Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (42 page)

"If Marget win?"

Stars, clouds of stars are canted in her spectacles; then fire, flaring as she turns. “Then we's undone. I't world she's great with, we is nowt.” And taking up her broom, she says, “Here's all to do."

Brock thrusts her hand into the fire, and lifts it up; it dances on her palm. “I's off then.” At the sill of
now
and
here
, she turns.

The island was bare. Whin, captive, twisted round to look. No castle, as the stories told of Law; no blade of grass, no tree; but a fell of burnt moorland, scald as a fireship, and crowned with stones. All round it raged a wolfblack sea, a wind that ravened on the shore. Above it stood unlifting sky. No sun nor moon, nor slant of light, but mirk and shadowless. No stars. Or rather that they walked among them, or the lykes of stars, in the Unrising.

They moved in silence for a time, still bent against the wind. “Here,” said Morag.

They halted at a standing stone. It seemed a rough-carved image of a naked witch, squat-bellied, spindle-shanked, and girning, crouching with her legs agape. Whin saw it was a thrall, enduring, blind as dark. It kenned them and it hated. “Bawbee Mag,” said Morag, calling it by name. She took her iron keys and chose one, with a muttered spell; she turned it in the witch's lock.

Earth opened like a grave. Bonecold it was, astounding breath and blood.

The child?
Again Whin saw the blotch of birds that tore and quarrelled at the dying girl; she saw the bloodwet child upheld. Kit's lass. His daughter, that she'd sworn to find, and bring her, even from the depths of Law.

"Down here,” said Morag and Whin followed, down and down a spiral stair, and in and out the turnings of a labyrinth.
They's left me a thread, and I walk and I wind.
She tried their tally on her knucklebones; could make no sense. A thread would tangle on itself, a trail of stones would scatter like a cloud of chaff. They were under Law.

Witstarved, falling in a daze of dream, Whin stumbled on.

She was roused by a reeling stench, a rustling mewling watchfulness. A squalid rancor. They were halted at a cave, howked out of glistening rock. The hag thrust in her torch between the iron bars. “Bred to the stone,” said Morag. “They were of thy kind.” A cageful of fledgling ravens, blind as worms, and writhing naked in the litter. Wenches to the fork, but winged and taloned. Ravenous beneath. Their mews was strewn with tirings of manflesh, raw bloody bones. Whin stood by the bars: not close. A raven stirred and mantled, gaping at both maws. She was naked, quilling out; she spread the wings that were her hands once, webbed. She was ringed through her privities, that gaped. Her will, her mortal tongue, her soul were gone. Her eyes still knew her fall. And hated.

A monstrous regiment, a blood-dark Pleiades. And of her kind.

A fury waked in her, not whirling but a whetstone.
I see,
thought Whin; and brushed her finger through a smoky torch: that bound her oath.
I will.

And now they spiralled up and upward; but they came not into light. Bare passages, where hung a few flagged tapestries, all blear with dust.
Her
webs. And nothing else, but here and there, great chests broke open, spilling wrack. Salt-ruined webs of velvet, bletted books. A virginals. Gnawed candles. Cups and oranges, all blue with rot. A sword. And there, the whirligig she'd cried for, that she'd broken, long years since. The knife she'd lost, that cut his cord. Her Ashes brat's. The stubble on her cold neck rose and pricked. That blade had severed her from kind. For what? For nothing but her will. She knew not even if the boy had lived an hour past her leaving him, birth-bloody, on the starven ground. She'd vowed to cut his throat with it, she'd sworn it to the gods: give back to Law what law decreed—his blood. But she had not. Starved earth to suckle him but once: and so she thirsted. She went on.

And in the arras on the wall there stirred a dawnless wind.
What's there?
A glint of mirror. Shadows in the smoke. Were they wafts of her memory? Woven of her dreams?
There
, in the shadow, in the crouch and quaver of the torches—guisers? Faintly as the stars they played, slow-tumbling in an autumn mist, they glimmered in her eyes and faded. Look there, a knot of swords? A cage? And turning, she saw nothing there, a slashed web stirring in a draught. But there, the torches caught a splatch of weld, as ragged as a weed. White hair, as white as chimneysweepers gone to dust. The Sun.

He turned to her from shadow.

All in black. Unmasked. And smiling like a rennie fox.

"Mistress Ashes."

Tumult, as the roaring girls swept onward. “Ashes’ will!” they cried. They tanged their ladles on their pans, and blew their mournful threning horns. At every crossroads, and from every stile and stead and scattered cote, almost from every bush, they gathered up guised women as a river in a spate takes sticks. Ashes that was Margaret, dazing in the whelm and uproar of them, stumbled on through the endless night, haled on and hallowed.

"...will. Her will!"

Down and down they thundered, madded like sheep: sploshing hugely over moorland and moss, over leapstones and across a swift loud beck, down a green lane, down a sunken trod, walled and higher walled, the narrower the swifter: down a street. “Who is't?” cried voices. “Clapcraws that's to hang.” Their pattens clanged on stone; their voices rang, re-echoing from walls. “Will hang.” They spilled into a broader place, pent in. Lapping and cross-lapping, fanning out, like swift water in shallows. Dark: but for their lanterning.

Three suns were dancing in the market square. Down leapfire, up lightfast, and round again the year to come, outleaping both; and like a candle flaring in its fall, as new and new again uprose.

Still jostled onward, Ashes saw the guiser juggling cages of fire, the flames upleaping as their cages fell, the brighter for their downfall. A smith, by her leathern cap. She caught and quenched them, one two three: all but an ember that she pouched. A hail of coppers and a blare of horns. She turned to face the rout. “Here's a clatter,” said the smith. “Lang Meg and her daughters, come down frae't hills.” A woman by her voice: but breeched, like Ashes. Jangling as she glanced. But coatless: in a patched and singed and sooty jerkin, of as many greys as storm in February. Grey as any brock.

A guiser called out, “I see yer a sleightful wench."

"And if I is."

"We's after a smith. Are ye learned of that mystery?"

"Black and white."

"A master?"

"Aye, and mistress of journeymen."

"Can yer break locks and bars?” said the striding woman with a sword. “There's a bird we'd spring."

"Oh, I's keys til all locks.” She beckoned Ashes to her side. “Come, lass. Thou show me where he's laid."

Uncharted here below. Ashes looked all round for the dark tower. None: a dark space, an off-square, set askew; a few bleared candles in the eaves of low houses. All abed? No. Watchful. At the far end where it narrowed ran a river with a stone bridge.

There.

By the bridge-end. A round cell in the marketplace, with a cap like a candle-snuffer. Like her lantern: but dark. Absurdly small and like its card, as if she saw it through her glass held backward: but not for laughter, no. Dank-walled and windowless: she knew that dark. That blindness of despair.

From a coign behind it on the packbridge, Corbet and his henchmen rose with swords. All else was nothing.

He was unmasked, half in guising: in a long robe of black sheepskins, with his vizard at his shoulder like a white crow, his familiar moon. Its hair like smoke and ashes. No scythe this meeting, but a naked sword.

He bowed: as if they partnered in a dance.

"Mistress Ashes."

His rout was coming from the trances of the town. At her back she felt the swirl and counterswirl of guisers, men and women at odds.

"Come, a dance at hallowfast,” he bade her. Gall and honey in his voice. “Will you have
Cross my river to Babylon
?"

Ashes felt a pull at his bidding: as if his will like a raptor's talons tugged her soulstrings from her heart. But the juggler's sooty palm was on her shoulder. “Bide,” said Ashes’ champion; and faced him. “Off to thy mummery?"

"At midnight: not without some certain dainties that this rabble would filch. And thou, smutch-bellows? Art thou her champion?"

"I's come for't wedding. Heared there's a fiddler and all."

"Mine? Is put off, they say."

"Thy son and his mother's cockpiece, his daughter and her son. How many's that?"

"I play not at riddles.” Hand on hilts.

The guiser stood. “Twa then: Ashes and her will."

"What, that crowsmeat? His bride-bed is a rope."

"Criss-cross, and rope's a bed."

"And a fell for a featherbed on him."

"Sleeps light. ‘Twill cast it off as cloud."

"Crows at his cradling."

"And will swing his rattlebag, and flight them. Flaycraw's his trade."

"Yet will hang, for his reckoning. His teind's to pay."

"That ring was not thy gift but his. Witchmaster."

"So the vixen laws it for the lamb.” The moonface at his shoulder smiled on Ashes, blind, unchanging in its pyre of hair. “The brat's for the gallows, and that greensick girl is mine."

"Not for thy needfire: Ashes of herself."

"Will this rout of hobnails have a Lunish stranger for their idol?"

"Ashes lights on who she will."

"What need? They could bear about a lolling puppet; and yet drink themselves sottish in her name."

"They's ears."

A dark low muttering behind her; a clenching in the crowd. And still she stood.

His hand grew tighter on his sword; and yet he darted in his glance. His voice rose, reedy as a rackett. “Shall I not have law?"

"Aye. And Law have thee."

"I'll not change words with a juggler."

He turned, disdainful, to the rabble, calling out in his shawm's voice: “Will you loose this dunghill rat to spoil your corn? Breed ratlings of your wives and daughters?” Silence. “Will you teach my covenanted wife to play the whore? To prank at midnight in a tinker's breeks?” Thunderous silence. “I will have whipped who hinders or defies me. She is mine to chastise for her impudence; he is mine to hang: I will take what is mine own."

A woman in the crowd called out, “Which d'ye want, Maister? Lass or arse?"

A storm of jeers and catcalls.

"Breeches is hers by right: Ashes rides rantipole."

"Go singe yer petticoats wi’ leaping fires: y'll not leap her."

"First to bed's first wed, awd Craw, and Horn take hindmost."

Still the witch gang held the bridge: a dozen men, well-armed. Uneasy in their arrogance. All drawn. No weapons in the crowd but clods and sickles.

"Fire straw,” said Corbet's man, aside to him; but Ashes heard. He thrust his torch at a vent in the prison.

Corbet stayed him with a hand. “My lady cracks no charred bones."

He turned back to Ashes. “If thou comest not now by law, still later thou wilt come; and serve me, will or nill.” She stared back in mute fury. “Not a word? Thy tongue will learn its usage, soon enough. And if this night breed maggots in thee, still thou wilt serve. In stews or in kennel: tainted meat I give my pack."

There were horses waiting in the shadows; they mounted, and away.

"My lady's huntsman,” said Morag.

"I do hawk for her,” he said. “But here's a black wench that I know, though she deny me.” He bowed ironically to Whin. “I knapped thy maidenhead. Thou spawned a brat."

"Any mort's same as t'other i't dark,” said Whin. “So be it that she's cleft. If she'd a prick yer might remember her."

"I mind thee perfectly. Thy glass a little breathed with country handling; but uncracked."

"There's a marvel, an yer mended it."

"Thou wert Ashes, and bade me."

"There's many been."

"In Crawcrag, a reeky sort of goat-shagged slough."

"They's souls."

"Their Fool had a blue eye and a brown. And thou didst take me for thy will. Thy Sun. White hair, like chimneysweepers—ah, I see thou mind'st.
What's a’ clock,
thou saidst, and whift mine ear.” He laughed. “Ah, thou gaped for it. Thy milk sprang to my fiddle."

"Y'd have met himself ont road,” said Whin. “I doubt men blab."

"They do. Thy cries are commonplace as ballads, and thy knacks on every swagman's tongue; but I did cheap thee first of all. How thou didst game it! Ride-a-cock rantipole, a-gallop, being green. And touse it and mouse it, and tumble and mumble it.
Come in, says cunny to the fox."
Her voice, in mockery. “And thought it was thy choosing."

He turned to Morag. “What would my lady with this haggard?"

"Happen a lock,” said Morag.

"No more than she's used to: stand and take,” he said. “But idle work. Thy ravens want a ninth. Let her be seeled and gentled."

"That's as my lady bids,” said Morag.

"Has she sport?"

"Aye, when her chit's returned—young Mistress Manseed—then we'll hunt her father's soul, and feast her, and my chucks will have his stones."

"Cold meat,” said the huntsman, with a glance with at Whin. “Her crop wants sweeter junketing.” Mock tenderly, he coyed her cheek. “There's word aloft that thy fondling's to the gallows. There's a pretty dish of eyes."

He caught Whin's hand before it struck, and bent it backward, so she dropped her knife. “I do not mar,” he said. “Carve me or curse me, I am what I am."

"Thou's no man, but a guiser: a thing that walks in men's bodies."

"Worms must feed,” said the huntsman. “And nakedness be clothed. I do but change my coat of skin to please me, like burd Ashes. Has my lady Runagate not eaten thee?"

"Aye. And so my bairn did in my belly, inward out. And I's here.” Whin sleeved her face, wearily. “Thou'd have got no child on me. Being ghostly."

"Thy brat is father to himself, his mother's cockpiece. Of thy flesh."

"His flesh is promised,” Morag said. “It is the ravens’ fee."