“At your service, noble sirs. Pray exercise due caution amongst ye falling stones. They be jarred loose by ye pressure of ye hogweed against ye mouth of ye cave. Gin ye will forgive ye presumption, I recommend full speed ahead.”
“To where?” Peter demanded, even though it was plain to see that the crumbling roof gave them no choice except to go with the glow or stay and be buried alive. “Don’t tell us Gwrach is back in business?”
“Nay, Bard Pete. Gwrach be destroyed.”
“Then how come you’ve got your old job back?”
“I happened to be in ye vicinity and heard ye sound of pursuit. Hence I bethought me to come to ye rescue.”
“All by yourself, eh?”
“I be trained to ye job, sire.”
“So ye be. What happened to Lord Ysgard? Isn’t he still with you?”
“Lord Ysgard be within,” Medrus replied, flickering slightly. “Ye fact of ye matter be this, noble bard. As ye might have deemed, Gwrach accumulated a treasure of no inconsiderable magnitude by robbing her victims before she killed and ate them. Being, as ye wist, without employ or prospects, I sought to ingratiate myself with Lord Ysgard by apprising him of ye fact and suggesting he come to gain ye hoard under my guidance.”
“Whom were you trying to ingratiate yourself with when you set that booby trap for Sir Torchyld on the battlements back at Castle Ysgard?” Peter demanded.
The glow remained steady this time. “With Dwydd, honored bard. Gin ye come now frae ye castle of King Sfyn, ye have mayhap encountered a sorceress of that name. I wot not gin she hath by now encompassed ye death of Sir Torchyld, but I wist ere yet I met ye that Dwydd and my late employer Gwrach of malodorous memory had entered into a conspiracy to destroy him. Methought sin Gwrach’s plan had gone awry, I might gain favor in Dwydd’s eyne by acting in her stead. Thus perchance could I avail myself of Dwydd’s power over ye giant hogweed, in my geste to obtain Gwrach’s treasure. ’Twas but an idle hope, methinks, but I could not afford to let ye chance go by. A wight in my position needeth all ye help he can get.”
“Regardless of whose expense he gets it at, eh?”
“I but followed ye examples of my former masters, noble bard. Be an humble clerk supposed to ken better than his betters?”
“Cripes,” Tim remarked. “What do you want to bet this bird reincarnates as a Philadelphia lawyer?”
“I should not be at all surprised,” Dan Stott agreed. “But, Medrus, why did you seek to engage Lord Ysgard in your venture? Why not come alone and secure Gwrach’s hoard entirely to yourself?”
“Nay, noble assistant archdruid. Bethink ye, were a mere clerk like me to show his face in any town beladen with gold and gems, I should be clapt into prison as a thief and a rogue, and tortured until ye magistrates wrung from me ye secret of mine hoard. Gin I made Lord Ysgard his fortune through my fealty, I might hope at least to get a steady job out of it. He wisteth ye force of mine argument. Being himself somewhat low in ye coffers, he agreed to ye geste, and here we be.”
“Bully for you,” said Peter. “Have you found the treasure yet?”
“I had not to seek, sire. I wist already where it lay, having oft been forced to light Gwrach her way whilst she added ye purse of yet another luckless wight to her ill-got store. Picking her teeth with his rib bone ye while, belike. ’Tis one of Lord Ysgard’s more amiable traits that he continueth not to make loud sucking noises long after he hath broken his fast. Such habits be more trying to ye nerves of ye upper servants than ye aristocracy wotteth.”
“I can well imagine,” said Peter. “So where is Lord Ysgard, and where is this hoard of Gwrach’s?”
“Yonder,” said Medrus. “Observe ye large puddle, prithee.”
“M’yes, very pretty. Who changed you back into a glow?”
Peter hadn’t found much reason to trust Medrus during their earlier adventures, and he wasn’t inclined to do so now. He thought the recharged glow was probably telling the truth about Gwrach’s amassed treasure and why he’d persuaded Lord Ysgard to come after it with him, but he didn’t at all care for the way Medrus was evading his questions. He tried an innocuous one.
“Did you have any trouble finding the cave again?”
“Nay, Bard Pete. Ye little boat which had ta’en us to Ysgard brought Lord Ysgard and me back to ye landing place whence we four had embarked. Thence ’twas a simple matter to retrace ye path back to ye cave. My sense of direction be well developed, ye wist. Here be ye turning. Note that we be making much better time today, sin ye be more experienced in cave-walking.”
“I had noticed,” said Daniel Stott, who as usual was bringing up the rear. “I must say, however, that I find the experience no more agreeable than heretofore. Also, Medrus, I am somewhat confused by your narrative.”
“How so, noble assistant archdruid?”
“Imprimis, you say you had no trouble finding the cave again, and that you knew in advance precisely where Gwrach’s hoard was situated. It puzzles me, therefore, that with an efficient ferry service at your disposal, you have not already removed the treasure and made your way back to Ysgard. As we all know, me distance is not so great that you could not have made at least two trips by now in the coracle. Or you might have relied on that excellent sense of direction and brought back packhorses from Lord Ysgard’s stable if the hoard is too large to be conveniently removed by boat. Hence, why have you and he elected to remain in the cave so long? I find it hard to credit the possibility that you enjoy being in a situation that occasioned you so much misery in years past.”
“Oh well, one getteth used to a place, ye know. In point of fact, noble sir, Lord Ysgard hath suffered an accident which hath prevented our departure thus far.”
“Dear me, how distressing. Why haven’t you mentioned it sooner? Is he badly injured?”
“Nay, sire, I cannot say. Belike ye druids, having superior wisdom, will be able to offer an opinion.”
“Belike,” said Peter somewhat grimly. Medrus still hadn’t given a straight answer.. He was about to ask for details of Lord Ysgard’s accident when the tunnel gave its final wiggle, he saw the reflected flickering of firelight on the walls, and heard a familiar voice pouring out its mournful plaint.
Chapter 20
“O WALY, WALY AND welladay me, how I hate to cook. How goeth ye receipt? First catch ye victim. Aye, ’tis done. Disembowel whilst yet breathing. Ugh, how terrible was Gwrach’s handwriting. Did she really mean disembowel? Methinks he would soon stop breathing gin I made ye attempt, and then what? ’Twas a bad moment back there when yon scrawny servitor became a raging salamander instead of a disembodied glow because I misread ye words of ye spell. Had he but wist, he could have o’erpowered me at the moment. Then what would have become of poor Dwydd?”
They could see her bent low over a filthy parchment, picking out letters with a clawlike finger, sighing and shaking her head. “Ay me, for my cozy turret and ye banqueting board of ye great and bountiful King Sfyn! Yet here at least be I at last free from ye constant nagging of my wicked niece Edelgysa. Ne’er a letup twixt cockcrow and owl hoot. ‘Curse me this one with carbuncles.’ ‘Put me a murrain on that one.’ ‘Mix me a potion to effect ye demise of ye other.’ I still wish I had put yet another pinch of eye of newt in ye poison for young Prince Dilwyn. He died not peaceful and sudden as befitted his kind and gentle nature, but lingering, with mighty gripes in ye belly, poor lad. And Edelgysa cared not a whit, but rejoiced to have one less prince betwixt her Owain and ye throne. Alas, to be old and at ye mercy of rich relations.”
She shoved the parchment aside. “Well, this repining buttereth no parsnips. Gin Ysgard en daube be on ye menu tonight, I must e’en puzzle out this disembowelment ere ye guests arrive. ‘Tis only correct protocol to feed them ere I kill them. Now that I be mistress in mine own domain, such as it be, it behooveth me to maintain ye standards to which I be accustomed.”
Dwydd picked up a large knife and tested the edge on her thumb. “ ’Twill do, meseems. ’
Tis a loathsome fate I be reduced to, trapping innocent wayfarers to stock my larder. Ne’er yet have I tasted human flesh, and mine own crawleth at ye thought. Almost would I rather starve. But not quite. Innocent wayfarer, I be about to disembowel ye. Wouldst endeavor to keep breathing whilst I hack out thine entrails?”
“Be damned if I will,” came the snappish reply. “Hell of a geste this turned out to be, ecod. First I sprain mine ankle and get stuck in this moldy den for three days. Then along cometh an evil hag and turneth mine henchman into some kind of lit-up bug. And now she craveth to slash my guts out. I shall stop breathing any time I take ye notion, hag, and ye can put that in thy pipe and smoke it.”
“You tell her, Lord Ysgard,” said Peter, stepping forth into the den he remembered so vividly and had hoped never to see again. “Well, Dwydd, I see you’ve found yourself a new home.”
“Aye, and ’twas ye who drove me to it,” the crone replied sourly. “I hope ye be satisfied. Making an old woman end her days in a hole in ye ground, instead of my erstwhile comfy quarters at ye castle of King Sfyn.”
“Drat it, woman,” Peter expostulated, “is it my fault you chose to set yourself up as a witch? Can’t you understand you’ve brought retribution on yourself by brewing up poisons and bashing the edges off swords and kidnapping griffins and maidens and feeding Sir Torchyld that nonsense about being enchanted? What was in those two biscuits you handed him before he went to kill the wyvern, by the way?”
“Naught save henbane, wolfbane, and dogbane,” Dwydd answered sullenly. “ ’Twas a new receipt I was trying out in ye public interest. I deemed that gin ye wyvern ate Sir Torchyld, it would also swallow ye biscuits and be poisoned, thereby conferring a great boon on ye kingdom of Sfynfford and surrounding realms. Try to perform a kind deed and where doth it get ye?”
“Good question. And this was all your own idea?”
“Nay, dulling ye sword was my wicked niece Edelgysa’s doing. I but strove to salvage some good out of her iniquity.”
“You’re all heart, Dwydd. How did you get to be such great pals with Gwrach?”
“ ’Twas but a professional acquaintance, noble bard. My late husband ye wizard summoned her by accident one Beltane eve, and she stayed with us for a spell. Ye see, sire, my husband was not a bad man, but he was in sooth a terrible wizard. At ye end, he became addicted to potions. Morn and night he sat around brewing and swilling and conjuring up satyrs and centaurs to drink with him. Hast ever had to clean up after a parlorful of hairy-hooved debauchers, bard? None wist what I went through ere ye wizard expired in agony from a mismixt elixir. E’en then he left me in parlous state, a lone widow with barely a fillet of fenny snake to my name, not wotting where my next phial of toad sweat was coming from. Bethink ye, I had to pawn my cauldron.”
“Gad, yours is a sad tale, madam.”
“Ye ha’nt heard ye half of it yet, bard. In mine desperation, I got in touch with Gwrach by a method ye wot of, belike, and begged succor. She scryed an opening for a job at ye castle of King Sfyn, though I misdoubt she and my wicked niece Edelgysa, who by then was wed to ye well-meaning but thick-headed Prince Edwy, had contrived ye vacancy by eliminating ye then resident hag. Gwrach gave me a short course in haggery and taught me ye spell for raising hogweed.”
“How did she happen to choose hogweed?”
“La, sire, wist ye not that hogweed be one of ye old standbys in ye wizardry repertoire? Like ye poor, it be always with us, though it lieth dormant in ye soil until ye potent spell be spoke.”
“Do tell. And it—er—disappeareth once the spell is unspaken, so to speak?”
“Nay. To vanish ye hogweed, ye must use a special spell, which only I know, methinks, now Gwrach be agone. ’Tis ye only spell I wot how to work, gin ye want ye truth. For aught else I maun rely on potions, trickery, or sleight of hand. And, alas, mine hands be not so sleight as once they were. ’Tis a rotten life for an aging hag.”
A small sigh came from the glow at their feet. “Ay, well do I wot how she feeleth. Poor hag! One might almost feel pity for her were one’s own plight not rendered so dire by her evildoiņg.”
“M’yes,” said Peter. “Now, madam, I gather your position is this. Having been ousted from King Sfyn’s castle because of your unholy alliance with Princess Edelgysa, you feel you have no recourse but to take over Gwrach’s old stand here and turn mass murderess for a living.”
“Sire, let me clarify my position. I was not ye willing confederate of Gwrach and Edelgysa, but their helpless tool. Gwrach taught me ye spell only on condition that I use ye hogweed to send her victims. Edelgysa got me ye job only so that she could employ me in turn as an instrument of her perfidy. And bitter did I rue my cruel fate.”
“Yet you’re quite ready to go on being cruel to line your own stomach.”
“Nay”, cried Dwydd. “Methought I could, but I find I cannot. May mine hand wither ere I disembowel this noble lord. Were he but an humble peasant I might bring myself to it, but I have been too long steeped in ye protocol of ye court. ’Tis not ye done thing to show disrespect for one’s betters in so gory a manner, and that be ye flat of it. Regard his high, disdainful mien e’en now as I raise ye disemboweling knife. See, he flincheth not when I describe a circle with ye tip of ye blade around his bogail.”
“He-he-he,” giggled Lord Ysgard. “Get away from my belly button, hag. That tickleth.”
“Aagh!” she cried, flinching back. “He laugheth.”
“So he does,” said Peter, “and so do I. Ha-ha to you, silly old woman. Don’t you agree, boys? Aren’t you laughing, too?”
“Hell, yes,” shouted Tim. “Ho-ho-ho.”
“And a lusty guffaw,” added Dan Stott, suiting the deed to the word.
That set them all off. Lord Ysgard roared himself red in the face as he adjusted his disarranged garments over the area Dwydd had laid bare for disemboweling purposes. Peter, Tim, and Dan chortled and pounded each other on the back. Even Medrus ventured a diffident titter. Wondrous to behold, that broke the spell Dwydd had recast upon him. At once he ceased to glimmer and resumed his own unprepossessing shape.
Tim wasn’t impressed. “Cripes, Medrus, you looked better as a glow.”
“Nay, say not so,” cried Dwydd.
She hurled the disemboweling knife into the farthest recesses of the cave and stood before them totally submissive, with tears running down her face, leaving streaks in the dirt.
“With all respect to ye who have ta’en away ye living from a wretched old woman and exposed my once-feared powers for ye shams they be, I find him not uncomely. He remindeth me of my late husband ye wizard, albeit he be sober. He hath that same intellectual brow and ye same scrawny frame. Mark ye well they bags under his eyes. In my husband’s case they told of long poring o’er ancient tomes of mystic lore, though I misdoubt this sorry wight hath pored only over ye floor of this accursed cavern.”
“Nay,” said Medrus, “I be in sooth a man of learning. I can read long words of many letters. I wot to write and cypher. I was clerk to my late liege, Lord Mochyn, ere he fell victim to Gwrach here in this foul den and she made me her vassal e’en as she made this luckless hag.”
“That so?” said Lord Ysgard. “I can use a man like ye around ye palace. Gin ye help me carry off yon treasure we came for, ye may stay and work for me. What say ye?”
“I say yes,” cried the ex-glow. “Ah, to be a real clerk again, respectably clad in a tunic of reasonably decent quality linen, with a leathern belt around my waist and mine own inkpot depending therefrom. Ah, for ye quill in my hand, ready to inscribe ye words of wisdom that fall from my master’s noble lips regarding ye vendage of sheepskins and salted mutton. I may have a tunic, noble master?”
“Aye,” said Lord Ysgard, “gin there be any left in Ysgard to fashion ye one. Without women to spin and weave and sew, we be in parlous state.”
“There be garments among ye treasure, sire. Gwrach hath stripped them from ye bodies ere she ate her victims. E’en mine
own old tunic and inkpot be among them, gin ye rats have left any part uneaten.”
“Then, damme, let’s go get ’em. I have suffered enow for this vaunted hoard and as yet I see not a groat of it. Er—ye druids be far too holy and unworldly to claim shares, be ye not?”
“Hell, yes,” said the archdruid. “It’s yours as far as we’re concerned. Right, boys?”
“By all means,” Daniel Stott confirmed with a gracious inclination of his Jovian head.
“Absolutely,” Peter agreed. “You’re going to need a little something extra in the old sock, Lord Ysgard. You’ll find you’ve a good many more mouths to feed at home than you had when you left.”
“What mean ye?” roared Lord Ysgard. “Have those hot-blooded young devils of mine flouted mine orders? Couldn’t wait till I got back, eh? Rode over to Sfynfford armed to ye teeth and abducted themselves a gaggle of princesses, I’ll be bound. And now, ecod, I have a war with King Sfyn on my hands, I ween.”
“Not at all,” Peter assured him. “In the first place, they didn’t ride, they went afoot. Prince Yfor very sensibly decided not to take any of your horses away in case some emergency came up while your sons were gone. They left Degwel and your master-at-arms, who seems a capable chap, in charge and I—er—put a spell on your strong room for the duration of your absence.”
“Umph. But ye princesses?”
“No problem there, either. The young ladies were so bowled over by your lads’ gallantry that they all fell in love at first sight. The parents could hardly object to such suitable suitors, so they gave consent and threw a first-class wedding. When last seen, the bridal party were all riding back to Ysgard on richly caparisoned chargers, laden with handsome gifts and attended by a number of buxom serving maids.”
“Buxom serving maids? Damme, ye don’t say! And King Sfyn agreed to ye nuptials?”
“He attended the ceremony in full regalia and gave all six happy couples his official blessing. Also some fine presents, I may add.”
The Curse of the Giant Hogweed Page 18
