkness. Brothers in arms but not in heart. Well, that is the way of things, is it not? Good often walks with Bad.”

  Rosemunde kept smiling. “In truth, Oma, they have both dug out the mine and will stay to work with us. We shall rebuild the furnace. They will help us in that too.”

  “Aye, that they will,” replied the old woman, turning and making for the fire again, her rags dragging behind her along the forest floor. “Make thy meal, for it fast grows dark. There will be plenty of time later for spinning plans.”

  Rosemunde looked into my eyes again, her face full of hope. “All will be well,” she repeated.

  Out the corner of mine eye I spied Christoph, smiling like the dog that in a moment turns and bites the hand.

  AND WE WORKED hard. Digging and cursing, our faces besmirched with earth and dust, we scratched out the magic ore. For three days we hammered until our fingers bled, filling the baskets the sisters lowered down to us on ropes. Yet our hearts remained stout, the winking and twinkling of the silver urging us on to free it from its dark prison.

  Though he cursed all in Creation to Heaven above, never had I seen Christoph work so in earnest. Even as I would take pause to wipe my brow, he would laugh and berate me, calling me a lazy clown.

  And the sisters would smile and laugh to see us emerge from the ground, looking like two Blackamoors, coughing up grey spittle. We did not care, happy in our bounty. While we burrowed like moles beneath the great oak, the sisters had been busy too. Not far from where they burned their wood for charcoal lay their smelting furnace. It was a crude machine but one that Rosemunde assured me worked well enough for them.

  She said that the Oma had given them the knowing to build it, telling them how to lay the large flat stones in a hole that yawned as wide as a millstone and as deep as a cauldron. She had warned that they should use only the hard white stones that could withstand the blast of flame and heat. The sisters followed her words in full, carefully setting each stone in place with their slender hands now well-chafed and gnarled.

  I confess their forge looked nothing like the tin furnaces back home in Saltash that belched forth smoke and fire. Even so, Rosemunde showed me a great lump of silver the size of my fist that she swore had been born of their unlikely oven. At the sight of it I held my tongue and so did Christoph, the both of us made believers by what she held in her outstretched palm.

  And after the passing of a few days, it was time for us to witness the miracle of the stone furnace with our own eyes. Christoph and I had no role in this ceremony that lasted the whole of a morning. But we watched perched near to the sisters and their task. The furnace lay situated at the edge of a sheer hillock, as high as a tall man. First, they arranged a full basket of the silver ore in the earth. On top of this they laid the charcoal lumps with great care, slowly handed down from above to those who crouched in the stone-lined hole. They went to their work without banter, only the occasional command of Rosemunde carried upon the air. These strange midwives huddled close about the great earthen cunny, coaxing out the treasure from its hard womb while Christoph and I, like expectant sires, waited at a distance and in quiet anticipation.

  Once lit, the fire burned an eternity and all the while the sisters stood or sat saying nothing. The heat grew stronger as the charcoal raged in the ground and the sisters drew back from the hole. After a time, the smoke died to a wisp, though the fire yet burned below. Rosemunde beckoned to me and we joined her as she walked down the bank and turned to face the sheer wall at the foot of the furnace. Leaning against the hillock was a statue of the Blessed Virgin, pale white stone and faded blue paint, her arms outstretched and head downcast. Her face was pocked and chipped of colour, and her nose cut clean off. She looked more like a painted strumpet battered by some pimp rather than the Mother of God. From what sacred niche had She been carried off, thence to lie in this forsaken place?

  It was then that I took notice of a hole the size of a large plate, dug out above the statue and at the height of my eye, level with the bottom of the stone-lined well on the hillock’s crest. I peered inside to see cherry red coals aglow deep within and to feel a hot blast on my face.

  “Watch now, Rikard,” Rosemunde said softly as one of her sisters reverently handed her a large earthenware bowl. “Watch and see what we have worked for with our sweat and toil.”

  I felt Christoph shouldering me, trying to push me aside to better see for himself what was happening. All was quiet but for the wind blowing through the trees setting the leaves a-rustling with agitation. Still, we saw nothing.

  Christoph broke the spell of the moment with derision.

  “Your science has not worked well this day, woman. Is this what I have broken my bollocks for this past fortnight, eating and sleeping rough like some beast?”

  “The metal comes in its own time,” shot back Rosemunde. “If you have only a child’s patience t
hen be off with you. But don’t mock me with your tongue.”

  Christoph guffawed in a poor effort to mask his chagrin. “None has a tongue sharper than you, woman!”

  But then I saw it, hesitant and small. It was an argent teardrop upon the lip of the hole. Slowly it grew to fullness and then plunged to the forest floor. Rosemunde raised up the bowl as another grew to take its place. And after a moment or two, the silver droplets came quicker one after the other. Soon, they became a molten trickle. I stood transfixed by the sight, only half-believing what I saw: liquid treasure leaking from out the Earth and into Rosemunde’s bowl.

  And Christoph whooped with joy, clapping me about my head while capering like an ape. I too burst out with a yelp of amazement. Rosemunde half-turned her head to me and smiled, not broadly, but thinly, as if amused by our innocence. And more silver came into the bowl, thin as her smile but steady in flow. When at last it stopped, she drew back the vessel and showed it to me. Within it, lay some three fingers depth of silver, now hard, grey, and dull in aspect.

  “It is our Lady’s bounty, given up for us, and now, for you also,” she said.

  “God and Fortuna have not yet abandoned me,” I whispered, half to myself though she too heard my words.

  “Let us make more!” growled Christoph from behind.

  We gathered again upon the hillock but our treasure proved little interest to the others. They had seen it all before. But I glimpsed on their begrimed faces a certain tiredness not borne of physical labour. This preyed on my mind some, though in the moment I pushed it back from whence it had come. And off some distance from where we stood, further up the long and gradual slope of the Kroeteberg, I spied a dark pile of rags that shuffled among the trees, stopping at times to watch our progress. I had quite forgotten the crone who seemed to hold all of us in thrall as if by some invisible halter.

  The sight of the old creature unnerved me yet again, and at once I was seized with remorse for abandoning my comrades and remaining here. The strangeness of my current situation I had pushed behind me, but now it came back in full, tugging at my conscience. I knew that like some play, this pretty conceit could not last forever and that I could not remain in this forest cut off from all. It would end one way or another. Either by misfortune (with Christoph as the agent) or by my own action in walking down the mountain again. These days among the Sisters were numbered.

  We made no more silver that day. Rosemunde said it was but to show us how it was done, to give us a reward for our labours of the week. And as we journeyed back to our camp, I could tell that Christoph was nursing some bit of mischief because his gaze was not on the path we trod. He tripped and stumbled over root and branch in the midst of his black reverie.

  At length, he sidled alongside me and whispered, “Hey, Englishman, what do you think of this business? Digging in that hole for three days to gain a lump of treasure the size of a goose turd!”

  He shook his head in disgust. “At this rate, we’ll both be greybeards before we have enough silver to make this worth our while.”

  “What would our companions have made of this?” I replied, in truth not wishing to be drawn into his scheming. “Poor old Balthazar might have had a word or two to say about the situation.”

  “Aye, well he’s dead now,” grumbled Christoph, after which he fell silent for a moment or two as we trudged along, the Sisters well ahead of us.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said, his voice quiet. “I have been thinking that these women have been in this wood near upon a year and working the mine for many days. What have they done with the silver they’ve already made?”

  I knew just where his reasoning was leading and I didn’t like it. “It is not for me to say how much or how little their treasure is by now,” I told him. “But I’ve begun to worry about this place. All is not right here.”

  Christoph sniggered at me. “Faith and God’s cods! Have you only just puzzled that out, Englishman? These creatures are mad and probably outlaws besides. But I want to know where they’ve hidden their treasure. It must be buried hereabouts. What else could they have done with it?”

  I shrugged but did not bother to answer him.

  “By Christ,” he muttered, “I would settle this night for just a drink and a woman.”

  “We have the latter aplenty,” I replied.

  “That is so, but they’re a cunning lot and I’m liable to find a knife in the ribs the moment I lay my hand on a merkin.” He paused again. “Keep your wits about you. We must see if we can spy out their trove. What say you?”

  As he desired an answer I gave him a nod. But no words passed my lips.

  We reached the camp and the hovel holding all the worldly possessions that remained to me after my adventures. The Sisters fell to their tasks that I had now become accustomed to seeing: gathering firewood, checking their little traps for coney and grovelpig, and preparing the meal in the black iron pot. Christoph wandered off to scheme further while I sat near the fire, contemplating just what I was to do with the few choices I had.

  After a time, Rosemunde came to me again.

  “What is it that troubles you?” she asked, kneeling in front of me and touching my arm.

  “I was thinking about my comrades and that which I’ve left behind,” I replied. “In truth, I don’t belong here and that you must see already.”

  “Was it so very much that you have lost? We saved your lives and now offer you the means to give you wealth. Is this such a bad bargain?”

  I smiled at her and in turn her mouth creased in a grin, her green eyes darting across my face as I beheld her.

  “Aye, no bad bargain,” I said at last. “But I’ve come so very far in these last months that I don’t recognize my own life anymore. It seems so long ago. Was this meant to be?”

  She didn’t answer me, but instead, rose up and seized my hand that I should follow her.

  We walked together out of the camp and no one else took notice. I quickly cast a glance back to look out for Christoph, but I saw him not. Away and down the slope we went, the sun leading the way darting among the green boughs. It was a narrow, faint path that I had not taken before. After a few minutes, the ancient beech and birch gave way to thick stands of pine and this we entered. No sound followed us into this dark muffled world but she knew her way in the gloom and we soon came out again into the light.

  Here, the forest was of large oak and we descended further. We entered a small clearing, nearly full round, and at its head stood a great tree growing double out of the ground and cleft in the centre. Though this was a sight most unusual, it was the strange fruit of the tree that offered the greatest surprise.

  A hundred red ribbons hung about its branches, dancing lazily in the air. And with them, many tiny silver bells, gently tinkling as they swung in the breeze. And at the base of the cleft, a statue of a woman lay propped up and wedged between the two trunks. It was milky white and unadorned, but like the one at the furnace, seemed to me to be an image of the Virgin. Yet now I was less sure of my reasoning.

  And beneath this plaster idol, candles nestled together, carefully placed at her feet. At the very base of the tree was a wide stone bowl and in it I spied what looked like the remains of crushed berries, red and purple.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “It is a sacred place. Though I risk the Oma’s anger by bringing you here, I wanted to show you where we find solace and where we bind ourselves together in common purpose.”

  “You have built yourselves this shrine but it contains little that I’m familiar with,” I told her. “Here lies a votive of the Virgin but I see not the Cross or Crucifix as one would expect –”

  “She is not who you assume Her to be,” said Rosemunde turning to look at me and pushing her hair away from her face.

  “Then I ask of you again,” I said, growing apprehensive, “what is this place?”

  Rosemunde came closer to me at the centre of the clearing.

  “She is the White Lady.�
�� Her eyes looked into mine. “And we are Her daughters who serve Her in this wood.”

  “And who might this White Lady be?” I asked her.

  “She is Fraw Holt, the One who looks after us all, the One that the Oma has brought us to. It is she that grants all favours in this world.”

  I felt myself growing cold in that place as her words gave truth to the fears that I had been nurturing for days.

  “You’re a witch, Rosemunde.” And the words, as they came out of my mouth, came without anger or fear. In truth, they were laced with sadness, for my heart had already been ensnared by this creature.

  She did not flinch at my accusation but looked past me as she spoke.

  “Aye, as many folk would name us so. But the Goddess cares not what names we are called and nor do I. She gives us protection and strikes down those who would destroy Her and Her servants.”

  I should have knocked her down there and then. I should have fled that wood with what little I had and made my way north. But I could not repel her or her words. I closed the distance between us and grasped her shoulders.

  “Why, for the love of Christ have you done this thing?” I said, my voice rising now. “You risk your lives with this false worship. Are you mad?”

  She slowly but firmly pushed off my hands.

  “For the love of Christ, you say? And what has your God done for me and my sisters? He has suffered our menfolk to be taken from us, ignored our pleas when plague stalks our babes, let us drop with hunger when food is scarce. Where is His mercy when soldiers come and violate us? We have seen precious little of His works here.”

  Her words pained me for I had witnessed much death and cruelty in the year gone by. Who was I to attempt to reaffirm her Faith when even to me it seemed that the Lord had abandoned us all?

  “I won’t betray you,” I told her. “But nor will I take part in heathen ways. I may be bound for Hell anyway but I’m no worshipper of the Devil.”