Plenilune

by Jennifer Freitag

  The light began to hurt and she shut her eyes. Far away, but rolling and angry and long as the length of a dragon, growled the thunder.

  The red looked well on her. It brought out the subtle red tones of her hair and made her cool eyes flash, and even if she looked to herself totally foreign, she had to admit that it became her. She smiled, coolly and a little scornfully, at the thought of her mother’s long monologues on what a girl could do to look beautiful.

  I am English, she thought, rolling over and pulling the blankets close to her chin, and we have no beauty but in our tempers.

  5 | Exile

  The storm broke over Seescardale and Marenové House in the cobwebby-grey of the early morning, and kept the world wrapped in cobweb-grey to the threshold of the New Ivy Moon. The bad weather kept both Margaret and Rupert indoors, and as vast as the house was, she could not quite avoid him. She felt at times that he was deliberately following her, or deliberately preceding her; once she stepped into the long upper hall above the kitchen wing and found him standing at the bank of windows, looking out westward into the rolling surge of the storm, his body bound up in a cloak so deeply purple it was almost black. There was the briefest flicker of worry between his brows in that single instant, then he caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye and turned to look directly at her. It was strange, but in the jab of his eyes—a jab that hurt her breastbone—she felt as if the storm were all her fault.

  She picked up her skirts and left him without a word.

  It was with a vindictive sense of satisfaction that Margaret rose from her bed on the morning of New Ivy Eve and, turning back the curtains, found the world drenched in a blinding clear gold. The storm was gone: the freshness, the brightness, the crispness of Plenilune autumn burned across the landscape as Margaret had never seen an autumn burn before. The lawn and lane were covered in a fish-scale coat of brown and red leaves—and gold in places, where the half-wild maples had thrown down their mantles. The horses were in the paddock, leaving tracks in the dew where they went. At the end of the kitchen wing she could just see old Hobden splitting firewood.

  Inexplicably she pulled back, letting the curtains drop in place again. She felt now as she had when she had looked down on Rupert’s old Manor: a mingled sense of beauty and of pain, and everything that was worth anything seemed as far away from her as earth.

  Rupert was not at breakfast. When she went down, Margaret found a neatly-cut card on her plate which read:

  “I have gone up-See to fetch one last touch for your gown. I will be back by dinner. Take care of yourself, my dear—Rupert.”

  It was brisk, touching, caring, and Margaret tossed the card away with a flick of her wrist. It fluttered feather-wise on the tabletop, sliding on the smooth surface, and hid itself under the edge of a silver candelabra. She let it lie, out of sight and out of mind, and ate her breakfast in solitude.

  It was her first clear day in almost a week. There was no time to dawdle. She put on a frock of fawn-coloured corduroy and stepped out of doors, following the sound of the slow, incessant chopping.

  It surprised her how very much old Hobden looked just as she had left him. His bent, wrinkled, nut-brown body was encased in the same cotton shirt, the same tattered leather vest, the same corduroy trousers and boots. He made the same soft, irritated grumbles as he always did. For no reason she could explain, she thought he ought to have changed; for no reason she could explain, she was glad he had not.

  “Good morning,” she said graciously, finding a seat on a giant block of wood. Her fingers dug into the hard, sun-warmed bark and she felt the rough rings of the tree’s heart under her palms. In this little southern corner of the House, the sun of late autumn, the sun of early morning, dreamed of being warm.

  With a slow, circular, ambling movement Hobden swung the axe down and away and gave a little salute, tugging with thumb and forefinger on his forward tuft of hair. “G’moornin’,” he rejoined in that rich, raspy, walnut tone of his. He squinted northward and added, “Mus Rupert’s gone away for the day, hmm?”

  Margaret nodded.

  Hobden turned away and fumbled with his handle on the axe-haft, grumbling under his breath like a badger all the while. “ ’Tain’t for me to say, but I knowed Marenové took a breath of relief when ’e passed beyond t’intake.”

  “Marenové and I both,” murmured Margaret, with her head turned away so that Hobden would not hear.

  Old walnut Hobden went back to his work, swinging slowly away at the wood while the wood fell away beneath his blows, sheering off in even twos so that he was presently surrounded by a pile of large, split, almond-looking pieces of wood. He did not seem to tire, but went on with all the steadiness of an engine. Margaret watched him absentmindedly for some time, wrapped up in her tartan against the November chill; but presently, as he showed no signs of stopping, she began to grow tired of the monotony. She got up, skirting him carefully, and began to wander along the southward arm of the home-meads which were less cultivated and bore the stamp of the wild encroaching fells more clearly than the other gardens.

  Broom and furze, whose flowers had long since fallen, and bramble, whose berries had long since been picked, made a kind of wild hedge at the end of the low slope that took and channelled the little stream. It seemed to be the oldest piece of garden; there was no foot-bridge over the stream, which Margaret would have expected to find elsewhere on the grounds, but a mere loose collection of flat stones rising out of the stream-bed. She took the stones without another thought, crossed a bit of grassy, unkempt soft turf that might have been a flower-plot once, and squeezed gingerly through the thorny gap in the intake hedge.

  After that there was a thin, short wood of alder that did its best to sink its roots into the stream. She climbed through it and out, with the suddenness of stepping from one world into another, upon the tawny shoulder of the fell. The wind was all around her as it had not been in the low hollow of the House grounds: it boomed and galloped, thundering, brushing, lunging and kicking like a stampede of horses round her shoulders. It was a golden wind, golden and bronze like the wings of an eagle, and the bright colour of it swelled around her with a potency like water. She moved through it, borne and buffeted by it, with the House falling away behind her like a bad dream.

  A narrow goat-path, a mere thrush-coloured thread in the tawny turf, stretched upward before her, skirting the steep side of the fell, but always stretching upward, upward and around and out of sight behind the distant shoulder of the fell. Without a thought she struck out on it, climbing upward with the swell of the air all around her. It became a bother to wrestle her wrap around her shoulders and she let it go, holding onto it with only one hand so that it flew out before her like a multicoloured banner of primitive war, fierce and free, its snapping and billowing the very laughter of its genius. She felt it stirring something in her blood.

  After a quarter-hour of walking, the wind had slackened into a soft constant rush, and she paused on the goat-path to look back. She had come far and high; Marenové House lay below her, the view of it unobstructed by trees—if she strained she could just make out the tiny toy-figure of Hobden still at work. If she was careful, if she stood perfectly still, with one hand up to shove her wayward hair out of her eyes, she could almost imagine she was not wearing Rupert’s collar and leash.

  It was a cruel trick, she thought, to be trapped in a land that seemed so high and wild and free.

  With prim deliberation she gathered up her wrap and skirts and continued on. She rounded the swell of the hillside and found herself above a flock of sheep, quite a large flock, overseen by two squat calico dogs. They ranged all down the slope and into the finger of a green stream valley. To Margaret, walking along to the tune of their thin bell-notes, they looked like a spray of blackthorn blossom flung across the fell’s slope. Quaint and picturesque, pastoral, uninhibited by the torments and cares of the young woman poised above them, they went on grazing—and would go on grazing, she thought with a
pang of strange longing, time out of mind as they had always done, no matter who sat at Marenové House.

  And suddenly, from somewhere high in the folds of the fell’s flank, high up above the flock of sheep that was like the blowy white blossom-fleece of a blackthorn, high and clear there came to Margaret the sound of a panpipe playing. The sound stopped her in her tracks, frozen like a bird, and she listened to that sound as she had never listened to a sound before: and it seemed to her, as she listened, to be the very calling of a soul. It spoke across the dale, silver and thin, but full-bodied like wine, crying and self-satisfied, alien and remote. A pianoforte and its notes, a harp and its notes, were all separate things, but to Margaret the panpipe and its song were living and eerie, as though it were, not the voice of an instrument a man had made, but the soul’s-voice of the fell itself.

  Just as quickly as the song had come, she ached as she had not let herself ache in weeks. It was not for home, it was not for her family. She did not know what it was for. She only knew that she had to get away from that free, melancholy voice among the fells—which was the very voice of the fells themselves—before it crushed her.

  The music of the panpipe came after her for a distance until, with a struggle between the wind’s upward rushing, it gave way to the intermittent gurgle of a plover. Without haste, but without hesitation, Margaret moved into the face of the wind, fighting for each step downward. She was glad for the fight: it gave her something to occupy her mind with and it lessened, a little, the ache that had sprung up like a candle’s flame beneath her breastbone. It was with relief that she finally came down the last stretch of slope and saw the alder-hanger and the thorn hedge, though it was not with relief that she saw the looming bulk of the House.

  She stopped inside the gap and looked around, feeling oddly more out of place than ever. Hobden must have finished his work: there was no sound of axe barking on wood. The plover still gurgled somewhere on the fellside; from the thickest tangle of alder a chiffchaff was singing Ode to Joy and, from farther off, a blackcap was shrieking something about freedom. She cast a baleful glance backward and began up the garden, keeping to the rear path.

  It would be the dinner hour soon, and Rupert would be returning. Beyond the thorn hedge she left her walk of freedom; ahead she anticipated Rupert’s questions. Was her walk refreshing? Did she enjoy herself? And all the while as she strode up the path she could just see the faint mockery that flickered in the backs of Rupert’s eyes. But what appalled her most was that she could find no answer. Her walk abroad beyond the home-meads, where things went on with the rhythm of the land, had pained her almost as much as the familiar routine of a manor house.

  She stopped by a massive rose-bush, bereft of buds but still adorned in green-flame leaves. As she knew it would, the inexplicable pang returned as soon as she ceased motion, but this time she understood its meaning. It was not for home, it was not for family—it was for belonging. The thought lay in her mind like a feather lying in her palm, quivering, anticipating with every heartbeat a wind to come whisk it away.

  The only belonging she had was her own entrenched determination. She gave a little gesture, as if to toss away the thought, and moved on. There was no other belonging for her to be had anywhere save, by a mocking twist of providence, in the company of one wrinkled old labourer, and even then Margaret could not fool herself into believing that was anything like belonging.

  She was roused from her thoughts as she rounded the kitchen wing by a sudden splash of colour against the shadows. In the narrow darkness was growing a straggling but defiant little broom bush, its limbs petrified by the night colds, but still holding, even at this late quarter of the year, a handful of golden sparks in bloom. They seemed to call out to Margaret, not with the crushing beauty of the panpipe, nor the distant homeliness of Rupert’s old Manor, but with a small warmth like a fire. Instinctively she went over to it, pulling her wrap close as she bent into the shadow by the building, and looked intently at the blossoms.

  They were quite old, and rather browned, clinging to their mother plant only because it grew in a sheltered part of the grounds where the wind could not rattle it. Even the week’s storm had not managed to denude the bush of its early summer flowers.

  I know how you feel, she thought pityingly, straightening once more. But at least you have shelter. We may cling to ourselves, but I am always in the wind here.

  With a delicate finger she touched one outstretched blossom of crumpled, browned, flaming saffron-colour, and watched as a single petal broke off and floated down on a soft gust of wind.

  “Oh!” she said, starting as if stung. With a complaint of fabric she strode forward and crouched down, putting one hand out to the object on which the broom-petal had fallen.

  She had missed it in the shadows, for it was almost the exact colour of the shadows themselves. A little ashen heap the smudged colour of a titmouse, ringed in scorched grass, lay at her feet, broken up only by the single thumbnail of yellow petal and, where a touch of light came in, the glitter of what looked like lettering. Curious, Margaret shoved up her sleeves and, gently replacing the petal on the grass, eased and levered the charred object out of the pile. Ash fell away, hissing upward and spiralling outward like imitation smoke; she got her hands horribly dirty carefully brushing off the flat face of the object.

  It was the back cover of a volume, illustrated in simple design by a gold Chi-Rho; its spine was still attached, but frayed and burnt beyond repair. She put it down and began questing for the front. Her resting heart-rate was strangely low at this moment: she felt the numbness and at once the sharpened awareness of being in a dream. She found two other backs and handfuls of burnt book-leaves which were ruined, too, beyond repair. At last, near the heart of the pile, she unearthed a front piece that, though it had been divorced by fire from the rest of its body, was legible and otherwise intact.

  She had a strange sensation, kneeling there, staring at it, that she had been there and stared at it before.

  In neat gold print, as gold as the broom-petal, she read off the author and title: Songmartin’s Commentaries, Philippians, Volume XI. She held the thing lightly so that it would not break, but her hands had gone suddenly tense. As keenly as she could hear his laughter, as keenly as she could see his mocking glance, in her mind’s eye Margaret heard Rupert’s words to his cousin, low and regretful.

  “I’m afraid I have misplaced that particular collection.”

  Misplaced…Misplaced! She stared with a sense of horror at the burnt bodies of the ecclesiastical books and felt the sharp blade of rage cutting open all her veins inside. She saw broken images, scraps of words—the war-banner of her tartan cloak, the blackcap singing, the sullen scarlet of leaves on a garden plot, Skander’s voice saying, “For the love of heaven!”—little things: little things that somehow mattered.

  Gently she laid the book back down among its dead fellows and rose, turning to the broom bush. With one hand cupped beneath, one hand running tightly up the branches, she shaved off curls of bright yellow bloom until her hand was full of them. With all the silence of ceremony she stood over the ash pile and let them fall, scattering in a sidewise cascade of flower-sparks. The last petal fell, drifting clockwise, spinning like a top, and rested on the Chi-Rho. For a moment Margaret expected it to catch and leap alight, and for the whole thing to burn up into nothing.

  Her heart had forgotten to beat. She was not sure how she lived without the blood-thrum of it going through her. Detached but determined, she followed the porphyry gravel path to the rear door and let herself in. With the clearness of one walking in a dream, she was glad her heart was not beating: she might not have been able to walk so knowingly into the throat of the dragon otherwise—a dragon that, python-like, had its coils round and round Marenové House and was quietly cutting off the life of it. But Marenové knew, and Hobden knew, and now, with a clarity that hurt, Margaret knew.

  One of the chamber maids met her at the stairs and came forward to take h
er wrap away, saying something about dinner being laid and what had she done to her hands? Brow arched, body numb and spirit detached from everything, Margaret stared at the girl coldly, blankly. Whatever the maid saw in her mistress’s face made her own go pale, and with a deferential bob the girl murmured something and turned away.

  With measured step Margaret climbed the stair. The silence, which she always felt was about to scream, the stillness, which she always felt was about to break into a storm, both seemed suffocating now. She moved through them, still with the numbness and intensity of feeling as in a dream. Even in her room she knew there was no sanctuary—was there sanctuary to be found anywhere?—but at least there she might cut off the dark flow of Rupert’s genius so that she might sit and think.

  Once within her room, quite alone save for the little maid who was sweeping out the fireplace, she pulled her armchair close to the window and sat in the pale cold sunlight, her chin in her hand, staring out unseeingly across the lawn.

  There was not much to think. The first blaze of rage had died out into a low firedrake smoulder. It was the only thing that kept back the sense of wickedness that haunted the halls of this House. When Margaret had thought she was an ambassador for Earth, she had not realized that she was representing her to Hell.

  A sharp wind blew outside—the hollow echo of it hummed inside the room—and the movement of the damson trees drew the young woman’s attention. And suddenly it seemed to her that she could have been standing at the west window of her house in Aylesward, looking outward and upward at her familiar Cumbrian fells. As far back as she could remember there had always been the stark rise of the fells around her, tawny in summer and ribbed with snow and cold like the sides of some great animal in winter. Had she ever not lived here?