Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (65 page)

Past. Don't look. Keep walking.
But a staff swung round before him, tripped him up and barred his way; a strong hand caught his shoulder: not unkindly but inexorable. Hauled him up and turned him round. “Here, boy. How cam'st thou by that jacket?"

"It were given me.” Wried shoulder, ducked head.

"By?"

No answer.

"Thy name?"

"Aiken Drum, sir."

"Well then, Master Drum. That's Crowd Catling's good silk doublet and his murrey hose. And as I wager thou'st not killed and eaten him, I take you for a thief. Hast thou not bid him stand? And standing, spill and die?” Head down and turned. A shake. “He gives the offcast of his bravery to none but minions. Yet would not this suit, for he plumes himself on it. And least all would he adorn thy whey-face with his scarlet. It goes ill with thy sorrel pate."

A moment, and the whispering fall of leaves. The journeyman raised the lad's chin, gazing at his face. He whistled softly. “By trod. ‘Tis Ashes’ governess, the maker of plays.” Her blush betrayed her. Gentler now, but no less stern, he loosed her collar. “Were you not at Low Askwith, Lightfast last? And taught that pretty child his interlude?” She remembered that voice: Tom o Cloud's. “Speak, lady. ‘Tis your cue."

No answer but a bitten lip.

"So you're Covener's niece? Corbet's handfast?” His arm dropped to his side. “We'll be hanged, boy and all."

"No.” That startled her to protest. “No. What I have done is my fault only."

"What, took your own maidenhead? Or rather, Corbet's: for it is his in law."

"I know."

"There are broadsides up at every crossroads, nailed in every inn. Gold offered for your taking, aye, and retribution sworn. Look. Here.” He showed a paper like a ballad sheet. A woodcut girl. “If this is laid on us, the quality is damned. For which I thank you, Madam Minx."

She folded up the page, quite small. “If they find me, then my kin will—burn me?"

"They'll not deal kindly with you. No."

"They would wed me to my grave, to January. Is that kindly?"

"No. I would not give a rat to Corbet for his dog to worry; I've heard tales of his cruelty. But what of us? Shall we hang for your heedlessness?"

"And if I sheltered with a silly widow? Or a gang of begging children? Should they hang? Their lives are dear to them as yours to you."

He looked at her. “An argument. Yet such would spare your honour: which is all your worth."

"I must deal somehow with mortals; else I die. I would not kill myself."

"So went you with a common journeyman?"

"Are you not?"

"I offer no enticement. But with this rattlepate, this fiddler?"

"Not for his sake.” Annot twined a lock of hair about her finger, bit it; raised her face. “I would away at a venture, for I could not stay to wed. At Maying, for ‘twas only then I'd leave to walk abroad: that once. And met him in the wood, as Ashes had foretold me, pat upon his cue: I broke the thorn.” A treeful of small birds rose all at once in fret; they flocked another tree, as bare. They leaved it with their plaint. “Like you, your fellow did remember me; he praised my verses—and my outward self, my mouth and eyes, but that I counted less. And yet I plumed myself. He flattered as the fox the crow.” Again the birds unsettling. “And being green, I did believe him. Could I go with you to join the gallantry? I said. For I would study how to guise. Would boy myself. And he said he would prentice me.” She wrung her feathered hat. “Oh, I am a fool, a fool."

To leave thy featherbed? But with a wolf in't.
Softer now. “Were you in love that you lay with him?"

"Fifteen,” she said, “and had a tryst with story. I would put myself into a song."

"'Twas they who put the grey hawk's feather in her bed,"
said the journeyman. “All know that we steal wives and daughters. Did you dream on us?"

"I fled a nightmare. There were none would speak for me against that match, but my brother Grevil, who is timorous. My dearest sister, who is dead.
Here is Law,
I thought,
nor am I out of it:
so bid an Ashes tell me of my fate, forspent my prophecy. As they will do, this Ashes spoke in riddles.
Thy ship's i't forest,
she did say.
Its shrouds are fourfold strung.
I saw his fiddle and I thought—"

Her listener did not sing:
Then touch but her smicket and all's your own.
He bit his tongue. “And so he told you pretty tales of love, and sighed and swore? He toyed you and he teased?"

"He asked no leave of me, but took.” A silence. “Having once, he said, I must henceforth. To pay my lessoning.” Annot thought of the bedding. It was all a dark confusion in her mind of shame and stirrings, awkwardness, sharp pain, rank sheets or mast and nettles, twinges of uncertain bliss. It cloyed curiosity.

Gently: “May it was and now October. So he's left you by the highway? He'd a friend?"

White then red, and white again. “I would not."

Too far. He'd gone too far with her, in anger at his friend. “I do pray your pardon, mistress, for my ill-considered speech. My brother has foredone us all; I hold you faultless of his crime."

He knew his fellow player: fathom-deep and babbling, for a time, of love and goddesses; then up he'd spring, dry-dolphining through other's tears. Still lighting on the next divinity, and then the next. He made ducks and drakes of maidenheads; he feasted on young hearts like cherries. Surfeited. But like an orchard-thief, well-willing, he would share his sweets. His fellows held their drabs in common like their books and their bacca pipes, their stockings and their souls. ‘Twas even generous to her, he'd think: a virgin spoilt is but a penniless green girl. She'd be fortunate to have him find a spark for her, a gallant. One a trifle marred perhaps, not outright tainted. At any rate but one, not anyone: she'd not come yet to standing work in alleys and the cart.

"So you ran?"

"Aye, at midnight. I took for my recompense his sword and bravery; and left him sleeping, with my smock and petticoats."

"Would I had seen him wake.” Tom o Cloud heeled over laughing. “Petticoats! And provincial petticoats, what's worse."

"Do you players not woman it in coats?"

"Catling will not: so is but a fiddler. Let him frisk it in his Cloudish smock.” He lay back on the grass, still green, and looked up into the leaves. “Now then, Master Not Annot. We journeymen go everywhere and all at once, like moonlight. We are made of tales; our livery is broidered all with tongues and eyes: in brief, we are your only rumourers. What say you if we noise abroad that you were stolen by the fays? They took you—hapless child—from the greenwood and under hill to dwell. ‘Twill be news in every inn and market, aye, from Scarristack to Lune, and ballads sold of it."

There was mischief in her eyes now. “I would make them, an I may."

"Would you so? To what measure?"

"You may sing it to the tune of ‘Babylon.'” She stood and walked a pace; then turned. “How she rose amid her maidens all, and combed her yellow hair—not red, ‘tis not poetical—and in the greenwood met—"

"A lord of elfin?"

"No. The queen herself, and all her courtiers, her rade, in crowns of blackthorn that is mother to the slae, and mounted on black hares—"

"'Twould play well, an ‘twere staged.” He rose and turned on her, all frost and flowering thorn. His look would wither May, downcast the stars. “How durst thou break a branch of mine?’”

"The wood's my own."

"It springs of us. ‘Tis rooted in our dark."

"And reaches to the light.” She casts her handful of bright leaves to the wind. “And so they take her crown, her maidenhead. Her tongue.” Her back was to him. “Think you that would sell? We'll get a man to cry it, street to street."

On a sudden grave again, he said, “You must away from Cloud. For tales or none, your folk will hunt you. I can walk with you to Luning Haven. No further: I am sworn to meet the gallantry—among them your betrayer, he whose windpipe I would gladly throttle, and whose blood I may not spill. We meet by Hallows, for our winter tour."

"Walk with me?"

He held his dagger with its point to him. “By the Moon and Ashes, I do swear: I will touch not a button of you, not a hair, but by your leave."

"I do hold you by that oath.” She curtseyed. “But with me? Is that not perilous?"

"They look not for my prentice, Master Drum."

A fleeting smile; then fret. “I have no silver for the crossing; nor honest means to get it. I took nothing when I fled from home."

"Sell his frippery."

"'Tis stolen. I do wear it of necessity, but coin it I will not."

A turn and scuffle through the leaves, then back to her. “Make us a masque: of what mystery you will, so it be shaped for four men and a boy. I have ink and paper for the writing of it, and will pay for it your passage to Lune."

"I could do that.” And her February face unclouded. “I would like that."

"Then your quills shall fledge you. Will I see you to the ship?"

What her legs knew was a curtsey. But Tom o Cloud laid a finger to his lips; he sketched a bow: half in homage and half prompt.

She bowed in turn, most courtly in her prentice part: all footpage, all aglow.

"And Master Drum—?"

"Sir?"

"Are you with child?"

As if he'd struck her: but it must be said. He would not now see her left, a stranger, unprovided. Annot shook her head uncertainly, then nodded; shook again. She didn't know. She didn't know how she could know.

"If falls, ‘twill fall.” He gathered up his bundles. “Come then. We've miles to walk by nightfall, if we'd lie not at the Nine."

As he turned to the crossroads, back toward Fallowing, she saw the fiddle at his back. He looked at her, over his shoulder. He smiled. “Most journeyman can play a crowd. I second."

In her lantern-room toward morning of another Lightfast, turning from her new glass, Margaret wrote: “...clowding to the North: the
Ship,
the
Vixen Dancing
veil'd in snow. The
Crowd of Bone
...” Her sister woke and cried; was danced. The footsteps came and went below. “...at rise. The old
Moon
joyeth in her Riddle; as the
Sunne
in
Ashes
lap doth labour to his Joye.” Drowsy, she leafed backward through her notes and ciphering. No moment when the sky had changed, yet all had. “Perseis hath changes, even as the Moon herself; doth maske—or Seemingly—in all her Figures, now as one and now the Other goddesse: but the lighter, great with Dark.” Still backward, to the winter of another year. “The
Witches
wade the nightshore, in the shining of the
Road.
The
Sheath and Knife
cast up like sea-wrack, lost and found; the
Kist
long buried in the Sand. Rash
Hulver
in his falle..."

"I like not this moon,” said Pipe-and-Tabor. “I would die abed."

"In a boy's mouth and a bacca pipe in thine,” said the Second Witch.

Covertly, the First Witch was fingering his downy cheek and chin, his lip. Shadowed? “Then he should away: there's nought here but stockfish and oysters."

"Has not thy voice cracked?” said the Second, all mischievous condolence.

"But a cold. This filthy norland fog."

Lightfast of the year they'd parted, drum and fiddle: Annot sailing Luneward to uncertain harborage, her new love turning North with the gallantry. They lay the night at Uthwind, on the dockside. From their jettied window, they could see the Tilda Shoop, as great-hipped as a marketwoman, shift and creak and sidle on the waves. Her master liked not setting forth. An ill wind sang and jangled in her shrouds, a peevish little wind; all day, the gulls upcast themselves at random, settling and unsettling. The small rain turned to sleet.

Crowd Catling their fiddler, turning from the sleeted view, went on: “The Blackthorn is the swifter: she doth bring the lord's daughter of Perran Uthnoe to wed in Lune. The day is named, a fortnight hence: she sails the morn."

"We sail,” said my Lady, “at the moon's will.” Her painted cards lay spread before her on the table. Northern stars: the Ship, the Swords, the Vixen Dancing. “Lying in her daughter's arms, as now, she doth devour fortune."

Pipe-and-Tabor went on cording up the boxes, counting up the properties against his list. “The moon her silver mantle. For the sun, a periwig. One yellow doublet that was torn. Tom o Cloud his coat of leaves..."

The boy'd been juggling with an orange, round about his hand, and round, like ivy wreathed: as if it could not fall. A second now. A third. But withered, so it would not balance with the others, blue and slumped. “I would away from here. I weary of this dark."

The First Witch drank. “Uthnoe? Old Ranulph's daughter? I saw her gown that they praised so for the needlework; ‘twas nought."

"In itself ‘twas fair enough,” said the Second. He stretched his tawdry stockings to the fire, where an egg was roasting in the ash, beside his hissing sweltering boots. “'Twas she that ill-became it. A peely-wally puling thing, still hanging on her nurse's pap. He'll not get a heir by her these five years."

"Not he. But thinkst thou Crowd will bed her ere the bridegroom can?"

Still the fiddler wheeled about and paced and argued, like a player: he had caught the trick of them. He used his stage. “They are fools who would not journey hence. Such a wedding comes not twice in ten years. All the gallantry of Cloud and Lune are bid to play at their solemnity; and we—not least of them but bravest—should outdo."

"Five swords, with belts to them..."

"'Tis not a combat, that I know,” my Lady said. “A calling rather: for the sky must fall. We are for Cloud, then, and the masque of witches, when the wind has turned."

"Cloud is but to play before a hobnail rout, for pence and ale. There's gold for us at court."

"There's gallantry for thee,” said the Second Witch. “Hast thou not made conquest of the lady's waiting-woman? Not the sheep but the black hare?"

"Ah,” said the fiddler, sighing. “She is frost and fire, incomparable."

Tom o Cloud looked up from his letter. “And so like nothing: neither fire nor frost, nor damask rose nor thorn, but only Gill who will. A thing of nought."