(A sample from Blood by Moonlight.)
© 2009 asotir. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
21. Of the Bell-tower
AT THE TOP of the bell-tower was a door of oak, and it cracked, dark, round at the top, and hinged with black wrought iron. The latch too was of iron, cold under Agnes’ thumb.
For a time she was standing there, not making up her mind; then the cat mewed. Agnes pressed the latch and entered the room where Master Aengus had lived, when he lived here as Arianna’s Bacach.
In the Bacach’s chambers books, papers, instruments, dishes, linens and cushions were scattered about the floors. A few lone embers shone red in a makeshift grate; at the left was darkness, and black lines of a scaffolding beyond the bells.
It seemed someone had taken over his rooms after all.
The snow was ending, and a little starlight showing in the night through the high openings, chopping the floor into black and gray fragments. The bell-tower climbed above the mist, so that the starlight could be seen shimmering on the top of the mist as off a calm lake.
From the crannies over the bells came an ominous croaking, of rooks in tangled nests.
The puss leapt down out of Agnes’ arms and ran across the mess. She bounded up the scaffolding by a brass telescope to settle in the lap of a man.
Daintily prancing, the puss was turning in the man’s lap, and his hands scratching her ears, absent-like, until she curled up, veiling her eyes in the plume of her tail.
The starlight shone off the white cat and the telescope. It outlined the man’s dangling trouser-legs, and his shoes and hands. The upper part of him, though, was darkness.
She was afraid of a sudden, with a great overmastering fear, and she wanting nothing better than to be fleeing the place; her throat was choking, strangling, and the words she would not utter barely escaped her into the room:
‘Master Aengus!’
Something stirred up there, making no more sound than the whir of a bird’s wings. Agnes felt eyes turning her way, peering through the gloom. She was glad of the darkness for this, that it spared him the sight of her stained worn skirts and bare arms raw and red with soap.
‘Who are you calling for?’
The voice was rich and resonant, but softer than Aengus’ voice, less sharp, less knowing. It was the voice of a man is dreaming all the time. But was it his voice?
‘You, now,’ she answered boldly.
Out the great window their voices were carrying, up above the mist. The dark man on the rooftop leaned forward closer to the edge, listening.
‘Why did you call me that?’
‘Surely it’s your name.’
He was silent a while. ‘Here they call me the Bacach. The Lame One.’
‘What did they call you elsewhere?’
He was stroking the cat, drawing his fingers soft and slow through the thick white fleece.
‘I don’t remember.’
She had seen him shot and buried. She’d moistened his grave with her tears. But had that man been Aengus? She’d seen him but dimly – he’d had the shape of Aengus, and not his shape. And this one—
‘What do you remember?’
In the faint starlight his fingers were dark in the pale fur. For a moment Agatha’s heart leapt, the way she thought she saw the pallor of a scar on his inner wrist.
‘I remember a flood,’ he said softly. ‘Water rushing, boiling up. I remember a cathedral of light, and the voices of women singing, like angels, like sirens, sweet and paradisiac.’
‘What else?’
‘Nought else.’
‘Nothing of – what you were before?’
‘No.’
‘Did they not tell you what you were?’
The fingers clutched the cat’s fur. ‘They told me,’ he answered, ‘that I am the murderer of the White Hind. Because of me, she is no more seen about these isles.’
‘Aengus,’ she moaned, ‘and do you not know me?’
‘Why, surely I know you,’ he answered. ‘I’ve seen you wandering about the lawns below, and the old countryman told me your name. You’re Agnes who is washing the stair.’
‘And Lady Agatha?’ she asked.
‘I know of a Lady Agatha,’ he said, sounding pleased to be able to answer her. ‘She was in a story. There was a man in love with her. But she didn’t love him back.’
‘What was the end of the story?’
He nudged the telescope, pointing it from star to star. It was as if that old story did not interest him. He was forgetting her already. ‘The man died. I don’t know what became of the lady.’
After a while she went back out the door.
She trudged back to the Hundred Steps and a Step, each one blacker than the rest with mud and muck ground into the marble’s skin. They would never be cleaned, not by a hundred hands working twenty years; they would stay black for ever and a moon after. She stepped on them with her wooden shoes, scraping their faces with her heels.
But something stopped her. The last step, now, did it look a little bit less black than all the others to her eyes?
She thought to herself, Master Aengus is alive.
And she stepped out the servants’ door and looked straight up into the black ruin fading into mist.
‘I will win back your heart, Master Aengus. For all you have forgotten now, the memory will come back to you, and myself I will win back your heart.’
IN THE MOONLIGHT the old countryman, Mac Bride, was feeding the lady’s blood-hounds. He was holding a bucket full of bloody scraps, and as the hounds ran round him leaping, he was doling out the scraps, calling them all by name as though they were his old friends: ‘Here, Francesco! Do you like that, Estéban? Wag for it, Waltherius! Ho now, Cormac!’
The last scrap he saved for the smallest, a floppy-eared pup. It was only recently Arianna had found a pup bold enough to be one of her pack, so she’d let it into the pens with the rest, and now her troop were fifty-one. She had named this latest Gwangior.
Mac Bride left the hounds’ byre and washed his pail in the lough.
When he stood up, the old man’s lean body rose like a pine tree against the moon-path on the water. He called out in a soft voice, speaking words older than Gaelic unto the fishes and weeds clustering under the water at his feet. For a time Mac Bride was listening. Strange was his face: a Firbolg’s face.
He went into the pleasure hall by a back way, quietly round. From a doorway he looked across to the woman bent over the Hundred Steps and a Step.
For so many moons she had been toiling, and now she was expert in her labor: the way the Moon was almost sunk, and she had reached the seventh step.
Which if she cleaned, there would remain only ninety and four to clean. And even so, come moonrise those seven would be black as ever, and she would have to be starting all over again.
The old countryman was shaking his head in turning away, the way he was hearing Agnes singing at her task.
THAT MOON Agnes heard voices coming up off the water. She left her work and drifted down closer to the edge.
The last Swan boat was ready by the mooring poles. A bravo of a man was aboard, giving his hand to help aboard his lady. She was dressed all in black, and her arms were swathed in black, and her hands were in black gloves, and a black veil of lace was wound round her face and trailing down her back. Only her bosom was bare, and it was white as the moon outside the mists. The lady and her bravo were laughing and bidding farewell to their friends on the stones.
‘Lady Ann,’ called Agnes, ‘I know who you are.’
The lady fixed her eyes on her through the veils.
‘Do you now, my girl?’ she said.
‘Don’t you remember me? It was I gave you jewels once, and pins, in your home.’
‘Ah,’ she answered, ‘was it you, now?’
‘You’re much changed.’
‘Thank you for it. Faith, the trinkets came in handy here – how else would we have won all that we now have? But I’ll pass you back all that’s remaining. I’ll throw it over to you, can you catch it?’
‘I’ll catch it. But Lady Ann, what do you hear of the children?’
‘The grawls?’ The lady’s peals of laughter rang out on the water. ‘Well, and well! It’s the devil’s own time they’re having of it, on their larks and wild kailees! Sing them a song if you see them, my girl! Now farewell!’
‘Farewell, Lady Ann,’ she said. The couple’s friends had gone up already into the abbey, and Agnes was standing by the mooring poles alone, gazing into the mist brightening in the moonglow. She took up what the lady had throw back to her, and went back to her labor. All that moon she was working, but only with half a heart, the way her eyes were always stealing back to the beloved old book, with its spine worn smooth, hiding its stories well-known to her heart.
Come darkness, Agnes went to her cot in the low hall where the girls were dreaming. She was always the last in of those who would be coming. She took off her woolen dress, smoothed her shift and lay down into her cot. And she was so weary in herself that she could not help but be happy in her heart.
But she heard, in the long darkness of the hall, sighs and groans, and the sounds of some girls weeping softly into their pillows, fretting away with homesickness and heartweariness, and Agnes rose up and went to the sides of their cots one after another and asked them,
‘What is it now that’s troubling your dreams, dear one?’
And one after another they were answering her, saying, ‘It’s hard the work is here, and I miss my ma and my da and my brothers at home.’
‘Come with me, and I’ll smooth away your trouble,’ Agnes told the girls.
She led them to her own cot by the doorway, where they all clustered round. And Agnes pulled out a dog-eared book, and it was so well-used the whole of its spine was worn away, and the girls might read no title there. And putting the book open, and singing down a witch-light and rubbing the last glow out of its scales, Agnes starting reading the tale of Prince Og and Princess Maeve, which in the course of its course runs much as follows:
Out of all the gentle places remaining in the Innis Fodhla, Agnes read, the two strongest were those of the moon and of the woods. But the gentle place of the moon was better-peopled and defended: it was the last true stronghold of gentleness left in the isle. As for the Princess of the woods, Princess Mab, she was hunted by men and Englishmen, and saw her hills built upon with castles of conceit, and her woods cut low, or tamed into parks for hunting, until in the end she was left with only a few sides of hills scattered widely, and a few tangled shadowy corners of woods, as the last shrunken yards of what was once an empire.
The last of her folk clung to her, but they too dwindled, hunted by the Englishmen, until in the end only one hart and one hind were left to her. And then a hunting party found them out, and cut off the hind’s head and shouldered her flanks home to their cooking pots.
Now nine days after this, the Man of the Bog happened to be in that place, setting his traps and lairs. It wasn’t after foxes and badgers the Man of the Bog was hunting, but after this and that: strange curious things: a bit of moonshine, a patch of mist, a cobweb, a will o’ the wisp. The Man of the Bog was checking his traps and his lures, when he heard a sobbing in the wind: went over the hillside and found the Princess Mab weeping over her last fallen faithful one, but she was bright as a mirror for all her sadness, and the Man of the Bog in an instant was falling in love of her. ‘Come away into my arms,’ he was saying, ‘my bright Princess Mab, and I’ll be making you forget all your causes for bitterness and pain.’ And she, being gentle and a princess, longed for his kisses, and went weeping to his arms.
And for a time they abided in the wild moors and the Bog, where only the wayward go, and are soon trapped and lost for ever. And all that time they were as happy as any of their kind could be with the counties overrun with Englishmen and Protestants.
The daughter of this pair was the Princess Maeve, and she was born in the same moonlight as saw the birth of Prince Og. All throughout the gentle places the birth of the Moon Princess’ son was proclaimed, and in a few dank places under leaves folk talked of the birth of Princess Maeve as well.
Then and there the Man of the Bog and Princess Mab decided they would wed their daughter to the son of the Moon Princess, the way her mother was a Princess without a county, and her daughter would be a Princess in nothing but her name. And this, they reckoned, was to be the last Great Hope of the gentle folk, that the uniting of the Moon and the Hill should make a place and a county strong enough to withstand the assaults of the World. Even the Moon Princess placed the kiss of her lips on this agreement, and nothing in all the gentle places was looked for with such eagerness as this uniting, and the offspring of the union, though the promised spouses were still no more than twinklings in their leafy cribs, and each had yet to endure its fostering abroad in the arms and houses and homes of men.
Into the world and homes of men went Prince Og, but it was into the world and lairs of the beasts that Princess Maeve was meant to go, and for seven years she was brought up as a beast of the field and the woods. But it was only the curse of the Moon Princess awaiting Princess Maeve when those seven years of the World had passed.
‘Now,’ said Agnes, closing up her book, and kissing its spine, ‘are you thinking your lot is so bad, and your service here an exile, an ionarbadh? Then think on poor Princess Maeve, and count yourselves lucky at that.’
So she was sending them back to their cots, with dry eyes and soothed hearts. Then all at once Agnes looked up, the way the witchlight had swum away, and a long, thin shadow was falling out of the mist across the low eye-shaped window of the low, long hall. The shadow stirred, and moved away. Into the darkness Agnes went, but only nine dim witch-lights were swimming there, and no one else.
‘Who were you, now?’ Agnes murmured. She looked up at the ruined bell-tower dark in the mist. But then the weariness of her work was weighing on her, and she went back to her lonely cot inside the doorway.
THAT DARKNESS was a long one. And Agnes dreamed the old servant of her lord, Mac Bride, came and stood over her cot. He held a witchlight by the tail.
‘Come with me, Miss,’ he was telling her, ‘and I’ll do you a service.’
She smiled at him in her dream, and went out of the hall, across the lawn, to the gleaming abbey. Mac Bride led her up the steps and in by way of the open gates.
‘Turn now,’ he told her, ‘look to the lough.’
It was late in the darkness. At the water’s edge the Swan Boat was bumping up to the mooring pole, and nine men and women in wild attire were leaping up aland.
Mac Bride in her dream said, ‘These are the lady’s robbers back from their kailees. They are the first back this darkness. Look to their boots, now!’
And she saw their boots blackened with mire.
Then she might hold her peace no more, but in her dream addressed them.
‘Gentle sirs and ladies,’ she said, ‘I know you are wearied from your hunts, and that your joints must be chill from the damp. Your one desire is to return to the fire-warmed rooms, array yourselves, kiss your sweethearts and attend your lady.
‘But think first of what you do here, when you return with boots and shoes full of the black mud of the bogs. See your trail up the outer steps; look on the steps you mean to mount! They are black, but the foremost ones are white, and clean. It was myself cleaned them, and it was all I could do, during the hours you were abed, to scrape the mud from six of them, and make a start at the seventh. Six, of a hundred and one!
‘If you go on as you are, then these six by next moonrise will be blacker than the other ninety and five. Have pity on me, I beg you, for my heart is breaking from the uselessness of all I do, that is as quickly undone, by you. My years will go for nothing, and I will die here as I started. As if I had not lived at all. Do not rob me of my life, do not murder me, but take care, I implore you, and tread lightly on my dreams.’
Those words were among the hardest she had ever uttered, even in a dream; there were tears in her eyes and her voice was near breaking under the weight of them.
And the riotous bandits praised the scrub woman, the way she was as desperate as themselves. Out through the doors they went, and washed off their boots in the lough.
By then was another Swan Boat returning, and another load of robbers approaching the abbey. Agnes must repeat her words, fully thirteen times, all the long darkness, until her voice was cracking and her eyes red with tears, and she was tossing about in her cot. In the long low hall the other serving girls gathered round her, touching her shoulder and speaking her name, softly, softly, ‘Agnes! Agnes!’ Until at last she answered.
AFTER THEIR MEAL, the girls went to their appointed tasks. Agnes took her brushes and pail and went into the abbey by the side door, the way the crescent gates were shut, and all the robbers dreaming and touching their lovers high above her.
Agnes bent over the first step. And she saw to her surprise that it was not black but white, white as the pelt of the White Hind, and shone in the moonglow like a mirror.
And after that darkness the trollops and bandits never failed of washing their boots in the lough, and struck off the clods of mud staining their breeches and hems before they came into the abbey. Indeed, so clean were their feet from then on, that they tended rather to take old dirt up, and left the stairs cleaner for their passing, the way it was their great delight to outdo themselves incessantly. Each moon now Agnes cleaned seven steps more; on the next moon when she came, she saw those seven were cleaner than she’d left them. And in less than thirteen moons, all the Hundred Steps and a Step were sparkling; and they never needed cleaning, ever again.
IT WAS PROCLAIMED that there would be held a masquerade on Samhain, on the long dark of the moon: and all diversions would be enjoyed at that ball, and a special exhibition of the dancers. At that ball Arianna would make her choice, who would be her next champion.
The time of the masquerade came nearer, and all the dancers fearing it. But Mielusine now, she was quiet all the time, and a bit sad, the way she never danced now so well as she had that once, when only one pair of eyes could see. In all the time since, Mielusine hadn’t once heard any word from Vasquez. And still and all she told Ino to be paying Vasquez’ debts.
The dwarf squawked, but ‘Haven’t I money enough for it, now?’ said she. ‘Then do as I bid you, Banker Ino.’
What now was comforting her, was a strange thing: it was the small white stone she’d stolen from Master Aengus’ room. Mielusine kept the leag lorgmhar on the table by her bed, and touched it to her lips before she rested. The leag lorgmhar guarded her dreams. She was glad she hadn’t returned it, the way it now was hers.
Now after kissing the stone the dancer had a dream, and this was the way of it.
Atop the bell-tower, the door to Master Aengus’ rooms was open; in front of the bells a man was standing, and he reaching for her, saying, ‘Come.’ And the voice of the man in the dream was Vasquez’ voice.
The dream left her, and Mielusine rose up out of bed. Moonbeams were pouring into her window, swirling with the mist. Mielusine stepped into the light, turning slowly, silently watching her limbs making whirlpools in the mist. The power of the dance was entering into her, the way she was yielding to it, moving beautifully as some wild thing footing the strait paths of a hill. In a way she was leaving herself behind; she was the dance she made.
Drawing her velvet cloak over her shift, bare footed, shaking her black ringlets, Mielusine went out of her room. The lawns of the crannog were powdery with snow, cold and clean on her toes. The broken steps and ladders were patchwork in the moonbeams falling through chinks in the wall. The door, it was not open as in her dream; but easily it yielded to her small hand, and in she danced, silent as a moonbeam.
He was there awaiting her. She knew he would be.
But who was he?
He was sitting by the bell beneath the telescope. His arms were braced against the window frame, and his legs dangling out over the ledge, and himself leaning far into the night. Beyond him the sky was ablaze with stars, shining on the surface of mist, bright like the sea.
It was long since the Maid had looked upon the stars in their nakedness. The sight swam in her like porter; her breath was sweetened even more by the thought of the dark man aloft.
He hadn’t seen her yet. Mielusine felt no fear of him. Still dancing, she glided to him and said,
‘Faith, what is it you’re looking for?’
The figure looked back. Mielusine saw the outline of his face against the stars; it seemed he was staring at her. Then he twisted his body and swung his legs back in, leaning weakly against the window frame.
‘For the cowardice to jump,’ he answered her. He did not speak in Vasquez’ voice; it was another’s voice – one she knew. ‘But I’ll never be finding it, the way I know she is still out there, somewhere hidden in the white. Who’re you?’
‘I am Mielusine. Weren’t you waiting for me? Now I am come. Teach me, please.’
He stood, none too surely, and stepped into the room. For a moment she was losing sight of him; then a light flared up from a bit of straw in the embers; he was lighting the candles on the table.
In the light his face seemed less drawn and tormented than she remembered. She did not wonder to see again the face that once she had seen buried under an apple tree. Curiously she looked on the bandages wrapping his breast: once white, now dirtied with dark, old blood.
‘Come on then,’ he told her. ‘Didn’t she send you for this? Do you know what you’re wanting from me, or are you only coming for a look?’
He was bending over the table, and not looking at her at all. There was a hanging gathered by the table, and Mielusine danced in close to it.
‘Stand there!’ he commanded. ‘’Tis better so, your face in shadow. They’ll be telling a more honest fable. I see you are young, and pretty enough – but you were not always pretty, nor were you powerful in Day.’
Mielusine saw in his hands a stack of beautiful cards, and he drawing them together and apart with his long, strong fingers.
‘What are you about?’ she asked.
‘Didn’t she tell you a thing about me?’
Mielusine, her face still in shadow, smiled. He sighed. ‘Arianna should say a thing before she sends her wards to me.’ He thrust the cards across the table.
‘Draw them into three stacks.’ So she did.
He began laying the cards out across the table. Mielusine had seen cards at fairs, but never any so large or beautiful, or with those strange names. And now he was telling her about herself as though he’d known her all his life. Mielusine was enchanted. How could he know such things?
‘And that is all I have to be telling you.’
Over their heads on the rooftop, the dark man sat in tailor-fashion within the tent of his dark gray cóta mór, and he was hearkening to their words, and hearing them all quite clearly. But still he only listened, and did not move, not yet. Only now, he grinned. Skulls grin as broadly as the dark man grinned.
The Bacach leaned back, and a bit of pain caressed his face, and Mielusine saw how weary he was with no resting, the way he was spending all his hours here thinking of his love until it was a poison in him, and searching for her in the water and in the mist, and everywhere else she wasn’t.
Mielusine felt bewildered. Was this the secret of love?
‘What card is that?’ she asked. To one side lay one card face down.
‘’Tis the final card,’ he answered. ‘The card of the querent – of the seeker. ’Tis your card. Turn it up if you like: it is not for me to do.’
Mielusine reached out for it, feeling its riddle calling to her. He added while she was reaching, ‘You needn’t show it to me or even be telling me what it is. It’s only to you that card need be speaking.’
She took it between her fingers. On the card was painted a beautiful woman pouring water from two ewers. Mielusine laid the card on the table.
‘Le Stelle,’ she murmured, reading what was written across the bottom of the card. ‘What does it mean?’
He looked at her searchingly, the way she was glad for the hanging and its shadow.
‘The word, d’you mean, or the card?’
‘The word.’
‘The word means, “the Stars.” ’
‘’Tis a pretty card.’ She wasn’t even blushing a bit, though the lady on the card was naked as a tree in winter.
‘It isn’t there to be pretty,’ he said. He was angry now, raking the cards into a heap. ‘Learn from it. Now let you be going. If Arianna wasn’t sending you here you shouldn’t have been coming. Be going now!’
She glided back before his vehemence. He was rising, but already Mielusine was passing out of his rooms in silent wonder, leaving him and his pain behind her like a bad dream.
Round and round and down the steps she spiraled. Gladness was in her heart. She felt the moonlight burning her breasts. In the empty dancing hall she cast down her cloak and kicked off even her shift, and was dancing round in the dark, naked as a tree in winter, naked and free, and whirling ever faster before the small white stone.
The way she was finding the joy of the dance again, and making its mystery her own.
ONE SPOT ONLY on all the Hundred Steps and a Step remained dark, a spider-shaped stain near the topmost riser, nine steps from Arianna’s door. Agnes was cleaning it almost with love, the way it was the end of her labors. So full of her task was she, she did not even notice the step falling behind her, nor the soft rustle of the lady’s skirts.
As to the Maid Buan now, whose skirts and step they were, she was looking on the serving woman with wonder. Sure now, she thought, there are marvels in the Night! That this creature could have made shine the Hundred Steps and a Step!
‘And it was a clever seamstress I heard you were,’ exclaimed Maid Buan, ‘but these steps are so bright, ’tis a far better charwoman you must be.’
The serving-girl looked up at the maid from beneath a mop of tangled, greasy hair. ‘I thank you for it,’ she answered, ‘but I cannot say, from all I’ve heard, that you make that good a lady.’
Maid Buan laughed. ‘But you’re the rare insolent one! ’Twould almost seem you’ve a lover here of some repute, that you’d dare say such words to me! Are you not Agnes? Maid Mielusine tells me it was you who made her fine white gown, and is it the very truth?’
The serving-girl nodded.
‘Serve as my seamstress, then, and make me a gown for the lady’s masquerade. It’s rich your reward will be if you please me. All tools and materials I’ll furnish, and you may be staying in my rooms with my servants if you please.’
In the serving-girl’s wild eyes, green as leaves in a windy wood, something was dawning, and she looking far beyond the maid. For a moment Maid Buan thought the woman must be simple; that she might even be so peculiar as to refuse her; but at length Agnes pursed her lips and bowed her head and answered,
‘It’s sorry I am, Maid Buan, for the sharpness of my tongue. To be your seamstress would be my honor.’ She looked up sharp into Buan’s eyes.
‘I will make you a gown.’
Maid Buan was surprised that so simple a saying could mean so much to her: all at once a vision entered her head, of herself at the masquerade, the lodestone of the bandits’ eyes.
‘’Tis well,’ she said. ‘I have the stuff already, it is samite, sendaline, cloth of gold—’
But the strange serving-girl was shaking her head, telling her solemnly, ‘I will make you a black dress.’
FITTING-FORMS, silver pins and needles, spools of thread, bolts of silks and satins, bows, ribbons, fine linens: beautiful things, and the sight of them, so long forgotten, made Agatha’s eyes smart.
Come moonrise she set to work, and while the Maid and her servants were dreaming beneath their lovers’ touch, Agnes spun and sewed and snipped by the light of the Moon.
And she sang as she cut, and she hummed as she sewed, only she made no sound singing, the way all the melodies were only in the gown. She made her a black gown, and freed herself, in that dress, of the steps, of the snow, and of the Hind: of moonglow and starlight and all things white like bones, like grins, like innocence.
It was the last bolt of cloth that Master Aengus made, his nine moons’ work, that Agnes made into that gown.
Now, come moonrise the serving-girl dressed Maid Buan for retiring, and then the maid dismissed her. It was even then that Agnes would be entering the maid’s chambers to take up again her work.
Then Agnes saw how Maid Buan undraped the black velvet hangings from a certain glass on the wall and looked deeply into it. Her face burned redly, then paled, and her eyes were distraught; Maid Buan sighed, shook her head, and returned the hanging to cover the mirror. Sadly she went into her bedchamber, alone, and Agnes felt a tug of sorrow for her, though she didn’t know why. Each moonrise Agnes watched Maid Buan perform the same ceremony before she went into her bedchamber, alone. Then Agnes looked long on the black hangings, before she sat herself down and took up her needles and thread.
IT HAD BEEN the fashion for gowns to be elaborate, with embroidery, lace and needlework, and layer upon layer of linens; and Agnes knew that such would be the very taste of Maid Buan. But in the black gown Agnes eschewed all ornament, and cut simply, so that its lines should not be in any way obscured.
And on the skirt of the gown she wove tiny brilliants in patterns of the stars zodiacal, the way that light played upon it, shimmering, winking. But the narrow bodice of the gown she left bare of brilliants. The way the gown was blackest round where the back and bosom would show, cloudlike and celestial. Only upon the left bosom of the bodice, Agnes was wanting to place one jewel. But there was nothing in Maid Buan’s jewelry-case she was liking; so she left it bare.
And the skirt, all scattered with brilliants, was soft, and wide like a country girl’s attire.
Along with the gown Agnes was making two shoes, tiny things of black with silver buckles set with three brilliants. She did not know just the shape of Maid Buan’s feet, the way she was making the shoes to fit her own. And she made a clip for the hair with the last three brilliants in the jewelry case. And she made a black mask as well, for half the face; and she cut eyes out of the mask, and they long and narrow.
WHEN THE GOWN was done and the shoes set beside it, then Agnes looked on it and falling in love with her work said,
‘No one will wear this gown but myself.’
Then there were only three moons left before the masquerade. For two moons Agnes fitted the gown to herself. And on the last moon of all she caught up what fabrics came first to hand, the samite, the sendaline, the cloth of gold, and with handfuls of lace, ribbons and ruffles, she stitched together another gown for Maid Buan. The maid was quite pleased with it, and it was quite good enough for her, too.
And when that second gown was finished, Agnes looked again on the black velvet hangings that covered Maid Buan’s mirror on the wall. And she stepped over to them and lifted them, uncovering the rich, strange carvings of the frame; and she looked deeply into the image in the dim, silvery glass.
With the rising of the final Moon before Samhain, Agnes went down to the long low hall and laid herself down to rest. Weary as she was, she was yet a-tremble, for the pleasure of the thought of the beautiful black gown. And then fear began to grow in her, and doubt. Sure now, someone would know her as the woman who washed the steps; the bandits would cast her out from the ball before a general mockery.
She paced the hall, and stepped up to the window. The moon was sinking through the grass. And at last the girl did manage, uneasily, to rest: then her resting sat on her like a stone, and she couldn’t get up.
And the Moon sank, 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.
And the masquerade began, and Agnes slept on.
