Antioch

  “I don’t like mushrooms or onions, Uncle John.”

  John stayed positive. “Well, sometimes something you don’t like is better than nothing at all.” Daniel dropped his forehead onto his knees.

  The onions and mushrooms roasted fragrantly on makeshift hickory skewers John broke and soaked in the river. They soon became irresistible to the hungry boy. He devoured a stomach-full and fell asleep not long after. John crept over and placed his hand on Daniel’s forehead, making sure that he was asleep and that he was well.

  Then he stepped away and drew his sword. He removed his stained belt and tabard and placed them on the campfire along with his gauntlets and scabbard. John cleansed his blade over the flames of his burning habit. He couldn’t carry his family’s blood any farther. He’d taken a longer way back, avoiding the farm, so the boy wouldn’t see the bodies.

  Daniel woke up the next morning with the sun. John was kneeling next to the campfire’s smoking ashes. His chainmail glittered, uncovered, and his sword was bare on the ground in front of him.

  “You look different, Uncle John.”

  John stood. “I took a bath in the creek. You should too. You smell like a stinkhorn!”

  Daniel frowned. “Are any of those mushrooms and onions left?”

  “You ate them all last night! Don’t worry, though, apples are ripe ahead and you’ll have the best meal of your life tomorrow at Fergus’ place.”

  They reached Antioch near four o’clock in the next day’s afternoon. Chimneys jutted up from the steep, shingled rooftops and narrow, cobbled streets ran between the wood and stone walls. Pale, black-haired people bustled about, practically uniformed in humble brown wool and white linen. They recognized John and met him, asking what he knew. He stopped and offered hospital, according to the custom of the church, and advised them to stay inside and be careful, but he didn’t mention the plague.

  John led Daniel through a circular courtyard with a well, similar to the marketplace in Meroe, before reaching the northern edge of town and a two story building with multiple smokestacks. The smell of burning apple wood and good food hung in the cool autumn air all around it. A sign on an iron arm over the door read “Cauldron” with a painting of a steaming stew pot.

  A bell on a coiled metal strip at the doorjamb rang as they entered and a man called, “Sarah!” from out of sight, down the cramped hallway to the kitchen. John smiled at the sound of that voice; it was all kindness, business and mischief.

  The dark wood common room had a low ceiling and a warm hearth. It was filled with the rich, smoky scent of roasting meat, the fragrant bouquet of stewing vegetables and the thick, pillowy aroma of baked bread. Four big bowls of apples lined the lone, long table in the center of the room. At the far end, a man wearing crude, deer-hide clothing waved from his seat in the shadows. Short and stocky, he had a shaggy, black and brown mane of hair and beard, and the amber eyes of a wolf.

  John lifted a hand to return the greeting and told Daniel, “Go sit next to Marabbas over there. Be friendly. I’ll get us some real food.”

  Daniel scrutinized the stranger. “Yes, sir, but…” He leaned close to John and whispered, “He looks like a gunder.”

  John nodded, impressed, and did not whisper. “That’s very good! Marabbas is a gunder!” He gave the boy a gentle push.

  John felt the kitchen’s heat from the hallway and walked into a torrid, stone dungeon of hanging pans and cooking tools. A plump, sweaty man in a bloody apron darted between the bubbling pots on the stovetop and an open grill that sizzled with steaks. A heavy butcher’s table crowded the center of the room and on the other side of it an oven and fireplace radiated hotter than an average man could stand. A big, black cauldron hung simmering from a hook in that fireplace.

  The door to the kitchen from outside burst open and Margot, a plump woman with her hair tied up under a scarf, stomped in yelling, “Fergus! You’ll cook yourself again! Leave the door open! Oh, hi John! Cider?”

  Fergus turned around with a big smile on his dripping face. “Oh, hi John! I’ll be a few minutes here. Steak?”

  John said, “Yes please, to both. I have a boy with me as well and I need your help.” John told them Daniel’s story. They promised a room upstairs for him as long as he needed it.

  John grinned when he returned to the common room. Daniel was sitting where he’d been told, but leaned away from Marabbas, whose muffled snorts echoed in his upturned mug. John sat with them and Margot came in with a heaping tray of cider mugs, dark loaves of bread and soft butter. The bread was very different from the unleavened griddle cakes Daniel was accustomed to.

  Margot said, “Eat up, dear. You’ve been on a long road.” After a careful taste, he attacked the crusty, fluffy loaves.

  Fergus brought in steaming bowls of vegetable stew and then plates of thick, fatty steaks. Marabbas’ steak was bigger than anyone’s. His eyes widened on it as Fergus set it down. If Marabbas had a tail, it would have wagged.

  The doorbell rang and rang again. By the time the five of them finished eating, the common room was filled with noisy people. Many of them went to John requesting news. The men of the church usually had interesting stories to tell. John gave them repetitive, vague advice to stay indoors and be careful.

  A girl came from upstairs to help serve. She refilled Daniel’s mug with a pitcher and a quick smile. After she passed, Daniel asked, “Who was that?”

  Fergus grinned. “My youngest, Sarah.” Then he winked. “She’s sixteen!”

  Margot swatted him. “Fergus!”

  Daniel was embarrassed. He thought the girl was pretty, but he didn’t want anyone to know he thought that. He’d simply never been in a restaurant before.

  John put his hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “You’ll be alright here, son. Remember what we talked about. Do what Fergus and Margot say. If I’m not back tomorrow, I’ll be about a week.”

  Daniel knew John was leaving, they’d talked about it, but he was overcome by uncertainty anyway and missing John already. “Yes, sir.”

  John left the table, bid goodbyes and took his sword from where it leaned against the wall.

  Fergus met him at the door. “If you’re off to Meroe, let me pack you some.”

  John looked over at Daniel, sharing the boy’s anxiety, and turned back, eyes dark and circled. Rubbing his face, he said, “I haven’t slept in days. My chest hurts. I’ll lie down at the church for now, but unless Gabriel or Sam can go in my place, I’ll have to leave tomorrow. Michael might need me.”

  Fergus nodded. “If you do, I’ll have you ready twenty pounds of good, smoked jerky, some tack and a skin of Margot’s firejack.” He smiled and winked. “So you won’t get too cold.”

  John couldn’t help smiling back. “You’re a good friend, Gus. Thank you. Keep this plague business quiet if you can. I don’t think it would be good to have people heading out there trying to help. I don’t know what’s happened yet.”

  Fergus nodded again.

  ***

  Cold, morning air came into the kitchen. The door was propped open with a log. Sarah held up one end of a big, raw bone on the butcher table for her father. The two of them were discussing Daniel, Sarah being unreceptive to her father’s suggestion of a marriage.

  “He’s a little boy, Daddy.”

  Fergus stripped the flesh and the tendons from the bone. “A little boy that owns a farm and has kin in the church.”

  Sarah thought about it for a moment. “That’s true.”

  Fergus grinned. “Good girl. If you get to work on it, in a few years you’ll be better matched than Beth!” Sarah crinkled her nose and grinned just like her father, mostly at the thought of besting her older sister.

  Daniel came in with his arms full of firewood. Sarah gave him a sweet smile and a wave. Her hand was slick with gristle and little blood clots. Daniel would have waved back, but he was holding the wood, so he just stared. Then Margot called for Sarah to come along to the market and the girl flitted away.

&n
bsp; Fergus put a greasy arm around Daniel’s shoulders and said, “We’ve our mise en place, boy!”

  “Meez and what?”

  Fergus enunciated. “Meez - En - Plahss. Everything is ready! How’d you like to learn some wizardry?”

  The boy paused. Wizard was a dark word, surprising to hear in the morning, in a kitchen. He’d been raised on the brutal fables of Clan Breahg, tales told by the fire at night. They warned of witches and wizards who never drink water, preferring instead the virgin blood of children put to sleep by the awful spell, the whammy. Fergus didn’t seem like someone who’d drink a sleeping child’s blood, but Daniel had never heard the word wizard associated with anything other than a calamitous moral lesson. The boy was on his guard.

  Fergus lifted a large, jagged saw from the rack of tools overhead. “They’ve a ham-fisted gunder over at Betheford’s,” he said, shoving the saw through the bone, “that’ll toss some flesh and maybe a veg in a pot and boil it - in water - then call it a soup or a stew. That’s neither soup nor stew. It’s not even food. There’s no magic in it. Real food has magic in it and you need bones to make magic, boy.” Daniel watched the saw’s teeth notch an inch of the bone’s width per stroke. Zzz, Vvv, Zzz, Vvv. It was the length of his leg.

  Fergus arranged the segments and joints on a metal tray. “Listen, boy, water is like air and air is nothing. The only thing you get from swallowing air is a belch. Real food has flavor and texture and since air is nothing, just like water, we can see that water is nothing! It’s just air… that’s wet. Never add nothing when you can add flavor!” He shoved the tray of bones into the blazing oven.

  Daniel was confused and nervous. “Yes, sir, but you… drink water, don’t you?”

  “Fwah, water. I wouldn’t drink water if they shunned me. Why drink water when you can drink cider?”

  “I… I don’t know...”

  “No, water’s only good for sucking the magic out of other things, like bones and this!” Fergus chopped vegetables into rough chunks for another tray. “The bones by themselves are powerful, but they’re wickedly powerful with this! Hoo-hoo! Do you know the name of one part carrot, one part celery and two parts onion?”

  “No, sir...”

  Fergus swept up his hands, holding his big knife in one, and posed like that in his bloody apron, dramatically chanting the words, “ASSORDEDICUS, AROMATICUS, VEGITABIDILOUS!”

  Daniel let out a shout, “uuhooOOAAAH!” and backed away to the other side of the butcher table, nearly falling over a sack of potatoes. Sure that an evil spell was about to sizzle from the wizard’s lips, he picked up a potato and threw it at him.

  It hit Fergus in the elbow. “Ow! Bedevil you, Daniel! What was that for?”

  “Don’t put the whammy on me!” Daniel had another spud cocked and ready.

  Fergus gaped. Then he started laughing. He laughed for a long time, hooting, wheezing, wiping his eyes and holding his knees to brace himself. “I promise I won’t… put the whammy on you,” he struggled to say, then laughed some more. “But, Daniel, listen to me, you’re only safe as long as you’ve a potato! The moment you put it down…” Fergus became serious, raised his eyebrows and squinted.

  Daniel frowned at Fergus and then frowned at his potato.

  Fergus started laughing again and had to fight the giggles to keep working. Glancing smiles at Daniel, Fergus put his tray of chopped vegetables into the oven under the bones, wiped the butcher block with a dirty rag and then brought down some jars and a few big bowls. Daniel sat on the sack of potatoes, watching him.

  Fergus poured steaming water from his kettle into the bowls. He stuck his finger in one and then yanked it out, wagging. “Ouch! Too hot. I don’t want to kill them…” He looked sly and sideways. “Yet.”

  Daniel squatted like a toad on the potatoes, a wide, low frown under his bulging eyes.

  Fergus patted one of his jars. “The pixies I have in here, you see. Do you want to see?” Daniel shook his head and stayed where he was. Fergus chuckled, tested the water again and said, “Perfect! Just hot enough to make them scream. It’s their screaming that makes the bread rise.” He opened the jar and started spooning thick, muddy yeast into the water.

  “That’s not pixies.”

  “Pfft, what do you know?”

  “That’s just mud or something.”

  “Fwah! Mud. These are my screaming pixies.”

  Daniel came over to look. “What is it, really? What makes the bread like that?”

  Fergus looked around conspicuously, as if to make sure no one was listening, and then whispered the mysteries of leavening to Daniel while the yeast bloomed in the water. The boy was fascinated. Fergus gave him some molasses to taste and then, tossing flour like fairy dust on the blood-stained table, taught Daniel how to mix and knead bread dough. They set their dough balls aside, to let the pixies scream, and went with buckets to the well.

  Daniel sloshed his water trying to keep up. “Is the cook at Betheford’s really a gunder?”

  Fergus smiled. “No.” Then he winked, said, “He’s dumber than a gunder!” and laughed. Daniel didn’t laugh, so Fergus said, “Don’t they say dumber than a gunder over in Breahg? It’s funny!”

  “No. I mean, no sir, they don’t say that. They say to stay away from thieving gunders. If a gunder’d come round the farm, Pa’d call him a rascal and run him off.”

  “Oh, well, that’s…”

  Daniel interrupted unintentionally, opening up to Fergus. “I’ve been to Meroe.”

  “Oh! Well…”

  “Oaky’s from there. He works for Pa… or, I guess he used to work for Pa in the summer. Oaky took me a couple times but they didn’t say dumb as gunders either and he got me some chewy candy there.”

  “Ah, I…”

  “I’m sure sorry I chucked that baker at you, sir.” It had taken him a while to get to it, but Daniel wanted to apologize. “Thank you, for keeping me while my uncle’s away.”

  Fergus smiled. “You’re welcome, boy. Let’s get back to our mise en place. Who knows what villain may have fouled our mise while we’ve been bothering with these wretched buckets? Never touch another man’s mise. It’s the most important rule in the kitchen!”

  The bones roasted to a golden brown in the oven. Fergus placed them in the bottom of the cauldron with the carrots, celery and onions and then waved his hands over his work, chanting again, but a little less dramatically. “From the mists of thyme,” he said, giving Daniel a cheesy wink, “come forth, spirits! Oo-de-lally!” and tossed in a small, cloth bag of mixed herbs.

  They poured cold well water in up to the pot’s rim, lit a fire under it with a taper - there were plenty of tapers and always a fire in Fergus’ house - and then turned back to the business of the bread. By twelve o’clock, stock and bread had filled the building with powerful, wholesome aromas. Daniel followed Fergus around, assisting him and getting quizzed.

  Fergus waved his wooden spoon like a wand and tapped the stove. “What is the single most important spell component at a wizard’s disposal, boy?”

  “Huh?”

  Fergus folded his arms. “What is the most important thing in the kitchen?”

  “Uh… never let another man touch me?”

  Fergus shook his head. “No!” He waved his hand around. “What’s the best thing in here?” Behind his grin, Fergus was preparing a lecture on the magical qualities of butter, which, in his opinion, was by far the best and most important thing in the kitchen. Fergus had recipes, techniques and taste buds devoted to butter and enjoyed arguing butter’s superiority over all other culinary devices.

  Daniel said, “Oh, Pa’d say it’s bacon, I guess.”

  Fergus paused. “Your pa’s right.” He didn’t want to argue with the memory of the boy’s father. Besides, Fergus knew a few tasty things about bacon. It wasn’t the worst thing the boy could have said.

  9 The Golden Rule

  John rode his pinto south toward Meroe, leading Ares on a rope. An hour after the cr
ossroads to the farm he saw a group trudging up ahead. Worried they were a mass of devils, he brought the horses to a stop. As the group approached, John noticed they had goats, small carts with chicken coops and other supplies. At the front, waving and carrying his saddle over one shoulder, was Michael. John went to them, dismounted and embraced his filthy, scarred and tattered friend. The sailors gathered around them.

  ***

  The group’s pace was slow. John walked next to Captain, who told some of what he knew while impressing with his matches and his pipe. To John, he was a mysterious, black-skinned pirate, conjuring fire and breathing smoke.

  Captain said, “Zeke didn’t tell us much about them, the bauran. He’d no time for questions. That might’ve been why it happened the way it did for the Vesper. She didn’t have our crew of course, but, had Zeke told them more…” Captain shrugged and paused for a smoke. “Mmm, no. He’d only time to tell us where to go. And now, after leagues of water and heartbreaking impossibilities, we’ve come, and found you, the strangest of all. I’ve wondered if you’re even men.”

  Drake spoke up from behind, “Well they’re not women, Captain. Look at the mustache on Michael.”

  John brightened and clapped Michael on the back. “Hah, Michael! You’re not a woman!” Michael shook his head with a weak smile. He’d had quite enough of Drake by then.

  Drake went on, “Even Andalynn can’t grow one like that.”

  Andalynn hooded her eyes. She didn’t have a mustache. Biggs grinned. There was a smile hiding in her face. For her, friendly teasing was a comfort. She didn’t have many friends among the crew. Most of them avoided her or referred to her in secret by derogatory names, like Armymom and Shooty McShoot-shoot.

  Michael scolded Drake. “Be careful, young man. That’s an off thing to say to a woman. Show some courtesy.”

  Drake smirked.

  John smirked too.

  Captain tried to redirect the conversation. “They’ve burned down the world and you just walk through them. How do you do it?”

  John didn’t respond. He behaved as though Captain had said nothing. It was the same with Michael any time he didn’t want to answer a question about the church. They answered such questions with silence.