Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (63 page)

But they get up, go on, as people do; they change things, being who they are. Will's angry and aspiring; Noll grieves; Margaret wonders; Kit and Whin regret; but Imbry sees what comes. All are loved in some way, not as they would chose; and all but one desired. Noll is odd man out.

Whin takes his shoulder. “Hallows on yer orchard, Master, to blow well and to bear.” She looks for the last time. “You that way, we this way."

The guisers turn—not inland—upward, climbing into air as if the heavens were a hill. They go by the pack road, white with stardust: Imbry running on ahead; Whin loping with her jangling pack; and Will, Will lagging, looking backward at his Margaret.

They come like hoarfrost and are gone. In their packs are dreams, lies, memories: the patterns that the mind makes of the scattered stars, the toys and engines of imagination. At your bidding, they will play for you the histories of the sky: the moon's brief comedy, the downfall and the death of stars. For silver, they will wake your dead; for gold, will sain your marriage beds. Some say they do steal restless wives and children: that is false. For they take nothing but your dreams, though some run after. If they come as guisers, you must let them in: the slouched one with her bag of ashes; the patched one with his broom of thorn. They bring the sun.

So Whin and Will and Imbry fade: not dwindling into space as travellers do; but paling as the morning stars do, overtaken by the light.
We drown,
thinks Margaret:
there isn't dark enough to bear us up.
For even as they watch, the night grows thin. The sun will not bring life and color to the shadowlands: it will efface them, white them out like snow. A cloud of reason, overwhelming myth. Her edges now begin to blur. She thinks, she tries to think if anyone—the Nine?—has told her of a road returning. But the light's dissolving will and memory.

At her back she hears the sea, the booming and the swash. It catches at her throat, the tang. They turn to it, all three.

There's Brock. She's waiting in her sooty cap between salt water and the strand. As black as a stithy, as apt as a knifeblade fitted to its haft. To hand. Her boat's drawn up. “Lowp in,” she says to them. But Margaret's clumsy: parts of her too light, too heavy all at once. Unstrung. She staggers in the sand. She falls. So Master Grevil and the other man—her father?—help her on, half carry her; they wrap her in their coats. They launch. The boat is real and splintery and cold. It grits beneath her feet; it rocks and shudders on the waves; it wallops. Giddying, she cannot tell if fire or water, fever or the swell unsettles her; but feels the thinness of the hull that bears her on the cold abyss of sea.
Water,
she would say, but knows no more.

Look now where the sky is bloody, there beyond the heath. You see those two great stars? And there, a third and brightest? In that twelfth of heaven called the Harvest Field, that bright, those baleful stars conjoin: black Slae who breedeth melancholy, and my lady's crow, old Morag, see, a red star like a raven's eye; and at their feet, bright Perseis, that green girl they would master, who would not be owned. He ravished her from heaven, bore her off to be his bride; the old crow dressed her for his bed, her table. Yet she rises, she eludes them, flawless of their blight. All three are there enskied. They brighten with the falling dark. They hang.

So you may see them in the great dance, crossing and recrossing heaven, siding in the starry hey. Now they arm; now gypsy; now withdraw, and for a time they meet not, east or west. In heaven is a dalliance, disdaining as they pass:
thou harpy
and
thou whoreson kite.
They do but trifle. But in hell, they're wed.

In Law they will be joined forever, and their bride-bed is a rope. Jack Daw will hang, undying. Winged and taloned, she will set upon him on the gallows tree, devour with her beak and bloody mouth. She ravens on the thing she loathes. Each scrap of him is sentient; each gobbet venom in her gorge, her gash. Each day he is renewed: his flesh, her stomach for his flesh. The crow will eat him, cock and eyes.

Near light now on a moorland. Anywhere. Black frost; a scant of snow, unsettling, driven on in wreaths before a restless wind. The girl is running, running blindly from the witch gang. They are vanquished, far outstripped, hailed down upon with baneful fire: but they've scathed her, and she cannot shake the terror from her blood. They hunt her down, the half men, guised as wolves, bears, boars; yet smiling with their mannish teeth. No other beasts would gloat.

But she herself is half, is meddled. Stripped of Ashes, she is no one. For her soul is in the elderwomen's keeping: they unselved her when they sained her Ashes. At her Wake, they would have taken back her coat, her silence; given her her name. But she is scoured, shorn, unhallowed: not by rite but violation. Daw has stripped her of her godhead and her will, ransacked the soulbag that was in her trust. That rape is graver than her own. Even but to wear the daggings of the Ashes coat—and she is naked else—seems blasphemy.

The girl runs on.

The first pain is a thunderclap: a shockwave and a flash so fierce it seems to be outside her, greater than herself, an element. An ocean. Like a wave it scoops her out, her inlets and her harborage, withdrawing in a long harsh grinding ache. It staggers her; she bears it. Bent and clenched, she keeps her feet, fights hard for breath, hangs on.

It's faded. She goes on a little way, a little further, toward a fold, a thorn tree.

At the second shock, she's riven, and she burns from roots to crown, her tree of nerves white-fiery. Green and burning: for another half of her has gone by the sky road and the outland sea, another half has won. She cannot piece her selves together.

Looking back, she sees a spattering of blood on snow. She feels blood sidling down her leg, a snailing, then a stream. Leaning on a wall, she lurches for the gap in it, for shelter.

At the third she's felled. She lies with what has come of her, her issue, at her side: a splatch of blood and splinters of a thing of crystal.
O my glass,
she mourns,
my starglass,
thinking she's miscarried of her secrets. But the shards are of an Annis witch: a wizened, knowing thing, a crazed and shattered sentience of glass. A goblin child: as midnight black and lucid, edged as elfshot, and malign. Each shard of it another witch in embryo, an imp. It has my lady's face, cracked through.

Since the master's horse had come back riderless, the house was in an uproar, kitchen and hall. Barbary had sent out all the men, three riding, and the rest in pairs afoot. The first were back straight way with news: that Madam's horses were gone. And Barbary, hastening to her chamber, found the witch and all her servants fled. “We'll hunt her, then?” “No,” said Barbary. “You'll fetch Master Grevil. Happen he's been nighted.” They went abroad with lanterns, flails and forks, to seek for him. In twos and threes: for there was mischief stirring. Witches. Rantsmen.

Barbary kept the fire up for their returning, got wine and physick and old linen ready for whatever ill befell. Waited. Worked. No good in sitting idle. Stilled the wauling of the maids, who had him spirited by goblins, set upon by thieves. Turned witch and fled with Madam. But her mind was elsewhere. They should have been back by now, if only with tidings. Ill news travelled quickly. If he weren't at Shanklin's—Well, it were a steep road up from Imberthwaite, and ways were icy. Crown, collarbone, ankle? Send it weren't his back.

At nine she sent the maids to bed, wittering and clinging; all but Nan who'd some sense to her, if told sharply. Asleep now in the chimneycorner, with her stocking on her lap. She'd scarce knit an inch.

And if—? No heir. He'd not wed, being as he were, so he'd gotten none. It all would go to some far Outlune cousin and his stranger retinue. And all this household, masterless. Turned out upon the road.

No more to polish. Still no word.

Far in the night, it was. The fire sank and sang. The shadows crept from their corners. Barbary half drowsed: she'd waked the night before with Hawtreys’ bairn. Her thimble fell; she heard it on the hearthstone—
ting
—like a little bell. And looking up, she saw young Master Noll. Eight winters then, or seven. He was by the dresser, with his pale red hair, that curled like oak leaves in a frost, and in his suit of mourning, overdyed. She saw where she had mended it, that elbow. He'd be wanting candles, then—a sickly child, and ever at his book. He begged them of her, as another child would cakes. Begged tales. Not coaxing prettily, but as a prentice to his master. Ah, now he would speak—A log fell. He was gone.

Shivering, she bent to make the fire up: no blaze would drive away that cold of doubt. Ill news, to see his shadow walk. Could he yet live? And over and again, like children's tales, she saw what might have been. Stolen by his faerie folk for sporting, under Law? Tumbled in a fell-dyke? Ah, like Hawtreys’ lad, poor bairn. His bright hair rayed out in the ice. Moon send no crows to him. Waylaid by Corbet's men? Or Madam's? There was wickedness abroad this night. She knew it in her blood.

Just then, she heard the dogs start up. Beldam and Bullen in the yard: the one and then the other one, then both at once. Then all the housedogs in a frenzy. Grevil's hounds. She heard the stumbling running feet and the hammering at the door; but when she drew the bolt, only Wick Billy tumbled in, white-cold and sobbing. “Ashes—"

Nan woke crying.

He could not get his breath, but panted, “Sun's not—Ashes—"

She took him by the shoulders, steadying. “What is't, lad?"

"Sun's not brought—"

Nan wailed, “O waly and there's winter ever. World's at end."

Barbary slapped her silent. Then she poured a cup of wine for Billy, and he drank.

"There weren't Ashes. Smith Rendal and all, they waited but she never come. And Sun's not brought.” He sleeved his face. “They says Awd Slae's abroad wi’ his gabblerack. They hunt. He's stown her away for his whoring, and there's never light again."

Corbet,
thought Barbary. He'd a grudge at this household, master and ward. And he would spoil what he could not possess.

There was no one left to send. “Nan,” she said. “Thou keep fire up. Thy master will be cold returning. And let none in but of our house."

"I's flayed, oh, I's flayed."

"Thou's nowt to fear, thou goose. Hearth's been hallowed. Give Billy o't bread and wine. He'll sit with thee."

She was fettling as she spoke: stout shoes; her mantle and another mantle, wrapped about a hot stone from the hearth; burnt wine; a good sharp knife, the same she jointed sheep with. Clambering up on the kist, on tiptoe she unhooked a lantern from amid the rafters, the oldest and the plainest of the hallows twenty. She would need it. She was lating Ashes.

The child is cradled in the old moon's lap, as light there as a garland, light as leaves. The moon with her gnarled hands combs her daughter's sleep, undoes the ravels of the night. Her sleep is long as wind. Her dreams are leaves on it, and leaves. They're drifted deep in time.

A traveller would see none of this: a windbent thorn, with pale rags tied to it; a stone; a spring. Yet here is hallows. He might pause and leave a coin within the hollow of the stone; or tear a strip of scarf to flutter with the fading hopes, the rags of twilight and of dawn. Or she might make a pilgrim's journey to the spring, to drink to fill her womb; or trample cross and cross it with her muddy boots and flock. They'd not get in.

In comes the journeyman, old Brock, and crouches by the spring. She cracks the ice to fill the cup. She drinks to the childing of the moon, a caudle of Cloud ale.
Wassail.

Cold hail,
says Malykorne.
She bears it light.

Brock looks at Ashes in her lap, and Annis. Turning, they are each the other, new of old: the cauldron and the sickle and the cold bright bow.
Hard travailing. She'll live?

Outlive this world and all.

Thou's gossip?

An thou stand wi’ me.

I'll that. Thine ashing?

And the old witch takes her spectacles and huffs them, moon and moon; she folds them, bow on bow.
What's thine?

Brock drops a great bunch of her keys. They jangle falling.
But she's to find locks to them.

Then Malykorne unhaps the bearing cloth of earth, of cloud, of fire: she upholds the naked sky, unswaddled.

A fold, a thorn. A sweep of snow, but endlessly refigured by the wind: no tracks in it. No where. But even as her candle—all but viewless now by winter dusk—went out, Barbary saw the blood on snow.

Ashes. We's Ashes.

It's what she'd always wanted, standing last. The vision. But a few steps farther on, she saw the huddle of the Ashes coat, greyed out with snow, the brush of hair, banked fire: Ashes, lying in her blood.
O sisters two, they's killed her.

She had seen ill things; had cut away a mortifying breast. But not a goddess raped.

Kneeling, Barbary swiftly touched the lips, the pulse. She lived. But could not live in company, so smutched, defiled. The hacking of the virgin's hair was sheer contempt. It said:
she opened to us of her will. She joyed in it.
It said
whore
.

Capably, reluctantly, she turned the still girl upward, studying the belly and the thighs. No seed. No snailtracks, nor no ruttish scent on her. But blood and blood. Far wrong in that.
With ... knives?

Her hackles knew before her eyes did: witchcraft. And she found the outcome of it: at the virgin's side, the monstrous birth. It swayed her stomach like a chasm, fathomless; it blackened in her sight: would take her eyestrings in its talons and would wrench them. But she willed herself to look upon it. Fathom it. There's no undoing in the dark. And yet she gazed on it but warily, behind her out-turned hand, as if she looked upon eclipse, dark-dazzling. Her fingers all were edged with silver, spilling silver; and she saw the chalk of bones. It burned with cold, a cloud of it, a hag. And it gazed back at her, with fractions of a face. All beautiful, all damned. It would possess her—not her belly but her mind—with rage, iceblack and lucid. For she knew all at once what Madam Covener had done, her sorcery. Not merely forced a green child for an old man's bed, but bred of her a blasphemy.