Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (29 page)

They walked the Lady into being.

When she lighted she was three. From east and north and south, she rose. Three faces, each and all the moon, his end: her sickle shearing and her millstone trundling round, her old black cauldron gaping for his bones.

A neck! A neck!
the grey cock crew. And from behind him, suddenly, a rope was round his throat and twisted: held until a knife was in each eye, a bloodred sun; until a blackness cracked him like a snail on stone. Let go. And naked, blind and burning, hard and helpless, he was turned about thrice moonwise. He was crowned with straw. With sun. A silence but the clack of flails.

My lady spoke then from the north. “Who graved thee?"

He could whisper. “Thy servants sworn to thee. My lady, i’ thy lap."

And from the east, “Who got thee?"

"On thyself, myself."

And lastly from the south: “And who will bear thee?"

"Thyself alone."

Three staves struck the earth as one. “Get him up."

The Fiddler, wrapped in Cloud, still slept upon the hills. Outworn with harvesting.
No gazing now,
thought Margaret. She'd go no further on. Turning back from the hillside, coming down, she halted by the Owlstone. She'd cakes for the crow lad in her pocket, from the harvest ale. But there was something left already in the hollow of the stone: a roundness, and the ghost of scent. She knew before she drew it out. A withered orange. Light with age, a shadow of itself. She cradled it and sniffed.
But where—?
They grew not in the wood. What conjury was this? And under it, and stained with it, a playing card. Not hers—her heart had clenched—but cruder. Tallowy with handling, and it reeked of bacca. But the one: old Slae, the coldest of the wandering stars. He sat with his unwilling bride, bright Perseis: the banket spread before her all untasted, and her cup undrunk.

Full naked moonlight now. And at her own chill back, a shadow and a scent of wine. Uncloudish. And another, ranker stench beneath, of man. Of Morag's games. She turned.

So pale—a revenant? An inbreath, caught. And then she sorted what she saw: the crow lad in a fine white shirt, laid open to the waist. As white as deathcap, rising from his rags, gill-pleated to the bands. A lordly shirt. He laughed. “Made thee leap.” There were twigs of ivy in his white crow's hair. “S'll make thee tumble next.” He held a sprig of grapes up high—
now jump for it
—and higher still, a taunt. He smiled like summer lightning, at a flash, and elsewhere. He was drunk. Not sprawling now but taut with it: a bowstring, and his quiver full of pride and mockery. “I's a star thou's not spied. Riddle me that."

"If it's not in heaven, then ‘twill rise in time; if not, thou may'st look for it in Law."

"I'd go,” he said. Lordly. “I'd dazzle thee."

"How cam'st thou by that shirt?"

"With tickling trout.” New bruises on his wrist, his neck, the color of the grapes. “There's nine,” he said. “Then eight.” Sleek fruit, unwithered, with a bloom like galaxy. And each a starless night. “I serve a mistress greater than thine own.” He bit; he sucked ecstatically, and spat. “Her dark s'll eat thy light."

Mist rose from the river in the dawning. There was light now, even in the wood. Green, green as summer still, the foliage, but in a sadder key, incurling on itself. Bronze green: the summer cast and past. The gressops now had changed their tune. Grevil walked beside the river, up and down, as he had walked and waited since the pale of night. No more. He dared not: he was wanted at the high barn, great with barley. A good year for the corn: the sun had held. He looked at the rain-starved river, bonier, but saw no glint of gold.
Happen he came back for it.
But that was folly: it had washed to sea, or else lay deep within a dub or cranny, lost until a chance discovered it, untarnished and unfaced. The river kept its counsel. Here and elsewhere, a circle started, spread; another and another one cross-faded.
At the ninth,
he thought,
I'll go.

"Fishing?” said a reedy voice. Turning, Grevil saw the scythesmen's Lady, with his bone mask on his shoulder and his staff, but elseways as a gentleman. “There are rare trout in this stream, I've heard. What luck?"

Grevil chose his words. His neighbor had a jackdaw's eye for trouble, and a restless and malicious tongue. And he had spies. “Good morrow to you, sir. Ill fortune. ‘Twas here but yesterday I caught three fingerlings and lost a luck-piece from my pocket. Through a hole. If you see it—” He measured air between his thumb and finger. “'Twas a sort of antick charm, no bigger than my thumbnail. Gold."

"I mind it well,” said the witchmaster. “Tom Grevil thy grandsire took it from its grave, where I had laid it with my son. Thy family was the first to break the earth with spades of iron. It is old; it likes not cabinets."

He's mad,
thought Grevil.
Doting mad.

Yet still the fellow smiled. “I liked not thy fathers. They did break the Law.” He turned away to go, how lightly for his years. At his back, the mask still mocked at summer's fall, unseeing.

"Stay,” said Grevil. “A word with you."

He turned, as if he were a card: that face all mystery and malice; this, the lord of high estate, all arrogance. Master-Mistress. “If brief. I have business elsewhere."

"That boy they call the crow lad: he is sorely bruised, beyond all measure of chastisement."

"What care is it of thine?"

"That care I take of any creature on my land, that it be not abused. He—"

"What
he?
It is an Ashes brat. There's game in it, no more."

Grevil drew a breath, but his voice shook. He was losing. “For shame. The boy is kinless; but is of your kind."

"For all I know, he's of my getting.” The witchmaster shrugged. “Leave thy fence, Noll Grevil; I know thy care in this. Thou coyst him and he cozens thee; but he is mine.” A flicker of the card. “Of earth and of my mystery, and at my will. As thy vixen is thine."

"What vixen is that?” Lost utterly.

"That nameless maudlin thou hast taken to thy bed—Aye, hand to hilt, thou'll not kill earth with iron—"

Mad. But as a dog is, killing with his mouth.

Sheer, smiling enmity. “Aye, she. Noll's fey. Now there's a liking I'd not guessed in thee. Whence came this tooth for cunny? Or dost thou use her as a boy?"

"Crows eat thee,” said Grevil. “And thy lying tongue. And all thy slanders. These are tales of naught."

"Tales? Are they not thy mastery? Here's law before thy books were made: what's masterless is held in common. Haws in every hedge. But I tell thee: I will give thee thy crow lad for a turn if thou wilt barter. Boy for girl."

To Grevil's shame, his impulse was to flail at him—scratch out that smiling face. A womanish, a weeping fury. Futile. As good score adamant, outstare the sun. When he had mastery of his hands and voice, he said, “Go, play thy vilest fantasies: but on thyself. The girl is innocent; the boy is neither mine nor thine, but hath his will. I do not take.” He looked now at the mask of flesh, the face of ivory. Was there a crack? Was there a difference? Nothing in the eyes. “And even nameless, they have souls."

"Do they?” Suddenly the witch's face was mischievous. “Does thy crow lad? I do wonder where he keeps it hid.” And whistling up his dark hounds, tall as thunderheads, he strode away.

Getting crawcrooks on the moor for Barbary, Margaret heard a low-breathed whistling in the heather, changing to a stormcock's angry rattle, rising, and the white-haired boy fell in with her. Said little, circling back and back to her, and to and fro, like one of Hulver's moons. But he showed her where the owl had built, the feathers and the bones; and where the imbers grew, blood-ripe, miraculous: at once whole and hollow. Pierced. She set them on each finger's end. He dug where he had left a merlin buried in an ant-heap, skull and body in their perfectness, want-polished, white as elfshot. Each his own garner.

By and by, they came among grey trees, an orchard run to wild. Thrawn trees, flawed apples, windfall in the tangled grass. Thick as stars.
The wood below.
Margaret knelt to scry it, sorting through the heaps. Sitting back on her heels, she cradled—heft and sweetness—sniffed, and bit. Sharp-sour, leaping in the mouth. The crow lad, stooping for his share, said, “Here's bonny."

Leaves in her lap. All round, the bare green hills, cloud-mantled; water, wind. Behind her in the orchard, scarved in mist, knee-deep in tangle, lay a low-browed cottage. Asleep. No eyes in it. “Whose...?"

"Awd lass.” He knelt in the deep grass, tearing hanks of it. “Gi'ed me bread, times."

"Is she dead?"

He shrugged.

The house empty. “None came here?"

"Witch."

An apple fell; birds cried. He was weaving grass between his hands. A bauble turned and rounded, bristling. Too green: it flagged. “Tellt me stars. What she called t'wood above."

"Stars like mine?"

"Thou stocking bur. Aye, stars like thine, that light mooncalves to mischief.” He tossed the bauble to the wind. “Thou's another such teasel as yon twitch-rake. Scritch scratch like a pair of wool-combs. Thou braids of her, awd Jin."

A glint on gossamer. Up and upward into air. She traced it with a crawcrooked finger, dreamily. Blue hands. Far off, a sheep bell clanked.

"Witch?"

Hands flung heavenward, he toppled backward in the knobbly grass. “Aye, witch.” He lay looking upward through the leaves. Through his backturned hand, as if the faint sun dazzled him. “She were Ashes."

Kneeling up, he felt amid his rags and tatters for a twisted rag of pouch; undid the string. Raddle and ashes. He smudged a fingertip, and on a stone he dabbed a swift scant pattern: a glyph of stars she knew. The Witches.

"What she tellt me."

He sat back on his heels, the stone between his hands.

"Once afore t'moon were round, there were sisters, Craws Annis and Mall Moonwise. And they span t'moon atween ‘em, turn and turn on ae spindle, light and dark. Ae thread. And ilka clew they span a month; and ilka twelve and one, a year."

"What did they spin?” said Margaret.

"For Nine to weave, thou windegg. Yarn."

"But of what?"

An inchworm silence, blunting at air.

"Shorn lateworms?” she said.

"Snick up, I's telling thee.” But his mouth quirked; then statelier, he said:

"But Annis, she were high and proud. Thowt ower much on her white hands: so she span no more. And that were Year at far end. She thowt much on her glass. Fair as frost, she thowt hersel. So she's rived her shadow frae hersel, and bound it in an iron brooch, and hid it, lock and key, i’ kist. And that were Night fast. And she thowt as Sun would get new shadow on her, so she's cut him down wi’ her sickle, sleeping. And she's ground him in her quernstones and she's boiled him in her pot. Tongue and teeth it has, atween her legs. And that were Day drunk up. And she band her sister in a bush o Thorn. And that were Moon lost. And t'Stars she fastened in her glass."

"Not now,” said Margaret.

Another silence, needle sharp.

"Lang syne,” he said. “So it were Lightfast evermore, for ay and O."

"And then?"

"Twa witches come out o't Otherwhere, fire and frost"—he touched the stone, two fingers to the brighter stars—"and swore that Annis should be bound."

Chin on knees, she was gazing at him. “And?"

He tossed the stone away. “They did."

"Did the sky crack?"

"Aye. Riddled down like rain. Like hailstones. It were stars til t'eaves."

"And the year turned?"

"Like a whirligig."

"And—” She could not say it.
Annis?

Greendark beneath the branches now. The crow lad sees another dusk beyond it, dawning, and the shadow of the crows. A cornfield. Now he shakes with cold and clacks his rattle, and the cold mist eats his cry. He is hoarse with shouting, but he must.
Craws!
Annis crouches in the hedgerow, waiting; if a crow lights, she will pounce and tear him with her iron nails, and hang his tatters from the thorn.

He leaned to Margaret, whispering, “Eats children."

White morning, like a new leaf, all unwritten. Silver on the lawn by sunrise. Gossamers. An edge of gilding on the trees.

Autumnal,
Margaret thought.

They'd taken up their scattered work: a heap of Grevil's notes, unthreshed, on flyleaves, foolscap, scrawled in margins, lay before her, interleaved. Her quire of pages, squared and sorted, weighted with a pebble, to her hand. She tried her pen and mended it.

Across the table from her, Grevil stood and read a folded sheet, cross-written, with a haws-red broken seal. Not work. He wore his coat, but no bands; he'd been seeing to the threshers in the great barn, in and out.
Let them glean who want,
he'd said:
'tis garnered. I'll not stint.
All beyond the trees and rising to the stones of the fellsides, the clouds’ edge of the sky, there lay shorn fields, unmantled of their summer dignity. He looked out on them. Pale straw a-prickle through the bare brown earth.
White-headed. Back and shoulder for the stroking. Like a cropped lad's neck,
he thought, and stirred.
The nape a-shiver to the hand.

Margaret drew a little Ship.
Autumnal.
And a new word,
Hallows.
She could taste the curve and edge of it, the quickening: the great stars rising and the whirl of leaves. A larger night laid bare.
Unleaving.
She forefelt it even in her spirit's marrow, great with dark.

A stir and shaking in the orchard leaves, but no bird's voice: Doll asway in the treetops called down to Nan below her, with her apron full of pears.

"Half ripe,” called Nan. “There's better higher up."

Bending to her paper, Margaret wrote:

At Lightfast is the Sun in Ashes; for the which oure Learned Wives do say that she is great with Time. But the lewder Sorte will haue it, that Hee dyes in her, and rises in her Lappe.

"Do thou tent thee and I's toss.” The shaking of the boughs and scrabbling, the plump of fruit.

"O a wasp!” cried Nan.