Blood by Moonlight

by Asotir

  ‘Ah, as to that,’ he murmured, in a sing song tone, with a long sideways look at the Bacach, ‘It was ever my pleasure to be strolling by the lakeside. But what have we here? Is it a war-party I’m looking on?’

  ‘We’re leaving, Mac Bride.’

  ‘Then have a fair voyage, Miss, and Mary speed you to your destination!’

  ‘Mac Bride, Master Aengus is going with us.’

  At that the old countryman turned, looking from the face of the Bacach to Mielusine’s mask. ‘Is he, now?’ he muttered.

  ‘Don’t try to stop us, old man,’ warned Eudemarec. He put a pistol to Mac Bride’s breast. ‘It wouldn’t be worth the pain of it, you see.’

  ‘Stop it now, and put aside the gun!’ cried Agnes sharply. ‘Mac Bride, Aengus is a dead man here in this place. We’re taking him off to restore him to himself. Will you help us?’

  ‘You’d never be doing it this way,’ he told her. ‘The lady knows this scheme already; she had it in a dream. The fire will rouse them, and they’ll be on your trail before you lose sight of the crannog.’

  ‘It’s a gamble we’re ready to take,’ said the Breton.

  ‘Is there another way for it?’ asked Agnes.

  The old countryman looked on her quietly, in the strangest way. He was on the very verge of speaking, and yet holding his tongue.

  From one of the windows a light gleamed, and the casement swung out. In the candlelight Agnes knew the face of Old Meg, looking down on them all with an evil intent. For a moment she stared; then ducked away back into the hall.

  ‘Please, Mac Bride,’ pleaded Agnes. ‘We haven’t the time. You helped him once with a good heart. Can you stand by now, and be his jailer?’

  He said, very gently, ‘Your heart has changed, Miss.’

  ‘You are lovely,’ said the Bacach to Mielusine. ‘You’ll not run from me again, will you?’

  A door banged open in the servants’ building, and three burly men approached. They were Arianna’s ferrymen, roused by Meg. ‘What are you doing there?’ they demanded. At the sight of the Bacach they scowled. It was worth the worst of Arianna’s wrath to let the Bacach get away off the lough. Ever since he had been killed in the duel across the lough, this was her strictest command.

  ‘Be at ease,’ said Eudemarec calmly, showing them the ring. ‘I am her champion. She sends me to escort these three into the forest and show them the right path.’

  ‘Lady Arianna said he wasn’t to go. Only Arianna can say anything other than that.’

  ‘Oh, I think I can show you the fallacy in your argument,’ answered Eudemarec, and drew out a brace of pistols, leveled at their belts.

  ‘Now,’ he said coolly, ‘there are three of you, and I’ve but the two pistols; so if you have the blood of Turks, you may yet overpower me and fulfill your command, which I maintain is a false one, the way it’s herself is sending me here. But then two of you will die with balls in your bellies. Choose between you which, for ’tis a matter of indifference to me.’

  The ferrymen stood glaring at him.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Eudemarec after a bit: ‘if you want to live, stand over by the mooring pole, and untie the boat.’

  ‘This is not the way,’ said Mac Bride. ‘Leave them and their boats, the way others will be coming to work on them, and the alarm will soon be sounding.’

  ‘Is there another way?’ asked Agnes.

  The countryman nodded. ‘There is one.’

  They trooped along the crannog, the countryman and Agnes, the ferrymen, Eudemarec, Mielusine and the Bacach. They passed the casino, the Lady Chapel, and the servants’ quarters. They rounded the basilica and went quietly past the byre, where the blood hounds whined and scratched the earth at the sight of Eudemarec. Close to Arianna’s garden, the lean old man stopped.

  He sat on his heels over the water, and fished in it a little with his long, bony hand. It was the candle burning in the eyes of himself, was giving him the strangest look.

  ‘It was long ago, long,’ he told them. ‘When the crannog was built, we made a secret causeway, the way we would never be needing boats if we hadn’t any, if we had the wisdom. We piled up stones almost to the surface of the water, deep enough so as not to be seen by the eye, and following a tortuous path. My daughter used it once of a time,’ he said. Then he stretched out his arm and took her hand. ‘’Tis a path I know; feel it now, and don’t be forgetting.’

  With his fingernail almost cutting her palm, Mac Bride traced in Agatha’s hand the twisting and the turning of the causeway out of the crannog. The flesh of her palm was streaked white like lightning, showing the path.

  ‘There’s no need for this, you know,’ she told him. ‘Come with us, Mac Bride. We’ll have use for you.’

  But the old man shook his head. ‘I’ll not be such a traitor, Miss. And this is the way of it, if you want to win Aengus for yourself, it’s you must do the doing of it, not I. Go on then, and let her bless you! The boy was ever a soft point in my heart. It runs in the family, as you might say.’

  ‘Eudemarec, at least let you be coming with us,’ she begged. ‘Arianna will hold it against you.’

  ‘I will win her round, never fear,’ he said with a grin. ‘She is not evil. I would know evil in her. Neither is she good. She dwells with beauty, and beauty has its own law. She’ll not betray her love. And if she does … why, then I lose the wager! It would be worse to see her no more.’

  ‘If you are going, go now,’ said Mac Bride. ‘Look to the Moon, how high she is.’

  With that, the old man left them, back into the abbey, and did there whatever it was that he did. Mac Bride kept his own accounts.

  ‘Bless you, old friend,’ called Agnes after him.

  She dipped her booted foot into the lough, probing: found the causeway stones. She slogged forward, splashing; behind her came Mielusine, holding her skirts in one hand and Agnes’ hand in the other. The Bacach followed them awkwardly into the dark water.

  Step after step, turning upon turning: they walked upon the water deeper and deeper into the lough, like three magicians.

  ‘Go with my love, Agnes,’ called Eudemarec after them softly, watching the three of them whitely blending into mist. ‘Win back the memory of your lover, the way he cannot know you but love you.’

  He turned back to the ferrymen. He leaned against the wall of her garden, looking them up and down. ‘’Tis the brightness of the Moon,’ he said. ‘A long one. You’ve not by any chance got a pack of cards about you, do you?’

  * * *

  ALL THAT MOON Eudemarec held the three ferrymen captive; and Agnes and Mielusine led the Bacach past his grave up through the orchards. Along the way they passed a small ring of hand-small stones set in a vantage point. The paths were beaten bare through the white snow, and Agnes climbing easily and swiftly. But the man with his limp could go but haltingly, and the women had often to help him.

  When the Moon set they took a bit of rest, then started on their way again. They went on after moonrise, while the brightness passed over their heads. They had climbed very high by then, and were close to the end of the mist.

  But when the Moon sank, then the man fell on his knees for very weariness, clutching at his thigh.

  ‘Get up, come along,’ urged Agnes.

  ‘He cannot be going any more,’ answered Mielusine, ‘And we’ve not the strength to carry him.’

  ‘Do you not,’ said Agnes, ‘see that we are at the very edge of this county of mist? I can see stars over my head, where the mist is thin! – But what sound is that, now? Merciful Mary!’

  * * *

  THIS WAS THE WAY the Lady Arianna rose out of her dreams, with a rich slow stretching and coaxing of blood back into her limbs. She was smiling to be thinking of her new beloved; but she found the room empty beside herself.

  Down she looked from her window to the Swan boats, and knew something was amiss.

  Eudemarec met her at the casino door with the ferrymen at his back. He hid nothing fr
om her, and confessed all.

  ‘Did I not deny you this already?’ she asked him coldly. He had broken his promise to Agnes, you see, and spoken of it to the lady after all. ‘Well, but I will forgive you the one naughtiness; after all, timid men are none to my liking. Your fault will be undone, though, the way I will be finding him and bringing him back to me; as for these women, now, I don’t care what befalls them, so long as it is none of it good. And what will you do now, Eudemarec, to make this up to me?’

  He smiled, and kissed her palm. When the darkness was ending, they went up to her chambers, and were no more seen. She was very tender with him that time, and wept tears over him in her joy.

  But when Eudemarec woke out of a dream by moonlight, he saw that Arianna’s ring was no longer his. His fingers were bare. Then an overmastering fear took him, and he left her side, even as Gwangior had done and fifty others before him, and he fled into the wild orchards after Agnes and Mielusine.

  Behind the Breton a dark man covered in a tricorn and a dark gray cóta mór took another Swan boat and rowed himself across the lough. He stepped atop a hill into the ring of hand-small stones, and watched the Breton fleeing.

  The Moon sank, and the darkness gleamed off the face of the waters of mist lapping the tall abbey. Arianna rose, and called her girls, and had them bring her hunting dress.

  * * *

  ‘IT IS HER PACK,’ said the lame man, listening. ‘It is the lady’s blood hounds, and Arianna is hunting again.’

  The sound gave back some strength to him, the way it was taking his thoughts away from his leg. He stood up, flanked by the woman and the White Hind on the hill side, looking back down into the mists. The baying and the howling of hounds were growing through the ghostly trees.

  ‘They are coming this way,’ whispered Mielusine through her mask. ‘Are they hunting us?’

  ‘It may be,’ said the man. ‘It may be the lady. She wants a new blood hound.’

  ‘Come on, then,’ begged Agnes, plucking at their sleeves.

  They went on their way as best they could. Mielusine was leading the way, her strong thighs easily pushing away the ice. It was the man who stumbled, on nothing at all, at the very lip of the ridge, with the waves of mist breaking just over their heads. And ever behind them was swelling the baying of the hounds, to a frenzy.

  And blending with the hounds’ cries another howling reached their ears: inhuman, from a human throat.

  ‘Eudemarec!’ moaned Agnes.

  Mielusine was stilled, and the Bacach bent back his head, kneeling below her white skirts. But Agnes, weeping and cursing at her friend’s fate, plucked at their coats, and pulled them up and after her.

  ‘Let you be hurrying, let us go on,’ she said moaning, ‘we must go on out of this awful deadly mist.’

  * * *

  SO THEY FLED out of that county. And in the dark of the moon a hundred riders sallied forth, passing with wild whoops of joy beneath the branches of the orchards, out into the bare land on the lady’s greatest of all kailees, to hunt down and fetch back her Bacach, no matter how long it would be taking them. The moonbeams made a path for the robbers to be following, and there was only Grain’s shore where the lovers might be finding haven. But they had never heard of Grain as yet.

  The man in the dark gray cóta mór saw Eudemarec’s end, and the pack of hounds scattering back down to the lough. He watched all that with a grim face, showing no more concern than a hanging judge.

  Then he stood and slung the old quiver and bow across his shoulders, and took up the lovers’ trail.

  24. Of the Dwellers in the Night

  IN THE LAST summer of Day, while the King’s men tracked down Master Aengus, the ripe hay grass in the fields the countryfolk worked for the good of their landlords had shaken in the wind. The grass had shaken because it was tall. It had shaken because it would not be tall for long.

  In the Night the kings were dead. The houses of parliament stood empty. The lords that did not lie abed sleeping stood begging on the open roads. Generals and admirals gave their orders to the winds. The seas were empty but for the most desperate of men, and they half piratical. Princes of the church fared no better than their brothers of the state. The Wakeful trusted more strongly in the good people in the mead than in the gods in the cathedrals, now open to wind and rain. Mary was worshipped, but as if she had been Morgan or Aphrodite.

  In Day, the Sun had showed what was, and what had been, and what must be. In the dark there was only the suggestion of what could be, what might have been, and what yet may come. The contrast fed ambitions. Now there was a choice.

  In Day some, like Master Aengus, had carried their darkness about with them. Now all those who had lived through the fire had made their peace with darkness. And in the bargain, darkness had showed them – wonderful things.

  It was a transfiguration not only of the world, but of the men as well.

  In Day, what had they done? Plowed fields, sowed seeds, dried hay, dug roots, mined peat, fished the deep, stocked cellars, wove and sowed, cooked, ate, spoke of the old subjects, fed fires against the cold. Each of them penned in by what he did, how much land he owned or tilled, what his church was, what tongue he spoke, who his father had been, and his father’s father… In the Night all that was forgotten.

  The children showed them the way. The children loved the Night, the way all those children who had bad dreams in darkness were sleeping; and the waking children never knew a better holiday, and laughed, and took the grownups by the hand, and were showing them the way.

  It was as though all those Wakeful had paused: stood still in their forward-going, let the towers of the world come crashing down, and looked about them out of altered eyes, pondering what they might build out of moon-painted fields.

  Nowhere was this felt more strongly than among Tinkers.

  The Tinker had known the Night of old. Not for him was working the day long like the tenants, and sleeping through the night to be strong for more work. The Tinker owned the open roads, and slept beneath the stars, and watched the wild winds tearing the dark cold nights of winter. The Tinker had been waiting for the dark. Tinker lads and lasses were born with the dark in their blood.

  Their grandparents had ruled these hills and rocks. Once they had been masters. Then foreigners had come from the sea, there had been battles and blood, and the old masters were struck down into bondage. In time new foreigners had come from the sea, and again there had been battles and blood, and the old masters struck down into bondage.

  Seven times it had happened in the Irish land. Seven new races of masters, seven new races of slaves.

  Only a few of those beaten never submitted, but they went into the hills, into the bogs, and into the wild heart of the land. They built their houses on wheels, the way no land was left them that would not soon be taken back away from them. They lived by their wits and their courage, and spat on the roadside when anyone spoke of the Law. And they were known as Tinkers, though many a folk called them Clan Ulcin, that is to say, the Children of Evil.

  Now in the Night amongst all the Wakeful the Tinkers were sowing bawdy songs, whispers of unspeakable deeds, and willful desires; and they were plowing darkness over those dreaming fields, dressing them to bear what was never known before. Animals dream only when they sleep, and so had the cottagers done, forgetting their dreams in daylight.

  There was no more daylight now, thanks to Master Aengus and his mad love.

  It was a rarity of Ireland, the Innis Fodhla, that so many of her tramps were descended from her former rulers, dispossessed and hunted, too stubborn or proud to leave. They were the gleanings left behind by invasion, war and rebellion. And if the cottagers had forgotten their heritage, their heritage had not been forgetting them.

  And now the cottagers were dreaming with open eyes as the Tinkers had done, and breathing in the hot smoke of the Tinkers’ open wild fires.

  And it was as if Black Eden had come back to Innis Fodhla, and they were freed after
a thousand years of servitude.

  And through it all the dark man in his cóta mór, the Man Who Should Have Slept, went walking with his longbow and quiver across his shoulders, shaking his head and muttering, ‘Shame, now! Shame, shame, shame!’

  Then he bent his head, and took up again the traces of the lovers’ trail.

  Part IV.

  The Waning of the Moon

  25. How They Fled

  ACROSS SILVER FIELDS beneath ice-clad stars, Agnes and Mielusine led the Bacach, down to the western coast, after what was left of the roads of day. They entered into lowlands empty and still beneath the Moon. The winds were frosty out of the north, though Imbolc came soon enough and Brigid’s fires, and by the reckoning of Day Winter’s end was nearing. Powdery snow was still falling, even in the lowlands, even on the coast, turning the black land white.

  All that season they were fleeing, fleeing through the snow, fleeing over ice. Now and again they would be stopping on hills or lookout points. Through the lands below they could see bands of bright-hued riders, women and men, roving through the fields: the lost nobility of the Night: Firbolgs, Tuatha de Danaan, Celts, Normans, Tinkers and robbers, and every blessed one of them Arianna’s.

  All those folk were scouring the lands for the Bacach; once they almost caught him, and were riding over the bridge Agnes hid him under. Mielusine’s horns were scraping the old stones over their heads, and the pounding of hooves ringing in their ears, and the man shaking for cold, the way the ice was swimming round his socks. Agnes coughed until a dark red stained her sleeve.

  She led them up higher, on the moors. She led them over the spines of the Sliabh-na-Mban. There were no Wakeful there. Now and again they were finding a broken-down farm, and Agnes was digging spuds and turnips for them. Even so they were starving.

  Cold waxed that summer, colder still. The Snow-Cold Summer that summer was called, by those that Woke in it. Agnes swore it had never been so cold in Ireland in Day. And if the Sun did not return, she knew, colder and colder each summer would burn, until all the world was frozen dead as ice, and Arianna ruled over a frozen waste.

  Dotting the white fields were the standing stones, left there from long ago, the way that they were called the beds of Diarmid and Grainne. In hollows of such stones, out of the snow, they lay down all three together, overlapping their coats. To Agnes the cold was a bright knife in her lungs, cutting her with coughing. As for Mielusine, though herself was healthy, her splendid white dress was trailing tatters, and she looking the ghost in her mask.