Blood by Moonlight

by Asotir

  ‘Her feathers are soft,’ murmured the girl; and the falcon spread its wings and flew out the window and was gone.

  So Eudemarec was freed of the falcon, but now the maid Zelie was following him everywhere, hanging on his elbow. Agnes saw this, and contrived to draw Eudemarec apart a moment.

  ‘Eudemarec, I am Agnes. You’ll never find Arianna with this downy chit trailing you. Would you be freed of her?’

  ‘Agnes! Is it you, indeed? But no, though I thank you, ’twould be unkind. I have already lost my chance, and I’ll lay down my cards now, the way I’ve lost this hand.’

  Zelie returned, tugging at Eudemarec’s sleeve: ‘Hawk-tamer, come quick, the dances are starting!’

  These were the performed dances, and all ringed the stage to watch the dancers. One after another the dancers thrilled the company, until it was Mielusine’s turn.

  She stood before the blaze of footlights for a moment.

  The masked throng waited on her, and she was losing the memory of her practiced steps. What was the first of all my moves, and then what came after that? she was crying out inside herself. I cannot remember them all, I cannot remember even a one of them!

  Then she threw off her cloak. It isn’t Mielusine facing them, now: it is the lady in the mask of the White Hind. Let them see only her, and let only herself guide my movements now. It was in her limbs and in her heart, the way she ruled them now. She signed the music to commence, and she danced.

  It wasn’t the way she had danced by herself, beautiful though that had been. This, with all eyes devouring the sight of her, was better. She felt the power of the mask on them all, gentlemen and ladies: it was her power, and the music and movements burning out of her. And it was a little drunk she was, drunk on the desire the men were feeling for her, and the dancer herself burning to be lying red-naked in the arms of them, every blessed one.

  Hidden in the burning footlights, in the midst of the throng, stood a man unmasked. He gazed up at the bold beauty playing with the desire of all.

  So the Bacach first beheld Mielusine in the mask of his White Hind.

  The crowd surged closer to the burning footlights. From beyond that barrier of light, the red mouth of the White Hind bright and hot smiled beckoning back at them.

  The trees in the burnt enchanted wood would not have known her for their shy sweet Maid during that dance. She was so bold she shocked even the bandits.

  Mielusine bowed, and cloaked herself again during the applause. Two other dancers came on, their faces glum, the way they knew how little would be their reward for following her.

  Behind the stage Mielusine was laughing, swimming in the love of the admirers.

  It was a need in her strong as breathing, to be among these men; to stand so close that their presence embraced her, and she was drowning in the smell of them. She could feel their gaze upon her as hands caressing her body, and she was that pleased.

  ‘Later, sirs!’ she told them. ‘When the others have finished, then let you seek me in the hall.’

  ‘Will I be seeing you there?’ asked Vasquez.

  ‘If I want you to,’ she answered. The insolence of the reply seemed native to her. She laughed, seeing him go. Hadn’t he been right after all?

  In the ebb, she saw the Bacach. His face seemed itself a mask, waxen and yellow, tinged with old pain.

  ‘Do not go,’ he cried. ‘What is this mask? Do you know? Are you the White Hind?’

  ‘No, I’m only a dancer,’ she answered, and in the press slipped away, eluding them all, gliding into Night. It was her pleasure just then to be swimming in the mist and witchlights away from them all.

  The Bacach went after her. For an instant he saw her, palely roseate in the floating witchlights, rounding the ruined walls of his basilica. Then she was gone. His heart was kicking, his hands trembling, his brow chill.

  He followed.

  And the mists covered both of them, and the witchlights swam on, thickening the mists with their brightness.

  All balls must end, even that one; the music ceased, and the ladies, the maids, and the bandits climbed the snowlike Hundred Steps and a Step. Soon the slender young Moon would be rising.

  The nine young girls under Mac Bride’s command, yawning great yawns, set to snuffing out the thousand candles.

  Zelie, the child dressed as a dove, asked Eudemarec to escort her to her door, and they climbed to apartments where the Breton had never been. The girl smiled shyly. ‘Will you not step in a moment, sir, until I may get a candle lit?’

  ‘Surely I’ll do that,’ answered Eudemarec.

  They passed within the large carven door, they passed into inner chambers where no witchlights swam, and all was black as ink.

  In the darkness the Breton heard the falling of her cloak; he heard a rustling at the snowclad windowsill; in the open starlight he saw the falcon lighting there. Then he turned, the way the candle flared to the kiss of the match; and Eudemarec beheld there Lady Arianna, unmasked, unclothed, in glory.

  The Sixth Year of Night

  In the sixth year of that Night, the students broke from their Teachers.

  For in spite of all tricks, most students had learned nothing, could do nothing out of the ordinary – could do no more, in fact, than they had done during the Day. And they blamed the Special Ones and said they hoarded their secrets.

  But others among the apprentices had become Masters, and contested with their Teachers for preeminence.

  Fellowship and brotherhood were lost. There was a falling-out, and it came to hard words, blows, and killing.

  23. How He Met the White Hind

  AGNES did not want her masquerade to end. Upon shining lawns beneath the dimming witchlights she danced on, wild-souled, surrounded by a dozen bandits. But even they at the latter end left her, despairing that she should ever reveal herself as the lady. Alone she danced on, her skyblack skirts swirling.

  An odd mist hung over the ground, just about the feet. Mac Bride’s nine girls were killing the abbey’s candles and fires; across the lough, lights were winking on; through the upper airs the glow of the young Moon was gleaming, and cutting through the mist.

  Agnes stopped, and her skirt swirled to embrace her. ‘For luck,’ she whispered, drawing off the emerald and casting it into the lough.

  It splashed there softly and sank, drifting down the syrup of the waters. It came to a rest beside the sleeping maiden drowning in her hair, and Agnes never saw that gem again.

  She walked about the crannog through the snow, her spirits cooling, the mist making her cough. Every room below was still and dark; only through the upper windows gleams of candles reddened the mist. Even the gambling had ceased. For a time Agnes stood quietly in the shadow of the broken basilica, under the bell-tower. At length, alone, she turned back to her cot.

  She found someone already there, and that was Mielusine.

  ‘Master Aengus was following me,’ the Maid told her, ‘and I feeling sorry for him. It wasn’t that way I wanted to be meeting him. You told me he was dangerous, but he seemed a lost little boy. This hall seemed the best hiding place, so I asked after your bed.’

  ‘Do not go,’ breathed Agnes. ‘The other girls must be about their duties, but let us rest together as we did before, the way I’m so lonely. I also was thinking of him, and the pain of it lingers, it lingers in me. Sweet Mielusine, will you forgive me for goading you to what I would have had you do?’

  ‘Dearest Agnes, I missed you.’ They hugged each other, and then, still in their fine gowns white by black they lay together in the little cot, holding tight.

  ‘Mielusine, would you be going from here?’ whispered Agnes. ‘I am going, but you may stay if you like.’

  ‘No, I’m going. But we cannot leave Master Aengus.’

  ‘No. Eudemarec will help us rescue him.’

  But they neither of them saw the Breton in the darknesses that followed. He was the lady’s champion, and she hardly let him leave her apartments; he wasn’t eager t
o go, either.

  At length Arianna had herself arrayed: paraded Eudemarec down the crescent stair, and in front of all put on his finger the moon ring, pressing back his finger. Then Mielusine drew him aside, where he spoke with them both in private.

  ‘Is he alive, now,’ said he, ‘and I didn’t kill him? But that’s the finest news! Surely I’ll help you!’ He was too happy to deny them anything. He even agreed to say nothing to Arianna.

  So it fell out, that on the brightness of the Moon, when Arianna lay dreaming the deepest of dreams, Eudemarec dressed himself, kissed her hand, and tiptoed down the stair.

  But Agnes couldn’t help herself, and she was drawn back into Maid Buan’s chambers, using the key she had made. She had to look one last time into the glass on the wall there.

  It was quiet in those rooms. Agnes stepped up to the wall and drew back the black velvet hangings, uncovering the ornate carvings of the frame and the dim silvery shine of the glass. She looked deeply within. And after a time she was whispering to herself old words out of the deep of her soul:

                                 …set all the eyes

  Of court a-fire, like a burning glass,

  And work them into cinders, when the jewels

  Of twenty states adorn thee, and the light

  Strikes out the stars!

  She stopped then, the way she felt another presence: cast her look about, and saw Maid Buan standing in the door naked in her bedshift.

  Agnes let the hangings fall, but the maid caught them and took her hand and kissed it.

  ‘Is it true, now?’ asked Maid Buan in a whisper. ‘Was it the same sight I saw in the glass, as yourself were seeing?’

  ‘What sight did you see?’ asked Agnes.

  ‘I saw – but it couldn’t be you! But it’s truth and nothing else this glass will show! Here now, let me look, and you look also, and tell me what you see of me!’ And she cast up the hangings and stood before the glass. Agnes looked there with her.

  She saw there a face, and it was like the maid’s face.

  It was a face like the maid’s face, only stuffed and swollen up with pride and daunting haughtiness, cold and repellent. Agnes for shame looked away, and Maid Buan let the hangings fall.

  ‘But you, in the mirror, now,’ the maid was murmuring, ‘you were so – so beautiful! Are you truly so fine and so flawless as that?’

  ‘No, it’s only the artistry of the glass, and I’m no more than you’re seeing now before you.’

  The maid was shaking her head. ‘This,’ she answered, ‘is the artistry of the glass, that it shows back what’s more true than the eye can see. And every moonrise I’m gazing into it, and looking for some betterment, but every moonrise it shows me the truth of myself, and how vain and empty a showhorse I am. Tell me now, seamstress, what are you, that you are unparalleled in the glass, and yet you toil here as a servant? How is it you achieved such beauty, and can you not help me to be overcoming that thing, that thing, now – what you saw there in the glass?’

  Agnes was silent, turning it over in her mind. Then she smiled kindly and said, ‘I’ll do what I can do for you, and the rest you must be doing for yourself. All right?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ answered Maid Buan.

  Agnes took the maid by the hand. ‘Come,’ she said.

  And she led the maid into her bedchamber, and led her into her bed. The moon glow was falling strongly through the windows, the way the maid’s rooms were high up in the tower, and near to the thinnest layer of the mist.

  Right away Maid Buan’s eyes closed in the moonlight, and her face lost its lines of troubling, and her breathing grew slower and deeper. Agnes sat on a stool beside the bed, and she lay three flowers alongside the maid’s head, of the rose that blooms in the night, and the hidden rose, and the Lady’s rose. And she stroked the maid’s hand, and breathed along with her breath for breath. The perfume of the roses lay thick about the bed, but Agnes could see, that though the maid rested deeply, she wasn’t dreaming. Agnes leaned in over the maid’s face, deep into the pillow of scent of the roses, and she whispered three words in Maid Buan’s ear, softly like a secret: ‘You may remember.’

  The maid’s hand clutched Agnes’ tightly, and her breathing stopped and started. Agnes could see her in dreaming, and softly she let go the maid’s hand and slipped out of the chamber.

  * * *

  NOW IN THE MIDDLE of that moon Maid Buan’s eyes open, and she rises up out of her bed and summons her serving-girl. She orders the girl to put over her Maid Buan’s cloak, the dark one, heavy and hooded.

  Then she takes her mask and goes out of her chambers, and steps down the Hundred Steps and a Step, and no one is there to meet her.

  Maid Buan goes out through the great doors, that are hanging open, and that is strange, the way they are never open when the lady lies resting, and her abbey sleeps. But now they are.

  And Maid Buan walks out to the landing, where a Swan boat is standing waiting, with a boatman, and his head is bowed, and his face is muffled, so naught of his features are to be seen. Maid Buan steps into the Swan boat, and the boatman shifts with his pole, and the Swan boat slips from the shore of the crannog in the mist.

  Around the lough the boatman guides the Swan boat. Maid Buan lifts her head, and she sees the abbey all white in the mist, turning about before her eyes. Three times they go about the abbey, soft, stealthy, smooth, and there is no person at all to be seen on the shore, only the white buildings of the abbey turning in the mist.

  And never has it shone so beautifully in the maid’s eyes before now, the way her breath catches in her throat.

  Now after the third time round the shore the boatman guides the Swan boat to the landing, and Maid Buan steps up ashore again.

  She walks up to the great doors of the abbey, and now they are shut before her. There is a serving-girl there working, cleaning the bronze and carvings. And this girl is the first soul Maid Buan has seen since leaving her chambers.

  Maid Buan, she goes up to the girl, and hands her her mask, and says to her,

  ‘Now let you be the Maid, and let me be taking your place.’

  The girl says not a word, but she takes the mask, and Maid Buan’s heavy cloak, and the maid puts on the girl’s homespun dress.

  The girl she goes away, and Maid Buan now is all alone, and a Maid about the place no longer. And she takes the rags in her hand, and she touches them to the bronze and the carvings of the great doors, and she sets herself to cleaning them.

  * * *

  AND WHEN THE MOON rose next, and the light of the Moon glowed in the mist again, Buan was done with her work for that darkness, and she went to where she knew the serving-girls slept, and she found the cot of that girl who wore the mask of Maid Buan in the chambers high above. Buan lay herself down and rested, and when the Moon sank again she rose up and went to the great doors, and she cleaned them again.

  There was a carving in the door, and it a girl’s head, very lovely, but made green and dark by the mists of the lough. Each darkness Buan was cleaning that carving, and it coming lighter and more burnished under the touch of her hand, and that work did Buan’s soul good, and was setting her at peace with her heart. She loved that carving and that face, and the great doors, and what she did with them.

  * * *

  NOW AS TO THE BACACH, he had shut himself up in his rooms those darknesses, and was searching the stars in his telescope. His ate little but drank deeply, of the rainwater that fell in buckets on the bell-tower roof. But sometimes when the Moon was brightest, he crept about the forsaken lawns, looking for the hind.

  Servants came and left him food. They came in silence and darkness, the way they were not disturbing him. The Bacach hardly noticed them. But when one of them opened the door loudly, and held a glaring candle before her, the candle burned his eyes; he cursed her and bade her begone.

  ‘I will begone, and you will be gone along with me,’ she answered. ‘Master Aengus, come.’<
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  She was in white, and she wore the body of a woman, but she was the White Hind.

  He climbed down out of the sky, slowly.

  ‘You are here,’ he said. ‘You are real.’

  She held out her hand to him. He took it: there was no substance in it. His frozen, nerveless fingers felt nothing.

  They went down onto the lawn. Agnes was waiting there.

  ‘How is he?’ she asked. ‘Aengus, how goes it with you?’

  ‘I’m numb,’ he answered, looking on his White Hind.

  ‘Here is Eudemarec,’ whispered Mielusine.

  The Breton stopped short at the sight of Agnes. ‘Why, what new metamorphosis is this?’ he asked.

  Agnes smiled and bowed to him. Her hair was clubbed in a queue, and she wore a tricorn hat, boots, breeches, and waistcoat beneath a cóta mór. ‘Don’t I make a pretty boy? I learned well enough how skirts and silks fare on the road.’

  Eudemarec laughed.

  ‘You have a familiar look to me,’ said the Bacach.

  ‘Don’t you know me?’ asked Eudemarec.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am the man who killed you.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Bacach.

  ‘And are you really the love-mad Irish farmer, put out the sun? Are you Master Aengus, indeed?’

  ‘I am the Bacach. I draw the cards for Arianna.’

  ‘You must draw mine some time.’

  The man reached into his pocket and drew out a card at hazard on his fingertips. The Breton turned it over: it showed a man walking the road, his belongings slung on his shoulder, a pup nipping at his heels. ‘Il Matto,’ Eudemarec read. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It means, farewell,’ answered the Bacach.

  Mielusine murmured, nervously, ‘Let us be going.’

  They passed under the abbey in silence, to the mooring pole and Swan Boats.

  ‘One we will take, and the rest burn,’ Agnes said. ‘They’ll not soon be on our trail.’

  ‘That is not the way,’ spoke a voice from the darkness.

  ‘Who’s there?’ asked Eudemarec.

  ‘Let you not harm him, he is a friend,’ said Agnes.

  He came out of the blackness north of the abbey, walking slowly, like a heron, he was so tall and lean. His smile was crooked as his legs.

  ‘Greetings, Miss,’ he said sardonically.

  ‘Mary bless you, Mac Bride,’ she answered. ‘And what brings you out under the fullness of the Moon?’