(A sample from Blood by Moonlight.)
© 2009 asotir. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
20. Of the Dancer
FOR SIX DARKNESSES of the moon the witchlights were swimming low about the grounds, shrunken and dim; the candles went unlit, and merriments were suspended. And Arianna dressed darkly, darkly veiled, mourning Gwangior, who had been in the day the fiercest highwayman in the British Isles.
For a time Agnes gained upon the steps, the way the robbers weren’t going out on their kailees. She reached as far as the thirteenth step; she’d never seen so many clean at once. Eudemarec came to pay her a call from time to time, and his words lightened her labor. But it was not long to last.
When the candles were burning again, the witchlights swam up higher in the air, and the robbers were dressing more boldly than ever, if that was possible. Many were going to the dancing hall, to watch the dancers practicing: reels and wild jigs, contradances, quadrilles, minuets, pavanes – all the elder dances, and the ones they were creating. In the day the dancing hall had been the Lady Chapel. Huge it was and starry bright, the way the fishy witchlights loved to swim high up under the stone ribs of the arches.
All the dancers practiced hard, most of all the nine who were the lady’s wards, the way their time was coming. ‘Let you wait, now,’ they were whispering, and laughing slyly at Mielusine, who didn’t understand. ‘Wait for a masquerade!’ Mielusine was grateful for a moment of rest now and again, the way her legs were sore and burning.
On the close of that moon, while the robbers fared abroad on their kailees, the Swan Boat put out onto the lough. Aboard were three: two ferrymen, and a third figure clouded in a dark red cloak. They poled out so deep in the mist they were not seen from the crannog at all. The middle figure slipped out of the dark red cloak and sank into the waters of the lough, sank deep into the black waters of the lough.
Later on, the Swan Boat was poled back to the crannog. Two ferrymen poled the boat, and between them stood the Lady of the Lough, holding a reed, and it was white-naked she was, standing in the belly of the boat. Her face was pale as a new lamb’s pelt, and her dark hair streaming wetly down her back, and her body small as a virgin’s. She gave the reed to a man standing at the edge of the crannog, and he bowed to her and welcomed her into a great, warm, mantling cloak; the color of the cloak was as silver as herself.
‘Let her bless you, young lady,’ said Mac Bride, the way it was himself welcoming her. The old man bent like a stork, and kissed her two hands.
‘Only you, Mac Bride?’ she asked him, very calmly. ‘I was looking for another.’ Then naked under the warm white cloak, she passed him up the crannog unseen into the lady’s garden, and the silver-chased gate shut fast behind her.
The ferrymen nodded to the old countryman, the way they were mute; he gave them silver coins and sent them back to the landing; himself he walked round the circle of the crannog three times with a lantern in his hand, cleansing it free of all sin.
He never knew – or did he, now? – of the black-shadowed niche in the abbey wall, where someone was standing watching him. Agnes held her breath, and watched him pass. When the witchlights were fading, she went back into the abbey and to the Hundred Steps and a Step. And she never told Mac Bride of seeing him circling the crannog, nor of anything else she’d seen.
THE WINTER was long, it lingered all year, and the weather held cold and black, and snow ever falling out of mist over the lough. Only the wan lights of the village, reflecting off the water amongst the reeds and sedge, showed there was any world at all beyond the crannog. By an open window in the dancing room, Mielusine would go gazing into the lough, resting upon a high railing in the wind, thankful for its coolness.
Eudemarec had told her of Agatha. ‘Will you not help me keep her spirits up?’ he had asked. ‘For she must be surely lonely, toiling the long hours at her endless task.’
Why, she was wondering, would she not see Agatha? The answer was coming to her, only this, that she had betrayed her teacher. But she didn’t know how.
When the Moon rose, the other dancers went to their beds, hot baths, and suppers with their lovers. Mielusine lingered over the lough, warming herself in a velvet cloak Ino had given her out of their winnings. Mielusine understood that she was wealthy now, the richest of the wards, with as much money in her bank as the boldest bandits. She didn’t know what that meant, and little she cared, though she was glad to see Ino rubbing his hands and dancing his jigs at their fortune.
Little flakes of snow were wetting her cheeks, and she turned and went in, the way she knew the Moon now was somewhere up in the blackness behind the clouds.
She went out to the coiling stair and looked at the woman on the steps. That one had all her mind on the third step, scrubbing and rinsing and scrubbing again in the sallow light of a greasy candle.
For a time the Maid was lingering by the hangings, watching. She thought, Surely she is much changed from the time I knew her in the wood. But how? Perhaps that she is younger.
The woman on the step heaved her shoulders, stood and carried out her pail for fresh water. Mielusine stepped behind the hanging.
Back once more in the silent, solemn hall, Mielusine lighted a candle at the edge of the stage. The witchlights were dark, and only a hint of the moonlight gleamed off the leading in the colored windows high up in the walls of the ancient Lady Chapel. She thought of Vasquez. How long it had been since she’d seen him!
Already Lughnasadh had gone by, and the rogues and minxes had laughingly all made their handfastings, moons and moons ago. Soon, too soon, Mielusine would have to dance before the lady and the court; and she wasn’t ready at all. She stepped up on stage, took off her cloak, and began to dance. Round and round she flew, and it seemed to her that for the very first time she was getting the reel right, and showing some grace; and the prettiness of her gestures was entering into her. And the prettier she felt, the lonelier she felt, so that it was like a great ache inside her, black and chilling as the wet outside the windows.
‘You will always know love, Mielusine,’ Lady Agatha told her once. ‘You like a man, you fancy him; still and all it is not love, the way you are doing what you want. Then he is on your mind; it isn’t that you want to be thinking about him, indeed you don’t; all the same you do. You are bound by a fever, and you’ll not want to think it love, the way it comes only from your blood and the edges of your bones.
‘Is it love , you are asking? If you are afraid, then it is love.’
Mielusine stopped her dance of a sudden. She heard someone clapping in the darkness beyond the stage. She skipped to retrieve her cloak and hide herself.
‘Who is it? Who’s there?’ she called.
A figure emerged, ruddy in the candlelight. The man stopped clapping, picked up the candle, and offered Mielusine his hand. He wore only a wide sleeved shirt and muddy riding breeches. His hair was clubbed and powdered. She could not see his face, the way he wore a bodach mask, and it the most grotesque and ridiculous the maid had ever seen.
‘It is Maid Mielusine, is it not? You’re damned pretty, dancing here alone on a dark moon!’
‘Hello, Mr Vasquez,’ she said.
AGNES found a cat upon the steps, intrigued by the smell of the soap. She was a fat, white puss, with long hair, a small face, blue eyes, and a tight black collar.
Agnes set down the pail, smiling.
‘Well-met, puss!’ she exclaimed. ‘Did Mac Bride bring you from the manor? He never told me so.’
The cat bounded up in her lap, asking Agnes to scratch her chin. Agnes caressed her. The cat’s droning song reminded her of happier times.
‘How sleek is your coat! Now, someone has been brushing and combing you, taking great care; and I know Mac Birdie was never doing any such thing as that.’
Agnes frowned, stroking the cat. She looked out the window. High up, the walls of the bell-tower were dim and dark in the snow. It was said the Bacach had had his rooms there, when he lived.
The pails, the brushes, and the rags Agnes put away in the closet; and carrying the cat in her arms like a child against her breast, she went out into the snow, crossed to the tower, and began to climb into the dark.
‘DO NOT STOP,’ said Vasquez. ‘Dance again. Dance for me now.’
‘Yes,’ breathed Mielusine.
She slung the cloak from her shoulders and began to dance for him. He moved with her, holding the candle between them, the better to be watching her. Mielusine was looking into his eyes in the mask, paying no mind to her steps. Her body had no weight at all.
He set the candle on the floor and took her hands. ‘Now let you dance with me,’ he said. So they did.
He was holding her very close, and through her shift she was feeling the heat of him. And watching. What would his kiss taste of? Would it be sweet like cake, biting like porter, or fresh like a pear?
‘Come,’ he murmured, wrapping her in her cloak. ‘Do not dress. All are resting save the gamblers; none will see you.’
They went onto the dark lawns by the lough. For awhile they were walking in the snowy mist, not speaking, only walking in the snowy mist.
He leaned up against her, pressing her upon a iron gate. His mask was dark against the smearing lights of the village far away across the lough.
‘Why,’ she breathed, ‘do you always wear this mask?’
He kissed her ear and answered, softly, ‘The way I cannot rest, Maid Snowflake.’
‘But do you never dream?’
‘To dream,’ he laughed, ‘perchance to sleep.’
‘It’s sad,’ she said, ‘you make me. Who can cheat his dreams and not go mad?’
‘I am mad,’ he answered, kissing her. ‘What else would you be asking of a will o’ the wisp, a Beltane child, a Tinker’s foundling?’
She could feel his breath, hot and dry on her cheek. He was stroking her hair, her cheek, her throat, her breast.
‘Not here,’ she said. ‘…the dogs…’
It was by the pens of the lady’s hounds they were. She heard their scratching and whining very close.
‘Old friends of mine,’ he muttered in her ear. ‘I brought you here to show them. Go on – show my friends how pretty you are!’
He turned her round, dropping her cloak. In the gloom she saw the hundred white eyes of the hounds, their dark red ears, and their pink tongues licking the night. Herself she was gleaming, pressed against the iron in her dancing dress.
The dress they all were practicing dancing in, it was a silk shift open for freedom of movement, nothing at all, and compared to it nakedness would have seemed chaste. The stinging flakes bit straight through it, dizzying Mielusine. Vasquez slipped two fingers beneath the ribbons of the shift, sliding them off her shoulders; she crossed her arms just in time to catch it at the tips of her breasts.
Mielusine gasped.
She was feeling the warmth of him, smelling his flavor mingling with the warm odors of the dogs and the icy sweet smells of the lady’s garden. Slowly she let the shift slide down her, its caress soft as Vasquez’ breath on her nape. She kicked it aside, with a showy, dancer’s kick. His hands streamed down her sides with the melting snow, and red naked she leaned full against the iron bars, turned away from him, reaching up to grip the top of the gate with both hands. The ice cold metal kissed her cheek, her breasts, her thighs. She heard him take a breath behind her, sharply like a kiss.
The dogs gathered round, whining and clawing the earth. Mielusine felt no shame at it – she was burning, burning, burning.
All at once she could hold no more, and her cramping fingers broke from the iron.
‘Oh my Beloved,’ he said into her ear, ‘my Beloved, my Beloved, my Beloved.’
She sank onto her velvet cloak. He was still kissing her, very cleverly on her shoulder and throat, and she was sobbing for the ache in her body and the sadness in her heart, the way then at that moment, closer to this man than she had been to anyone since she’d been an infant in the arms of her ma, she was feeling alone in the world.
Still and all she was proud lying there on the snowy hard ground before the gate, proud he had chosen her, proud of her deed, and proud of her pleasure, of her pleasure above all.
After that moon, she went no more to the grave beside the apple trees.
