John Saturnall's Feast Read Online Free Page A

the waft of smells to curl from the pot. As his mother lifted the lid, a puff of steam rolled up and broke against the rough underside of the thatch. She looked over with a smile. It was their game.
    ‘Mutton,’ he said. ‘Barley. An apple. Some lemon thyme. Bay . . . ‘
    He had only to breathe in to know the names. When he had finished, she leaned across to ruffle his hair. As her fingers brushed the bruise, he winced. She frowned then drew him close, her fingers feeling gently around the swelling.
    ‘John,’ she soothed him. ‘My boy. It's just their sport.’
    They were the words she always spoke, cradling his head or combing his hair with her fingers. Her whispers curled about his ears like riddles. Like the wisps of steam from her kettle that twisted up, stretching and dissipating into nothing. But John remembered the stink in the sack. Dando's kick. Abel Starling could bounce rocks off his head till his hair turned grey, his mother would still be murmuring in his ear. Suddenly his impatience flashed into anger. He pulled away.
    ‘We don't belong here,’ he said.
    ‘Belong?’
    ‘We should never have come back.’
    His mother's eyes narrowed. ‘Who told you that?’
    ‘Ephraim Clough.’
    ‘What does he know?’ his mother retorted. ‘This is our home.
    Everything we have is here.’
    ‘And what's that?’ he demanded, looking around the hut's narrow walls. ‘What do we have?’
    A reproachful look from his mother. Silence would follow, he knew. That was how all their disputes ended. They turned to nothing like the steam from her kettle . . . But now he saw her brow furrow.
    ‘More than you know,’ she said. To his surprise, she got to her feet, walked to the hearth and reached up. When she turned, she had the book in her hands. She set it on the chest and eyed him across the heavy slab. ‘Open it.’
    Was it a trick, he wondered? Some new riddle to bewilder him? As he lifted the leather-bound cover, the musty smell of paper rose up. He turned the first mottled leaf and looked down at an elaborately drawn image. A brimming goblet was decorated with curling vines and bunches of grapes. But instead of wine or water, the cup was filled with words.
    John stared at the alien symbols. He could not read. Around the goblet a strange garden grew. Honeycombs dripped and flowers like crocuses sprouted among thick-trunked trees. Vines draped themselves about their branches which bristled with leaves and bent under heavy bunches of fruit. In the far background John spied a roof with a tall chimney. His mother settled beside him.
    ‘Palm trees,’ she said. ‘These are dates. Honey came from the hives and saffron from these flowers. Grapes swelled on the vine . . .’
    She spoke half to herself as if she were reciting words learnt long ago, her fingers skipping from the faded symbols to the images of plants and fruits. Then she turned the page.
    It might have been a different book. The ink was bolder and the paper less mottled. Here were the palm trees again, and the crocuses and vines, but with all their cousins too. Flowers that John knew from the meadow sprang up beside bushes whose fruit he had never seen before. Creeping plants coiled like serpents amid monstrosities which surely had never existed in nature. Yet every vein of every leaf or petal was picked out as if drawn from life. Every stem was labelled with tiny spiky letters. More such pages followed. Then the ancient book returned with its faded ink. This time a forest of birds rose from the mottled paper.
    ‘These pages were written long ago,’ his mother said, looking down at the trunks and branches. ‘Written and rewritten. Long before you and me.’
    ‘What are they?’ John asked, looking among the trees.
    ‘Each page was a garden. Every fruit grew there.’
    Kettle-steam, he thought again as his mother fell silent. But then the images drew him in. Birds flew or roosted amid the branches: plovers, larks and doves together with others that John