Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (20 page)

Margaret curtsied again, rather shakily. The room roared and dizzied. The last of her command was crumbling, clods from pale roots.

"Come up, then.” Barbary took up a jug and aired linen, and led her away.

Behind them, a girl called out to the company, “Well, I's for a jig. Clap us intil it."

Margaret followed her new mistress across the stone-flagged passage: back though the hall, where dogs and embers drowsed and mumbled on the bones of winter; through a low, dark room, half workroom and half parlor, full of snips and snaps of leather, bales of fleeces, glints of brass. Up a winding stair of oak. They came to a high room open to the rafters, panelled, with a stripped and shrouded bed. Swept bare. A bower once; a garret. There were planks in the roofbeams, thick-starred with apples drying, hung with bunches of greyed herbs, sweet and bitter. “T'awd mistress were an Outlune woman. Kept her stillroom.” Turning cattycorner, Mistress Barbary undid a low door, like a cupboard in the chimneystack.

"There."

A low bed with a faded patchwork; a joint stool; a candlestick. Another blurred and faded patchwork at the window, made of glass and green and rain.

Barbary set the jug of water on the sill.

"Will I undo thee?"

Here too.
Margaret shivered, waiting to endure. She dreaded what the sharp-eyed servant must see: the welts and bruises of her flawed virginity, the blood-dabbled smock. The cards. O hallows, would she find the cards?

"Here's a knot,” said Barbary, softly. She let fall her hands. “Get on,” she said. “And wash thysel. Thou's mucky. Bed's clean.” She turned and rummaged in a kist.

A sleeve fell, stiff and heavy as a scab. Another. Spoils of dead queens drowned. Broideries rebroidered, trailing snarled and ravaged threads. Past mending. Rags of lace like last year's February. Waist and stomacher; petticoat and stays. Her sullied shift.
A strange world, Cloud,
she thought:
all changing.
Cloud and water, moving in the air; the sky unstayed. As if she laid aside the bands of heaven. Naked, Margaret dove into the coarse clean smock wrapped round the stone bottle. Warm. Tears started at the touch of it. So strange and light. So strange. She blinked them back; poured out the water for her hands and feet.

"Take these.” Margaret turned. Barbary shook out an jacket and petticoat, ink-blue, the blue of midnight. Wool. “Her waiting-maid as were. Mek three o thee. Thou pin it up.” She bent to the welter of tumbled clothes and gathered them. “That's as fine linen as ever I see'd, yon smock. Moon'll blanch it."

Gone.

No lock on the door.

Margaret stood at the window, looking out at the green.
Thea? Cold here.
Not the changeless cold of Law, but sudden. Kind unkind. No answer. They would hunt her. In a storm of ravens, in a shadow at the door. She must keep watch. Keep silence on her birth. She shivered. Colder here than in my lady's tower. Bone-cold. And she ached. How long had she been travelling? Turning back the quilt, she wrapped herself and huddled on the bed. A long road out of Law. For all her will to wake, she nodded.

Hush, ba,
sang the wind.

Norni?

Here and nowhere. A remembrance. In their tower, Norni rocked an empty cradle by a fire of bone. At her knee, small Margaret held a tangle of bright silks; she saw a pale boat, rocking on a river of bright milk. Imbry's ship. Her sister's. Milk-twin and mother, child and nurse, they wove her journey between them, skein and song; made cradles in the air, of air. Then came a wind in the door, a rattling. The fire crouched and leapt.

Margaret started awake—keys jangling? No. She drew breath. No. Wind in the ivy. Wind. Her heart slowed, steadied. Soft featherbed. Small rain. Unmooring, she remembered leaves blown backward in a vanished book, untelling winter. At the story's spring, she slept. But in the ease of driftedness, her mind still crouched at ward, a cloud full of thorns.

"The
morning Starre
doth lie this daybreak in the
Thorn
,"
a later Margaret, turning from her glass, will write,
"wherein she joyeth most, her Pleasaunce and her Powre;
Slae
now falleth back and
Hulver
upriseth..."

In the green dark of another morning, Annot rose. She laid aside her mantle and her gown of black for petticoats of green, May mourning; mirrorless, she combed her leaf-red hair, and as she braided it all down her back, she sang beneath her breath.
” ... and a thought come in her head to run in the wood ... “
She left my lord's ring and my lady's baubles—though she traced the earrings with a finger, half-regretfully: her chains became her well. She left her needle in her work, too nearly done: the one unfinished sleeve.
” ... to pull flowers to flower her hat ... “
A smock to be bedded in, a shroud. Too fine for the greenwood, to sully and snag. But she wore her old ring that had been her grandam's, her namesake: that she kept.

An Lightwode.
And she turned it round on her finger.
Wode I fall?

She'd cast cavels for this chance; bid Ashes for a tale. And happen she'd return a maid among her maidens all, green-garlanded, enchained; or happen she'd be lost forever. Lost like Perseis, to wander barefoot in the wood above, the sky; and bloodfoot on the Road. She had the tale of it by heart; had played it, most pathetically, before her bedpost and a velvet bolster and a brace of crooked chairs.
But thou art mazed, sweet fool. The wood is dark. And I th’ moon's daughter in these rags of cloud Shall bear thee light...?

But now, this morrow, was no play, but Ashes’ telling. She must gang to the greenwood, to keep tryst with a—What? A witch? A ghost? A daemon lover? All in silver and sable, fair-faced like the earl of Law. And at the thought, she laughed.
Thou greensick girl, thou gowk. To put thyself into a song.
And yet imagining his hand on her, imperious—
he asked of her no leave
—she blushed, as if half naked in a flaw of snow she'd drunk burnt wine. And shivered, hackled down her hause-bane with the thrill of it, ablaze with swallowed sun. Aglow with it and giddy. Drunk: and yet athirst.

Tell me a ship. I would away.

And Ashes turning in a clack of runes:
Thy ship's i't forest. Unleaving.

Unfelled?

T'keel's of thy laying. O’ th’ new moon, that will round wi’ travelling. Thy mast's o't tree.

What moon?

As thou may. Thou must til t'greenwood, til t'thorn; and break thou ae branch of it, but ane, and call on—

Ashes?
Air.

The birds had wakened, giddying. The night bled pale. She blew her candle out; and with it, all unknowing, she was past. Away like fire into air: but for a waft of honey and a wisp of soul. And in her bed, foreshadowed, unforeseen, another Annot slept, and dreamed her journeying. Long since. And yet to come: the O implicit in the origin, the new moon in the old, infurled; the rounding of the endless ring.
Lief wode I fall
—forever and again, the seed, root, flowering—
an light would spring.

Far far in the greenwood, in the dark leaves of the wood, the owl cried out for her.
Two, two eyes.
And echoing, the small birds’ plaint:
Of tree, of tree, of tree.
Forever: yet they bid her haste. No time. She had a tryst with story.

The child dreams. She is cradled in the moon's lap, who with gnarled hands combs her sleep, undoes the ravels of the hag-rid night. Her sleep is long as wind.

A small voice, like a fire of leaves:
She braids o her mother.

And another, like the crackling of frost:
Aye, as left hand to this right. And Lightwood?

Of his root.

As wind is braided with the flying leaves, so her sleep with falling stars. They speak through her in tongues of leaf.
A braid of birds,
she thinks. She's falling upward now, slow-wheeling through a hail of stars. They sain her, touching eyes, heart, mouth.

"Thou wake."

She's lying on the black earth in a drift of light. Looking upward, she sees bare wood and moonless night. No stars. Two cummers huddle on the ground beside her: a dark one, hulked in sooty sheepskins; and another, hung with tatters, like a tree that keeps her wintry leaves. That one bends to her with glinting spectacles; the other raises her with tarnished hands. Moving, this one jangles, like a tree hung with ice. “Time thou was waked."

So light. So strange and light. Her head is starless.

"How—?"

"Thou made thee a trance,” says the leaf-witch.

She does not ask,
Where?

"Wood above. Thou's come by unleaving."

She's lost her shoes along the way.

The dark one holds a wooden bowl to her. “Thou drink.” A caudle of new milk. The child drinks deep of it, of dreams. It goes round.

From her lap, the leaf-brown other takes a barleycake, round as the honeyed moon. “Thou eat,” she says, and shares it out. The child takes. It is warm. “Is't bread?"

"A riddle,” says the leaf-witch.

And the dark one: “Barley. Thou break."

And so she does. The bread is hallowing. But in her share is something small and stony-sharp: a ring. A knot of seeds of blood. She turns it over in her hand; she holds it out to them. “I don't..."

"That were thine,” says Brock, the dark witch. “And will be."

"Will you keep it for me?"

"Till I won't,” says leaf-brown Malykorne.

And Brock says, “As I will."

The child looks from one to the other. Malykorne holds out her long hand for the ring. “Mind thee, thou mun come for it."

"Will I know the way?"

"Thou knaws by th’ moon,” says Malykorne. She's pulled a long thread from her ravelled sleeve. Round her finger and her thumb, and in and out, she's wound it in a clew of light; she's done and done. “There's thy journey.” A knot and a sleave, unbraiding starlight. Light as thistledown: she huffs it from her palm.

"Time is,” says Brock. “I'll set thee on.” Jangling, she doffs her coat of skins, and laps the child in it. “Cold in but thy bare soul.” Ah, but colder still in Ashes’ fell, in bone and blood. Stone cold. Then stirring, like a hive in winter; warm and fusty, with a tang of iron like a dying forge. Her blood rings like a new-struck nail. Brock touches the child's brow with her ashy hand. “What do they call thee, lass?"

By no name. “Thou.”
Crows’ meat. Hole to fill.

"Thou's left that,” says Malykorne. “Behind thee."

She looks back. Far far behind her is an O, a crow's eye or a cracked bright glass. A world, no bigger than a stone in someone's ring: she scries it in her hand. A child sits reading in a wintry garden, in a whorl of leaves, unfallen, walled about in glassy innocence. No flaw. A bird cries.
Margaret?
The child looks up; the leaves fall, scattering. Time runs. Unspelled, she spells in them her spring and fall, her journey.

Margaret lay amid a brangle of stars: their argument. Unselved: at once the riddle and unraveller, herself the key. But even as she knew the tale of it—so nearly understood—she woke to birdsong, lay bewildered by the light. The east looked down on her, dispassionate, the moon a white jug in its hand.

"Thou's o'erslept thysel,” said Mistress Barbary. “Happen thou's weary, travelling.” She set the jug down by the bedside. “Get thee washed afore it keels."

Rising barefoot and tousled, Margaret made her courtesy.

"Be still wi’ yon bobbery. Thou's not a-guisering.” A shrewd look. “Brought up til it? Well, it won't do here. Folk think it mockery."

A careful nod.

Barbary went on. “Happen as thou's a stranger, thou won't know ways o't hall. Master's Master Grevil. Bartolemy Grevil. He studies—Thy neck—And I keep house for him. Joan Heron's Barbary.” Her arms were full of clothes. She ducked her chin at them. “Thou's gentry, so he'd have it. So thou lies abed i’ feathers. Gets thy water carried up.” She laid down her bundle on the joint stool, unfolded a smock. “And goes t'finer for't. But for a’ that, thou's a chit: so under governance. Thou does what thou's tellt."

Comb in hand. “Madam, at your will and his."

A look, an upward nod.

Bodies and petticoat. The servant shook them out. “His naunt's, these'd be. Sisters out o Lune, they were—oh, ‘twould be forty year agone. Damaris, his mother were, t'awd master's Mistress Grevil, and young Annot.” Stockings. Gown. “'Tis all else mourning.” Fine falling bands, but out of starch; a bitter tang to them, of wormwood. Mistress Barbary pinched the folds. “Outlunish stuff. Still plainer than thy frippery. But I's set thee to furbish it. See thy skill at thy needle."

"Madam, I know not the art of it."

Almost startled. “No? And they says t'fair folk's witches at their needles. Fine as frost.” She took the empty jug. “Dosta want doin up, or owt? No? Quick then. Glass in t'awd mistress's chamber"—the apple room—"if thou mun prink. Breakfast i't kitchen."

At the door, she turned back.

"And what shall we call thee?"

A deep breath. “An't please you, Margaret."

Grave approbation. “A good workday name. Wears well."

The maids were all at breakfast, sitting round the table with bowls of porridge and shares of oatcake, mugs of ale. Margaret stood at the sill, combed and braided, very soberly clad. Forlorn. She heard a whisper: “Noll's fey.” A nudge and a titter, a spurt of mirth silenced, like a kettle lid clapped to. At Barbary's nod, they all rose. They turned and bobbed to her, prim as pats of butter. And the little kitchen boy stood up and bowed solemnly, his hand to the hilts of his ladle.

"Good morn t'ye, lady,” he piped.

Margaret curtsied: measure for measure.

"And the dog said bow-wow,” called the dark girl. A smirk round the table, cut off by Mistress Barbary's glance: butter and knife.

Herself rose and beckoned Margaret to her side. “Here's Master Grevil's ward. She's called Margaret; and by bread and salt, she's o this household."

"Halse ye,” they muttered, round the board.