Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (25 page)

The viols and the hautboys ravel out their braided music. Hulver coils himself to leap. And at the threshold of the stage, a star falls, chiming, from his crown. Noll runs to pick it up, to pluck his sleeve. Too late. The sackbuts call him. He ascends.

Far in the night, Margaret crept down the winding stair, and tried her key in the orchard door. It fit; and with attending to the lock—an owl feather oiled, from her bundle of pens—it turned.

She dared not, yet she must. The glass was in her skirts.

Softly now, she slipped the latch, stepped out among the inky trees. She stood a breath, dissolving in the sound of the river and the scent of green; slipped into it, as water into water, night in night. And ring on broadening ring, she felt the pupils of her soul enlarge. Still stood, attuning to the wider dark. No cell, but shadow to the far horizon. From beyond, there blew a little wind that set the wood astir, that shook the watery leaves. They spattered down on her, small drops of rain. Waked circles to the shore of night. Greywhite on grey, she saw the rabbit on the lawn that stilled and shivered, twitched and stilled; she saw the trembling of the grass. The boles of trees were paler than their leafage, ghosted by the waning moon. A wraithlike blue, limned in lichens, and the burden of the mossblack leaves. An owl belated spoke. So bounteous a dark. When she was brimmed with it, so that a drop would overspill her silence, she looked up.

A star.

One only in the rifted cloud, adrift before the moon; and blotted ere she raised her glass. But there, a dappling of stars, swift-clouded by the shifting heavens. Round she turned. And there and there, a glint of sky, like glimpses of a body in a ragged smock, a shoulder fire-moled, a blue-dark breast. Like islands in the rush of tide, still drowning in the rack. Silently, she called on them,
O stay
. And heedless ran after, through the gate with its stone boys, round the drowsy manor to the upward road. No thought, no longing but to see the open sky, away from the hulk of chimneys and the crowding trees.

Irresistibly, she was drawn to the hilltop and the ring of stones. There the sky would come round again, she half-believed. Envisioned: as a lantern that doth make a world about it, or a silver glass that she had seen in Law that drew a ship from a swirl of colors, as a wick draws fire out of puddled oil. It was the focus. Round it all the riddled heavens would be drawn together in their perfectness, still turning in their wheel of fire.

So she ran, but only to the turning in the hedge, the stile; and there she halted, and she sleeved her face. Looked down at her plashed petticoats, her bare legs striped with grass. Looked up again. No use. The hill was steeper than her onset, and the dark too fleeting for her ardor. Already there were voices in the leaves, a charm and bickering, an endless even plaint. The night was in half mourning, turning back the veil of cypress from its brow. No tint of morning yet—unless in shadows were a ghost of green?

But
see-saw, see-saw
in the hedgerow, like the hinges of the rusty sun—dull vaunt of day—a cuckoo sang its mock.

They were all at breakfast in a flood of sunlight. From the doorway, she was dazzled. “Thou's late abed,” said Mistress Barbary.

"Cry you mercy,” said Margaret, curtseying. “I slept ill."

"Aye, ‘twas a feather in her bed,” said Cat. A smirk and elbowing, all round the board. Wick Billy sucked his spoon and goggled.

"Didsta now?” A long considering look.

"Indeed but scantly.” Not at all. She'd slipped through the wainscot door as the house was stirring; made frantic rough amendments to her draggled clothes. She dared not drop her eyes; but Barbary's, she thought, missed nothing in the searching light: the stiff-dried petticoat, the damp shoes, rudely scraped.

"Happen thou wants physicking. Thou's have a dish o mugworts to thy supper."

The maids wried their faces. Margaret dipped her submission.

"Come, break thy fast. Quick now. Here's all to do."

Barbary turned to the others. They rose to her nod, in a flurry of napkins. “Day."

Margaret sat, and cooled her cheeks with a long draught of buttermilk. Her porridge was stiff in the bowl.

Barbary was already up and clattering; called over her shoulder. “T'master's rid out til Summerlaw; but thou's weary o thy book, I's warrant."

Seeing Margaret's dismay, the maids overcrowed her.

"Here's out o thy book,” said Cat.

"Nay, there's moonshine i't almanac,” said Doll.

"At turn o't moon will be our shearing,” said Nan, lordly. “And Hob Hurchin's to pipe."

Ellender smiled. “And Tam Sledger's to dance wi’ Is Oddin. All night."

Nan tossed her head. “He may please himsel. And what he's brewed, may drink."

"Clip ale,” cried Doll. “'Twere brewed this Hallows past. And cakes."

"And delicates,” said cat-sleek Ellender. “Dowsets. Curds and cream."

"Thy tongue's to turn it,” said glowering Nan. “Thy face would posset milk."

Doll galloped on. “Twelve hundred's to be sheared, says Tom. Then fall to dance."

"Last year I's etten nine cheesecakes,” said Wick Billy, unstopping his spoon.

"And were sick on thy long-coats,” said Cat. “Thou pollywog."

Sukey, clearing dishes, looked up at Barbary. “An't please you, mistress, will Marget be t'lady at feast?"

"What, yon gowk's egg?” said Cat, “Is
she
to queen it?"

"What's
she
?” said Barbary. “Kit Crowd's mother?"

"Madam Mim there. Margery Daw."

"And why not?” said Barbary. “'Tis not a part that begs discernment.” Secure in her ministry, though a cloud of May-fly ladyships should fleet away, she unlocked the spice cupboard. Nutmeg and ginger, saffron, pepper and cloves. A spar of sugar.

"Who is't then? Tell us.” A nest of gaping beaks about her. “Have ye choosed?"

"Nan's eldest,” said Barbary. A toss of the head. “But Cat Clapperdish is boldest.” A caper and a clap. “Doll's bonniest, and likest to a gimmer-lamb.” A squeak. “Nell's nimblest—aye, she'd keep her shoes fair in a sheep-dub, an she trod upon another's loaf. And Suke—"

"Nay, I couldn't.” Twisting her apron.

"Suke's our piper's daughter and may call his tune."

And she set them all to work.

Margaret, stoning raisins for a century of tarts, heard them singing, to and fro in the long low kitchen, rolling out paste for the cheesecakes—thin as tiffany—and raising coffins for the warden pies. Sad tales of the deaths of maidens to a set of tunes would make a widow skip; and mirth in a doleful key, modal and minor and elegaic:

Ah, but it had a dying fall, as if the petals were a thought embrowned, even in the blooming.

Margaret had faded from the room. Thought only of the silent dance, the dancers all in cloth of air, of darkness but for scarves of light, faint silver, and the flashing of their crescent feet. They wore the seven planets for their diadems, bright fire at their hilts. Unmasking, they did put aside their brief eclipse. The sun, moon, stars cast off their mantles of the cloud; took hands about the pole.
I was but out of measure with the night,
she thought.
Ill-timed. But if I go before full dark, wait midnight at the stones?

The Fiddler raised his bow.

Toward midnight. From her window, Margaret saw the stars of summer westering: great Hulver in Ashes and the Scythe sunk deep in grass. Past moonset of a cloudless night.

Time.

With her starglass hidden in her petticoats, she crept down the winding stair, unbarred the wicket in the door, and slipped like shadow into shadow. Breathless with expectancy, she trysted with the Nine. At the sill of heaven, on their Law. She walked as soft as if the moon were owling her, as if the Raven at her back could spy. Death's daughter's child, she feared nought else, no ghost nor witch nor traveller. How brief this summer's night: an island in the rising tide. Even now, it glowed with intimations of the dawn, not stark midnight but owlgrey. Scarce dark enough to see the Lyke Road, faint as foam above her head. She met no stranger but a started hare.

On Law, the greycloaked sisters huddled, sparser than in memory. Her master and Barbary did say they walked. And here, here only was a flawless prospect of the east; as if the circle of the stones were built as frame to it: night's lantern that the east would kindle. Through it, she looked eastward to the harbingers: the Fool, the Knot of Swords. Toward Ninerise. Soon. She wiped her starglass, fogged with gazing. In and out, she walked the maze of shadows, turning Nineward always in her restless hey. Barbary's song was braided through her mind. A summoning:

A star? Still naked-eyed, she gazed until it dazzled. Yes. A knot of stars. She waited as they rose; she bowed and raised her glass.
Come, Nine.
They swirled to her, a skein of swallows—O a crowd, a dazzlement. At once her world was cracked, fell shining. What new stars were these? Dark sisters dazzling. As if her seeing were a breath that kindled, blew the ashes of the sky to embers.

Now Margaret dreamed no more of journeying. Against her night-closed eyes, she saw as through her glass: a coin of sky that trembled, fogging even with her careful breath. A vision circumscribed and yet enlarged: bewildering, glorious, aswarm with stars. She walked starblind, like a traveller in a snowstorm, in the whirl and sting of revelations.

Lying in the dark, on Law, she told the Nine, with pebbles, great and little, on a stone. A henge within a greater henge; a mirror of the smallest, highest of all. A spiral she could cover with her nail. Eighteen. Nineteen. A gemel? Twenty-one. At dawn, she swept them up like jackstones.

It was all to learn again. Not chains and carcanets of stars, but a scattering of stones, unset. She sifted for them, as for diamonds, in a drift of silver sand. There, the Owl's Eye, unblinking; there, the Tabor at the Fool's knee; the Clasp in the Necklace like a clew of light, woolgathered, wound about a spindle of thorn. Torn fragments of a text she'd read in full, an alphabet ungrammared. Notes of music played by one and one that made no harmony.

But there were stranger things to see in heaven.

She'd begun to write them down on scraps of paper: a mouse's nest of them behind the wainscot, with her sketches and her notes.

"Hulver in my Lady's house. He hath a train of Boyes about him, lillywhite: small Starres within his Orbe that dance attendance."

* * O * * * O * * * * * * O *

Remembering, she smiled; then bent the closer to her page.

"The Moon in my Glasse is old.” She stopped there. Light enough to blow the candle out, to play at sleep before they waked her. Light enough to write by, and a stub of blacklead: she went on. “Happely she doth go disfigur'd, in the guising of a crone, as Ladies walk abroad in Maskes. If it be not for the sake of Modestie (for all may gaze on her), then perhaps ‘tis Vanitie: though she fear not being Sunne burnt, yet she may be Winter chapt. Or else there is a Cloudiness within my glass, a sorte of Cattaract or web. Or else with looking nearly on her radiance mine Eyes be witcht. But she is flawed of Face, like one unpolisht with the Smallpox, who doth white herself to Seeme the fairer...” Looking up, she saw the moon itself, of lucid gold, of honey, melting on the tongues of morning, in the blue of air. Her light transmuted into song. “...yet she wanes."

Grevil walked out beside his meadows, lifted dazzling from their douse. They glittered in the wind, white aureate. A water green, wave green beneath. Blue undershadow, and the sweetness of the mingled flowers.
Fine hay, but if ...
(No hailstorm, blackrot: he had paid the charm.) Still green but golder, eastward to the rigg, his stripling barley stood, as yet unbearded. At a rippling in the grass like a running hare, he turned. A skylark shrilled its swiftlinked spiring music; but no bird rose. He followed.

"The Road,” she wrote, “is made of Travellers.” Her book was stitched of gathered leaves, no bigger than her pack of cards: the left hand to its right. She wrote as in a mirror, backward: not in Cloudish nor the old tongue, which her master somewhat knew, but in her cradle tongue, in Norni's language—and in Scarrish runes. No words for half what she would say, so she'd made them up:
starglass. Slantstill.
Notes, conjectures, observations. Reckonings and sketches. Margaret dipped her pen. “...faint Starres and numberless. The Nine...” Eyes shut, she saw a swarm of stars. “...if they bee Sisters, they are many as an Hive of Bees. What Honey they do make of Ayr and darknesse, I know not. If they be not Nine, I know no Tale of them; and if the Heavens be untold—"

No more. The stars were fading as she gazed, the brief night bleeding into dawn. So brief a night that none had risen, nor had set, but waded to the knee in half-light, dreaming, deep as mowers in a field of grass. All the bright, unlearned stars of summer.

Margaret looked down from the heavens’ Law and saw the figure of it standing on the earth. The heavens’ rune of stars was mirrored, backward, in the ring of stones. But even that had changed. Like stars in her glass that crowded, riddle beyond rede, the stones had thronged with fainter stones. New monoliths.
The glass has vexed my eyes
, she thought, and rubbed them. Half-light still. But now she saw the new stones were a knot of men and boys, bareheaded, silent. Waiting.

In the bush where she lay, a bird woke, chirred sleepily. None answered.