Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (27 page)

"So he is. Hallyborn. So we's not to clod muck at him. For Ashes sake. And she's gi'en him our Dad's awd shirt when he's begged, and bread.” Twisting her apron, pink with unwonted emphasis, she said, “And so Mistress Barbary has. So there."

"Ned's awd stockins,” said Wick Billy from down amidst the muddy shoes. He lay there on his belly, dreamily, pushing them about like boats in water, like wagons afield. “I knaw where t'Mistress has ganged."

"Thou disn't."

"I do. Cuddy's getten bellywark. Green imbers, he's etten. And she's ganged wi’ a drench.” And he bent with his wisp of straw to Nick's great haywains, Margaret's stout cobles, down at heel with clambering.

Clack! went Barbary's pattens on the sillstone. In she came and snecked the door. Shook out her spattered apron; settled her cap. “Here's a clattering of tongues. Do thou make up t'fire, Nan; and Doll, thou scrape sugar. We'll a posset ere we go.” Bidding Margaret to her knee, she slipped the blue skein on her hands; and winding up her ball of yarn, began her tale where she had left:

"...a fiddler frae a dance. He heard no bridle ring; but in his road and cross his way there stood a horseman, all i’ black..."

It was clouding to the eastward even as the Nine would rise. The stars were winking out, dissolving in the moon's spilt whey like salt. No glimpse of Journeyman; but Perseis and Hulver lay conjoined. No more this night, thought Margaret. She would in, and write her notes, and rise the earlier. And yet she lay in the cradling heather, gazing at the earth asleep. Asleep.

The curtains of her journey billow out, raingrey, and wrought with stars. Her bed's a book, a ship. Is time. The leaves lift, turning backward in the tale. Unwintering. The clawed rings of the curtains...?

Were a nightjar in the heather, churring, changing to a cuckoo's mock. She started up. No bird. That white-polled boy.

"Catched any?"

"I'll away,” said Margaret, rising, with her glass behind her.

"Dark yet,” the crow lad said. “If thou's bent on play."

"'Tis my work and I have done."

"What, is thou moon's shepherd? Is all thy stars in lamb?"

"I wonder that,” said Margaret. “So I wake."

"Thou madge-owl,” he said, but absently. Turning gazing at the sky, he was silent a space. “Moon's driven them to fold.” He bent to her, all prickliness turned thistledown. “Ayont this knowe. Will I show thee?"

"I must away. They'll be stirring."

"Sun's abed. They'll not afore it, being swinked."

"The mowing...” But she wavered.

"Hay's in,” he said. “Yon field's t'last. But see thou.” Softly at her ear. “Come. A pretty flock o stars, and all a-maze i't grass.” Coaxing still he drew her on, still turning backward toward the cloud-lapped east.

"There now."

"Oh!"

A cloud of stars. Of wandering stars, Perseides astray. Aglint and giddying. Now there, now elsewhere, in and out, like candles in a maze. A dance. Down-drifting like a scarf of light, silk gauze and silver, spangling, that wafted to the grass and tumbling slowly rose, unravelling. Rebraiding, cross and cross. A net and what eluded it. Ah, there, the cloth of heavens of her dream, but wrought on nothing, on the air itself.

And airy as a conjuror, as grave as any mage, he swept his arm at them.

"Here's t'Sheepcrook; here's t'Black Dog, at Fiddler's heel. Yon's Riddle. Yon's Lantern at t'Ship's mast. And t'Ladle and t'Vixen Dancing.” His hand like a pale moth. “Yon twa bright stars is Witches. Sheath and Knife. There's Smith at her stithy. That's t'Owl, waking wi’ her one eye open, and Brooch in her claw. That's Sickle and that's Straw, but some call it Thread-Needle or As-Many-As-Will. That's Ewe and that's Shears. There's Fold."

"Fiddler?"

"Aye, to play for t'guising. Didsta fall i’ last rain?"

Margaret considered. “Perhaps I did."

His naming made no sense: ‘twas spring and winter all at random. A jugglery.

"Does they like thee, yon hey o stars?"

"Not stars,” she said. “Slow comets. Planetary. See, they err."

"Owlet.” He stooped and combed the grass; and turned to her. Moonspill through his fingers. She could see his sharp face shadowed by it and the will o wisp of his hair. He showed a little flinching creature in the cave of his hands. Against cracked nails and callus, earth-ingrained, she saw its scrawling shadow and its moonleaf greeny glow, that seemed no part of it. That scarce indwelt.

Spill and shadow. She bent, scarce breathing, to observe the thing. A chimaera: a grubbish creature and a lamp of soul.

"What is it?"

"Lateworm.” Triumphant. Nonchalant. He opened out his hands and whiffed. Away. “Thou goslin. They foretell."

"Can you read them?"

"Aye.” That scornful glee. “That grass will fall."

So I've drowned,
thought Grevil, turning upward to an endless green. A roaring in his blood. No breath. And far far above him, wavering, an eye of light.
I've fallen through the Sun's eye, fallen burning from the mast.

He looked to where the crow lad waded, naked as the Fiddler, in the shallows of the beck. Against the stream.
O let me keep this moment ever, ever at the sunstill—only but to gaze. Unleaving.
How he bent, like wind in barley; how he stood. Burnt brown as Tom o Cloud, oak brown to where the leaf turned flower, to the softness and the stirring. And his white head burning in the sunlight, in a flare of silver. Like a comet, perilous and beautiful.
What Till hath writ on Comets. What Antoninus saith.
Ah, now the pyets in his head began, the rumour in his ears.
See now, t'King o Lune is dead.

"Lad?"

"Aye. Again?” But he came and crouched by Grevil, naked still, and plucked his tousled shirt. Unscarred, unbeaten since his boyhood—Madam's cruelties were of the spirit—Grevil would not strip beside that flawlessness, that damage. He himself was marred, but only with the keeping, like a wanfine vintage, musty with his age and ink. He traced the downless cheek, the collarbone.

"Not over and again, but ever."

Grevil's hand went to his coatskirts, to his pocket, to his purse; spilled out a something glittering on his palm. Sun's face looked up at sun.

"Eh,” breathed the crow lad, and bent to it.

A mask, no broader than his thumbnail, bearded with the corn.

"Is't coin? Or what?"

"An ashing."

"Whose?"

"Thy forebears.” Grevil turned it in his hand. The face, not kingly but a stripling youth, scarce bearded, seemed to smile. “A digger found it in yon hill by Imberthwaite they call Unleaving; not in my time but my father's father's, and ‘twas ancient then. As old as Mally's shoon, my nurse would say.” He touched the bright hair. “Thine."

Grevil saw the light go out of him. “They'd hang me for it."

"Why? ‘Tis no one's but the earth's, as thou art."

"You knaws me, what I is. I's Ashes’ brat, I's nowt.” He pulled his rags of shirt on, and his breeches. “When I's dead, I's craws’ meat. And there's none sall tell me."

Grevil put the bright thing in his pocket; stood and took him by the shoulder. “Thy tale is written in my book: how Ashes is thy mother and thy soul is Cloud's."

"Burn it.” Now he kindled: not with love but dread and fury. “That's not for yer grammary. Yer fool. If he—"

But
If
was swallowed. Almost he had struck his elder, clawed him by the ears: the Master Grevil who could have him hanged. He'd had him by the cock and stones a quarter of an hour since; had jigged him. That was business; this was insolence.

Gently Grevil took the work-rough hands between his own, unclenched the fists. He thought he knew the cause. “No craft in spelling: I do swear it by the Road. I am not the first to write of Ashes and her son. Thou art in a crowd of such."

Still sullen. “Crow lad's what I is. There's nobbut t'ane."

"No, lad. No. For all men die: yet that is not the only tale. Thou art thy own self, and thy tale is thine.” Soft, soft now as a snail's horn, stalk and eye: the apprehension of his soul. Not lust but tenderness. Once more his hand delved in his pocket; once more the golden face smiled upward at the sun. He closed it in the crow lad's unresisting hand; he kissed his mouth. And softly, even as the boy had turned, the elder spoke. “Know that I do love you. Will."

As if it burned, the crow lad flung the gold from him. As swift as starshot, tumbling in the sun, it flew, fell sparkling in the water: where it lay.

Grey and sultry. All the trees a lead-roofed louring green; the becks like scratched and sanded pewter. Even in the shaded house, Margaret heard the endless sithe and rustle of the barley. It was bending earthward, light and heavy with its end. Beyond the river, slanting to the sky, she saw it: hoary-headed, all a-dither and a-dazzle. There was thunder in the air, said flurried Barbary: the butter wouldn't turn, the milk was dour, the hens a-swither in the rafters, and the chimney vexed. ‘Twould lay the standing corn, she doubted. Grevil had gone out to view his fields with Gill Arket: to bestill the tempest if he might.

That imp of elf-bolt in the air had witched her pen. However carefully she wrote, her page was finger-daubed, all blotched and cockled with her sliding sweat. Blind
O
s: her quill at fault. Her plait-ends ermined with the ink. She tipped the sand, that clung and glittered on the dampened sheet; took up another page, crosswritten.

"Of Charmes. For engendring a childe of Stone:

"There is a kind of edg'd Chrystal, calld by oure Countrywomen Haile; that beeing taken in a Witches wombe (an she be flawlesse of a Man), with certaine other rites, will breed of her a Misselchild. Of which they say, Shee is Ashes, lateward come. These Flints or rather flawes of Ayr, they say, did fall of Annis in her shattering..."

Thunderstruck. Had shattered? Could my lady fall?

"...the which (though it be reckond Ages past) yet they do call this endris Night; and they do swear it that this child of Hailstone (mirour to herself) shall be no striding Hagge nor Guiser, such as Childern fear, but Annis in her Perfectnesse."

No more than that. Had fallen, ages past: could fall. But in that wrack her knowing of the heavens overturned. Blind Law had stood eternally, she'd thought: a field of souls. Death's garnering. My lady's dark of moon had reaped them, green and bearded, bled of light. Their ghosts like windlestraws, threshed dry. She saw it now—O now—undone, death's harvest springing up as light.

A rumbling in the heavens, back of Owlriggs. Now a glance and lifting in the leaves. Green dark at forenoon, almost for a candle. Bending by the spattered window, Margaret dipped her pen.

"Against thunder..."

In the north, it rains. There Ashes is called Earthfast, for she never rises; in their brief pale nights, she wades in darkness to the thigh, like one cast up. Her ocean is of earth, of time. She topples in the wave of dawn.

Past midnight. Hail and wind. It lashes at the window, hung with arras and unglazed; it rattles down the chimney, hissing in the fire. At a blow, the shutter claps, and Madam lifts her head and listens. Nothing. Only for a space, the wind has fallen, and the candle curls about itself its winding sheet of wax. She reads again what she written in her letter to her kinsman. “...durst vilifie thine House to meddle with a namelesse Girl..."

At that she lays aside her pen, and rising, she unlocks her kist. Within, the casket is of iron, hard as dragonscale, inlaid with horn and porphyry and roundels of a glassy stone, nightblack, in which a fire sleeps, half-waking: dragons’ eyes. She bespells them. With her charms and with her bunch of keys—not all of matter—she undoes the nine witch locks, turns back the heavy lid. At once, a roke is in the air, of rime. A somewhat glitters in its depths.

She does not touch. She is no virgin; it would kill. And yet she gazes on the stone, desirous. A shard of Annis. Fracted and refracted in its crystal are the starry heavens, flawless of the sun. A frost is on the iron: endlessly the stone within it turns its matrix to itself. It seeks an other to subsume, to cast a likeness of its lyke. Yet cannot hold: without a limbeck of the flesh, it sublimates. And falls, a snow of stars.

A girl. And in her wardship, fatherless: to be reborn. Ah, she herself could envy that annihilation. To the stone she names the vessel: Annot.

Low in the heavens now, the Reaper bends, as if he gathered shadow in his hook, a harvest of the dead. He crouches like a fishing cat. Below him, deeper still in Law, there swims a tawny star.

That sky is in the scryer's cup, the cup within his hall; his hall—ah that no Ashes born may tell you. East of elsewhere. And the sky's his cup; he drinks of it, drinks down the moon. The scythers’ witch, who will be Lightfast—though he goes by many names—keeps wake. He watches. In the nightwine is a speck of gold, a spark, slow-tumbling upward; now a flake of fire, now a drowned face, all of gold and wreathed about its head with gold, and every hair a sheave. A souling. Grevil's Will.

He drinks.

"Now?” said Margaret, swathed in apron.

"Back. It spatters.” Pink with bending to the fire, Barbary stirred the pan. A slush of beaten sugar in it went to molten snow. “Thou see it disn't gang to rime.” Round she stirred. “Else it's all to do ower."

O strange,
thought Margaret.
Burning snow. A frost of fire.

On the table lay rounds of paper, written over like the moon's face: Grevil's book turned thriftily to use. She'd copied out those leaves; had cut them—so—for Barbary's pots and pies. The door was open to the day, where Suke and Doll stoned cherries in the garth. The kitchen boy whistled at his scouring. Nan in the buttery clattered and sang.

O came there a stranger here last night

To drink till th’ day was a-dawning...?

"'Tis a way of keeping light i’ winter. Shares o't sun.” Barbary kept stirring. “So: we's have us imbers at Lightfast, as is proper; oranges if there's a ship; a quiddany for Kindling; and at harvest we s'll put up damsons, white and black, for Ashes’ ale.” She looked at Margaret. “Is there not imbers in thy country?"