by Asotir
Always, Mielusine wore the mask of the White Hind upon her face. Only when the man lay dreaming would Agnes let Mielusine put off the mask.
‘But he’s only the worse for it,’ said Mielusine. ‘His love is turning into longing from such closeness. It’s in his eyes, have you not seen it? It’s an enchantment growing over me like sin. When he’s looking at me, he’s seeing something else.’
‘When you’re wearing it he adores you, and is that so dreadful? But let you be fighting the enchantment his eyes are weaving for you, or you’ll be lost for ever.’
‘’Tis only the mask he loves, and never me at all.’ But in her heart Mielusine was wondering.
‘Black and red and white are the colors of my love,’ the man was singing, as they trudged along their way.
‘Red and black and white is she.
White is her body, pale as the
Snow of one night;
And red is her collar of red gold and her horns,
That are redder than crushed fox-glove;
And black are her eyes with the riddle of skies.
‘Black and red and white are the colors of my love,
Red and black and white is she.
My love will wear no colors,
Only black, only white;
But when she is red, then there is no color
Anywhere else in the world.’
So the long cold darkness wore on, with never an end of fleeing for them, chased after by all the mighty of the Night.
* * *
THERE WAS A SNOW falling, and they sitting under another bridge upon a stream of ice. Mielusine lay dreaming of food; Agnes sat up waking with the man, they both of them looking on the dancer in her dreams.
It is the mask, Agnes was thinking. But she knew better.
The Maid had been just the proper sort of prettiness, in her coloring, her form, and her heart. Herself, Agnes, had polished her into the consummation Aengus would have most desired. She’d foreseen this end from its beginning. She’d meant for it to happen. But still she envied Mielusine, the way she was yet beautiful, and the end of his desire.
‘Aengus,’ she whispered. ‘Aengus.’
‘Yes?’
‘Do you know that you are Master Aengus then, and not the Bacach?’
‘I know that is how you are calling me.’
‘Do you still remember nothing?’
‘I have visions, and perhaps they are coming from the past, and perhaps they are yet to be.’
‘And do you remember how you cursed me? You cursed me with desire for you, when you put out the Sun.’
‘Aye, so you have told me.’
‘It is truth,’ she said, and kissed him.
It was only his mouth against hers she was feeling, and not a kiss at all. He was longing for the White Hind, and she could never be that for him.
‘Do not be crying, Agnes,’ he said softly. And it was hating him surely that she was then.
It snowed blackness for a long while round that bridge. A fit of coughing shook Agnes, near breaking her ribs. The man lay down dreaming, and Agnes bent over the girl, tugging off the mask. She was looking at it a long while.
When the clouds broke and the moon whitened the world again, Agnes told Mielusine to put the mask on.
‘Do you know where you are leading us?’ asked the dancer. ‘Where there is a town, and people, and warmth?’
‘Go back to Lough Mask then, and your rich life in the abbey if you’re unhappy.’
‘I cannot be wearing this mask any more. It is so heavy it will choke me!’
‘You’re whimpering like a child, can’t you at least be still?’
* * *
IN THE END, Mielusine would not wear the mask. She put it off, and let him see her face. It seemed to make no difference to the man.
Hard was the going in the snow, deep as it was. It was caking to their shoes, and the ground underneath ragged and treacherous.
Agnes came to her senses. ‘What’s that I’m seeing?’
‘Is it will o’ the wisps?’ asked the maid.
‘No,’ said the man, ‘those are her folk.’
Wan yellow lights were flickering and weaving down the slopes to the left of them, to the right of them, before them and behind. Now Agnes could see them clearly. They were lanterns. In a great narrowing ring the bandits and minxes were closing on them. A shout reached their ears, followed by a pistol shot. One of the bandits had seen them.
In bounds the bandits’ horses were climbing the snows, kicking up drifts behind them.
The yellow lanterns were swinging by the saddles, and the dark cloaks of the horsewomen and horsemen billowing in the winds, and their black scarves over their faces showing only their eyebrows and piercing, wicked eyes. Closer and closer they came.
They rode the hill side, sweeping it in circles, until they’d covered it all, and not a cat’s space was untrodden by their horses’ hooves. But they met only one another, and none of those three. The bandits and minxes looked one another in the eye, fiercely; then they laughed, relishing the chase, and raced away down the hill towards the nearest wood, a small crop of black in the white waste.
* * *
IT WAS THE MAN of the three, had found the low mound underneath the snow with a little tunnel leading into it. The tunnel was lined with undressed stones, and at its end a little round chamber. The man gathered oddments of dry turf there with moss and leaves and grass, and started a fire. The ruddy flames were cheering Mielusine, and she smiling for the first time since Arianna’s masquerade.
‘It’s faster our clothing would be drying if we took it off,’ said Agnes.
‘That would be immodest,’ protested Mielusine.
‘Since when did a dancer complain of modesty?’
‘Do not be speaking to her in such a voice,’ commanded the man.
Agnes was that disgusted with them, she went out into a hollow in the snow on the hill side. Where she coughed, and hugged herself for warmth, and kept a lookout for bandits. She felt at her belt under her cóta mór, where she’d hidden a scian dagger. The clouds were clearing, and she looked into the stars, and they the stars of Lughnasadh.
‘Lughnasadh, and here I am sitting in snow, and not a blade of green grass to be seen,’ she said. And she looked out across the land.
Soon enough in spite of the snow, she could see firelights burning from every hilltop. Round the fires the robbers were gathering, lured there by the Tinkers to their old, wicked rites. For a time at least the three would be safe.
Alone, hugging her knees to her breasts, Agnes was shivering, and at length her eyes closed, and she was resting.
It was the first time the man and Mielusine had been alone together, since the masquerade…
* * *
AGNES was dreaming of Aengus and the dancer inside the hill. She was seeing the Maid sitting by the fire, and she was seeing Aengus looking on the Maid.
There was a silence in the barrow. Those two had nothing to be saying to each other.
At the first, Mielusine would be looking away from Aengus’ gaze. She would not wish to acknowledge him so openly. At length she would look sidelong at him: and seeing his look, and his piebald body, red and white, she could not help but smile. He would smile too.
Agnes saw the whole of it in her dream. She knew them both so well, the way she had lived alongside one from two years’ time, the way she had taught the other every look and manner to be having with a man.
The dancer would have risen then, and glanced down on her ruined dress. Surely it was in a sorry state! And shyly Mielusine would remove it, turning her back, her shoulder veiling her mouth, hiding its secrets. Quickly she’d shiver on her other dress, the red, red dress, that would be crimsoning all the barrow even to the fire. She would be feeling warmer then, less timid, less reserved.
Her own beauty would be seducing her as much as anything Aengus might think or do. But she would be thinking to herself, What is it he sees, looking on me so? I
t was in her own eyes, herself as no longer Mielusine, but as the Hind, that magical creature of all his dreams and longings. What a trap that was!
He was very near to her. There was that wonder in his eyes. With one fire-warmed finger he traced a line down her brow, past her ear, down her throat, to the hollow of her collar.
Mielusine shuddered at that touch, even as herself, Agnes, had once on a time shuddered at it, and felt the tingle of it descending into the hollow of her breasts.
He was holding the mask before her. Perhaps that slight movement of her head was but the last wave of her shudder. He put the mask onto her, and she did not deny him. Her dark eyes peered out childishly from the cutout eyes.
It was afraid she was then, as Agnes had not been on the falling of the Night, all at once afraid: of him and of his eyes, of his longing for the thing she was not, of the touch of his hands on her body.
And Mielusine would be remembering what herself, Agnes, had told her, long ago in her lessons:
‘Do not stop for fear. It is the very sign of love, fear is. Passion will mark you and change you forever, it’s that you’ll be fearing. A great lady will feel fear the first time, the first time it is real. She’ll not be flinching for that, but she’ll seize the nettle every time. It’s that that makes her great.’
So the Maid would only shiver, not deny, as Aengus laid bare her body, pale and soft and delicate as new-fallen snow.
Her skin gleaming roselike in the fire. The floral scent of her escaping from captivity, mingling with the smoke. And Aengus drinking it in. Mielusine sighing, leaning back, and raising her arms above her head.
She was in a sort of Mesmeric trance. She felt her heart beating through the long veins of her throat, but her senses were numb to all else but his touch, and the physical possession of his gaze. Aengus reached up and touched, ever so lightly, the insides of her tiny wrists. How he’d loved doing so to Agatha’s wrists! He ran his hands like silent snowfalls down along the outside of her arms. Mielusine would feel every one of the invisible, downy hairs of her arms responding to the passing fingertips.
As to Aengus now, he would love the delicate, fragrant hairs that flowered in the rounded hollows underneath her arms. He’d be loving the slender, arching throat. The tiny, half-buried breasts and their burning tips. The limbs stretching out long and glimmering, and quivering chastely at his touch, as if shivering at some sudden chill.
He would kiss her open lips beneath the mask, and she clutching his hair in her hands would force him hard and deep down on her lips; and when at last she let him break that kiss, then Mielusine would sigh, and a single note would escape her lips, sweet and pure as a child’s, like the note she’d sung on the dark road way.
* * *
AGNES heard that note. Even out on the hill side in the snow, she heard it.
With eyes shut fast she saw it, all and all of it. It was as if herself, Agnes, lay in Master Aengus’ arms beside the fire. She envied Mielusine Aengus’ love; envied Aengus his perfect, foolish passion.
She bore the dancer no ill heart. It was the White Hind she was hating, the way it was the Hind truly possessing Aengus, and the Hind her only rival.
‘Och, Aengus,’ she groaned into her knees, ‘Aengus, now has your name become Agony to me…’
She coughed another red spot into her palm. She lay in a ball inside her coat, and at last she dreamed again.
When she roused herself the Moon was sinking, and a flock of black birds flying against it. The needfires were dark and dead. Agnes found something in the snow beside her.
It was the mask of the White Hind.
When she ventured down into the barrow, she found Aengus lying in his somber clothing by the gray ashes. Mielusine was gone. The red dress was still there, folded up neatly as though she’d never put it on.
26. Of Their Quarreling
THEY WENT on their way, the two of them, the man and Agnes. They followed the dancer’s tracks in the snow.
‘Where is the White Hind?’ he was asking. And she answering, ‘Gone ahead, and left you this mask. We’re to follow.’
‘But why did she not take me along?’
‘The White Hind flies like the wind when she’s a mind to, and you are slow, and lame. Take care, or I’ll leave you too.’
They sat under a hedge. Above them three dark women went past against the stars, speaking Gaeilgte on a hill.
Aengus lay dreaming, and Agnes went apart and tried on the mask. But she couldn’t squeeze her face through the narrow opening.
From his dreams the man rose groaning, tears rolling down his cheek like ink.
‘I dreamt I saw the White Hind,’ he told her. ‘She was going down a lane, and mayflies swam in the light like gold dust. There was a dark man beside the Hind. He was leading her by a leash tied to her golden collar, and they were going away from me. They were beautiful together. O Man, I hate you. You have the White Hind, you alone of all, and you boast of it.’
‘Aengus, what befell when you tried to summon back the Sun?’
‘It was some place by the Sea. I was forbidden entrance. Oh, I cannot recall.’
‘Bring back the Sun, Aengus. You swore you would. I put that task on you.’
He did not answer.
* * *
ALONG THE WAY they came by the side of a curious house, tall and crooked. In the topmost window one light was burning, and Agnes was leading him away from that place, when the door creaked open, and someone came out after them, calling ‘Agnes! Agnes!’
She went back to the house. The doorway was dark, but the stars glinting off the snow showed a figure standing there, gathered up in black folds. The figure moved – it was a woman, after all: dressed all in black, veiled in black lace, and only her bosom bare.
‘Agnes,’ she called, ‘Agnes, girl, is it you?’
‘Yes,’ she answered.
Lady Ann the cottager once, the Lady-trollop now, took her aside and spoke quick words to her.
‘Agnes, you must go with soft steps. I’ve sent my man out to be finding you, and here you are on my doorstep! There’s someone tracking you, and he means you no good by the look of him. Only six moons past he was here, eating off my platters, and drinking my ale, and talking away. Be careful, now, he’s surely near here!’
‘Who is it?’ she asked.
‘Why,’ answered Lady Ann, ‘it’s the Man Who Should Have Slept, to be sure! Didn’t you know he was no friend to you and yours?’
‘No,’ she answered, ‘but I thank you for the warning.’
‘Let her bless you, my girl! If it weren’t for you I’d never been a lady!’ But already Lady Ann’s voice was softened by the snow, the way Agnes was hurrying back on her tracks, and thankfully finding the man still leaning upon the broken tree. She took his hand, and led him away as quickly as he might go.
* * *
THEY FOLLOWED the dancer’s tracks in the snow. In a valley, the footsteps were covered by the tracks of many horses; and on a stony hill where the wind had blown away the snow, they lost the trail.
‘I know where she has gone,’ said Agnes. But she led him away from where they had been following. Meek as a child he followed her.
‘Aengus,’ she called back to him.
‘Yes.’ It was no more than a whisper, that voice of his.
‘What day would it be, if we still had days?’
He looked up at the stars. ‘August the twenty seventh.’
‘And it’s winter, still?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is happening? What’s become of the world?’
‘It’s Night, and the Lady is pining for her Bacach.’
Mostly the snows they were light, but some were heavy and drifting. Trails vanished beneath them and the going was gallous heavy.
And little they knew of it, but wherever they went they were followed, and wherever they stopped they were watched from the hilltop behind them. The tall gaunt man buttoned up his cóta mór against the snows, and silentl
y tracked the lovers.
* * *
ONE DARKNESS she left Aengus sleeping, and she went around a wood. She climbed a snow-clad wall, and looked across a rising of fields in a coat of silver and snow. Looked, and there beyond a hedge she saw the high stone manor house that she had left.
It was silent and dark beneath the snow. There were no lights, no scent of smoke. Inside, the rich men and their ladies, all of the Lady Agatha’s friends, were sleeping still in their beds. The thickness of their sleeping wrapt around the house and its grounds.
Round the grounds some riders were riding, and they wearing the black and scarlet cloaks of the county of mist. But she got past them, and slipped up the hedge alongside the snow-covered drive.
And she was thinking, no doubt, of the wood and dried peat Mac Bride had stacked there, all ready now for the burning. She was that tired now; cruelly, heavily tired. Her rests had turned deeper and sweeter in the cold. Her dreams had turned so beautiful…
Somehow she managed, by the merest crack, to open the servants’ door, and she slid into the shadowy interior. She was that thin after her long traveling. The door shut fast behind her.
Moonlight and starlight were shining off the snow and glowing through the ice-stained windows, with a still, soft, blueness, and she stepped quietly, with the grace of a girl going into church, painfully aware of the echo of every step she makes.
She walked through the downstairs hall, through the dining rooms and public rooms, and she thought of being there long ago, on her twenty-first birthday.
That, she thought, was years ago; and yet in days not very long ago; am I older now, or am I still only twenty-one? The Sun hasn’t gone round but half a year since then. But no, what am I thinking? The Sun hasn’t gone around at all.
So thinking, strangely, she climbed the servants’ stairs. Out into the upper hall she came. Where for a time she stood, looking on the door to the lord’s room. The great door bent half open, showing her a glimpse of the bed, where she had lain alongside Master Aengus.
The rest of the doors in the hall were closed and shut fast. A torpor like the fullness of sleeping after too heavy a meal on an early summer’s afternoon, that was weighing on her, slowing her steps and slowing her thoughts, like the dust slowly turning in the snow-glow through the windows. Once more out of habit, like a dream, she tried the doors to the Sleepers’ bedchambers: and now one doorlatch turned for her, and the door seemed almost ready to yield. She muttered over it words she learned from Master Aengus’ tables and parchments: pushed open the door and stepped in.