by Asotir
At last, come moonfall, the first step seemed a little less black and a little more gray. She sighed, wiped her brow and thought to herself, That’s better, now! And next time better still!
But when she came back the next moonrise, the step was even blacker than the others. The way she was starting over again, moon after moon, and every blessed moon.
In the dark of the moon she was not resting, but went out looking on the windows of the pleasure-house. She heard the music, the laughter, and the indolent voices of the nobles of the Night. She was hating them all for their ease and pleasures. And she was looking up higher, to the windows fading into mist, and wondering which was Arianna’s.
The serving-girls took their meals in a low hall alongside the kitchens. Agnes ate on a rock over the water, looking into the lough, until it was time to be back at her chore.
The steps she had cleaned were foul again, as always. There was no end to it, it seemed. Standing before them one time more, her pail in one hand and her brush in the other, her shoulders shaking and tears starting from her eyes, she moaned, ‘But how can this be? Who is doing this?’
‘I will show you, Miss,’ said a voice behind her – and that was a voice she knew.
* * *
MAID MIELUSINE stood a long time in Master Aengus’ room. It was quiet in the cold bare bell-tower, and black dark. All she could make out was a little glimmering of the mist beyond the bells; by its light she could see nests built up in the crannies, of rooks and owls, evil birds. In front of herself stood a small table, and on it a packet and a white stone smooth and rounded as a hen’s egg. Mielusine touched the stone, and all of a sudden she heard an ominous cough.
She stood stone still.
A slight rustling she heard. Someone else was there. A servant of the lady, perhaps – or a thief with his hand on his sharp scian dagger.
Mielusine turned and fled those dark rooms, fled down the ladders and stairs, out to the lawn and into the gaming rooms. It was the brightness and warmth and human voices lured her there, the way the gamblers heeded no clock.
For a time Mielusine was wandering among the tables, looking on the games and understanding none of them. At that hour only the most ardent gamblers were there, and the rooms were quiet but for the murmuring of wagers and the clinking of coins. Some there went masked, some wore wigs, some still wore their coats.
Mielusine stopped beside the table of the Wheel. She liked seeing it spinning and the silver ball bounding into its compartment all by chance. They were laying down their wagers on a field of black and red squares. It was a mystery to Mielusine how some were winning, and others watching fortunes raked away and lost.
She was feeling something hard in her hand. Opening her fingers she saw the leag lorgmhar.
She had never picked it up. Of course she hadn’t. But it must be that she had taken it unthinkingly, startled by the cough. And now she ought to be returning it, but she daren’t go back into the bell-tower.
The players were laying their wagers on the field. Hastily Mielusine placed the stone on the square of the Red.
‘What’s this, now? What sort of a wager is that?’
It was one of the lady players speaking. She was masked, but the maid could see that her hair was brown, lighter than chestnut, and that she had the longest, loveliest throat. The servant at the table stopped the wheel, and all eyes turned to Mielusine and the white stone.
‘Take the thing back, I say,’ demanded the lady, glaring at Mielusine through her mask.
‘The lady can wager what she pleases, can she not?’
‘But ’tis a common stone, of no value at all!’
Mielusine would have taken back the thing; but the crowd was gathering, hemming her in.
Next one was calling for Banker Ino. It was a dwarf he was, with a great head on his body, and his face laughing, wise and sour at once. Someone hoisted him onto the table where he stood over them all like a little god.
‘Now, then,’ he pronounced, rocking back and forth, ‘what’s the problem here?’
‘It’s only the lady here placed a wager, Banker Ino.’
‘It was a common stone she put down! There you see it, on the Red. Make her take it back.’
‘She can wager what she likes,’ said another.
‘But,’ asked the servant, ‘what should I be giving her if she wins?’
The dwarf looked from the stone to Mielusine in her white dress, and she blushing and wishing she could only sink into a puddle and die, and be done with it all.
‘Well, now,’ said the dwarf, very slowly in his child’s voice, ‘I wouldn’t be calling it a thing of no value at all, the way the lady herself is standing pledge behind her wager. ’Tis a white wager she’s playing, to be redeemed at the winner’s own choosing. Who’s to say that’s of no value?’
‘Not I to be sure.’
The last was uttered by a gentleman in a most grotesque and sneering mask. He was tall as the Banker was short, and his hair curling silver at his brow, and his voice as silver as his curls. His eyes were so gentle and kind, Mielusine was thinking she had never before seen such feeling eyes.
‘I will be backing the lady’s wager, if she will permit,’ he was saying. He took up the stone and let fall a thick handful of bank-notes in its place.
Even the dwarf was taken aback at the gesture, clucking, ‘But, sir, the amount—’
‘You’re right, of course,’ the man apologized. He dredged in his pocket and strewed another handful of notes on the pile, the way it was spilling over half the field. The players looked agape on what a fortune it was, even in the extravagant Night.
Ino laughed and clapped his hands. ‘Bravo! If the Maid Buan has no further complaints?’ he added, bobbing in the objector’s direction.
She, with a pretty if irritated wave of her golden fan, inclined her head. ‘Sure, if the gentleman is bent upon charity to the point of his ruin.’
‘Let spin, then,’ bade Ino. And the chamber the silver ball fell into was the thirty-and-sixth, and it was red.
‘Will you take your winnings now?’ asked the gentleman in the sneering mask at Mielusine’s side.
‘Oh – I couldn’t,’ Mielusine said.
‘The wager stands, then,’ he said. Of course that hadn’t been Mielusine’s meaning at all. But the cheers made her feel as bold as if it had been.
That spinning the ball fell in the sixteenth chamber, and it too was red.
‘Again?’ asked the gentleman softly.
Mielusine felt a warm wave rising in her at the sound of his voice. There was more money on the table than she in all her life had ever dreamt of. ‘All right,’ she breathed.
And the number was two, and red.
‘Once more, for our mutual good fortune?’
‘Oh, let that be an end to it, please!’ begged Mielusine. She only wanted to leave the crowd behind and be back in her chamber again.
‘As madam commands,’ said the dwarf, bowing gravely. ‘You’ve taken half my profits of the month! As to the gentleman, his part will find its way back to me. But will you not take pity on me, dear Miss, and allow me to reinvest your winnings in my bank? I assure you a good per centage.’
‘Shall I?’ Mielusine wondered.
‘Take at least so much for extravagance,’ said the gentleman, brusquely putting a fistful of notes into her hand.
‘How can I ever be thanking you?’ she asked. ‘You risked so much for me!’
‘Ah, as to that, I had good fortune now, until you broke it. If I’d lost my winnings, my creditors had had to go a bit longer before drinking my blood. Now I must be leaving, the way they will soon hear of this. I must be spending the moneys before they do. And when next you are in difficulty, dear Lady of the Stone, let you call upon Vasquez, and then you can be thanking me by enjoying a little less of luck!’
With which he was gone, and the throng scattering, and Maid Mielusine standing by the dwarf, before a great pile of money on the table. They all were l
ooking at her with such eyes, and she made up her mind to be no longer afraid, but to be descend with the other wards in the procession every darkness.
And she saw that after all she still was holding the Leag Lorgmhar.
17. Of the Lady of the Lough
‘BUT HOW can this be? Who is doing this?’ Agnes moaned.
‘I can tell you, Miss,’ said a voice.
Agnes turned. A bit of a smile hung on her lips.
The man that was standing there was lean and tall and old, and he was no stranger to her, the way he was Mac Bride, the old servant of the manor.
‘Well, Mac Bridey. Of course you are here.’
The old cottager bowed, and gave her back a grin. ‘Will your ladyship come with me now, and let an old countryman enlighten a lady?’
‘Please, do not be calling me “lady” here, Mac Bride, I’ve no heart left for such ironies.’
He led her across to a little room in a wall. Old tools and broken buckets were covered in dust in the corners. ‘Here you must abide me when your work is done, at moonfall. I will bring you your dinner and show you a thing.’
At the end of her working, she put away rags and buckets and brushes, and met Mac Bride at the closet. Soon they were settling in the dark, and only some light entering through a crack in the door panel, where Agnes put her eye.
She saw men in scarlet and silver climbing through the witchlights swimming up the stairs.
‘Soon they will be coming,’ Mac Bride said.
‘Who?’ she asked.
‘Look, and see for yourself.’
From the landing high above, a strange procession was descending. Foremost came the lady’s servants dressed like maids and pages of years long gone. After them came the hundred robbers of the lough, the jades and rogues, minxes and bandits, each belted with sword or pistols; and the wenches wore each a scian at her belt. They wore cloaks of scarlet embroidered with the letter A in black, or cloaks of black with the letter A in scarlet; and on the heels of their boots silver spurs, the like of which she had seen before.
‘And out of all these desperadoes,’ said Mac Bride, ‘she will choose one to be her champion, for a darkness, a Moon, or a year, as she please. She has a crescent silver ring. When she chooses a champion she places this ring on his little finger, pressing the finger back. But when she tires of him, then the lady takes back the ring while he is sleeping, and – and the rest I will not tell you.’
After the robbers came a most splendid lady. Her hair was firelike in the glow of the enchanted fish; her eyes were green, and she wore a crimson purple gown. She was tall and slender, and so regal in her bearing that Agnes had to exclaim, ‘Is it Arianna, now?’
‘Nay,’ answered Mac Bride, taking for a moment her place at the crack. ‘But it is only Maid Niam, one of her wards.’
Agnes looked again. ‘You are right,’ she said. ‘For her bearing is not proud enough. But this one, now: she is the lady for a truth!’
‘Tell me her features, the way I’m sure you’re wrong again.’
‘Her hair is brown, lighter than chestnut, gleaming as with diamonds. She has the longest, loveliest throat I’ve ever seen. She carries a fan of gold, and her gown is dark and rich as the finest chocolate from the new world.’
‘Ah: that is Maid Buan, another of her wards; she’s proud enough for two.’
‘Now there is a man dressed like an admiral. He is tall and beautiful, and well he knows it, too! He walks with the swagger of a lion.’
‘That is Gwangior, the lady’s champion,’ Mac Bride said. ‘And after him you will see another of her wards, and she the newest and fairest: it’s said you know her.’
‘Yes,’ answered Agnes quietly.
It was Maid Mielusine in her white gown; and though she may have walked less boldly than the others, she surpassed them in the delicacy of her movements, the fineness of her features, and the openness of her eyes.
Seeing the Maid, Agnes felt all at once her own ugliness, and how far she had fallen. When she could look again, the landing above the stair was empty – save for one.
‘Arianna.’
She breathed the word, the way she could not speak above a whisper.
Mac Bride nodded.
‘Now you have seen her. Tell me the way of her, then.’
Agnes parted her lips, and after a moment closed them.
There was no way to describe that one. There was only height, and slenderness quick as moonlight, and eyes like arrows. Of colors, there was none, the way there gleamed from her only a thick, resplendent whiteness, like the braiding together of all colors. And there was pride, desire, sultriness, and danger, the way she was the body of that unending Night.
‘I cannot say,’ whispered Agnes. ‘But she descends the stair as if she were walking down the sky.’
Then Agnes could look no more upon the lady, but lowered her eye to the human face of Mielusine. Then she saw at Mielusine’s side another: Eudemarec. His look was that of a man whose thoughts are far away.
Arianna raised her arm. Agnes heard the opening of the great doors of the abbey onto the Night.
‘You know your tasks,’ Arianna called out to her bandits: ‘Now go!’
And with a wild whooping and a clattering of swords and spurs, the robbers went into the night. Where the Swan Boats waited to ferry them over, nine at a turn.
Agnes fell back into the gloom of the closet. A greenish, yellowish, bluish anti-image of the scene was burning in her eyes, filled by the lady of the lough.
‘So that is my enemy,’ she murmured.
‘It is for her sake your work is undone,’ Mac Bride said. ‘Each darkness Arianna is sending her bandits across the lough to fulfill her wild kailees. And when they return from their kailees, their boots are black with mud from the bogs, and they dirty the steps worse than they did the time before, the way it is their great delight to outdo themselves incessantly.’
‘But what is this Arianna, and how did she win such power? Why do they follow her?’
The countryman laughed. ‘Ah now, as to that, there are as many different tales as you could waste your time in counting! But Miss, this is the Night-land, and you must learn to think as do the Night-folk. These men and ladies come into Arianna’s service because she is ours. It’s her beauty has drawn us here – and by that word you must understand more than any eye could see. Why, do you ask? Because it pleases her.’
‘I do not understand,’ she said.
‘When you do, it’s free of this place you’ll be,’ he answered her.
It was late when the countryman led Agnes back to her bed to rest. ‘You’ll be finding me where the lamps are burning,’ he told her. ‘It’s in charge of the fires I am.’ Then he let her be.
In the dark, low hall, half-buried in the crannog, Agnes undressed to her shift and crept into her cot just inside the door. She listened for awhile to the sounds of the girls filling the hall with their unspeakable dreams. From far away, through the windows set under the ceiling like milky eyes, the music of the abbey and the beat of dancing feet was reaching her.
Agnes fell a-dreaming of the procession, the maids, and the unutterable lady of the lough. Toward the darkness’ end she was turning in the cot, her hair streaming from one side to the other. And once she whispered a name aloud: ‘Aengus!’
18. How the Maid Entered the Court
ONCE IN MOONLIGHT, whenas all the abbey folk were asleep other than gamblers and servants, the dark man in the dark gray cóta mór went striding round the crannog at the water’s edge. Three times he went round the crannog, going against the sun.
When he stopped he stood in the shadow of the ruined bell-tower. Slow now, the dark man raised his head and looked up to the tower. From the ground the bell-tower was rising into the whiteness of the mist, and vanishing away.
The dark man stepped forward, and laid his hand on the age-old stones of the bell-tower. Long and lean and sinewy was that hand, and the bones showed in it like bolts and rods of
iron.
The dark man looked about from under the brim of his tricorn, and satisfied himself that no others went about. He shifted about his bow and his pouch of arrows on his back. Then he reached up higher, and let his fingers sink into the cracks between the stones, and he drew himself up. He reached up then with his left hand, higher still, and dug the tips of his fingers into the cracks between his stones, and drew himself higher.
Hand over hand the dark man climbed the wall of the bell-tower. The mist wrapped round him and swallowed him up.
Old Meg went by, between checking on her girls; she tarried by the bell-tower, and looked up that way; she saw nothing there of the dark man, the way he was hidden already in the high mist.
And the mist brightened and whitened around the dark man climbing. It was to the uppermost airs of the mist he had climbed; climbed higher still; climbed out into the moonlight air above the mist.
Over his head was a great window open in the wall, under the roof of the bell-tower. The end of a telescope was showing there.
The dark man shifted his hands, and followed the cracks between the stones in the wall, and went softly, and crept around the window. He climbed up to the rooftop. Where he stood breathing with heaviness, and unbending the iron bolts of his fingers stained with the lichens from the age-old stones.
He leaned out over the parapet of the rooftop, and looked out below. Below him the window opened, and he could see the telescope, and hear the sighs of the man languishing within.
The dark man in the dark gray cóta mór smiled, and sat tailor-fashion on the stones, and began his vigil on the bell-tower.
* * *
AS TO EUDEMAREC now, he wasted his hours gambling, the way there was nothing else to be interesting him. Maybe it was because he didn’t care, but he was winning all his hands and enriching himself; he enjoyed to spend his winnings adorning the dancers he welcomed to his bed.
Once he spent a whole moon gaming; he took the bank and went on winning; then he was losing, and then winning again. Maid Buan, the proud one, was wagering hard against him.
Eudemarec knew Maid Buan well by now: she was always coming into the gaming hall and gambling away the treasures men were showering upon her for her favors, vainly; and she would challenge hardest whatever man won the most that moon, the way she found him shining with the glory of the luck of all his winnings, and handsome, and it seemed the moon glow shone on and gathered round and round him. On this moon, the glow was shining on Eudemarec’s head and hands, and now she was striving with a heart and a half to break his bank. But as to the Breton, no thought was in his head outside of the cards and their numbers, and he didn’t even know it when Maid Buan’s treasures were depleted, and she turned on her heels with a fury and left; he didn’t even know it when the Moon went down and the mist darkened.
