The Curse of the Giant Hogweed

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “Such accoutrements are not strictly necessary,” Dan informed him. “The boat is guided by mysterious forces.”

  “What forces?”

  “That detail is never explained, possibly to enhance the atmosphere of mystery. One merely trusts. Sir Torchyld, if you and I get in simultaneously from opposite sides, I believe we shall thus minimize the danger of capsizing.”

  Tim snickered meanly. “Some trust. Go ahead, Dan. We can all use a good laugh. Might bring down something else to eat.”

  “There is, as I rather anticipated, a lunch basket in the boat,” Dan replied mildly, setting one large foot in the flimsy craft and pulling the other in after it.

  Torchyld stepped briskly aboard at the same time. Shandy watched for the coracle to founder. To his astonishment, it appeared to ride almost as high in the water as before. Stott and Torchyld were now passing chicken legs, jam tarts, and bunches of grapes back and forth like two ladies at a tea party. Medrus moaned.

  “Might I not go in ye coracle, great druids? It be so long, so very long—”

  “Oh, what the hell? Come on. Here, boys, take your staves.”

  Peter got Tim and Medrus stowed aboard, then he climbed over the gunwale himself. It was a tight squeeze, even with his knees up under his chin, but at least he got his jam tart before Torchyld ate them all.

  “Now who’s going to shove off?” Tim demanded with his mouth full of chicken. “Assuming we can get off at all.”

  “We are already afloat,” Dan told him, reaching calmly for the last drumstick.

  Lo and behold, they were. The coracle had moved out into the middle of the stream and the mysterious forces were buckling down to serious business. They were none of them comfortable but the chicken was juicy, the fruit was sweet, and for drink they had only to dangle their cupped hands over the side and scoop up the cold, clear river water.

  The water was remarkably good in this enchanted land. Peter only hoped it wasn’t laden with typhus germs. Probably it wasn’t. That would come with modern progress. He drank some more and rubbed his wet hands across his face to wash off the traces of his picnic lunch. He needed a shave. So did Dan. Tim hadn’t shaved in years, and he doubted whether Medrus had ever shaved at all; though Torchyld’s blond mustache was at least decently trimmed.

  There was something to be said for beards. He’d have one himself, no doubt, before they got out of this mess. A gray one. If they ever did. He sighed and tried to find a more comfortable position. It wasn’t easy, sitting scrunched up on this blasted wickerwork. The crew’s backsides would look like a plate of waffles by the time they disembarked. Why couldn’t the mysterious forces have laid on a bigger boat? And a few cushions?

  Nice of them to have thought of the lunch, though. Too bad there wasn’t more of it. The forces must have been expecting a smaller party. At least they were moving the boat along at a good clip. It was rolling slightly now. Medrus was beginning to look a bit green.

  “Lean over the side and wet your head if you start to feel funny,” Peter told the clerk.

  “Great druid, I dare not move.”

  “You’d damn well better move if you’re going to be sick,” Tim growled.

  Maybe Medrus did and maybe he didn’t. Peter couldn’t stay awake to find out. The warm sun, the gentle breeze wafting as predicted about their temples, the rocking motion of the boat, were lulling him and the rest back to sleep. Torchyld, who’d so gallantly kept watch while they were napping back on the riverbank, was already snuffling gently, murmuring “Syglinde” every so often and looking surprisingly angelic. Dan Stott was probably asleep, too. It was hard to tell, with Dan.

  Medrus had dropped off when Shandy roused himself to check, and was making those whimpering noises again. Poor bastard, Peter thought muzzily. God alone knew what horrors he’d been subjected to by that monstress Gwrach, aside from the trauma of being disembodied. Or what he’d gone through beforehand, if it came to that. Lord Mochyn couldn’t have been the world’s greatest employer, either. Any human being who’d be willing to engage in sexual congress (Peter was something of a prude in certain ways) with a creature like that deserved to wind up in the soup.

  He didn’t feel so well, himself. Maybe the chicken had been slightly off from sitting out in the sun in that picnic basket. Not that he’d had enough of it to matter.

  And that was still an interesting point to consider. He’d had no previous experience of enchantments, but it did seem as if whatever power was engineering this excursion could have provided more adequate accommodations. Unless the coracle was just some kind of ferryboat that drifted around looking for business and took anybody who came along, regardless. Or unless the mysterious forces had been expecting a smaller group, as he’d wondered before.

  They mightn’t have counted on Medrus. He’d been sort of an accidental addition, though not a big enough one to count for much. It was Torchyld who really made the difference. And it was Torchyld whom the hags had been out to get. That old bat Dwydd had made two attempts on his life already that Peter knew about: once when she’d disenchanted his sword and presented him with those two quite possibly poisoned biscuits as he was on his way to kill the wyvern; and the second when she’d swiped the griffin and the girl to create a situation that would send him into the clutches of Gwrach, weaponless and distraught over his sudden demotion from hero to villain. Gwrach herself had talked of sending Dwydd a thank-you note for the lovely dinner, so there could be no doubt the whole thing was a put-up job.

  Torchyld’s thinking he’d been switched by magic from a warrior to a bard was nonsense, of course. If there’d really been any enchantment, he would presumably have been given some bardly attributes instead of just a harp and a heave-ho. Torchyld was no more a bard than Peter Shandy was. Less of one, in fact. Peter didn’t particularly enjoy recalling the events of the previous night, but nobody could deny his first go at hardship had been a bang-up performance.

  It appeared that Torchyld, unlike the college president he so oddly resembled, wasn’t very bright. No, that wasn’t so at all. Torchyld had brains enough when he chose to use them, if his own account of how he’d killed the wyvern was true. He was—unawakened, that was it. A child of his time, no doubt. This was an era, and a country, where strange things happened.

  Shandy had to believe that. He’d seen it with Medrus; he’d seen it, God help him, with Gwrach. He’d seen the hogweed growing before his eyes. And Tim’s eyes, and Dan’s eyes. Right now he was sitting in a boat that was certainly moving as though some unseen intelligence was guiding it, even if it had been ordinary human hands that packed the lunch and set the coracle adrift.

  Torchyld must have seen a fair amount of this sort of thing. He couldn’t help believing in enchantments because he knew they happened. Therefore, he might well be conditioned to believe in enchantments that hadn’t really happened at all. The young fellow simply hadn’t yet learned to separate the abra from the cadabra.

  Would he ever get a chance to learn? Somebody was going to a lot of fuss and bother to get him killed. Was it Dwydd, acting on her own, or was the resident hag just doing a favor for some member of the king’s household? And why would one of them want him dead? Was it because of his girl, or his wealth, or because his father who’d been eaten by a garefowl had been the rightful king and Torchyld was the true heir to the throne? God, Peter wished he could stretch his legs.

  The sun was bothering him now, going down and sending oblique rays straight into his eyes. So they were heading due west, if that meant anything. Peter draped a fold of his robe across his eyes to shut out the glare. That was better. Soothing. Restful. He’d just keep his eyes shut a minute longer to ease their smarting.

  Chapter 8

  PETER SLEPT. HE COULDN’T tell for how long, but when he woke, the moon was either coming up or going down. Down, he thought. As Huck Finn would say, it felt late and it smelt late. A long time since he’d read that flawed masterpiece. Too long. Well, there wasn’t much he could do about
it now.

  Tim and the others were still pounding their ears. At least they hadn’t been eaten by sea serpents or invaded by water voles. The little boat was still clipping along at a lively rate. Gradually, that fact began to worry him.

  When they met, Torchyld had been banished from King Sfyn’s castle for less than a day. He hadn’t had any great head of steam on when Shandy first saw him; he’d been too burdened by his weight of woe to have put many leagues between himself and his vanished bride-to-be. Fifteen or twenty miles at the outside, say, and probably nearer ten.

  After they’d met Tim and Dan, they probably hadn’t gone any distance at all. They’d wasted time palavering on the path, then the hogweed had chased them into that cave. Once inside, it seemed as if they’d traveled endlessly, but in all likelihood it hadn’t been more than a mile or two. Nor had they covered a great deal of ground before they’d stopped to rest after their hair-raising night, and found the boat. Or the boat had found them.

  If they were floating in the general direction of King Sfyn’s castle, therefore, they ought to be making port any time now. If not, they were being taken a good deal farther out of their way than they wanted to go.

  It was all very well for Dan Stott to talk blandly about being assisted on the next leg of their journey. Shandy had little faith in The Wizard of Oz as a travel guide. He wished to Christ he’d thought to fetch along something they could use as a paddle. They did have their staves, and a devilish nuisance these were turning out to be in so tiny a craft, but the staves would be of no use unless they got close enough inshore to pole. The boat seemed to catch his thought, and took a sudden skip that sent them out into the middle of what Peter, now that his eyes were accustomed to the darkness, could see was no longer a stream but a good-sized lake.

  What was the use of worrying? Obviously he wasn’t in control here. He didn’t know who was, or what, or why, or how. The boat must not have been sent to drown them; it could have managed that any time these past several hours. The only sensible thing for him to do was relax and enjoy the ride.

  Relax, forsooth! Peter could barely manage to wiggle his eyebrows, let alone take a decent stretch to get the kinks out. How in tunket did the rest of the boys manage to sleep so soundly? And why did that twerp Medrus have to keep making those confounded noises?

  Anybody can be noble and heroic in a real crisis. It’s when you’re in a situation where there’s nothing much you can do, when you get a cramp in your left gastrocnemius, when you didn’t get enough supper and you start brooding on the pint you never got to drink, that real fortitude is called for. It was low and mean and rotten to take umbrage when the offender meant no offense; nevertheless, if Peter Shandy could have got a foot untangled, he would have found exquisite relief in kicking Medrus to shut him up.

  Perhaps Medrus, like the coracle, had a knack for intercepting thought waves. He slumped forward so that his scurfy head was all but resting on Shandy’s knees, and stopped whimpering. Peter was about to try nudging him back, if it could be done without upsetting me boat, when he realized something was going on. Medrus was fumbling under his, Shandy’s, robe.

  Furious, Peter was ready to risk a shipwreck by belting him one when Medrus straightened up, raised something to his mouth, and began to gnaw. Now what had the little bastard got hold of? Peter sniffed and realized it must be a chicken leg he’d cunningly stashed in the bottom of the coracle for a late-night snack. Sneaky but understandable. One could hardly expect much in the way of high-minded morality from a person with his background. Still it was irksome. Peter was in a mood to be irked, no doubt. Drat it, how far was this pestiferous boat going to take them?

  Medrus had finished his surreptitious repast. He must have gnawed halfway through the bone before, with obvious reluctance, he dropped it overboard and licked his fingers like a cat. Poor bugger, he had a big hollow to fill. A few beechnuts and what little he’d had from the picnic basket couldn’t have gone far toward assuaging the kind of hunger the ex-clerk must have built up during his disembodiment. Peter told himself so and knew he should be ashamed for having to, but he still felt annoyed. He was sorry they’d acquired Medrus. He hoped he wouldn’t be sorrier before this trip was over.

  If it ever was. He tried to get back to sleep but found himself only napping by fits and starts, jerking awake to feel yet another crick in his neck or his back or his knee or his big toe. The night was a million years long. Dawn would never come. They’d drift on and on, getting stiffer and stiffer, finally withering away like dried-up kernels in last year’s walnuts. On this happy thought he fell at last into a sound sleep, and woke to find the boat gliding up to a stone jetty at the foot of a towering castle.

  “Wake up, everybody,” he caroled. “We’re going ashore.”

  “Huh?” Tim sat up as straight as he could manage, and rubbed his eyes. “Where are we?”

  “I don’t know, but we’re somewhere,” Peter told him. “Recognize this castle, Torchyld? It’s not King Sfyn’s?”

  “Nay, I ken it not.” Torchyld yawned. “No matter. They will give us a banquet.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Have to, in sooth. That be ye rule of etiquette. ’Tis unmannerly to slaughter us before they feed us. Even ye sorceress in ye cave knew that.”

  “True enough, she did. But—er—it’s not the general custom to kill the guests after the meal, is it?”

  “Oh no. They be more like to want to marry us off to their ugly daughters,” Torchyld replied, gloom settling over what could be seen of his countenance as he thought of all those unwed female cousins back home, not to mention his also unwed and now possibly mislaid Syglinde.

  “Well, Dan and I are already married and you’re betrothed,” Shandy told him cheerily. “That leaves ’em only Tim and Medrus as prospects.”

  “Mayhap we had best not say so until we see how lies ye land. Who be I, druid?”

  “Who—er, um, yes, I see what you mean. Perhaps for the time being, you’d better remain an apprentice bard.”

  “But I wot not of making poetry.”

  “That’s right, you wotn’t. You’re still—er—learning the business and not allowed to perform in public yet. I’ll do any barding that’s necessary. Well, well, here’s our welcoming committee.”

  Peter was none too easy in his mind about the men marching down to meet the boat. He felt a trifle less anxious, though, when he saw there wasn’t a drawn weapon among them. Those few who did carry spears looked, from their tin soldier poses, to be doing so merely for ceremonial purposes. Peter waited until the boat had drifted within hailing distance, then tried an experimental, “Ahoy.”

  “They speak in strange tongues,” he could hear one remarking to another.

  “Drat it, what was I supposed to say?” Peter muttered to Torchyld.

  “Ye might’st have tried ‘hail.’ ”

  “All right then, hail. Hail, hail, the gang’s all here.”

  “What the hail do we care?” Tim chimed in. “Tell ’em to put on the coffeepot and bring on the mules to haul us out of this goddamn tub. I think my back’s broken.”

  “Mine also,” said Daniel Stott, coming to life without undue haste. “Do I gather we have attained our hitherto unknown destination?”

  “It’s still unknown at the moment,” Peter told him, “but I guess this is as far as the boat goes.”

  Even now they were bobbing up to the jetty and eager hands were reaching out to secure the coracle. Peter tried another hail and was answered by a veritable hailstorm.

  “Hail to thee, blithe spirits,” he finished off the chorus. “May we come ashore?”

  “Welcome. Welcome, damn it.”

  The fattest and best-dressed of the group, a middle-aged man of medium height with sharp little blue eyes and gray hair, bustled forward rubbing his hands. “Happy to have ye aboard. Steady ye boat there, louts. Help our distinguished visitors out. Be ye bards or druids, honored sirs?”

  “Some of each,” Pete
r told him. “This venerable personage is Archdruid Timothy Ames, and this is Assistant Archdruid Daniel Stott. I’m Boss Bard Peter Shandy, this is Apprentice Bard Torchyld, and this chap in the sawed-off petticoat is Medrus, whom we found in a cave temporarily employed as a disembodied glow. He tells us he was once clerk to a Lord Mochyn. You wouldn’t happen to have been acquainted with Lord Mochyn, by any chance?”

  “Mochyn?” The head of the greeting party scratched his somewhat unkempt gray beard. “Ye name soundeth familiar, but I can’t seem to place him. ’Twill come to me, sooner or later. I be Lord Ysgard and these be my sons: Yfor, Yfan, Yorich, Huw, Hywell, and Hayward. My steward be around here somewhere. Degwel! Hoy, Degwel! Shake a leg.”

  “I be here, my liege. I was but instructing some of ye minions to run and put another trencherful of boiled eels on ye banqueting board. No doubt our distinguished guests will wish to break their fast without delay.”

  “We shall be honored to sit at Lord Ysgard’s board,” said Peter, “and we thank you, Steward Degwel, for the boiled eels. Are we also indebted to you for sending this coracle to pick us up?”

  “Nay, great bard, ye coracle be none of my doing. I would have chosen a vessel better suited to ye size of ye company.”

  “Degwel wotteth his stuff,” said Lord Ysgard. “But come, come, ye must be famished. Have a good trip?”

  “We got here,” grunted Tim, hoisting himself out of the boat with the help of two of Lord Ysgard’s stalwart sons. They were all tall and broad in the beam, all black-haired, black-eyed, and rosy-cheeked. Nice boys, they looked to be. Probably run to fat in later years if they took after their old man.

  Where was Mrs. Ysgard? Peter wondered if it was the custom for the ladies of the house to keep out of sight until the men had got a chance to examine the moral principles of any newcomer. It did seem odd that not even a serving maid was sticking her head out from around the donjon keep to get a squint at the newcomers.

  When they entered the castle, they still didn’t see a woman. Nor were any present at the banqueting board when they entered the great hall, which in truth wasn’t so great, though of course they weren’t about to say so. When the five of them, Medrus below the salt and Torchyld down among the younger sons, refraining from voicing his displeasure only because Shandy kept giving him stern looks, took their places with Lord Ysgard, his family, the steward, and assorted members of the lordly household, there was barely room for the minions to squeeze through with the trenchers and the wolfhounds to forage behind the benches. Shandy could see why the Welsh had taken to breeding corgis.