Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (16 page)

Tighter still, he clenched his hand. His knife. He'd left his knife.

He made to pass by.

"Lightwood?"

Kit walked on.

"Heard tell thou was asking at Jack Daw.” Almost, he turned. “For a fiddle."

Daw had it out for him; he drew the bow. And at that wauling sound, Kit's soul was snared. He turned and looked. Old and curious, far older than his own had been; rubbed shining as a fallen chestnut, newly split from its green burr. It had a carven woman's head. He yearned for it.
A trade,
he told himself:
not bread but years of bread.
A livelihood. He slipped two rings from off his fingers, deep within his coat; held out a third. White-gemmed. Like fleeces heavy with the dew. “Fair trade."

"What's this? Cuckoo-spit?” said Daw. “That, thy long knife, and a knock at thy vixen. I's a fancy to red hair."

"White-faced bitch is breeding,” said Cap-and-Feather. “Maggot spied."

"She's a tongue,” said Black Mort. “Can use it."

Jack Daw fleered. “I like a brave bellyful. Stir pot wi’ my flesh hook and mek brat dance."

Kit spat. “Crows eat thee. Cock and eyes."

"They do,” said Jack Daw, smiling.

Kit tried to shoulder past, but the doxies mobbed him, like crows at an owl by daylight. Jack Daw plucked at the fiddle. “Thou has strings for it, and all.” His fingers at its neck and belly. “Owt else in yon placket?” Kit's face gave him away. He knew it. Daw twanged a string. “Done, is it? Say, two rings.” He watched hope flicker. “Two rings. And thou serve yon nest o crows—ah, they gape for it. Now. Here. I like a play."

"No,” said Kit. “No more."

The drabs were all about him, taunting, lifting up their petticoats. White belly and black joke. Craws wi’ beards. Against all his will, Kit felt a stirring. And a sickening. Hobthrust rose and danced. He stared. A black scut, and a shitten fleece. Old ling. Rustbrown, and the red blood trickling down by her knee.

A cruel hand caught his wrist, bent backward. Wried his arm round his back until the socket started and the cold sweat sprang. No breaking Jack Daw's hold. Sinewy as yew, he was, inexorable. The voice was wasp honey. “Come, then. A bargain. For t'sake o that night's game thy dam once gave me. Salt and sweet, insatiable. A blue-eyed witch.” Doubt and horror. Daw touched his cheek, mock gently; bent and whispered in his ear. “How cam'st thou by my face?” Kit swayed. In that brief slackening, the old man knocked him backward, winded, to the ground. Cap-and-Feather pinned his arms and Daw knelt on his shoulder, set a knife across his throat. “Where's thy vixen earthed?"

Clack! goes the old year and the new year tumbles down.

Kit turned his face. Shut his lips.

"By my lady's name, it will go ill with thee."

Skirts about her waist, the Black Mort straddled him; she squatted and undid his breeches flap. “Here's a knocking i't cellar. Here's a bird flies up."

Pissabed danced wildly, she whirled and wobbled in the road, like a slowing, sleeping top.

Cap-and-Feather chanted.
"The wren, the wren, the king of all birds..."

"Caught i't furze,” said Black Mort. She spat between thumb and fingers. Laid on.

Kit gasped.

"Although he is little, his family is great..."

"Wring it neck,” said Pissabed.

"Darkmans and glimmer,” said Jack Daw. “My lady bids. Then do."

A voice from somewhere cried, “Hang craws!"

"Craws!” answered from the hills. And all the dogs of Soulsgrave took it up.

"Cut,” said Jack Daw. “Prig and run."

Crack! Blind lightning blast, a whirl and burring through his skull.

No more.

Kit woke, rolled naked in a ditch.
Fiddle's wracked,
he thought.
Where's here?
Himself was lash and scratch and throbbing, ice and fever, and a dizzy thud behind his eye. Dragged through whins, he thought. And tumbled down a bank.
That green girl at my bow's end. At the dance. That horseman?
His hand moved gingerly. No, his good hand—one was lame. Cracked bagpipes in his side. A broken crown. Wet blood on his mouth. Not his. From Cap-and-Feather. From her other mouth. Remembering, he retched and strangled. Nothing in his gut to puke.

Nothing left.

No clothes.

No rings.

And at his wrist, no braid of Thea's. Sharper still than all his hurts, he felt that ring of absent fire.

Gone.

Whin said in the dark, “Went naked back?"

"I robbed a scarecrow of his coat.” A clear night mocking him. The Hanged Lad ranting on Cold Law. As naked as himself. They'd left him with one broken shoe, in haste. Derision.

"So yer done that. Ta'en rings."

"I did."

"Lost braid."

"I did.” That desperate searching in the dark. He'd had a crazed hope it was somehow lost, not stolen for an end. That he would find it, tossed aside as naught. In a small voice, he said, “I didn't tell her. That I had it. That it was gone."

"Round thy wrist? Had she not see'd it?"

"No. I thought. We'd not—we hadn't lain together. Not since harvest.” He would not force her crazy innocence, not take his will of her. And yet he had.

Long silence.

"At the stones,” said Kit. “At Imber Beck. That kiss she gave me was the first time. Of her will.” He drew one ragged breath. “That other, freely. Not her love.” He was crying. “One other time. The last. I never knew it was. I never knew."

Waking in the night. Hard ground. And Thea with her back to him, within his curve, and cradling his hand against her breast. Like a child her doll. He felt his ring there, on a thread; he felt her quick heart tap and tap, like a branch at a windowpane; he felt the round drum of her belly thud and kick. She smelled of smoke and Thea. Not asleep.

She spoke, not drowsily, but low. “Kit. I do love thee. Know that."

Blood in my lady's place. Blood on her smock. It would not come out.

Margaret hurried through the dark and winding hallways, down toward her room. No sanctuary there, no more than in a hare's slight form, the impress of her crouch; but licit. Blood, suddenly. A spattering of drops, no more. Herself she'd washed and washed, no trace or tinge of it was left. Flung the water from her sill. But her smock. Would find her out. Bury it? The dogs would out. Burn it? No fire but in my lady's study. Up the chimney? Blood will out. Ah. Cut herself and mingle. Knife. She had a knife.

Softly now. She lifted the latch.

Morag and my lady waited with a rod of juniper. “Straying, and thy book undone. Come, Madam."

Margaret curtsied, rose. “My lady."

"Closer, girl. I am no basilisk."

The hand with its great ring held the face: a sere unshaking hand; a white face, like a scrap of paper to be written over, like a mirror to be filled. “There is something of my daughter in you."

"Aye, the whore,” said Morag.

"Alike in straying,” said my lady. Still she held her gaze. “Chastise her."

"Thy vixen, Madam.” And when Margaret made no move, the servant took her bedgown, pushed her smock to her armpits. Held her wrists and bent her back across the kist, her new breasts and her belly all disclosed, a gibbous moon. Thrust her legs apart.

Slow blood.

My lady spoke, a cold still fury in her voice. “And who undid that knot?"

Morag said, “Not art, I'll warrant, but the worm in her. Your glass is carrion."

"Is of my adamant. A blank, but that I grave her with my icon and my law. And offscum else: yet will transmute."

"Or spoil, as did her dam. Your poppet. Waiting on the stars."

Whiter still, my lady's face. “It will be done, and presently. By this moon's dark."

A catechism then.

"What was thy mother?"

"Your daughter,” Margaret said.

"A whore. Which is?"

She knew not. “One who strays?"

"'Twill do. Puts carrion in Annis’ place. Which is?"

"We name it not."

"That errant part, wherein thy mother did betray me."

"Crow's fee,” said Morag, pinching. “And the vixen's earth."

Margaret endured. The crow's contemptuous, efficient hands; my lady's avid eyes. And even in her dread and terror, sick with shame, she thought,
Like Thea?

Then the rod, and no more thought.

They left her on the floor, amid the fallen needles, the scattering of twigs.

My lady turned at the door. “It is time thou learned thy glass."

A key snicked in the lock.

For a long time she lay weeping in her dabbled smock. Blood with hidden blood.

No voice. She heard no voice.

Kit hurried, huddled in his flapping coat. It would snow by dark. Black moor, white sky; but knit, the whiteness tangled in the ground as rime, the blackness branching up as trees. A scant wood, leafless now. Sloes, rowans, all gone by. Firing. He bent to get sticks. It still was light; but stiffening towards dusk. Ravenwards. And Thea waiting, pacing in their roofless shieling, by the ashes of a hearth. She made cairns of stones. She did and she undid. He dared not leave her; they would starve without. No sticks to burn; no bread. A handful of dampish meal, half acorns, bitter as the wind.

The braid was gone. He saw it glinting everywhere.

There. In that bush. He stumbled toward it.

Gone.

He stood. He would have wept, if he'd remembered how. It was all too much, too much. He stood. Dazed, cold, defeated, sleepless, starved, lightheaded, lousy. Fizzing with lice. His feet recalled him, white cold, wet; he'd blundered. Cat ice.

Looking down, he saw a tump in the marshy ground: a spring, turfed over, housed with three great stones. Kneeling, he touched the lintel of the low door, lichened; found the blind runes graven in the rock.
Help us,
he said to darkness, spinning out a thread of silver.
Lighten her, my love.
He touched the water. No one. In the wood beyond, a stormcock sang. No solace here. He rose. On a tree hung knots of rags, frayed, faded to the blue of a winter sky. Another sky, some other now or then, caught here. And in among the ravellings of sky, a rag of iris. Thea's scarf.

Kit. Margaret. Ah, you do not hear me. She is gone until her time comes round; she cannot let you in. No hallows anywhere. Not yet.

At the corners of their shieling, raised on cairns, Kit saw her barricade: spiked crowns and spirallings of ice, frail caltrops. Morning stars. He dropped his sticks and ran. From wall to ashes, wall to wall, he found her, pacing and clenching. Blood on her lip. Then something wrenched her, as a laundress would a rag.

"Thea. How long—?"

She caught his sleeve, his coat, as on a breaking ship. Another wrench and shudder. “Kit.” Like burning wax, her face: it warped and ran. Almost Thea leapt from it, as flame from a candle, blowing out. “Undo it."

"Love?"

"Undo the knot,” said Thea. “That braid you took of me. Undo it."

Still he stood.

"To let the child be born. I cannot lighten else. I cannot meet them."

O sweet hallows on us.
“Gone,” he said.

"What?"

"Taken. Gone."

"Ah no.” A great cry, twisting.

"Thea—"

She whirled on him, white-fiery. “Run. Now."

"I'll not leave thee. I will not."

"For a woman's help. I die else.” Wrench and leap. “Now. Get thee hence."

He turned at the threshold. “O my heart's love."

"Go."

No time, no time.

He ran.

Whin dreamed of ravens. An ill-chancy dream, an omen. Then a telling. A trance. She saw a girl still barely living, filthy, naked on the icy ground. Her childbed. Saw the stubble of red hair, the new milk seeping from her breasts. The glazing eyes. A witch stood watching her, a corbie perched upon her hand. She stroked its beard, she ruffled it; it preened the bracelet at her wrist, of braided fire.
Ah, the sweetest morsels for my chuck, my Morag,
said the witch.
The crow's fee and the eyes.
Down it flapped, it picked the tidbits. Still the girl breathed, the blood ran, the death cry rattled in her throat. Then the witch called down her crows. They clustered at the bloody womb. They tore.

Whin woke yelling.

Still Kit slept on. He twitched and whimpered. Whin sat up and shook with rage. She cursed the raven and the witch; she cursed the knife that loosed the child, the braid, the shears that cut it. Cursed her master mistress Brock who had entangled her in this atrocity, to see and see and see. Change nothing.

Then up she got, and ran down to the shingle, to the water's edge. She'd drown the soulbag, wash the ashes from her face. Walk inland. She would be no more death's journeyman. Running, she tore her rings off, death by death, to hurl them in the sea.

Brock stood between salt water and the strand. “I'd not do that,” she said.

"Could yer not have let her live?” cried Whin. “Not see'd to it that she went wi’ child, smick smack, afore she'd much as bled? Thou meddlesome. And all for nowt. A tale of Ashes."

"It's done, and long since done,” said Brock.

"And nowt to do wi’ me."

"And all to do.” The sea swashed, swashed. “There's bairn."

O thank hallows.
There, a woman with a lantern. Hale and canny, she looked: brisk, in pattens and a hood. Kit caught her apron. “My lass. Please. Needs a woman by her.” And she raised her candle, looking through him with a smile would scoop apples, a shankbone smile—I know two of that—and turned away. Up the fell.

He ran after. “Pity on us. For the love—"

Another crossed the trod. A sonsy girl, a goosedown girl and slatternly, who bore a flat candlestick, as if she tumbled up to bed. “Miss—? Can lead me to a midwife? My lass—” She blinked and giggled, turned away.

Another and another still. All with candles, all the girls and women of the dale end, lating on the hills. Now there, now elsewhere in the cloudy dark, as if they danced
Nine Weaving
. Round they turned like children in a game, a-bob and wheeling, in and out, through bushes and through briars. They were seeking with their candles—
lambs at Hallows? Birds’ nests?
They were sought.