'Til Kingdom Comes - The Banished Prince Vol 2: Here Comes The Witches

Interrogation

"Oh my God...! This is the Manchet bread that the nobles and upper-class men eat all the time? Why aren't they using rye, barley or oats here?"

"These flour is deemed to be expensive as its a white bread and nobles always think white bread is meant for them. I think there's another bread called pandemain where the flour was sifted 2-3 times and was the softest there is...!"

Wendy voiced out her thoughts aloud and was heard by Jennings, who hurriedly came over, thinking there was a problem with the bread.

"Hi, I am Jennings, the Head Baker for the Gracehaven's Finest Bakery, is there anything you wish to point out about the bread?"

"Oh, hello. My name is Wendy and this is to compliment you, my dear. I haven't tasted these kinds of bread before and all I ever heard or seen was the pandemain bread. I heard it was sifted 2-3 times and it's was much fluffier than this bread. Frankly, this is a Manchet bread, right?"

"Oh, pandemain... You seemed to know a lot about bread, yes? Well, we don't really sift our bread, we kind of weighs them and fluff them abit with our cupped hands. What's your profession, Wendy. Don't mind if I ask since we seldom have visitors here and normally we would have citizens coming in to be inducted into our society."

"Oh...I used to be an aleswoman. I move around a lot and recently I settled down with the Pag... I mean this travellers group." Wendy nearly slipped her tongue and was kicked underneath the table for nearly mentioning the Pagan in front of strangers, and especially with a town they had fallen in love with.

"Oh, alright then. Enjoy your meal. I'm going back to the bakery to finish up the orders. We supply bread to 15 towns from here."

"Are those two Bakeries yours? I mean there are 2 Bakeries with an astonishing amount of Ovens that I had never seen before in my life...!" Wendy inquired as she was deeply piqued with interest in this little town.

"Hahaha. These 2 Bakeries belongs to this town. It came from all our hard work. There's a total of 30 bakers working these 20 Ovens on 3 cycles. Alright, I'd be off now. I'm finishing my shift soon too by 3 o'clock. We can chat about bread, biscuits, pies, cakes and Muffins later on if you like. Hehehe."

With that Jennings slightly bowed and went back to her bakery where she continued to follow up with her work.

"Did you hear that, girls? 30 bakers and 20 ovens...! This town is superb and it's like a working town with all the facilities as well. Look, they had Gracehaven's First Tailor and Loom and Gracehaven's Greasy Spoon. Are we living out of a dream or what?!"

Wendy delightfully exclaimed as she took a slice of bread and held it close to her nose. The bread was freshly baked and smelled garlicky with a hint of butter. It was not a leftover or some food that had passed into someone's mouth. She felt like she was in seventh heaven.

"You fool. You nearly leaked out who we are right now to the Baker. Please contain your excitement, next time, yeah?" Penelope gritted her teeth as she spoke to her. She too doesn't want to be shunned away for the umpteenth time.

"But weird...how come these people don't recognise us as Pagan even though we dressed like one. Are they pretending or they can't be bothered to check?" Penelope thought inwardly as she too took a whiff of her bread and dipped into her pottage.

"Oh my gosh...! There's so much goodness in this pottage. I thought that the young guard was pulling our legs or something. When he mentioned about the pottage, I was like 'meh' but it's really true...look...! Chunks of game meat and not bones...! Hmm... Nom nom nom... '

It was Penelope's turn to exclaimed in delight as she scooped the thick pottage or stew and ate it after she dipped in with her thick slice of bread. Imelda and Farah looked at each other and giggled since they noticed for the first time that these 2 'old' ladies were bickering at each other.

The men ate silently but were also thankful for the food that was served before them. Never before they had food served to them since they were used to scooping their own bowls during mealtimes.

Andy too ate silently but his mind was racing with ideas. "There's a blacksmith here and maybe if they let us stay here or even at the outskirts of town, I would be able to use their facilities to make some wonderful arrows."

"Also I have the explosive arrowheads that I wish to introduce but the arrowsmith before dismissed the idea totally. Hmm, I wonder who I should speak to right now regarding these matters."

Andy used to have a single meal of the day and that was provided by the boys that worked together at the farmland. It was usually breakfast that consisted of a thin gruel that barely nourishes the needs of one for toiling in the fields the whole day.

Luckily he had been an apprentice for the past 2 years at the arrowsmith and was paid with a plate of broth or stew with some slices of bread to last till the night and next morning.

He thought about what happened to him and sighed inwardly. How he wished he was born in a much better family or having a brother who loves him and not loathe him at all.

He doesn't know what had gotten inside his brother's mind as he had let the matter slide. Maybe keeping a low profile would make his family thought that he had really died in real life.

After they had eaten and rested for a while after their meals, the same guard came over to them and pointed out that the Majesty and the rest of the Ministers were waiting for them at the domain's conference hall.

They quickly cleared the table and wanted to wash the dishes but were stopped by the ladies manning the cauldrons, saying that the dishes would be taken care of.

"Go now, please don't make our Majesty wait. His and Her Majesty had been waiting there for quite some time already." a lady manning the rocket stoves advised to the group and they quickly brought their belongings and went ahead, following the guard closely behind.

=*=

"Good morrow. Please don't stand on ceremony. We have a strict rule here about bowing and curtsying since it would make work get disrupted even more with incessant bowing et cetera."

"We also hope you had your fill that was prepared by our ladies at the cooking area. So, I heard that you came from the North, which was quite abnormal since we do receive visitors and other inhabitants before from the West Side."

"I believed the guard had made some introduction when you came in earlier? So where did you come from, actually?" I didn't want to make an introduction of our Ministers yet and queried about some important matters at heart.

When they first came into the domain and had knelt in the floor, they can't help notice that we were young to be termed as King and Queen and were wearing normal clothes and not those expensive and exquisite looking ones.

We didn't even wear our crowns and coronets over our head and they noticed that it was even placed aside on the right-hand side of the conference hall, on a small table just below a portrait.

Penelope, as the leader of the group, spoke up, "Good morrow Your Majesty. My name is Penelope and we just came from the North. From Adewera, in fact."

"We were told by an old villager to head to this settlement but when we got inside, it turned out that this was actually a fully functional town. Yes, your Majesty, your guard had explained in full detail of some parts of this town."

I eyed the set of quivers that a lad of about 16 or 17 were carrying on his back and I can't help to inquire, "Laddie, could you pass your quivers over so one of our Ministers can take a look at it?" the boy looked up and unslung the 5 quivers in which Eagle took it from him and handed it to Gwen.

Gwen made her own arrows too but she found the arrows and the arrowheads were very straight and very well balanced. Not only that, she noticed that this arrowhead was special and deduced that it might be used by some of the elite bowmen of the militia.

Gwen can't help but praised the boy, "Laddie, these arrows are being made by you? They're very good... In fact, I could vouch that these are better than mine. I'm a huntress and archery is my game."

The boy looked up and managed to squeeze out a squeak that sounded like a 'thank you'.

"Come, I've said earlier on. Don't stand on ceremony. Please grab a seat. There's plenty of them here so sit where you think you're comfortable with." I once again advised to the group and they looked at each other before they sat down, men on one side and the ladies on the other.

"From the set of clothing that you wear, you were not nomads or Irish Travellers, am I right? This was because you do not travel in a wagon and only carry your possessions inside a small bundle."

"Everyone here dressed almost in the same colour except for this lad here. So, truthfully... Who are you and what is your aim being here in Gracehaven?"

My revelation was direct to the point and my question doesn't have a hint of beating around the bush. I would prefer to set up a strategy by asking direct questions since we already have the answers. These seemingly innocent questions were meant to see if they would answer truthfully or not.

The group looked at one another before they started to look downcast as if they were facing an impending doom that they can't avoid. A rolling boulder that was hurled towards them and the nine of them were like bowling pins ready to be struck and blown away.

Penelope, the leader of the group, peered at everyone's face before she replied on behalf of the rest, "Your Majesty, we are the Pagan Witches and Sorcerers and we hail from Knaresborough Cave. We gathered ourselves because I could see the aura of one that had gone through their Awakening."

"At first there was me alone and then it was soon joined by the others. Some of us knew about our special abilities, while others find out about it through mishaps or certain events."

"The lad here — he is not one of the Pagan Witches and Sorcerers but a normal healthy kid. He was discovered by us one day when he was floating downriver, full of injuries and we nursed him back to his health. He had nowhere to go so he decided to join us."

"Very intriguing indeed. I have heard and read about Witches and Sorcerers so I have some ideas. Are you an individual group or belonged to some kind of association? Do you cast curses and hexes or removed them, perform rituals and sacrifices of animals and even infants?"

I must have read the wrong set of reference books concerning Witches because when I mentioned about sacrifices of infants, some members of the group flinched and even shuddered. There were 2 young Witches that even cringed in horror when I mentioned them.

"Uhhh... Did I mentioned something that was taboo or supposed not to be discussed at all?" I sought the answer from the group because Heather who was sitting beside me also covered her mouth in surprise as she gasped and were very wide-eyed at the mention of Witches sacrificing babies and so on.

"Your Majesty, those are the evil Witches you were mentioning about. We are considered as White Witches and we only use our special abilities to either help others or make our lives a little simpler."

"We do not deal with curses or hexes, we do not perform rituals and sacrifices, and especially we do not dance around in the moonlight holding talisman and other whatnot while screaming, screeching and throwing our bodies onto the ground or perform self-mutilation."

Penelope illustrated the other group of Witches called Black Witches that would perform such rituals in order to appease their gods or whomever they prayed for.

These Black Witches were notorious for performing orgies and other unnatural acts. Black Witches would also cast curses and hexes while some leave footprints or stops if their own saliva behind them, that when someone stepped into them, they would fall sick or even be their slaves.

I pondered for a while and finally supplicate, "So what do you Pagan Witches and Sorcerers do?"