(A sample from Blood by Moonlight.)
© 2009 asotir. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
16. Of the Leag Lorgmhar
GENTLY, the Swan Boat bumped upon the crannog.
The ferrymen slung the ropes about the mooring poles, and the seven girls walked up the planks and onto the ground of the crannog. The mist seemed thicker here, and the girls were feeling its chill droplets kissing their cheeks; on the girls’ hair the droplets caught the light like brilliants. Hanging in the mist, moving about, globes of brightness slowly swam over head. Some of the globes were no larger than a man’s head, others a full fathom wide. The globes trailed spiny black tails that were propelling them through the air.
At the end of the mooring a woman was waiting, and she was Old Meg. Old Meg looked the girls over with her bright, bright eyes while they were curtsying to her; then she swept her arm back behind of herself.
‘Welcome,’ said Meg.
The girls looked about, eating up the wonderful sights of the place. In the moonlight the abbey and the crannog could never be seen from the village, the mist was so blinding white. But in the dark of the moon could be seen, not so much the thing itself, but only the image of its lights in the water. Through the dark of the moon the abbey was ablaze, and the village dark and closed. Only, here and there, a shutter softly opened, and a young lad or pale-eyed lass would be gazing out into the mist, and wondering. They never beheld the true shape of the abbey, they who dared not cross and enter service there, as these girls did.
‘Well,’ said Meg, the mistress of the girls, looking them over; ‘this crop seems a bit better than the usual run of what straggles over; all but you, the last one there: why, you’re hardly a girl at all, and have a proud look in your eyes.’
The creature stared back at Meg. Meg sighed, threw up her hands and said, ‘Well, what ever can the lady expect of me, when I’m getting such as this! Come along then, girls, don’t be gawking, it’s impolite, and likely to win you a whipping hereabouts. Mark me, come along now!’
Meg took the girls round the buildings to their beds, the better to be showing them the place, and telling them their duties. Quietly they trooped round beneath the high, white stone walls. Through the airs around them swam the witchlights, globular, effulgent fish, trailing snaky tails, breathing out brightness from their gills.
The abbey was not so much built by the setting of stone upon stone, as spun like a spider’s bridge. Its halls and rooms were never the same, but changeable as the body of a woman. Sometimes this building was the refectory, sometimes it was the brewery; the lady chapel there, now: next darkness, maybe the garden would be in its place. It could be a maze at times, and you never knowing what would be the room beyond the door you were opening. But there was a place for the servants, and a place for the kitchens, and a place for a bell-tower rising over the shell of a basilica, and a place for Arianna’s blood-hounds; that much at least could be said.
And the grandest building there was the casino. Once of a time it had served as the Abbot’s home and offices; now the Italian pleasure-house, it rose seven stories to the lady’s chamber at the top of its forward tower, called the Lady’s Tower; under which were the bedchambers of the gentle folk, the lady’s wards and robbers, and down below them gaming rooms and showing halls, and a feast hall. At its rearward wall rose the framework for another tower, on which a few men were working; that was called the Bride’s Tower, but its oldest stones were centuries old, and no one would speak of the tale that lay behind it. From the front doors of the casino to the lady’s rooms above, seven stories up, coiled an immense marble staircase, one hundred steps and a step all blackened with muck; but all the other rooms of the casino were properly clean.
‘This will be your duty,’ Meg told the proud, proud girl; ‘what is it we’re to be calling you again?’
‘Agnes,’ the girl replied, flashing her eyes.
‘Agnes, well now, Agnes, then: you needn’t be helping any of the others in their tasks, Agnes, no, you’re much too fine and good for that, old Meg can tell your quality, Agnes, but all you need be doing is the cleaning of the Hundred Steps and a Step. And you needn’t even be working the whole nine months out, but as soon as all the steps are white as a child’s teeth, it’s free you’ll be. But if you fail, you go empty-handed.’
And Meg laughed when she said it.
THE SERVING-GIRLS slept in a dark, low hall, half-buried in the crannog, and ever wet with lake-water seeping up under their beds. Three times fifty cots there were, for three times fifty girls.
And some were sobbing for homesickness, and some sighing for love, and some deep in dream, their labors had been so hard. Many were naked in the arms of their lovers in the upper chambers, or filling their mouths with wine and sweet-meats in the casino. They were the girls had been there longest, and would not go back home.
Again and again the swan-boats poled across the lough, discharging and collecting the wild folk of the abbey, the robbers, the gamblers, the rogues and the jades. No one saw the dark man in the cóta mór squatting on the hill. Until he rose, as though after making up his mind, and stepped out of the circle of his stones. Gently he strode down to the water’s edge, holding his tricorn low and his muffler high over his face, and he joined the others waiting, and was ferried across with no questions into the white buildings grown up on the crannog.
MAID MIELUSINE had been welcomed to the abbey, the way she was the lady’s ward. She was given chambers high in the casino, and told to prepare herself, the way in time she must be welcomed by the waters. But Mielusine kept to her chambers, and did not dress, and did not go down the Hundred Steps and a Step in the processions.
So she stayed there, lonely and longing, looking out the window into the bright mist. Witchlights swam in and out of the window, glowing in her chambers, some of them pink, others greenly glowing, or golden or amber or gray. It was the virtue of those fish to be dark and drinking in the light while the Moon was rising, and breathing back light when she sank. Some of the serving girls, those who had been there longest, brought her up food and the oddments she was needing; it was themselves told her of the abbey.
‘In the abbey,’ said one, ‘all is intrigue and passion. Here is no mourning for the Day. In the abbey Arianna built her playground, and stocked it well with meat and drink, amusements, women, and men.’
‘Arianna!’ exclaimed Mielusine. ‘Who is she now, and where did she come from? I was never hearing of her in the day.’
‘Och!’ cried one girl. ‘The Lady Arianna was fished up out of the bed of the lough, after a sleep longer than centuries, by a horseman who had come.’
‘Nay, why are you filling her head with such nonsense?’ cried another. ‘The truth of it is, Miss, that in the day Arianna was no better than a common adventuress.’
‘Yes, and she killed the King’s chief magistrate in a castle in Wales.’
‘No, that’s not it at all! Miss, listen to me, I’ll be telling you the truth. I heard it from a certain gentleman, and he in a position to know, that Arianna is a foreigner out of the East.’
‘No, not the East: it’s Italy she hails from, now: Venice, I heard said. She was a noblewoman there, shut up in a convent by her family for the hotness of her blood–’
‘Hold your tongue now, don’t be filling her head with lies!’ shouted another, giggling: ‘Truth is, Arianna was a courtesan, who tempted men from the shade of the Coliseum in Rome.’
‘No, you’re wrong,’ said the first, and ‘You’re the lying one!’ said another. Every serving girl was telling Mielusine a different tale; and there were too many tales of Arianna.
So Mielusine kept for many darknesses undressed in her chambers, and was frightened to be going down in the processions, the way even the serving girls there were splendid. She was standing naked in her shift in the high open windows of her bedchamber. She was looking out into the burning silver mist, feeling its droplets on her throat and her breast, tasting its watery perfume, breathing it in. And the mist off the lough was rousing desires in Maid Mielusine for longing, for daring, for recklessness, and for more.
In her loneliness she was thinking more and more on Master Aengus. She could not get beyond it, that he was dead. Lady Agatha had taught Mielusine dances and all manner of things, with only Master Aengus in mind; now he was no more, what was the good of her?
His rooms, high in the bell-tower, were still empty. No one was admitted there.
One moonrise, when the lady and the court lay down to dream, Mielusine dressed herself, uncomfortable in the heavy dress after going so long in only her shift. She touched open the door to her bedchamber, and crept down out onto the crannog. The moonglow was burning her cheek like the blush of a secret sin. She walked across the lawns between the high buildings into the blasted, black shadow of the basilica. She stepped into the ruin and softly climbed the bell-tower stairs to Master Aengus’ door.
And she turned the latch in the door, and stepped into the darkness beyond.
A GREAT WAYS DOWN below her, in the pleasure-house, Agnes was nearing the Hundred Steps and a Step. It was her first time at her chore. In the abbey, the servants toiled while the gentle ladies dreamed.
She looked up those steps, at the dirt on them, at the black on them.
She had a pail of soapy water, a scrub brush and a rag. She was dipping the brush into the water and scrubbing the step; and after a bit she was wiping the step off with the rag, rinsing the rag in the water; and when the water was black, but the step no less so, she was bearing the pail out, emptying it, filling it, and staggering back.
At last, come moonfall, the first step seemed a little less black and a little more gray. She sighed, wiped her brow and thought to herself, That’s better, now! And next time better still!
But when she came back the next moonrise, the step was even blacker than the others. The way she was starting over again, moon after moon, and every blessed moon.
In the dark of the moon she was not resting, but went out looking on the windows of the pleasure-house. She heard the music, the laughter, and the indolent voices of the nobles of the Night. She was hating them all for their ease and pleasures. And she was looking up higher, to the windows fading into mist, and wondering which was Arianna’s.
The serving-girls took their meals in a low hall alongside the kitchens. Agnes ate on a rock over the water, looking into the lough, until it was time to be back at her chore.
The steps she had cleaned were foul again, as always. There was no end to it, it seemed. Standing before them one time more, her pail in one hand and her brush in the other, her shoulders shaking and tears starting from her eyes, she moaned, ‘But how can this be? Who is doing this?’
‘I will show you, Miss,’ said a voice behind her – and that was a voice she knew.
MAID MIELUSINE stood a long time in Master Aengus’ room. It was quiet in the cold bare bell-tower, and black dark. All she could make out was a little glimmering of the mist beyond the bells; by its light she could see nests built up in the crannies, of rooks and owls, evil birds. In front of herself stood a small table, and on it a packet and a white stone smooth and rounded as a hen’s egg. Mielusine touched the stone, and all of a sudden she heard an ominous cough.
She stood stone still.
A slight rustling she heard. Someone else was there. A servant of the lady, perhaps – or a thief with his hand on his sharp scian dagger.
Mielusine turned and fled those dark rooms, fled down the ladders and stairs, out to the lawn and into the gaming rooms. It was the brightness and warmth and human voices lured her there, the way the gamblers heeded no clock.
For a time Mielusine was wandering among the tables, looking on the games and understanding none of them. At that hour only the most ardent gamblers were there, and the rooms were quiet but for the murmuring of wagers and the clinking of coins. Some there went masked, some wore wigs, some still wore their coats.
Mielusine stopped beside the table of the Wheel. She liked seeing it spinning and the silver ball bounding into its compartment all by chance. They were laying down their wagers on a field of black and red squares. It was a mystery to Mielusine how some were winning, and others watching fortunes raked away and lost.
She was feeling something hard in her hand. Opening her fingers she saw the leag lorgmhar.
She had never picked it up. Of course she hadn’t. But it must be that she had taken it unthinkingly, startled by the cough. And now she ought to be returning it, but she daren’t go back into the bell-tower.
The players were laying their wagers on the field. Hastily Mielusine placed the stone on the square of the Red.
‘What’s this, now? What sort of a wager is that?’
It was one of the lady players speaking. She was masked, but the maid could see that her hair was brown, lighter than chestnut, and that she had the longest, loveliest throat. The servant at the table stopped the wheel, and all eyes turned to Mielusine and the white stone.
‘Take the thing back, I say,’ demanded the lady, glaring at Mielusine through her mask.
‘The lady can wager what she pleases, can she not?’
‘But ’tis a common stone, of no value at all!’
Mielusine would have taken back the thing; but the crowd was gathering, hemming her in.
Next one was calling for Banker Ino. It was a dwarf he was, with a great head on his body, and his face laughing, wise and sour at once. Someone hoisted him onto the table where he stood over them all like a little god.
‘Now, then,’ he pronounced, rocking back and forth, ‘what’s the problem here?’
‘It’s only the lady here placed a wager, Banker Ino.’
‘It was a common stone she put down! There you see it, on the Red. Make her take it back.’
‘She can wager what she likes,’ said another.
‘But,’ asked the servant, ‘what should I be giving her if she wins?’
The dwarf looked from the stone to Mielusine in her white dress, and she blushing and wishing she could only sink into a puddle and die, and be done with it all.
‘Well, now,’ said the dwarf, very slowly in his child’s voice, ‘I wouldn’t be calling it a thing of no value at all, the way the lady herself is standing pledge behind her wager. ’Tis a white wager she’s playing, to be redeemed at the winner’s own choosing. Who’s to say that’s of no value?’
‘Not I to be sure.’
The last was uttered by a gentleman in a most grotesque and sneering mask. He was tall as the Banker was short, and his hair curling silver at his brow, and his voice as silver as his curls. His eyes were so gentle and kind, Mielusine was thinking she had never before seen such feeling eyes.
‘I will be backing the lady’s wager, if she will permit,’ he was saying. He took up the stone and let fall a thick handful of bank-notes in its place.
Even the dwarf was taken aback at the gesture, clucking, ‘But, sir, the amount—’
‘You’re right, of course,’ the man apologized. He dredged in his pocket and strewed another handful of notes on the pile, the way it was spilling over half the field. The players looked agape on what a fortune it was, even in the extravagant Night.
Ino laughed and clapped his hands. ‘Bravo! If the Maid Buan has no further complaints?’ he added, bobbing in the objector’s direction.
She, with a pretty if irritated wave of her golden fan, inclined her head. ‘Sure, if the gentleman is bent upon charity to the point of his ruin.’
‘Let spin, then,’ bade Ino. And the chamber the silver ball fell into was the thirty-and-sixth, and it was red.
‘Will you take your winnings now?’ asked the gentleman in the sneering mask at Mielusine’s side.
‘Oh – I couldn’t,’ Mielusine said.
‘The wager stands, then,’ he said. Of course that hadn’t been Mielusine’s meaning at all. But the cheers made her feel as bold as if it had been.
That spinning the ball fell in the sixteenth chamber, and it too was red.
‘Again?’ asked the gentleman softly.
Mielusine felt a warm wave rising in her at the sound of his voice. There was more money on the table than she in all her life had ever dreamt of. ‘All right,’ she breathed.
And the number was two, and red.
‘Once more, for our mutual good fortune?’
‘Oh, let that be an end to it, please!’ begged Mielusine. She only wanted to leave the crowd behind and be back in her chamber again.
‘As madam commands,’ said the dwarf, bowing gravely. ‘You’ve taken half my profits of the month! As to the gentleman, his part will find its way back to me. But will you not take pity on me, dear Miss, and allow me to reinvest your winnings in my bank? I assure you a good per centage.’
‘Shall I?’ Mielusine wondered.
‘Take at least so much for extravagance,’ said the gentleman, brusquely putting a fistful of notes into her hand.
‘How can I ever be thanking you?’ she asked. ‘You risked so much for me!’
‘Ah, as to that, I had good fortune now, until you broke it. If I’d lost my winnings, my creditors had had to go a bit longer before drinking my blood. Now I must be leaving, the way they will soon hear of this. I must be spending the moneys before they do. And when next you are in difficulty, dear Lady of the Stone, let you call upon Vasquez, and then you can be thanking me by enjoying a little less of luck!’
With which he was gone, and the throng scattering, and Maid Mielusine standing by the dwarf, before a great pile of money on the table. They all were looking at her with such eyes, and she made up her mind to be no longer afraid, but to be descend with the other wards in the procession every darkness.
And she saw that after all she still was holding the Leag Lorgmhar.
