(A sample from Blood by Moonlight.)
© 2009 asotir. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
18. How the Maid Entered the Court
ONCE IN MOONLIGHT, whenas all the abbey folk were asleep other than gamblers and servants, the dark man in the dark gray cóta mór went striding round the crannog at the water’s edge. Three times he went round the crannog, going against the sun.
When he stopped he stood in the shadow of the ruined bell-tower. Slow now, the dark man raised his head and looked up to the tower. From the ground the bell-tower was rising into the whiteness of the mist, and vanishing away.
The dark man stepped forward, and laid his hand on the age-old stones of the bell-tower. Long and lean and sinewy was that hand, and the bones showed in it like bolts and rods of iron.
The dark man looked about from under the brim of his tricorn, and satisfied himself that no others went about. He shifted about his bow and his pouch of arrows on his back. Then he reached up higher, and let his fingers sink into the cracks between the stones, and he drew himself up. He reached up then with his left hand, higher still, and dug the tips of his fingers into the cracks between his stones, and drew himself higher.
Hand over hand the dark man climbed the wall of the bell-tower. The mist wrapped round him and swallowed him up.
Old Meg went by, between checking on her girls; she tarried by the bell-tower, and looked up that way; she saw nothing there of the dark man, the way he was hidden already in the high mist.
And the mist brightened and whitened around the dark man climbing. It was to the uppermost airs of the mist he had climbed; climbed higher still; climbed out into the moonlight air above the mist.
Over his head was a great window open in the wall, under the roof of the bell-tower. The end of a telescope was showing there.
The dark man shifted his hands, and followed the cracks between the stones in the wall, and went softly, and crept around the window. He climbed up to the rooftop. Where he stood breathing with heaviness, and unbending the iron bolts of his fingers stained with the lichens from the age-old stones.
He leaned out over the parapet of the rooftop, and looked out below. Below him the window opened, and he could see the telescope, and hear the sighs of the man languishing within.
The dark man in the dark gray cóta mór smiled, and sat tailor-fashion on the stones, and began his vigil on the bell-tower.
AS TO EUDEMAREC now, he wasted his hours gambling, the way there was nothing else to be interesting him. Maybe it was because he didn’t care, but he was winning all his hands and enriching himself; he enjoyed to spend his winnings adorning the dancers he welcomed to his bed.
Once he spent a whole moon gaming; he took the bank and went on winning; then he was losing, and then winning again. Maid Buan, the proud one, was wagering hard against him.
Eudemarec knew Maid Buan well by now: she was always coming into the gaming hall and gambling away the treasures men were showering upon her for her favors, vainly; and she would challenge hardest whatever man won the most that moon, the way she found him shining with the glory of the luck of all his winnings, and handsome, and it seemed the moon glow shone on and gathered round and round him. On this moon, the glow was shining on Eudemarec’s head and hands, and now she was striving with a heart and a half to break his bank. But as to the Breton, no thought was in his head outside of the cards and their numbers, and he didn’t even know it when Maid Buan’s treasures were depleted, and she turned on her heels with a fury and left; he didn’t even know it when the Moon went down and the mist darkened.
In the end he pushed back his chair away from the table, and with deadly eyes stared at the piles of his winnings, gold and silver coins, and rings and chains and chains.
He stifled a yawn in the back of his sleeve.
‘For Maid Mielusine’s bank,’ he said, and went out.
The lawns were still. It was almost the hour of moonrise again. A few guests were hastening to catch the last ferry to land. The ferrymen then put up their boats and went in to their suppers.
The lough was murmuring gently. The fog was soft on the Breton’s cheek. There was a sort of stillness, as of death. Very slowly the mist brightened, and the waters of the lough were brightening. In the county of mist, moonrise was never known until after it had come.
Eudemarec looked into the silver in the lough.
‘Arianna,’ he breathed, as though taken by surprise with the thought. ‘Arianna d’argent.’
AT THAT TIME, Arianna had three maids, Maid Buan, Maid Ferb, and Maid Niam. Each had charge of fifty maids, and it was the way of them, that they would tend the wild orchards round the lough. Maid Buan saw to the apples, Maid Ferb to the pears, and Maid Niam had charge of the quinces.
Arianna herself kept a garden, luxuriant beyond all telling, at one end of the crannog. And the fragrance that garden exhaled into the dark airs of the Night, commingled with the mists of the lough, and carried over the whole county.
Now as to Mielusine, she was waking and walking with the Moon, and still evading the court. The Swan Boat did not cross when the Moon was up, but Mielusine often looked across the waters to the apple orchard, where the little grave was.
‘Ino, why am I here?’ she asked sadly. ‘What do I look for?’
The banker laughed. ‘You’re looking for what many do, Wood-Maid: a doorway back to Day.’
Mielusine sighed. ‘Yes, I don’t like the Night. It’s sneaking and nasty.’
‘Don’t let the lady catch you saying that,’ warned the dwarf.
It was Ino, convinced her at last to be showing herself at court. While many bandits went roaming after adventure, others attended Arianna. Each darkness the lady walked the crannog, and the witchlights colored the mists, and threw long gleams across the waters of the lough.
‘Mielusine,’ asked the lady, ‘why do you slander the darkness?’
‘It’s only that it makes me shiver, ma’am,’ said Mielusine, not daring look at Arianna’s magpie eyes. ‘There’s so much unseen in it.’
‘It is its virtue,’ answered Arianna. ‘Whatever you see must be as it seems, and nothing else. There are no regrets in Night.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘We give no sanctuary here, Mielusine. You must join us or go back.’
‘I cannot be going, ma’am! Where else can I learn of love?’
The lady laughed a silvery laugh. ‘If you would stay, you must be welcomed by the waters. It is a custom all here must undergo.’
‘What shall I do?’
The lady led Mielusine to the water’s edge. That was on the end of the crannog, and the vapor of the garden thick and warm about them. The stones were piled high and steep about, like skulls crowding up out of the lough: the water opened deep and black beneath their feet.
Arianna pointed down into that sluggish mere.
‘Come the full Moon you’ll go into the lough or leave us, little maid.’
The lady said those words on the dark of the moon. And it was thirteen darknesses Mielusine had, to be going to the water’s edge and looking down, and thinking up her fear. Until that darkness came.
‘Go down into the lough, Mielusine, bring back a reed from the lough bed, and tell us what you see there.’
The lady’s whisper burned the maid’s ears, and she shuddered. ‘Those who lack courage cannot stay here,’ whispered Arianna wickedly. ‘The beasts will harm you only if you wish them to.’
Mielusine looked up into Arianna’s eyes. Very small and childlike Mielusine seemed, and the gentlemen and ladies whispering among themselves, so sure that she would not survive the trial.
Others helped her out of her gown, and naked as a pearl white scarf shivering in the breeze, Mielusine stood on the rocky edge. She had not even a shift on, not a stitch.
She could not swim a stroke, but thought to herself, Better to drown than suffer the taunts of the ladies, laughing behind their fans.
She pinched her nose, did little Sini, and jumped.
For a time the cottager’s daughter was clinging to the rock, and the water was lapping round her, and in the witchlights the ladies of the court saw her kicking legs flashing under the water. The ends of her hair were snakes writhing on the surface. Then she went under, and the ladies saw a glimmering deep down, but then it wavered and vanished among the gleams of the witchlights on the waves.
Down into the oily blackness struggled Mielusine.
On the rocks the ladies took their ease awaiting her. Ino was going among them, whispering into their ears. They all laughed gracefully and maliciously to hear his words, and eagerly nodded their agreements.
At first Mielusine closed her eyes, kicking and waving her arms. But soon she found she could see, after a fashion, even in the water.
Great shapes were moving past her, and with a shudder she kicked away deeper. The water pressing against her, pushing her back up, and herself fighting and fighting against it.
The water broke, and Maid Mielusine paddled to the rock. Arianna herself stretched down her hand to her.
‘Give me the reed, and tell us how you fared.’
Mielusine shivered. Her hair slid straight and slick down her back. Her small, narrow face was gleaming in the torchlight, and she had never looked so lovely. Her slender trembling arm held up the lake-weed.
‘I went down,’ she said, gasping still. ‘The water didn’t – didn’t want to let me. I remembered what you said. The water seemed warmer, deep down. I went deeper.
‘On the bottom was a green and golden light. I took the reed. Then I saw a blue maiden lying on the sand. She was dressed all in flowers, and very beautiful. She was curled up on her side, and pillowed her face on her hands. Her eyes and her mouth were smiling in a dream. Then I had no breath, and swam up with the bubbles.’
‘Welcome,’ said Lady Arianna, and drew Maid Mielusine lightly up beside her. Straightway some minxes came forward to dry Mielusine and dress her again.
‘Who was the maiden?’ asked Mielusine.
‘One who died and never found her lover,’ answered Arianna.
‘What was her name? Does everyone see her so?’
‘Each sees something different, now come, eat and rest,’ whispered the dwarf in her ear. ‘The lady showed you great favor, don’t try her patience! See the jewels I’ve won! I wagered the ladies that you would pass the test, and now half these shall be yours.’
Ino laughed wickedly, and danced a little jig.
Then Mielusine was kissed by the bandits and minxes of the abbey, and they made a feast, with dancing and singing, and named that darkness after Mielusine, seating her in the seat of honor in the casino hall.
None of them noticed the solitary figure in the shadows by the door. She was but a girl of the maidservants, and of the least of them, winning no favor, the way she was still wearing the homespun dress of her village: and its hem black and ragged from the dirty work she did.
When all the court had passed, the girl stepped out from shadow, and resumed her pacing round the isle. The gamesters were in the gaming-rooms, the robbers out on their lickerish quests, the maids in the orchards, the gentlefolk in the hall, and Arianna gone alone into her garden. Only the maidservant strode the outer grounds between the abbey and the waves.
She rounded the servants’ building. She went past the dark pens where Arianna’s fifty hunting hounds were pent, scratching at the ground, snuffing at the vapor of the garden, whining hungrily.
She went across the lawns to the crannog’s end, and by chance she lingered to a stop at the water’s edge where the maid had had her trial.
There she stayed, looking down into water.
She was thinking, perhaps, of the lovers she had spied about the crannog, kissing in dark corners. Perhaps she was wondering what made the lovers so happy.
And wasn’t she wondering, too, whether herself would ever again be happy?
She had been angry as a girl, with poverty and the pride of her parents, who would not accept the English, or change their church. She had been thankful to the old man who had lifted her out of that poverty. She’d had moments of gladness by him, surely: when he gave her a horse or new gowns, or took her off to London. But happiness, now?
The maidservant sighed, and kicked a stone into the water; it vanished underneath the ink. She looked on her palm, on the black spot there.
Her one time of happiness was when the Night first fell. What did it matter that he had made a spell to give her that? And he was dead, now: she herself had seen him dead and buried.
The boatmen at the mooring-poles watched the bandits laughing and rushing into the casino. Through the doors voices were reaching them, welcoming them, raised in a song to honor Mielusine; and the singing filled the crannog, so that the bandits did not even notice, far away beyond the hounds’ pens, beyond the kitchens and Arianna’s garden walls, the small upright figure pensive on the lough.
