Fierce Enchantments

by Janine Ashbless

  I shrug. “I’ll go ask who it is, Mistress,” I say.

  So I do. The water is up to my ankles in parts, but I set my jaw and slosh through to the yard gate. As I reach it the bell clangs for a third time, a noise that now makes my teeth grate.

  “Who’s there?” I call loudly. There’s a spyhole hatch in the plank, but it’s made for a man’s height and so above my head.

  There’s no answer. I put my hand on the slippery wood, then find the crack between the door’s two leaves and peer through. It’s not yet proper dark out there, but my field of vision is no wider than the edge of a knife. Something moves—something white—crossing from left to right too swiftly for me to focus.

  “Let us in.” The voice is deep and masculine, and so close that I think for a moment that it’s been uttered in my ear, and I jump back startled.

  “Who’s that?” I demand.

  “Meg?” It’s a different voice this time—softer, but still a man’s. “It’s me: Finlay. Let us in, lassie.”

  The breath leaves my lungs, steaming. “Finlay,” I whisper soundlessly. It is—it is his voice. I remember it so well, whispering those sweet, meaningless promises between his kisses. My heart is clanging louder than the gate bell did.

  “We came back, Meg. Let us in. We came home.”

  A small sound is born in my throat, but dies before it can escape. “Truly?” I whisper.

  “Truly.” He has heard, somehow. “It was a long walk, Meg. Let us in.”

  I realize I’m crying—though I only know because the tears feel scalding hot on my cheeks. I brush numb hands across the wooden planks. I want to know if it’s true, I want to know who it is standing on the other side. But I dinnae want to see.

  There are no more calls for access. Nothing but silence—no muttering, no knocks, no impatient shuffle of feet. Absolute silence. Like the grave. Then behind me, the Mistress’s faint call: “Is it them Meg? Is it my lads?”

  Taking a deep breath, I seize the beam and lift it from its bracket. Then I step back from the door as it swings open.

  They stand there, the three of them: Rory and Finlay taller than the whippety Allan. They wear white now, not red; stiff white cloaks, and broad-brimmed white hats that drip with the last of the rain and cast deep shadows. Their breath, if they have any, disnae steam as mine does, and their indistinctly visible faces are pale.

  “Meg.” The broadest one, Rory, steps forward. “Where is my mother?”

  “In the house,” I manage to whisper. “She’s waiting for you.”

  One by one, they walk past me and cross the yard. They move slowly, like men who have walked themselves into exhaustion. They must have come a very long way indeed, I tell myself—from Purgatory they’ve come, or the depths of the sea—and without thinking I glance down. Through the puddled water Finlay’s feet gleam, bare and fish-belly white.

  Then they have passed me and are filing toward the lit doorway. I catch a whiff of dank, malodorous air, but it is too late now to refuse them. All I can do is trail at their heels.

  Their mother is waiting by the door. As they approach she lets out a squeal and runs forward, heedless of her fine slippers of Spanish leather in the wet, and she throws herself onto Rory’s broad chest. I can hear her laughing and sobbing and trying to talk, all at once and all tangled up. “You’re here! You’re back! I knew you were alive! I knew it!”

  Rory puts one hand on my Mistress’s head, a little clumsily. My stomach feels like it is full of shale; the Rory I knew would have caught her up and hugged her and whirled her around him. This one just waits, submitting to her hugs and her cries without reaction. I think even she realizes that something is wrong, because she draws back suddenly and stares up into his face. For a moment her expression goes blank, and then horribly awry—and then she laughs and squeezes his hands in hers, and turns away to her other sons. They stand like pillars of salt, almost motionless under her embraces.

  “You look so ill, my poor laddies! Come inside, come inside! Your hands are like ice, Allan! Come in before you catch your—Come and warm up.”

  I follow them inside, into the candlelight and the comparative warmth, where there are layered rushes underfoot to soak up the worst of the mud, and familiar faces to greet them. Rumor has brought every remaining servant into the hall, to see for themselves the return of the three brothers. They stare, eyes glistening, mouths open or set in twisted lines. There’s a susurrus of disbelief, an indrawn under-the-breath hiss of dismay. Hands flicker: head to chest, shoulder to shoulder. Figures that have pressed in close to see start to retreat, sidling or pushing backward.

  “Meg, help them off with these … things. I suppose they wear them onboard ship, do they?”

  I reach up, obediently, to take Finlay’s curious white cloak from his shoulders. It’s made of bark, I work out: great papery pieces of birch-bark, crudely stitched together, but clearly from a birch tree bigger and whiter than any I’ve seen in my life. Their hats are made of the same material. As Finlay doffs his and passes it to me, I see his face clearly for the first time.

  He’s dead. There’s no doubting that. I’ve helped lay out a few corpses over the years and I know that look. His skin is utterly bloodless and has an ugly glisten to it, and his eyes are sunken in bruised hollows. Only the flicker of the candlelight gives him any semblance of color or life, and I can imagine he would look much worse under daylight. And he smells, I notice now—they all do: a smell like the kelp piled on the beach below Dunbar after a storm. He smells of the sea.

  He looks at me for a long moment, and I feel like my heart has stopped too. His pupils are so dilated that the darkness seems ready to pour from them.

  How are we to bear this? How? I have caressed this young man and I have felt the ache of his leaving and I’ve wept for his death. I have—

  —in bed, at night, while my Mistress slept and the hours seemed to yawn like the depths of the sea, I have—

  —I have touched myself and imagined it was him, come back to me.

  Oh God.

  “Such strange hats,” my Mistress gabbles shrilly. “Where did you get them?”

  “There is a tree,” says Allan. His voice is flat and soft, devoid of feeling. Not one of the three has shown any hint of emotion. “It grows outside the gates of Paradise. That was as far as we could get. We couldnae go past.”

  “Well, I am sure they are very practical for keeping off the rain. You wouldnae believe the awfy weather we have had here since you left, my boys. The neeps rot in the fields.”

  “Mother,” says Rory, in that same even tone. “The rain—”

  “Let’s get you into some dry clothes; you’re drookit. And och, look—you’ve all lost your shoes. How did that happen, you foolish laddies?”

  “When the ship went under,” answers Allan quietly, but my Mistress is clearly, determinedly, not listening. She turns away, just in time to see the servants scattering down the hall.

  “Blankets!” she calls, angrily. “Build up the fire in the Great Hall, and lay the table, and mull a pitcher of wine! Draw fresh water so they may wash their hands! Fetch them dry clothes and boots! We will have a feast tonight, all of us! My three sons are hale and well, and back safe from the sea!”

  Finlay is still watching me with his black, black eyes. No breath stirs his chest. His curls hang in wet ringlets, and he would break my heart with his wistful, familiar beauty … if it were not for the fact that he is dead.

  I longed so much to see him again. I watched him ride away up that track with such pain. And now here he is, right in front of me. I could touch him, if I dared.

  “Come in, my bonny lads,” their mother urges. “Come sit by the fire!”

  I take the chance to flee to the kitchen, obeying orders.

  ♦♦♦

  Then she made up a supper so neat

  As small, as small, as a
yew-tree leaf

  But never one bit could they eat.

  ♦♦♦

  The three sons are cold company, as might be expected. My Mistress has got them sitting down at the head of the table when I return, with their backs to the fireplace, but they’ve no interest in what we put before them. I cut them the finest white bread, whilst the poker warms in the embers until I can dip it into the spiced wine with a hiss. But they eat nothing, and sip not a mouthful of that good hot mull when I place the goblets on the table.

  My Mistress hardly seems to notice. She’s pulled up a bench and she sits facing them, her hand on Rory’s knee, and she disnae stop talking. She prattles on about the weather, and the farms, and the servants. Nine weeks of gossip. And when she runs out of that she talks about their childhood adventures, and how Rory fell out of the Great Pine that day when he was eight and broke his arm, and how Allan tried to ride the Roan Bull but only provoked it to break the fence so that the kine were scattered for miles across the fields, and how Finlay shamed the priest on St. Swithin’s Day by correcting his reading from the Psalter.

  I want to stop my ears with my hands and block out her blether. But silence, I know, might be much worse.

  Poor woman. She cannae see what is in front of her.

  They watch her, and listen politely, and hardly speak a word. Their clothes steam as the heat from the fire builds. At one point Jacob comes in, grumbling and squinting and laden down with dry clothes from their bedchamber presses, but they decline to change into new attire.

  “Thank you, Mother. But we dinnae feel the cold,” says Rory softly.

  As I’m standing behind them pouring the unwanted wine, I notice that there’s a piece of seaweed caught in Finlay’s hair, its little brown bladders pale against the wet curls. It makes me shudder. But the worst moment is when the other servants come in to pile steaming hot food before the three brothers: pottage of neeps, and peppery haggis-pudding, and slices of mutton. They dump the food and scuttle away as if they’d been forced to serve lepers. The three men look down at the meal without interest. Then my Mistress, without apparently thinking at all—she’s in the middle of a soliloquy about who was wearing what at the Sunday service in the village kirk last week—pulls Rory’s plate toward her and cuts up his mutton into tiny pieces, as she must have done for him when he was a wee bairn.

  I dinnae think she even sees what she’s doing. But it’s terrible to watch. I feel my throat swell, and I turn away. I wish I could leave. I wish I could shake her by her thin shoulders until she sees what it is happening before her eyes.

  Then, abruptly, I notice the lull in her exhausting monologue. I turn in time to see my Mistress rise to her feet. Desperation is etched around her eyes, but there is a smile scrawled across her lips where none should be.

  “My poor laddies,” she says. “You are so tired after your journey that you cannae even eat. I’ll go see that your beds are made up.”

  “We are tired,” Finlay admits, but is instantly contradicted by his older brother.

  “We cannae sleep.”

  “We have tried,” Allan says. “But the rain …”

  She stretches her horrible smile. “The rain has stopped. You will sleep sound tonight, now that you are safe home. I will go prepare.”

  “Let me help you, Mistress,” I offer quickly.

  “No, Meg. Stay here and serve at table. Bring them anything from the kitchen that they choose. My sons are to have all they desire, tonight.” She turns away, her movements stiff, and walks off down the hall, leaving me alone with the dead men.

  There’s a long, unpleasant silence. I know there’s no point in offering them food. The three men watch me from eyes filled with the grave’s darkness.

  “So Meg,” says Rory quietly, pushing out his chair. “Will you sit on my lap, for old times’ sake?”

  His thighs are as broad as ever, though his slowly drying clothes are stained with salt. I remember his playful embraces and the rasp of his hairy skin, rough as bark, against mine. I shake my head. “I think not, Master Rory. Your lap has grown cold since last I knew you.”

  He disnae react, except with the slightest inclination of his chin. He disnae even blink. Not one of them has blinked since they arrived, I’m suddenly sure.

  I fold my hands before me, determined to wait it out. The platters of wasted food steam.

  “Pretty Maggie,” says Allan, with something approaching expression in his voice and—to my horror—a movement of his gray and bloodless lips that approximates a grin, “will you play at bob-apple between my thighs once more, for old times’ sake?”

  Oh how well I remember the fever-heat of his lithe body beneath mine, and the unaccustomed narrowness of his bucking hips, and the urgency of his thrusts.

  “I will not, Master Allan,” I answer him. “That’s a fruit that does not keep well in salt water.”

  He nods.

  Finlay presses his hands to the table and bows his head, and then lifts it to look at me directly. “Will you kiss me, my Margaret?” he asks, his voice as stripped and thin and strange as sea-worn driftwood. “For auld lang syne?”

  Oh Lord, help me.

  His kisses had always made me blush, unaccountably. They’d been nothing like his brother’s straightforward pecks, but instead gentle, lingering creatures of breath and warmth, caresses bestowed on my mouth and throat that seemed to have no other purpose than their own pleasure. They’d made me feel almost uncomfortable. I feel a tear escape and run down my cheek, which I dinnae doubt is as pale as theirs.

  “The taste of your clay-cold lips would be awfy strong now, Master Finlay,” I say. My voice is hoarse, but I try to speak gently. “It would do me terrible harm, I fear.”

  He disnae reply, but his expression holds me. I dinnae know what to read in his still, harrowed face. It seems to me that there is pain there behind the mask of cold flesh: an ache that cries for respite. But whether it is the fires of Hell or the gnawing cold of the sea that torments him, I cannae tell.

  I want to stroke back his damp locks. I want to see peace in those troubled eyes.

  “I’ll go fetch more wine,” I mumble, though they have done no more than touch their full cups to their closed lips until now. But I cannot bear this. I have to get away. My insides are knotting under my ribs.

  I get as far as the passage to the kitchen before my Mistress blocks my way. “Meg!” she cries forlornly. “Their bedchambers are damp and drear—the rain has entered and ruined the linen. I didnae know!”

  “Wheesht now,” I say, daring to place my hand upon her arm. “It’s the weather; it’s not your fault.”

  “But I should have seen to it—I should have been ready for their return.”

  “They took us all by surprise, Mistress,” I assure her. I’m relieved when she nods; shocked when she steps forward into my embrace and lays her head on my shoulder. I feel her narrow frame shudder, and I dinnae think it’s the cold to blame.

  “I cannae find any of the other servants. I wanted them to change the mattresses, but … I cannae find them anywhere. Even Jacob.”

  Cowards.

  I pat her awkwardly, stroking her shoulder. “It’s alright, Mistress. We’ll get it sorted.”

  “I wish them to sleep in my own great bed tonight,” she says, a little muffled against me. “That bed is warm and dry. I laid my fur pelisse upon it. They’re so cold.”

  My eyes half-close in dismay. The bed is big enough for three, certainly, but—Her own bed? For her dead sons? The thought of what might await her in the morning makes my skin crawl. “Is that … right?”

  “We will make shift elsewhere tonight.” Her voice, so weak and plaintive, becomes suddenly stronger as she pulls away and looks me in the face. There is something in her eyes—something that burns, that hurts, and that frightens me far more than the darkness in the open, watchful eyes of the dea
d brothers. “Go pile the fire in my room high, Meg. Dinnae stint with the wood. I want them to be warm.”

  No, I want to say. But she is my Mistress, and she is so alone, and love has broken her heart and her mind. I bite my lip and I nod. And I go out to the woodpile.

  Up the dark stairs with the log-basket on my back I go, as I have done a thousand times. But not like this night. When you lay a corpse out for a vigil you normally keep the room cold, for obvious reasons. But not tonight.

  On my knees in the split ashes, I build up the fire, coaxing the flames with my breath until they roar. The blaze scorches my pale cheeks. My insides are in turmoil. I dinnae know what to feel. I am torn between horror and exultation at this dreadful miracle. I am torn between pity and a wicked, secretive pleasure I will not confess to anyone until my dying day: the joy of looking upon a face thought lost forever, a face longed-for and hotly desired. I am outraged that God has let them walk again—and yet, in my deepest core, sick with gratitude.

  I am so afraid.

  But not just of the dead.

  Then I hear their feet, heavy and measured, upon the stair, and my heart nearly climbs out of my throat and bolts across the room. What do I do? I cast about myself in panic. I dinnae want to be cornered here in their bedchamber. But to go to the top of the stairs as they ascend—to see those corpse-faces looking up at me through the darkness, while they tramp slowly toward me—that I cannot bear. There’s no other way out, only a door to the tiny garderobe. I might go hide in there all night, crouched over the drafty, stinking hole. Would I be safe in there? I’m as sure as I can be that they have no need for such facilities.

  Ach—I have dithered too long. Their tread is at the door. I lift my sleeve to shield my face from the fire and I busy myself tidying the ashes, pretending not to have heard. My heartbeat punches me in the entrails, over and over and over.

  The door creaks and falls back with a slam.