Tender Morsels

  She came and stood close at Urdda’s side, pushing her chin into the breeze. ‘Gawd, there’s a joyless prospect.’ Her sharp eyes in their nests of wrinkles took in the leaden sky, the mournful forest, the snow-white line, irregular, dividing them. ‘Look at that miserable streak of gypsy-smoke,’ she said. ‘They will be down there in their dark little dugouts of houses. I nearly starved out there myself, a winter or two. We must take them down a side of bacon, the next week or so. And some roots, and cabbages. Mebbe some wool blankets. They shared their scraps of food with me once or twice.’

  She shifted her teeth and noticed Urdda watching her. ‘I had forgot those people,’ she said with some embarrassment, ‘since I got my wealth. I had sat up here in the town like the leddy I am, like the only person in the world, until you come along. You nuisance.’ She poked Urdda’s arm with her crooked twig of a finger. ‘Making me do things. Making me see things again.’

  11

  Up from the millrace I chased those slutty girls—me, Bullock Oxman, as before would never meet a girl’s eye. ‘I am Bullock!’ I roared. ‘And I am Bear! Aargle-argle-argh!’ Spirit of the spring, I roared and ran after them.

  They crowded and screamed and funnelled and flooded up Laundress Lane, around the well and the slap-rocks, their mad noise racketing off the walls. I caught the skirt of one and kissed both her cheeks black. ‘Eeh, you devil bear!’ she cried. But I’d run on before her slap could connect.

  Some went straight, but several swerved off up that cut-through to Murther Lane, behind the convent there. All I needed was for one to stumble and they would all fall in a pile and I’d be the top one, slapping soot on them all.

  And joy! even better!—there were Filip and Noer in the lane-top, rushing down, Noer in his hat that was a mask too, and covered his eyes.

  ‘Eee!’ went the girls, and turned back; then ‘Eee!’ again, seeing the me-Bear blocking the lane-bottom. And wild they were, finding themselves trapped. Dodge and peer, shove and scream—it was like uncovering a nest full of rat-babbies all squeerming and squeaking.

  I spread my arms to catch as many of them as I could.

  As I pitched myself forward, there came a flash, as if someone had struck my mind with a shoe-hammer made of silver, or of ice, or . . . Then, as Filip and Noer cannoned in from above and pushed the whole ruck back, it came again; the flash, the blow, the cold and silveriness.

  ‘D’ye have to shout in my ear?’ screeked the maid in front of me, though I had no memory of shouting. And then, as we were still pushed and staggering, first Noer ‘Yowp!’ and then close upon him Filip ‘Yowp!’ they both said, like dogs clipped by the wheel of a wagon. And the juice of fear ran hot all through me, the juice of discombobulement from that strange silvery shock. What had it been? Stop a moment and let me think.

  But there’s no stopping of a Bear Day, not till the bakers stop you. We had to run ourselves to rags, dint we? And then Noer, half blinded by his mask-hat, blundered pretty much straight into their arms—out the end of Mittenhead I seen them blonk! him with a flour-bag and the white go everywhere. I were free to run on, though I almost wished it were me that had been blonked, I was so hot and weary.

  ‘’Twasn’t long till another brace of them come after me. I put up a good last spurt of running, but in the end, of course, there was the thwap at the back of my neck, and the world shot white ahead of me. My nose was rubbed into cobbles and my head was rolled upon them, and Pader the pastry-man were bouncing the breath out of my ribs.

  Then there was drinking, vast drinking, at the Whistle, and I thought of nothing but shouting the next jibe at Noer and laughing, and singing all the verses of ‘The Thin Soldier,’ with the rude bits especially loud, and cooling the tip of my nose in the good white foam that quilted Keller’s ale so thickly, which underneath was as golden and smooth as honey, as cold and bitter and pure as the Eelmother herself.

  Then it was along to the mayor-hall for the feast we rolled. Oh my! There was foods I had never had in my life. There was shellfish brought all the way from Broadharbour that were like spindles and coin-cases that you hammered open for their white meat. So sweet! Sweet and rich, with sauces such as my tongue were startled and bewitched by.

  Somewhere there, with the band playing and the wines also, somewhere in the tantara and the rataplan of the whole thing, I fell to sleep. Well, it were hardly surprising; I had been running most of the day, I had been overexcited beyond sleep for two nights before that; it was only to be expected. The feast went on, but it were a dream-feast, mixed up with the shine and flash of rushing cobblestones, the beam and stretch of faces afeared and thrilled, the whole day’s memories tipped and stirred, blurred and misshaped in the mixing-bowl of sleep.

  Next I knew, someone reamed out the inside of my head with a burst of noise and light, that was the curtains being rattled back from a window vicious with spring sunshine, each pane packed over-fully with warped and bubbled clouds.

  I was in a strange room, a back bedchamber of the Whistle, and not one of the plain ones either. All us Bears were here: Dench with his hat and bear-shirt cast off, hairy chest aglisten; Filip and Noer still furred, Noer’s eyeholes goggling but the eyes within them scrounched tight closed.

  ‘Shaish, it smells like bear-farts and beer in here,’ shouted Keller’s sister, blocking out some of the window-light with the bosom of her, with the big arse, her hammy arms propped upon the arse-edges.

  ‘It’ll smell worse in a moment when I’ve brought up all my innards.’ Dench had his arm across his eyes like a saint in the throes of conversion.

  Keller’s sister laughed like thunder and thundered away.

  ‘I hurt all over,’ said Filip softly, unmoving, his eyes closed.

  I creaked up into a sit, and my hat came up with me. I grappled with it, my arms sogged and tingling from lying so long stretched above my head in sleep, but it would not come off. I pulled it harder, and a different which-way—I wanted more than anything to get air into my damp, flatted hair and to have a good scratch—but blowed if I could make it even wobble. Then I had to stop or I would have brought up my shellfish into my furry lap. Oog, I did not like to think of those shellfish now, their rich flesh and the sauces—oh, no.

  ‘Have they stitched our bear-bonnets on us in the night?’ I grumbled. ‘Have they glued them?’

  Dench, hatless, gawped at me. Filip reached up and patted his bonnet. ‘Oh, I am still wearing it?’

  ‘Stop griping and shouting, all of ye,’ muttered Noer into his blanket.

  ‘By the Greshus Leddy, you are right.’ Filip’s eyes came open. ‘I cannut remove it.’

  ‘Undo my strings.’ I turned my back to him.

  ‘They are undone, Bullock,’ he says. ‘Don’t you remember? Baker Sansom loosened us all last night. Best Bears there of ever been, he said.’

  ‘Take it offer me, then,’ I said to Filip. ‘I couldn’t shift it in the night.’

  There was tugging at both sides of my back. ‘Yes, it is affixed to ye somehow.’

  ‘Pull it harder,’ I say. ‘Like a bandage off a wound.’

  Which he does. Which the pain was like nothing I’ve known before, and the shout I gave was similar incoherent.

  ‘Jay-sus feck, Bullock!’ Noer lifted his face a moment, horrible white and creased from his bed.

  ‘What of they done?’ I said, near weeping, and the grog spun in my head and my eyes bobbed on it like corks. ‘Oh, they have sewn it into my very bones!’

  Filip, behind me, was interested. I could feel his breath; thank gracious I couldn’t smell it, the state my stomach was in. ‘There is no glue,’ he said. ‘Put yourself to the light more, man. No, there is no glue and no stitching. It is only . . . joined. It looks just like you are part-skinned, that I would just have to pull a little and it would peel away from you beneath, like the skin off a sheep or something. But I pull and it does not come away.’

  His hat bobbed and tapped at my shoulder. I took hold of it and tugged. ‘Hwoo
r, stop,’ he said. ‘That is awful. They have done it to me too.’

  And now Noer had half sat up and looked ready to shoot flames out the red eyes of his mask. ‘What is with you, for gossake?’ And he wrenched at his hat-mask and just about pulled his own head off, then lowered himself very carefully back to the blanket, a hand clapped over his mouth.

  Dench laughed at him. ‘I don’t know what is wrong with you that you can’t undress yourselfs.’ He stood up, and off fell his bear-pants. He swung himself about in the fresh air from the window. ‘Bears that can’t get bare. I never heard the like!’

  ‘Netherless’—Filip plucked at his shirt—‘it seems to be so.’

  Dench stepped over Noer’s legs and picked up his folded trews from a carved chest. He pulled them on, watching Noer work on his hat and me on my skin trews, which were stuck just as fast as the rest.

  ‘It makes no sense,’ said Filip. ‘You cannot pull it free, yet where’er you slip your hand in, you can feel it free and loose—there is my skin, all sweated, and there, separate, is the bear-skin. Flap, flap.’

  I followed his lead and yes, I could push my fingers in all around the hat, but as soon as my finger moved on, the skin would be tight to my head again. ‘This is frightening me.’ I put my face in my hands. ‘How much of this is the drink? This is just the kind of dream I were having on all that fine wine.’

  Dench, reaching for his shirt, let fly a trumpeting fart. ‘There, pick the dreams out of that.’

  I flung myself across Filip on the bed and buried my face in the quilt.

  Filip cursed. ‘Phoargh, Dench, what have you et?’

  ‘I know,’ Dench said, pleased. ‘Who would have thought such a feast would ingender such foulness?’

  ‘I will sleep some more,’ I said. ‘Mebbe when I wake again, I’ll be unstuck.’

  But no one heard me; Filip had gone from under me and was wrestling Dench on the floor and on Noer, who begged them to stop or be sicked upon, they were doing such violence to his stomach.

  I did manage to sleep, and for quite some time, going by the light when I woke. Noer sat on the far edge of the bed, looking glum.

  ‘You are still a bear,’ I said. I was awake now; I was coldly sure of that.

  ‘I am,’ he said. ‘And so are you, and so is Filip. Forevermore.’

  ‘It cannot be,’ I said, and commenced pulling at my sleeves and hat.

  ‘Well, it is.’ He was bored of the whole question. ‘Not soap nor hot oil nor solvent poultice can break the seal. See?’ There were welts and scratches all up and down his back-skin from the trying. ‘It is not glue holding it to us,’ he said. ‘It is some force more sinister. I tell you, we were about to be cursed as dark-arts-men when we went abroad this morning, and people saw what happened to us. The God-man were bent on it. It were only Filip’s quick tongue that saved us. We were the victims of someone, he says, not practitioners ourselves. We are just helpless innocents, like someone slipped a potion to or something.’

  I stopped trying to peel off the skins; it was making me ill again. ‘But who, though? Who would want to?’

  ‘No one can guess. Some spellmistress as wants babbies of a Bear, is the conjecture. Others tried saying we had brought it on ourselves, wearing the skins past midnight. But everyone remembers Blaze sitting in the square just a year or two ago, spinning tales in his furs all next day, and he shed them no difficulty.’

  Our eyes met for the first time.

  ‘Is this real?’ I said very softly.

  ‘Oh, I’m afraid so, Bullock.’

  We sighed, me flat, him hunched over.

  ‘I cannot think why this has happened,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t care why or what for. I just want my face back,’ said Noer dully.

  ‘Yes indeed, it is worst for you. Bad enough the head, without around the eyes too. It does not itch, at least, or pain.’

  ‘No, it is just clamped there. As if we are in harness for something. Or in prison, in chains.’

  ‘We can move about, at least.’

  ‘You will find that is not such a blessing when you see the way folk look at you. Why do you think I am back here? I am enjoying this fine room to the last possible minute before the kellermistress is too unsettled by us and gives us the boot, out into the stares and the people crossing theirselves.’

  We both took in the rich bed-curtains; the carvings on the chair-backs; the fine rug, with Noer’s blanket twisted and clumped on it like a battle-corpse.

  ‘It can’t be forever.’ I moved my finger around inside the bear-hat.

  ‘They are working on Filip. Any moment they will burst in the door and say they have found the method.’

  But the door stayed fast in its hole, and no sound came from beyond it.

  The three of us shifted on Leddy Bywell’s step, listening for sounds from the other side.

  ‘I hear she is terrible to look upon,’ I said under my breath.

  ‘I don’t care if she look like cat’s meat,’ said Filip, ‘as long as she gets this skin off.’

  ‘I’ve seen her,’ said Noer. ‘She is ugly, as you’d expect, but only from age and a life outdoors, no worse.’

  ‘We should of brang clothes,’ I realised. ‘If it works and she frees us, I don’t want to be wearing these foul things, however loose they are. They might stick again.’

  ‘Ha, how much did we wish for them, eh?’ said Noer. ‘And now they are our curse.’

  ‘Shh!’ says Filip, and we all looked at the door.

  ’Twas not a horrible face at all that showed in the opening. ’Twas a fair one, if foreign. ’Twas a very fair one, with bold eyes that took the three of us in—blink, blink, blink!—and then the fair face laughed! My gracious, had she not been so pretty I might have been mortal angry, but I were prepared, with her prettiness, to hear kindness in that laugh, to hear sympathy.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I have heard of you!’ She opened the door wider for us and, still smiling, ushered us in. ‘Oh my goodness, look at you,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Come in here, sirs.’

  She put us in a kind of parlour, to which she let in some light by pushing back drapes even richer and heavier than those in Keller’s bestroom. She was a fine figure. Was this the mudwife herself, spelled up young, very young, and beautiful? She had something of a witchlike way about her, I thought. She was very sure of herself.

  ‘Please,’ she said, ‘take your ease. I will let the lady know you are here.’

  We sat in delicate plushed and gilded seats that had our furry knees up to the height of our nipples, and we looked about at the chandelier, at the heavy gold picture-frames, at the carpet like a blood-coloured cloud underfoot.

  ‘Gawd,’ said Noer softly. ‘And us dressed for the occasion.’

  With all the richery around, we were not inclined to talk much more than that, and so we sat trapped in our pretty chairs until slip-perish steps outside and a croaky voice muttering set us struggling up to standing, and straightening ourselves.

  The witch, the tiny witch, rustled in in a brocaded house-gown and matching cap, and just an ordinary grumma face, all wrinkles and nose.

  ‘Good morning, gentlemens,’ she says.

  ‘Morning, mum,’ says Filip, all humble, and tells our names. ‘We of come to ask for your help.’

  ‘Yes, I have heard of your perdicament,’ she says. She wore rings on her clasped hands that were like great polished extra knuckles. Her hair was plaited white and tight, the tail of it over her shoulder like some animal were crawling down her back.

  ‘Let me see how the skin is joined to you.’ She had a fine set of ivory teeth in there, the very best that money could buy.

  ‘You show, Bullock,’ Noer startled me by saying. ‘You are not so cut about with experiments.’

  Filip unlaced me, and then I turned my back to the window-light and pulled the bearskin aside as far as it would go.

  The leddy disengaged a hand from her ring-tangle with a heavy clicking. Then
her fingertip moved on my skin from the top of the join to the bottom. It was all I could do not to shudder. Was she fixing it now? Was it undoing? Was that magic, shivering through me?

  No, it was not.

  ‘Hmm,’ she says. ‘What were you doing when this happened?’

  ‘Sleeping,’ said Noer. ‘Sleeping in Keller’s bestroom at the Whistle. The Whistle Inn, mum. Up by Garner’s Lantern there, you know.’

  ‘Had you taken food or drink?’

  ‘We had feasted at the mayor-hall, mum,’ said Filip. ‘For Bear Day, you know. We had shared from platters and jugs with many others, none of whom were so afflicted.’

  ‘There were a fourth bear there with us,’ I said, ‘what et the same as we did and could still undress at the end. His bear-suit came off just as normal. Just as it ought.’ I remembered enviously Dench swinging himself in the window-light at Keller’s.

  ‘So,’ says the widder. ‘When was it you were just you three together and no one else?’

  We looked at each other. ‘Why, never,’ said Filip. ‘From the moment we met up, when Bullock herded them girls toord us in the twitten, to the time we discovered the skins could not be removed, there were always someone with us, mostly no less than six or seven.’

  ‘That’s it!’ I said, sudden enough to make everyone jump. ‘That’s where it happened. In the twitten.’

  ‘Where what happened?’ said Filip.

  ‘How would you know?’ said Noer to me.

  ‘I remember. You shouted, too, both of you. We went through this thing, this . . . There was like a flash, like a pop! I went through it twice. I dint know what had happened to me, but then I forgot, in all the rush. I remember, because I took off my hat and wet my head just before that at the well, but from then until the time I tried to take it off in the night, I didn’t attempt it again, so I didn’t discover. But that were when—I swear it, dint you notice?’ Because they were looking at me as if I had cracked.

  ‘What are we supposed to have noticed, Bullock?’ said Noer gently, dangerously.

  ‘The both of you, you shouted. Yowp! you went, one after another.’