Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (34 page)

Margaret drew herself still further in. No door, no sky.

"There's one you've not asked.” Mistress Barbary turned to Margaret, looked long at her and level. “By t'moon: are you this Annot that were lost?"

A small voice, disused, despairing. “By the moon and dark of moon and all the wood above, I know her not."

"Then tell your name, or wear another's garland to her bed."

Smaller still. “I cannot say."

Madam now disclosed her hand. There lay on it a ring of silver, black with age. “Where got'st thou this? For it was Annot's."

Silence.

"It was hidden in thy chamber. It is found.” Flawless Ellender smoothed down her apron. Turning to the whitefaced Grevil, Madam said, “Do you vouch for it?"

He took it, turned it his hand. “It is like her ring. But if it were, the room was also Annot's room; belike she left it there, for she took nothing."

"This she would not leave: it was an ashing of her mother's kindred.” Madam bent her gaze on Margaret. “By her face, the girl's a liar. She is Annot."

"Or—"

"Or thou'st taken in a thief and whore. Wouldst see her whipped before the town? Turned out upon the road to serve Daw's pack?” He was silenced. “Now girl, by Annis and her night, I conjure thee: where got'st thou Annot's ring?"

In darkness. Room on room of shadows, and the glint of things that spilled from broken coffers: all the ashings of the dead untold. She would not speak, would never speak: but that her lady's name compelled her. “From one that's dead,” said Margaret. Under Law.

Annot stood, scratched and breathless, on a hillside, at the edges of a leafing wood. Wavering, as in a dance half-learned, the music fallen still—
Now which? Now which?
The exaltation that had carried her to this fell back, the wave of it withdrawing from the printless reaches of her heart. Nothing but a shining on the sand laid bare. A momentary gleam. It sank away.

Ashes? Thou didst call the dance. What road?

The stars, too, sunken into grey. All vanished now, the Road that she had followed, white as wave-edge, the Fiddler and the Thorn. The Shepherd's Fold. Before her in the paling east, the Nine had faded into air, triumphant. It was May that marked their rising out of Law.
As I hope to rise.
The morning star, bright Perseis, still shone beside a fainter star, she knew not which.
O Perseis. Thy story mine.

A rustling in the wood behind her. Turning, she looked back. She saw a young man, all in gold and violet: amazement in his face, and dangling from his hand, a garland of the thorn, both white and black. She knew this dance, the soundless music of it moved them both. Now he would speak.

"I find no flaw in it.” said Grevil. He looked wearily to Margaret, turning the parchment for her to the waning light.

She looked at a winter hedge of words, at the lash and eddering of quickset strokes. A cage of law, close-woven. Here a crow-blotch of sealing wax; there, a gout of it like blood new-spilt on snow. A hand—long dead and laid in earth—had set her seal on it: a ship like a clinched moon, riding on its keel; a mast of tree, that flowered into stars; and all about it, falling, leaves or stars.

Lief wode I fall, an light wode spring.

The riddle in her ring. No stone in it, and yet a skein: a knot of blood.

"It is not my hand."

He sighed. “It is my mother's mothers’ ring. Her kindred's, that I wear. And Master Corbet his stamp—” A fiddle and a flaunting crow, blunt-struck, blurred with vehemence. “—both signed and countersigned. Did they chaffer for an eggshell, for a bride of straw, that seal is proof."

She could cipher. “You would sell me."

"No,” he said, dismayed. “'Twas none of my doing, by the air and Ashes. I would lief undo.” He turned to her. “Think you I would sell a child?"

The crow lad had given her a blade of elfshot, bitter cold and true. She flung it. “You have bought."

Too carefully, as if he bore a cup unspilled, he said, “I do not take.” Glass-cold and quarrelled. She could see where he had cracked, long since; how still he bore himself in shards. “Go marry."

Madam Covener did up the clasp; she held the mirror to her ward's unseeing face. “Thou wilt mind thee of this chain I gave thee, at thy trothing. I have kept it well.” She touched the girl's bright head, close-braided, quenched; sought trembling in the body, still as tree.

The north light, passionless, played evenly on all: the heap of jewels on the table; the woman, soberly and richly clad, still handsome, with the silvered glass; the servant by the window, hands folded in her apron; the girl, pale as frost in autumn, in a stillness of despair.

The woman bent to her casket. “Does she bleed?"

"Madam?” said Barbary.

"Thou hast change of her linen. Will she breed?"

"Scarce yet.” The servant made her courtesy contempt.

Madam Covener slipped a ring on a roll of parchment. “Bedding will ripen her."

Sharp-eyed Barbary took up her tray. “He's a taste for green fruit, yon gallant."

"'Tis not his belly will ache for't.” The witch half smiled. “Go. I will bid thee."

As she turned, Madam Covener held stones to Margaret's cheeks, half made to hook them in her ears; was checked. No piercings, not a scar. She called to the kist where her own maid knelt, turning out long-folded linens. “Grieve, my needlecase.” Her black-browed waiting woman brought needle and thread. “Hold her."

Margaret dared not flinch; she felt the shock of power still, that laid her naked to my lady's thought. This meddling bruised her flesh and spirit; but that rush of godhead was annihilation: it laid waste her soul. Her mind sought shelter elsewhere, amid the stars and numbers in her head: but the air was no liberty, the heavens were no roof. She stumbled in a labyrinth of dread.

Slow lightning, sawing at each lobe. The point was burred with salt. No cry: but Margaret's eyes went wide, her irises half drowned in dark. Pain made itself a door of seeing; made of light a rape. Unwilling tears, yet two or three slid down her captor's hand. “Ah, the stones become thee.” She tilted Margaret's chin and gazed. “Thou braid'st of thy grandame that wore them. Blood will tell."

The boy is running, bloodfoot on the moor. He's made his way by holt and hollow, ditch and slough: mud-slubbered, thicket-torn. Lain shuddering and burning in the pale of day. Slept scarce at all, with listening for the brash of hounds. Slogs on now. He is far beyond the fields he knows; knows nothing, but the sea's his only hope. Knows not if it lies east or west. And he might die, if he's not taken. There's a green fire burning in his lights, rust-ropy when he hacks it up; a fire in his blood. And when he drinks to quench it, then a black frost in his gut. As if he's swallowed attercaps. He cannot last.

So at nightfall he breaks covert. And he's running on a moorland, white as if with frost. So light, he's never run so light: as if he's starved away the clag of mortalness. He swivels in the moon for joy. And yet the wind outrides him.
Tig last!
he cries to it. And laughs: Will Shadowslip. Now the air is thick with flying leaves, black leaves before the moon: though not a tree stands by him. Laying back his ears, he runs.

All round him, there's a scent, blood-cousin, that he knows for sea.

Then he hears the cry of hounds. Can feel it in his prick and marrow. In his stones. Can feel the scorching of their breath—No. No, that clamoring is fear. Those flying leaves are ashes, eyed with sparks. He swings about. There's fire on the hills. Not daybreak. North, east, west. As frantically he seeks a trance in it, it closes on him in a ring of gold.

And like the stone of it, he sees the huntsman, all his harness traced in fire, and his mantle of the burning gold upflung. His mount's a roil of smoke and agony. His red-eyed hounds are scattering like a shovelful of sparks; their master falls apart in flakes of fire—a spur, an eye, the flinders of a mouth—still curling inward on himself.

The crow lad drowns in fire, wakes with shrieking.

See, a card is burning in the witch's hand. The last: the Hare, cast down in embers on the ashes of the pack, the Huntsman and the Hound.

In the tale, the Moon-Hare's rising out of Law is liberty; he lopes amid a rime of stars.
See there,
the old wife says.
That star? And that? He's running, and they's never catch him. Nobbut Brock will, for her bag.

That tale is lost.

Scant light for sewing. Close within the kitchen window, Barbary bent to her needle, frowning, turning Margaret's ruined tawdry in her clever hands. She'd given threads to Margaret to unpick, to save the gold inwoven; but the girl was elsewhere, gazing past the rain-lashed window at the fell. The work lay idle in her lap. While she was caged these endless weeks, the year had turned toward winter, shedding leaves with her blood. The trees laid bare the sky: for naught. Beyond the whirl and slant of wind-torn leaves, her crown of stars moved on unvisited, unseen.

Light mirrored made a second prison of the world beyond, cast all behind before: the fell was white with swags of linen, winter-hedged. Reflections. High in the air, Doll and Nan tripped neatly to and fro about their work: glazed linen slid beneath their skating irons, flakes of lace fell lightly from their goffers, making frost of fire. As she worked, Nan Shanklin sang, abstracted, mournful.
” ... of his needle, he made a spear, Benjamin Bowmaneer..."

Her breath had dimmed the glass; she wiped it.

And in sad antiphony, Doll sang,
"My father was a gentleman, a gentleman was he ... “
A shirt, a collar. Thump and glide.

A smock.
” ... and th’ proud tailor rode prancing away..."

"...but he's wed me til an awd man o three score years and three..."

Herself was time's mirror: a glass ghost-misted. Spirits’ breath that will not stir a feather yet may stain a soul with longing, with regret. They clouded her, her ghosts. The leaf on stone, the leap of fire that was Thea's voice. Ash of driftwood that was Norni's tang; her salt wind singing to the cradle rocking, empty on the stones: Imbry's cradle, who was dead for Margaret's sake. The lost girl shivered, skyblack on the moor. Her hand was in the frost. And now, beyond that skeining work, Margaret saw Lyke Moor, with its lost souls wandering.
” ... of his thimble, he made a bell ... “
She saw the crow lad, black as starless night, starve-naked, with his hair like cold fire blown about him, unconsuming. Saw him still behind her eyes.

"...to ring that flea's funeral knell..."

A golder fire in the air sprang up. He burned in it. Another. And another.

In the room behind her, they were lighting candles, whispering.

"...he's gone intil a hare and hunted, Mab says..."

"...slipped..."

"...come full o't moon, they's take..."

Margaret turned from the ghostly hillside; spoke to blot the voices. “Will you go?"

Pursed lips, drawn brow. Counting stitches. “Sayst?"

"Hie, Jeannie, hie..."

"Will you seek Ashes? At the stones?"

Barbary bit her thread. “That's done wi'.” Then sleaving new silk, she said less tartly, “I's beyont moon now. Ashes mun bear."

"...and sing low, Jeannie, low..."

"Oh,” said Margaret. “I see."

"Is thy needle a bill-hook? Thou's not lifted it twice this hour."

"Ye can never mak’ a singin bird out o a hoodie craw."

Margaret took up her handwork, bristling with pins, and drew them; stuck them in a clot of cushion like a heart. Barbary shook out her ravaged breadth. “Here's cats’ knittery. ‘Twill do for a stomacher.” She called to the serving maids, “Y'd best bring candles up. They'll be darkling."

Fain to be flitting, they clipped out.

Dusk in the kitchen, unghosted of its smocks. Rain spat in the chimney, rattled at the pane.

Barbary chose her strand of silk. “I were never Ashes.” Another thread, a knot. Swift stitches. “I wanted.” Even in her own despair, Margaret heard the longing in the other's voice.

"Why?"

"Not for mastery, but for—” The needle poised. “—draught of light. I wanted Ashes, same as tree wants light. Rain and rooted earth, aye, fairly; but ‘tis light in grain. I would knaw that law, that dance; and now I never s'll."

There was a shutter still undone. Only for a glimpse, Margaret looked out on leaves, on endless leaves, wind-paling; at the starless sky, cloud-curded, and the rounding moon. Rain-curtained now the Coffer and the Keys, the ember of the Raven's Eye. Then the servingwoman pulled it to, and latched it. “Go now. Madam waits."

Cold haily night. All folk indoors. Cowering and curing in their chimneynooks like so much bacon. Withered apples in a heap of musty straw. And wanting only fire and fleet: the caudle on the hob; the hangings drawn against the October storm, against the rattle and the sting of sleet. The glory shuttered out. Above them in the smoke, ungazed at, lay the vault of heaven, underdrawn with cloud: the stars in their lightless rafters, hooked. Like so much kitchenry.

Still there,
thought Margaret, kneeling at the sill. And set them in the sky in order, like a child with her babyhouse. Toys and shadows. Here a cradle of a nutshell; there a thimbling jug of delf. A saltspoon for a ladle: horn. Sad pretty trinkets from a yearcake, a child's wealth long ago: a spindle whorl of bone or ivory, like an ear-bob, wound with tow; a tawdry ring, a cheat of brass and glass for gold; a riddle and a shears of lead.

In the high chamber, Annot's kists lay open, spilling rich and thrifty odors mingled—orris root, ambergris, wormwood and camphire—and outmoded finery. They were remaking her in Annot's image. All her clothing, though excellent, was quaint; and after her long wandering—Madam said—ill fit her.

Madam Covener herself, with Rue her waiting-woman, had the fangling of a bodice. Grieve stitched at linens: fine whitework, as for a bridal or a shroud. Beside her, Ellender, entrusted with a nightcap-in-ordinary, bent demurely to her work. Her bright new thimble glinted. Nan came to mend the fire and clear away, remembering—but only just—to bob.