The Brew Witch

THE BREW WITCH

By Don Cambou ©

Eliza Course lived alone, except for her cat. She was a handsome young woman. Her teeth were white and straight and she hadn’t lost any of them. Her breasts rode high and proud. Her long black hair shined in the light of the sun. She could have had a husband, but Eliza like to keep her own company. The last thing she wanted was to cook and have babies for some feeble brained wood chopper or wheat grower. She could do her own wood chopping and wheat growing.

She chose to live on the edge of the forest, where few came, and fewer could notice her one room house made of live willows and a straw roof. Her wheat and barley fields were small, and looked like nature had created them. They curved and dipped and flowed without the hint of a straight line. 

She and her cat kept the tiny house clean and vermin free. All the grain she had to store for her brews drew lots of mice and rats. Coal black Henry took care of them. A tattered rug from someplace far to the east covered most of the dirt floor. Outside, was her brewing kettle and lots of firewood to get the job done.

It was a sunny fall day, and Eliza was anxious to get going. She grabbed her basket and slipped into the woods. She knew some brewers who put mistletoe or even the sickening, dangerous, bright red mushrooms with white tufts into their beers. Not Eliza. She may have been a brewing witch, but she had her honor. She knew the forest intimately. In a short time she’d be at the cluster of oaks where her mushrooms grew. That’s when she heard a large body crashing through the brush ahead of her. Eliza knew what it was before seeing it. Her skin prickled. The four hundred pound boar broke through the brush and stopped fifty feet from Eliza. He eyed her menacingly. His bristles raised. He panted, and a two foot long string of spittle from his mouth swung like a pendulum just above the ground. She knew his eight inch tusks could make short work of her. He grunted and edged forward toward the intruder. 

Slowly, Eliza spread her mother’s rainbow cloak with her hands until it looked like wings at her side and reached higher than her head. The boar seemed undeterred. He closed the distance between them, shaking his head and grunting. Then Eliza started to sing with a quavering voice. It was more of chant than a song. Something that came through her mouth without entering her mind.

Be gone, forest beast

I be not your enemy

Find other things to be your feast

That be your best remedy.

Be gone forest beast

The boar looked confused. He’d never heard the rhythm of song. Eliza sang the verse again, this time more forcefully. The boar looked straight at her, turned slowly, and slipped away. Eliza didn’t move from where she stood. She was trembling. Others might say she put a spell on the boar. Eliza wasn’t sure.

She was anxious, always glancing to her right and left, as she hurried to her special grove of oaks. Just as Eliza had suspected, she found her prizes there. Carpets of tiny white mushrooms with purple fringes. These were the good ones that would make her brew so much more than an ordinary beer. Those who drank it would laugh for no reason, dance to music that none could hear, and have visions of thing unseen. Later, when the magic wore off, they would drift into a healthy, relaxing sleep. Unless, of course, they drank too much. Then the gentle sorcery could turn into a fearsome bedevilment.

She was back at her cottage by midday. Brewing was hard work. But Eliza loved to create the beer-like brews that could relieve people of their painful burdens for hours at a time. She had started the fire before dawn, so that she’d have a rich bed of coals when the brewing time came. Her great iron kettle gently simmered. It was filled with clean creek water and her wheat and barley grains. She kept the mixture at a simmer for hours. Henry slept on the ground near her – just far enough away from the coals for perfect comfort. Stirring the kettle over the glowing coals made for hot work. Eliza stripped off her clothes and worked naked, letting the breezes of the decay season gently caress and cool her skin. During those hours of nurturing her brew, she took time to clean her mushrooms of forest debris, and carefully place equal amounts into two medium sized barrels. No toad skins or snake venom in her brews, just the wondrous purple fringed mushrooms from the forest floor. She also added her version of gruit: mugwort, yarrow, horehound, heather, and other herbs. The gruit would help preserve her brew. Henry woke up from his drowsy afternoon, in time to see Eliza begin to ladle the sweet, warm brew from the kettle into the two barrels. She added a small bowl of her last brew into each barrel. All the brewing witches did it. For luck. The wort, as she and other brewers called it, would soon begin to bubble, turning the sweet mix into beer. Eliza didn’t know it, but the bowls of brew she added contained the yeast that would consume the sugars in the wort and excrete alcohol and carbon dioxide bubbles. That’s the science, but to Eliza it was magic.

Two weeks later, her barrels of the mushroom beer brew were sealed tight and ready. They were heavy, but Eliza was strong. She hefted one, then the other, onto her cart. She added a blanket, some fresh bread she had baked, and her tall black brewer’s hat. If you were a brewer at a large fair like the one she was going to, you needed to stand out. The pointed hat would advertise her brew from a distance. She hitched her goat ram, Arthur, to the cart. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, pull the cart alone. Eliza would have to help him. She said her good byes to Henry, and left him with a strip of dried squirrel meat and a large bowl of clear water. He’d have to hunt for the rest of his food. But the mice were always plentiful around her granary. 

The first hour of her journey was the hardest. Arthur pulled while Eliza pushed her heavy cart over open fields, full of stones and ruts. Then she reached a path that would take her to a road. She’d follow the road all the way to the fair.

The Fair was a large one. It would last over two weeks. And in those two weeks, Eliza’s life would change. She couldn’t know it, but this fair would provide her with a home companion she needed, and bestow on her a degree of immortality few humans attain.

The first day’s sales were brisk, even with Eliza’s self-imposed limit of one flagon per customer. Eliza was tired. She’d already put her cork in the barrel, and was prepared for a little dinner and bed. That’s when the man with long white hair and beard appeared in front of her stall. He was dressed all in black and in a strange fashion; and he was weighted with many years. He spoke with an accent, and had the voice and manor of a young woman. “I’d like a flagon of your brew, my Lady. I’ve been carefully observing your customers, and they all seem to be having an unusually happy time.”

“So sorry good sir, but I be closed for the night.”

“An old man like me might not make it through the night.”

Eliza laughed at that one. “Oh you will. Just dream about me brew.”

The next morning, one of Eliza’s first customers was the strange old man. 

“Did you dream of me brew?”

This time he laughed. “Hardly. I spent most of the night looking at my fire through prisms I bought here at the fair. Strange, isn’t it, that I’ve come all the way here to buy Venetian glass at inflated prices when I could have just gone up the road to Venice.” Eliza didn’t understand, “Venetian”, “Venice”, “prisms”, or “inflated”, but she laughed anyway. It was a simple kindness she liked to extend to her customers. Without asking, she drew him a large flagon of her brew. “Ah. A young woman with a mind reading talent!”

As she handed him the brew, she smiled and said, “That not be me specialty sir.” He gave her coins and waved away the change. He turned, and walked slowly towards the center of the fair. She called to his back, “Don’t forget to return me flagon!”

The old man reappeared just as Eliza was again closing for the night. When she asked him how he liked the brew, he paused for a long moment. Then he very slowly said, “It was… magnificent!” He went on to ask Eliza if he could join her for dinner. He told her he’d be glad to pay. Because of his age and girlish ways, Eliza felt she had nothing to fear from the old man.

“All I can give ye is bean soup, and a bit of bread.” 

“That would be lovely. Soup is one of the only things I can still eat. And another flagon.”

She smiled. “Sorry. Ye’ve had yer share for today.”

Later, around her fire, they talked with an intimacy Eliza had never experienced in her adult life. The old man farted continuously because of the bean soup, and didn’t seem to notice. Eliza pretended she didn’t notice either. He told her he was a maker of macchina. “What be a mah-keen-ah?” she asked. 

He waved his hands around, “You know, like, like – your cart! That’s a macchina.”

Then Eliza thought she also heard him ask, by the way, if she could find him a dead body. Eliza was shocked, but quickly smiled when the old man giggled. He must have been teasing her. Then he asked her what made her brew so marvelous. She was quiet for long moments. Somehow, she trusted the old man. Finally she answered, “Tis the mushrooms.” The old man smiled and nodded. Then his head stayed down and in seconds he started to snore. She gently guided his frail frame and head to the ground. She put a shawl under his head as a pillow and laid down beside him, so that her blanket could cover them both.

The old man woke full of energy. “Well. That would be the first time I ever slept with a woman.” Eliza looked at him strangely, and he started to giggle again. She found him full of jests. She offered him a piece of bread as she carefully placed sticks on the previous night’s embers.

“I’ll be making tea. Ye can have some.”

“Mushroom tea?”

“No. Mint tea. It grows along the creek bed near me home.”

“Then I’ll have a flagon of your brew instead.”

Eliza thought it was early for the old fellow to be drinking her brew, but she uncorked her barrel and drew him a flagon.

“Thank you, Eliza.” He used her first name now. “I have some dyes and minerals for painting to buy today.” He tipped his head to her, turned, and was gone before she realized he hadn’t paid for her brew.”

When the old man finally returned, Eliza could see that his eyes were still dilated.   She could hear him whispering to himself, “Wondrous! Wondrous!” Finally, he turned his head toward Eliza and locked his eyes on her fine features. “How much do you make here in a day, Eliza?”

“Oh, I’d say a couple of shillings. Some days up to four.”

“Well, I’m returning your flagon. I’d like to pay you for the brew, and for two days of your time here.”

“But selling me brew be my livelihood. I can’t stop…”

He interrupted her by thrusting the flagon her way. Eliza’s eyes fixed on four shining objects nestled in the cup’s bottom. They were yellow and lustrous. Stunned, she picked one out and bit it as another merchant had told her to do if she ever came across such a prize. “Oh, they’re real gold my dear girl. Each one is probably worth more than a week’s earnings selling your mushroom beer. The brew inspires me and so do you. I want to paint you.”

Eliza was confused. Paint her? Did he want to draw circles around her breasts and hand prints on her bottom? Did he want to put paint on her privates? Not this man. “Ye want to… paint me?”

“Yes! Yes! I want to paint your portrait. I want you to sit for me.” 

“’Sit’ for ye?”

“Sit quietly for me for two days while I paint your picture on a canvas – it’s like a board.” Eliza nodded her agreement, still confused. 

The next morning, high clouds filtered the sun, but the old man said the weather was perfect for the “portrait” he wanted to paint. Eliza was surprised that the old man had a handsome young assistant named Marco. Marco carried a chair on his back, a few blankets and food, and a box of paints and clothes. Eliza carried what they called the “easel”. The old man carried only the flagon of Eliza’s brew, sipping at it as we walked. It was really only a half flagon. That’s as much as he wanted on painting day. The three walked far from the fair to a hidden meadow. Behind the meadow was a wall of oak trees. The old man stopped. All he said to Marco was “Here.”

Marco put the chair down and the old man adjusted its direction. As Marco set up the easel, and put the canvas and paints on it, the old man prepared Eliza. He gave her a fine dark green top with gold sleeves of something he told her worms made. He called it “silk”. When he asked her to put it on, Eliza’s face got hot and red. “Right here? In front of ye?” The old man said he didn’t care if she changed in front of him and neither did Marco. He said she could go into the woods to change if she wanted. But he told her to be quick about it. Eliza ran off into the woods. When she returned, he had her sit in the chair and helped her comb her hair, parting it in the middle and draping it on both sides of her face. He put another piece of silk over her shoulder, stepped back, and asked her to smile.

“Lovely,” he said very faintly. He had Eliza sit in the chair, arranged her hands, and started to paint. His eyes got so sharp Eliza thought he looked like a hawk .

In the late afternoon he said, “Enough for today,” and put down his brush. He told Eliza to return to her camp to eat and sleep. He and Marco would sleep where they were. She guessed it was to protect the painting. He told her to come back in the morning with another half flagon of her brew. Eliza’s own dress felt itchy and rough after wearing the smooth, cool silk. But she was glad to stop smiling. Her face hurt.

All the sellers were closing for the night when she got back to the fair. She bought some cheese, and lovely smelling bread. Then she saw a nanny goat and kid for sale. She felt she was rich. She bought the goat and kid for one gold coin. Now she wouldn’t have to push her cart behind Arthur the ram. She paid John, a seller of salted ham, to watch her things, especially her new nanny and kid, and two barrels of brew, while she was being painted. She bought a flagon of beer from another brew witch – ordinary beer, not special like her own. Then Eliza ate, drank, and fell asleep quickly. 

The noise of the fair coming to life woke her in the morning. She grabbed some bread and some cheese she’d bought the night before, poured a flagon of water for herself, and a half flagon of brew for the painter. Then she rushed off to meet him and Marco.

When she got to the meadow, he was already painting, but wouldn’t let her look at his work. “Just background,” was all he said. When she once more was dressed in the silk, with her hair combed, he got that hawk eyed look again and she knew he was painting her, and not “just background.” He worked all day. Long after he’d finished his half flagon of “inspiration,” he finally stepped back, smiled, and put down his brush. “It’s finished!”

“Can I look now?”

“Yes, dear Eliza.”

She looked at the painting and frowned. “I be stronger than that -- not soft. I don’t look like that!”

“Oh, but you do Eliza. To my eyes.”

“Yer “background” is all stubby trees and rocks and a road and a blurry lake! Not the fine green oaks behind me!”

The old man shrugged. “Artist’s privilege.”

“And ye don’t even show me teeth! Ye said to smile, so I be smiling for two days to show me pretty white teeth and ye don’t even show ‘em!” 

“But it’s still a lovely smile, don’t you think?” She looked closer. It was a lovely smile.  As Eliza stared at the painting tears formed in her eyes. She didn’t know why. She felt the old man’s light hand on her shoulder. “My Eliza. Mio Eliza. Mon Eliza. Go back and eat and rest. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” But come the dawn, he had vanished. He had much work still to do.