by Asotir
And from a hill over the river valley a dark man stood out from behind a tree. He was wearing a dark gray cóta mór. In his hand he held a bow, and quickly he strung it, nocked an arrow in its string, and drew an aim on the beast.
But the White Hind started at a sudden sound. Down the valley rode a riding-band, and she darted away.
The horses beat nearer. Their riders were so many robbers and jades, come hunting Master Aengus. And they a wild-looking, splendid, throat-slitting bunch, clad in broad-brimmed hats and silver spurs, and heavy riding cloaks, and scarlet riding cloaks adorned with the black letter A and black riding cloaks embroidered with that same letter A in scarlet, too. They cut him down with their scians and made a bier for him, and bound up his body in reeds and in sedge. They took the bundle of his parchments the fish-girls had left at the side of him.
And the riders wheeled their ponies and their stallions round about, laughing and discharging silver pistols into the clouds for sport, aiming at stars between the gaps of clouds. And they rode themselves away up-country, and they carried the dead man far away, to the white shining abbey dreamt up in the mist.
At the edge of the bay the dark man watched them go. He unstrung his bow, and put up his pack again across his thin bony shoulder, and he followed after the robbers’ trail.
* * *
SOME MOONS LATER, a bit of warmth came seeping out of the deep places in the earth.
Behind the thick black hedge, inside the dark close wood, in the Honey Hall, Eudemarec the Breton felt his strength rising back into himself, and his arms ready to gripe and grasp, and his legs ready to stride and stroll. And in the presence of the Maid he felt some of his wounds come round well again; little did he guess that was the work of Agatha, that sang little songs of healing over him whenever he lay himself down to sleep.
And one dark of the moon, Agatha bent low across the Breton in his bed, and breathed out a secret little song, so that the perfume of her breath entered fragrant within his broad-spreading nostrils, and he caught his breath and almost woke, although she would not let him. And the song of her went softly and simply into his heart,
Master Aengus,
Master Aengus,
Master Aengus waits for you.
* * *
THE DARK MOON was rising again, and Agatha woke and rose from her spot on the floor before the Maid’s bed. She saw the other bed was void, and she stepped out of the door.
At the end of the glade the Breton was standing, looking at the Moon.
‘Let her bless you,’ said Agatha.
He stayed looking out into the sky, and it was as if he did not hear. But after a space he breathed, and asked,
‘How big is the Night-land do you think, and how many moons’ riding, between this place and Ballynoe in County Cork, hard put to by the banks of the Bride?’
Then Agatha smiled a little bitter smile. Yes, she thought, he heard me even so.
‘It is far and wide,’ she answered him, by way of testing him.
‘And how old will I be, when at last I might be reaching it?’
‘As old as you will be at that time,’ she answered, ‘if you stayed here in this place instead.’
Eudemarec made ready to be setting out again. And to her surprise Lady Agatha, too, found herself restless to be going, restless to be doing. Maid Mielusine saw it in them both, and sighed; she had no great urging to be off away from her home there.
One moon Agatha went off to the pond to wash the linens; Eudemarec took his horse away riding. Maid Mielusine went about her affairs and tended to her trees, and tended to her hut, and tended to the animals coming to her byre. Alone she was, in the rising of the moon; alone she was in its falling. And there was no sign nor sight of Eudemarec, nor of Agatha either.
That moon Mielusine kept her stew waiting a good long time, enduring the trees’ grumbling, to wait for the Breton and the lady, and they neither of them showing their faces at the door. At moonfall Mielusine went herself to the pond. Where she found the heap of linens by the water, and the tracks of the Breton’s horse, and naught else.
Mielusine sighed. She knew what had befallen.
‘It was the lady, for all her rags, Eudemarec better liked; and now they two are gone away together, and I am left alone.’
She went and sat herself down on one of Owen’s roots.
The next moon rose, and that moon fell, and her grieving only worsened. It was a worse loss even than the loss of her sisters she was feeling.
Gone now is my beauty, gone now my fortune, gone my friend, and they are all gone. With them went Mielusine the lady, Mielusine Master Aengus’ love. What is left? Only Mielusine the cottager’s daughter, the little pinch-faced Sini.
* * *
NOW, WHEN Eudemarec rode his horse to the pond where Agatha bent to her washing, he let his horse wander, and himself stood speaking to her. She did little to encourage him, and was answering hardly at all.
He was telling her of the world of Night.
‘Now some, accounted dream-eyed in the daylit world, thrive and do great things; and others, once mighty, now are as beggars by the way.’ And he told her of the many gentle cities were a-building, in places overlooked by day.
‘Why, there are whole cities in the mountains of the Rhine, and a mist maunders over them, and you cannot reach even half a league near to the walls of them. Every living soul, man and woman, child, horse, and dog, lies deep in the unwakeable Sleep. There are strange towers built over the dry fields deep in France, and they are pressing the grape there as if it were the flesh of Bacchus reborn they are crushing into wine.’
Agatha wrung out a cloth, scratched back the thick tangle of her dirty hair. Eudemarec took a stone and skipped it out across the pond; still she would not answer.
‘Then again, below the mountains,’ he went on, ‘I saw white-clad priests in Rome, bowing on the rooftops of basilicas, praying to the Black Sun, the Moon’s half brother.
‘In Spain the priests are sleeping: a Counter-Inquisition is on foot, and they are raising the Horned God. In the palace of the kings of France peasants walk about barefoot, making love in marble halls before the gilded doors of slumbering nobles. Beautiful harlots in Paris are hailed as once Empresses were in Rome.’
Agatha took a stone, and stroked it back and forth upon one of his shirts, worrying at a stain. The Breton fetched him up a sigh.
‘How strange it is, then, that only here in this small forest would I be finding word of my enemy. And I had not even entered here but for the simplest chance.’
She stopped at that, and fixed his eye. ‘What pointed you here?’ she wondered.
‘Why, a woman on the road pointed the way, saying here was surely someone who could help me.’
She frowned. ‘A woman!’ she exclaimed. ‘And was it a lady, dressed in the height of fashion?’
‘No, now: it was a countrywoman old in her rags.’
Agatha returned to her washing, and he continued in his musings. ‘The strangest place I found, was here in this land: in a lough of mists there is a land, and there I found another lough, where the Lady Arianna has conjured up her white abbey.’
‘I have never heard of her,’ said Lady Agatha.
‘Ah, but you should have done! There are wonders in her court. Once, far across the lough in the dark of the moon, I even caught a glimpse of the lady herself, shimmering on the water.
‘All her bandits and trollops followed after her. Behind her went her three maids, and at her side walked her champion. A bit apart walked another, in a plain coat and breeches. There is a strange tale hangs about him, and later I met and spoke with him.’
Lady Agatha cast down the linens and sighed. ‘Amuse me then, Eudemarec, if you must pester me. Tell me of the man.’
‘Well, he is somewhat above the common height, and lean. There is something in his eye – he is always searching for a thing he claims he lost; and he spoke of strange things such as no other man would think of.
‘He is called Arianna’s Bacach. And indeed he is lame in one leg. Bacach means lame in your speech, does it not?’
‘It is generally the meaning of folk when they say it,’ she answered, turning back to her washing.
‘They say in the night of No Moon after Imbolc, river-frogs and herons hopped up to the lough, and called to the lady in croaks and screeches and howls. Then the lady sent her bandits to the river, and they came back with the man.
‘He was dead, or very near it. Arianna labored over him many a moon, and brought him back to health.
‘They say he had gone on a geis set upon him by a woman, into the Western Sea. And there below the waves he struggled to summon back the Sun; but of course he found only his own death when he set out from these shores.’
Lady Agatha turned on him sharply. Aengus, cried her heart. Master Aengus is that man! But aloud she was saying, ‘This cannot be true, what you say. Admit it, sir: it is a lie.’
‘By Mablaith, it is the truth I tell you!’
‘Go on then, describe this man to me,’ said Agatha. ‘Were his hands long, with knuckles round as quail’s eggs, and sparse black hairs growing upon the backs, like reeds bent by the wind? Did he have a gap in his right eyebrow, where a pale scar ran? And was there a lock of white hair grown out in his dark locks above his left ear?’
‘You know him then, my lady. It is the very man.’
‘I know his double! But did he wear a chain about his neck, holding a golden guinea?’
‘No – but he wore a chaplet of laurel that the lady herself had put upon him, the way they said, laurel is the poet’s gold, as much as the blessing of the dead, and the rare right word.’
‘Tell me then, Eudemarec: you said he spoke of strange things. What things? Did he speak to the Moon as though he knew her secret name?’
‘He did that,’ said the Breton with a laugh.
‘And did he claim to know what lay at the back of the winds when they ran, and what things the grass-stalks sang, when the Moon goes down? And had he seen the sky beyond the Sun and Moon?’
‘As I say, this Bacach was a man of wisdom.’
‘And did he not speak of a lady he loved. Did he not tell of how he longed for her and wronged her. Did he not tell you how he lost her, and braved what no other man had braved, to win her back – in vain? And did he not speak her name?’
Eudemarec considered, and shook his head.
‘Lady, compose yourself,’ he said. ‘Yes, his words ran along some such lines. He was searching for one, and he said he would give his life to gain her back, and repair the wrong. That he would never see her again. And that knowledge cut his heart to the roots.’
‘Yes … yes,’ said Agatha. She turned away, to hide her face away from him. Let no man see me in the weakness of my need, she thought.
‘But it was not a woman he spoke of,’ said Eudemarec.
She turned back.
‘No,’ he said again. ‘Rather it was a white hind he had wounded.’
Lady Agatha took his arm. ‘What is this you say,’ she asked, ‘—a hind?’
‘He had searched the world for her, but hadn’t found her. Oh, he went on and on about the hind. He never spoke of any woman. Unless by the hind he meant a lady?’
‘It cannot be true,’ said Agatha. ‘It must be a lie.’
She sat and held her head between her hands. She hardly heeded him.
‘It seems you knew this man,’ Eudemarec said at length. ‘Pardon me if what I said distressed you. Maybe I should be leaving you now. But it’s the first time we two have been alone apart from the Maid. And it’s almost well I am now; soon I’ll be going. But I would not go alone.’
‘Ask then,’ she said through her hands. ‘You’d know what it is Maid Mielusine is whispering to me in your regard?’
‘No, Agatha. I’d know rather what it is you are whispering to her.’
Lady Agatha uttered a bleak, mirthless laugh.
‘What, now?’ he asked.
‘Oh Eudemarec! Don’t you see the comedy in it? – That between the beauty and the one in rags whose hair hangs like river-weeds, you should choose me?’
‘Your maid is fair as Day, but this is Night. Your quality gleams through your rags. Why do you hide? I know your wild heart all the same.’
‘Do you, now?’
He stood up over her, close and near, so that the warmth of his body was strong as arms embracing her. ‘We have both known passion, you and I. We have both betrayed what was dear to us. Our loves are waiting in the Day. But we need not wait alone. Let us join hands.’
She swept back her skirts from him.
‘But you don’t know!’ she mocked. ‘You met him face to face, and you don’t even know it!’
He looked at her, a blank look; her laughter stung him, stronger now than ever.
‘Would you know then, what sort of man is this Bacach? Would you be knowing the place of your enemy, and mine? It’s there where you found him! They are the same, those two. The Bacach is Master Aengus, Eudemarec!’
‘No,’ he breathed.
‘Moy-rua, yes! And it’s this Bacach who loosed the girdle of the Sun and doomed the Day, and it’s himself who left your Mablaith to languish unto death!’
13. How the Trees Were Stilled
LATE IN THE DARKNESS of that moon, at last, Maid Mielusine ladled out her cooking to her trees. Herself, she ate no part of it.
She sat in the hob seat in the hearth and looked into the embers burning out. Maid Mielusine fell quiet, bending in upon herself. They are gone now, she saying to herself, over and over and over again. Prince Eudemarec has taken Lady Agatha away, and they two are gone now beyond the hedge out of this wood, out into the Night-land broad.
The trees grew louder and coarser than ever, if that was possible. They weren’t sorry at all those two had gone. Mielusine was theirs again, and no one else would claim her: no!
And they fell to boasting amongst themselves, who of them would prove her best guardsman.
‘It’s me!’ shouted Neil. ‘I’ll be her best protector!’
‘I’ll be letting nobody near her!’ shouted Sean.
And Griff and Sean and Neil they were towering out from the benches, and butting crowns amongst the rafters, knocking up a frightful din, the others shouting them on, shoving forward and back.
Maid Mielusine on the hob by the hearth bent her head, glaring at them. The trees weren’t looking often her way, the way her looks for them were so very mad.
All at once she leapt up: caught a firebrand from the hearth, swinging it, shouting ‘Leave! Leave! Leave!’
Mielusine flung the door shut on them; she was tearing off the white gown, digging in her chest for her homespun clothes. But her eyes were falling on the slumbering red gown, and she was feeling how unfair all of it was.
Again and again she was regretting being shy with Eudemarec. Again and again she was taken with thoughts of how pleasant it would have been to have been kissed by him: to be kissed by any man at all! The thought of it started something burning up in her, dreadful and fine. And all alone she was curling up on the hearthstones in the glow of the fire, and wishing in her misery to be sleeping endlessly, ignorant of the world.
I must be rising soon, she was dreaming in herself at last. The way it must be moonrise already, and my animals in the byre hungry and lone. But she did not move.
At last she was hearing a sound at the door, and Mielusine saw someone standing there, half shadow, shining through the damp veil of her tears.
‘Am I dreaming now,’ Mielusine was whispering, ‘or is it truly you?’
The figure reached out its arms, beckoning.
‘Mielusine!’ the figure called.
‘Mielusine, Eudemarec is gone, he bore me to the hedge at the edge of the wood but I couldn’t go farther with him. He knows where Master Aengus is now, Mielusine, and is gone to kill him. It was I told him where to find him!
‘And now I cannot keep away, but it draws me lik
e adamant, I must be going there, but my thoughts are running, round and round – Mielusine, it’s that you must be coming with me, or I will be falling dead in a ditch along the road even if I could be getting out of here. Will you, Mielusine? Will you come with me after Eudemarec, and keep him from killing Master Aengus?’
The Maid crawled to her feet. She was leaning back against the hearth, her hand half raised. In her belly it was hollow, as though she had been struck there. The tips of her breasts against the coarse wool of her kirtle were burning, burning. Then she answered,
‘Surely I’ll go with you, Agatha. Weren’t we planning it all along? He’s going to Master Aengus? Take me along with you.’
And Lady Agatha filled a corna with goat’s cream and drank of it, and offered it to the maid.
‘Drink,’ she said, ‘and finish it.’
Mielusine turned the corna round, to the white kiss on the rim where the lady had drank, and pressed her lips to the very spot, drinking and feeling the lady’s eyes looking that deep into hers.
Outside the Honey Hall, the moon and her Night-land they were beckoning them. And they went out of the hall, those women, and slipped away into the Night.
* * *
AS TO THE TREES, they were hiding themselves out of shame and suffering in the dug-up glade where Conn killed Owen. They were standing there, bent over among the lifeless trees. And their thoughts were running in the same stream-bed, and it’s sad and lonely they were, and worried for the maid.
And their branches were creaking in the chill night’s wind.
What is wrong with Maid Mielusine? creaked the branches of this one. Why don’t she come deck us with flowers and straw rings as she used?
It’s all Agatha’s fault, creaked the branches of that one. She’s ugly. I hate her! How did we ever take her for a lady, now?
Mielusine loves her. And besides, she made her the lovely white gown, and transfigured her.
They all were sighing the same sad song, twisting back toward the hall where herself, as they thought, lay dreaming.
You knot-heads, let her char you all! What’s the matter with you now? broke in one sharply as the snapping of a limb. It’s not with you she’s wanting to play! Moy-rua, can’t you see Miss Mielusine’s a lady now herself?
There was stillness in the glade after that. Only the chill wind soughing and sighing in the branches of the dead trees. The eight friends waited, but it was in vain, the way Maid Mielusine wasn’t coming round to find them and shoo them all home for a good hot meal. Come the next darkness they crept back to the hall – they had to.