PETER SHRUGGED AND TOOK hold of the little man’s hand. “Lead on, then. We can’t stay here. What’s your name, by the way?”
“Medrus, your druidity.”
“All right, Medrus. Come along, everybody. We’re moving out.”
The three others, numb from the witch’s brew they hadn’t had time to sleep off as well as from their incredible awakening, clasped hands in turn and stumbled along behind. It wasn’t very far to the real cave opening, perhaps a quarter of a mile, but it was tough going with no light whatever. Tim minded the trek most.
“Damn it, Medrus,” he grumbled, “can’t you even glimmer a little?”
Medrus couldn’t, but he did keep up his running patter like Emma Woodhouse’s neighbor, Miss Bates. “Prithee mind ye stalagmite here. Observe ye puddle.”
Tim was still feeling the damp in his bones, the horror of their narrow escape from the hag, and a hangover the like of which he hadn’t experienced since his late wife Jemima made him try her elderberry wine.
“How the hell do you expect us to observe what we can’t even see?” he snapped.
After that, Medrus maintained a hurt silence until at last they emerged into bright sunshine. Then he collapsed, writhing on the ground and screaming, “Aagh! ’Tis not to be borne.”
“Now what’s eating you?” Tim snarled.
“It’s the daylight,” said Peter. “God knows how long the poor bugger’s been crawling around inside that cave. He’ll need a while to adjust.”
“How long a while? Damn it, Pete, we can’t lollygag around here for the rest of our lives waiting for this pipsqueak’s eyeballs to settle down.”
“I myself would be content to lollygag awhile,” said Daniel Stott, propping himself against a conveniently situated beech tree. “We might employ the interval in cogitation upon which direction we ought to proceed in when we resume our march.”
“Straight to King Sfyn’s castle,” said Peter.
“But we can’t,” Torchyld howled. “We haven’t found ye griffin yet. Gin I go back there without old Ffyff, they list to hurl me from ye parapets and boil me in oil. Or boil me in oil and then hurl me from ye parapets. I forget ye protocol. I feel not well.”
“I’m tired myself,” Peter admitted. “It’s been a rough night. I move we find a good place to camp, and sack in for a while. Here, Medrus, sit up a minute. Let’s see what we can do about those eyes.”
He ripped a narrow strip off the hem of his still-sodden robe and bound it around the clerk’s forehead. Then he plucked a few short, leafy twigs and thrust them under the headband so that the leaves hung down to serve as a primitive visor.
“There, that ought to help a little. Try opening your eyes for just a second at a time, until you begin to feel comfortable.”
Medrus ventured a quick squint. “Gramercy, great and bountiful sir. Such munificence is astounding. Now gin I could only have some small morsel to eat. I have not tasted food since I entered ye cave with my liege, Lord Mochyn, in times agone, and I must say I begin to feel a trifle peckish.”
At the word “food,” Daniel Stott started up in alarm. “Dear me, this is indeed a parlous state of affairs. We are totally unprovisioned. Let us temporarily thrust aside our own discomforts and seek sustenance for this luckless wight. Medrus, would you settle temporarily for roots and berries in lieu of more substantial fare?”
“Marry, I would not,” grumbled Torchyld. “Up and to ye hunt. Who hath my sword?”
“Great Scott,” cried Peter, “haven’t you?”
“Would I be asking if I had?”
“Then it must still be back in the cave, drat it. Why in hell couldn’t you have hung on to it? Your sword was the only weapon we had, except Tim’s golden sickle, and that won’t cut hot butter.”
“There’s the harp,” Tim wheezed. “Why don’t you try charming a few partridges out of the trees, Peter? Give ’em one of your song-and-dance routines. God, that was funny.”
He began to chortle at the memory. At once a shower of beechnuts dropped from the tree, pelting Tim on his bald head and caroming off his beard. Torchyld found this hilarious and laughed also, only to get zonked by an even heavier fall. At once he fell to cracking the fine, fat nuts in his fingers.
“Here, clerk,” he said, handing Medrus the first handful of kernels. “Noblesse oblige. Chew them slowly, lest they give ye a bellyache.”
“Thankee, noble bard,” the clerk replied humbly. “I cannot chew other than slowly. I possess but two teeth, and they not in line with one another.”
He began mumbling beechnuts while the others cracked and munched. Peter rapped his nuts cleanly with a rock and got out a perfect kernel every time. Daniel Stott carefully and deliberately opened a fair-sized heap, then settled down to concentrated mastication. Torchyld went at the job with such energy that he was soon surrounded by crumbled shells and squashed kernels, which he scooped up and gave to Medrus.
“Eat these, clerk. They will save those two teeth some grinding.”
Tim cracked and ate a few, then said, “Oh hell, that’s too much like work.” He’d never been a big eater, anyway.
Peter soon lost interest in the beechnuts, too. He gazed up into the branches, his brow furrowed in thought. After a while, he crowed. “Gentlemen, I think I’ve got it.”
“Whate’er it be, I want some,” said Torchyld.
“You have all you want right now.”
“All of what? Fleas? Nay, druid, of those I have more than I want.”
“You and me both,” growled Tim. “That cursed sheepskin must have been crawling with ’em. I move we find ourselves a swimming hole and take a bath.”
“A what?” said Medrus.
“A bath. Like when you get into water and wash yourself all over.”
“For what purpose, great archdruid?”
“To get the dirt off, dang it.”
“Ah. Vast is thy wisdom, though strange thy customs. Prithee, sir bard, be there any more nuts?”
“Be my lowly guest.”
Torchyld considerately mashed another handful for him. “I might perchance also give ye some of whatever else I have in such abundance, gin I knew what it be.”
“Very funny,” said Peter, and laughed.
His wasn’t a particularly hearty laugh, barely more than a snicker, but it fetched another small shower of beechnuts. “See,” he said, “it happens every time.”
“That nuts fall from trees?” the young giant scoffed. “Vast indeed is thy wisdom, druid. What else can a nut do?”
“It happens whenever we laugh, is what I’m driving at. Don’t you get it? Laughter, that’s our most effective weapon. Remember what happened to the sorceress?”
“She brast.”
“I know she brast. I’ve still got a few reminders scattered over my nightshirt. I’m all for the swimming hole, too, Tim. But what I mean is, she brast after we’d begun to laugh. Don’t you remember? First she began to cower away and shrink.”
“But it wasn’t till you heaved that wet rag at her that she brast,” Tim argued. “Busted. Whatever the hell she did. I say it was the cold water that finished her off.”
“I incline toward Timothy’s thesis,” said Dan Stott. “I believe I mentioned before that in the case of the trifids, water proved to be the effective dissolving agent. A similar incident was described in a book to which my daughters were much addicted during their formative years. I must say I found the narrative a trifle farfetched in spots, though the character of the lion was subtly drawn. In any event, this took place in a region known as Oz, when a child named Dorothy effected the demise of a wicked witch by pouring a bucketful of water over her. Hence we have well-documented evidence that witches recoil from the threat of water.”
“She’d already recoiled before I sloshed her,” Shandy insisted. “I grant you the cold water may have triggered the final explosion, but it would be unscientific to overlook the preliminary effect of the laughter.”
Dan pondered awhi
le, then essayed an experimental chortle. He got one beechnut and a much put-out starling.
“Ye tree knew ye didn’t really mean it,” said Torchyld.
“You fooled the starling, though,” said Tim.
The bird gave him a dirty look and flew off.
“The salient fact,” Stott decided, “is that I did in fact get a result. This bears out Peter’s argument and means we are less defenseless than we might have supposed. He who can laugh in the face of adversity is in sober fact thrice-armed, it appears. I find myself greatly heartened by this knowledge.”
“Urrgh,” said Torchyld. “I still wish I had my sword. Mayhap I should go back and get it.”
“Mayhap you shouldn’t,” said Peter. “I have a feeling that would be a remarkably stupid thing to do. Would you settle for a quarterstaff ?”
“A what?”
“A long stick, suitable for prodding and lambasting.”
“Oh, a ffon. That be a peasant’s weapon. And forsooth, who careth?”
Torchyld leaped to his feet and went on the prowl. It wasn’t long before he found a ffon to his liking, about six feet long and as big around as Dan Stott’s arm. Peter thought it more suited for tossing the caber than hand-to-hand combat, but he didn’t say so.
“Might ye rest of us not equip ourselves with ffons, too, if I may be so bold as to offer ye suggestion?” Medrus ventured.
With his eyes now fully open and all those beechnuts under his kilt, the clerk looked a shade less weedy, though still a wretchedly inferior specimen. His suggestion was sensible enough, though, so they all began equipping themselves according to their tastes. Tim chose a sturdy branch about three feet long with a knob at the top, which he could use as a war club or a walking stick as occasion offered. Medrus followed his example on a punier scale to befit his rank and stature. Dan Stott managed to find a tall staff with the top looped over to suggest a shepherd’s crook or a bishop’s crozier.
Dan did look remarkably like a bishop, or some such august personage, in that long white robe and headdress, with the fillet of gold across his hairless brow. No wonder the hag had fallen for him, Peter thought. He himself aroused Torchyld’s derision by selecting not one but three sticks: short, straight, and strong; none of them bigger around than a plant stick. He also gathered up a few feathers the starling had shed when it fell out of the tree, and stowed them in a fold of his robe.
Peter was also still carrying the harp, which Torchyld appeared to have handed over to him on the strength of his stellar performance back in the cave. Now he hoisted it back over his shoulder and jerked his head forward.
“What do you say, men? Let’s start hunting for water. I want a drink and I want a bath. And I want to wash this filthy damned burnous I’m wearing. And then I want a nap. The rest of you at least managed to get a little sleep last night. I never closed my eyes.”
“It still amazeth me, noble druid, that ye alone were not felled by Gwrach’s magic potion,” Medrus remarked.
“That so?” Shandy gave him a narrow look. “It amazeth me that you know her name all of a sudden. Back there a while, you said you didn’t.”
“Great sir, I durst not men utter it. Mayhap I should not have dursted now.”
“You mean the evil that she did lives after her?”
“I cannot say. I only fear.”
“Laugh it off,” Tim snorted. “Mayhap you can snicker up a stack of buckwheat cakes. Let’s strike downhill, Pete. We’re more apt to find water on low ground. Besides, I’d rather go down than up.”
“Right, Tim.”
Peter was growing deeply concerned for his old buddy. Tim was a tough old rooster for his years, but he wouldn’t be able to stand much more of this. He’d keep going till he dropped, of course, rather than admit he was done in, but how soon was he going to drop? It was an ineffable relief to come upon an open, grassy bank with a genteel creek meandering through. Better still, the sun they’d seen back at the cave mouth and hardly been able to glimpse since then in the thick forest was warming the grass nicely.
They all crouched at the water’s edge and took long drinks. Then Peter remarked, “Great day for the wash,” stripped off his soiled robe, and waded in with it over his arm, leaving the harp, the feathers, and his three sticks on the bank.
“How’s the water, Pete?” Tim asked him.
“Great. Come on in, everybody. Good for what ails you.”
Torchyld plunged in as a warrior should, splashing and wallowing and insisting it wasn’t a bit cold once you got ducked. Tim followed, then Dan Stott, still wearing his white robe and looking a bit like Moby Dick. At last Medrus waded in ankle deep and dithered there moaning until Torchyld picked him up by the ankles and pitched him in head first. Once over the initial shock, he paddled around like a puppy and put on airs about his bravery in entering this foreign element.
Without soap, they couldn’t get themselves or their clothes really clean. They did their best, however, all except Medrus, who couldn’t seem to grasp the principle of washing. At last, refreshed and at least semipurified, they came ashore, spread out their garments to dry on the grass, and eased themselves down to rest. Before long, Torchyld caught the older men yawning.
“How can ye sleep?” he chided. “Men on ye march drowse not without first setting a sentry.”
He sounded as if he hoped they’d talk him out of the idea, but nobody did so he had to sit alone listening to Tim snore, Dan snuffle, and Medrus emit strange whuffling noises like a dog dreaming of chasing a rabbit. Peter merely slept, or tried to until he felt himself being prodded in the ribs.
“Hist, druid,” whispered the self-appointed sentry. “Something cometh.”
“What cometh?” Peter growled back. “Why couldn’t you wake somebody else?”
“Because ye old one and ye fat one outrank me, and ye scrawny runt I trust not. Behold.”
Peter sat up and beheld. “Well, I’ll be jiggered,” he exclaimed when he’d spotted the object bobbing toward them down we stream. “A floating washtub. Is that what they call a coracle?”
The vessel looked to be about the size and shape of his grandmother’s zinc bathtub, woven basketwise of osiers or some such withy material, and covered with stretched cowhide. Shandy had seen pictures of them, but had never really believed anybody would voluntarily set out from shore in so flimsy a craft.
“Who’s in it?” he asked Torchyld. “Can you see?”
“I see nobody. It floateth high on ye water, yet acts as if it were being steered.”
Torchyld waded out into the stream, his staff held ready just in case. In a moment, the coracle had bobbed close enough for him to look inside.
“Empty,” he announced. “Unless there be a disembodied boatman.”
“That be entirely possible.”
It was Medrus who’d spoken. Their talk had wakened him and Timothy Ames, who were both eyeing the coracle with keen interest.
“Bring it ashore, son,” Tim called out.
Before Torchyld could obey, the little boat of itself changed course and swerved in the direction of Tim’s voice.
“It obeyeth ye archdruid,” laughed the king’s great-nephew. “Come hither, boat.” He waded ashore. Sure enough, the coracle bobbed along behind him, into the shallows next to the bank.
Now that he could get a good look at it, Peter saw that the wicker frame was skillfully woven and the hide covering shrunk so tight to it that it made a dry, light, and probably efficient craft. It would be tippy and cranky to steer until you got the hang of it, but could be rowed or paddled without much effort.
He’d heard Welsh fishermen would take their coracles out off the coast in all weathers. He’d hate to try that himself, but on a meandering creek like this one, the little boat might be at least a temporary answer to Tim’s fatigue. The problem was, how could they all fit in? The coracle looked as if it would founder under the weight of Torchyld and Dan alone, not to mention trying to squeeze the others in around them.
Maybe it would be possible to make a rope of vines or strips from their robes, and float the coracle along with Tim and that poor shrimp Medrus in it while the rest towed from the bank. That was, of course, provided the stream flowed in the direction they wanted to take. He asked Torchyld. The young giant only stared at him.
“Dost expect me to know? I thought ye did.”
“But how the hell—” Peter caught himself. He’d forgotten he was supposed to be infallible. While he was wondering how to save face, Dan Stott blinked, opened his eyes without undue haste, and slowly sat up.
“Ah,” he remarked. “The boat has arrived.”
“Cripes, Dan, you sound as if you’ve been expecting it,” said Tim.
“Let us rather say that I am not surprised. Such craft are frequent manifestations in the vignettes of local history to which I alluded earlier. It has come to take us on the next leg of our journey.”
“The hell it has. Where’s that?”
“We shall no doubt be informed when we get there.”
Stott arose, picked up his now dry robe, shook it free of lounging grasshoppers, and put it on. He adjusted the gold fillet around his head-covering, made a discreet trip behind a convenient tree, came back, and announced, “I am ready.”
“You’re actually going to ride in that boat?” Tim demanded.
“We all are, are we not?”
“How the hell can we? The damn thing’s no bigger than my Aunt Winona’s old sitz bath.”
“I suggest that Sir Torchyld and I, because of our greater weight and girth, take the bow and stern respectively. If you and Medrus sit side by side in front of me and Peter takes his place between you two and Sir Torchyld, we should be able to trim the boat adequately.”
“Trim, hell! She’ll be slam on the bottom with all hands before we can get our rumps planted.”
“I believe not. Such an occurrence has not cropped up in any of the literature sent by my sister Matilda. Passengers are merely wafted over the rippling waters while gentle breezes fan their temples. Sometimes ethereal music is heard, sometimes not.”
“Sometimes there’s a rudder and sail, or a pair of oars, or some damn thing to navigate with, isn’t there?” Tim insisted.
The Curse of the Giant Hogweed Page 6
