Something moving opposite the queen’s folk made them all turn to look. A huge horse came onto the field, its hooves striking fire where it walked. Several of the winged creatures skittered away from it as if blown by the wind. It raised itself on its hind legs and neighed, a sound like someone crying. Now Alice could see a shape clinging to its back, a sea-green creature with a long snout. She shuddered. Did George consort with these folk?
A shadow seemed to trail behind the horse, hiding its followers. The sea-creature put a horned shell to its mouth and blew a shrill note, and the horse charged. Then everything became a shock of motion as the two groups met.
Here a green man, as pliant as if he had no bones, grappled with one of the twig-people. Over and over they rolled, and the twig man laughed as Alice remembered them laughing the night of the revels. They almost appeared to be playing some sort of game or dancing an ancient dance, bending backward and forward in shapes a human could never assume. Then she heard something break and the twig man lay unmoving on the field. The sea-creature flowed forward to lift him but at that moment a horned man cut his way through and stabbed the creature to the heart. The substance that flowed from his wound seemed too watery for blood.
There a huge man, thick as a tree, headed toward the queen and the standard-bearers. He carried a club in one hand and a length of chain in another, and the links of the chain rattled like bones. Robin Goodfellow stepped forward to meet him. The chain whirled out and Robin caught it on his staff. A moving light covered the two of them, white near Robin and a tarnished green over the other man. Robin pulled the chain from the man’s hand and with a sound like a snarl the man closed with him, his club raised. The light grew brighter and the man fell back.
More green men took the field, some walking, some riding the tremendous horses. And there were other creatures there as well, shadows covering their shapes: flying, cluttering forms that kept to the trees, things that scuttled near the ground. A few oddly shaped people came with them: a squat man with hands as long as forearms, a woman whose grin nearly reached to her pointed ears. They did not join the battle but stood off to the side, laughing and pointing at the knots of fighting.
Finally the train ended with a few who appeared to be human. Why would people fight for these folk? Or were they slaves, taken from among London’s population?
Could Oriana’s warriors stand up to these? Her band looked small and slight next to them, and it seemed to Alice that they were fewer than their opponents. Already the winged creatures had retreated to the edge of the field. Several of the twig-people moved this way and that, uncertain, and one of them somersaulted away from the battle. As Alice watched a mounted sea-creature bore down on one of the horned men and slashed out with its sword. But the queen stood tall and proud, watching the battle from within the circle of her guard. The moon shone over their standards like the sun playing on leaves.
Alice heard screams and strange cries, the flapping of wings and the pounding of hooves. Through it all she looked for Brownie. Finally she saw him, standing a little back from the fight, as if he felt he did not deserve to be included among such heroes. One of the boneless men moved to engage him in battle and he turned to meet it. Then more of the creatures darted out in front of them, and he was lost to sight.
Alice looked at Margery. Her friend stood still, a look of great concentration on her face. “A pity this battle will be lost as well,” she heard Paul Hogg say, not sounding sorry at all. “Or did you three think to change its course somehow?” He laughed.
“Nothing has been decided yet,” Margery said. “Don’t forget—we have the advantage here. This time the war is fought at night, with the moon nearly full.”
“Hear her, Alice,” Hogg said. “She admits to it—her friends are night-folk, conceived in darkness.”
“Aye, and that’s what may save us. Oriana’s people are stronger in the dark.”
“You still hope!” Hogg said. He laughed again. “I tell you, you’ve lost. Again. Alice, where is your brownie?”
The fighting had moved to another part of the field; she could not see Brownie anywhere. What had happened to him? And how did this man know about him? But that was easy—George must have told him.
“Didn’t you see him fall?” Hogg said. “Only one of the brave warriors to die this night.”
His voice was so full of malice that she turned to him angrily. Words she had heard in the churchyard but had never used formed on her tongue. He smiled, his lips like a blade. But just then she heard shouting on the field.
“The dragon! The dragon has come!” one of the standard-bearers called. Others around them took up the cry. The fighting stopped; everyone looked upward expectantly.
In the sky Alice saw not one but two dragons, one of them silver-white and the other a reddish-gold. Which dragon fought for the queen? All around her folks cried out in fear and wonder.
The red dragon spewed fire. On the field the twig-people scattered in confusion, screaming. “Hold!” one of the horned men called, but they paid no attention. The silver dragon moved toward its opponent, jaws open, vast wings spread. They grappled, claws out. Fire rained down upon the field.
Alice turned to Margery, but the other woman’s expression gave away nothing. Agnes watched the dragons calmly, as if they were a pageant or fireworks display arranged for her amusement. Would nothing move this phlegmatic woman to wonder? But Alice remembered Agnes’s comments on the queen, and she knew the midwife would be very interested in the outcome.
The dragons backed apart. One of them keened; the other answered. They flew in close again, their silhouettes framed by the moon. Their bodies and the moon seemed to form a coin from a country long fallen to ruin. She thought she saw blood drop to the field.
The silver dragon had been hurt; its wing hung crookedly away from its body. Near her someone gasped. But as they watched the wounded dragon made one final attempt. Its wings turned in as it flew forward; its neck extended and its jaws gaped wide. The red dragon backed away but its opponent had opened a long gash down its flank. The red dragon keened again and flew away.
So the red dragon had lost, Alice thought, surprised at how little she cared. But the silver dragon was leaving too. Folks began to drop their weapons and stand as if amazed, the queen’s band on one side, their opponents on the other. Oriana and her standard-bearers advanced toward the center of the field. From the other side came a man Alice had never seen, tall and clad in red mail, with a crown red as fire. Several of his warriors walked behind him.
“Now they parley,” Margery said.
“But who won?” Agnes asked.
“No one. No one has won. Neither side has enough men to continue the fight.”
“But someone has lost,” Paul Hogg said. “The queen has lost her ablest warriors this night. Go back to your cottage and sell your charms for twopence, Margery. The next time these two meet will be the last.”
“Aye, the last,” Margery said. How could she stay so calm? “The battle will end when Arthur is found.”
Arthur! Alice had forgotten him. But Margery had been wrong; he hadn’t come to this battle. Whatever ties he had to the Fair Folk had loosened, or had been weak to begin with.’ She would never see him again, him or her true son.
“Arthur’s dead, or lost forever,” Hogg said. “And what man would fight for a woman who cared so little for him she gave him away at birth?”
“Who would fight for a man who never takes the field, thinking only about his own safety? See where he comes, your king. King of the Cowards, they call him.”
“But they fight for him just the same.”
“They have no choice. He’s bound them to him with his arts.”
“You lie. Nothing he does is unlawful. And next you’ll tell me that Oriana’s people fight out of love.”
The king and queen had reached the center of the field and began to talk in low voices. Alice studied the group around them, trying to make out the humans who had fought against Or
iana. Was it true that they were bound to the king by necromancy? But now she noticed that they all had stains like splashes of water down the front of their jerkins. She closed her right eye and saw the faerie-light on them. Of course, she thought, remembering the stories from her childhood. They were water-people, lying in wait at the side of lakes and rivers, ready to drown travelers walking by. The stains on their clothing gave them away.
Opposite this group the queen stood, straight as a sword and unyielding, her warriors grouped in a semicircle behind her. What did they talk about? What terms would the red king force from Oriana? If her folk left London would Alice ever see Arthur again?
Whenever people talked about war Alice always thought of the individual people who would have to die. She was not like the others in the churchyard in this, she knew; when they had rung the bells and built the bonfires at the defeat of the Spanish Armada two years ago she could not share in the exultation of her neighbors. She had thought only, Thank God Arthur will not have to go soldiering.
But the Fair Folk cared nothing for Arthur, she knew that. Margery could not claim that Oriana’s people fought out of love; whatever emotions they felt love could not be one of them. They understood nothing about the bond between mother and son. Not one of these finely dressed folk would consider her or her son in their decisions.
Suddenly Alice cried out and ran onto the field. She heard Margery call something after her but she ignored her and made for a small bundle of fur near the queen and king. Brownie lay curled up on the grass, a long gash open on his flank. The blood that matted his fur looked black in the moonlight. As Alice watched he breathed in shallowly. He was alive!
“Margery!” she said loudly. “Margery, help me!”
Margery went to join her. “We must not interrupt the parley,” she said, speaking softly.
“The parley be damned. He’s alive. We have to help him.”
“I will. Quiet now.”
Margery opened her purse. Alice had been watching Brownie, willing him to continue breathing, and by the time she looked back at her friend Margery had taken out a cloth dipped in herbs. Where had she wetted the cloth? It didn’t matter; what mattered was that she smoothed the cloth over Brownie’s fur, that his breathing grew more even, that the wound seemed to close a little. At last he opened his eyes and looked up at them.
“Did we win?” He sat up, a worried look in his soft brown eyes.
“Nay. Lie back,” Margery said. “Queen Oriana—”
“Hush. She rules still.”
Brownie fell back, satisfied. “We have to get him to my house,” Alice said.
Margery looked up at her friend. “Do you think that’s wise?”
“It doesn’t matter. Someone has to care for him.” Margery seemed to see the logic of that. She nodded and braced her shoulder under one of Brownie’s arms. Alice took his other arm carefully and they lifted him together. He was surprisingly light.
They sat him down against a tree at the edge of the field. George nodded when he saw them, as if his suspicions had been proven correct. Did he still think that Brownie was a demon? How could he, when he consorted with things far more evil-seeming? Alice thought that George’s mind must be a kind of swamp where nothing was clear-edged, where he believed whatever was easiest for him to believe.
“You’ve found him, I see,” Hogg said.
“Aye,” Alice said. “And still alive.”
“For the moment. I doubt he’ll last the night.”
Alice turned to Margery, seeking reassurance, and for once her friend gave it to her. “You must not believe anything Paul Hogg says,” Margery said firmly. “He’s told me many lies over the years, haven’t you, Master Hogg?”
“No more than you’ve told me,” Hogg said. He looked distracted, anxious about something, and a moment later Alice saw what it was: the parley had ended. The queen and king bowed to each other elaborately and, Alice thought, a little mockingly. Then both sides retreated, and the work of gathering up the dead for burial began.
A chill wind blew suddenly and Alice shivered. “It’s over,” Margery said. “Nothing’s changed—there are a few more dead on both sides, that’s all. It won’t end until Arthur is found.”
“And she claims that I lie!” Paul Hogg said. “It’s clear to me that Oriana’s folk lost here. One more battle and your precious queen will be vanquished.”
“We’ll find Arthur before then.”
“Arthur!” Hogg laughed. “Alice, let me tell you your future. Arthur is dead. And when she learns the truth about your son, Margery will forsake you as well. She needs Arthur, doesn’t she, to progress beyond her small petty magics. You will grow old alone, with no one to love you. You will die in bed, and so little will you be missed that your body will not be discovered for three days.”
How had he known her deepest nightmares, her dread of growing old and friendless? Was that why she had rescued Brownie, because she knew she could not keep company with humans? He was wrong about Margery, though—her friend had no magic, only wisdom and a strong knowledge of plants and stones. She shook her head, not wanting to bandy words with this odious man any further.
“Good night,” Margery said to Hogg. “I know we’ll meet again.”
“Good night,” Hogg said. As he and his men turned to go Alice saw that one of them, the fourth man, had a stain on his jerkin like that of the water-people. She closed her right eye and saw the faerie-light on him, though green and tarnished, the way it had appeared over the man who had fought with Robin Goodfellow. What hold did Hogg have over this creature? How had he made one of the water-people serve him?
Brownie was able to walk by the time they left the field, though the nut-brown color of his face had faded to a pale gray. Agnes did not remark on their new companion; no doubt she had seen stranger sights tonight. They said nothing for most of the long walk home, each woman thinking her own thoughts.
As they reached Cheapside they heard the bellman give his call:
“Remember the clocks,
Look well to your locks,
Fire and your light,
And God give you good night,
For now the bell ringeth,
One o’clock.”
Without discussing it they hid in a small alley as he passed. “I wonder what he’d make of us,” Agnes said, laughing, as he passed. “Maybe he’d think we were whores.”
Alice didn’t care. No accusation that anyone could make could be as dreadful as what George had said at the stationers’ meeting yesterday. Had it been only yesterday? So much had happened since then: the play, and Walter …
She felt a pleasant warmth spread through her at the thought of Walter, and she told herself firmly to forget him. Love did not come to someone her age; the only thing left to her was caring for folks and easing their pain: her strange son, and John in his last illness, and now Brownie … It was not much, but it was work that would keep her until she died.
As if to prove that her life held no new joy she said to Margery, “Arthur never came.”
“Nay. I’m sorry.”
“I wonder why not.”
“Who knows? No one can say why these folk do what they do.”
“What happens if Oriana loses the war?”
“To your son, you mean? I don’t know. He might be taken captive, or—”
“So we must find him.” Or killed, Margery had been about to say. She had never been one to spare her friend’s feelings.
“Aye.” They came up to Paternoster Row and Alice’s house. “And soon. Good night.”
Alice could barely come awake the next day but she took time to look at Brownie and bind his wound. Then she walked to Paul’s; she could not afford three days’ absence at the churchyard. As she went through the gate she saw Walter coming from his stall to greet her.
“I looked for you all day yesterday,” he said. “Were you ill?”
At his words strong feelings coursed through her like lightning, excitement and pleasure
and desire. Her face grew hot and she wondered if he could see it, and the thought made her color more. Blushing, at her age!
“I went to visit my friend Margery,” she said. Damn, but she should not have said that; she must be tired indeed. Now he would tell her she should stop seeing Margery, that she should be careful after the accusations leveled at her the day before.
He said nothing. He was not George, after all. But the trip had been dangerous; if anyone still harbored suspicions that she was a witch this would have confirmed them. She felt glad that he did not pry, that he left her alone to make her own decisions, and thinking this she remembered again how pleasant his company had been the other day.
“There were strange sights last night,” he said. “So they say in the churchyard, anyway. Dragons, two of them, fighting against the moon. Did you see them?”
She couldn’t think what to reply. But her face must have given something away, because he said, “Has this anything to do with you? Or with Margery?”
She wished she could answer him. Not because she wanted advice about her son, or because she was tired of lying, but just so that she could stay and talk with him a little longer. “Nay, of course not,” she said, and turned to go.
13
Warmer days came to London. The nobility left for their estates or to follow the queen on her progress but the city seemed as full as ever. The acting companies that had gone on tour returned and joined the ones that had remained in the city, drawing huge crowds, showing five or six plays a week. Beggars and pilgrims, madwomen and thieves came as well, and gypsies in scarves and bells who danced and spat fire and told fortunes. The streets stank of offal left to rot in the sun, and the people stank too, and doused themselves liberally with perfume to cover the smell. Kites and ravens flew overhead.
Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon Page 16