Quis – Chapter 3

The Treasure of the River

Illustrations by Francesca Duo

The ground was soft. And just as well, too, because we fell right on our bottoms, but weren’t hurt. What? We fell on the ground? Shouldn’t we have fallen into water? Well, my friends, we were inside a world of story: the Ghastengarda, father had called it. In that world, every kind of magic is possible. And now we found ourselves on wet grass that was so cold it was almost frozen, and around us the fog was thinning out. In the space of a few breaths, in fact, it cleared so much we could see all around us. We were un a small rise, in the middle of some leafless winter bushes, and luckily our fathers were about twenty paces away, lower down. We hid behind those bushes to watch. Our fathers were speaking with…

…a boy as beautiful as an angel and as cheerful as the sun. It was as though the best and brightest child of the richest nobleman of the city had had a hundred perfumed baths, then put on clothes that had been washed a thousand times, and… and I don’t know, I just can’t describe how… clean he was. And likeable. You couldn’t help but love him after a single glance. As we found out later, his name – and a rather odd name at that – was Quis.

Now he was speaking with them. Matteo’s face was as wonder-struck as ours, but my father seemed completely at ease – actually, he was enjoying his cousin’s surprise a little, I think. The angelic boy was pointing to something further away, down, down, toward the river. Because, you see, we were up high on the banks of the Ticino, I believe quite close to San Salvatore, outside the walls. To the left, in the distance, I recognised the Roman bridge, and nearer to us were brick-makers’ huts and fishermen’s boats.

…never have I seen such greed in a king,

The boy was saying.

For gold, jewels, belongings, for everything!
He took it all, from each and every subject,
Leaving them bitter, in poverty most abject,
And now that he’s fled in the face of battle,
At last they’ve seen his true face and mettle.
But what does he care? His only thought
Is for taking his treasure without getting caught.

Now, here’s two more incredible things about Quis: how he speaks. It seems like a nursery rhyme. I don’t know how he does it, I’ve tried and I can’t. A first rhyme might come to me easily, but if I try to keep going I trip over my tongue and that’s the end of it. The second thing is: when you are inside the Ghastengarda you can hear him everywhere, no matter whether he’s two feet from you, or a thousand. And he doesn’t shout, not at all! He speaks softly, and you can always hear him.

Meanwhile, Pietro and I were watching, and I have to admit, we were both scared. Now we had been magicked away beyond the city walls and, what’s more, beyond our own time! Because the brick-makers and the boatsmen down on the banks of the Ticino were all dressed like people out of old fairy tales, like the people in the oldest wall-paintings in the oldest churches of the city, the ones left the way they were after the great earthquake of years ago, half crumbled and ruined. And the city, from what we could see of it from there, was different, too. It was smaller, with more wood and less bricks, and there were no towers. Let me tell you again, we were scared!

What were we to do? Come out of the bushes and show ourselves, and let ourselves be punished a bit, or stay hidden and wait to follow our fathers back home to our own world at the journey’s end, and somehow try to get away with it? What would you have done?

Just watch him beg, grovel, entice,
While his heart within has turned to ice…

It was Quis again. Just who was he talking about?

Now we saw that the boatsmen were talking with a tall, rather fat man, who was half bald. He was dressed like a poor man, but his fingers, which looked like little sausages, bore thick gold rings, with huge coloured gems, that he could obviously no longer get off. He seemed to move with difficulty and was sweating… even though the air was very cold.

“…but you must obey, I am your king! Take me to the far side, straight away…”

“But Your Majesty…” said one of the boatsmen, a youth with a shy air. The other, older and more cunning, roughly cut in.

“What majesty, stupid boy? I can only see a fat, arrogant man wearing rags. Does a king go about dressed like that?”

Quis was amused by the scene:

My, my! Isn’t stubbornness a curse?
And cowardly greed just makes it worse!
You used to dress as commoner to spy
On your folk in the city: ‘twas a clumsy lie.
They always saw through you, it wasn’t hard,
So now you would try it again, they’re on guard.
Though all you are seeking is a helping hand,
Of course they won’t do as you haughtily command!

Now we heard other voices, crying out: “It’s him! It’s him! Apripert the greedy! Aripert the coward! In the name of the Lord, capture him!”

And from the plain beneath the city walls came soldiers wearing the strangest armour and carrying round shields, just like in the very oldest wall paintings. They were brandishing long spears, and were furious. The man with the golden rings turned as white as quick-lime and started running towards the river. Well, I say running… he sort of waddled, like a duck on land… do you know what I mean? With many a wail and a moan, he plunged into the freezing water, and began whinging like a puppy dog.

The angry soldiers got to the riverbank when he was already deep in the water, trying to swim. They stopped: there was clearly no point in trying to follow him, his doom was sealed. Quis sadly shook his head.

What astonishing effect has desperation!
Even the laziest will run if it’s from strife;
But is it the treasure you stole from your nation,
That you choose to save now, or your life?
Alas! Your pockets are leaden for all the gold inside,
The river flows swiftly, will you reach the far side?

Indeed, right in the middle of the river, we saw the current dragging the man away, and he was no longer able to keep himself afloat. Incredibly, he was no longer even trying to swim. He just held his arms up out of the water, with gold coins, rubies and sapphires clutched in his hands. Soon he went down.

The soldiers stayed to watch a little longer, but he didn’t come up again.

“He has punished himself for us.” Said one.

Just then, we heard a raven crying, caaaaw, caaaaw! We looked up. It made me think of the fog-raven in the alley way in Pavia, but then I saw that this one was older, its head nearly bald, with grey feathers beneath its wings. It slowly wheeled overhead, and called again… caaaaw, caaaaw! When we looked down again… we were no longer on the river.

“The treasure of the river? The treasure of the river… Nonsense!”

What? Who was talking? Where was I? What had happened? Oh, how confused I felt! We were not on the rise above the river anymore. Pietro and I were under an old walnut tree, and it was spring time, because its leaves were only tine, and of the lightest green, the very first of the year. But how? What had happened? We had entered no magical fog this time… quite simply, we were there.

“Your father made fun of both you and your brother, gullible as you are!”

It was a woman’s voice, coming from a poor little wooden hut, all crooked and leaning to one side, with a roof that seemed ready to cave in from one moment to the next. A narrow window opened in the wall closest us. Outside the window stood our parents and Quis, eavesdropping.

“What treasure of the river? How could my father have let me marry you? How could he? He abandoned me here, to this life of misery, surrounded by stinking fish… for ever!”

“My dear, don’t say these things,” came a man’s voice. “My father didn’t lie. Every day we take a piece of the treasure he was talking about to the markets…”

“Treasure? Is that what you call a basket of… of… tiny alborelle fish?”

“Before passing away, my father made me and my brother promise to work hard every day with our nets to search for the treasure of the river. E so, every day we take more and more fish to the markets. Soon we’ll have enough money to fix the roof, and maybe build a new room…”

“You didn’t understand what he meant, husband! I’ll give you one more chance. But this time I won’t leave the matter in your hands. I’m going to the woods-witch, Edburga, she owes us a favour. I’ll be back soon.”

And we heard a door shut – actually it sounded more like a door breaking – and a tall, proud, blonde woman with dark eyes strode angrily away from the house. Our fathers and Quis followed her at a discreet distance, not to be noticed. Quis commented, laughing:

My, my! Isn’t stubbornness a curse?
And ambition can only make it worse!
If she goes to the witch of the wood,
Whining about fish,
Demanding a wish,
There will surely come of it no good!

Once again, Pietro and I looked at each other. What should we do? Follow them?

“Let’s go,” he said, “and show ourselves to them. Come on, Faro, that’s enough now. Let’s give ourselves up, our fathers will give us a few smacks, and that’ll be the end of it. I don’t want to get lost and get stranded forever in this place… this time… this world… Well, I don’t know quite what it is.”

“No, come on, we’re going really well. All we have to do is keep an eye on them. Sooner or later they’ll go back home, and when they do we can follow them without being seen, as though nothing ever happened.”

Pietro was far from convinced, but I gave him no time to think.

“Let’s go, Pietro, we don’t want to lose sight of them.”

It was true, our fathers and Quis were disappearing into the woods. Pietro gave me an uncertain look, but he came.

Quis had spoken of a wood-witch called Edburga. Who was she? We would soon find out she was an extremely old woman, who spoke strangely and lived in a little cottage beneath a towering, majestic black poplar. Well, I say cottage, but that makes you think it was made of wood, at least. But instead of walls and a roof there were only old woollen cloaks hung about branches, one next to the other and sewn together, and then covered with feathers of every size and colour. It was a kind of feathered tent. It was surely the strangest house I had ever seen. But there was no doubt about it: it was the right house for a woods-witch.

Edburga was sitting on the ground and wore an ancient woollen cloak that was also covered with feathers, and she wore a blindfold. She had lit a fire and was roasting something. From the smell it must have been fish.

The fisherman’s wife went up to her.

Quis and our fathers kept well hidden, and we kept double hidden, once from our parents and once from the fisherman’s wife.

“Edburga,” the wife said without so much as a ‘good day’, “my husband and his brother brought you that fish you’re cooking, didn’t they?”

The witch smiled under her blindfold.

“Good day to you.”

“I said, my husband and his brother brought you that fish, didn’t they?”

“All the fishermen bring me something from time to time. Is your husband’s name Picaldo, and his brother’s Pacoldo? Two fine boys.”

“Picaldo’s father used to bring you fish, too, didn’t he?”

“To be sure, as did his grandfather. Wise and generous men, they were.”

“Then you owe us… I don’t know how many hundreds of fish, over generations… Enough is enough! They say you’re a powerful witch. Let’s see. When I got married, my father-in-law promised that Picaldo and Pacoldo would find treasure in the river. Instead, every day they bring home the smallest fish to be found in the river, the alborelle, and no treasure at all. I’m sick and tired of it. From now on, you must make them fish the great enchanted sturgeon that swallowed the treasure of King Aripert, that the storytellers sing of!”

After a long silence, the witch replied:

“Are you sure, my girl? The alborelle are tastier than sturgeon, have you ever tried them in marinade?”

“Don’t take me for a fool! I want to live like a normal woman, in a decent home, with decent clothes. Do as I say, and you will have paid back all the fish of ours you have eaten.”

“Very well, then, I will do as you demand. But you must give me a hair from your head.”

“A hair…? Oh, yes. For the magic, of course!” And with a grimace, she plucked on of her long blonde hairs from her head. She gave it to the witch, and we saw her hand tremble a little. She was not nearly as sure of herself as she made out to be.

The old woman now did something truly strange: she held the hair between two fingers and blew gently all along its length. The… she let it drop. What happened next made me shiver… the hair began to move by itself, as though it was a worm. It wormed its way into the ground. Down, down, down it went, until it was all gone. Then, with a determined expression, the witch began to dig with her bare hands, and soon drew forth from the soil a big, fat earthworm, just the same length as the hair.

As she watched, the wife was as fascinated as she was disgusted. The witch, calm and sure, whispered something to the worm, which stopped wriggling and calmed down. After a few moments a bird – a thrush, I think it was – flew out of a nearby bush and came to rest on the witch’s hand. It took the earthworm in its beak and flew away.

“Is that your magic done, witch?” Asked the fisherman’s wife. She was clearly struck by it all, but at the same time disappointed.

“That is my magic done.” Nodded Edburga.

“Very well, then. Goodbye.”

And with that, the woman went off as quickly as she could.

Caaaaw, caaaaw!

We heard the raven call overhead one more. We looked up at those black and grey wings… we blinked… and  we were no longer by the  wood-witch Edburga’s house.