Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (60 page)

Nothing comes. The Fool twists his cap of straw; the Fiddler sighs; Leapfire quivers like a bow.

Walk in.

But he precipitates; falls out of air. Sharp-sided, many-faced: he is the scythesmen's witch; the guisers’ Lightfast; Master Corbet, glittering with rings; Old Slae that carries off the weeping Perseis; Jack Daw, whiteheaded, all in black, greenblack and broken swagger, like a swung cock at a fair. A pack of selves, and all one self: the Old Sun, hoary with expired light. Old crow of all.

They know him well, though each a face of him. That cold sheer smiling enmity: that will to break. He speaks not to Leapfire, lord to lord, but to the upstart crow lad, feathered out with guising.

Summer deigns no answer, draws; then letting fall his belt, ungirding godhead, he stands forth.

Smiling, Winter draws his sword: old steel, sheathed in ruined velvet, scarred with use; bright only at its edge, death-polished.

Leapfire attacks. Youth and rage will carry him through seconds of his onset: enough to startle Daw, almost to daunt him. He falls back a step; but artfully. He lets the boy wear himself out with slashing, futile in his fury; parries him at will. A chance scratch seems to bloody Daw's arm; it frenzies his adversary. Then leaning forward, as if inquiring, Daw disarms him. The sword spins over and half over, clangs on the ground. Daw sets his foot on it.

The Sun, eclipsed, looks back at him with dark-drowned eyes. His face is almost blank with horror.

"Yield?"

Live,
thinks Grevil; though the Fool must watch.

Leapfire cannot speak. He shakes his head.

Stooping for the sword, old Lightfast tosses him his own.

Once more the boy assails him, slashing in a frenzy at the smiling face, stabbing at air; once more the old god thrusts.

And Grevil stands as if the sword has pierced him, slain with shock. He sees the boy transfixed and twitching; sees the old god, face to face with him, caress him, kiss his mouth, blood-welling. “Whore. And whore's brat.” Then the god withdraws, he shakes his sword free from the toppling body.

The ground shakes, unmooring.

The crow lad falls, blood runs; the world begins.

Even through the tumult of souls, Whin feels the shadow at the door: that will be Morag and the glass. Her end. She lifts her face to meet it square, defying it—and startled, nearly laughs. She's looking in another sort of mirror, at another self.

There's a thief in the shadows, crouching. Cap and fellcoat: with a gang, then, of guisers. They'd have sent their Ashes as they played. Who stares at her and shivers. Mirror's not the other way. Whin sees the girl see no great witch, no hero, but a journeywoman in a sark of blood. Old blood, inglorious. An elding body. Grey black and gory, like a badger in a trap. Fordone. She can feel the drumming of the Ashes’ heart from here. Mad scared and—Whin laughs silently—reverberant with sex. What, here? With ghosts? And how can Annis not feel the roar of blood, like sea-break in a cave?

Feels nothing, only self. Does naught, only brood on absence. That's why there's Morag: for her talons, for her eyes. And she has just now been diverted. Stepped outby.

Still telling, rising to a roil of story, Whin beckons to the brat:
Soft now. Blind, not deaf. But quick.

The brat—O marvellous!—upholds a glint of metal. Tosses it. Whin catches, clumsy with her long travail; she cuts herself on scissors. But she knows their metal in the marrow of her spine: that knife with which she cut the cord. Her son's blood tempered it.

Softly, softly now, she closes on the braid.

As the blades meet, round about her neck she feels the guisers’ knot of swords, their wheeling to the measure of her heartbeat, fast and faster in her terror, giddying—and all at once they draw.

Her blood's the braid. It leaps from her, unbraiding from her body in a rush of red. It whirls away in fire. Felled.

Darkness.

Ashes comes to my lady's tower, to the threshold: where is nothing still, but absolute. Its gravity annuls her. In her veins is lead, envenoming; her soul is in a slow eclipse. On groping for her lens, she sees it milkblind, blank as any stone. Her gown the Nine have given her, of twilight, now is leached as white as ashes, livid. She is home.

Three times she stamps the groundless air. Dry-voiced, she calls to death, “Lief mother, let me in."

Sea-heavy, torn like water, towering: the night sky breaks in fury on their heads. The goddess rises up in tempest. She is called.

Imbry cowering in the wrack waits death. Confusedly, amid the lancing of the lightnings, the contusion of the thunderclaps, she sees the stars, wave-warped, as if the sky were ocean; sees the tatterings of light. Then the nightwave overwhelms her, and she's drowned.

Long afterward, her stopped heart beats again; she draws a saw-edged breath.

My lady?

Gone.

Sea-hammered, thunderstoned, she raises up her head. She sees the other Ashes lying trodden like a shipwrecked sailor.

Dead?

Creeping warily along the ground, Imbry touches her. Still breathing. Turns her. Cold as stone though. Swounded. Where the ravelling of the braid has touched her are a thousand wales, fine whips of fire. Blood on blood. The sark of older blood not hers, may be: she's weltered like a midwife. But she's ill enough, in truth, and stinks of kenneling. Rag-naked, rope-cut, chapped and cracked and starved.

Imbry haps her in the bear coat; then for want of else, she combs her dirt-rough hair. That's all the comfort she knows. But it works: the Ashes wakes. And not mad: her gaze is curious, self-mocking, shrewd. “I's old for saining.” A leaf-scratch of a whisper.

"Thowt yer were drownded,” says Imbry. “Thowt I were."

"No chance, brat. Thou's to hang.” Grimacing, as if her bones ache, the Ashes sits, runs fingers through her hackled hair, as if to free them with the fading spells, to limber. She considers young Ashes. Black imp like herself were. Like a hollybush dragged through a chimney. Aye, she'd scratch Sun's face. “Thou keep yon comb then. Keep it well."

"I is.” Then remembering, Imbry fetches out a leather bottle from her budget. “Our master mistress Brock, she sended yer this."

"Here's rain in April. Halse ye.” Whin drinks long and long before she lowers it and sighs. “Ah. That'd set stones to dance.” And seeing Imbry's look, she passes it over. “There's a snuff yet i't bottle. Cloud ale."

It's water.

"Pull's up, lass, and I's lag thee after.” Stiffly she rises, raxing. “If it's guising, thou's work to do."

At that, Imbry startles. “Craws! I mun gang now. They's be lating me to lap Sun."

"So thou's done,” says old Ashes, smiling. “Had thy will. And will."

Imbry pinks: not with modesty.

"Wick sword, has he? He's been thumping yer awd Lightfast then?"

"We's brought no Winter,” says Imbry. “T'witch said bid him and he'd come."

Whin knows what Lightfast loiters here. She pales. “Run, lass. Thou's wanted. Run."

No Ashes.

Grevil takes her part in silence. Holds the dead Sun in his lap and cradles him. No words, he has no words. He gathers up the sheaf of him; he rocks, he rocks him at his breast, the bright youth: Cloud in Ashes. Closes the astonished eyes. He strokes the rough bright hair, the cheek forever beardless now. He sains him—eyes, mouth, heart—with hand alone. No tears. He cannot weep as yet. He bends to kiss the cold mouth, bright with blood. Still warm—O goddesses—and clotted with his death. As warm as embers. Yet no breath will kindle now. The play does not go on: the sun rise dancing and the summer wake. No spring will come.

Gently, Grevil lays the body down.

The Fool picks up the Winter's sword and turns to Lightfast.

Slowly, slowly, Whin that was Ashes strives against my lady's tide of rage. It runs athwart itself and baffles in its riddling rocks. She wades in it, waist-deep and oversoul: a turbulence of witches in a nightmare sea. Like weed they wind about her, red and brown and virid black; they importune. She's combed them, so they cling to her. She tangles in their greenwhite hair.

Bone weary: she would lie with them and drown. A solace. But her work's to do. She follows Annis in her fury, bright as moonblaze on the water. Clear path if she could ford a way.

Far far ahead of her, the Ashes that was Imbry dodges, dances in a blindman's hey. Well she may chance with lightning, being sea-born, so a hero by her birth. She's hunting Annis hunting blind amid a cloud of witches, in a labyrinth of self-made ghosts: the ruins of her mind. The goddess cannot see for voices.

Yet she runs and rages, streaming fire like a falling star. What's called her down, dishevelled, from her brooding?

Not the guisers. They're trumpery for Morag to dispose. No, she's bent on something else, a soul beyond all others in her avarice, a lust more jealous even than her daughter's braid.

A glass. Whin sees in Annis’ mind a child of crystal, firenew, still glowing from the blast; the reddest where she's broken off in shards. A vessel. Empty and unsouled. And all her lust is but to pour herself as mist into that void, possess it utterly. Whin sees the canting of the heavens in that narrow space, the swirl and settling of stars; and then the seal of godhead and the absolute of night. The child will crack of her.

Kit's lass's bairn. Whin's sworn to him; so she must stand for her, come what will.

Far off, she hears the lamentation of the guisers, mourning for the Sun. That's Ashes’ journey. Send she's not too late. But Whin sees, as she is cursed to see, forever and again, his death. She knows by heart his loveless birth; has waked with dreaming on his life. A chance brat, scatter-sown. A windclock whirled away. Her son.

The Fool picks up the Winter's sword and turns to Lightfast. Fronts him.
He will die,
thinks Kit.
I cannot bear it, death on death.
But Grevil throws it down at Daw's feet. It falls clattering. It's wood—a painted prop.

The old god laughs. “'Twas a rare jest that the boy should bring his death with him. Expedient. And I unarmed.” He opens out his hands in mock transparency. Grevil says nothing. “Not the first thing of yours he's been spitted on; though much the hardest.” Nothing. A sly look, and that buzzing, balming voice. “Whores will talk. They carry tales like pox: no doubt he gave you mine.” Still mute. The god looks round. “What, no mystery? He will not rise? Your bush is belated."

"His death was not the wager settled. Still I dance the ay and O."

Is he mad?
thinks Kit. But it is spoken well, good voice and good discretion. Noll touches his shoulder, sketches with his knee a hint of curtsey. Still he speaks in that clear well-measured player's voice.

"He will rise. I promise. As the sun will rise. Look now, the sisters come to dance for him."

I see,
thinks Kit.
He runs it backward: it is all to come. Another Ashes and another Sun.
They've hinged over to the masque now, to the witches’ mystery. Tom's the heart of it; the hinge, the double-jointed paradox, is Ashes.
In my coming I do leave; Death of dying I bereave.
It's the play itself has power, not themselves. Like Ashes: in herself the girl who takes her on may be a fool, a rantipole, a scold, a slut; she may be giddy, greedy, vixenish; but in her hands are life and afterlife and death. The mystery works itself each time, it hallows nonsense, turning silly into seely sisters.

So: Brock's journeymen will play,
ad hoc,
apocalypse. A poor forlorn hope to storm so dragonish a citadel, but two are all they are. Kit holds himself in witch's wise, and takes his sister up; he curtsies to a ghostly gentle audience.
"Be not affrighted, ladies, he will rise; ‘tis writ in the catastrophe. ‘Tis but a winter's tale: a dream of ghosts.
” And saying, he would make it so: would write the script anew.
We do it, so it is.

They go on with the masque of witches: playing sisters playing greater sisters, shadows of the light.

"His dreams do prick him and he flowers."

There is power stirring, they can feel it: as a blind man in a wood can feel the spring. And so can Daw: for circling like the stalking gallantry, he seeks to break the charm. A false knight at the crossroads, in his cockblack broken swagger, down at heel. At every turning, he is there: he holds a mirror to their inward littleness, to Noll and Kit.

"Here's players: swordless and unstrung."

Not wordless though. They shrug.

"So he would rise for a wench: not for thee.” The scythe swings at Noll.

The dancer leaps. “But I am Ashes; he will rise for me."

"A pretty love, to bed him on a gallows tree and hard him with a rope. He died despising thee."

A stagger, but a leap: it clears.

A swing at Kit. “Thou know'st I delivered up thy vixen to my lady's table, and my cully here did carve."

A leap in silence.

"But I gamed her first: we had good sport."

Kit sees his Thea as he saw her last, in labor: whitefaced, warping like a swelted candle, wrenched with pain. Dismissing him to save him. But the Witch says, “
How came she lighter of a Sun?"

Closer, coldly at his ear: “Thy daughter's like her dam: fire at the fork."

Hands clenched, but still he plays.

"I had her in her mother's belly. And but an hour since. In company."

At that Kit's tempted to his useless knife, to stop that damned voice, and slash its smiling, cancel it; but as the Witch dissolves, he feels a flaught of fire at his back, a swirl and spiralling. The strings are flying to the fiddle: Thea's and another's, trebling her alto, making of his burden harmony, the three as one.
Ah, she braids of her mother.
It is strung in time, in tune. Will sing, itself and all alone: the one tale always. Truth in riddles. And it sings:
He lies.