by Asotir
Those words were among the hardest she had ever uttered, even in a dream; there were tears in her eyes and her voice was near breaking under the weight of them.
And the riotous bandits praised the scrub woman, the way she was as desperate as themselves. Out through the doors they went, and washed off their boots in the lough.
By then was another Swan Boat returning, and another load of robbers approaching the abbey. Agnes must repeat her words, fully thirteen times, all the long darkness, until her voice was cracking and her eyes red with tears, and she was tossing about in her cot. In the long low hall the other serving girls gathered round her, touching her shoulder and speaking her name, softly, softly, ‘Agnes! Agnes!’ Until at last she answered.
* * *
AFTER THEIR MEAL, the girls went to their appointed tasks. Agnes took her brushes and pail and went into the abbey by the side door, the way the crescent gates were shut, and all the robbers dreaming and touching their lovers high above her.
Agnes bent over the first step. And she saw to her surprise that it was not black but white, white as the pelt of the White Hind, and shone in the moonglow like a mirror.
And after that darkness the trollops and bandits never failed of washing their boots in the lough, and struck off the clods of mud staining their breeches and hems before they came into the abbey. Indeed, so clean were their feet from then on, that they tended rather to take old dirt up, and left the stairs cleaner for their passing, the way it was their great delight to outdo themselves incessantly. Each moon now Agnes cleaned seven steps more; on the next moon when she came, she saw those seven were cleaner than she’d left them. And in less than thirteen moons, all the Hundred Steps and a Step were sparkling; and they never needed cleaning, ever again.
* * *
IT WAS PROCLAIMED that there would be held a masquerade on Samhain, on the long dark of the moon: and all diversions would be enjoyed at that ball, and a special exhibition of the dancers. At that ball Arianna would make her choice, who would be her next champion.
The time of the masquerade came nearer, and all the dancers fearing it. But Mielusine now, she was quiet all the time, and a bit sad, the way she never danced now so well as she had that once, when only one pair of eyes could see. In all the time since, Mielusine hadn’t once heard any word from Vasquez. And still and all she told Ino to be paying Vasquez’ debts.
The dwarf squawked, but ‘Haven’t I money enough for it, now?’ said she. ‘Then do as I bid you, Banker Ino.’
What now was comforting her, was a strange thing: it was the small white stone she’d stolen from Master Aengus’ room. Mielusine kept the leag lorgmhar on the table by her bed, and touched it to her lips before she rested. The leag lorgmhar guarded her dreams. She was glad she hadn’t returned it, the way it now was hers.
Now after kissing the stone the dancer had a dream, and this was the way of it.
Atop the bell-tower, the door to Master Aengus’ rooms was open; in front of the bells a man was standing, and he reaching for her, saying, ‘Come.’ And the voice of the man in the dream was Vasquez’ voice.
The dream left her, and Mielusine rose up out of bed. Moonbeams were pouring into her window, swirling with the mist. Mielusine stepped into the light, turning slowly, silently watching her limbs making whirlpools in the mist. The power of the dance was entering into her, the way she was yielding to it, moving beautifully as some wild thing footing the strait paths of a hill. In a way she was leaving herself behind; she was the dance she made.
Drawing her velvet cloak over her shift, bare footed, shaking her black ringlets, Mielusine went out of her room. The lawns of the crannog were powdery with snow, cold and clean on her toes. The broken steps and ladders were patchwork in the moonbeams falling through chinks in the wall. The door, it was not open as in her dream; but easily it yielded to her small hand, and in she danced, silent as a moonbeam.
He was there awaiting her. She knew he would be.
But who was he?
He was sitting by the bell beneath the telescope. His arms were braced against the window frame, and his legs dangling out over the ledge, and himself leaning far into the night. Beyond him the sky was ablaze with stars, shining on the surface of mist, bright like the sea.
It was long since the Maid had looked upon the stars in their nakedness. The sight swam in her like porter; her breath was sweetened even more by the thought of the dark man aloft.
He hadn’t seen her yet. Mielusine felt no fear of him. Still dancing, she glided to him and said,
‘Faith, what is it you’re looking for?’
The figure looked back. Mielusine saw the outline of his face against the stars; it seemed he was staring at her. Then he twisted his body and swung his legs back in, leaning weakly against the window frame.
‘For the cowardice to jump,’ he answered her. He did not speak in Vasquez’ voice; it was another’s voice – one she knew. ‘But I’ll never be finding it, the way I know she is still out there, somewhere hidden in the white. Who’re you?’
‘I am Mielusine. Weren’t you waiting for me? Now I am come. Teach me, please.’
He stood, none too surely, and stepped into the room. For a moment she was losing sight of him; then a light flared up from a bit of straw in the embers; he was lighting the candles on the table.
In the light his face seemed less drawn and tormented than she remembered. She did not wonder to see again the face that once she had seen buried under an apple tree. Curiously she looked on the bandages wrapping his breast: once white, now dirtied with dark, old blood.
‘Come on then,’ he told her. ‘Didn’t she send you for this? Do you know what you’re wanting from me, or are you only coming for a look?’
He was bending over the table, and not looking at her at all. There was a hanging gathered by the table, and Mielusine danced in close to it.
‘Stand there!’ he commanded. ‘’Tis better so, your face in shadow. They’ll be telling a more honest fable. I see you are young, and pretty enough – but you were not always pretty, nor were you powerful in Day.’
Mielusine saw in his hands a stack of beautiful cards, and he drawing them together and apart with his long, strong fingers.
‘What are you about?’ she asked.
‘Didn’t she tell you a thing about me?’
Mielusine, her face still in shadow, smiled. He sighed. ‘Arianna should say a thing before she sends her wards to me.’ He thrust the cards across the table.
‘Draw them into three stacks.’ So she did.
He began laying the cards out across the table. Mielusine had seen cards at fairs, but never any so large or beautiful, or with those strange names. And now he was telling her about herself as though he’d known her all his life. Mielusine was enchanted. How could he know such things?
‘And that is all I have to be telling you.’
Over their heads on the rooftop, the dark man sat in tailor-fashion within the tent of his dark gray cóta mór, and he was hearkening to their words, and hearing them all quite clearly. But still he only listened, and did not move, not yet. Only now, he grinned. Skulls grin as broadly as the dark man grinned.
The Bacach leaned back, and a bit of pain caressed his face, and Mielusine saw how weary he was with no resting, the way he was spending all his hours here thinking of his love until it was a poison in him, and searching for her in the water and in the mist, and everywhere else she wasn’t.
Mielusine felt bewildered. Was this the secret of love?
‘What card is that?’ she asked. To one side lay one card face down.
‘’Tis the final card,’ he answered. ‘The card of the querent – of the seeker. ’Tis your card. Turn it up if you like: it is not for me to do.’
Mielusine reached out for it, feeling its riddle calling to her. He added while she was reaching, ‘You needn’t show it to me or even be telling me what it is. It’s only to you that card need be speaking.’
She took it between her fi
ngers. On the card was painted a beautiful woman pouring water from two ewers. Mielusine laid the card on the table.
‘Le Stelle,’ she murmured, reading what was written across the bottom of the card. ‘What does it mean?’
He looked at her searchingly, the way she was glad for the hanging and its shadow.
‘The word, d’you mean, or the card?’
‘The word.’
‘The word means, “the Stars.” ’
‘’Tis a pretty card.’ She wasn’t even blushing a bit, though the lady on the card was naked as a tree in winter.
‘It isn’t there to be pretty,’ he said. He was angry now, raking the cards into a heap. ‘Learn from it. Now let you be going. If Arianna wasn’t sending you here you shouldn’t have been coming. Be going now!’
She glided back before his vehemence. He was rising, but already Mielusine was passing out of his rooms in silent wonder, leaving him and his pain behind her like a bad dream.
Round and round and down the steps she spiraled. Gladness was in her heart. She felt the moonlight burning her breasts. In the empty dancing hall she cast down her cloak and kicked off even her shift, and was dancing round in the dark, naked as a tree in winter, naked and free, and whirling ever faster before the small white stone.
The way she was finding the joy of the dance again, and making its mystery her own.
* * *
ONE SPOT ONLY on all the Hundred Steps and a Step remained dark, a spider-shaped stain near the topmost riser, nine steps from Arianna’s door. Agnes was cleaning it almost with love, the way it was the end of her labors. So full of her task was she, she did not even notice the step falling behind her, nor the soft rustle of the lady’s skirts.
As to the Maid Buan now, whose skirts and step they were, she was looking on the serving woman with wonder. Sure now, she thought, there are marvels in the Night! That this creature could have made shine the Hundred Steps and a Step!
‘And it was a clever seamstress I heard you were,’ exclaimed Maid Buan, ‘but these steps are so bright, ’tis a far better charwoman you must be.’
The serving-girl looked up at the maid from beneath a mop of tangled, greasy hair. ‘I thank you for it,’ she answered, ‘but I cannot say, from all I’ve heard, that you make that good a lady.’
Maid Buan laughed. ‘But you’re the rare insolent one! ’Twould almost seem you’ve a lover here of some repute, that you’d dare say such words to me! Are you not Agnes? Maid Mielusine tells me it was you who made her fine white gown, and is it the very truth?’
The serving-girl nodded.
‘Serve as my seamstress, then, and make me a gown for the lady’s masquerade. It’s rich your reward will be if you please me. All tools and materials I’ll furnish, and you may be staying in my rooms with my servants if you please.’
In the serving-girl’s wild eyes, green as leaves in a windy wood, something was dawning, and she looking far beyond the maid. For a moment Maid Buan thought the woman must be simple; that she might even be so peculiar as to refuse her; but at length Agnes pursed her lips and bowed her head and answered,
‘It’s sorry I am, Maid Buan, for the sharpness of my tongue. To be your seamstress would be my honor.’ She looked up sharp into Buan’s eyes.
‘I will make you a gown.’
Maid Buan was surprised that so simple a saying could mean so much to her: all at once a vision entered her head, of herself at the masquerade, the lodestone of the bandits’ eyes.
‘’Tis well,’ she said. ‘I have the stuff already, it is samite, sendaline, cloth of gold—’
But the strange serving-girl was shaking her head, telling her solemnly, ‘I will make you a black dress.’
* * *
FITTING-FORMS, silver pins and needles, spools of thread, bolts of silks and satins, bows, ribbons, fine linens: beautiful things, and the sight of them, so long forgotten, made Agatha’s eyes smart.
Come moonrise she set to work, and while the Maid and her servants were dreaming beneath their lovers’ touch, Agnes spun and sewed and snipped by the light of the Moon.
And she sang as she cut, and she hummed as she sewed, only she made no sound singing, the way all the melodies were only in the gown. She made her a black gown, and freed herself, in that dress, of the steps, of the snow, and of the Hind: of moonglow and starlight and all things white like bones, like grins, like innocence.
It was the last bolt of cloth that Master Aengus made, his nine moons’ work, that Agnes made into that gown.
Now, come moonrise the serving-girl dressed Maid Buan for retiring, and then the maid dismissed her. It was even then that Agnes would be entering the maid’s chambers to take up again her work.
Then Agnes saw how Maid Buan undraped the black velvet hangings from a certain glass on the wall and looked deeply into it. Her face burned redly, then paled, and her eyes were distraught; Maid Buan sighed, shook her head, and returned the hanging to cover the mirror. Sadly she went into her bedchamber, alone, and Agnes felt a tug of sorrow for her, though she didn’t know why. Each moonrise Agnes watched Maid Buan perform the same ceremony before she went into her bedchamber, alone. Then Agnes looked long on the black hangings, before she sat herself down and took up her needles and thread.
* * *
IT HAD BEEN the fashion for gowns to be elaborate, with embroidery, lace and needlework, and layer upon layer of linens; and Agnes knew that such would be the very taste of Maid Buan. But in the black gown Agnes eschewed all ornament, and cut simply, so that its lines should not be in any way obscured.
And on the skirt of the gown she wove tiny brilliants in patterns of the stars zodiacal, the way that light played upon it, shimmering, winking. But the narrow bodice of the gown she left bare of brilliants. The way the gown was blackest round where the back and bosom would show, cloudlike and celestial. Only upon the left bosom of the bodice, Agnes was wanting to place one jewel. But there was nothing in Maid Buan’s jewelry-case she was liking; so she left it bare.
And the skirt, all scattered with brilliants, was soft, and wide like a country girl’s attire.
Along with the gown Agnes was making two shoes, tiny things of black with silver buckles set with three brilliants. She did not know just the shape of Maid Buan’s feet, the way she was making the shoes to fit her own. And she made a clip for the hair with the last three brilliants in the jewelry case. And she made a black mask as well, for half the face; and she cut eyes out of the mask, and they long and narrow.
* * *
WHEN THE GOWN was done and the shoes set beside it, then Agnes looked on it and falling in love with her work said,
‘No one will wear this gown but myself.’
Then there were only three moons left before the masquerade. For two moons Agnes fitted the gown to herself. And on the last moon of all she caught up what fabrics came first to hand, the samite, the sendaline, the cloth of gold, and with handfuls of lace, ribbons and ruffles, she stitched together another gown for Maid Buan. The maid was quite pleased with it, and it was quite good enough for her, too.
And when that second gown was finished, Agnes looked again on the black velvet hangings that covered Maid Buan’s mirror on the wall. And she stepped over to them and lifted them, uncovering the rich, strange carvings of the frame; and she looked deeply into the image in the dim, silvery glass.
With the rising of the final Moon before Samhain, Agnes went down to the long low hall and laid herself down to rest. Weary as she was, she was yet a-tremble, for the pleasure of the thought of the beautiful black gown. And then fear began to grow in her, and doubt. Sure now, someone would know her as the woman who washed the steps; the bandits would cast her out from the ball before a general mockery.
She paced the hall, and stepped up to the window. The moon was sinking through the grass. And at last the girl did manage, uneasily, to rest: then her resting sat on her like a stone, and she couldn’t get up.
And the Moon sank, and once more the stars wheeled r
ound to touch the Samhain mark, when all souls and dreams are loosed. And for four and twenty hours the Moon did not rise nor shine.
And the masquerade began, and Agnes slept on.
22. Of the Masquerade
DURING THE LAST MOONS before the masquerade, Lady Arianna was closed up in her garden, alone. Never a soul saw her in that time; but sometimes lovers strolling beneath the garden wall heard a soft low humming there.
And in that time, on the streets of the village across the lough, the countryfolk were shaking their heads. And their young daughters went down to the lough fifty at a time, ringing the bell and calling to the ferrymen, ‘Take me across, now! Let me go into service in the abbey!’ ‘No, take me instead, I’m more clever and willing!’
And in the long low hall the serving girls were hugging and kissing one another, the way they knew their service was reaching an end, and soon they would be rewarded and sent home again. The thought of their old parents was making them smile a sly and wicked smile. They were no more the sweet obedient lasses they’d been when they had come.
‘It is not the same for me,’ Agnes told them. ‘I’ll be taking no duais, let the steps be as bright as they can be.’
Agnes had dwelt on the crannog in the mist then almost the full term of service. Nine Moons had risen in the time since she had come across on the Swan Boat. And more, the Hundred Steps and a Step were clean, and many a time Old Meg came calling for Agnes, to be sending her on her way. But Agnes kept away from her, and could flee when she wished into Maid Buan’s chambers, where Old Meg dared not set foot.
In the bell-tower on the moon before the lady’s masquerade there was darkness and quiet, save for the soft hiss of the embers, and the passing of moonbeams through the window.
In that window the man was sitting, one leg dangling in the room, the other bent on the sill. He was dressed plain and dark, the way free-holding farmers might have gone to church in Day. His hair was dark and unruly, with a streak of silver above the left temple; his face was troubled. In his lap was curled his long-haired white cat. Her chin was resting on his hand. On the windowsill beside the man’s foot lay a card, face down.
The shining mist washing and lapping at the wall beneath the window made no sound. Far away stretched that waterish silence underneath the moon. Clouds came, covering the moon, the way the darkness deepened, and the room was lost to sight.
