Blood by Moonlight: 35

(A sample from Blood by Moonlight.)

© 2009 asotir. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

28. How She Sang to Him

SHE WANDERED through the wood. In the brightness of the moon she heard the raging of the madman. The black leaves shook with his birdlike cries.

Her stockings, shirt and breeches were shredded by brambles, her shoes muddied and torn. Her hair was full of twigs and leaves, and the fear of Arianna’s bandits was in her, the way she could hear their hunting horns sounding outside the wood.

Could they hear him crying, too? Could they tell his voice, that voice that no other man was ever using?

On tree trunks she cut the thin grooves of his name, AENGUS. But she found no other scratchings beside the first.

‘Come down to me, Aengus,’ she was calling. ‘Come down out of the branches of trees. Let your feet feel the ground again: behold in my eyes the sight of the man that once you were: not so wild, not so driven by the winds, but mine.’

She knew he was near. But he did not answer.

She was drinking from a stream, and saw pale wood chips floating past her on the dark water. There were twelve, and then one larger.

‘Aengus, did you send me these? What did you mean by it?’

Agnes built a hut of fallen branches, ferns, and brambles. She made fires there, warming her bed. Her hut breathed blue smoke in the darkness, filling the wood and leading her home.

She hoped he would be lured by the smell of her cooking, and built a nest for him up a nearby tree. She rested dreaming that he was there; and when she might not dream she spoke to him, hoping her words like the smell of her fire would be reaching him.

‘Don’t go, Aengus, come back! Let me warm your rain-chilled body, let me soothe your chafed red hands!’

But he never came or answered.

And she found a hollowed log, lined it with leaves and put food in it beneath the trees. It was often empty. Was it Aengus who ate it, or a badger?

The dark of the moon came circling back. That cold was the bitterest ever. The stream froze over, and the branches cracked in the blackness loud as pistol shots. And her cough deepened, like a plague cough, like a death cough.

It seemed to her he had become the wood, and the wood was him. Gathering berries from a rowan tree, she thought he must have eaten some. Hearing the owl screech, she thought he heard it too. The creak of branches in the wind spoke with his voice. It couldn’t be anyone else’s, the way there were no other people left in the world.

Through the black claws of branches, she gazed upon the Moon. She was the Samhain Moon, and herself so cold, and Winter still waiting to be born. And what, she wondered, would that Winter be after a Summer of snow and ice? She’d never live to see its end.

‘Is this our Eden, Aengus?’ she said to him from the door of her hut. ‘Is this our Paradise?’

That darkness she crept out into the glen. Something huddled over her tray. It started at her presence, spread its wings and flew into the tree.

‘Aengus, don’t go! I can tell you the beginning of your pain, and it’s only I can set you free of it!’

There was no sound or stirring answering her, but still and all Agnes sat against the hut, sending her thoughts far back; and she told him:

‘It was the first of May, it was, and the Sun was hot and bright, and all the ladies riding to the lake. Dame Letitia and Lady Felicia were speaking of their lovers, but I, I had nothing to say.

‘And across the lake I saw a dark and solitary man. He was standing on a rock gazing down into the lake. He didn’t even cast a glance our way. Miss Cecily told me it was a farmer without friends, and he was often seen on the meads with his dog; a cold, backward man, but something of a philosopher.

‘Then under my breath I was saying, “Never, Master Aengus, will you be happy without love; and never while the Sun shines will you love anyone but me.” Then all at once a black swan flew up from the lake, and out of all the ladies by the lakeside your dark eye fell on me.

‘I blushed hot as foxglove, repenting my rash words. I had to look away at once, the way I couldn’t after tell whether you but glanced at me or stared all the while we were there.

‘After that, I had your house pointed out to me, lonely and apart, half fallen from neglect. I heard the tales they told about you. Once or twice I even saw you, walking in our preserve.

‘I had never noticed you nor heard your name before. Now it seemed you were ever in my path. I had loved looking out my windows on the meadows; now it was always you there, dark and still and watching. The morning after a rain I found footsteps in my flower beds, and knew that they were yours. I thought, “What does he want? Why does he haunt me?” Oh Aengus, why could you not have been foolish and light like any other lover?

‘Talk of the mad farmer who chased me was ever on my friends’ laughing lips. And I thought after all, it was only proper that you love me. It was none of them who’d won your heart.

‘Then you were gone away,’ she added, after awhile.

‘You stood no more upon the meadow grass, there were no more footsteps under my rosebeds. Your house, half shambles, came to be shunned. It was easier without you, yes! Never again did I think of you, I swear, until the night before the last day. It was ever on such a night that you would come for me.

‘I didn’t miss you. But I mightn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t breathe, I opened my windows and you were there.

‘Then all at once I longed for you as I longed for no other man. You were unhandsome, and the sweat of the horrible thing that you’d done came gleaming off your brow. I did not know my longing was but a trick, a thing you put on me. I stepped back to be away from you, but when you entered I took hold of you and kissed you, viciously, and laughed…’

Agnes hugged her knees to her breast, rocking slightly back and forth.

‘I said what I said by the side of the lake, and that was the start of it all, for you, for me…’

And a cry came croaking down to her, hardly human, the way she had trouble making it out: two words:

‘Why, lady?’

 

‘WHY, AGATHA?’

She was pacing the woods, weighted by his question. Why had she spoken those words by the lake? Why Aengus? And why word her geis in that way? She tried to recollect herself as she had been on that bright day, but that one was a stranger to her now. Only the wooing of her geis stood out in her mind, unforgotten.

She left him food on the tray, as before; when the Moon rose the food was untouched. She knew he hungered for her food. She knew he starved for it. One darkness, at last, he ate of it.

Come moonrise Agnes found him lying on the moss beside the tray. Her herbs had put peace in him.

It was a great black crow she was looking at, with one white feather on its wing, a bent leg, and human eyes.

She took him in by her little fire, and cradled him in the crook of her arm. While he slept she was silent, listening to the wood. She heard an owl screech very near. Then the fancy seized her that Arianna was there; she covered the fire and scooped leaves over both their bodies to hide them.

‘Now I’ve grown half as mad as you,’ she muttered. ‘But while I hold you I’ll never let you go, let lady and bandits come as they like.’

At length she rested. It came onto her slowly, in stages, and this was the way of it. First she was aware of his breathing, the rustle of leaves at his breathing. Then it was the rapid beating of his birdlike heart she was hearing, deep under the feathers. Her own heartbeat she heard as well. And she thinking, If music has the power to charm, so does love have strength to heal, and let my love now heal your poor burning brain, my Aengus, though I am so tired.

She felt her own heart slowing. So she rested.

When she opened her eyes he was gone. There was only a feather caught in her sleeve.

She saw him across the glen, crouching on a root, ready to flit up into the branches. But his feathered form was larger now, and he was almost a man again.

‘Aengus,’ she cooed sleepily, holding out her arms. ‘Come again.’

And warily, like one half-tamed, he hopped down off the root and came back to her, walking with darting steps.

She took his hands in hers.

‘We must go now,’ she said. ‘We must find shelter, and a way to summon back yourself. Even if it means losing you. Aengus, will you come with me?’

The way he looked at her he might still have been a crow.

Firmly she took his hand, and led him out of the wood.

 

IN THE FIELDS they were wandering in snow up to her waist, though the stars were harvest stars, and Winter after being born. They went down south and eastaways, down to the Irish Sea.

They went by starlight, and hid in the shadow of a hedge or rock by moonlight, when the lanterns crossed the distant hills, and the bandits’ horns were blowing. Agnes let drape the long braid of her hair down between them while they dreamed.

She was dreaming of flowers springing up and growing strong, taking her strength, like Day being born out of her bones. Her coughing was hindering her, and weakness and weariness, and a rising tide of sleep, dark and sluggish as death.

From the hilltop behind them they were still watched.

The woman stumbled and could go no more. The pair of them lay down in the snow under a hawthorn tree, the way there was no other shelter to be found. When the Moon rose, she shone down on them like an evil lantern lighting the bandits’ way.

Through the icy mist hanging over them like tent cloths, Agnes was watching the Moon. ‘Aengus,’ she murmured, ‘are you there? I am burning. Fetch me water.’

Aengus melted snow in the hollow of his hands, and she licked at it. They had nothing better to be eating. He looked on her, saying nothing. But it seemed to her a bit of reason was returning to his eyes. Or was it her reason was failing?

That moon she lay in the hollow under the hawthorn tree, waking and dreaming dreadful dreams. She knew she must find strength to move on with the darkness. But when it came, she hadn’t.

With the next moon her fever had lessened, but herself weaker. She was no better on the next darkness, or the next, or the darkness after that. But already they had tarried there too long. They must be going.

He was lifting her, and she leaning against him, and he hobbling with her, and they step by step going down a hill.

That walk was torment to her. Her head was thrown back against his shoulder, and she feeling the ground through his stagger, and the stars moving and jigging with them, like her starry black skirts.

 

‘AENGUS, Aengus, set me down.’

It was later, and the Moon was glaring through the clouds. Blown snow was a forest now.

She lay back on the snow. It felt so good that she lost all care for anything except to go on lying there until the dawn. In the back of her mind the flowers were blooming, tall in the Sun above her bones in the dark Night of the Earth.

She rolled back her head on the snow. On the hill side near them a cave was opening. ‘We must go in there,’ she murmured. ‘We must go out of moonlight. But I cannot…’

It was bliss to cease even the little effort of speech. She had no desire. Sure, and this is what the angels feel.

Mutely the man knelt over her, hiding her face from the Moon. He watched her, but she did not move.

It began to snow again. He took off his chaplet of laurel and laid it on her hand. He picked her up, and took her into the cave.

From the hilltop a figure was climbing down after them. He was a dark man, dressed in a tricorn, a muffler, and a long dark gray cóta mór.

The dark man stepped down to the cave-mouth. For a time he was standing there. Then with a turn of his head he strode forward.

 

FAR AHEAD, deep in the hill side, among the warmth of the stones, the man carried the woman. The cave stretching on before him, and he following it, down and up again, until it was ending, and he coming out the far side, into a green meadow, into a grianan. There was the tang of the Sea in the air, and the mewing of sea-birds.

And it was bright there, with the glow of early evenings or of late nights; the sky ended in a pale band over the Sea, of rose and violet wherein the stars were drowned. The Sea was still, with expectancy, and the light of the sky shone off it green as copper. The land down to the Sea was covered with long dark grasses, bowing to the Sea, down to the cobbles of the surf.

The man nestled the body of the woman down into the grass. He straightened her coat, her breeches, and her braided hair. He wiped a bit of dirt off her cheek, and stroked her dry, cold brow, and murmured, ‘Agatha…’

Blood by Moonlight: 34

(A sample from Blood by Moonlight.)

© 2009 asotir. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

The Seventh Year of Night

In the seventh year of that Night, the Masters, those who Woke and Spoke to the Strong Places in the Night-Land, put forth their Powers.

They Cast Out the other Waking away from the Strong Places. And they raised stones or air or water or fire about the Strong Places, and forbade the others from every walking there again.

Blood by Moonlight: 33

(A sample from Blood by Moonlight.)

© 2009 asotir. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

27. Of the Dark Wood

IT WAS THREE MOONS, Agnes did not go back to him. Then she found his tracks and followed them.

A line of wagons crossed her path. The wagons were brightly-painted and clad with tin, and the pans and pails hanging from the sides rang and clattered like rain.

‘Let her love you, young man! And what are you doing walking through the gentle Night, alone?’

‘It’s searching I am for another. Tall and dark he is, with one white lock, and not strong, the way he is limping. Have you seen him?’

‘Not the buckle of his shoe. But climb up with us, and if we find him on the way, you will, too.’

‘I’ve got to be finding him, do you see. His wits are limping too, and I don’t know what will become of him.’

‘Climb up, and we’ll keep a sharp eye out! We are going to the Fire – do you not count the stars? I’m Bera, and these are my girls Brigit and Buana. And you now, young man, what are we to be calling you?’

She answered, softly, ‘Aengus.’

The old Tinker woman smiled a smile that split the whole of her face in two. She held out her hand. ‘Aengus, climb up, and we’ll look for your friend along the way.’

‘Yes,’ she answered, and taking the woman by the hand, she went up beside the daughters on the plank seat.

The line of wagons sang and rang, down dale, up slope, with lanterns swinging like fire-flies from their tails. Alongside the wagons went many on horseback: some Tinkers like the wagoneers, but the rest wild women and men with pistols and scians at their belts, and eyes bright in the dark. Arianna’s bandits and jades, hunting the Bacach. But they didn’t know her on Bera’s wagon, the way she was another Tinker, and in disguise.

The Tinker girls talked to her, and laid their hands along her knee, and she must be telling them something of herself and the man she was looking for, but she could never remember, afterward, what it was she told them. In her heart she was cursing herself for the harsh words she’d lain on him. In the middle of it she broke down coughing, and staining her handkerchief red, so Bera put her back in the wagon and laid her down, and one of the girls lay alongside of her for warmth. They clucked their tongues and turned their eyes sorry-wise, and the mother shook her head. Then the two girls quarreled over which of themselves would be getting to lie alongside the young man to warm him.

But Agnes was drifting in warm and in dozing, deep into the deep. Dim and faint she was hearing them quarreling, and the words of the tale their ma was telling them to keep them still and attentive; so far away it seemed to her, so far herself seemed from herself!

‘But didn’t she fight against it?’ asked Buana.

‘Oh, it wasn’t that she didn’t,’ answered Bera from the front. ‘But what was it she could do?’

‘Run away,’ said Brigit.

‘Fie now,’ said Bera. ‘She was only a girl, and the other was the Lady of the Lough! Only a few of the gentle people could have stood up to her. And less than a few would have defied her as Princess Maeve was doing.’

Agnes closed her eyes, listening to the Tinker women talking on about the fairy tales as though they were truth.

‘And when will the curse be put off her?’ asked Brigit, the way in stories there is always a way to put off curses, and the way is always found, unlike in life.

‘This is the way of it,’ answered the mother, ‘that Princess Maeve will only return to her own shape upon her betrothal to Prince Og. But Prince Og defied the lady, and she cursed him with forgetfulness, and exile in the Day-land, forever, and there in that place he fell in love with a human girl, a daughter of Adam; and as to Princess Maeve, she followed another path.’

‘Hush now,’ whispered Buana, ‘you’ll be waking young Aengus from his dreaming.’ Agnes felt the brush of soft lips across her brow, and a fragrant breath murmuring, ‘Dream, sweet man, dream.’ So she did.

It wasn’t they not knowing, was she woman or man. It was only they letting people be what they wanted to be. She wore a man’s clothes and a man’s name; so it was a young man the girls tended to, and a young man they carried in their wagon, and laid down on the outer circle in the red light of the needfire.

The heat of the great fire was blackening the hill, melting the snow even outside the rings of wagons, and warming the ground. And the heat of the Fire washed over the young man on the ground in three great waves. It dried her hair, it dried her clothes, it dried her flesh and bones.

 

SHE SAT UP, looking in the Fire.

It was a huge beehive risen on the hill. The flames were spiraling up and about, wreathing into smoke. And from one hand a dozen lasses came out of the dark, bearing over their heads a great nest of wildflowers, primroses and brambles, blooming even in the snow in the Night. And atop that nest lay the body of a girl all in white, tattered and airy as lace, with a great red scarf wrapped round and round her throat, and a golden torc clasping round the scarf.

The lasses took the nest up to the needfire, and they shifted to place it on the top, so that the flames withered the roses and wildflowers, and the thorns sparked, and the body of the dead girl was joining with the smoke, and becoming no more than air itself.

About the needfire were gathered a thousand or more of the bandits and jades, Arianna’s folk. And on the far side of the fire Agnes could see a fine fair carriage, drawn by twelve horses, and Arianna herself was standing there, grieving.

‘But who was she?’ Agnes was asking. To which one in passing answered in low tones,

‘’Twas one well-loved by the old Man of the Bog. But she is flown now with the birds.’

Then Arianna turned on her heel, and went up inside her carriage; her coachman cracked his whip, and lady and robbers and jades rode galloping away into the Night-land, searching for her Bacach as they had done for moon upon moon, with gallous small success.

At which the Tinker lasses and youths came ringing the fire again, and were grasping one another’s outstretched hands, and beginning a slow somber dance. In time the steps of them flashed quicker, the way it was not for long they could be withholding their joy in the great vast spaces of the Night-land. The last of the robber women and men were dancing with them, and their silver spurs were flashing in the fire. From out of the dark on every hand others were climbing, carrying bundles of twigs and logs and many other things, and casting them onto the pile.

More of them came, curious folk, boys and girls, and bent old people, and many tongues were spoken among them, and there seemed no lack of understanding. They wore the dress of different lands; some were fair and some were dark, and some in finery and some in rags. But there was a look and a gleam in the eye of all of them, so that they seemed all kindred.

A child came up to her with a cípín of birch in his hand.

‘What are you burning?’ she asked the child.

‘Whatever we want,’ answered the child, and asked her, shyly, ‘What do you want?’

Bitterly she shook her head. The child moved on around the fire, and she reached into her sack, and took out a book, much used, so that the title on the spine had worn out with smoothness.

It was the book she had loved so, when she had lived, and the Sun had shone.

She let the old thing fall open to any page, and she read there: and the words came back to her, so that she could keep on reading them, even closing her eyes, even closing the book.

And unsteadily she rose, and stepped forward, and the dancers broke their ring for her, and she stood inside it. The great breath of the flames was burning into her face, like hot summer sunshine, and against it she narrowed her eyes, and breathed in fire. And she cast the book on the fire. Sparks and ash flew out of its lies into her eyes, drawing out tears. She looked through the tears and saw a woman on the yonder side of the fire.

This woman was dancing alone around the fire, dressed in a cloak reddened by the flames, proudly glowing and alluring with the sins of the flesh. The woman paused in the turns of her reels, and her shadowy, mysterious eyes caught Agnes’ own. Then the woman danced on, and others joined the circle.

‘Come dance,’ sang Brigit, beckoning, ‘with us, Aengus! Take my hand with me!’

‘Nay, now,’ answered Buana. ‘It’s with me Aengus will be dancing!’ But the young man shook her head, and quietly stepped back to the dark edge of the fire.

The rush of the ring swept the Tinker girls round out of sight on the fire’s far side, shrieking and laughing. Children were dancing after them, seven children in a row: they were Agnes’ children. All at once they caught sight of her and pointed her out, singing, ‘We know who you are! We know what your heart desires!’

She looked on them with no words in her at all. Then the dread of them took hold of her, and she slipped away into the darkness, and went down the hill side to a dark wood, ingrown and tangled with brambles and dense dead bushes.

She had nothing then. She had lost her lord and manor house, and her friends of the day, and Mielusine, and her beauty, and her hope, and her book, and Aengus.

 

ROUND THE WOOD she walked, looking for a trail, until the glow of the needfire was only a lost smudge of red in the sky beyond the twisted, thick, black boughs.

Some cottagers were living beside the wood, themselves coarse as homespun, still brown after those years without the Sun. Agnes thought them quite the loveliest people she had ever seen.

‘Mary love you, surely we been watching the trails,’ they said, giving her a failte and sitting her before a smoky peat fire on the only seat in the cottage, and it old, and in no good repair. It was odd, they to be burning turf and living at the edge of a wood.

‘We always watch for strangers and suchlike, it been hard to get some things since all went dark. You now, Miss, have you any goods?’

She could only offer them a hank of tobacco out of one of her coat pockets; they snatched it up gleefully and reddened their dudeens at the fire. But they knew nothing of Aengus.

‘Nay, now, none has been afore you for ever so long – seven moon or more: and them bandits on horses hot on the chase of something, but we hid from all them. All’s we gets is the madman in the wood. He howl, he howl, Lady! Whenas he’s close, it’s damned little rest we can be getting, the way he howl. Listen! There, now! Och, why don’t merciful Mary send him down a well, or break trees over his head!’

Outside the cottage Agnes heard a dim moan. It grew to a yell, a shriek. The cottagers’ children stopped up their ears. It went on and on, longer than a human voice might last. Then it broke, and faded away.

‘Moy-rua, he’s been doing it for ever,’ they told her. ‘He’s devil-haunted, poor miserable creature. And when he howl, we may churn and churn, but no butter will come. Why can’t that blasted devil chase him crost to the far side of the wood? – Or bring clouds in on bright moons. That’s when he’s worst, whenas the Moon’s most brightest.’

But Agnes felt her blood chill, the way that cry was in his voice.

And she went from the cottagers, burdened with jars of berries, and bags of nuts. Puffing happily on their pipes, the woman and man sent her off with a blessing.

‘Be well, be merry, Miss in a man’s breeches! Let her keep you warm and dry! Go east now, skirt the blue bogs, and you’ll be finding Grain’s county alongside the Sea. She maybe will be curing you. Do not be going into the wood, it’s an evil, nought but badness dwells there.’

‘Let her bless you,’ said Agnes, kissing the both of them.

She left the cottage behind her on her right hand, trailing round the wood, stepping closer and closer in to it. The eye of the spying Moon discomfited her.

The wall of brambles, tangled dead weeds, brake and bush shifted warily past her. Over the brambles she could see dead, white, rotting trunks; crooked branches curling low; black leaves bunching, blotting out the stars. She heard the rooting of boars, the rustle of small sneaking things, and owls and birds of the night. And she heard the cries of Master Aengus, gone mad in the middle of that wood. But there was no path through that wall.

She bent down by the wall of the wood, feeling the tangles. It was like wicker, and stronger than stone walls, the way not even cannonballs might have breached it. In some places the weeds were woven close as woolen mittens.

She dipped her hands into the weeds, taking them back with a shudder when thorns cut her palm.

The dampness breathed through her coat. She was feeling a burning round her brow and a dryness in her throat ever since she slept on the snowy hill side.

And after a time she felt an opening in the wall.

It was a dark hole down on the ground, half-covered with a fringe of grass. It must have been a fox’s path; but if she left the bags of nuts and berries outside, and took off her cóta mór, she might just squeeze into it.

The brambles coiled about her inside the black tunnel. Her breeches were wet with mire. Where the brambles crossed the tunnel she took them carefully between her fingers, bent them down and put her knee upon them. Behind her, her knees, cut by the brambles, left little curling trails of blood. She crawled further ahead, reaching her hand into the black.

Where her hand touched a thing, slender and slight. She took it into her bosom, and went on crawling.

The Moon must have fallen while Agnes was creeping down the tunnel. Weary as she was, seeing nothing at all about her, she dared not stop, the way she might be meeting some beast coming out from the far end.

At last she won clear. She crawled up a little mossy knoll, where the ground was some less damp, and there, in darkness, she let her limbs bend back out straight, until the soreness was fading and she could dream.

The Moon was peering through the branches when Agnes rose. On the broken trunk of the tree over her, she saw in the moonlight two words, crudely scratched out of the bark, one above the other:

GODDESS
STOP

 

Agnes traced the letters with her fingertips. Then she took out of her bosom the card she’d found in the tunnel. There was a couple drawn on the card, a man and a woman, both red naked, chained by collars on their wrists beneath a winged giant.

Il Diavolo, the card read.

And once more the stars wheeled round to touch the Samhain mark, when all souls and dreams are loosed. And for four and twenty hours the Moon did not rise nor shine.

Blood by Moonlight: 32

(A sample from Blood by Moonlight.)

© 2009 asotir. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

26. Of Their Quarreling

THEY WENT on their way, the two of them, the man and Agnes. They followed the dancer’s tracks in the snow.

‘Where is the White Hind?’ he was asking. And she answering, ‘Gone ahead, and left you this mask. We’re to follow.’

‘But why did she not take me along?’

‘The White Hind flies like the wind when she’s a mind to, and you are slow, and lame. Take care, or I’ll leave you too.’

They sat under a hedge. Above them three dark women went past against the stars, speaking Gaeilgte on a hill.

Aengus lay dreaming, and Agnes went apart and tried on the mask. But she couldn’t squeeze her face through the narrow opening.

From his dreams the man rose groaning, tears rolling down his cheek like ink.

‘I dreamt I saw the White Hind,’ he told her. ‘She was going down a lane, and mayflies swam in the light like gold dust. There was a dark man beside the Hind. He was leading her by a leash tied to her golden collar, and they were going away from me. They were beautiful together. O Man, I hate you. You have the White Hind, you alone of all, and you boast of it.’

‘Aengus, what befell when you tried to summon back the Sun?’

‘It was some place by the Sea. I was forbidden entrance. Oh, I cannot recall.’

‘Bring back the Sun, Aengus. You swore you would. I put that task on you.’

He did not answer.

 

ALONG THE WAY they came by the side of a curious house, tall and crooked. In the topmost window one light was burning, and Agnes was leading him away from that place, when the door creaked open, and someone came out after them, calling ‘Agnes! Agnes!’

She went back to the house. The doorway was dark, but the stars glinting off the snow showed a figure standing there, gathered up in black folds. The figure moved – it was a woman, after all: dressed all in black, veiled in black lace, and only her bosom bare.

‘Agnes,’ she called, ‘Agnes, girl, is it you?’

‘Yes,’ she answered.

Lady Ann the cottager once, the Lady-trollop now, took her aside and spoke quick words to her.

‘Agnes, you must go with soft steps. I’ve sent my man out to be finding you, and here you are on my doorstep! There’s someone tracking you, and he means you no good by the look of him. Only six moons past he was here, eating off my platters, and drinking my ale, and talking away. Be careful, now, he’s surely near here!’

‘Who is it?’ she asked.

‘Why,’ answered Lady Ann, ‘it’s the Man Who Should Have Slept, to be sure! Didn’t you know he was no friend to you and yours?’

‘No,’ she answered, ‘but I thank you for the warning.’

‘Let her bless you, my girl! If it weren’t for you I’d never been a lady!’ But already Lady Ann’s voice was softened by the snow, the way Agnes was hurrying back on her tracks, and thankfully finding the man still leaning upon the broken tree. She took his hand, and led him away as quickly as he might go.

 

THEY FOLLOWED the dancer’s tracks in the snow. In a valley, the footsteps were covered by the tracks of many horses; and on a stony hill where the wind had blown away the snow, they lost the trail.

‘I know where she has gone,’ said Agnes. But she led him away from where they had been following. Meek as a child he followed her.

‘Aengus,’ she called back to him.

‘Yes.’ It was no more than a whisper, that voice of his.

‘What day would it be, if we still had days?’

He looked up at the stars. ‘August the twenty seventh.’

‘And it’s winter, still?’

‘Yes.’

‘What is happening? What’s become of the world?’

‘It’s Night, and the Lady is pining for her Bacach.’

Mostly the snows they were light, but some were heavy and drifting. Trails vanished beneath them and the going was gallous heavy.

And little they knew of it, but wherever they went they were followed, and wherever they stopped they were watched from the hilltop behind them. The tall gaunt man buttoned up his cóta mór against the snows, and silently tracked the lovers.

 

ONE DARKNESS she left Aengus sleeping, and she went around a wood. She climbed a snow-clad wall, and looked across a rising of fields in a coat of silver and snow. Looked, and there beyond a hedge she saw the high stone manor house that she had left.

It was silent and dark beneath the snow. There were no lights, no scent of smoke. Inside, the rich men and their ladies, all of the Lady Agatha’s friends, were sleeping still in their beds. The thickness of their sleeping wrapt around the house and its grounds.

Round the grounds some riders were riding, and they wearing the black and scarlet cloaks of the county of mist. But she got past them, and slipped up the hedge alongside the snow-covered drive.

And she was thinking, no doubt, of the wood and dried peat Mac Bride had stacked there, all ready now for the burning. She was that tired now; cruelly, heavily tired. Her rests had turned deeper and sweeter in the cold. Her dreams had turned so beautiful…

Somehow she managed, by the merest crack, to open the servants’ door, and she slid into the shadowy interior. She was that thin after her long traveling. The door shut fast behind her.

Moonlight and starlight were shining off the snow and glowing through the ice-stained windows, with a still, soft, blueness, and she stepped quietly, with the grace of a girl going into church, painfully aware of the echo of every step she makes.

She walked through the downstairs hall, through the dining rooms and public rooms, and she thought of being there long ago, on her twenty-first birthday.

That, she thought, was years ago; and yet in days not very long ago; am I older now, or am I still only twenty-one? The Sun hasn’t gone round but half a year since then. But no, what am I thinking? The Sun hasn’t gone around at all.

So thinking, strangely, she climbed the servants’ stairs. Out into the upper hall she came. Where for a time she stood, looking on the door to the lord’s room. The great door bent half open, showing her a glimpse of the bed, where she had lain alongside Master Aengus.

The rest of the doors in the hall were closed and shut fast. A torpor like the fullness of sleeping after too heavy a meal on an early summer’s afternoon, that was weighing on her, slowing her steps and slowing her thoughts, like the dust slowly turning in the snow-glow through the windows. Once more out of habit, like a dream, she tried the doors to the Sleepers’ bedchambers: and now one doorlatch turned for her, and the door seemed almost ready to yield. She muttered over it words she learned from Master Aengus’ tables and parchments: pushed open the door and stepped in.

The door in her hand was drawing back to close itself, but, taken by a notion that if she let the door close on her she would be trapped there, and tumble down in sleeping till the end of the world, she held it firmly, while she bent forward and down over the figure wrapped up in sheets and bedclothes like a mummy.

‘Sir James! Sir James, can you hear me?’

And she murmured a bit of something else out of Master Aengus’ tables.

And the snow whirled up outside the window, and the door leapt to close itself, and almost snatched itself out of her hand, but she held it fast – and the Sleeper’s breast rose and fell in a sigh, and his lips parted, and one cheek twitched.

‘Sir James, what is it you’re seeing? Can you not see me?’

And a branch threw itself against the window in the wind, and the Sleeper’s eyelids twitched, and underneath them the balls of his eyes darted about.

‘Sir James, what is it you’re feeling? Can you not feel my hand?’

And she reached out and took hold of his thumb.

Then his eyes flew open, his nose snorted in a breath of cold air, his lips parted – his face was full of dread and horror at something – something in the room about him which she could not herself see – and his eyes rolled about, caught sight of her, and for a moment seemed to know her, and sought to warn her, of the dreadfulness of dreams, of the evil of the Night, of the emptiness of desire – when the door leapt back to its jamb, pulling her back, her hand wrenching away from him, and he lapsing at once into a deathlike mask of sleep. Until she fell out into the hall again.

She breathed there uneasily, and felt in the air about her the hostility of the Sleepers, meant for her.

It’s not, she thought to herself, waking they’re wanting – not so long as the Night lasts. How dreadful Night must appear to them, that are not used to it. And she thought, They are dreaming of Day, and let them dream on, without the hindrance of my meddling.

She descended the front steps and went out the main doors, and saw on the drive nine of Arianna’s rogues and jades awaiting her.

One laughed, and drew his silver pistol, and thumbed back the hammer of it.

Very still she stood there. But she would not go back into the house. So she stepped down to meet them.

‘You may take me,’ she told them, ‘and do your worst to me; but you’ll never win him back into that jail.’

One of the bandits jumping down off his horse strode to her, and knelt in the snow in front of her.

‘Lady,’ he said, ‘we’ve no wish to be hurting you. You may come along with us now, or go another way, as pleases yourself. It’s only the Bacach we’re seeking, to carry him back into the mist, and into the crannog. And that for his own welfare, the way there is many a danger for him out in this country. And most harmful of all is that place,’ he said, raising his arm at the house, ‘the way that place, if it find the Bacach again, will see him die and fall down into dust. Never let him come here! Never let him see its walls again!’

‘Thank you,’ she told him, ‘for your kindness. Only, why are you helping me? I’m no friend to the Night or any of you all!’

‘Lady, do not be wronging yourself so! You cleaned the Hundred Steps and a Step, did you not? And do you think any daughter of Day could be doing that?’

Down the long drive she walked, and along either hand of her the robbers and jades in their scarlet and black cloaks bowed, and took off their hats to her. But still in her heart she didn’t trust them, so she went first to the lake, the desolate lake. Where for a time she listened to the wind crying in the dead dry sedge along the ice, crying, ‘Always! Always!’

‘Ah, and we’ll see about that,’ she said, and when the Moon went down into the hill she gave the riders the slip and stole away back to him.

 

SHE LED the man down along the Bride. Bandits hidden in the village almost captured him, but knowing the lay of that land, Agnes eluded them, and she took the man away eastaways, across the Blackwater and across the Suir.

A flock of black birds, bigger than crows, flew over their heads, and Agnes felt ill at ease. Were birds not Arianna’s messengers?

‘I feel kinship with the birds,’ said the man, looking up after them. ‘I want to be free like them. Birds, let you be coming back for me!’

 

‘IT WAS EVER strange fancies taking your heart,’ she told him, walking in the moonshade of a hedgerow.

After a while he said, ‘What was I like, before?’

And she began to tell him of himself, of the ruined man he’d been, and how he’d wooed her, and how he’d drowned the Sun to win her, and vowed to bring it back.

He only said, ‘It’s the White Hind I remember, and nothing at all before her.’

‘It’s lying you are,’ she answered him. ‘You do remember. You remember it all. You only say you can’t recall it, the way you couldn’t be facing me otherwise.’

They did not speak after that. They went a long way together, fleeing the bandits, hiding under hedges and rocks in the high places.

The man was carrying the mask, looking on it always.

‘Why do you seek the White Hind? What is it you are looking for, then?’

‘I look for myself,’ he answered, gazing on the mask.

‘Are you lost, then?’

‘I am here, but my wholeness is missing.’

‘Go away, Master Aengus! Go where you will never see her, never hear of her, where no one will bring her to your mind!’

After a long while, the man sighed, and lay down with the mask cradled in his arms. He sang, softly, a mad song:

‘Over the earth is moving the wind
Relentlessly; I stand here
Still; she at the back of the wind
And beyond.

‘She travels here, she travels there
Wherever her fancy leads;
But her fancy never leads her
Where I am.’

 

She stared at him. She pulled at him, but the man wouldn’t be budging from that place, and so she must lie down beside him, and lay the half of her cóta mór across him to warm his crippled leg.

Slowly the stars wheeled into and out of clouds.

About the middle of the darkness Agnes rose, and she took the mask of the White Hind away from him, and going far apart she put it under hard earth beneath the snow.

And she left him, and walked by herself in the snowy Night.

It was three moons, she did not go back to him.

 

MEANWHILE the Bacach lay dreaming in the snow. He didn’t know that Agnes had risen from his side, or that she had stolen away the mask, or that she had gone away. He didn’t know that the Man Who Should Have Slept was even then sharpening the points on his arrows. He didn’t know that something else was watching after him from a bit of wood on a nearby hill. That was a little beast of the wood, pale as the snow, delicate and arching as a willow, with small silver horns and a golden torc twisted round her neck.

The Bacach lay dreaming while the White Hind slipped out of the wood and crept down softly to his side. He lay dreaming still while the dark man appeared on a far-off hill, and raised his bow, and shot an arrow into the beast.

The White Hind took the arrow full in her throat, and she staggered, and tarried, dreadful tarrying; she swayed a little over the man laid out on the snow before she fell, heavy falling; and she died.

The man in the dark gray cóta mór stepped down over the Bacach, and troubled his leg with the tip of his boot. The Bacach stirred, but the man bent over and whispered to him, ‘Now, now, brother, don’t trouble yourself! It’s nobody that’s here, it’s nobody at all, only your long lost beloved brother Fergus, come to pay a call! Dream now and stay dreaming! Dream of your love lying and dying for love in your arms.’

The dark man laughed, and uncovered his face. And his face was ghastly and grim and mad, the way he hadn’t dreamed in all the months of the Night. He couldn’t be dreaming, you see, and he didn’t dare rest, for fear he might fall asleep like all the Sleepers. Because he was the Man Who Should Have Slept.

‘Well,’ said he, grinning, ‘my brother Aengus, won’t you even bid your dear brother Fergus good-evening? It’s so long since we grew up together, and swore ever to be true to each other, when we mingled our blood together. Where are your fancies, airs, and powers now? Who studied better, you or I? And who learned best?

‘You stayed at home after our father fell, but myself, I took the rebel road, and I went across the Sea for it, and worked on the work of our land, and you doing nothing but studying after your heart’s desire. And I hated you for that, and for the traitor you are.

‘I knew it was your work, when I saw the black spot on the Sun,’ he said. ‘It was in a far land I was then, but I still found the needed ingredients to mix a brew to keep me wakeful in spite of anything you or the old man could do! Oh, this Night of yours is a fine thing, brother, if it let me come back to my homeland, and kiss my kin once more.’

And he said, ‘Oh, I came back again to the Bride, and I waited and watched, until I found your trail. You let my love die, brother, and you stood by while the King’s men hounded me out of home and country, but you never were thinking that one fine night would see me revenged on you!’

The dark man slung off his bow, and put that into the Bacach’s hand; he slung off his pouch of arrows, and tucked it up under the Bacach’s arm.

And he took up and brandished a sword in his hand.

‘What are you thinking, brother Aengus, that you find me with our father’s sword? It was me should have gotten it, not you; I found it again in the Night; it was in a dead hound’s breast; fancy that, right where you left it! You’ll not get this back again!’

The Man Who Should Have Slept turned and left the Bacach with a laugh. And after a time the Bacach was freeing himself out of his dreaming, and stirring and opening his eyes.

He sighed, and saw at his feet a lady stretched out, as lovely as the lee. She was dressed all in white, torn and ragged and airy as lace. Her long throat was arching up his thigh where the old wound beat, and her head in his lap, and in her throat an arrow, and the blood from the arrow staining all the front of her gown, and the snow also all about her skirts and feet and where he sat was red, red with her cold, cold blood.

For a time he was staring at the dead woman stretched out on the snow. He had never seen her before, never in his life; but there was something about her, something – and then he saw in her pale brow by the start of her dark hair two small nodes like the start of silver horns, and round her throat a torc of twisted gold.

The man looked down and saw in his hand his grandfather’s longbow, and a quiver of arrows alongside his leg. He looked up, and his hands cast aside the bow and arrows, and his eyes saw that three blackbirds were flying across the clouds by the Moon, high up away from the Earth.

His cry was choked off under the clouds, and few would have guessed it came out of a human throat.

Blood by Moonlight: 31

(A sample from Blood by Moonlight.)

© 2009 asotir. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

25. How They Fled

ACROSS SILVER FIELDS beneath ice-clad stars, Agnes and Mielusine led the Bacach, down to the western coast, after what was left of the roads of day. They entered into lowlands empty and still beneath the Moon. The winds were frosty out of the north, though Imbolc came soon enough and Brigid’s fires, and by the reckoning of Day Winter’s end was nearing. Powdery snow was still falling, even in the lowlands, even on the coast, turning the black land white.

All that season they were fleeing, fleeing through the snow, fleeing over ice. Now and again they would be stopping on hills or lookout points. Through the lands below they could see bands of bright-hued riders, women and men, roving through the fields: the lost nobility of the Night: Firbolgs, Tuatha de Danaan, Celts, Normans, Tinkers and robbers, and every blessed one of them Arianna’s.

All those folk were scouring the lands for the Bacach; once they almost caught him, and were riding over the bridge Agnes hid him under. Mielusine’s horns were scraping the old stones over their heads, and the pounding of hooves ringing in their ears, and the man shaking for cold, the way the ice was swimming round his socks. Agnes coughed until a dark red stained her sleeve.

She led them up higher, on the moors. She led them over the spines of the Sliabh-na-Mban. There were no Wakeful there. Now and again they were finding a broken-down farm, and Agnes was digging spuds and turnips for them. Even so they were starving.

Cold waxed that summer, colder still. The Snow-Cold Summer that summer was called, by those that Woke in it. Agnes swore it had never been so cold in Ireland in Day. And if the Sun did not return, she knew, colder and colder each summer would burn, until all the world was frozen dead as ice, and Arianna ruled over a frozen waste.

Dotting the white fields were the standing stones, left there from long ago, the way that they were called the beds of Diarmid and Grainne. In hollows of such stones, out of the snow, they lay down all three together, overlapping their coats. To Agnes the cold was a bright knife in her lungs, cutting her with coughing. As for Mielusine, though herself was healthy, her splendid white dress was trailing tatters, and she looking the ghost in her mask.

Always, Mielusine wore the mask of the White Hind upon her face. Only when the man lay dreaming would Agnes let Mielusine put off the mask.

‘But he’s only the worse for it,’ said Mielusine. ‘His love is turning into longing from such closeness. It’s in his eyes, have you not seen it? It’s an enchantment growing over me like sin. When he’s looking at me, he’s seeing something else.’

‘When you’re wearing it he adores you, and is that so dreadful? But let you be fighting the enchantment his eyes are weaving for you, or you’ll be lost for ever.’

‘’Tis only the mask he loves, and never me at all.’ But in her heart Mielusine was wondering.

‘Black and red and white are the colors of my love,’ the man was singing, as they trudged along their way.

‘Red and black and white is she.
White is her body, pale as the
Snow of one night;
And red is her collar of red gold and her horns,
That are redder than crushed fox-glove;
And black are her eyes with the riddle of skies.

‘Black and red and white are the colors of my love,
Red and black and white is she.
My love will wear no colors,
Only black, only white;
But when she is red, then there is no color
Anywhere else in the world.’

 

So the long cold darkness wore on, with never an end of fleeing for them, chased after by all the mighty of the Night.

 

THERE WAS A SNOW falling, and they sitting under another bridge upon a stream of ice. Mielusine lay dreaming of food; Agnes sat up waking with the man, they both of them looking on the dancer in her dreams.

It is the mask, Agnes was thinking. But she knew better.

The Maid had been just the proper sort of prettiness, in her coloring, her form, and her heart. Herself, Agnes, had polished her into the consummation Aengus would have most desired. She’d foreseen this end from its beginning. She’d meant for it to happen. But still she envied Mielusine, the way she was yet beautiful, and the end of his desire.

‘Aengus,’ she whispered. ‘Aengus.’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you know that you are Master Aengus then, and not the Bacach?’

‘I know that is how you are calling me.’

‘Do you still remember nothing?’

‘I have visions, and perhaps they are coming from the past, and perhaps they are yet to be.’

‘And do you remember how you cursed me? You cursed me with desire for you, when you put out the Sun.’

‘Aye, so you have told me.’

‘It is truth,’ she said, and kissed him.

It was only his mouth against hers she was feeling, and not a kiss at all. He was longing for the White Hind, and she could never be that for him.

‘Do not be crying, Agnes,’ he said softly. And it was hating him surely that she was then.

It snowed blackness for a long while round that bridge. A fit of coughing shook Agnes, near breaking her ribs. The man lay down dreaming, and Agnes bent over the girl, tugging off the mask. She was looking at it a long while.

When the clouds broke and the moon whitened the world again, Agnes told Mielusine to put the mask on.

‘Do you know where you are leading us?’ asked the dancer. ‘Where there is a town, and people, and warmth?’

‘Go back to Lough Mask then, and your rich life in the abbey if you’re unhappy.’

‘I cannot be wearing this mask any more. It is so heavy it will choke me!’

‘You’re whimpering like a child, can’t you at least be still?’

 

IN THE END, Mielusine would not wear the mask. She put it off, and let him see her face. It seemed to make no difference to the man.

Hard was the going in the snow, deep as it was. It was caking to their shoes, and the ground underneath ragged and treacherous.

Agnes came to her senses. ‘What’s that I’m seeing?’

‘Is it will o’ the wisps?’ asked the maid.

‘No,’ said the man, ‘those are her folk.’

Wan yellow lights were flickering and weaving down the slopes to the left of them, to the right of them, before them and behind. Now Agnes could see them clearly. They were lanterns. In a great narrowing ring the bandits and minxes were closing on them. A shout reached their ears, followed by a pistol shot. One of the bandits had seen them.

In bounds the bandits’ horses were climbing the snows, kicking up drifts behind them.

The yellow lanterns were swinging by the saddles, and the dark cloaks of the horsewomen and horsemen billowing in the winds, and their black scarves over their faces showing only their eyebrows and piercing, wicked eyes. Closer and closer they came.

They rode the hill side, sweeping it in circles, until they’d covered it all, and not a cat’s space was untrodden by their horses’ hooves. But they met only one another, and none of those three. The bandits and minxes looked one another in the eye, fiercely; then they laughed, relishing the chase, and raced away down the hill towards the nearest wood, a small crop of black in the white waste.

 

IT WAS THE MAN of the three, had found the low mound underneath the snow with a little tunnel leading into it. The tunnel was lined with undressed stones, and at its end a little round chamber. The man gathered oddments of dry turf there with moss and leaves and grass, and started a fire. The ruddy flames were cheering Mielusine, and she smiling for the first time since Arianna’s masquerade.

‘It’s faster our clothing would be drying if we took it off,’ said Agnes.

‘That would be immodest,’ protested Mielusine.

‘Since when did a dancer complain of modesty?’

‘Do not be speaking to her in such a voice,’ commanded the man.

Agnes was that disgusted with them, she went out into a hollow in the snow on the hill side. Where she coughed, and hugged herself for warmth, and kept a lookout for bandits. She felt at her belt under her cóta mór, where she’d hidden a scian dagger. The clouds were clearing, and she looked into the stars, and they the stars of Lughnasadh.

‘Lughnasadh, and here I am sitting in snow, and not a blade of green grass to be seen,’ she said. And she looked out across the land.

Soon enough in spite of the snow, she could see firelights burning from every hilltop. Round the fires the robbers were gathering, lured there by the Tinkers to their old, wicked rites. For a time at least the three would be safe.

Alone, hugging her knees to her breasts, Agnes was shivering, and at length her eyes closed, and she was resting.

It was the first time the man and Mielusine had been alone together, since the masquerade…

 

AGNES was dreaming of Aengus and the dancer inside the hill. She was seeing the Maid sitting by the fire, and she was seeing Aengus looking on the Maid.

There was a silence in the barrow. Those two had nothing to be saying to each other.

At the first, Mielusine would be looking away from Aengus’ gaze. She would not wish to acknowledge him so openly. At length she would look sidelong at him: and seeing his look, and his piebald body, red and white, she could not help but smile. He would smile too.

Agnes saw the whole of it in her dream. She knew them both so well, the way she had lived alongside one from two years’ time, the way she had taught the other every look and manner to be having with a man.

The dancer would have risen then, and glanced down on her ruined dress. Surely it was in a sorry state! And shyly Mielusine would remove it, turning her back, her shoulder veiling her mouth, hiding its secrets. Quickly she’d shiver on her other dress, the red, red dress, that would be crimsoning all the barrow even to the fire. She would be feeling warmer then, less timid, less reserved.

Her own beauty would be seducing her as much as anything Aengus might think or do. But she would be thinking to herself, What is it he sees, looking on me so? It was in her own eyes, herself as no longer Mielusine, but as the Hind, that magical creature of all his dreams and longings. What a trap that was!

He was very near to her. There was that wonder in his eyes. With one fire-warmed finger he traced a line down her brow, past her ear, down her throat, to the hollow of her collar.

Mielusine shuddered at that touch, even as herself, Agnes, had once on a time shuddered at it, and felt the tingle of it descending into the hollow of her breasts.

He was holding the mask before her. Perhaps that slight movement of her head was but the last wave of her shudder. He put the mask onto her, and she did not deny him. Her dark eyes peered out childishly from the cutout eyes.

It was afraid she was then, as Agnes had not been on the falling of the Night, all at once afraid: of him and of his eyes, of his longing for the thing she was not, of the touch of his hands on her body.

And Mielusine would be remembering what herself, Agnes, had told her, long ago in her lessons:

‘Do not stop for fear. It is the very sign of love, fear is. Passion will mark you and change you forever, it’s that you’ll be fearing. A great lady will feel fear the first time, the first time it is real. She’ll not be flinching for that, but she’ll seize the nettle every time. It’s that that makes her great.’

So the Maid would only shiver, not deny, as Aengus laid bare her body, pale and soft and delicate as new-fallen snow.

Her skin gleaming roselike in the fire. The floral scent of her escaping from captivity, mingling with the smoke. And Aengus drinking it in. Mielusine sighing, leaning back, and raising her arms above her head.

She was in a sort of Mesmeric trance. She felt her heart beating through the long veins of her throat, but her senses were numb to all else but his touch, and the physical possession of his gaze. Aengus reached up and touched, ever so lightly, the insides of her tiny wrists. How he’d loved doing so to Agatha’s wrists! He ran his hands like silent snowfalls down along the outside of her arms. Mielusine would feel every one of the invisible, downy hairs of her arms responding to the passing fingertips.

As to Aengus now, he would love the delicate, fragrant hairs that flowered in the rounded hollows underneath her arms. He’d be loving the slender, arching throat. The tiny, half-buried breasts and their burning tips. The limbs stretching out long and glimmering, and quivering chastely at his touch, as if shivering at some sudden chill.

He would kiss her open lips beneath the mask, and she clutching his hair in her hands would force him hard and deep down on her lips; and when at last she let him break that kiss, then Mielusine would sigh, and a single note would escape her lips, sweet and pure as a child’s, like the note she’d sung on the dark road way.

 

AGNES heard that note. Even out on the hill side in the snow, she heard it.

With eyes shut fast she saw it, all and all of it. It was as if herself, Agnes, lay in Master Aengus’ arms beside the fire. She envied Mielusine Aengus’ love; envied Aengus his perfect, foolish passion.

She bore the dancer no ill heart. It was the White Hind she was hating, the way it was the Hind truly possessing Aengus, and the Hind her only rival.

‘Och, Aengus,’ she groaned into her knees, ‘Aengus, now has your name become Agony to me…’

She coughed another red spot into her palm. She lay in a ball inside her coat, and at last she dreamed again.

When she roused herself the Moon was sinking, and a flock of black birds flying against it. The needfires were dark and dead. Agnes found something in the snow beside her.

It was the mask of the White Hind.

When she ventured down into the barrow, she found Aengus lying in his somber clothing by the gray ashes. Mielusine was gone. The red dress was still there, folded up neatly as though she’d never put it on.

Blood by Moonlight: 30

(A sample from Blood by Moonlight.)

© 2009 asotir. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

24. Of the Dwellers in the Night

IN THE LAST summer of Day, while the King’s men tracked down Master Aengus, the ripe hay grass in the fields the countryfolk worked for the good of their landlords had shaken in the wind. The grass had shaken because it was tall. It had shaken because it would not be tall for long.

In the Night the kings were dead. The houses of parliament stood empty. The lords that did not lie abed sleeping stood begging on the open roads. Generals and admirals gave their orders to the winds. The seas were empty but for the most desperate of men, and they half piratical. Princes of the church fared no better than their brothers of the state. The Wakeful trusted more strongly in the good people in the mead than in the gods in the cathedrals, now open to wind and rain. Mary was worshipped, but as if she had been Morgan or Aphrodite.

In Day, the Sun had showed what was, and what had been, and what must be. In the dark there was only the suggestion of what could be, what might have been, and what yet may come. The contrast fed ambitions. Now there was a choice.

In Day some, like Master Aengus, had carried their darkness about with them. Now all those who had lived through the fire had made their peace with darkness. And in the bargain, darkness had showed them – wonderful things.

It was a transfiguration not only of the world, but of the men as well.

In Day, what had they done? Plowed fields, sowed seeds, dried hay, dug roots, mined peat, fished the deep, stocked cellars, wove and sowed, cooked, ate, spoke of the old subjects, fed fires against the cold. Each of them penned in by what he did, how much land he owned or tilled, what his church was, what tongue he spoke, who his father had been, and his father’s father… In the Night all that was forgotten.

The children showed them the way. The children loved the Night, the way all those children who had bad dreams in darkness were sleeping; and the waking children never knew a better holiday, and laughed, and took the grownups by the hand, and were showing them the way.

It was as though all those Wakeful had paused: stood still in their forward-going, let the towers of the world come crashing down, and looked about them out of altered eyes, pondering what they might build out of moon-painted fields.

Nowhere was this felt more strongly than among Tinkers.

The Tinker had known the Night of old. Not for him was working the day long like the tenants, and sleeping through the night to be strong for more work. The Tinker owned the open roads, and slept beneath the stars, and watched the wild winds tearing the dark cold nights of winter. The Tinker had been waiting for the dark. Tinker lads and lasses were born with the dark in their blood.

Their grandparents had ruled these hills and rocks. Once they had been masters. Then foreigners had come from the sea, there had been battles and blood, and the old masters were struck down into bondage. In time new foreigners had come from the sea, and again there had been battles and blood, and the old masters struck down into bondage.

Seven times it had happened in the Irish land. Seven new races of masters, seven new races of slaves.

Only a few of those beaten never submitted, but they went into the hills, into the bogs, and into the wild heart of the land. They built their houses on wheels, the way no land was left them that would not soon be taken back away from them. They lived by their wits and their courage, and spat on the roadside when anyone spoke of the Law. And they were known as Tinkers, though many a folk called them Clan Ulcin, that is to say, the Children of Evil.

Now in the Night amongst all the Wakeful the Tinkers were sowing bawdy songs, whispers of unspeakable deeds, and willful desires; and they were plowing darkness over those dreaming fields, dressing them to bear what was never known before. Animals dream only when they sleep, and so had the cottagers done, forgetting their dreams in daylight.

There was no more daylight now, thanks to Master Aengus and his mad love.

It was a rarity of Ireland, the Innis Fodhla, that so many of her tramps were descended from her former rulers, dispossessed and hunted, too stubborn or proud to leave. They were the gleanings left behind by invasion, war and rebellion. And if the cottagers had forgotten their heritage, their heritage had not been forgetting them.

And now the cottagers were dreaming with open eyes as the Tinkers had done, and breathing in the hot smoke of the Tinkers’ open wild fires.

And it was as if Black Eden had come back to Innis Fodhla, and they were freed after a thousand years of servitude.

And through it all the dark man in his cóta mór, the Man Who Should Have Slept, went walking with his longbow and quiver across his shoulders, shaking his head and muttering, ‘Shame, now! Shame, shame, shame!’

Then he bent his head, and took up again the traces of the lovers’ trail.

Blood by Moonlight: 29

(A sample from Blood by Moonlight.)

© 2009 asotir. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

23. How He Met the White Hind

AGNES did not want her masquerade to end. Upon shining lawns beneath the dimming witchlights she danced on, wild-souled, surrounded by a dozen bandits. But even they at the latter end left her, despairing that she should ever reveal herself as the lady. Alone she danced on, her skyblack skirts swirling.

An odd mist hung over the ground, just about the feet. Mac Bride’s nine girls were killing the abbey’s candles and fires; across the lough, lights were winking on; through the upper airs the glow of the young Moon was gleaming, and cutting through the mist.

Agnes stopped, and her skirt swirled to embrace her. ‘For luck,’ she whispered, drawing off the emerald and casting it into the lough.

It splashed there softly and sank, drifting down the syrup of the waters. It came to a rest beside the sleeping maiden drowning in her hair, and Agnes never saw that gem again.

She walked about the crannog through the snow, her spirits cooling, the mist making her cough. Every room below was still and dark; only through the upper windows gleams of candles reddened the mist. Even the gambling had ceased. For a time Agnes stood quietly in the shadow of the broken basilica, under the bell-tower. At length, alone, she turned back to her cot.

She found someone already there, and that was Mielusine.

‘Master Aengus was following me,’ the Maid told her, ‘and I feeling sorry for him. It wasn’t that way I wanted to be meeting him. You told me he was dangerous, but he seemed a lost little boy. This hall seemed the best hiding place, so I asked after your bed.’

‘Do not go,’ breathed Agnes. ‘The other girls must be about their duties, but let us rest together as we did before, the way I’m so lonely. I also was thinking of him, and the pain of it lingers, it lingers in me. Sweet Mielusine, will you forgive me for goading you to what I would have had you do?’

‘Dearest Agnes, I missed you.’ They hugged each other, and then, still in their fine gowns white by black they lay together in the little cot, holding tight.

‘Mielusine, would you be going from here?’ whispered Agnes. ‘I am going, but you may stay if you like.’

‘No, I’m going. But we cannot leave Master Aengus.’

‘No. Eudemarec will help us rescue him.’

But they neither of them saw the Breton in the darknesses that followed. He was the lady’s champion, and she hardly let him leave her apartments; he wasn’t eager to go, either.

At length Arianna had herself arrayed: paraded Eudemarec down the crescent stair, and in front of all put on his finger the moon ring, pressing back his finger. Then Mielusine drew him aside, where he spoke with them both in private.

‘Is he alive, now,’ said he, ‘and I didn’t kill him? But that’s the finest news! Surely I’ll help you!’ He was too happy to deny them anything. He even agreed to say nothing to Arianna.

So it fell out, that on the brightness of the Moon, when Arianna lay dreaming the deepest of dreams, Eudemarec dressed himself, kissed her hand, and tiptoed down the stair.

But Agnes couldn’t help herself, and she was drawn back into Maid Buan’s chambers, using the key she had made. She had to look one last time into the glass on the wall there.

It was quiet in those rooms. Agnes stepped up to the wall and drew back the black velvet hangings, uncovering the ornate carvings of the frame and the dim silvery shine of the glass. She looked deeply within. And after a time she was whispering to herself old words out of the deep of her soul:

                               …set all the eyes
Of court a-fire, like a burning glass,
And work them into cinders, when the jewels
Of twenty states adorn thee, and the light
Strikes out the stars!

 

She stopped then, the way she felt another presence: cast her look about, and saw Maid Buan standing in the door naked in her bedshift.

Agnes let the hangings fall, but the maid caught them and took her hand and kissed it.

‘Is it true, now?’ asked Maid Buan in a whisper. ‘Was it the same sight I saw in the glass, as yourself were seeing?’

‘What sight did you see?’ asked Agnes.

‘I saw – but it couldn’t be you! But it’s truth and nothing else this glass will show! Here now, let me look, and you look also, and tell me what you see of me!’ And she cast up the hangings and stood before the glass. Agnes looked there with her.

She saw there a face, and it was like the maid’s face.

It was a face like the maid’s face, only stuffed and swollen up with pride and daunting haughtiness, cold and repellent. Agnes for shame looked away, and Maid Buan let the hangings fall.

‘But you, in the mirror, now,’ the maid was murmuring, ‘you were so – so beautiful! Are you truly so fine and so flawless as that?’

‘No, it’s only the artistry of the glass, and I’m no more than you’re seeing now before you.’

The maid was shaking her head. ‘This,’ she answered, ‘is the artistry of the glass, that it shows back what’s more true than the eye can see. And every moonrise I’m gazing into it, and looking for some betterment, but every moonrise it shows me the truth of myself, and how vain and empty a showhorse I am. Tell me now, seamstress, what are you, that you are unparalleled in the glass, and yet you toil here as a servant? How is it you achieved such beauty, and can you not help me to be overcoming that thing, that thing, now – what you saw there in the glass?’

Agnes was silent, turning it over in her mind. Then she smiled kindly and said, ‘I’ll do what I can do for you, and the rest you must be doing for yourself. All right?’

‘Yes, yes,’ answered Maid Buan.

Agnes took the maid by the hand. ‘Come,’ she said.

And she led the maid into her bedchamber, and led her into her bed. The moon glow was falling strongly through the windows, the way the maid’s rooms were high up in the tower, and near to the thinnest layer of the mist.

Right away Maid Buan’s eyes closed in the moonlight, and her face lost its lines of troubling, and her breathing grew slower and deeper. Agnes sat on a stool beside the bed, and she lay three flowers alongside the maid’s head, of the rose that blooms in the night, and the hidden rose, and the Lady’s rose. And she stroked the maid’s hand, and breathed along with her breath for breath. The perfume of the roses lay thick about the bed, but Agnes could see, that though the maid rested deeply, she wasn’t dreaming. Agnes leaned in over the maid’s face, deep into the pillow of scent of the roses, and she whispered three words in Maid Buan’s ear, softly like a secret: ‘You may remember.’

The maid’s hand clutched Agnes’ tightly, and her breathing stopped and started. Agnes could see her in dreaming, and softly she let go the maid’s hand and slipped out of the chamber.

 

NOW IN THE MIDDLE of that moon Maid Buan’s eyes open, and she rises up out of her bed and summons her serving-girl. She orders the girl to put over her Maid Buan’s cloak, the dark one, heavy and hooded.

Then she takes her mask and goes out of her chambers, and steps down the Hundred Steps and a Step, and no one is there to meet her.

Maid Buan goes out through the great doors, that are hanging open, and that is strange, the way they are never open when the lady lies resting, and her abbey sleeps. But now they are.

And Maid Buan walks out to the landing, where a Swan boat is standing waiting, with a boatman, and his head is bowed, and his face is muffled, so naught of his features are to be seen. Maid Buan steps into the Swan boat, and the boatman shifts with his pole, and the Swan boat slips from the shore of the crannog in the mist.

Around the lough the boatman guides the Swan boat. Maid Buan lifts her head, and she sees the abbey all white in the mist, turning about before her eyes. Three times they go about the abbey, soft, stealthy, smooth, and there is no person at all to be seen on the shore, only the white buildings of the abbey turning in the mist.

And never has it shone so beautifully in the maid’s eyes before now, the way her breath catches in her throat.

Now after the third time round the shore the boatman guides the Swan boat to the landing, and Maid Buan steps up ashore again.

She walks up to the great doors of the abbey, and now they are shut before her. There is a serving-girl there working, cleaning the bronze and carvings. And this girl is the first soul Maid Buan has seen since leaving her chambers.

Maid Buan, she goes up to the girl, and hands her her mask, and says to her,

‘Now let you be the Maid, and let me be taking your place.’

The girl says not a word, but she takes the mask, and Maid Buan’s heavy cloak, and the maid puts on the girl’s homespun dress.

The girl she goes away, and Maid Buan now is all alone, and a Maid about the place no longer. And she takes the rags in her hand, and she touches them to the bronze and the carvings of the great doors, and she sets herself to cleaning them.

 

AND WHEN THE MOON rose next, and the light of the Moon glowed in the mist again, Buan was done with her work for that darkness, and she went to where she knew the serving-girls slept, and she found the cot of that girl who wore the mask of Maid Buan in the chambers high above. Buan lay herself down and rested, and when the Moon sank again she rose up and went to the great doors, and she cleaned them again.

There was a carving in the door, and it a girl’s head, very lovely, but made green and dark by the mists of the lough. Each darkness Buan was cleaning that carving, and it coming lighter and more burnished under the touch of her hand, and that work did Buan’s soul good, and was setting her at peace with her heart. She loved that carving and that face, and the great doors, and what she did with them.

 

NOW AS TO THE BACACH, he had shut himself up in his rooms those darknesses, and was searching the stars in his telescope. His ate little but drank deeply, of the rainwater that fell in buckets on the bell-tower roof. But sometimes when the Moon was brightest, he crept about the forsaken lawns, looking for the hind.

Servants came and left him food. They came in silence and darkness, the way they were not disturbing him. The Bacach hardly noticed them. But when one of them opened the door loudly, and held a glaring candle before her, the candle burned his eyes; he cursed her and bade her begone.

‘I will begone, and you will be gone along with me,’ she answered. ‘Master Aengus, come.’

She was in white, and she wore the body of a woman, but she was the White Hind.

He climbed down out of the sky, slowly.

‘You are here,’ he said. ‘You are real.’

She held out her hand to him. He took it: there was no substance in it. His frozen, nerveless fingers felt nothing.

They went down onto the lawn. Agnes was waiting there.

‘How is he?’ she asked. ‘Aengus, how goes it with you?’

‘I’m numb,’ he answered, looking on his White Hind.

‘Here is Eudemarec,’ whispered Mielusine.

The Breton stopped short at the sight of Agnes. ‘Why, what new metamorphosis is this?’ he asked.

Agnes smiled and bowed to him. Her hair was clubbed in a queue, and she wore a tricorn hat, boots, breeches, and waistcoat beneath a cóta mór. ‘Don’t I make a pretty boy? I learned well enough how skirts and silks fare on the road.’

Eudemarec laughed.

‘You have a familiar look to me,’ said the Bacach.

‘Don’t you know me?’ asked Eudemarec.

‘No.’

‘I am the man who killed you.’

‘Ah,’ said the Bacach.

‘And are you really the love-mad Irish farmer, put out the sun? Are you Master Aengus, indeed?’

‘I am the Bacach. I draw the cards for Arianna.’

‘You must draw mine some time.’

The man reached into his pocket and drew out a card at hazard on his fingertips. The Breton turned it over: it showed a man walking the road, his belongings slung on his shoulder, a pup nipping at his heels. ‘Il Matto,’ Eudemarec read. ‘What does it mean?’

‘It means, farewell,’ answered the Bacach.

Mielusine murmured, nervously, ‘Let us be going.’

They passed under the abbey in silence, to the mooring pole and Swan Boats.

‘One we will take, and the rest burn,’ Agnes said. ‘They’ll not soon be on our trail.’

‘That is not the way,’ spoke a voice from the darkness.

‘Who’s there?’ asked Eudemarec.

‘Let you not harm him, he is a friend,’ said Agnes.

He came out of the blackness north of the abbey, walking slowly, like a heron, he was so tall and lean. His smile was crooked as his legs.

‘Greetings, Miss,’ he said sardonically.

‘Mary bless you, Mac Bride,’ she answered. ‘And what brings you out under the fullness of the Moon?’

‘Ah, as to that,’ he murmured, in a sing song tone, with a long sideways look at the Bacach, ‘It was ever my pleasure to be strolling by the lakeside. But what have we here? Is it a war-party I’m looking on?’

‘We’re leaving, Mac Bride.’

‘Then have a fair voyage, Miss, and Mary speed you to your destination!’

‘Mac Bride, Master Aengus is going with us.’

At that the old countryman turned, looking from the face of the Bacach to Mielusine’s mask. ‘Is he, now?’ he muttered.

‘Don’t try to stop us, old man,’ warned Eudemarec. He put a pistol to Mac Bride’s breast. ‘It wouldn’t be worth the pain of it, you see.’

‘Stop it now, and put aside the gun!’ cried Agnes sharply. ‘Mac Bride, Aengus is a dead man here in this place. We’re taking him off to restore him to himself. Will you help us?’

‘You’d never be doing it this way,’ he told her. ‘The lady knows this scheme already; she had it in a dream. The fire will rouse them, and they’ll be on your trail before you lose sight of the crannog.’

‘It’s a gamble we’re ready to take,’ said the Breton.

‘Is there another way for it?’ asked Agnes.

The old countryman looked on her quietly, in the strangest way. He was on the very verge of speaking, and yet holding his tongue.

From one of the windows a light gleamed, and the casement swung out. In the candlelight Agnes knew the face of Old Meg, looking down on them all with an evil intent. For a moment she stared; then ducked away back into the hall.

‘Please, Mac Bride,’ pleaded Agnes. ‘We haven’t the time. You helped him once with a good heart. Can you stand by now, and be his jailer?’

He said, very gently, ‘Your heart has changed, Miss.’

‘You are lovely,’ said the Bacach to Mielusine. ‘You’ll not run from me again, will you?’

A door banged open in the servants’ building, and three burly men approached. They were Arianna’s ferrymen, roused by Meg. ‘What are you doing there?’ they demanded. At the sight of the Bacach they scowled. It was worth the worst of Arianna’s wrath to let the Bacach get away off the lough. Ever since he had been killed in the duel across the lough, this was her strictest command.

‘Be at ease,’ said Eudemarec calmly, showing them the ring. ‘I am her champion. She sends me to escort these three into the forest and show them the right path.’

‘Lady Arianna said he wasn’t to go. Only Arianna can say anything other than that.’

‘Oh, I think I can show you the fallacy in your argument,’ answered Eudemarec, and drew out a brace of pistols, leveled at their belts.

‘Now,’ he said coolly, ‘there are three of you, and I’ve but the two pistols; so if you have the blood of Turks, you may yet overpower me and fulfill your command, which I maintain is a false one, the way it’s herself is sending me here. But then two of you will die with balls in your bellies. Choose between you which, for ’tis a matter of indifference to me.’

The ferrymen stood glaring at him.

‘Well, then,’ said Eudemarec after a bit: ‘if you want to live, stand over by the mooring pole, and untie the boat.’

‘This is not the way,’ said Mac Bride. ‘Leave them and their boats, the way others will be coming to work on them, and the alarm will soon be sounding.’

‘Is there another way?’ asked Agnes.

The countryman nodded. ‘There is one.’

They trooped along the crannog, the countryman and Agnes, the ferrymen, Eudemarec, Mielusine and the Bacach. They passed the casino, the Lady Chapel, and the servants’ quarters. They rounded the basilica and went quietly past the byre, where the blood hounds whined and scratched the earth at the sight of Eudemarec. Close to Arianna’s garden, the lean old man stopped.

He sat on his heels over the water, and fished in it a little with his long, bony hand. It was the candle burning in the eyes of himself, was giving him the strangest look.

‘It was long ago, long,’ he told them. ‘When the crannog was built, we made a secret causeway, the way we would never be needing boats if we hadn’t any, if we had the wisdom. We piled up stones almost to the surface of the water, deep enough so as not to be seen by the eye, and following a tortuous path. My daughter used it once of a time,’ he said. Then he stretched out his arm and took her hand. ‘’Tis a path I know; feel it now, and don’t be forgetting.’

With his fingernail almost cutting her palm, Mac Bride traced in Agatha’s hand the twisting and the turning of the causeway out of the crannog. The flesh of her palm was streaked white like lightning, showing the path.

‘There’s no need for this, you know,’ she told him. ‘Come with us, Mac Bride. We’ll have use for you.’

But the old man shook his head. ‘I’ll not be such a traitor, Miss. And this is the way of it, if you want to win Aengus for yourself, it’s you must do the doing of it, not I. Go on then, and let her bless you! The boy was ever a soft point in my heart. It runs in the family, as you might say.’

‘Eudemarec, at least let you be coming with us,’ she begged. ‘Arianna will hold it against you.’

‘I will win her round, never fear,’ he said with a grin. ‘She is not evil. I would know evil in her. Neither is she good. She dwells with beauty, and beauty has its own law. She’ll not betray her love. And if she does … why, then I lose the wager! It would be worse to see her no more.’

‘If you are going, go now,’ said Mac Bride. ‘Look to the Moon, how high she is.’

With that, the old man left them, back into the abbey, and did there whatever it was that he did. Mac Bride kept his own accounts.

‘Bless you, old friend,’ called Agnes after him.

She dipped her booted foot into the lough, probing: found the causeway stones. She slogged forward, splashing; behind her came Mielusine, holding her skirts in one hand and Agnes’ hand in the other. The Bacach followed them awkwardly into the dark water.

Step after step, turning upon turning: they walked upon the water deeper and deeper into the lough, like three magicians.

‘Go with my love, Agnes,’ called Eudemarec after them softly, watching the three of them whitely blending into mist. ‘Win back the memory of your lover, the way he cannot know you but love you.’

He turned back to the ferrymen. He leaned against the wall of her garden, looking them up and down. ‘’Tis the brightness of the Moon,’ he said. ‘A long one. You’ve not by any chance got a pack of cards about you, do you?’

 

ALL THAT MOON Eudemarec held the three ferrymen captive; and Agnes and Mielusine led the Bacach past his grave up through the orchards. Along the way they passed a small ring of hand-small stones set in a vantage point. The paths were beaten bare through the white snow, and Agnes climbing easily and swiftly. But the man with his limp could go but haltingly, and the women had often to help him.

When the Moon set they took a bit of rest, then started on their way again. They went on after moonrise, while the brightness passed over their heads. They had climbed very high by then, and were close to the end of the mist.

But when the Moon sank, then the man fell on his knees for very weariness, clutching at his thigh.

‘Get up, come along,’ urged Agnes.

‘He cannot be going any more,’ answered Mielusine, ‘And we’ve not the strength to carry him.’

‘Do you not,’ said Agnes, ‘see that we are at the very edge of this county of mist? I can see stars over my head, where the mist is thin! – But what sound is that, now? Merciful Mary!’

 

THIS WAS THE WAY the Lady Arianna rose out of her dreams, with a rich slow stretching and coaxing of blood back into her limbs. She was smiling to be thinking of her new beloved; but she found the room empty beside herself.

Down she looked from her window to the Swan boats, and knew something was amiss.

Eudemarec met her at the casino door with the ferrymen at his back. He hid nothing from her, and confessed all.

‘Did I not deny you this already?’ she asked him coldly. He had broken his promise to Agnes, you see, and spoken of it to the lady after all. ‘Well, but I will forgive you the one naughtiness; after all, timid men are none to my liking. Your fault will be undone, though, the way I will be finding him and bringing him back to me; as for these women, now, I don’t care what befalls them, so long as it is none of it good. And what will you do now, Eudemarec, to make this up to me?’

He smiled, and kissed her palm. When the darkness was ending, they went up to her chambers, and were no more seen. She was very tender with him that time, and wept tears over him in her joy.

But when Eudemarec woke out of a dream by moonlight, he saw that Arianna’s ring was no longer his. His fingers were bare. Then an overmastering fear took him, and he left her side, even as Gwangior had done and fifty others before him, and he fled into the wild orchards after Agnes and Mielusine.

Behind the Breton a dark man covered in a tricorn and a dark gray cóta mór took another Swan boat and rowed himself across the lough. He stepped atop a hill into the ring of hand-small stones, and watched the Breton fleeing.

The Moon sank, and the darkness gleamed off the face of the waters of mist lapping the tall abbey. Arianna rose, and called her girls, and had them bring her hunting dress.

 

‘IT IS HER PACK,’ said the lame man, listening. ‘It is the lady’s blood hounds, and Arianna is hunting again.’

The sound gave back some strength to him, the way it was taking his thoughts away from his leg. He stood up, flanked by the woman and the White Hind on the hill side, looking back down into the mists. The baying and the howling of hounds were growing through the ghostly trees.

‘They are coming this way,’ whispered Mielusine through her mask. ‘Are they hunting us?’

‘It may be,’ said the man. ‘It may be the lady. She wants a new blood hound.’

‘Come on, then,’ begged Agnes, plucking at their sleeves.

They went on their way as best they could. Mielusine was leading the way, her strong thighs easily pushing away the ice. It was the man who stumbled, on nothing at all, at the very lip of the ridge, with the waves of mist breaking just over their heads. And ever behind them was swelling the baying of the hounds, to a frenzy.

And blending with the hounds’ cries another howling reached their ears: inhuman, from a human throat.

‘Eudemarec!’ moaned Agnes.

Mielusine was stilled, and the Bacach bent back his head, kneeling below her white skirts. But Agnes, weeping and cursing at her friend’s fate, plucked at their coats, and pulled them up and after her.

‘Let you be hurrying, let us go on,’ she said moaning, ‘we must go on out of this awful deadly mist.’

 

SO THEY FLED out of that county. And in the dark of the moon a hundred riders sallied forth, passing with wild whoops of joy beneath the branches of the orchards, out into the bare land on the lady’s greatest of all kailees, to hunt down and fetch back her Bacach, no matter how long it would be taking them. The moonbeams made a path for the robbers to be following, and there was only Grain’s shore where the lovers might be finding haven. But they had never heard of Grain as yet.

The man in the dark gray cóta mór saw Eudemarec’s end, and the pack of hounds scattering back down to the lough. He watched all that with a grim face, showing no more concern than a hanging judge.

Then he stood and slung the old quiver and bow across his shoulders, and took up the lovers’ trail.

Blood by Moonlight: 28

(A sample from Blood by Moonlight.)

© 2009 asotir. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

The Sixth Year of Night

In the sixth year of that Night, the students broke from their Teachers.

For in spite of all tricks, most students had learned nothing, could do nothing out of the ordinary – could do no more, in fact, than they had done during the Day. And they blamed the Special Ones and said they hoarded their secrets.

But others among the apprentices had become Masters, and contested with their Teachers for preeminence.

Fellowship and brotherhood were lost. There was a falling-out, and it came to hard words, blows, and killing.

Blood by Moonlight: 27

(A sample from Blood by Moonlight.)

© 2009 asotir. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

22. Of the Masquerade

DURING THE LAST MOONS before the masquerade, Lady Arianna was closed up in her garden, alone. Never a soul saw her in that time; but sometimes lovers strolling beneath the garden wall heard a soft low humming there.

And in that time, on the streets of the village across the lough, the countryfolk were shaking their heads. And their young daughters went down to the lough fifty at a time, ringing the bell and calling to the ferrymen, ‘Take me across, now! Let me go into service in the abbey!’ ‘No, take me instead, I’m more clever and willing!’

And in the long low hall the serving girls were hugging and kissing one another, the way they knew their service was reaching an end, and soon they would be rewarded and sent home again. The thought of their old parents was making them smile a sly and wicked smile. They were no more the sweet obedient lasses they’d been when they had come.

‘It is not the same for me,’ Agnes told them. ‘I’ll be taking no duais, let the steps be as bright as they can be.’

Agnes had dwelt on the crannog in the mist then almost the full term of service. Nine Moons had risen in the time since she had come across on the Swan Boat. And more, the Hundred Steps and a Step were clean, and many a time Old Meg came calling for Agnes, to be sending her on her way. But Agnes kept away from her, and could flee when she wished into Maid Buan’s chambers, where Old Meg dared not set foot.

In the bell-tower on the moon before the lady’s masquerade there was darkness and quiet, save for the soft hiss of the embers, and the passing of moonbeams through the window.

In that window the man was sitting, one leg dangling in the room, the other bent on the sill. He was dressed plain and dark, the way free-holding farmers might have gone to church in Day. His hair was dark and unruly, with a streak of silver above the left temple; his face was troubled. In his lap was curled his long-haired white cat. Her chin was resting on his hand. On the windowsill beside the man’s foot lay a card, face down.

The shining mist washing and lapping at the wall beneath the window made no sound. Far away stretched that waterish silence underneath the moon. Clouds came, covering the moon, the way the darkness deepened, and the room was lost to sight.

There was a war being waged in the soul of the Bacach. The different and various selves of him were fighting one against the others.

On top of them all sat the Wounded Lover, who loved the White Hind. But she was slain. Who had slain the White Hind? A vagabond man, a dark soul, a hideous rascal. And he grieved and would have wept the clock round, for the loss of his White Hind.

But under that self there lurked the Avenger. He hated the killer of the White Hind, and he cursed that killer, and damned him for all eternity.

But close under the side of the Avenger there hid the Observer. He knew some part of the truth, though he was mute and might not speak. But the Observer felt a chill steel scian blade piercing his heart when he heard the curses of the Avenger.

Then there was the Sly self, that laughed at himself and all the other selves for their pains and their furies and fears.

There was over the Sly self the Philosopher, that cared nothing for any of them, and set their pains at nought. He it was looked into the stars, and reckoned their movements, and had no care for anything under Heaven.

And there was the Madman, and this was the the self that the Bacach feared most of all. Round and round the Madman turned, and with a cutting blade he slashed at himself, and raged and bit.

And last and least of them all, there was a nameless self, that had the secret and the answer to all the pains and fears and anger of the other selves. But this one lived in terror of some great shadowy Thing that never showed its face. It was not mute, the nameless self, but it hid deep away in the folds and the corners, and never came out.

Sometimes the Bacach remembered, but memories were too much to bear, and sank back into the stuff of dreams. Sometimes the Bacach wished, but his wishes too were painful, and worse they went beyond his grasp, and he turned his back on them.

‘Bacach!’ sounded a soft voice from where the moonbeams had fallen. For the moon over the county of mists had set; darkness blacked the sky; blackness filled the bell-tower.

‘Who is calling me,’ asked the man, turning his head.

‘Do you not know me, my Bacach? Shame be to you for that!’

There’d been no sound or any light from the steps; and surely the man would have noted any such thing in the black, silent tower.

Over their heads, on the roof of the bell-tower, the dark man in his dark gray cóta mór leaned closer over his knees. His eyes narrowed into slits, and he was listening now with a heart and a half.

‘My heart is restless, my Bacach. I’m going to the garden gate time and again. Not even darkness soothes me. I’m finding no pleasure in my food or drink, my blood hounds or my blossoms.’

‘You are bored,’ he answered.

‘What then will revive my interest?’

‘Your new champion will do that.’

‘Who will he be, Bacach? What man would you choose for me?’

‘One you do not know, with a mind of his own.’

‘Oh, Bacach, how I treasure you!’

‘Then let me go!’ he cried; and the vehemence of his pain left a trembling in its wake.

The dark man on the rooftop reached forth, and gripped the edge of the parapet in his long lean fingers, and drew himself that closer to the edge.

‘Where would you be going?’ she asked, in an injured voice.

He gestured. There was a glow, half as of phosphorous, in the darkness where his fingers traced.

‘There’s only death waiting out there for you, Bacach,’ the voice reminded him.

‘One time I’ll leave,’ he promised her. ‘I’ll swim away in this lake. I’m only waiting, the way I don’t know where else to find her.’

‘What a stubborn child you are! Don’t be thinking to match your magic against mine! Twice now I’ve conjured you back out of death, and now you belong to me three times over, body and soul, and it’s here with me I want you.’

He drew his fingers over his brow, like a sign. ‘Tell me what I was before. Was my name Master Aengus?’

‘Who’s been whispering that name to you?’ she hissed. ‘I forbid it!’

The cat mewed, and she jumped to the floor with a soft thump-bump of paws.

Now the lady’s voice purred more soothingly, closer to the man’s ear, though still there was no sight of her in the dark beyond the bells.

‘Draw the cards for me, Bacach,’ she said. ‘Tell me of my lover.’

In the dark he lighted a candle and laid the cards, and answered all her questions. But his mind must have been elsewhere that time, the way, when time came to turn the card of the querent, it was two cards he’d laid down there by accident. One was La Torre, and the other La Temperanz. And when those cards were upturned, the unseen visitor’s laughter rang off the old bells.

‘O Bacach, I had a dream this moon. Untie its riddle for me. This is the way of it. I was on top of the casino, walking back and forth, waiting for someone. The night was frosty, and the stars so bright that I could reach my hand out and almost pluck them from the sky.

‘Then the stars dimmed, and I saw through the mist all my Swan boats burning on the lough. The fires went onto the land and were eating up all the trees of my orchards over the hills as far as the eye could see, making such a heat that the mists of this county were dispelled, leaving us naked under Heaven.

‘I called below, three times: at the third call there was a stirring, and my wards roused the bandits, and they rushed to save my orchards. There was still one ferry boat unburning, tied to the mooring pole.

‘But there was unseen to all of us a little red-brown mouse, and she chewing the rope of the ferry, sharpening her little white teeth. The last Swan Boat swung away, and my bandits fell stumbling into the water, drowning.’

The dark man on the rooftop drew on his strong long fingers, and pulled himself up standing.

‘What else betid?’ asked the Bacach.

‘Only the heat of the fires and the furious golden light surrounding me, and I woke.’

The man turned back into the window, dropping both legs into the lapping mist. He tugged on the white lock of his hair, and the dark man overhead could see him quite clearly now in the candle-glow.

‘It’s a hard dream,’ he said carefully. ‘I must ponder it.’

‘Do that,’ said the lady’s voice. ‘And now I mind me of it, you too were in the dream, O Bacach, standing on a rock, watching the little brown mouse. You knew how her labors would end, and yet you said nothing at all.’

Her voice sighed away into the silence of the lapping mist, yet a certain peril hung still in the air. Overhead the clouds moved on, baring the breast of the moon again. The Bacach picked up the cards beside him on the sill, and stepped down into the room, hiding from the stars. He lighted the twisted, bubbled end of another candle on the table, and shuffled and dealt out the cards.

‘I will test your fortunes, brown mouse.’ That drawing was unclear; but the card of the querent showed a winged trumpeter summoning forth a man and two women naked from the ground. And the name on that card was Il Giudizio.

‘Once more, once more,’ he was whispering: ‘and how many times is that? I’ll draw out her portrait once more, to see if I may find her.’ And for the hundredth time or more he was laying the cards for the White Hind.

The reading he was getting, it was confusion and obscurity.

At last he came to the down-turned card of the querent, of the White Hind. He was staring on that card for the longest time. Then carelessly he flipped it over. It was the same, of course. That card was always the same for her.

A hundred times or more he had drawn for her, always that one same card. And sitting staring at it, he was wishing he hadn’t dismissed the girl in the shift and velvet cloak, or at least that he could be remembering the name she’d given him.

The card of the White Hind was the card of a beautiful woman kneeling beside a pool, pouring water from two ewers, and the sky over her head ablaze with lights. And she naked as a tree in winter, and under her the words, Le Stelle.

The man stood, gathered the cards carefully in his hands, and put them into his pocket.

And the stillness about the abbey was broken by strains of music through the walls, the way the moon was sunk, and the darkness rising, and Arianna’s masquerade beginning.

For a time the Bacach was listening to the distant airs.

‘Yes,’ he said: ‘I will go to this ball. She is there.’

So he straightened his coat, drew his fingers through his hair, and for the first time in the nine Moons since his burial, the Bacach left the bell-tower.

And the dark man in the dark gray cóta mór crept down the wall to the window to the bell-tower room, and swung lightly in. A time he tarried, shuffling through the Bacach’s papers and going through his things; then he went off through the door, after the Bacach.

In the dancing hall Mac Bride had left a thousand candles burning, and schools of the fishy witchlights swam about the rafters, and folk were entering wigged and masked. This was Arianna’s masquerade, when she would choose her champion; and all the gentlefolk of the Night were gathering to honor her, and vie for the honor of being chosen.

The doors of the dancing hall were open onto lighted lawns where a thousand couples were strolling and casting coins into the lough. The silver coins were flashing and sinking in the inky waters, spilling round the sleeping damsel curled upon her side on the lakebed, while the currents tousled the ringlets of her hair.

And in the witchlights all the ladies were graceful and all the gentlemen elegant. There was a glamour cast over them all that darkness by Arianna, the way that all their flaws were hidden, and all their beauties shone. It was no hard task to tell the men apart despite their masks, but the ladies were transfigured into enigmas, and that was the lady’s desire.

Now, all the bandits were bursting to discover which of the ladies was Arianna, the way they would be devoting their attentions to her, to be chosen her champion. There was even a deal of wagering as to which lady was Arianna, and which bandit should be the first to unmask her. Some were saying that she had not yet arrived, others that she would not come at all, but only watched them from a secret recess. And still others were claiming she would come and go many times, in many masks.

Many gamblers wagered on a lady all in gold, and her hair dusted gold over its native darkness. She had the grace of a Tinker, her smile was smooth as a liar’s tongue, and upon her breast she wore a pin in the shape of an L.

But others put their money on a lady dressed in scarlet, the very hue of fresh-spilt blood. Her bared, slender shoulders were a provocation, her laughter lazy and insolent, and her mask it was the mask of a fox. She was the center round which many orbited, including Banker Ino, who was held to be wittier than the bandits, and privy to the lady’s secrets.

And many put their chances on another lady all in gold; and Maid Buan was delighted with the acclaim her gown was gathering her, and she danced every dance with a different rogue. But at the end of the masquerade Maid Buan still went back to her chambers alone, though even she herself couldn’t have told you why.

But most chose out a lady in white as Arianna: and she was Mielusine.

She wore her white gown, and the mask of the White Hind. And beholding herself in the glass, a fan in her hand, her bosom bared, her hair powdered and set, the enchanted mask upon her with its braided tail curving round her throat, Mielusine had had to reach out and touch the glass to be sure it was herself, indeed.

And in stepping down the stair, something had come over her, some shadow of a dream. She moved with sureness and was unknown by even her teachers, the way she was become the promise unfulfillable, the mystery, and the veil.

Dance after dance she moved about the floor, and she drank wine and breathed in the odor of the lough without, until she was so happy, that she felt herself twinned, and beheld herself beneath herself, laughing and floating and herself sweetly drunken upon flattery and the clamor of all men’s desire.

She saw Vasquez dancing with two ladies at once; he was easily known, the way he wore his bodach mask.

‘For shame,’ called Mielusine upon his head, ‘and what would your dancing friend say if she saw you so?’

From her words he knew her, but was not at all abashed.

‘My patroness must surely know,’ he said, ‘that even as I gained from her what I most desired, so she won from me what herself most longed for.’

Mielusine considered the matter, sheltered by her fan, then laughed. ‘You do not deceive yourself, Sir. But for this at least you must bear shame, that you appear unmasked at Arianna’s masquerade.’

The two ladies bursting into laughter of the most wicked tones, and Vasquez for once in his life discomfited, not knowing how to respond: wasn’t that the most delicious moment for Mielusine in all that darkness?

She moved on with a flourish into the whirling dancers and took command of the floor, the way all were applauding her, and their glad cries echoed by the screaming of a hawk flown into the hall. Three times the hawk screamed, stopping all chatter, stopping all dancing.

It was the cry of that bird, woke Agnes at last.

She sat straight up in her cot and rubbed the dreams from her eyes. Through the low eye-shaped window light was streaming. There was a great brightness from witchlights swimming about the grounds.

It was the masquerade. And how many hours since it had begun?

She thought to herself, It was fated; I am too late; I cannot go now.

Then she was gathering up the gown and leaving the hall. She passed to the snowy rocks beyond Arianna’s garden. There she set down her bundles, and drew off her shift.

The night was cold, and the black water colder still. She bit her lip and stepped in until she was quite swallowed up.

Bathing below the surface, sinking, she looked back up toward the night. The abbey shone there, fiery and swirling like a weeping of suns; Agnes swam up into its fire, drawing in a great breath.

Now, three of Arianna’s most feared bandits were strolling nearby, smoking and arguing which lady was Arianna’s mask. Then Ali put up his arm and said,

‘Behold the Lady of the Lough.’

Emerging from the water with a reed in her hand was a lake-wet, red naked girl. With grace and ease she dried herself from her bath. She set her hair up, and only then began to cover the perfection of her shape. At first it seemed a pity to the bandits, that such beauty must be disfigured by clothing; but when they saw the black gown on her like a second skin, then they saw that beauty embellished a hundredfold.

‘Surely, this is some goddess born out of the lough,’ murmured Sir Stephen.

‘She has not been at the masquerade, else I should have remarked her,’ vowed Philippe. ‘Ali, in truth, this is our lady, or else her double on earth. Now, let us three keep this secret, and let no one else hear of it: so we may reduce the number of our rivals.’ The robbers agreed, and stole back into the hall.

Over the doors of the casino, an emerald was hanging on a spider’s thread. A sign of bronze reflected it, graven with these words:

For the Fairest

 

All the ladies had reached for that jewel, but it had crawled up the spider thread out of their reach, leaving them laughing, somewhat scornfully, and cursing the dwarf, the way it was sure to be his work.

Agnes saw the jewel, but never the sign. It was the same emerald the village girl had taken for her place on the Swan Boat, and it was the same emerald the old lord had given Lady Agatha long, long before, when the Sun still shone.

She reached up and took it into her palm. She fastened it to the left breast of her gown where it belonged. Only then did she see the sign.

This cannot be, she said in herself, I cannot be the fairest, with this black spot on my palm. But the spot was gone, and her hand pale and pink as a girl’s. And she could not have said when she had last seen the spot.

As soon as Agnes entered the hall, bandits and self-made princes drew to her. She was the lady herself: they were sure of it! Setting her black skirts swirling, showing her ankles and even a bit of her calf, Agnes lost the last bit of her reserve.

‘Surely,’ she answered to all and no one there, ‘and I am the Spirit of the Dark of the Moon.’

But the other ladies were crying at the blue-green hawk flying about the candles. And they complaining to the bandits, ‘Will none of you rid us of this bird?’

The bandits set themselves a new rivalry, but the falcon scorned their efforts. Some, more hotheaded, were calling for pistols, but the redhaired vixen flatly forbade such violence.

Now as to Eudemarec, he was that time gathering morsels of meat from the banquet. Whistling he coaxed the bird down to his arm. He set it on an open windowsill, feeding it bits of meat on the back of his fist.

In this way the Breton restored the merriment of the dance, and condemned himself to serve as the falcon’s guardian the rest of the darkness. For awhile the ladies were admiring the hawk’s fierceness, until the music called them back, all but one, small and young, hardly of an age to join that company. Her gown was pearl gray and blue, and her mask in the fashion of a dove.

‘How ferocious!’ she sighed. ‘Are you not worried lest it attack you? For I have read that such creatures are by nature cruel, and torment their prey before devouring it.’

‘Though there may be such creatures in the world, she is not of that number. Should we condemn her for boldness, when we will pet the lamb whose flesh will later dress our table, though we disdain from butchering it ourselves?’

‘I don’t know that,’ answered Zelie. ‘I had a kitten once. She nipped my hands and left tiny dimples in my skin. But when she grew she batted field-mice until she killed them, and left them by my bed. I had to give her away in the end, I couldn’t bear it any more.’

‘She only honored you after her fashion,’ answered Eudemarec. ‘Later, when your claws have grown, you will understand.’

‘I should like,’ said the girl, ‘to touch it; but it will peck at me.’

‘I will undertake that she does not.’

Timidly Zelie stroked the feathers of the bird. The falcon was eying her nervously, but made no move to attack.

‘Her feathers are soft,’ murmured the girl; and the falcon spread its wings and flew out the window and was gone.

So Eudemarec was freed of the falcon, but now the maid Zelie was following him everywhere, hanging on his elbow. Agnes saw this, and contrived to draw Eudemarec apart a moment.

‘Eudemarec, I am Agnes. You’ll never find Arianna with this downy chit trailing you. Would you be freed of her?’

‘Agnes! Is it you, indeed? But no, though I thank you, ’twould be unkind. I have already lost my chance, and I’ll lay down my cards now, the way I’ve lost this hand.’

Zelie returned, tugging at Eudemarec’s sleeve: ‘Hawk-tamer, come quick, the dances are starting!’

These were the performed dances, and all ringed the stage to watch the dancers. One after another the dancers thrilled the company, until it was Mielusine’s turn.

She stood before the blaze of footlights for a moment.

The masked throng waited on her, and she was losing the memory of her practiced steps. What was the first of all my moves, and then what came after that? she was crying out inside herself. I cannot remember them all, I cannot remember even a one of them!

Then she threw off her cloak. It isn’t Mielusine facing them, now: it is the lady in the mask of the White Hind. Let them see only her, and let only herself guide my movements now. It was in her limbs and in her heart, the way she ruled them now. She signed the music to commence, and she danced.

It wasn’t the way she had danced by herself, beautiful though that had been. This, with all eyes devouring the sight of her, was better. She felt the power of the mask on them all, gentlemen and ladies: it was her power, and the music and movements burning out of her. And it was a little drunk she was, drunk on the desire the men were feeling for her, and the dancer herself burning to be lying red-naked in the arms of them, every blessed one.

Hidden in the burning footlights, in the midst of the throng, stood a man unmasked. He gazed up at the bold beauty playing with the desire of all.

So the Bacach first beheld Mielusine in the mask of his White Hind.

The crowd surged closer to the burning footlights. From beyond that barrier of light, the red mouth of the White Hind bright and hot smiled beckoning back at them.

The trees in the burnt enchanted wood would not have known her for their shy sweet Maid during that dance. She was so bold she shocked even the bandits.

Mielusine bowed, and cloaked herself again during the applause. Two other dancers came on, their faces glum, the way they knew how little would be their reward for following her.

Behind the stage Mielusine was laughing, swimming in the love of the admirers.

It was a need in her strong as breathing, to be among these men; to stand so close that their presence embraced her, and she was drowning in the smell of them. She could feel their gaze upon her as hands caressing her body, and she was that pleased.

‘Later, sirs!’ she told them. ‘When the others have finished, then let you seek me in the hall.’

‘Will I be seeing you there?’ asked Vasquez.

‘If I want you to,’ she answered. The insolence of the reply seemed native to her. She laughed, seeing him go. Hadn’t he been right after all?

In the ebb, she saw the Bacach. His face seemed itself a mask, waxen and yellow, tinged with old pain.

‘Do not go,’ he cried. ‘What is this mask? Do you know? Are you the White Hind?’

‘No, I’m only a dancer,’ she answered, and in the press slipped away, eluding them all, gliding into Night. It was her pleasure just then to be swimming in the mist and witchlights away from them all.

The Bacach went after her. For an instant he saw her, palely roseate in the floating witchlights, rounding the ruined walls of his basilica. Then she was gone. His heart was kicking, his hands trembling, his brow chill.

He followed.

And the mists covered both of them, and the witchlights swam on, thickening the mists with their brightness.

All balls must end, even that one; the music ceased, and the ladies, the maids, and the bandits climbed the snowlike Hundred Steps and a Step. Soon the slender young Moon would be rising.

The nine young girls under Mac Bride’s command, yawning great yawns, set to snuffing out the thousand candles.

Zelie, the child dressed as a dove, asked Eudemarec to escort her to her door, and they climbed to apartments where the Breton had never been. The girl smiled shyly. ‘Will you not step in a moment, sir, until I may get a candle lit?’

‘Surely I’ll do that,’ answered Eudemarec.

They passed within the large carven door, they passed into inner chambers where no witchlights swam, and all was black as ink.

In the darkness the Breton heard the falling of her cloak; he heard a rustling at the snowclad windowsill; in the open starlight he saw the falcon lighting there. Then he turned, the way the candle flared to the kiss of the match; and Eudemarec beheld there Lady Arianna, unmasked, unclothed, in glory.