The Curse of the Giant Hogweed

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “He claims his heart is sore with longing for you, that’s all. He’s had some—er—parlous gestes since you saw him last, but he acquitted himself nobly.”

  “He could do no other. Will this staircase never end?”

  “Careful, now. Don’t rush it. I think we’re just about—listen!”

  They must be almost down to the hall by now. Torchyld’s voice came clearly through the wall, raised in frantic outcry.

  “Damn it, Great-uncle Sfyn, where be she? I brought ye Ffyff, I want my Syglinde.”

  “Nay, I know not,” the old man was quavering when Syglinde burst from behind the arras and flung herself into her hero’s arms.

  “My beloved!”

  “My adored!”

  Some things hadn’t changed much over the centuries, Peter thought, watching the lovers replighting their troth. The six sons of Lord Ysgard, profiting by their example, started betrothing the six granddaughters of King Sfyn, and it was some time before the king could get a word in edgewise over the busses and osculations. At last he turned to Peter and bellowed in right kingly tone, “Bard, ye hast mighty powers. Gin it be not a trade secret, how didst work this disenchantment?”

  “Easily enough, your majesty. Weren’t you aware there’s a staircase directly behind your throne, hidden by that arras?”

  “Aye, I wist it well. But ye staircase hath long been blocked with stone and sealed with profound-spells and deep curses.”

  “The hell it hath, with all respect to your royalty. Dwydd’s been giving you the business.”

  “Ye words be strange, but ye meaning be clear, Bard Pete. That old besom shall be dealt with right royally when she returneth. But now ’tis time to celebrate ye return of my beloved griffin and my only somewhat less esteemed great-nephew, not to mention ye arrival of our distinguished guests and all this merry betrothing. Ho, minions! Fetch forth ye drinking horn and pile high ye banqueting board. Archdruid, prithee take ye place of highest honor at my right hand. Assistant archdruid, come and sit at my left hand. H’m, now who getteth to sit where? My daughter-in-law Edelgysa be wont to manage ye protocol, but she hath gone a-hawking. Ah, here cometh Aldora,” he said with relief as a pale though still lovely woman entered the hall. “How goeth ye headache? Ye see our prodigals have returned.”

  “And, Mama, I be betrothed,” cried young Princess Imogene. “This be Lord Yfor, eldest son of Lord Ysgard. Ye wottest, that place whence come all those kidnapped maidens. Be he not adorable? Look what he brought me.”

  She lifted her plump arm to display several handsome bracelets and gold rings. Her mother raised her eyebrows in pleased surprise.

  “Welcome, Lord Yfor. Although I must say it would have been more seemly to ask Prince Edmyr and myself for her hand before making thy proposal.”

  “Oh, Mama, be not so stuffy,” cried Imogene. “Nobody bothereth about those silly old customs nowadays. Anyway, Grandpa thinketh he be lovely. Dost not, Grandpa?”

  “Eh?” King Sfyn squinted from under his enormous eyebrows at the young lord on whom Imogene was keeping so tight a grasp. “Yfor, eh? Wasn’t it thy father who sent me that nasty message about wanting his wenches back? Threatened me with invasion, or some such nonsense.”

  “He was a trifle upset, sire. It be awful, trying to run a castle with no women. But that be all settled now, ben’t it, Immie darling?”

  “Mama, I’ve got one, too.” Gwendolyn couldn’t be kept back any longer. “This be Yorich. Dostn’t just love ye way his teeth stick out?”

  “Like hern,” said Yorich fatuously.

  Then all the nieces had to present their swains, amid much giggling and flouncing and wrangling over whose boy was the handsomest and whose girl the prettiest. In truth they were none of them anything to write home about beside Torchyld and Syglinde; but those two were off in a world of their own and didn’t count.

  The esnes and lackeys lugged in immense trenchers of baked meats, including a specially high-piled one of boiled eels for Ffyffnyr at which Daniel Stott gazed with some perturbation. However, the griffin slurped them down and, it may be said, suffered no ill effects then or later.

  The drinking horn passed from hand to hand. The lovers flirted, the old king beamed, the griffin belched dainty red and pink heart-shaped sparks. All was joy and revelry, until the hunting party returned.

  No longer was theirs a brave procession. The hawkers entered with bowed heads. In their midst came four men bearing a body on a litter. Prince Edmyr was no longer leading the show.

  “Oh, God! My husband,” shrieked Princess Aldora. She ran to the litter, caught up the prince’s limp hands, and started chafing them frantically between her own.

  “ ’Tis no use, Aldora,” said Prince Edbert. “His horse stumbled and threw him headlong on a heap of stones.”

  “That cannot be! Ne’er was there horse Edmyr could not ride.”

  “Ye steed was bewitched,” cackled the old hag in black, forcing her way to the front. “ ’Twas thy great-nephew ye wicked sorcerer, O king. He lurked in ye woods to which ye banished him in quest of Ffyffnyr, whom I doubt not he hath by now slain in his wickedness. As Prince Edmyr’s charger leaped forward, he arose from behind ye rocks and—”

  “And what, ye old bag of lies?” roared the young giant.

  “Sir Torchyld!” Dwydd reeled back, clutching at her wizened throat with a dirty yellow claw. “Aagh! Ye liveth not. Art but an evil apparition.”

  Syglinde laughed, a clarion ring of purest silver. “And ye art but a liar, nasty old crone. My Torchyld be no apparition! He hath been right here by my side. My ribs ache from his embraces and my arms from returning them. There be, I grant ye, enchantment in his kisses, but he casteth that spell only for me. And see, here be ye griffin ye claim he slew in his wickedness. Breathe a little fire for Dwydd, Ffyff darling.”

  The griffin obliged with a livid green eel-shaped tongue of flame darted straight at the witch. She reeled back in horror.

  “Nay, this cannot be! ’Tis sorcery.”

  “It be no sorcery, silly witch. Thy wicked tricks be discovered. Here be wise and mighty druids whom my darling Torchyld brought back to rid us of thy vicious wiles.”

  “Then why did they not stop my husband from being killed?” sobbed Princess Aldora.

  “Believe me, ma’am, we would have if we could,” said Peter. “We are not magicians, only men trained to use the brains we were born with. All I can say is, if there’s any ill-doing involved in your husband’s death, we’ll try to find it out.”

  “This be all lies and sorcery,” Dwydd was still screaming.

  Syglinde wasn’t the girl to take any such nonsense. “Like ye lies ye told the king about Torchyld’s stealing Ffyffnyr away, when all the time ye’d hidden him in the secret room at the top of Ruis’s tower, where ye hid me, too. Ye be a stupid old baggage, Dwydd, and thy trickery worketh no more. Behold!”

  She pulled away the arras from behind the throne, raising a cloud of dust and moths. The open doorway and the staircase behind it were plain to see.

  “Ye release ye evil emanations,” screamed Dwydd.

  “Fiddle-faddle,” Syglinde snapped back. “Ye only evil emanations around here come from thy unwashed carcass. There be nothing in that tower save rats and spiders, any one of whom hath a sweeter nature than thine.”

  “That reminds me,” said Peter. “It may comfort you to know that your late friend Gwrach meant to send you a thank-you note. She was most grateful to you for sending her so fine a dinner as Sir Torchyld. As you see, however, she never got to eat him.”

  “Eat him?” cried Syglinde. “Torchy dearest, what meaneth this bard?”

  “Oh well, ye see, we had this geste. Tell her, bard. Ye can put in all ye fancy touches.”

  “Be it seemly to be telling stories while my noble brother-in-law, heir to ye throne, lieth cold in death?” snapped a tall, commanding woman in a long green gown with a gold surcoat.

  “Princess Edelgysa be right,” sobbed the wretched
Aldora. “First my son, and now my husband. I be indeed accursed.”

  “Ye still have me, Mother.” A tall youth, handsome in a slim, poetic sort of way, carrying a hooded hawk on his wrist, came to put his other arm around his weeping mother.

  “That be my cousin Dagobert,” Torchyld murmured to Peter and his friends.

  “Nice-looking boy,” Tim grunted. “So he’s next in line to the throne now? Hope his life insurance is paid up.”

  “M’yes,” Peter murmured back. “Quite a coincidence, isn’t it? I’d like to get a closer look at the body. Shall we perform a druidical rite?”

  “How, for instance?”

  “March around and look solemn, I suppose.”

  “Let Dan do it. He’s solemner than I am.”

  “But you’re the big cheese. It would show lack of respect to all this royalty if you didn’t participate. Come on, Tim.”

  Peter stood up and addressed the king. “Your Majesty, the archdruid wishes to demonstrate his sympathy for you and your family by performing a brief but solemn rite, assisted by his assistant and myself. First, we suggest a bier be brought and the body of the lamented prince be laid on it according to your—er—usual custom.”

  “Yes, yes, a bier,” cried Princess Aldora. “Ye bier that but one moon ago held my precious Dilwyn.”

  “I believe you said Dilwyn was in fact the elder brother?” Shandy asked Torchyld, who had momentarily come up for air.

  Torchyld only blinked and smiled. Syglinde, however, still had a few of her wits about her. “That be so, Bard Pete. Dilwyn would have been crown prince now, were he alive.”

  “So I thought. And how did he and his brother get along?”

  She shrugged, causing her pale blue gown to ripple bewitchingly. “Like brothers. Well enough, in their way. Though Dilwyn was the elder, Dagobert hath always been ye quicker. While yet a stripling, he excelled at swordplay and jousting. To ye day of his death, Dilwyn could ne’er remember which end of ye lance did ye lancing. He was a kind, gentle youth who craved only to lie on ye bank anext ye moat and pick out which eel he would eat for his supper.”

  “Did he actually catch these eels and have them cooked especially for him?” Pete asked.

  “Nay, ’twas but a fancy. Dilwyn would eat any eel he could get. Like Ffyffnyr,” Syglinde added with a fond glance at the wounded griffin, now asleep with its head lolling in the old king’s lap.

  “Liked his grub, did he?”

  “Ate like a pig,” grunted Torchyld. “Syggie, do ye have to keep talking all ye time?”

  “Wouldst have me show disrespect to a learned bard?”

  “I’d have ye show a little affection for thy conquering hero,” said her betrothed, getting back to business.

  “Stop it, great oaf, or I’ll eat ye the way that sorceress tried to do.” Syglinde snapped her teeth at his ear. They were nice, white teeth, Peter noted, and appeared to be all present in the right places. That fact alone would no doubt have established her as a beauty. “Was she pretty?”

  “Hideous beyond belief,” he reassured her. “Uglier than Dwydd, even. She had—” He whispered something, and Syglinde giggled.

  “Silly! No woman hath that many.”

  “This was no woman.”

  “Can ye two not behave in a more seemly manner, in ye face of our terrible bereavement?”

  That was Aunt Edelgysa handling the protocol again. Syglinde blushed prettily and straightened her disarranged bodice.

  “I grieve for Prince Edmyr, in sooth, but he did pinch my bottom right oft.”

  Edelgysa’s eyes narrowed. “Prince Edwy indulgeth in no such tasteless frivoling.”

  Lady Syglinde gave her a demure look and said nothing. By now the black-draped bier had been brought, and Prince Edmyr’s body laid on it. Peter nodded to his friends and the three of them marched out toward it.

  “What the hell are we supposed to be doing?” muttered Tim. “I feel like a goddamn fool. Sing something, can’t you, Pete?”

  “No,” Peter muttered back. Nevertheless, he took a few swipes at the harp strings and decided to give it a shot.

  “Another good hawk-toter has gone to meet his fate.

  I hope he’ll find a parking place inside the golden gate.

  Another stall is vacant in the castle of King Sfyn

  For Prince Edmyr’s picked up his chips and sadly cashed them in.”

  “Great stuff, Pete,” hissed the archdruid. “Keep it up.”

  Peter nodded, took a deep breath, and jangled another chord.

  “The first to go was Dilwyn, a prince who loved to eat.

  He scoffed his eels and hiked his heels straight to the judgment seat.

  Now Pop has gone to join the throng across the Great Divide—

  And barding is the stiffest job that I have ever tried.

  So pardon me, fair company, if in a minor key,

  I simply offer one and all my deepest sympathy.”

  Peter strummed one last, mournful discord, lowered his harp, and bowed his head. Daniel Stott, deeply moved, patted him on the shoulder.

  “You clutch at the heartstrings, old friend. I should venture to estimate there is hardly a dry eye in the hall.”

  “Verily,” observed a courtier standing nearby, “I have heard bards in my day, but ne’er one like this.”

  “These be strange and wonderful times we live in,” agreed another. “Think ye they be really men, or enchanters?”

  “Hell’s flames, of course we’re men,” said the venerable archdruid, turning around and fixing the speaker with a baleful eye. “Button your lip or I’ll turn you into a goddamn sheep and put you out to pasture. We’re conducting a solemn rite, damn it.”

  Peter was, at any rate. He grew very solemn indeed as he noticed a small cut, with some bruising around it, at the base of Prince Edmyr’s skull. It must be fresh, for there was a tiny trickle of dried blood still around it.

  “Take a look,” he muttered to the archdruid, “and tell me how a man could get a whack like this falling headfirst off a horse.”

  “It’s not very deep,” Tim grunted. “You don’t suppose one of the hawks flew down and pecked him?”

  “Someone would surely have observed such an occurrence,” said Dan. “In any event, the beaks of raptors are adapted to tearing, not pecking.”

  “That’s right,” said Peter. “It looks to me more like the sort of mark that might have been made with a sharp pebble and a slingshot. Spang in the medulla oblongata. Might have been hard enough to stun him for a second. At the least, it would have given him one hell of a surprise. Distracted him, maybe made him drop the reins. If you plugged a man just as he was heading down a steep, rocky slope at a pretty good pace, for instance, you’d stand a reasonable chance of making him fall off. And,” Peter added, feeling around inside the broad crimson hood that had been carelessly tossed back over the shoulders when they’d first seen the prince on horseback, “I shouldn’t be surprised if this is what hit him.”

  “What is it?” Tim asked him,

  “I’m not up on falconry, but I’d say it’s one of those silver bells they tie on the hawks’ legs.”

  “Cute.”

  The bell was a dainty thing, skillfully fashioned, with a tiny hole at the top for a thong to be threaded through. Dan Stott hefted it gently in his palm.

  “This would have had to be from one of the larger birds, not a peregrine or a merlin, but a goshawk or gyrfalcon. Did Prince Edmyr hunt with such a bird?”

  “Let’s find out.” Shandy took back the bell and stepped over to Prince Dagobert. “Can you tell me how this thing happened to get caught in the hood your father was wearing?”

  “Nay, I cannot. It be a bell from one of ye hawks,”

  “I know, but which? Did the bird he was carrying lose a bell?”

  “I cannot say, but I think not. My father would have waxed exceeding wroth gin anything had gone awry with ye accoutrements. And gin ye bell had been loose, would it not ha
ve fallen to ye ground rather than into ye hood?”

  “Good point. He wasn’t in the habit of carrying a spare one there, just in case it might be needed?”

  “Not my father,” Dagobert replied with an edge of bitterness Peter did not fail to note. “He would have expected one of his attendant gentlemen to carry it. Or me.”

  “Were you then carrying such a bell this afternoon?”

  “Nay, not I. I doubt anybody was. It be not our custom.”

  “Your father was carrying a hawk earlier, I believe. What happened to the bird after he was thrown?”

  A gentleman stepped forward. “Prince Edmyr was carrying no hawk when he fell, honored bard. He had been working with Hebog, our largest gyrfalcon, but he handed her to me as we commenced our homeward ride. She had both bells attached to her legs when I took her from him, and when I restored her to her block in ye hawkery.”

  “I see. Thank you. Can anybody else suggest how this bell might have got into Prince Edmyr’s hood? Princess Aldora, can you help us?”

  The stricken widow only shook her head. “I have never known him to put anything into his hood save his head, and that only in foul weather. He liked better a plumed hat, or his jousting helmet.”

  “He’d have liked best a crown,” Dagobert muttered, so low that only the three men around the bier heard him.

  “Were you riding beside your father on the way home?” Shandy asked the prince.

  “I never rode beside my father. Always behind.”

  “How far behind? Were there other riders between you and him?”

  “My uncles and my aunts. I was back among my cousins, and ye attendant lords and ladies.”

  “Could I see your cousins, please?”

  Three young men stepped forward. Two were slender, brown-haired youths who looked a good deal like Dagobert himself. These were Gelert and Gaheris. The third was taller and more heavily built; black-haired, black-eyed, and handsome in a hot-eyed, heavy-lidded sort of way. If he’d been a woman, Peter thought, one might have called him sultry. This had to be Prince Owain, only son of Prince Edwy and Princess Edelgysa and clearly favoring his mother’s side of the family. His smile was ineffably condescending.