by Asotir
Three times the Moon rose, and three times she fell; in the county of mist the mist was brightening a bit when as the Moon was rising, and the mist was darkening a bit when as the Moon was hid. The women went on, now leading the horse, now riding Porter, slowly now in that treacherous land.
Maid Mielusine never knew that in the darkness while she lay resting, Lady Agatha would be rising, and twisting grass-stalks in her fingers, and walking about in the black mist, that like a thousand dewy mouths was tormenting her, gnawing at her face and hair and hands.
Agatha would not eat, lest the comfort let her rest. She fled from her dreams, that were still betraying her.
‘How long since I slept last, I wonder?’ she would ask herself, and be counting and reckoning up the moons as a distraction.
‘Agatha, is it time to be going again?’ murmured the Maid sleepily from her blankets on the grass.
‘Hush now, and be sleeping again, my puss,’ said Agatha, and passing her palm over the Maid’s brow; Mielusine’s eyes lowered, and the easy peace of sleep returned over her face. Then Agatha took up her pacing again, pacing up and down, to and fro, back and forth, in a rut of seventeen paces, even as once he had, long ago in the world of the Sun.
* * *
DEEP IN THE COUNTY of mist they climbed across a hillside, that was like a huge barrow or tomb-yard of ancient kings and warriors from the Five Kingdoms. From the top of that barrow they were looking down on a cluster of folk. The folk were leaving, and Lady Agatha led the way down to where those others had been. By the path was the Lady’s Well caught in a circle of stones.
‘I know of this place,’ said Agatha, wondering. ‘But it’s not here this place should be; or am I all turned about again?’
It was the way of the Night-land, that no map was solid and safe, but all the places shifted and slid about, and a body never knew what place would appear on the road ahead.
‘What is the name of it?’ asked Mielusine.
‘And I drank of the water of this well,’ said Agatha. ‘I was that young and proud, and it wasn’t the country-boy courting me I was wanting, but a man of some estate, wealthy and of power.’
She lifted out some water from the well, holding it cupped in her hands. ‘Drink it, now,’ she said to Mielusine. ‘Drink, and think on Master Aengus.’
‘Yes, I’ll do that,’ answered the maid. And she lapped the water out of the lady’s hands. But the each dubh would not drink out of that well.
Now, as soon as Agatha dipped her hands in the water of the well, it started to rise. It rose up to the lip of the circle of stones holding it, and overflowed, and ran down in a little stream between the slopes.
‘Come along,’ said Agatha. She took Maid Mielusine by the hand, and they followed the stream.
Down they traveled, deeper in that mist, the land rising and falling, and on the hillsides hundreds of fruit trees, wild apple, quince and pear. The little stream was running between the hills, snaking between the trees, and the women were following it.
And the deeper into that vale they went, the deeper came a sleepiness into Agatha, so that she could scarcely stay awake.
How long since I slept last, I wonder? she was asking herself, but that answer did not come.
They passed one thousand tents and wagons, filled with dangerous wild-looking folk; and the gleams in the eyes of those men caused the Maid to shrink closer to Agatha for safety. Glad she was, when they came out from the midst of that encampment!
The Moon was falling. That was the Lughnasadh Moon, Lammas in the old calendar of Day. And from ahead a rich smell of rotting reached them, and the lapping of little waves.
‘Is it the lough? Can we stop now?’ asked Mielusine. She was so tired she was almost falling.
But tired as the Maid was, the lady was worn by an even deeper fatigue. She had drunk none of the water of the Lady’s Well, and now an utter sleepiness was overtaking her.
How long since I slept last, I, I cannot – ‘oh! I cannot go on!’ sighed Agatha. She pulled the Maid forward, almost falling on her.
‘Mielusine,’ she whispered into the Maid’s ear, ‘over that rise now, the lough is surely lying. Listen! Do you not hear that clanging of iron upon iron, like a bitter bell? Mielusine, let you go on before me. Go on and call back to me, tell me what you’re seeing!’
Mielusine, impelled by her friend, went after the stream up between the apple trees. Soon she was vanished in the mist beyond. The beating of the iron bell rolled across the unseen water.
Agatha knelt down on the moss beside the little stream. Sleepiness conquering her, and she scarce able to keep her eyes open. Into the stream she murmured,
‘Mielusine, I cannot see! What is it you’re seeing?’
The Maid’s little voice came back along with the ripples, answering. ‘Yes, it is the lough! I see dim yellow lights to the left, of a small village. And out in the lough the mist is a white cloud, and other lights are gleaming like witch-lights over marshes.’
Agatha crept closer to the stream to hear better over the rushing of her sleepiness, and whispered into the water, ‘Mielusine, I cannot see! What is it you’re seeing?’
Faintly the Maid’s voice sprang up out of the ripples. ‘I see another light close to hand. Three torches burn at the water’s edge. Two men are there in silver and scarlet coats, and one ringing an iron bell upon a pole.’
Agatha let close her eyes. So sweet, so sweet some bit of sleep would be! She wormed yet closer over the water, put her lips down just over it and breathed, ‘Mielusine, I cannot see! What is it you’re seeing?’
But no answer was coming from the stream. The Maid was stricken silent.
For in the water of the lough was a swanlike barge, and on it stood a woman. It was tall she was, masked, and enfolded in a rich enormous cloak, that was black and chased with silver.
And on the mud where the stream ran laughing in the lough, two men were walking. They took another step apart with every peal of the bell. They held pistols in their hands, gleaming white and cold. And they were in the midst of a pistol-duel, those two.
One man was a stranger to the maid; the other was Eudemarec.
‘Eudemarec! Eudemarec, it’s me, it’s Maid Mielusine!’ she called. But the Breton paid her no mind. He had thoughts only on his duel, and the killing of his enemy.
In the misty torchlight Maid Mielusine could barely make the stranger out. But there was something wrong with his leg, the way he was limping.
Back in the mist, by the edge of the stream, Agatha’s head was nodding; her eyes they were closing in sleep, and her breath was heavy, deep, and slow. She was hearing her breathing, and nothing else, and no voice reaching her from the duel by the lough.
‘Eudemarec, let you be stopping,’ Mielusine cried.
From the lough the tall lady lifted her eyes and held the Maid’s gaze. And in that stare Mielusine felt a great fear, and found she could not speak, nor move, nor think.
And the lady spoke to her and told her, chill as mist, ‘Girl, be still: you will spoil the game.’
Then the bell rang, one last time; the shivers of iron ran out and back across the waters of the lough; and the two men turned to face each other, across a gulf of thirteen paces.
Agatha sighed, and fell into sleep; her head nodded down, and her lips touched the water of the stream coming from the Lady’s Well.
Eudemarec was standing very still, and the stranger was raising his pistol. The stranger took aim and fired. That shot boomed like cannon-fire across the quiet lough. But the stranger’s aim was careless, and the recoil all but threw him down, leaving the Breton unscathed.
And a drop of the water of the well wetted Agatha’s lips, so she tasted it, and drank; then all at once the weariness was leaving her, and she jerked back her head, and looked about her: Where was she, and what was that crash she had heard, like thunder?
Eudemarec smiled.
‘Now, Master Aengus, you devil, you monster, you hell-spawn,’ he utte
red, ‘I have you now.’
He leveled his pistol. Calmly he drew back the hammer with his thumb, and tightened his finger over the trigger. The hammer fell; the muzzle roared; white flame burst from it.
Agatha staggered to her feet, and looked about.
In that roar the stranger fell.
Aengus! her heart was crying. Aengus!
Eudemarec crossed the stream and strode over to the body.
The stranger moaned on the wet mud, and stirred a bit.
‘What,’ muttered the Breton, ‘still alive, after that? You take a deal of killing, sir.’ He drew a second pistol from his belt.
‘Hold,’ said the lady, raising her black-gloved hand.
Eudemarec brought the muzzle of the pistol down against the stranger’s head. ‘No,’ muttered Eudemarec. ‘I’ll not hold. Not if it cost me my life.’
‘It will cost you more than that.’
‘He robbed me of my love, and she was all I valued more.’
‘You’ll find yourself another love. Besides, your job is done. Your man is dead. Isn’t that right, girl?’
Agatha let her feet follow the stream, the way the sound of those shots seemed to be coming from that way. The grass beneath her feet turned wet and muddy, and she saw dim yellow lights to the left, of a small village. And out in the lough the mist was a white cloud, and other lights were gleaming like witch-lights over marshes, even as the Maid had said.
Mielusine came down to the lakeside. She turned the heavy woolen clad shoulders of the fallen man, and laid the head of him into her lap. Brushing back his hair she was looking on him, wondering, Was this truly Master Aengus?
The cheek of him was rough, and marks of torment were traced about the closed eyes. His flesh was waxen, bloodless. The Maid was stroking his closed, bent face, smoothing the lines, until a sort of peacefulness was coming over it. Calm was he seeming, calm and cold as death itself.
She felt the man’s throat. There was no movement there.
Hot tears stung her eyes. ‘It is true,’ she groaned. ‘He is dead now.’
Agatha heard faint voices by the water’s edge, and she wandered on as though she still dreamed. It was against herself her feet were fighting, as though they were knowing what she’d find ahead, and wishing to spare her the sight and the knowing of it. But she went on. She could see another light close to hand. Three torches burned at the water’s edge. Two men were standing there in silver and scarlet coats, and one holding the pull-rope to an iron bell upon a pole.
Eudemarec looked down on the body of the unknown foreigner he had sworn to murder. It was far away now that oath seemed to him, buried behind ramparts of thorn in the Broceliande.
‘But if he is dead,’ he wondered, ‘why is it still Night?’
‘It’s the wrong tales you’ve been heeding,’ answered the lady ironically. ‘It was only that man there, could have brought back the Sun. Now he’s dead, and the Sun will never shine again. Mary bless you for it!’
Agatha stopped, staring at the two men by the bell. The boatmen left the bell, heeding a gesture of the lady; they went down the mud-flats by the ripples of the lough and gathered up the body of the dead man. And they bore the body up the slope away from the water. In the grass at the edge of the orchards they buried it. Their spades crunched into the pebbly earth; and when the men beat down the filled-in soil, the sounds resounded over the glimmering lough like the strokes of hammers.
Every blow of those spades upon the Earth beat heavy on the heart of Agatha, as though it was herself they had buried, and were sealing away from life in the Earth.
The lady stood at the head of the little grave. She crushed and sprinkled a few leaves over the black mound. A smell of peppermint filled the air. The lady stooped and whispered to the Earth, while the Maid wept and sniveled.
Agatha from a distance was looking on, amazed. It isn’t truth, she was thinking. This is some foul theater-piece, it cannot be real.
The lady stood, and looked to the Breton. He was staring at the grave.
What thoughts and dreams scattered themselves through the brain of him, seeing it done, and the end of his long quest?
For many moons Eudemarec had searched for the man, the legendary Aengus who had unbound the girdle of light. Now he’d accomplished his oath. And now, because of that, the Sun would never be rising again. And now, because of that, Mablaith would sleep until the end of the world. It was Mablaith Eudemarec had killed this hour.
‘You fought with style,’ said the lady, passing to the water’s edge. ‘You will come with us into the abbey.’
‘I want to go also,’ said Mielusine.
Agatha made her feet move forward. She came near to the grave.
‘Let you come then,’ allowed the lady. ‘You are delicate as the heather of this land. It’s one of my wards you’ll be, and a dancer in the casino.’
‘And Agatha,’ added Mielusine.
Agatha knelt at the side of the grave. She gripped the dirt in her fingers. Now tears were welling in her eyes, but she spoke no word. Only a little mewing came out, like a cat’s.
‘Not her,’ said the lady. ‘She’s the last of all I’ll be letting in. Well, girl? Are you coming?’
‘Agatha,’ Mielusine said softly. She got no answer. She looked to the barge, to the lady waiting there. She was so glamorous that Mielusine went to join her.
With an unhasty pace the boatmen poled the Swan barge out upon the lough, toward the white buildings of the abbey emerging from the silver mist.
* * *
DRINKING AT THE WATER’S EDGE, Porter was watching them go. When the ferry at length was dissolving in the mist the horse tossed his head. He nudged the huddled woman by the grave, but got only a mew for answer.
The each dubh trotted up the path, and a dark man stepped out in his way, took hold of his reins, and leapt upon his back.
The man straightened his dark gray cóta mór, and bent over Porter’s neck, and whispered these words into his ears:
‘Go where I’m going, Porter! Go!’
In the glow of the Moon rising beyond the mist, the Each Dubh gathered speed, and bore the dark man away over the hills beyond the wild orchards.
15. How She Lingered by the Lough
ROUND THE LOUGH away from the tents where the bandits dwelt, those that would be going over to the abbey, there stood an old village, left over from the day; and the villagers came out of their doors only when the Moon was gleaming through the mist, and the lights of the crannog were snuffed.
The crannog in the lough had been there since before St. Patrick. With hundreds of timbers and thousands of stones as big as men’s heads, ancient hands had built up the island in the lough. There the abbey had stood safe from the raiders, the chieftains, the warriors and the Northmen. For hundreds of years since then it had gone abandoned, left for boys to go fishing from in day, for birds to be nesting on in night.
In the last day the fires had rained in a great ring around that county, until sheets of mist and darkness swallowed them all.
It was only afterward that the villagers first glimpsed witchlights out on the lough. The villagers learned the abbey was rebuilding on the crannog. And they found that if their cows ate of the sedge over the lough in the Night, no butter would be coming from their cream. After that it was out of nearby streams the villagers were drawing their water, and never the lough itself.
In the village they were telling how the lough was tainted, and lured folk into sinning. They all came to that place, all wives whose husbands were Sleeping, and all husbands whose wives were Sleeping. They brought the money of their spouses to the abbey, and spent it on their lovers.
In the village they were telling of wayward children playing too near the lough in the white moons of summer. How they fell drowsy in the sedge, covered with mist while lights danced on the water. And how, come moonrise, anxious mothers found them curled up at the water’s edge, seeming asleep, smiling sweetly. But they were dead.
Some in the village were telling how those children were not dead at all, but stolen away to serve in the abbey, where they never got older. It was only models of clay left at the water’s edge, so true to life they were fooling even the little ones’ own mothers.
And they were telling how, if a girl’s love could not be, for the anger of her father or the enmity of kin, then she would go to the abbey and drown her heartsickness in laughter and lust; else she would go in darkness to the water, and clothed round with wildflowers she would surrender herself to the lough bubbling up around her. And she would be lying on the dark bed of the lough, among the deep reeds dead.
You might even be catching such a one if you flung a net into the deep. But it was ill-luck and accurst to wake her, if you were not meant to charm her sore heart and be her lover. So none of the village lads tried, though some of the abbey-folk, as it was said, had done.
In the bright of the Lammas Moon the villagers ventured out, and found the woman by the grave. She was rocking on her haunches, back and forth, mewing. Not a word would she speak to any of their questions or remarks. In the end they took her in and tended to her. They were thinking she had lost her reason.
She was drinking the broth they were giving her, and eying them suspiciously. One of the men stood over her, and looked her in the eye.
‘Did you run into folk from the abbey, child?’ he asked. ‘Is that what happened? What were they doing now, that it left yourself in such a state?’
‘Mary bless you,’ said an elder woman of them, ‘I’ll tell you. ’Twas the tall hero, came first to the water. He shouts his challenge across the lough, and it echoing back answerless. Only at moonfall, the ferry comes gliding out, and the two men fight for the sake of the beautiful young miss, and the lady of the lough presiding over it all. It’s back to the crannog they went.’
The woman opened her mouth and said, ‘The crannog?’
‘Oh, but you mustn’t think of going there, shivering and half naked as you are. ’Twould be the death of you.’
The stranger woman pushed the older one back and went out into the lane. Children were playing there, and the eyes of men and women upon her.
‘She has the mark on her now, and it’s the greatest shame,’ whispered one.
‘I warrant she was fair, one time,’ answered another.