Very well, said the hawthorn. But the price will be high, both for you, and for him.
‘Whatever it is, I’ll pay,’ I said.
The hawthorn said nothing, but in the dark, I was sure she was smiling.
Two
The first is the wool of a black lamb on a spindle of elder wood. The second is a lock of his hair, tied with a piece of red thread. The third is a cantrip of Hagall: I am the coldest, whitest of grain. Thus do ye reap, and thus do I sow. The fourth is the blood of a Hunter’s Moon; the fifth is the shroud of an April bride. The sixth is the root of a mandrake; the seventh, an adder-stone, carved with his name. Stitch them into a pocket-doll, and place it in the cleft of a hawthorn tree on All Hallows’ Eve. As the year turns, the charm will take root: As ye reap, so shall ye sow.
But that harvest is for a colder month. October is mellow and deceptive: the golden apples dripping with wasps. The wasps sense the coming of the cold. They are angry, and ready to sting. Now I too, am ready to sting. And I must gather what I need to make the charm before All Hallows’ Eve, or find myself unready.
The black lamb is easy. I gather its wool from the spindle of thistle and thorn. The elder tree, too, is compliant: and I make sure to thank the tree with all the correct incantations. The hair is more of a puzzle. I have no such keepsakes from William. But the white-headed crow has the answer once more: she flies up to his window ledge. His hairbrush and comb are by the bed: she plunders both, and returns to me carrying a knot of hair. I know that hair well. I loved it once. Now I braid it into the lambswool, where it gleams October-gold.
Now for the blood, and the mandrake, with pebbles pushed into my ears to dull the sound of its screaming. The adder-stone is taken from a pebble beach thirty miles away, brought to me by an eagle, that cries: Fool! as it soars away.
But these things all have a price. The knot of hair and the adder-stone have already cost me dearly. Every scrap, every trinket has gone to pay for the charm’s components. And now I must find the most powerful thing – a piece of the shroud of an April bride – which is why I stand here now, with a wooden spade in my hand and a splinter of ice in my heart.
The graveyard lies by the village church. Our people never come here. Nor would I choose to come here now, especially not in my own skin. But without the piece of shroud, my charm will fail. It must be tonight. I creep into the village under cover of darkness. By the light of a waning moon I read the inscriptions on the graves. There are many grave markers here, and the risk of discovery grows with every moment I stay. But, at last, I find what I seek, and my heart leaps in savage joy.
The grave belongs to a village girl, married in April, dead by the end of August. An April bride is inconstant, not over wise, not over fair. Married with the cuckoo’s call; dead with its passing. Poor April girl. Her name is here, carved onto the wooden marker. It says:
KATE MILLER,
Beloved Wife of SAM and Daughter of ELDER.
Dyed of a Wasting Malady, in the 17th Year of Her Age.
As you are now, so once was I:
As I am now, so you shall be.
But I shall never be as you are. When I have my freedom back, I shall travel into the air. I shall become a thousand seeds of dandelion and fireweed, of ragwort and of thistle, alder and yew. And I shall take root wherever I fall, in your gardens and on your graves. And if you cut me, I shall grow and multiply a thousandfold.
Now I must dig deep and true. I use my hands, and the wooden spade. The earth is stony under the turf. That’s good. The hole grows faster.
At last, I reach her coffin. Her coffin is narrow, the lid nailed shut. I prise off the nails, one by one. The shroud is mostly eaten away. But there is more than enough of it left to stitch into a pocket-doll.
I fill in the grave. I stamp down the turf. No one will know that I was here. Poor April girl, unwise and plain. And yet she was beloved. She wore his ring on her finger. I know. I found the ring. I kept it. She had no use for it any more. And a wedding ring is a powerful charm, even more so than an adder-stone, and one that I know how to use.
And now all I need to do is wait for All Hallows’ Eve. The year turns: the fires burn, announcing the coming of winter. The ploughman tills the earth: the hay is stored away in the hayloft. And the travelling folk make merry, for it is our time: our covenant.
They call us the Devil’s children. But we have no allegiance to your Devil, or your God. We are the travelling folk. We live. And we will live for ever.
Three
Hey-ho, for Hallowe’en
All the witches to be seen.
Some black, some green
Hey-ho, for Hallowe’en.
And now it comes: All Hallows’ Eve, though the travelling folk call it by a different name. This is the night when spirits walk: when the Folk set out plates for their vanished ones and offerings for the Faërie. It is the night when fires are lit, and apples roasted in the hearth. It is a time of old gods; lost loves; of mulled ale and strong cider. On All Hallows’ Eve, the dead arise, and the travelling folk walk in their skins for the last time before winter.
This is our night. On Hallowe’en, no one questions our presence. We can come and go as we please among your houses and villages. Even the Folk of the castle will not turn away the travelling folk; not on Hallowe’en, the night when anyone could be anyone: your great-great-grandsire; the Devil himself; the King and Queen of Elfland.
The Folk of the village have built a bonfire in the middle of the green. Straw men, bundles of firewood, and the cast-off clothes of the dead – for the clothes of the dead must be burnt, they say, or face the wrath of the Good Folk. It is a belief that serves me well, for I will need clothes for the winter. I plunder the bonfire. A pair of boots, a coat, a fine wool skirt. Gloves and woollens and knitted socks, as soft as a new lamb’s belly. These things I take to my hut in the woods. But tonight I need something different. Tonight, I must be beautiful. Tonight I must have nothing less than the wedding gown of an April bride, taken from a pile of clothes placed there by a grieving widower, and if the husband sees me, he will think his beloved walks, and he will close his shutters tight, and cross himself, and shiver.
The dress is black. An unlucky shade for a bride, perhaps, and yet I know it becomes me. Barefoot I dance around the fire; barefoot around the fairy tree: and in its cleft I bind the charm that I have made from William’s hair, and my blood, and an adder-stone, and I fix it in place with a cantrip:
I am the coldest, the whitest of grain. Thus do ye reap, and thus do I sow.
There comes a voice from behind me, a voice both strange and familiar.
‘This time you did not falter,’ she says, and I turn to see the hawthorn, standing there in her own skin, all brown and crabbed and smiling. She is wearing my green dress and my scarlet high-heeled shoes, with the tiger’s-eye necklace around her throat, and maybe it is the rosy light from the bonfire on the green, but I think she looks younger, brighter, more alive than when I saw her last. The mossy hair is thicker now, streaked with glossy sloe-black bands. Her eyes are sharp and pinned with gold. Her lips, once ashy-pale, are now the colour of wild roses.
‘The season suits you, Old Mother,’ I say.
‘Apples and chestnuts,’ the hawthorn replies. ‘Cider feeds my withered roots, and brandy makes my blood flow. But you’ – she glances at my silken gown – ‘you are a winter queen tonight. And is that a ring on your finger?’
‘I dare say it may be,’ I tell her.
‘And will you dance under his window,’ she says, ‘and make him shiver and stare?’
I smile. ‘Perhaps I will,’ I say. ‘For if not tonight, then when?’
She gives a low chuckle. ‘I’ll walk with you, child. It has been too long since I saw the stars.’
The path to the castle is torchlit tonight, and busy with the travelling folk. The magpie woman; the crow; the stag; the wolf; the eagle. Here’s a salmon, with silver hair and a dress of fine-linked chain. Here’s an otter,
sleek and brown; a beech tree, tall and handsome. All dressed in leather, and silk, and fur, with crowns of antler and of bone. All carrying fiddles, and bells, and flutes, and pipes, and drums, and tambourines.
I join them, and for the first time since I first lay with William, I feel as if I belong here, that I have been forgiven. A linnet in a feather coat raises her sweet voice in song. I join her, and am joined in turn by a wooden drum and a shiver of bells. I start to dance, and they urge me on with stamping feet and clapping hands. And as we approach the castle I see a light at William’s window, and a shadow by the curtain, and know that he sees me, and feels the hand of Death upon his shoulder.
Someone passes me a flask of something warm and fragrant. I drink, and dance, and sing some more, until the stars are spinning. And now I feel a surge of love for all the travelling people. The ragged blue tit, the sparrow, the fox, the corncrake and the field mouse. The brown men and women that sleep in your fields, and lurk around your campfires. We may look like beggars by day, but on this night, we are kings and queens, and the world is our kingdom, our playground the night, and the starry night our canopy.
November
The Black Month
Marry in blue, lover be true
Marry in pink, no time to think
Marry in grey, live far away
Marry in brown, soon in the ground
Marry in green, not long to be seen
Marry in yellow, ashamed of your fellow
Marry in black, can never go back
Marry in red, wish you were dead
Marry in gold, your bed will be cold
Marry in white, everything’s right.
Traditional rhyme
One
Now comes the time of the leafless trees, and the geese heading south for the winter. The last of the apples have been picked; the bare fields have been resown. Jack-in-the-Green has put aside his summer coat, and the Winter King rules over the countryside. And the travelling folk have once more moved on; the fires of All Hallows’ Eve burnt down to nothing but embers.
The first of November marks the time when my people go to ground. The fox to his earth; the wolf to his den; the trees to their leafless dreaming. The hawthorn has shed the last of her fruit, and will no longer speak to me. Only the white-headed crow remains to bring me news from the castle.
The wedding is planned for the New Year. Until then, the bride-to-be remains a guest in the castle. The crow sees her occasionally, sitting at her needlework, or looking out of the window towards the distant valley. I see her too, through the golden eye of my stolen wedding ring. A wedding ring is a powerful charm, a window into other worlds. The wedding ring shows me a crow’s-eye view, soaring over the valley.
Not that there is much to see. Fog has come down from the hills, and only the tip of the tower stands above the unbroken whiteness. Underneath, it is damp, and still. The forest is nothing but spider’s webs. My firepit smokes, and my eyes are red. The boredom is worse than anything.
If I were myself again, I would go into a bear, and sleep until the springtime. Or an apple tree, to awaken with the blossom on my branches. Instead, I must sit in my hut and wait, and know that winter is coming.
I wonder what she is sewing, up in her room in the castle. Bridal linen, I expect, to keep her busy through the snows. I imagine pillowcases and sheets, each one embroidered with her name and his, or maybe a silken coverlet, all sewn with blue forget-me-nots.
I wonder who will make her dress, and of what colour it will be. Yellow, perhaps, to go with her hair, or rosebud-pink, or sky-blue. But no. White is her colour. She must wear white on her wedding day. Marry in white: everything’s right. If only the poor April girl had made a more fortunate choice.
I have a loom at the back of my hut. Last year, I made a fine brown rug of lambswool and of horsehair. This winter, I shall make a gown; a gown of every colour. My needle is sharp: my eye is keen. I have all winter to make it. And when it is done, and my All Hallows’ Eve charm has worked its way into his heart, then I shall dance upon his grave, and be free of him for ever.
Two
I shall start with the dress of the April bride, its modest, blameless panels. A fine dress, for a village girl, but I require something finer. With my knife, I will slash the skirt into shreds of cornsilk, and stitch it all over with rosebuds, and trailing fronds of ivy.
Once more I find myself thinking of the story of the kitchen princess, and her dancing shoes, and her fine silk gown, and her coach and four white horses. What a fool, to waste her gifts on such a paltry princeling. If I had three wishes, I would wish myself into the sky, and fall down in a shower of stars, and dance among the Northlights. If I had three wishes, I would make myself a Christmas pie, with chestnuts and with sugar-plums, and all kinds of sweet delights—
Waarrr! War!
The white-headed crow has taken to pecking at the roof of my hut whenever it wants attention. I draw back the deerskin curtain that keeps the wind from entering. The crow hops in. It is hungry. The honey-cakes are long gone. Soon, there will be nothing to eat but potatoes, and dried berries.
‘What news?’ I ask the white-headed crow. But I already know what news it brings. My wedding-ring charm showed me the signs of bad news from the castle. It seems the old laird has been taken ill. An inflammation of the lung, following a hunting trip. A southerly wind and a cloudy sky proclaim a hunting morning. But the old fool would go by an easterly wind, which always brings wet weather. And now he lies on his deathbed, while his son paces the hallways, and the bride-to-be counts the silver spoons in the kitchens and wonders – How long?
If the old man dies, she will be mistress of the honeycomb. And William will be master. At least, until my charm takes hold.
I am the coldest, whitest of grain. Thus do ye reap, and thus do I sow. The answer to the riddle is Hail, the bane of every harvest. My seeds have been sown, William. And now let us see what you shall reap . . .
Three
The old man took nine days to die. He held on till St Martin’s Day. But by St Catherine’s he was laid out, and buried in the churchyard.
Of course, this means the wedding must be postponed until the time of mourning is past. That means twelve months in black ribbons before poor Fiona can wear her white gown. If only the old man had eaten an apple on All Hallows’ Eve, as I did – a sovereign cure, they say, against all ailments of the chesty kind. Still, it is too late for him now. I watched through the eye of the wedding ring as the hearse came down the path, the horses’ plumes all wet with rain, and William, in his winter coat with the sealskin collar, walking behind, with Fiona by his side.
They laid him, not with the common folk, but in the MacCormac family vault. His name is freshly carved on the wall of the little chapel of rest. I waited until the folk had gone, and everything was quiet again, and then I went to pay my respects, and to leave a rune-stone by the door so that he would know me. And there, by the light of the new Blood Moon, I promised I would end his line, and see his family home in ruins, and watch his lands all pass to strangers, until they were broken up into strips and even his name was forgotten.
And then I went back to my hut in the woods, and the comfort of my fireside, and my needlework, and the white-headed crow. And when I awoke in the morning, I saw that the first frost had come, touching the grass and the spiders’ webs and the ploughed fields and hedges with silver, and I knew that the winter had truly begun, and that my waiting was over.
Four
Clear moon: frost soon, so they say. And the moon has been clear these past five nights, bringing hard earth, a black frost and death to many small animals – voles, blue tits, lizards, frogs – living around the lakeside. The lake, too, is frozen: great flowers of ice blossom around the islands. The ducks slip and slide on the surface. The white-headed crow sleeps close to the hut, too wild as yet to stay inside.
The castle is in mourning. My wedding ring shows me draped mirrors, stopped clocks, and scenes of quiet hysteri
a. Fiona is not happy that the wedding date has been put back. Nor is she happy that William, still not of age, cannot inherit his father’s lands, but must wait until he is twenty-one. Until then, his uncle serves as trustee to his fortune and has to give his approval to the impending nuptials. Fiona’s silent displeasure is clear. She works on her wedding trousseau with thin lips: saying nothing, eyes downcast. She has had to hire a chaperone, chosen for her plainness.
Meanwhile, the Folk are restless. The death of the laird, so suddenly, has caused grief and anxiety. The old man was popular; his son was raised among the village folk. He swam with their children in the lake; took apples from their orchards. The village folk remember this. Now he is their master.
A death in November means hard times ahead. The winter is only beginning. Over the next three months, there may be more than a dozen casualties. Old folk, mostly, or babes-in-arms too weak to withstand the damp nights. But with the end of the year comes the sense of something darker approaching. Four sheep were taken by wolves last night, and the farmer swears he saw a handprint in the blood on the stone wall of the pen, and knew that this was no common wolf. There are other omens, too. A rune-stone, found in the churchyard. The grave of a young woman, tampered with. These are evil signs indeed, and the Folk are troubled.
Through the eye of my wedding ring, I can see how fear ferments. The Folk are like an anthill riven by a passing cart. The cart moves on, but the ants are at war against anything that comes their way. I must take care. This is not a good sign for such as me. The Folk are fearful and easily roused, and this too often turns to hate. And I cannot simply go into a hare or a goat until this danger is past.
On Sunday, a pedlar came by with a load of baskets. At another time, he might have been welcomed. This time, the Folk sent him on his way with evil glances and muttering. Some boys threw stones. I must take care. Alone in my hut in the forest, I now have more than wolves to fear. And as the nights grow longer, and the wind grows knife-edge cold, I may yet need to deal with the Folk, and to trade for my survival.
A Pocketful of Crows Page 6