The Curse of the Giant Hogweed

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “It almost looks as if the hogweed meant to pin us up in here,” Shandy panted. “I wonder why.”

  “If we are imprisoned without food or water for any length of time,” Stott began lugubriously, then caught himself. “At least we still have a modicum of cheese,” he finished in a more hopeful tone, for the Stotts were men of valor.

  “Well, we can’t stay here watching the goddamn hogweed grow,” Tim fretted. “I vote we hunt for another way out.”

  “Have we reason to hope there might in fact be another exit?” Dan inquired.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised if there are several,” Peter answered, trying to sound hearty. “The rock formations are mostly limestone around here. Limestone’s highly water-soluble, as you know, and this is a rainy climate. The cave roof may have broken through in any number of places. I’d only suggest we try to leave a trail of some sort, so that we can find our way back to this opening if we have to. The cave may go on for a considerable distance.”

  And wind up at a dead end, for all his brave talk. He didn’t have to tell them that.

  “How can we leave a trail?” Torchyld asked him.

  “Good question,” Peter admitted. “Tom Sawyer did it with smudges of candle black, which brings up another interesting question. How are we going to see our way? It’s already dark enough here by the entrance, with those infernal hogweed plants blocking out the daylight. I don’t suppose anybody thought to bring matches?”

  Even as he asked, Peter knew the question was ridiculous. All he personally had in his possession at the moment were this dratted bedsheet around his body and the buskins on his feet. Except for Torchyld’s harp and what was left of Dan’s cheese, the others were in no better case, barring their meager arsenal of the freshly reenchanted sword and a golden sickle that wouldn’t cut anything except, presumably, mistletoe. It wasn’t much to equip a spelunking expedition with.

  “I might have a lightning bug or two on me,” Tim remarked. “I think I’ve picked up a fair assortment of vermin.”

  “I will guide you.”

  The voice was soft and mushy-sounding, and came from somewhere down around Peter’s knees. He looked down but could see nothing. Then, somehow, the sound began to glow.

  “Who—what are you?” he stammered.

  “I be your guide. Ye must follow me. There be no other way. See, e’en now ye weeds grow thicker.”

  That, they were appalled to realize, was true. Now no gleam of light whatever could be seen from the cave’s mouth. The hogweed had formed an impenetrable wall. The glow slithered over toward the opening, allowing them a sickening glimpse of hairy, turgid green stems bulging inward, either from the weight of other stems pressing against them or because they were trying to root themselves in the solid rock floor of the cave.

  “Come,” urged the voice. “Ye have no time to lose.”

  “But ye trail,” cried Torchyld.

  “It would be useless. Ye can ne’er come back. Ye hogweed will not let ye.”

  “But you do know of a way out?” Peter entreated.

  “I know all ye ways. Come, they grow impatient.”

  The mass of hogweed was producing an eerie sound now. It must have been caused by the pressure of stems and leaves rubbing together, but it sounded horribly like the squealing roar of an infuriated wild boar, hell-bent on annihilating whatever came in his way.

  “My friends,” said Dan Stott, “I know that sound. It is of the sort to send the stoutest heart scrambling over the side of the pigpen. The fortuitous appearance of some mysterious guide is not without precedent in the literature to which I earlier alluded. Be this apparition benign or malevolent, the accepted procedure is to accept its proffered assistance. And indeed,” he added as the grunts grew in volume and bits of limestone began to crumble away from around the mouth of the cave, “we have no other choice. After you, my stalwart companions.”

  “Oh, all right,” grumbled Tim, “if you say so. I just wish to Christ I knew how we wound up having to follow a goddamn lit-up talking caterpillar through the middle of nowhere.”

  Whatever the creature might be, if it was a creature at all, it seemed to know its stuff. It wriggled along the cave floor emitting just enough light for the party to see where to put their feet. Its glow didn’t penetrate to me upper reaches of the cave, but they knew the ceiling must be high because Torchyld had not yet complained of a bumped head.

  None of them said much of anything, in fact, until Peter remarked, “At least we needn’t worry about water to drink.”

  The floor and walls were damp, even puddly in spots. The voice explained courteously that the wetness was due to condensation, and that it was the water dripping down and dissolving minerals from the rock that produced the odd formations they encountered on the cave floor. Much more interesting ones hung from the ceiling, it said. The glow regretted it was not powerful enough to illuminate these latter for their edification.

  Shandy, with equal courtesy, told the glow that the hanging ones were properly called stalactites and the sticking-up ones stalagmites. The glow replied that was most interesting and thanked him for the information. One got few opportunities for learned discourse in the cave, it said.

  “Do you get much—er—traffic here?” Shandy asked.

  “A fair amount. Animals, mostly. Dull creatures, by and large. And ye occasional strayed peasant or beleaguered warrior.”

  “Any damsels in distress?” Torchyld asked guilefully, thinking no doubt of his vanished Syglinde.

  “We have been very slow in ye damsel department,” sighed the voice. “I really cannot recall how long it’s been since a weeping maiden happened along. One tends to lose track of ye passage of time down here, ye ken. But one mustn’t complain. It be a living. Pray watch ye feet here, we be coming to a rather sticky bit. Perhaps two of ye might care to wait here until I light ye other two across?”

  “I think we’d rather stick together,” said Shandy.

  He was feeling more and more uneasy, and sensed his companions were, too. Affable though it might be, a disembodied glow was hardly the most reassuring of couriers.

  Peter would have liked to ask the glow something about itself, but he was finding he needed his breath for more immediate purposes. The walking, which hadn’t been any too smooth at best, was now abominable. “Rather sticky” had been merely an early example of the British penchant for understatement, he supposed. Could this be an English rather than a Welsh glow? Surely they hadn’t walked far enough to be back across the border.

  This was no time for speculation. The roof had got low enough that they had to move at a sort of running squat. Between ducking stalactites and tripping over ill-placed stalagmites, slipping on wet patches and sliding down sudden inclines, Peter had all he could do to save his bones.

  The glow wasn’t being a great deal of help here. It kept chittering remarks like, “Prithee exercise caution,” and “Mind ye stalagmite,” but its luminescence didn’t seem to be working as well as it had earlier, and it always happened to be off around a corner just when the need to see where one was stepping became most urgent.

  Perhaps it was rather a dull glow, after all. Or perhaps it didn’t function well under such adverse conditions as these. Or perhaps—Peter preferred not to think of any more perhapses.

  Once when he slipped, he came nose-to-puddle with a sort of natural drinking fountain in the rock, where drips were falling into a bowl-like depression and staying there. Being thirsty, he essayed an experimental lick. The water tasted like ground-up chalk, a flavor neither surprising in the circumstances nor displeasing to one who’d spent so much of his life in front of a blackboard. Peter slurped a satisfying mouthful and found himself not only refreshed but also, if he wasn’t being fanciful, a trifle better able to see his way around the cave.

  He’d have invited his companions to take a drink, too, but the glow had somehow recharged its batteries and was putting on a burst of light and speed. The rest were hurrying to keep up with
it, and Peter knew he must do the same. He still couldn’t see well enough to find his way by himself, and he could vaguely make out at least three separate tunnels branching off up ahead. God forbid he should take the wrong one and get separated from his group. They were in deep enough trouble already.

  Chapter 5

  OR WERE THEY? COULD this dream turned into a nightmare be winding down? A quick turn in the tunnel chosen by the glow was bringing them out, not into the forest, but to a cottage built right up against the mouth of the cave.

  The cottage was definitely on the primitive side, but what did they care? Log benches, a rude trestle table set with one wooden trencher and a few wooden spoons, a fire of faggots burning on the puncheon floor and sending a reasonable percentage of its smoke up through a hole in the peak of the roof were paradise enow. A rude pot was set on stones over the fire, and a woman was stirring the pot. It would have been impossible to say how old she might be. Probably forty and looked a hundred, Shandy thought cynically. At any rate, when she heard them coming, she looked up from her cooking and greeted them pleasantly enough.

  “Good e’en to ye, wayfarers. Ye have come a fearsome journey, I doubt not. Sit ye down and rest ye.”

  “Right gladly,” said Torchyld. Being the youngest and spryest, he immediately pinched the best seat on the benches. “What manner of woman be ye, to dwell in so parlous a place?”

  “It be none so parlous once ye get used to it,” she replied. “Ye cave be handy for storing my food in the winter.”

  “By Cerridwen, then ye must be a hearty eater.”

  “Did you say Cerridwen?” Even as he was easing off his left buskin, for his feet had taken some hard knocks during their long stumble through the cave, Daniel Stott perked up his ears.

  “I did,” Torchyld replied in some surprise. “Wouldn’t ye?”

  “I might.”

  Dan stood up. Even with one bare foot and a graze on his bald head sustained by sudden contact with the cave ceiling during that last arduous scramble, he appeared majestic and almost frightening through the haze of wood-smoke from the ill-vented fire.

  “Who’s Cerridwen?” asked Tim, trying to act nonchalant in the face of his colleague’s sudden awesomeness.

  “Cerridwen,” Stott drew a long breath, “was the sow goddess, Gwion’s enemy in the Romance of Taliesin. Robert Graves described her as a barley goddess, equated by the learned Dr. McCulloch with the Sow Demeter, also known as Phorcis. I confess I have not thoroughly mastered the convolutions of Graves’s text on the subject, for I am not a quick-thinking man. However, I have what my students would call a gut feeling that in our present circumstances it may be well for us not to take the name of Cerridwen lightly.”

  “I agree,” said Shandy, feeling a sudden chill despite the warmth of the fire.

  As an expert on grains, he’d read a few things about barley goddesses. He wished Torchyld hadn’t mentioned Cerridwen, and he had a hunch the old woman did, too. She was casting uneasy glances toward the roughly tanned cowhide that served as a door to the hut.

  The place was windowless, so Peter couldn’t tell whether it was dark yet, but he could see no gleam of daylight through the smokehole. He couldn’t see much in general. After hours of straining to follow the glow through the cave, the smoke was making his eyes sting abominably. Tim, whose vision was none too great anyway, appeared to be having a hard time. Dan Stott didn’t seem to be much bothered. Either he was still in a state of elevation over the Sow Goddess, or else he hadn’t yet got around to noticing his discomfort.

  As for young Torchyld, he was probably used to conditions not much better than these, though no doubt a good deal flossier in the trimmings. He was sprawled on the bench with his buskins off and his feet to the fire as if he owned the place. The crone evidently found his arrogance entirely acceptable. She merely got the trencher from the table and filled it with whatever she’d been stirring in the pot.

  “Will it please you, sirs, to sup?”

  “What’s in that stuff?” demanded Tim, always the soul of tact.

  “Naught save a gutted rabbit and a few pot herbs. None such grand fare as noblemen be wont to eat, but the best a poor widow’s table can afford.”

  “I’m sure it’s delicious,” Peter said politely. In fact it didn’t smell much worse than a New England boiled dinner after the cabbage goes in.

  “Let him taste it first,” Tim insisted, jerking his head at young Torchyld.

  “It shall be as ye archdruid wishes,” said the giant, picking up one of the wooden spoons and scooping a mighty dollop out of the trencher.

  “Archdruid be he? Oh, I am indeed honored beyond all hoping,” cried the old woman, bobbing what was perhaps the great-grandmother of a curtsy. “Let me lay down a skin for thy feet, exalted archdruid.”

  Tim looked apprehensive, but all she did was fetch a sheepskin from the heap of dried rushes in the corner that was no doubt her bed, and spread it under the bench where he sat. Then she took down a bundle of herbs from a peg on the wall, and strewed them over the sheepskin.

  “ ’Tis fleabane,” she explained. “ ’Twould not be seemly that ye august fleas privileged to sup on ye archdruid’s venerable hide be mixt with ye common breed. I would crave to so honor you all, noble sirs; but alas, I have but one sheepskin and no more fleabane.”

  “That’s quite all right,” said Peter. “We appreciate your kind thought. How’s the stew, Torchyld?”

  Torchyld only nodded and scooped out some more. Taking the act as a sign of approval and realizing they’d better dig in or go hungry, the others picked up spoons, too.

  Eating out of a common dish was not an agreeable change for them, but at least they each had his own spoon. Shandy realized such a refinement might not be customary in so mean a hovel. Maybe the old woman carved them to peddle as souvenirs to the travelers she succored. He wondered what else she might do for a living.

  “Ye forest feedeth me,” she remarked, as though she’d read his thought. “It giveth me nuts and berries, and herbs for my pot and sticks for my fire. Sometimes I have the great luck to find a rabbit in my snare. This was a fine, fat one and would have fed me for three suns to come. Be it to your liking, noble sirs?”

  “Excellent,” said Shandy, feeling like a worm for having taken the rabbit from a poor widow’s mouth. “Aren’t you having any yourself?”

  “Sir, ye jest! Is it for the likes of me to break bread with ye likes of you?”

  “No,” said Torchyld with his mouth full. “She can scrape ye pot when we have done. What be to drink, crone?”

  “But an humble brew of mine own concoction, noble sire.”

  “Fetch it forth.” Torchyld tossed a gnawed rabbit bone over his shoulder and reached for the drinking horn. She pulled it back.

  “Nay, noble bard. Ye revered archdruid should drink first.”

  “But I be a king’s great-nephew under enchantment.”

  “With all respect, young sir, every third male person who cometh through my cave be a king’s great-nephew under enchantment, could one believe ye tales they tell. Were I to slight ye great archdruid, I might be put under an enchantment far more grave than thine.”

  “Have it thine own way. I yield not to rank but to respect for gray hairs,” Torchyld growled, chucking another bone on the floor and pawing around in the trencher for the last morsel of meat. “Be this all ye have, ugly hag?”

  “There be but a sup of broth in the pot,” she faltered. “I was hoping—”

  “Bring it here.”

  “Stay,” said Daniel Stott. “Let our gracious hostess have her share. I suggest, madam, that while you eat what remains of this palatable stew, for which we thank you heartily, I melt my piece of cheese in your cooking pot. You would not by chance have any bacon in me house?”

  “I have but one small rind, your worship.”

  “That will suffice. The bacon, you see, is suspended over the pot so that its fat drips down and imparts its flavor to the cheese. The
melted cheese can men be served over crackers or toasted bread, should any be available.”

  “I have flat cakes of grounden acorns,” she replied. “They could be atoasting by my fire whilst melteth ye cheese. ’Tis a woundily fine substitute for a rabbit, forsooth. Never in this land hath any heard of such a dish.”

  “By George, Dan, I think you’ve just invented Welsh rabbit,” cried Peter. “How’s the hooch, Tim?”

  “Better than Jemima used to make,” said the archdruid, his eyeballs wobbling slightly.

  Jemima Ames, Tim’s late wife, had probably been the worst cook in the world. Her essays into winemaking had been among her more picturesque fiascos, setting the air of Balaclava Junction alive with flying corks, and rattling the toenails of anybody who dared to taste the results. “Better than Jemima’s” was faint praise, but it was something. Tim took another sip to confirm his decision, then passed the horn to Stott. Dan in turn quaffed, gagged, and handed it along to Torchyld, who was looking pretty waxy by now. He took a mighty swig and gave the rest to Peter.

  “Ye dregs for thee, druid, since ye begrudge a desolated lover his small meed of consolation.”

  “Drat it, I don’t begrudge you anything. I just don’t see why this poor woman has to be done out of her supper because she’s had the decency to come to our rescue. Would you care for a drop of the craythur, madam?”

  Without drinking any himself, Peter offered the horn to their hostess. He’d have preferred to think he did it out of politeness, but the fact was, he didn’t like what he saw in the horn. Either she’d left a dead spider down at the tip, or else that strange acuity of vision he’d experienced after he’d drunk the water in the cave was still working.

  The woman refused. “Nay, kind and noble druid, strong waters be not meet for poor though pious widows. Except maybe a nip now and then to chase ye damp from mine ancient bones,” she amended, slurping down the last of the rabbit broth before Torchyld could change his mind and grab it. “Drink ye and be merry. I will refill ye horn. Come, sir druid, ye knowest it be discourteous to turn down ye drinking horn while yet ye revel be hardly begun. Humble though mine entertainment be, ye wilt surely not do me the affront to refuse it.”