Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (51 page)

Get him up,
cries Noll in agony.
She's dead now.

As if she's heard, the light witch beckons to the Sun.
Wake him: for his dream is done. We played it.
And he sings the morning.

So Tom o Cloud rises up in green, unfolds: like an imp from an acorn, like a catkin from a hazel twig. Shakes out his rags that lie about him like a drift of last year's leaves. He catches up the bright Sun laughing, tosses him, high high up in the air. As high as the rooftree that is green with winter leaves. And there he seems to hang forever, ever falling, shining as the light reborn.

Ashes laughs.
The Road is made of travellers,
she thinks,
and so we are. And so I spy us in my glass: we dazzle me.
All here: Mag Moonwise with her broom of Thorn who sweeps the Way before; the Fool with his Lantern and the Fiddler with his Bow; the Wren they harry from its nest; bold Leapfire; Ashes with her bag of souls. Herself.
The ritual's the Road: we
do
it, so it is. We dance the sky.

It swings about her, giddying. Not drunk, she has not drunk with them: but Ashes dances her. If once she stopped, the stars would rattle down like rain. Like coins for their beggary. Small silver in the bowl of night.

All about her in the night and firelight and snow, the guisers stamp and shout. They've drunk John Barleycorn his health in him, and round and round on setting forth; but they are drunk on heroes, dizzy with renown. As they come they whirl the torches upward, shouting out. They rant for sheer joy of it; they stamp the cat ice on the rutted road. The sky below. And Ashes heels it for the crack; she kicks and scatters flinders like the sparks of autumn leaves. The torches glitter in the star-cracked fragments. Every shard a Sun.

Master Corbet, sweeping up a handful of the scattered heavens, turns and bows to Madam Covener. He opens out his dripping hand. There is a piece still fading on it, fainter than the daylit moon. “Your lady's coin, I think?"

She takes, and it is nothing: water. Glances at his great rings, red as coals. “'Twill serve to turn a mill of yours. Or drown a forge.” Or break a ship of his on Law. She's bought him for her paltry niece, with his broad lands, and he will bed the creature, hard—the chit wants manage—but she'll bring an imp-child for a dowry, a daughter in her womb. And yet be virgin, seemingly, by Madam's own well-studied art. There's coin for him, to be her Lady's cuckold and to wear hind's horns. So much for his great rings.

There's tumult in the hall, a caterwauling of a crowd and drum. Her other niece, with her great bellyful, is leaning forward, all agog. The servants call and stamp. The fools are gawking at some jugglery, a tumbler in a tinsel coat. The Sun. Like a woodcut from a tawdry pack of cards. Hedge sortilege. All trumpery, this pack of journeymen; although their mistress has some inkling of the arts of Law. Has six or seven cantrips, but unstudied. Hedgewitch.

Madam smiles. Air and fire, earth and water, and that other element: all one, and in her mastery. She has a stone.

At the door-sill, Annot sets the garland on Noll's head. White buds like drops of milk. Of candlewax and ends of silk, he knows, just snippets; but she's wreathed the snow in it, she's made it real. A secret for his mammy. She parts the arras just a little on a glare and clamour. It is time now. He cannot. A wistful winding music plays. He will.

Now,
she whispers.
Softly, softly.

All in green, a green verge in her hand, the winter child arises from her mother's dark, walks barefoot through her shattered crown. But where she walks spring flowers.

He is Ashes and she keeps the year alive.

There's a hushing in the room, a susurration. Like a wind through branches, like a sea: the summertide. The winter leaves with her; she brings the green within, and
in
is not. No hall, no company, no fireside. A hill. At every step a green blade springs.

He carries Ashes in himself: he is a bowl for her, brim full of holiness. So he goes softly, lest she spill. And yet she overspills, and where the drops fall there are flowers. They are white, and rooted in the darkness. Ashes buds. He walks in wonderment.

But in the players’ space, amid the dazing candles and the roar, she stumbles and he halts. Looks round and backward. All unwooded now. All faces. Annot?

And the witches who are not look shrewdly on him: would he fall?

He casts about him wildly. Annot?

There. She nods at him, encouraging: begin. But in her face the mischief and the pride have slipped a little, like his wreath. She's fretted for him now.
Don't turn round,
she's told him.
Keep on.
He's done it wrong.

And the dark witch calls,
Pray silence for my lady's imp.

Confusion: what his legs know is a bow. The crowd of faces laugh, some not unkindly. And the Sun blears out his tongue. Crisis.

But Tom o Cloud lays a warm hand on his shoulder. Steady now. Then stepping back, he quirks a curtsey: half in homage and half prompt.

Later, ever after, he'll remember vividly: the whiff of eager sweat on sweat; how the brown of Tom o Cloud's face is crooked, paint askew on winter pallor; his smile. He'll dream of that: he will be standing at the verges of a greendark wood, afraid, afraid, and he will see it further in, run after. There and gone. Like flick of fire, a falling star. A wish.

But he is
she,
is Ashes now. Tom sets the garland straight.

Speak, lady. ‘Tis your cue.

No part of his, unpracticed now: the words her own. She speaks her mother tongue, still milky with her draught of heaven.

It's silent when she's done.

On the hillside is a door; beyond the door, a fire. On the sill there stands a girl in green to welcome Ashes in. She bids her.

Overcome with godhead suddenly, Noll turns and runs, he buries his head in his mother's not-now-lap, against her mystery. In that drumly hill is laid his sister yet unborn, who will be Ashes.

Tom o Cloud and my Lady sit, playing at the cards for hazelnuts. It's three-and-twenty worlds she's won of him so far; his pockets rattle in her pouch. Unmantled now, unmasked, there's none would mark her: he or she might be a scrivener or a stocking-mender, a hussif or a glover's clerk. Old, young; breeches, petticoats; the dark of moon or light: he plays all parts indifferently, indelibly, and keeps the company's purse. Like Ashes, they are liminal; they live among a cloud of voices, out of door of time. Bar them out and they'll be in at windows. Thieves, some call them, and dissemblers: picklocks of the eye and ear, and coiners of conceit. Brock's journeymen, that walk the moon's road of a history, slip souls like jackets. Tell. They loiter by the screens, as yet unpaid.

The fiddler's filled Tom's mazer cup with Lunish wine, and drinks. The Second Witch eats oranges. Six are too many to juggle. As are five and four. And the First Witch, flown with battle, strays amid the gentry, seeking delicates and praise.

"A pretty Ashes, that,” says Pipe-and-Tabor, drinking bacca. “Will we steal her?"

"Yon moth?” says my Lady. “'A plays a maiden rarely, but he's pricked out for another part. His father's master here."

"Milk still on his mother tongue,” says the Second Witch. “But mark you, he'll be mumchance when we come the next year. Breeched and cropped."

"Shame,” says Pipe-and-Tabor. “Fitted for the quality. Speaks well."

My Lady casts her bones. “His naunt—yon farthing candle—put him up to it. Made his verses."

They look at the girl in green. A stiff provincial finery. An artful hand had laced that stomacher, not hers: she wears it like a prentice, ill-at-ease. Indifferent fair; a fall of reddish hair, like bracken, down her back. A chit. They note her gaze still following the witch boy—sword and petticoats—admiring the sinewed hand so lightly hovering at his hilts, the blackwinged brows. The clear blood in his red lip comes and goes.

"There now, she dotes on Master Leg."

"Who's rapt with his glass."

"That breaks for him."

"Why then, he'll get himself upon a knifeblade."

"A horsetrough."

"A quarrel."

"A spoon."

The witch boy sinks his merlin face into a pot of syllabub.

The girl in green turns round.

And O, the fiddler cries, as if like Tom o Cloud he looked upon the fallen Perseis, amazed: “O rare Cosmography."

"Out of thy compass,” says Pipe-and-Tabor.

"Ah, what heavens to be lost in her."

"Thou'rt fickle as the sun, that lies a turn in every house in heaven. Just so many inns to thee. Here's good ale at the Nine and Shuttle, and a brave wench at the Bow."

"See, she comes,” says the Second Witch. “Guise thyself.” He catches up a mask and plumps it in the fiddler's lap.

And Tom o Cloud sings at him the old tune from the masque, the woodwo's brag:

Caught in his confusion, the fiddler's late to rise; the others make their courtesies with hat and leg. The girl with red hair dips and rises like a green wave of the sea. And he is drowned.

"Which of you is Master?"

"I,” my Lady says. “And Mistress."

"I am sent to bid you to our supper; so my brother Grevil says."

"And welcome: for we take our road the morn."

"Go you at venture?"

"Mistress, even unto Lune,” says Tom o Cloud. “Where ‘tis said that hares hold court at midnight, and the moon's their dancing master."

"I would see that.” A sigh. “It was bravely done, the masque.” The girl in green recalls her errand. “For your pains."

The players’ Mistress takes the clinking purse of silver, weighs it in his palm. No stint. Spills silver. Not a moon of it but at its full. He fishes in his pouch. “Here's for your little eyas.” Three half-bright Lunish farthings. Owls. “And for his poetry.” Another coin.

She turns it over in her hand. There's morning in her face, and mischief. “What, and leave yourselves no Ship?"

The fellow dandling the vizard speaks. “This fiddle is our ship that carries us; our wit our sails. Our wind is your good will."

"Am I an Outlune witch to bind and barter wind?"

"A witch,” he says. “No crone."

"Then sit I in the east. Will you not founder?"

"Mistress, in your cold dispraise is wrack; and drowning in your eyes."

"Then I will weep not at your tragedies."

"Nor clap our comedies?"

"Why no, lest with my plaudits I should overset your pinnance. For I see ‘tis overigged."

"Thou mermaid—” And he halts, dismayed.

A sword dance of words: they weave, lock, draw. Then silence and a fall.

My Lady speaks: and all that is abrupt, unpolished in the girl in her is grace and maidenhead. She speaks; and what she spells is true:

Tom o Cloud now takes the shepherd's part, his face alight with awe:

A shrill voice shoulders through the crowd. “Annot? Thou's wanted."

Pipe-and-Tabor shrugs. “Now pat there comes a nurse: and our catastrophe."

As waking from a trance, the green girl stirs and sighs; she gathers up her skirts. “Anon,” she calls. “I come.” And off through the rout of rustics like a swallow.

Flown.

The fiddler beats his fist againt his palm in fury.
Craws eat me.

They look where a wintry dame, stark upright, beckons from a great chair by the hearth. The green girl curtsies to a man in black, white-headed. Old as Slae. His great rings glowering like a stithy, like a handful of coals. On the table-carpet at his side, there lies a viol uncased. His reedy voice o'ercrows the company. They hear the triumph, not the words.

The Second Witch scowls. “I doubt they've chained her to yon death's head. They'll cry a handfast now."

The fiddler breaks a sword of lath.

And at the door, as if old January's fist were gloved in snow, there comes a muffled knocking and a cry.

The players’ Lady turns. “Here's winter come a-begging fire. Shall we hear these country clods their interlude?"

There's a green bough hanging on the door of Grevil's hall. Three times the Fool brings down his wrenstaff—crack!—upon the stone, so that the ribands dance, the bird flits wildly in his cage of thorn. Hob Hawtrey's men cry out,
Sun's in Ashes! Let us in.

And they call for the maid in the lilywhite smock, who trips to the door and pulls back the lock. Ashes that was Margaret schools her face in due solemnity. It's Sukey's turn, the youngest, in the pride of her silver pin. The keeper of the sill. She plays to her.

But it's a stranger at the door. A qualm: is Suke ill then? in disgrace?

But Hob's her father and the Fool sees nought amiss.
Ye mun let us in. We bring t'Sun.

And the maid, a young madam—she's a look of Nan about her—eyes them up and down. As an afterthought, she bunches up her skirt and bobs.
Yer all to wipe yer boots, mind.

Aye, Road's mucky. All them stars.

And shut door.

In sweeps Mag Moonwise to a solemn music and she clears them room. Oddly, it crunches underfoot. Shards of ice? The Fool slips backward, in extravagant dismay. He dances on the air; recovers.

In comes the gang of heroes, some trampling and scuffling clownishly, but the most of them curvetting, coltish in their pride.

They sing their calling on, and it is glorious: great-rooted, evergreen. It raises roofbeams.

Ashes enters, last of all.