(A sample from Blood by Moonlight.)
© 2009 asotir. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
2. Of the Thing That He Did
ON SUMMER’S EVE Lady Agatha went riding, through the long dusk sparkling with bonfires from every hill, and by chance it was Master Aengus’ farm she was riding past. His house was fallen in, dwelt in by deer and foxes; his fields were fallow, his milch-cow gone away, his dog tracked and slain for taking sheep. But no man, not even a King’s man, would take over that farm, for the curse that lingered there.
‘It’s a shame,’ said a man, ‘for the land to be barren and wasting away. Won’t his people come to claim the place?’
‘You know he hasn’t any people at all,’ said another. ‘Even old Tadgh and Maille May, they only took him in, the way they weren’t blessed with any children of their own, so they say. He was a foundling child.’
‘Where,’ she wondered, ‘has he gone to, then?’ She felt gentleness toward him, now he was gone away forever. For she felt safe at last from his eyes and from the feelings she felt underneath the fear, like the feeling the hind must feel when the hunter tracks her. But the sight of his farm was as if a cold hand put its fingers down the neck of her. Glad she was to put that ruin at her back!
AND MASTER AENGUS stood upon a spine of hills, between Earth and Heaven in the burning, burning night. The rush of the sea swarmed round him like the wildest blessing, and the gentle air was thick with it.
And Master Aengus pushed into the air onto the far side of the hill over the strand. That was how he won through at last, into the back of beyond, where no mortal men may ever pass. And the fire in the air swarmed and buzzed around him like a hundred thousand bees. But Master Aengus pressed on still.
A track of stones led down to a little stone hut. He bent and beat on the door with his staff.
‘Who’s there?’ was asked.
‘Open to me, now!’ shouted Aengus.
The latch stirred, and the door opened three fingers wide. An old, old crone peeped out. She was so old her feet might well have walked the earth before the first grass grew.
Master Aengus smiled a wild smile into that lovely face. ‘Give me the heart of my Lady Agatha and let her yield to me, or else the peace of death I’ll never see.’
But those words broke the crone’s face into a grin. She banged the door shut, and her old voice said, ‘Fool Aengus! D’you think I don’t mind what wind cries in the sedge?’
‘Come out!’ cried Aengus. But his staff and his voice broke on the stones.
Leaving, he broke a yellow pin-wheel in the garden path. It was a thing done out of spite. But far away a wave came crashing on the shore, curling all around the Irish land.
AND LADY AGATHA prospered, to hear the world tell of it, and gave herself to reading. Still and all, to some she seemed unsatisfied with all the gold she’d won. Her lord was kind enough to her, but he loved his hounds and horses every bit as much; and he was old, with an old man’s ways.
There was never a harvest for promise like that year’s harvest. It promised fair to be as rich as Lady Agatha, as folk said, and make truth of the saying that on Bron Trogain, the start of the harvest, the Earth lay in labor under the grain, the way bron trogain is the trouble of the Earth.
On the day after Bron Trogain the old lord had a word with the magistrate, and Master Aengus was outlawed, and the King’s men rode out on his trail with their white hounds.
And Lady Agatha went to the desolate lake.
She had never gone there, never since the day Master Aengus had espied her, and she had spoken a thing – no, he couldn’t have heard her murmur, not clear across the lake.
Lady Agatha let trail the reins and wandered in the sedge. The red sun of Lammas Eve shone off the waters into her eyes and it was sad she was, the way the cold was gathering in the upper airs, and it was nearly summer’s end.
BUT MASTER AENGUS was caged in a hollow tree at the edge of a wood under a spine of hills, and he with a bit of meat on the end of his sword to roast over his fire, when one of the King’s hounds found him. Big it was, sow-white, its ears red as rowan berries. The baying of the other hounds sounded from out the mist, and the King’s men close behind.
Master Aengus dipped the bit of meat into the fire, bringing out the juices, and offered it to the hound. For a moment the hound was wavering between man and meat; then it set its jaws about the meat. Master Aengus spitted the dog on his sword, and ran it through.
The baying of hounds rang off the hills. Master Aengus left his father’s sword in the hound. Far away in the wood something glimmered white in the mist. It was a pooka or a hind a-fleeing into a thicket. Master Aengus followed it.
THAT SAME EVENING Lady Agatha went riding in the wind and rain, and it was black night before she ventured back into the manor house, river-wet through cloak and dress and stockings, pale of face, her hands like knots in the leather reins. She let her maid undress her, and she warmed herself in the fire in her chamber, and slipped into her bed to sleep.
INTO A HOLLOW LAND the white thing led Master Aengus, where the bogs quaked round his feet. The soft rain feeding his fever, splashing on his brow, shuddering to steam, until bright laughter stopped him.
A lady with a silver cloak and crown of hair was sitting on a stone. Her brow was a lily, her eyes were twinkling and her lips red as bleeding blackberries.
‘Why are you laughing, then?’ asked Master Aengus.
‘Are you not a farmer from the Bride?’ asked the beauty in her turn. ‘I’ve heard tell of you.’
‘What thing have you heard?’
‘Ah, this and that! That your looks were such, folk took to calling you Aengus for a jest; that your manner was such, they called you Master, poor as you were. And that you know many a difficult and dangerous thing: in short, that you are a free thinker, and a philosopher.
‘And what has that won you, Master Aengus? Lady Agatha still blushes when you gape at her. Not all the potions ever blent will win you what you want!’
‘What then but die?’ asked Aengus.
‘Have you courage? Would you dare all?’
‘I would dare nothing, for nothing’s all to me.’
‘Then you might do something after all. And then the curse against your love will be ended, and your lady will consent to love you – or rather, she will conceive for you the strongest amorous desire. But if you do it, Aengus! Then her longing for you will be short-lived, and meanwhile all her world will be ruined and waste!’
The beauty smiled, daring and tempting and urging all at once.
‘I will do it.’
The beauty pointed with a twig. ‘Go into this hollow. In your shirt you’ll be shivering, and your throat it will be dry. It’s Samhain now and the Winter’s Moon, elder than the Sun. Not all the fire of day can thin the mist on this holy last night, with Winter wanting to be born.
‘And you will hear a singing down the way, like a nightingale. Draw near, but make no sound.
‘In an island in the bog you’ll be finding a slender maiden singing, and she alone and drawing in the mud with a willow-wand. Little older than a girl she’ll be in her grass-green coat.
‘Catch her if you can, but if she prove too quick, it’s with cleverness you must coax her out. Hold on fast, and don’t be letting go until she promise all you want! She has the secret, though she will be swearing she doesn’t know it at all. And if she will not, then tell her, do it for my sake. And if still she will not, then show her this.’
From her sleeve the beauty drew a small white stone, rounded and smooth, the size of a hen’s egg.
Master Aengus took the stone, the leag lorgmhar. He went down the path. The beauty’s silver voice calling after him:
‘She’ll be telling you your love can never be, dark Aengus. Your love, and your love only in all the world, is so cursed: and why should that be so? But there is a way. Would you wake the Unappeasable Host, Aengus? Would you break the Axle, would you prick the Sun’s blood-red black boil, for one woman’s sake? Could any man’s love be so mad or singular?’
Master Aengus went into the hollow. In his shirt he was shivering, and his throat was dry, just as she said it would be. It was Samhain and the Winter’s Moon, and not all the fire of day could thin the mist on that last night, with Winter wanting to be born.
And then he heard a singing down the way, like a nightingale.
AGATHA woke up in her golden bed.
Now, that was New Year’s Eve by the cottagers’ calendar, when all the souls are loosed. In spite of the rain, the land was brightened by hundreds of bonfires lighting on the hills; needfires the countryfolk called them, burned to rekindle the Sun against winter night. Lady Agatha huddled underneath the pallid golden sheets, hearing a sound of hoofbeats, of a hundred hundred riders coming forth. And she heard a gentle woman laughing: and she could not sleep. It was four weeks before the fever would be leaving her.
The next evening was clear and fine, and the rich men and their well-fed ladies in the manor house were delighting in the splendors of the sunset. It was most unseasonably warm.
And in the last moment of the day, a small black speck showed on the sun’s broad face.
Lady Agatha all at once asked, ‘Whatever became of the strange lonely farmer was ever chasing me, was Master Aengus not his name?’ But they didn’t know.
All that night the rich folk lay sleepless in the heat. Cambric upon cambric and the finest India muslins were let drape upon the floor.
Lady Agatha was alone. Her lord had gone out to take the measure of his lands, and his voice calling to his hounds came from far-off through her window, till it was hidden in the wind.
And she heard a great wave breaking on the stones of the Irish land, washing to the Western Sea; and an anguished cry went with it, from a stricken old woman in a hut beyond the hill. For the girl had told her tale.
There was a story the cottagers told to make sense of the word, Samhain, and it was like this. Suain is a gentle sound, and at Samhain gentle voices sound.
And Lady Agatha heard a third voice calling; and that was Aengus’ voice.
She went to the window, but was seeing not a soul. She shut the window to stop the voice, but the room waxed so warm she had to open up again. His song went on and on. And the beat of the riders was everywhere; and Lady Agatha was so forlorn, that she fell asleep at last.
And Master Aengus’ song went right into her sleep.
She knew now why the riders came. They came for her.
FOR FOUR WEEKS the air waxed warmer.
For four weeks the spot grew bigger on the Sun’s broad face, like a fat beetle that ate of it.
And every night, the Moon in the sky grew rounder, and fuller, and nearer by.
For four weeks the days grew shorter. Mist like soot obscured the sky. Weary and spent, the wealthy men and well-fed ladies were crying for a good long rest: in all those days and nights, they had not known sleep, no, not a wink of sleep at all. But Lady Agatha slept straight through those nights, and the days too, with a secret smile upon her mouth.
And the twenty-seventh day was brutal and dark.
And in the evening of that day the skies broke clear. And in the last moment of that day the blood-red blackness swallowed the Sun’s broad face; and the third wave shattered all the stony Irish coasts. They both heard it, she and he; but none of those others did.
Shooting stars rained out of Heaven in the dusk of that day, and the wealthy slept at last. They slept as they had never slept before. They slept like dead souls. Oh, but they slept!
And the date of that day was the 28th day of November, in the year of Our Lord 1757.
BUT THAT NIGHT Lady Agatha did not sleep.
‘Aengus,’ she murmured, waking.
The old lord was standing over her bed. ‘Why do you call that name?’ he asked. His face was a dreadful mask.
‘Because he’s there below, and it’s his voice I hear singing out my name,’ she answered gaily.
Lady Agatha stretched out her limbs, and she rose out of bed in only her shift, and stepped across the room.
She heard the old lord shouting for his steed, and riding after the Sun.
She lighted a lantern, hot between her hands. She paced about her golden bed. Tumult was rising in her roselike breasts, and a hollow in her like the apostate’s regret.
She leaned against the casement, peering into black. There was a glow lacing the hilltops, as from forty flaming cities. The pregnant trees murmured with the growing chaos, and the black air shook, with the elongating Night.
‘Oh,’ she cried and sighed at once, ‘Oh, Aengus!’
He stepped from a tree into her light. In the dancing glow his face gleamed darkly, sweating, as from some toil terrible and great. She was hearing his song again, and it welling in her, drowning out her own voice, until she danced to it.
She knew that he had caused these things.
‘Who are you, Master Aengus, and what are you, that you can summon up the winds, the clouds, and this Night? What are you, that you dare do such things?’
‘I am yours,’ he answered, and gestured with his hands, and more winds came, like hot breaths, and she was watching the gestures he made with his fine and lovely hands.
And she was afraid no more.
The warm night swam in Lady Agatha’s titian hair, her eyes were dim with passion, sultry desire was roused in her strawberry lips. Red naked beneath her fine lawn shift she reached and called to him hoarsely, ‘O my Beloved, my aching sweet love, come up to me here, clothe me with your kisses and lie alongside me for the night!’
‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘for one Night.’
