by Tanith Lee
At length he nodded. He put on a prideful foolish smile and stood to one side, waving me to enter, which is an antique courtesy to the stranger. I thanked him, and ducked under the low lintel and went in.
It was dim inside, with smoke and dusk. There was the cooking place and the fire of peats, the black rafters, a great chest with some tools laid by on it. A ladder went up at one corner to a half room above. The bed-chamber that would be, for in winter the flock must cram in here with the master. We sat down on sheepskins, and he indicated the iron pot set to bubble over the peat.
“There’s enough for all,” he said. “When Rosemay comes, she’ll give us ale.”
This did surprise me, I was not sure quite why, that he should have a woman to tend him. Somehow he seemed a solitary creature, and his house had a bachelor’s air to it, though tidy, no female thing scattered, and no carding comb or spinning wheel, but they would be above, perhaps.
“Your wife’s from home?” I said. It might, after all, be a daughter; it was as well to know.
“My wife,” he said. “Did you not spy her at the well?”
I remembered the well and the snowy may tree growing there. I had seen no one, or I would have offered to draw the water for her, or carry the jar. By such ingratiating ploys one sometimes earns one’s lodging. But his tone was humorous, as if this were some jest.
“No, I did not.”
“Well, no grief. For here she is.”
So I looked up, as he did, and through the opened door, the earthen jar in her hand, stepped his wife, his Rosemay.
I have been about, and I’ve beheld a woman or two was worth gazing at, and some indeed have been more than sisters to me. But this one. No, I had seen none like her.
The grey-mauve sky was behind her, the dark fireglow before, and she was a note of light between, tawny light, like certain wines I’ve seen, or candleflame. Her gown was yellow, a holy-day gown, too fine to fetch water or cook supper in, yet she wore it. Her hair was paler yellow than the gown, all loose, save for the two braids that held the sidelocks off her face and bound them up on her crown with a silk ribbon no different in colour than her hair. Her face and throat and hands were kissed all over by the summer sun. The lords’ women keep themselves white, like milk, but this maid was ivory and cream and rose. Yes, a yellow rose she was, and with the beauty of a rose.
Then she stepped into the house, and darkened with its shadow to a rose of swarthy gold.
And here I was, about to be in his debt for a roof and a meal, and this his wife. As if to prove it to me, he said to her at once:
“We’ve a guest, Rosemay, a minstrel, no less. Fetch us ale, my lass, and hurry the food.”
And she, to help the proof, Heaven forgive her, said to him in a voice lilting and pure as my harp itself: “Yes, husband.”
She said it with liking, too. With love, even, though that she should love him was beyond me. Me she never glanced at.
Well, I’m young. Flat-bellied, long-legged, strong and limber. I’ve good teeth, and women like my hair and my face, or so they tell me, and the rest, too, should we come to such dealings. My voice, I know, is better than most. So I spoke to her, I did, to the old sheepman’s tawny Rose.
“Thanks for your generosity, lady.”
But, “Be at ease,” said she, and still she did not glance. Not even at the ‘lady’ I’d gifted her, shepherd’s wife that she was. Then she brought the ale in a skin, and two wooden cups. She poured his, firstly. The fire flared, showing me, as of a purpose, her young smooth skin. She was not more than sixteen, and he a world-bitten forty. Men will often die before they are forty in the South, but here they live longer. There’s a strange still power in this land. The hills hold it, and men can take it to them if they will. So I’ve heard, and so I believe.
Well, next she came to pour for me, and as she put the cup in my hand, our fingers brushed, and as she leaned to fill the cup, the slope of her breast pressed against the bodice of her gown. And more than one cup was filled. I lusted for her, but it was more than that. The sight of her in the doorway, her voice, her sheen, her eyes – which now I saw were not blue, or brown, but the shade of that stone they mine for hereabouts, partly black and partly amber – all this thrilled me, devilled me. I had the feeling, more than to lie with her, to lift her up, to make her into music, like a new, bright bird-winged song.
As soon as she was finished pouring ale, she went over to the cooking place and never once had she looked at me.
So it went on, then. We had supper, a tasty mutton stew and slabs of bread with the crust yet warm on them. She waited on us, not sitting to her own food till we were served, and she serving him always the first, smiling at him once, when he raised his shaggy brows, and never noticing me. I fancy, if another maid had been so circumspect, I might have guessed her shy or sly and begun to hope. But this one’s way was not like that, but rather as if I were invisible – like that absent guest they will lay a place for at the table and serve with food, though neither he nor anyone sits there. During the meal there was no conversation, for this was no castle board; one thing came at a time. When we had had our fill – I asking an extra portion, a thing I rarely do in a poor house, but to get her attention, and not getting it – she took the bowls out to cleanse them. The shepherd meanwhile fished a hunk of meat from the stew, and moved just outside the door with it, whistling his dog. I’d thought it odd not to have seen a dog before, and odder yet when, through the doorway, I saw one come skulking down the hillside by the sheep, as if it had done something bad. I followed the man, and stood leaning on the doorpost. The gloaming was fading at last, but I could see Rosemay, walking over the turf with the bowls. The dog, as it sidled towards the cot, slunk by her and ran to the man, snatched the meat from his grasp, and made off at once, back up the hill with it. The shepherd turned, and with a grunt went by me into his house. I, amused a little at the dog, which treated the woman somewhat as she had treated me, strolled forward in the gloom to intercept her.
“The dog does not like you, it’s plain. Silly, witless dog.”
“It is my husband’s dog,” was all she would say, and was gone by me again, into the house to her elderly mate.
I went in after them with a silent oath, leaving the great landscape of Dark Hills to wind itself away on the spindle of night. Now I’d play for them, for a bargain is a bargain.
I’d play, and see what that would do. I have had women weep, even swoon at my songs, or they pretended they did.
He, when I took up my harp and let it from its cover, gave off that slight unfathomable noise the audience, large or small, will generally give, settling itself. Naturally, I squinted, too, over my tuning, to see how she did. But she sat motionless beyond the fire, though she had taken up no piece of women’s work to mask her idleness. It seemed she would listen. Well, then.
I sang some songs, I forget now which they were, the usual sort with which one begins, catching the mood, or making it. The shepherd relaxed, smiling and nodding, sometimes drumming his fingers in time. But my tawny rose, she sat as if a bee were buzzing in the room. So I came to the song I wanted. It was an old romance, old as the Dark Hills themselves, maybe, and it travels under many names and manier guises. But the gist of it is this: A young minstrel-knight falls deep in love with the woman of his liege lord, so deep in love he forgets battle and loyalty and honour for her sake, though he tells her nothing of the affair. And this I sang, and when I came to the tally of the woman’s virtues, I made them hers, her hair, and parti-colour eyes, her honey skin. Even the royal lady’s gown was saffron, in my song. It was a fly thing to be doing, you’ll say, but I reckoned him too unparticular to rouse at it. He seemed half asleep as it was. And she. What would she do?
She sat with her chin on her hand, and her eyes downcast, but she was very still now, so still I could not see her breathe, and in the shadow beyond the fire, she seemed scarcely to be there.
Then I struck the chords, and told how the minstrel-knight, w
ho loved so unrequitedly and so well, resolved to redeem his honour, and died in the war of his master, died with twenty-seven wounds in his young body, and not one of these at his back. And when he lay with his fair noble face lit by the sky, the very clouds wept for pity. And his men took him to the castle, and the royal woman grew pale when she was told, and went to visit his corpse. As she bent over him, one single tear she could not restrain fell on his lips, at which they parted and his soul spoke to her from within the cadaver: Lady, this is not death to me, for I died long ago when first I looked on you. I ask your prayers who never did ask your love.
I sang dulcetly. I had something at stake. The song, which is a worthy one, and not easy to play, came sweetly, and moved me. It is a tale warranted to overthrow a maid, but I admit there were tears in my own eyes, when I looked for hers.
But she did not sit crying. For a moment I believed I had cast my glove at the moon, as they say, and wasted the effort.
And then her gaze came up like two jewels in the shadow. She stared full at me, and such a stare it was I felt burned to my very marrow, as if I had been shot with fire. And I own I trembled, too. For these eyes said, sharp and plain as swords: Oh, I would give you more than tears.
The shepherd was slumped, aware in a daze the music was over. As he bestirred himself, she got to her feet, his Rosemay, and without a word she drifted to the ladder like a blowing leaf, and up it she went. And he, the big dull ram, shambled after her, grumbling some phrase of approbation at me I was too fey, by now, to understand. On the mid-rung of the ladder, however, he bent on me a weird grin that did alarm me for an instant, as if he knew it all, and other things that I did not. But then he was gone, and I took it for imagining.
Alone, I sat, and I vow I waited.
The dusk was gone, night come, and the peats on the fire slumbered and went out. The very night slumbered, and those broad shoulders of land outside the door, if ever they do sleep, were sleeping too. For him, I heard him snore after a while. Then my pulse ran, to be sure. I sat, and I waited, in the fireless dark, to hear the soft sole of her foot on the rungs of the ladder, whispering like grass, or the rustle her hair might make.
Once, some tiny night-beast, having got in under the door or by the chimney, flew against my cheek, and the blood tumbled in me, for I mistook it for her fingers.
Then I lapsed somewhat, and lay down; I was tired enough for that, though not to sleep, I thought, in my fever. A man, having seen her eyes in that one gaze, could not have slept.
Strung tense as a bow-string I reclined there. Presently the moon rose, and slid in at the cracks in the door and between the stones of the wall, and finally through the chimney hole overhead. Then I told how late it had got, and that she had not come to me. Well, she might linger to be sure of him. Next, the moon went down. Supposing she was virtuous? But what had this to do with virtue? I had wooed her – wooed, mark, not – thieved – wooed and won her. This night she was rightfully mine.
Yet the night would soon be done.
I dozed, and I dreamed she stepped from the ladder and leaned over me and kissed my forehead, but I woke and it was the morning breeze fluttering from the chimney. The shaft of light was nearly blue, and when I opened the door to look out, the sky was like a plate of silver behind the black foldings of the hills. It had a comely scent, the morning, but stale and vile to me. It seemed she had dallied with me, made a mock of me after all. She cleaved to her old shepherd, and would have none of me, be I young as day and strong and handsome as a hero. So. Her loss, not mine.
I walked from the cot, my harp on my shoulders, sour and heavy, cursing both of them, and under all strangely puzzled, strangely ill-at-ease. For nightlong I had heard him shift about above, but never a sound from her. And when I glanced back from the brow of the ridge beyond the cot, I saw the whiteness of the may tree, and I remembered the well and how I had not come on her there; and later I remembered, too, how the dog had avoided her. A witch, perhaps, was golden Rosemay, and I ensorcelled one whole night, writhing, with her flame on me she had not deigned to quench.
Now you may suppose that is all my tale, and be wondering why I puffed it up as such a curiosity, and laugh at me, reckoning I was only astonished, being vainglorious, that a woman said ‘no’ to me. But indeed, there’s something more to be told. If you’ll be patient, you shall have it.
Three mornings after I walked from the cot, I reached a village under the hills. It was of stone, as they are in these parts, a prospering place, and busy, for it was market day. No harper in his right wits will pass a market by, and accordingly I chose my spot and conjured my songs and collected some coin – when they could hear me for the bleating of their goats. At noon, I paused for ale, and as I was drinking it, I heard one man say to another: “Mad Rose is about again.”
That name, of course, stayed me. I turned my head, and a second man spoke up.
“Aye, and there’s the harper listening.”
“Who is mad, then?” said I.
“I’ll tell you,” said the gossip, “for it’d likely make a fine song.” At that, I must buy him ale, which I did. Sometimes, in this way, you do get a yarn worth refashioning with music. He supped his drink a minute, then he began. “It’s simply told. One market day a young man drove five of his sheep to our village, and on the street he met with our Rose. Now Rose was beautiful, and her hair was done up with ribbon, and she in her yellow dress, for you know how a maid is at market. But Rose was worse than most. A minx, Rose was, spoiling for every man, looking at him with her eyes till he thought he might do as he pleased, and then she’d run off, or set him at some other man’s throat. There was near-murder done now and then, and Rose at the edge of it.
“She had no father, do you see, only a sickly mother could not keep rein on her. Then the young shepherd drove in his five ewes, and he saw Rose, and she danced for him like the rest, first not looking at him, as if he were invisible, and then darting a stare at him fit to have him catch alight. Now he was an honest lad, this shepherd. Before the evening came on, he went to the mother and offered to have Rose wed him. The mother, be sure, would have been glad to give her daughter away, but Rose, why she laughed and she made sport of him, and when he only stood in her mother’s house, hanging his head for shame, Rose took up a pitcher of slops and emptied them over his crown. Now when she did that, his mildness left him, and they say he bellowed like a bull with rage. While outside, his sheep dog, that had lain quietly by the door, began to bark and howl as if it had the madness.”
The gossip hesitated, his ale drunk down, to see if I would replenish it. But my heart was striking me in the side. I made no move and, good-natured enough, he went on.
‘‘Well then, they say that he said this to our Rose: ‘I will have you, whether you will or not. And you will be true to me and obedient to me, and fetch the water, and cook my food and pour my ale, and lie by me in my bed all night. And that bold barren look you flaunt shall be only for those others I let see it, and you will be hid from those I wish not to behold you. But on me you’ll smile and fawn and be always with me, and that I swear.’ And this said, he called the snarling dog, and they went off along the hills, leaving Rose cawing with mirth like a crow.”
The man looked at his ale-pot again, less a reminder now than a perusal, feeling for the next words, for he was good at his story-telling, was the gossip.
“Now who knows but that the shepherd might have returned and carried her off, but he did not. There was fever about that spring, he took it, and he died, and the dog lay down on his feet and died too, and was buried with him under the may tree by the well, for the priest would not put this shepherd in the safe earth beside the church. The priest pronounced him a waerlog, and there may be something in that. For I’ve met those say they’ve spoken with a shepherd at dusk, near that well, and he grizzled by his forty-first summer, which he would have been, had he lived. As for Rose, she went lunatic on the night he died. Mad as the moon, and no help for it. They keep her indoo
rs when they can, but sometimes she’ll get loose and mope about. A sight it’s a pity to see. But the notion is she’s no more mad than you or I, but has only lost her soul. For the shepherd took it, and keeps it by him to do all he said, in her exact likeness as she was that day, sixteen and a rose, when he first set eyes on her.”
I peered at him as if I too were crazed. I shook from head to heel. And then the other man touched my wrist and pointed behind me, and a silence fell on the inn.
I turned, what else? And turning I saw her, as before, coming in at a doorway. And yet not as before. Mad Rose.
Truly, she was a pitiful sight as he’d said, her elf-locks wizened to grey, yet still weeded by a girl’s yellow ribbon, her maid’s yellow gown, once moulded on a slender ripeness, now slack, raddled and grimed by more than twenty years’ soiling.
She was forty, and a hag; old as the earth she looked, her brown skin loose on her bones as the gown was loose on the frame of her. Her eyes were filmed and colourless and darted all about, but here and there they fixed on a man with a fierce and intimate stare,
I went chill to my blood. I was faint, and put my head down on the table, so I did not see them coax her away, though dimly I heard her screaming. Nor did she go quite away, for she stays in my mind, in either shape, eldritch or maiden, mad woman or rose soul.
I told you, the Dark Hills are enduring, and men can draw power from them. When once I leave, I shall not come here again.
A Night on the Hill
At the end of the yellow afternoon, Hone walked out of the waste and saw the village lying before him on the slope under the hill. The hill he had seen for some miles, he had made it his landmark. It looked softer and greener than the rocks of the desert he had been travelling for three days, and this was so. It was a verdant hill, covered by woods, and underneath the village basked on the bank of a little river, painted houses and vineyards, and goats in the meadow.