by Asotir
In the end he pushed back his chair away from the table, and with deadly eyes stared at the piles of his winnings, gold and silver coins, and rings and chains and chains.
He stifled a yawn in the back of his sleeve.
‘For Maid Mielusine’s bank,’ he said, and went out.
The lawns were still. It was almost the hour of moonrise again. A few guests were hastening to catch the last ferry to land. The ferrymen then put up their boats and went in to their suppers.
The lough was murmuring gently. The fog was soft on the Breton’s cheek. There was a sort of stillness, as of death. Very slowly the mist brightened, and the waters of the lough were brightening. In the county of mist, moonrise was never known until after it had come.
Eudemarec looked into the silver in the lough.
‘Arianna,’ he breathed, as though taken by surprise with the thought. ‘Arianna d’argent.’
* * *
AT THAT TIME, Arianna had three maids, Maid Buan, Maid Ferb, and Maid Niam. Each had charge of fifty maids, and it was the way of them, that they would tend the wild orchards round the lough. Maid Buan saw to the apples, Maid Ferb to the pears, and Maid Niam had charge of the quinces.
Arianna herself kept a garden, luxuriant beyond all telling, at one end of the crannog. And the fragrance that garden exhaled into the dark airs of the Night, commingled with the mists of the lough, and carried over the whole county.
Now as to Mielusine, she was waking and walking with the Moon, and still evading the court. The Swan Boat did not cross when the Moon was up, but Mielusine often looked across the waters to the apple orchard, where the little grave was.
‘Ino, why am I here?’ she asked sadly. ‘What do I look for?’
The banker laughed. ‘You’re looking for what many do, Wood-Maid: a doorway back to Day.’
Mielusine sighed. ‘Yes, I don’t like the Night. It’s sneaking and nasty.’
‘Don’t let the lady catch you saying that,’ warned the dwarf.
It was Ino, convinced her at last to be showing herself at court. While many bandits went roaming after adventure, others attended Arianna. Each darkness the lady walked the crannog, and the witchlights colored the mists, and threw long gleams across the waters of the lough.
‘Mielusine,’ asked the lady, ‘why do you slander the darkness?’
‘It’s only that it makes me shiver, ma’am,’ said Mielusine, not daring look at Arianna’s magpie eyes. ‘There’s so much unseen in it.’
‘It is its virtue,’ answered Arianna. ‘Whatever you see must be as it seems, and nothing else. There are no regrets in Night.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘We give no sanctuary here, Mielusine. You must join us or go back.’
‘I cannot be going, ma’am! Where else can I learn of love?’
The lady laughed a silvery laugh. ‘If you would stay, you must be welcomed by the waters. It is a custom all here must undergo.’
‘What shall I do?’
The lady led Mielusine to the water’s edge. That was on the end of the crannog, and the vapor of the garden thick and warm about them. The stones were piled high and steep about, like skulls crowding up out of the lough: the water opened deep and black beneath their feet.
Arianna pointed down into that sluggish mere.
‘Come the full Moon you’ll go into the lough or leave us, little maid.’
The lady said those words on the dark of the moon. And it was thirteen darknesses Mielusine had, to be going to the water’s edge and looking down, and thinking up her fear. Until that darkness came.
‘Go down into the lough, Mielusine, bring back a reed from the lough bed, and tell us what you see there.’
The lady’s whisper burned the maid’s ears, and she shuddered. ‘Those who lack courage cannot stay here,’ whispered Arianna wickedly. ‘The beasts will harm you only if you wish them to.’
Mielusine looked up into Arianna’s eyes. Very small and childlike Mielusine seemed, and the gentlemen and ladies whispering among themselves, so sure that she would not survive the trial.
Others helped her out of her gown, and naked as a pearl white scarf shivering in the breeze, Mielusine stood on the rocky edge. She had not even a shift on, not a stitch.
She could not swim a stroke, but thought to herself, Better to drown than suffer the taunts of the ladies, laughing behind their fans.
She pinched her nose, did little Sini, and jumped.
For a time the cottager’s daughter was clinging to the rock, and the water was lapping round her, and in the witchlights the ladies of the court saw her kicking legs flashing under the water. The ends of her hair were snakes writhing on the surface. Then she went under, and the ladies saw a glimmering deep down, but then it wavered and vanished among the gleams of the witchlights on the waves.
Down into the oily blackness struggled Mielusine.
On the rocks the ladies took their ease awaiting her. Ino was going among them, whispering into their ears. They all laughed gracefully and maliciously to hear his words, and eagerly nodded their agreements.
At first Mielusine closed her eyes, kicking and waving her arms. But soon she found she could see, after a fashion, even in the water.
Great shapes were moving past her, and with a shudder she kicked away deeper. The water pressing against her, pushing her back up, and herself fighting and fighting against it.
The water broke, and Maid Mielusine paddled to the rock. Arianna herself stretched down her hand to her.
‘Give me the reed, and tell us how you fared.’
Mielusine shivered. Her hair slid straight and slick down her back. Her small, narrow face was gleaming in the torchlight, and she had never looked so lovely. Her slender trembling arm held up the lake-weed.
‘I went down,’ she said, gasping still. ‘The water didn’t – didn’t want to let me. I remembered what you said. The water seemed warmer, deep down. I went deeper.
‘On the bottom was a green and golden light. I took the reed. Then I saw a blue maiden lying on the sand. She was dressed all in flowers, and very beautiful. She was curled up on her side, and pillowed her face on her hands. Her eyes and her mouth were smiling in a dream. Then I had no breath, and swam up with the bubbles.’
‘Welcome,’ said Lady Arianna, and drew Maid Mielusine lightly up beside her. Straightway some minxes came forward to dry Mielusine and dress her again.
‘Who was the maiden?’ asked Mielusine.
‘One who died and never found her lover,’ answered Arianna.
‘What was her name? Does everyone see her so?’
‘Each sees something different, now come, eat and rest,’ whispered the dwarf in her ear. ‘The lady showed you great favor, don’t try her patience! See the jewels I’ve won! I wagered the ladies that you would pass the test, and now half these shall be yours.’
Ino laughed wickedly, and danced a little jig.
Then Mielusine was kissed by the bandits and minxes of the abbey, and they made a feast, with dancing and singing, and named that darkness after Mielusine, seating her in the seat of honor in the casino hall.
None of them noticed the solitary figure in the shadows by the door. She was but a girl of the maidservants, and of the least of them, winning no favor, the way she was still wearing the homespun dress of her village: and its hem black and ragged from the dirty work she did.
When all the court had passed, the girl stepped out from shadow, and resumed her pacing round the isle. The gamesters were in the gaming-rooms, the robbers out on their lickerish quests, the maids in the orchards, the gentlefolk in the hall, and Arianna gone alone into her garden. Only the maidservant strode the outer grounds between the abbey and the waves.
She rounded the servants’ building. She went past the dark pens where Arianna’s fifty hunting hounds were pent, scratching at the ground, snuffing at the vapor of the garden, whining hungrily.
She went across the lawns to the crannog’s end, and by chance she lingered t
o a stop at the water’s edge where the maid had had her trial.
There she stayed, looking down into water.
She was thinking, perhaps, of the lovers she had spied about the crannog, kissing in dark corners. Perhaps she was wondering what made the lovers so happy.
And wasn’t she wondering, too, whether herself would ever again be happy?
She had been angry as a girl, with poverty and the pride of her parents, who would not accept the English, or change their church. She had been thankful to the old man who had lifted her out of that poverty. She’d had moments of gladness by him, surely: when he gave her a horse or new gowns, or took her off to London. But happiness, now?
The maidservant sighed, and kicked a stone into the water; it vanished underneath the ink. She looked on her palm, on the black spot there.
Her one time of happiness was when the Night first fell. What did it matter that he had made a spell to give her that? And he was dead, now: she herself had seen him dead and buried.
The boatmen at the mooring-poles watched the bandits laughing and rushing into the casino. Through the doors voices were reaching them, welcoming them, raised in a song to honor Mielusine; and the singing filled the crannog, so that the bandits did not even notice, far away beyond the hounds’ pens, beyond the kitchens and Arianna’s garden walls, the small upright figure pensive on the lough.
19. How Arianna Hunted
THEREAFTER, when the maids went to the orchards, Mielusine went with them. She did not go to tend to the trees, the way she was a dancer. But she stopped at the edge of the apple trees, by a little mound of fresh-turned earth; and she was singing little songs over it, and tending the grave of Master Aengus.
She planted an apple there, so that his soul should grow up into that tree, and in after years she might talk to him in the branches.
Once in the village she asked after Lady Agatha. ‘The mad creature? Surely she pined away for grief, poor thing. Och, ’tis evil, this Night!’
The girl who’d given Agatha her place in the Swan Boat Mielusine did not meet, the way that one had not returned to the village, but had met with one of the robbers, and ridden away with him over the hills; he returned to the abbey with the emerald in his glove, but without the girl.
Mielusine passed only an hour under the orchards; then she went to the dancing-masters, to her lessons. She wondered when she should again see Vasquez. Ino had told her this much, that ‘the rascal ran overmuch into debt, and is in hiding till he pay enough not to get his throat cut on sight!’
Mielusine hoped she might be seeing him soon. When she lay in her bed she thought of him, and of what he looked like beneath his ugly mask.
* * *
AGNES WENT to the stairs before the moon rose. Soon the witchlights dimmed, and the bandits were in bed, and the Hundred Steps and a Step blacker than the moon before.
Agnes sighed, kneeled before the first step, spilled soap and water across it, and set to scrubbing.
A few passed her on the stair, servants, lovers, and gamesters keeping all hours. At first Agnes had stared at them, as if her look might have made their heels less dirty; now she didn’t glance up, even when one stopped and lingered.
She went on working, eying the muddy shoes out of the corner of her eye. Let him gape! Her skin had thickened by now.
‘Agatha?’ was asked.
The brushes halted in her hand. A sort of shiver ran up her arm. Her heart was beating very fast, and she had no wish other than to be hiding in some dark place. Then she sighed, shook back her dank locks, and looked him in the eye.
‘Yes, Eudemarec. It’s me you’re seeing here.’
‘My lady, what are you doing?’
She smiled wearily at the outrage in his voice. ‘Cleaning the steps, to be sure. Or trying to.’
‘But why?’ He stooped to offer her his hand, but she hid her hands in her skirts.
‘It’s here I was directed,’ she answered. ‘It’s my task.’
‘I will put an end to this,’ he said.
‘Please do not. I will finish this! And if they learn who I was, it’s out from the isle they’ll put me.’
He sat on the step above her, laying his arms out on his knees. He regarded her closely. Then he laughed, gloomily, shaking his head. ‘Is there nothing I can do for you, then?’
‘No, nought beyond giving me the pleasure of your speech for a moment, and telling me how you are,’ she said, stooping once more to her duty.
‘Ah, as for me now, what should I tell you? This is my nature, to be laughing when the outlook’s bleakest, and to be saddest when all goes well. But tell me now: will you forgive me for the deed I did?’
She looked gravely into his sea-gray eyes.
‘Aye,’ she was murmuring. ‘He was meant to die here. And ’twas my doing more than yours. You were no more than an arrow I loosed at him.’
‘I am sorry for it now. It was a fool’s errand. Do you miss him very much?’
She bent over the brush again, scrubbing hard. ‘Enough.’
For a long time silence went between them, and only the sound of the bristles chafing at the bandits’ dirt. Then he said, softly, ‘I killed Mablaith with the same shot. It was only your Aengus could have brought back the Sun. Now none of the Sleepers will ever be waking.
‘Already Mablaith seems dim to me, as if she had been someone in a tale I heard. And—’ he reached out for the post of the rail, and grasped it. ‘And my heart goes out to Arianna.’
Agnes took hold of the Breton’s knee. ‘Beware of that one.’
A bit of a smile haunted his lips. ‘I’m a gambler at heart, Agatha. And the dream of any gambler is to set a copper against a fortune in gold, and win.’
‘She is cold and cruel,’ said Agnes.
‘She is as beautiful as a snowfall in the Moon,’ he answered. ‘Her body has the strength of the brightest scian. What does it matter that I am an apostate, a very atheist, since I forsook my father and loved Mablaith in the wood? The game on the tables no longer appeases me. I would wager all I have, against the highest good Night can offer.
‘For now, the highwayman Gwangior is her champion; but ’tis said she’s tiring of him, and casting about for her next love. I will win her favor, or else I care not what befalls me.
‘Oh, Agatha,’ he went on, softly, for the pleasure of speaking his secret: ‘Every darkness I venture forth to be the one whose tale entertains her the most. Every darkness she’s asking me: “Eudemarec, what have you to say now?” And I hang my head and answer, “I’ve nothing at all to say.” “Faith, the honor of Brittany is lagging!” she says then, and all the robbers, gentlemen and ladies, laugh.
‘And for all that, I swear there is a twinkle in her look, meant only for my eyes. She is starting to love me, Agatha: and her love for me will not end as all her other loves have ended, but it will outlast the Night.’
Agnes did not answer. She went on brushing and washing the step. After a long while, he was taking his leave of her, promising to come speak with her again.
Agnes looked up after him, watching him go out by the little servants’ door, the way the main doors were shut and locked while the moon shone.
There was a great pity in her eyes.
* * *
WHEN THE MOON ROSE, the crannog was quiet, save for the clink of coins from the gamblers in their house, and the whispering of the serving girls. The dark man in the cóta mór strode about the grounds, walking from shadow to shadow, pausing now and again and standing still, as though he were listening or looking for something. But whenever he heard steps coming near him, the dark man slipped back into a shadow.
That moon a lady came to the abbey.
She walked up the way the moonglow was shining for her, through the mist, to the main doors. Now, it happened that on that moonrise someone had forgotten to close the main doors to the abbey. There they were, standing wide open, and the lady walked up into the entranceway.
She wore a long black dress tha
t covered her up, arms and all, in black, and left only her bosom bare. Over her head she wore a long black veil, tucked under her chin, wound round her throat and trailing down behind her. Her hands were covered in black gloves. At her side came a man, and a fine bravo he was, swaggering in with a saber at his side.
Agnes paused in her washing of the steps, and watched the lady at the entranceway. After a time some rogues and wenches appeared from the gaming hall, and greeted the lady with many fine words and flourishes. ‘Lady Ann!’ they were saying. ‘Lady Ann, welcome back to you, won’t you be joining us?’
The lady nodded lazily, and followed the robbers and trollops out. As she passed the steps, Lady Ann’s eye fell on Agnes, and Agnes met her gaze stare for stare; then the lady was gone, and her bravo’s boots were echoing down the passage after her.
It seemed to Agnes she had seen the lady once before, but she couldn’t remember where.
* * *
MAID MIELUSINE was walking about the abbey in the moonlight, going into the untrod places, pausing before the shadowy corners, and she would never have told herself that it was the rogue Vasquez she was hoping to be encountering. But when she saw him, then all at once she knew it.
He bowed to her in an overdone sweep, and put back his tricorn over the top of his grinning mask and silver hair. ‘Delighted,’ he said, ‘to find you again, Maid Snowflake. Will you walk a ways with me?’ Not waiting for an answer, he took her arm and started forward.
Along the way she was thinking of what she should be saying to him, when he cast a look back over his shoulder, and unthinking Mielusine asked, ‘What’s there, Mr Vasquez?’
He answered, ‘Oh, I only caught sight of a few of my creditors a while back, and I’d be just as happy not to have any words with them just now. Beside of which, I’m glad for the chance to talk with yourself, Maid Snowflake. You’ve been on my mind,’ he said.