I saw Tallys mouth, “Queen of the birds.”
“Not that a King needs a story for his making,” Lady Meriel said, with a sharp look to Tallys. “That is his right by birth and blood.”
Tallys’s head lowered in what could have been acquiescence. Lady Meriel frowned a little, brows dipping like the wings of a gull; stubborn as well are gulls, when it comes to what they consider theirs. But then she smiled around at the gathering, and her smile was gracious enough.
“But stories and dreams are the stuff of childhood, and even a Prince and King-to-be is first and foremost a boy. We grow out of these things, do we not, and laugh fondly at them afterwards,” she said.
All but a child herself, I thought, but the others laughed and nodded, all except Tallys.
“And if the King lies awake some nights, well, I’m sure his royal responsibilities, which he will take up in full from the Regent upon our marriage, weigh on his thoughts, as befits a King. I will be blessed to be able to share that burden with him when we are wed.”
There was a cheer at that, though quickly hushed, with a few nervous glances in the direction of the King’s tent.
“But look, here we are assembled, the night is young and the flames still bright,” Lady Meriel said. “Let’s have another story, though perhaps one more cheerful and more fit for a common campfire. You, young sir so dark and quiet;” this addressed to Tallys. “What tales have you?”
Tallys leaned forward and gave Lady Meriel a glance that glittered with the fire and looked about to answer. That answer, I feared, would be a tale not to the Lady’s liking, so I stepped into the circle and sang.
“Oh, a blackbird,” Lady Meriel said. “Begone, you, back into the night, lest you trouble the King with your song.”
Tallys raised an eyebrow at my interruption and said, “I knew a Queen who had three blackbirds. Their song was so lovely it would ease the living to sleep, the dying gladly to their death, and the dead again to waking. The Duke of the duchy by the sea promised the hand of his daughter to any who would bring him these birds. But every man who attempted the theft, knight and knave alike, succumbed to the birds’ song, until all the couches and chairs of the Queen’s tower were filled with their sleeping bodies, and the Queen was forced to stack them in her bookshelves and hang them from the walls like tapestries.
There was laughter around the circle. Lady Meriel gave Tallys a smile sharp as glass and asked, “What Queen was this, that you knew, young sir?”
Tallys said, “Ah, it was long ago. Just a tale now, that a little bird told me.” I bowed at that, to more laughter. “The Duke’s daughter grew weary of this stream of hopefully covetous men and envious of the Queen’s power. So she filled her ears with goosedown and went to the Queen’s tower in the woods and climbed over and under and around the sleeping men to the top of the tower and wrapped the birds in her skirts to take them for herself. But a willful wind came through the windows and blew the goosedown from her ears. The first bird sang, and the Duke’s daughter fell asleep on the spot and tumbled from the tower to the ground far below. The Queen found her broken amongst the branches, still asleep, tossed and twisted in her pain like a nightmare. The Queen wept to see such suffering. The second bird saw this and sang his song, and the young woman sighed and settled with a smile to her death.”
The listeners muttered in dismay. I gave a warning call but Tallys continued.
“The Queen lifted the Duke’s daughter in her arms and carried her to the river and set her body in, that it might float back to the Duchy by the sea. But at the touch of the water the third bird, that was still tangled in the young woman’s skirts, sang out a song so gentle and joyous that the woman awoke to life again. She laughed with delight to see the sky above her and the river beneath her, the birds flying circles around her, and most of all the Queen’s beautiful face before her. And the Queen laughed to hear her laugh and the blackbirds wove their song through the laughter and they returned to live in the Queen’s tower in the woods for all their days. The Duke’s daughter did awake the sleeping men and sent them home, as her hand was not the Duke’s to promise, and regardless she wanted the shelves for her books.
There was laughter and applause from some around the fire, but others took their cue from Lady Meriel’s thoughtful frown.
“I should have bound the birds’ beaks with string,” Lady Meriel said.
“I should have wrung their necks and rid the world of their mischief,” said the man who strode out of the darkness, all in red like the fire.
The crowd leapt to their feet again.
“Duke Edouard,” Lady Meriel said. “You’ve just missed a most interesting tale.”
“I heard enough to be interested in the teller. I would tell him in turn a lesson on respect for Dukes and Queens.”
The Duke’s fire-blinded eyes had not yet found Tallys, who looked to answer yet again. I sang my song, right at the Duke’s feet I was, and Tallys stopped and nodded, stepped back out of the light.
The Duke nearly caught me with a kick. I flew up and once around the circle, singing to make a point of it, then a wider circle around a tent where a young King bit his fingers to stay from sleep, and another, around a slim figure scattered to deepest green and dark earth under the trees, and once more around the fire where a girl stubborn as a Queen said, “We are well rid of such wild things,” and all there chorused their assent. So they thought, though my circles were not yet done.
* * *
“They are done now, my Merle,” I say. The blackbird will not go straight into his cage; he bows his head to the wren and walks a circle around the nest. But then a shrieking comes from one window and, so fast, the other, and the blackbird steps quickly between the bones to the safety of the cage.
“Safety? So you think,” I say to him, and hold up my hand. A rush of wind over feather and a shape shoots up from below the windowledge, wings flared to land on my wrist as gentle as any songbird. Though not as light; no small bird like her mate is the female sparrowhawk, and more like to make a meal of the blackbird than the wren.
But the sparrowhawk pays no notice to the blackbird. She makes a courtesy to the wren, studies the egg in its nest a moment, marks me with her avid unblinking stare as I roust out her prize.
In the window blunders a bat, mistaking the tower room for the safety of a cave, perhaps, and the hawk steps up into the air, effortless, and down again to drive the bat against the table by the nest. The blackbird watches with interest and some relief as the hawk unmakes the bat to meat and bone.
Sated, then, and sleepy, this bird of my reminding, she stands by the nest with its egg and tells her tale.
* * *
What the sparrowhawk says to the egg:
In and down, I gyred. Under a peregrine who pealed once, to remind me she could take me for my impertinence. Over the upheld wrists of stout lords and bright ladies, a-horse in the field that edged up against the forest. By wide-spaced elms and beeches, where servants and churls sat and gossiped over their labors. Through a flock of finches, indignant shadows reeling, scattered and scolding once I had passed. To a stop, on an arm slim but sturdy as any oak. Another of the laboring women in shape and dress, but of no earthly eye.
“Bold my Shae, Shae my beauty, find another perch,” She said. “You’re much too fierce for these folk I go to meet.”
She was no less fierce, to my sight, but my sight is too clear for the glamour in which She conceals herself.
To a high-branched elm, then, and down to a hawthorn to hide amongst the white blooms and one yellow, that was a butterfly left pierced on a thorn by a shrike.
Below my branch two women worked, needle and knife, and up to them She came and sat down among them.
“Well-a-day,” one woman said. “I’m Bea and this is Agnes, both of High Castle and here at the King’s service.”
“Tallys,” She said, “of here.” She waved a hand toward the woods. “At no service but my own this fine day.”
“A fine day, to be sure, for walking in the woods or riding the fields,” Agnes said with a sniff. “But a busy one for those of us set to sewing with no proper tools or table for it.”
Agnes was carefully unpicking the threads that held a coat-of-arms to a gentleman’s tabard, while Bea was sewing a sigil to a banner. There was a scattering of discarded embroidery about the two, some of which She smoothed across Her lap. Pictures such as men make; some a gold tower on a blue field, some an eagle at wing, some a stag’s head with a bird between its antlers.
“It’s like a story,” She said, “or a Book of Days.”
“A story of days wasted,” Agnes grumbled. “First King Hugh says he wants an eagle instead of the arms of High Castle, though the gold tower was good enough for old King Edwin.”
“At least it was a gold eagle on blue, and so we could reuse the thread,” Bea said mildly.
“And then it was the stag and bird, for the anniversary of his marrying Queen Meriel, he says, though I’m sure she’d’ve rathered a palace or some such.” Agnes snorted. “Which of the two was the stag, and which the sparrow, was the jape down the inn for all the Spring.”
“It’s a wren,” She said quietly.
“Hush, now, Agnes. Himself’s just over there, ain’t he?” Bea said, with a nod.
Forward She leaned to look to the field beyond the tree. “Hugh is here?” She asked.
“King Hugh,” Bea said primly. “On the white gelding there, with the Queen and Duke Edouard. And best the two of you ain’t heard being disrespectful by the Duke, I tell you.”
The man on the horse like a robin on a twig, plump and placid. At his right his mate in seagreen and at his left his kin in red and both with a sharp enough eye.
“Has he grown so fat in his high castle?” She asked.
The two women laughed, Bea with an anxious glance toward the field.
“Pillows,” Agnes said. “It’s pillows, ain’t it, tied all about him.”
“The King has fits,” Bea whispered, “and thinks he’s made of glass, so they say. He goes about padded lest he trip and shatter.”
“And calls the hunt but will not enter the forest, so his house and all the gathered nobles drink and trample the fields instead.”
“And changes his coat of arms yet again,” Bea said, and raised the banner she was sewing. “To a wildwoman, yet, and what will they have to say at the inn about that, I ask you?” Green eyes on a bramble of brown, the banner was, and She gazed into it like it was Her mirror, then away with a frown. I felt a disquiet, as if the wind had turned before a storm. Narrowed my vision, a blood-dimmed focus on the field beyond.
“Wildman, ain’t it, with a beard?” Agnes said.
“No, see it’s her hair.” The two woman turned the banner about, chattering.
Motion in that field, those on horseback turning this way, servants and soldiers scurrying amongst them. Ahead of them a man on foot in the red of Duke Eduoard’s household.
“They come,” She said and rose ready to stand beneath me. Such was her tension that I would have dropped to her shoulder had she not raised a hand to stay me.
The two women scrambled to their feet as the man approached.
“The Duke asks after the King’s new banner,” he said.
“It’s ready, ain’t it?” said Agnes.
Bea held it up, with a more gracious, “As best we could do out here.”
“As long as it gets us moving again, it’s a bloody work of art,” the Duke’s man said. Over his shoulder he looked and added, “Here the Duke comes, and the King and Queen themselves. Give it here, and keep your mouths shut, eh? The King’s mood is changeable this morning.”
“Do tell,” Agnes said, earning an elbow from Bea.
The Duke’s man took the banner and turned to greet the riders. The gathered nobles, sensing some entertainment, had followed the King’s party to flock around the tree like crows about a carcass. The horses, as bored as their riders and unsettled by the same disquiet as were She and I, jostled amongst themselves and threatened the feet of those who walked.
The King’s horse stopped somewhat ahead of the others, of its own accord, it seemed, as the King was looking down distractedly, prodding the cushions strapped around him with a uncertain frown.
The Duke’s man, conscious of the audience, bowed low. “Your Majesties, King Hugh and Queen Meriel, your Grace Duke Edouard, my Ladies and Gentlemen, at his Majesty’s command, the sign of the Wise Woman of the Woods.”
He unfurled the banner with a flourish and held it up in front of him. The King’s horse, startled, took a step backwards into the Queen’s, which nipped at its flank.
The King looked up, eyes wide on a head made small by his padded bulk, and saw the embroidered head before him. He went very still on his jittering horse. “The wren. My queen,” he said, very quietly.
“The what, my dear?” Queen Meriel asked, pulling at her reins, caught between her horse’s ill-temper and the press of the crowd.
The King showed no sign of having heard her. His focus was on the banner, an unblinking gaze that acknowledged no thing but its target, a mirror of my own expression, of Hers.
Then he stood in his stirrups, pulled his sword with surprising grace, and shouted, “The enemy is upon us! Strike! To me and strike!” He swung, slicing the banner in two, taking the Duke’s man’s ear and burying the sword in the man’s shoulder.
The Duke’s man fell back against Bea. The King’s sword pulled free, tracing an arc of blood across the women below me, the white blossoms around me. In me the smell of blood awoke the chill unmoving fury of the hunt.
The Duke’s man had made no sound, but Agnes gave a shriek as sharp as mine and stepped over the fallen man, arms raised.
“Betrayed! To me and strike!” the King cried and swung again, a blow that would have cleaved the woman’s head if her arm had not deflected the blow at the cost of fingers and flesh.
Queen Meriel had gotten her horse alongside the King’s left; she stopped and stared in incomprehension. Duke Eduoard, who had leaned in his saddle to avoid the King’s first wild swing, continued the motion to slip to the ground. He ducked under his horse’s head, drew his sword in time to catch the King’s next blow, which would otherwise have struck down Agnes where she stood over the Duke’s man, the ruin of her hand still raised as if to shield them.
Duke Eduoard struck again at the King’s sword, attempting perhaps to disarm him. One of the King’s huntsmen shouldered past the horses at that moment and seeing the carnage and the Duke’s blade, shouted, “The King is betrayed!” The huntsman bore one of the long ceremonial knives used in the Unmaking of the stag at the end of the hunt, and raised it against the Duke. The Duke turned to block the blow one-handed, the bright brittle steel of the hunter’s knife shattering. He shoved the huntsman down under the hooves of the horses, which were already maddened by the blood, stamping fear or aggression in accordance to their breeding. Over went a lady of the Queen’s household with a screech, as guards in the King’s service or the Duke’s shoved forward with weapons ready.
Queen Meriel had leaned to grab the padding around the King’s torso, was with a determined grimace attempting to pull him from his horse. The King turned and would have struck her had he not fumbled his grip on his sword. The King’s motion, and a sideways step of the Queen’s nervous mount, tumbled her out of her saddle and under the hooves.
The King, oblivious to the Queen’s peril, looked around and saw Her then, where she stood over Bea’s attempt to bind Agnes’s hand with scraps of the banner. Amidst the anarchy, the King’s gaze regained its focus. “What glamour is this,” he said and lifted the sword over Her.
Two beats of my wings, sending white blood-spattered blossoms spiraling, and my talons were in the flesh of his face. As he beat at me with the pommel of his sword She reached up and, succeeding where the Queen had failed, pulled him from his horse.
“I shatter, I shatter!” he cried as he fell. Down with him I
fluttered, one claw caught in his cheekbone.
The King did not shatter. He rolled in his absurd padding to land half atop the Queen. He turned his head to look past me up at Her. “Tallys,” he whispered, “it is broken,” and then his eyes unfocused and his face fell slack.
To Her shoulder I leapt as She leaned to take the sword from the King’s limp hand. But Queen Meriel, pinned under the King’s padded bulk, grabbed Her wrist. She allowed the Queen to pull her close.
“He calls you the name of the Wild Woman of his nightmares,” the Queen said. The wings of her brows lowered, and I hissed into that threat. “And almost I think I know your face. Nor just from that evil banner.”
“The banner is no doing of mine,” She said, “nor any of this mortal madness.” Shaking the Queen’s grip, She stood, and looked back at Bea, who cradled two bodies under white hawthorn blossoms.
“And anyway, the banner is unmade,” She said.
“Would that you were,” the Queen said. Her one hand found the King’s sword, and she pushed him off with the other.
I would have struck at those gull brows, but that She raised her arm again.
Up instead, I went. Back She stepped under the hawthorn, pulling Her glamour about her, fading into the wood. The Queen rose, sword in hand and eyes gone wild in confusion. Around the tree I flew, as Queen Meriel, already doubting what she had seen, knelt again to the foolish fallen King and cried for aid. Over the baffled brawling crowd, as Duke Eduoard fought unleashed anarchy. Under branches, as Bea spread a blue and gold coat gone red with blood and silver with tears over Agnes’s silent upturned face. Up and out, wider and wider, She slipping under the trees and I over, our differing paths to the tower at the heart of the woods.
* * *
The sparrowhawk tears at the ribs of the bat but will not eat more. She raises her head and the blackbird steps to the far side of his cage and grumbles at me.
“It’s not you of which she thinks, my bright-eyed Merle,” I tell him. “It’s a fat foolish robin she’d take.” I hold out my arm and the sparrowhawk steps up, her grip sharp and steady and so too the look she gives me.
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