by Greer Gilman
No part of his, unpracticed now: the words her own. She speaks her mother tongue, still milky with her draught of heaven.
My mother got me in her glass.
Still as snow on snow I pass;
But green in greener world I wake
And lighter of the dark I make.
In my coming I do leave;
Death of dying I bereave
It's silent when she's done.
On the hillside is a door; beyond the door, a fire. On the sill there stands a girl in green to welcome Ashes in. She bids her.
Overcome with godhead suddenly, Noll turns and runs, he buries his head in his mother's not-now-lap, against her mystery. In that drumly hill is laid his sister yet unborn, who will be Ashes.
* * * *
Tom o Cloud and my Lady sit, playing at the cards for hazelnuts. It's three-and-twenty worlds she's won of him so far; his pockets rattle in her pouch. Unmantled now, unmasked, there's none would mark her: he or she might be a scrivener or a stocking-mender, a hussif or a glover's clerk. Old, young; breeches, petticoats; the dark of moon or light: he plays all parts indifferently, indelibly, and keeps the company's purse. Like Ashes, they are liminal; they live among a cloud of voices, out of door of time. Bar them out and they'll be in at windows. Thieves, some call them, and dissemblers: picklocks of the eye and ear, and coiners of conceit. Brock's journeymen, that walk the moon's road of a history, slip souls like jackets. Tell. They loiter by the screens, as yet unpaid.
The fiddler's filled Tom's mazer cup with Lunish wine, and drinks. The Second Witch eats oranges. Six are too many to juggle. As are five and four. And the First Witch, flown with battle, strays amid the gentry, seeking delicates and praise.
"A pretty Ashes, that,” says Pipe-and-Tabor, drinking bacca. “Will we steal her?"
"Yon moth?” says my Lady. “'A plays a maiden rarely, but he's pricked out for another part. His father's master here."
"Milk still on his mother tongue,” says the Second Witch. “But mark you, he'll be mumchance when we come the next year. Breeched and cropped."
"Shame,” says Pipe-and-Tabor. “Fitted for the quality. Speaks well."
My Lady casts her bones. “His naunt—yon farthing candle—put him up to it. Made his verses."
They look at the girl in green. A stiff provincial finery. An artful hand had laced that stomacher, not hers: she wears it like a prentice, ill-at-ease. Indifferent fair; a fall of reddish hair, like bracken, down her back. A chit. They note her gaze still following the witch boy—sword and petticoats—admiring the sinewed hand so lightly hovering at his hilts, the blackwinged brows. The clear blood in his red lip comes and goes.
"There now, she dotes on Master Leg."
"Who's rapt with his glass."
"That breaks for him."
"Why then, he'll get himself upon a knifeblade."
"A horsetrough."
"A quarrel."
"A spoon."
The witch boy sinks his merlin face into a pot of syllabub.
The girl in green turns round.
And O, the fiddler cries, as if like Tom o Cloud he looked upon the fallen Perseis, amazed: “O rare Cosmography."
"Out of thy compass,” says Pipe-and-Tabor.
"Ah, what heavens to be lost in her."
"Thou'rt fickle as the sun, that lies a turn in every house in heaven. Just so many inns to thee. Here's good ale at the Nine and Shuttle, and a brave wench at the Bow."
"See, she comes,” says the Second Witch. “Guise thyself.” He catches up a mask and plumps it in the fiddler's lap.
And Tom o Cloud sings at him the old tune from the masque, the woodwo's brag:
Orion wears a coat of sparks
And starry galligaskins
But men may see what man I be
Without my first dismasking...
Caught in his confusion, the fiddler's late to rise; the others make their courtesies with hat and leg. The girl with red hair dips and rises like a green wave of the sea. And he is drowned.
"Which of you is Master?"
"I,” my Lady says. “And Mistress."
"I am sent to bid you to our supper; so my brother Grevil says."
"And welcome: for we take our road the morn."
"Go you at venture?"
"Mistress, even unto Lune,” says Tom o Cloud. “Where ‘tis said that hares hold court at midnight, and the moon's their dancing master."
"I would see that.” A sigh. “It was bravely done, the masque.” The girl in green recalls her errand. “For your pains."
The players’ Mistress takes the clinking purse of silver, weighs it in his palm. No stint. Spills silver. Not a moon of it but at its full. He fishes in his pouch. “Here's for your little eyas.” Three half-bright Lunish farthings. Owls. “And for his poetry.” Another coin.
She turns it over in her hand. There's morning in her face, and mischief. “What, and leave yourselves no Ship?"
The fellow dandling the vizard speaks. “This fiddle is our ship that carries us; our wit our sails. Our wind is your good will."
"Am I an Outlune witch to bind and barter wind?"
"A witch,” he says. “No crone."
"Then sit I in the east. Will you not founder?"
"Mistress, in your cold dispraise is wrack; and drowning in your eyes."
"Then I will weep not at your tragedies."
"Nor clap our comedies?"
"Why no, lest with my plaudits I should overset your pinnance. For I see ‘tis overigged."
"Thou mermaid—” And he halts, dismayed.
A sword dance of words: they weave, lock, draw. Then silence and a fall.
My Lady speaks: and all that is abrupt, unpolished in the girl in her is grace and maidenhead. She speaks; and what she spells is true:
But thou art mazed, sweet fool. The wood is dark,
And I th’ moon's daughter in these rags of cloud
Shall bear thee light.
Tom o Cloud now takes the shepherd's part, his face alight with awe:
The lady goes with me.
For that her star is wandering, I name
Her Perseis...
A shrill voice shoulders through the crowd. “Annot? Thou's wanted."
Pipe-and-Tabor shrugs. “Now pat there comes a nurse: and our catastrophe."
As waking from a trance, the green girl stirs and sighs; she gathers up her skirts. “Anon,” she calls. “I come.” And off through the rout of rustics like a swallow.
Flown.
The fiddler beats his fist againt his palm in fury. Craws eat me.
They look where a wintry dame, stark upright, beckons from a great chair by the hearth. The green girl curtsies to a man in black, white-headed. Old as Slae. His great rings glowering like a stithy, like a handful of coals. On the table-carpet at his side, there lies a viol uncased. His reedy voice o'ercrows the company. They hear the triumph, not the words.
The Second Witch scowls. “I doubt they've chained her to yon death's head. They'll cry a handfast now."
The fiddler breaks a sword of lath.
And at the door, as if old January's fist were gloved in snow, there comes a muffled knocking and a cry.
The players’ Lady turns. “Here's winter come a-begging fire. Shall we hear these country clods their interlude?"
There's a green bough hanging on the door of Grevil's hall. Three times the Fool brings down his wrenstaff—crack!—upon the stone, so that the ribands dance, the bird flits wildly in his cage of thorn. Hob Hawtrey's men cry out, Sun's in Ashes! Let us in.
And they call for the maid in the lilywhite smock, who trips to the door and pulls back the lock. Ashes that was Margaret schools her face in due solemnity. It's Sukey's turn, the youngest, in the pride of her silver pin. The keeper of the sill. She plays to her.
But it's a stranger at the door. A qualm: is Suke ill then? in disgrace?
But Hob's her father and the Fool sees nought amiss. Ye mun let us in. We bring t'Sun.
And the
maid, a young madam—she's a look of Nan about her—eyes them up and down. As an afterthought, she bunches up her skirt and bobs. Yer all to wipe yer boots, mind.
Aye, Road's mucky. All them stars.
And shut door.
In sweeps Mag Moonwise to a solemn music and she clears them room. Oddly, it crunches underfoot. Shards of ice? The Fool slips backward, in extravagant dismay. He dances on the air; recovers.
In comes the gang of heroes, some trampling and scuffling clownishly, but the most of them curvetting, coltish in their pride.
They sing their calling on, and it is glorious: great-rooted, evergreen. It raises roofbeams.
Ashes enters, last of all.
So this is coming home. Half strange already, re-estranged. How small it is, and bright, ablaze with candles. Green with holly. And so great a company within, so many faces. The master of this hall must keep his Lightfast handsomely. She looks about the hall for Grevil and for Barbary.
And sees herself, as in a glass—that pale red hair, that cruel dress—at Corbet's side. He holds a cup to Margaret's mirror, to his bride; and she must drink.
Star-crack and shattering: a heel to the heart. Then deepless cold beneath. It takes her breath away. And rising, scrabbling at the edges of the here and now, she thinks: But I am Ashes.
And slowly then, a dawning: Annot?
It is Grevil's hall: she knows that. Here is here; but when is now? For the meddling aunt is here—again or still?—unwithered now. Unwintered. But the bridegroom is as old as ever. Old as January. Lord of winter and my lady's huntsman, with his shot and snare of dearth, death, cruelty, and sickness. There is always a bride for him, a new green girl, as there is Ashes, over and again. They reign in hell.
Even in her thrill of fear, she thinks: but Annot got away. And then: Will I?
Old Corbet turns to her—to Ashes?—beckoning. Holds out his cup. A conjuration? It is ritual—she'd have it so—to greet the Sun. But in her blood and bones, she knows it as a spell, to bind his once and future thrall. Unwilling, shivering, she is drawn to him: a step, another step. Within his orb, as in her glass, she sees a ghostly retinue: his train of brides and boys. All had drunk to him, and all were eaten; they must dance. A step, and he will swirl her in.
But at her back, she hears the loud bewailing of the Fool: the play goes on. Recalls her. When she turns to look, he signs frantically at her: stalk, stalk. It is her office.
Slipped in among strangers: an alien, a ghost, a spy. A cheat. Would the company cry out on her? Demand their own invested Ashes? Think she'd stifled her, that phantom other? They don't see her: they see Ashes with her soulbag. She's her coat. Made bold by anonymity, she prowls among them, stalking children to their dens. In cupboards, under chairs, behind an apron or the linen-press, or halfway up the stairs. Some flirting with her shadow; others cowering; some struggling in their mothers’ arms.
But stalking, she is stalked. Now in and out amid the revellers, old Corbet edges up to her. At every turn, she turns from him. At every twist, he tails. I am Ashes: we do not conjoin, she thinks. You are not in my ephemeris. A knot of company is now athwart him, rallying. They clap his shoulder, calling out their lewd congratulations. His bride is young. He is fortunate. And she—! To sheathe him to the hilt, to take the measure of his puissance. Bear his sons. At every halt, they drink to him, and he must take his rouse. They none of them see Ashes.
Are they ghosts then? Am I? No question, Corbet's real: like Annis, he is absolute. She tries it in her mind. A place—the sky, a ring of stones, this hall—though fortune level it, is still the same; time changes. Or else where—space—travels, like a ring on a strand of silk. She runs it back and forth. She loops the string.
Where I stand is why.
And souls?
If she's a ghost, she is corporeal, embodied: she can touch the children, cheek and chin, her fingers slithering in their snotty tears, or gritted on a brickred rage. A bellowing. She sains them with her thumb, she smutches them, much as a shepherd raddles lambs. This child is one of Ashes’ flock. Death, pass by.
...in a vixen's belly, in a babby—and they's woe to snatch, worse than honey...?
The nonsense is the same. There's comfort.
Now some raffish lads—that pack o gallantry that Hob cried down?—come sauntering round to watch. Sleek idling fellows, more or less, half in and out of women's tire. Goddesses dishevelled, slumming it. Constellations offstage. Capon-crammed, wine-drunken, in their stitchery of silk, they watch the husbandmen at work.
...wi’ an urchin in its mouth!
What, no mustard? says the first of them loudly.
The Fool looks sharp at him. None, for your mam eats sausages wi'out.
Fool's not bad, the second says.
A scrape and clatter. Madam rises from her chair in anger, and the gabble's stilled. The guising falters for a beat; then at her nod goes on. Her servant slips to Corbet's side, she whispers urgently. A glance at Ashes: Later. He is retrograde.
And yet another child peers out at Ashes from behind the tablecloth. There is a giggling, clapped short, and then a humping wriggling in the rushes, like a mole at work. She cannot stay.
But ever as she hunts, she turns: and at the inward of the labyrinth is still the great conjunction of the myth. So many planets in one house—the sky at what ill-fortuned birth? First, the lord of the ascendant, old baleful Slae and his Perseis, his bride: scarce April when he bears her off. Bright Perseis, the errant star, is mutinous: storm clouds her face. Behind them sits the whited moon: the bawd, the panderer. And at her knee, a wan young woman, near her time—as full of child as the plum is of the stone—who pleads her sister's youth, in tears. She coys a child in petticoats, who twists away in loathing of the man in black. Who treads a garland at their feet, let fall. And then like some attendant moon, a young man who is elsewhere, or he would be: in his garden, say, engrafting his new apricocks or down a long pleached alley at the farthest end from all this potherment. A green thought in their shade. No seed of his, this crew of quarrelers, he seems to think, but in-laws merely. Slips.
But then a sweet-sharp sort of body, like an apple-john—an old retainer—says, Master, ‘tis t'wrenboys come to halse us all. Will you not attend?
Reluctantly, he rouses, turns to the brangle at his board. Come, shall we hear their catastrophe?
The crowd is closer now, attending eagerly. The players too: but they dissemble. In comes I, awd baggy breeks, says one. Then mingle-mangle with their yardsticks, and the shaking of the sheets.
And another, 'Tis their mystery now. Snick up
Stately, Hob commands the very eye of Cloud. He raps his staff, and bids the champions, Walk in.
In comes I, bold Knapperty
That were born of high renown
'Twas I that slew t’ Scarry knight...
And brought his breeches down, says the slighting player.
'Twas I who fought Rinosserot
And brought him to't slaughter
By that I made his buttons fly
And won my lady's daughter
Who's great with child by him already, says that player. And will spawn a Sun. See, he brags in her belly.
If that be he of noble blood,
I'll make it flow like Ranty's flood
Clish! clash! and down the braggart tumbles. Now only Leapfire stands.
In comes old Lightfast who will slay his son.
The nurse tugs Ashes’ sleeve. Mistress? In her voice is the oddest mix of deference, affront, and worry. Will you come? You've not sained t'Master's heir.
Last of all the bairns, she finds the child in petticoats. He's in the wainscot parlor, kneeling with an open book before him on the floor. She knows him.
We're Ashes both of us, says Noll. You're black. And I'm green. He looks at her. Does the coat come off?
And Margaret that is Ashes thinks, I chose you. Long ago and now. I will.
Elsewhere, the lath swords clash; the hero falls.
&
nbsp; She cannot speak; but she foretells him. At her beckoning, he lifts his face to her. With her thumb she smutches him, on lip and brow. She draws the sign for sky. She cannot change his lot, but only prophesy. He is what he was born to be. Though he will die, and leave no kindred of his body, yet his book will live. She marks him out for solitude, for study and regret. Live and long.
The fiddle tune begins. Will you see them dance? he says. They are most brave and curious.
By two and two, and in and out, the guisers dance. They heel it to the small pipe and fiddle, and the thrubbing drum: three tunes. An eerie music, edgewise and ecstatic. They dance with longswords, weaving and wheeling, doing and undoing thresholds, henges, doorways, and at last a knot of swords.
* * * *
"Ah,” said old Pipe-and-Tabor, “but thou shouldst have seen our Mistress Master Morland leap my lady's part. Five-and-thirty year agone, that would ha’ been, and Master Grevil there in petticoats. There's none such now."
The fiddler said nothing.
"There's few enough that keep old Law.” He knocked the water from his reedpipe. Few to play, and fewer still to set them on. This job would be their last this season. Then wakes and weddings to the hobnail rout, for pence and barleystraw and broken meats. Then nought.
No companies now; or none of quality, his mistress’ journeymen. None sworn. Chance men, all of them, rogues and gallowsclappers. Here's my Lady branded for a quarrel, and his cully dead. Here's their Second Witch whipped naked at the cart's tail, he that got a squinch-eyed goblin on a punk. Here's that fiddler that they'd picked up on the road last Hallowsweek. Stark shoulder and a melancholy in his wits. They griped him, and he played a-scrawl. Ah well, their last was hanged.
He sighed and thought of all the witchboys—witty striplings—that he'd taught to play. Their clever tongues.
"Pack up,” he said.
And still the fiddler gazed. At nothing. At the guisers’ play. Eight or nine clumping lackwits and a red-haired Ashes. Her? Would the fool sweep her chimney?
"What art thou agaze at?"
The bright hair burning through the ashes. Bracken in the rain. Too far. She's run too far before him; turning back, she bids him on.
"A ghost."
"Well, I see a quart pot. And the road."
I see a ditch and crows.