Blood by Moonlight Page 5

  She sank down on the moss and closed her sore sad eyes. And she was resting in the moonlight, and nursing her bitterness, and dreaming what to do.

  While the woman was dreaming, the winds fell slack, and the sky cleared above, so that Moon and stars shone straight down on the old face of Earth. Upon a strange sound and noise made as well on the one side as on the other, the birds took wing into the sky, and the two sides encountered each other with such a terrible shock, as the Night sky darkened with their feathers. And the starlings fell upon the houses, into the river, and over all the Irish land, wounded and slaughtered, dead in the streets, rent, torn, and mangled.

  6. Of Aengus on the Watchtower

  MASTER AENGUS rode down to the sea, to the point of Knockadoon Head. He had gone there always, ever since his seventh birthday when a lady had taught him the Moon’s first name. And that had been the start of his seeking after knowledge, possessed him all his life. As if it had been rather wholeness he was seeking, and to retrace his steps to a place forgotten and lost.

  The roar of the white sea came calling, as the wind off the cliffs caressed him. The immeasurable mass of the Sea, like some inverted continent, broke groaning on the rocks.

  ‘Yes,’ said Aengus, smiling: ‘and I missed you, too.’

  There was a pile of stones on Knockadoon Head, and that old, very old. Once heroes of the Five Kingdoms had lived here. It had been their dun, their fortress. Perhaps the beautiful Hound himself had stormed these walls; perhaps Finn had feasted here; perhaps Diarmid and Grainne had found here an hour of shelter stolen from their endless circle flight.

  The top of the pile was broken, and there in the gap Master Aengus stood, the salt winds kissing and curling his hair. From thence he looked into the stars burning the waters of the bay.

  He thought on the woman who had been, once, his fever. No more was he feeling that madness for her. No more was she that magical creature, distant and strange, he’d seen across the lake. She was only Agatha. She was too real now.

  ‘Tell me then, my darlings,’ murmured Master Aengus, ‘Where is that song that once she waked in me? Where did it go?’

  As a boy Master Aengus had gone upon one rare dry summer night into the lord’s preserve. Soon his dog had left him, hot after a rabbit. Aengus himself walked alone through cool moon shadows, moss beneath his feet, ferns against his shins. He was fancying himself the lord, and that all this was belonging to him.

  He found a secret hayfield on that night, fenced in by trees. He stood half in shadow, enchanted by the stalks all yearning toward the Moon. He stepped unchallenged into her whiteness, and walked into their whispers.

  Many a time afterward he was searching for that field, asking the tenants far and wide, but he never did find it again. All he was finding were common fields, not magical at all, like his.

  Master Aengus did not go to church, neither the new-painted churches of the English masters, nor to the outlawed gatherings of the priests of his kind. He had his own Bible. He had written it himself. It was a book of but one page, and on that page but one line, and on that line but one word, No. But he never said No to his hayfield.

  Much later, a grown man buried in studies, he was feeling love for the first time in his life, for the smartly-dressed young beauty whose family was ruined in all but their name, and who was the old lord’s mistress, though some called her his ward, and others still his wife.

  He saw Lady Agatha across the lake, and he heard a song rising in him, and Aengus recalled the summer night long lost, and the whisper of the haystalks. He almost heard the whisper again, and almost knew its meaning. To catch a word here and a sound, and the sense of it just beyond his grasp. But all he found he understood was what wind cried in the sedge. And then a chill green rain was falling, and the lake was desolate.

  He had not dreamt the knowing of her body would mean the killing of her song.

  And now in the dark of the moon on the Tower over the sea on Knockadoon Head Master Aengus held a cípín of birch in his hand. He snapped the twig against the old stone. ‘So be it,’ said he. ‘I do not love her. I will not love her. I’ll never love again.’

  Anger lashing out of his eyes, he pointed up the frayed bit of twig to the moon over the sea. ‘I’ll go back to my studies and put a bad name upon love. No more songs for me! I defy you now more than ever I did before.’

  And Master Aengus threw away the cípín down into the Sea, into its white and roaring mouth. He listened to the waves. He had promised a thing to her: would he do it? Would he dare?

  ‘Yes, it’s truth,’ he muttered, nodding down; ‘and for memory of her song, I’ll do her this bidding, and bring her back the Day.’

  If he could. If it could be done at all.

  It had taken every bit of Master Aengus’ learning, and the most part of his strength, to break the axle and pierce the boil and drown the Sun in Night. And since that time it was as if part of his knowledge was blotted from his mind, and a part of his strength was lost. He did not know Agatha had been stealing his wisdom, poring over his texts in the attic room.

  Master Aengus made a circle of hand-small stones about him on the top of the tower, and laid himself down in the middle of it.

  For a full Moon and a moon Master Aengus stayed on the tower by the Sea. He rose when the Moon went down, and when she rose he dreamed, so that her light became part of his dream. And in his dream Master Aengus traced the path to that place where he must go, and he did what he must do, to waken Day and summon back the Sun.

  When he started forth from dreaming, it was in a palsied sweat he was. He shuddering, and dragging his bent tormented body to the edge of the stones, and looking down into the mouth of the abyss.

  And still the Sea was roaring, whitely roaring. It gave him back some peace into the heart of himself, to hear that endless song go on. He listened for awhile, gave her his blessing and went down.

  Slowly, as if still dreaming, Master Aengus rode through the warm summer of the Night, past hayfields and dark woods, until he came into the county of bogs.

  He rode the deep paths below the wet black cliffs of peat. The moonlight shone off the treasures buried in the peat, relics of the ancient nights: shirts and cartwheels, spoons, combs, bits of leather and hair. Those things had been buried there since before St. Patrick’s day. Deeper and deeper into the past he rode.

  Master Aengus rode out of the bog into fallow fields. The old moon was thin and broken in the cloud-flecked sky; the land was dim and strange. It would have been Lammas in the day. It was then he saw her, on a hilltop far away.

  Delicate and graceful she was, palely gleaming. Her side was to him, her face to the moon. Her body it was a slender arching shoot, undulant as a willow.

  She was a small hind, and her coat was white.

  For a long time Aengus was watching her. She was a brightness almost light, and somehow shadow for all that, so he could not see her clearly. It made her less real.

  Then she bowed and pawed the ground, as if to curtsy to the falling moon. And she trotted away and was gone.

  * * *

  THE DARKNESS was well on, and Master Aengus lying on the bare ground, and his cheek on the hard dirt road. He groaned, and rubbed the dreams away. He had forgotten the hind now. He remembered his promise to Lady Agatha, and the perilous path he must tread.

  He started on his way.

  He went up the hill out of the county of bogs, into the green hills, and he went on his way, and all at once he halted, and stared down on the ground.

  He found a trail of tiny hoofprints on the ground. They were such as a small hind might have made. For a long while, Master Aengus stared at that trail. Then he left the path he’d been following, and went in the way of that trail. It was the hunter in him, he might not help himself.

  * * *

  IN THE MIDDLE of Ireland he came upon a wood, and round the wood stretched a thicket of hedge. The trail led up to a stone patch in the ground before the hedge, and no hoofprints led
away out from the stone. Master Aengus tracked round that stone patch, and up and down and back and forth before the hedge, but no other hoofprints were there to be seen, only those leading up, and not a one leading on away. Here the trail ended. Master Aengus sat on the stone.

  He had lost the trail. His hunting skill had failed.

  After a time he looked through the ragged hedge, and spied something white moving on the other side.

  Very quiet he was, as he lifted himself up with his hands on the icy stone, and crept forward to the hedge, and peered through its pinholes at the thing that was there.

  It was the white hind.

  It was the first time he had seen her from so close. Her pelt was white as ice. She was horned, and a collar of gold clasped her neck. She was standing and stooping, and nibbling on greens sparsely scattered among the tree boles. Easily she moved a few steps to her right.

  Now, he whispered in himself to her, I have you, and you’ll not be free of me again.

  Master Aengus stepped along with her. The hind was taking no notice him. But he was looking through the hedge, searching for an opening big enough for himself to be slipping through.

  High was the hedge, half again his height, and he’d never be scaling it in time to catch her before she darted away into the depths of the wood. The only passages through the branches and boles of the hedge were no bigger than his hand.

  The whiteness of her moving down behind the hedge, and Master Aengus creeping with her, step for step and move for move.

  Down the way he could see a path in the field, and a darkness like an hole in the hedge.

  ‘Be still now, my pet,’ whispered Master Aengus. He took a step toward the path.

  But at that, the white hind lifted her head, turned about, and pranced deeper into the wood out of sight.

  Master Aengus raced to the path. He bursting through the opening in the hedge and dashing into the wood, but seeing no sign of the hind.

  A light snow began to fall. It was early for snow to be falling.

  In the middle of that wood Master Aengus found a lake. The branches of the trees were white, and the margin of the lake a silver collar made of ice. But the snowflakes shuddered and burned to water in the black face of the lake; and Aengus stood there stonily.

  On the farther shore something was standing by the ice collar of the lake. It was a small four-legged beast, and its pelt was all of white.

  It was herself. She was the white hind.

  Master Aengus stood very still, waiting for her to come around the lake.

  But the hind lifted her head and looked about. It was shy and nervous she was; she knew he was about. She was turning, and about to go away into the wood.

  I cannot run fast enough to catch her, he thought.

  Master Aengus pulled an arrow to his ear.

  I’ll catch her only in the flank, he thought. A little wound, just to bring her down. I’ll bind her, heal her, and tame her for my pet.

  To the arrow he whispered, ‘Go fetch me what I’m seeking, and carry it back to me.’

  And if he missed, and the arrow struck too deep? But she was almost gone now, and all at once the bowstring slipped his fingers, and the arrow leapt away across the lake.

  It caught her in the flank; the White Hind staggered from the wound, but the arrow flew back across the pond, and stuck in Master Aengus’ thigh.

  He cried out and fell heavy on the bosom of the Earth; the hind gave a little leap and vanished away.

  * * *

  LADY AGATHA started, and opened her eyes.

  She was lying on her mare’s saddle cloth, her body gray in shadow, the folds of her skirts agleam with rime in moonlight. Her mare was gone.

  She felt the duration of her dreams in her shoulders and in the ache of her hips. It seemed the longest time.

  Where have I been, she was wondering. What have I done?

  She brushed the ice flakes from her skirts. Ice flakes, and it Summer still, by the calendar of Day! Behind her she saw a wood ringed by a high hedge, that just at her back opened in a deep, dark hole.

  Before her a path was leading down across a river into the Night. The path was dark with the litter of black feathers. A few fires were burning on faraway hilltops. Arising out of dreams of the Day, of brightness and society, Agatha was shaken by the sight of the Night-Land. It was as though some immense Hand had stretched forth and blighted the land, despoiling it of human folk, of cheer, of reason, of safety. Somewhere behind those fields, Master Aengus worked.

  Silently she withdrew into the hedge.

  In the interrupted moonlight she wandered through the wood. The unleaved branches wove like wicker in the sky, burned by fires in the last day, blackened into peace. A sort of path was opening before her. A little snow was starting to fall. Far ahead at a crossing, a beautiful creature stood in her way.

  It was a small white hind, horned, wearing a torc of gold about her neck.

  Sure now, this is a creature too beautiful to live, Agatha thought. A mere hour will doom her.

  The white hind tossed her head and regarded the woman shivering down the way. The hind was bloodied at her flank.

  ‘Who has wounded you, now?’ asked Agatha. ‘It’s no more than you deserve, prancing about so trusting and innocent.’

  The sight of the hind rankled her. She was angry at her. The helpless, sad-eyed, weakling! She was glad she was wounded – she wished she would die.

  The hind trotted off, limping and slow. Agatha followed the blood spots in the snow through the silent, burnt forest. Soon the snow halted and stars cut through the clouds.

  She noticed she was limping. A tiny stone on the inside her shoe was cutting her instep, a bitter wound.

  The spots ended at a small ice pond, still and black as sleep. The vanishing tip of the moon glinted off the ice, and sank into the black.

  Agatha could see a woman in the ice.

  Rumpled and soiled was that woman’s dress, and her face ghastly pale, the mouth pursed and hard like the pit of a fruit, the eyes huge and dark. The look on that face she had seen too many a time for her to be forgetting it now. It was a look had frightened her below her window on evenings long ago, in the face of Master Aengus.

  But who should the woman in the ice be now but herself?

  Lady Agatha shook her head, and laughed, and that was the ugliest sound.

  And once more the stars wheeled round 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.

  The Fourth Year of Night

  In the fourth year of that Night, the Waking began to make a new society, without any looking back at the societies they had moved in during the Day.

  It no longer mattered what a man or a woman had been during the Day. The Low were now High and the High were Low, and yet some that had been low were Low still, and some that had been high were High as before. There was no way to foretell these things.

  But there were some who seemed to have hidden bonds with the Strong Places, and to know them as the Strong Places began now to know them.

  7. Of the Maid in the Wood

  BEYOND THE POND the blood spots failed, or she lost them; the path continued up. There everything was white, even the trees in snow coats. The stars were eating up the sky as Lady Agatha climbed among them. Beyond the hill the bow of the moon slipped hugely into earth.

  In another clearing, silent in starlight, nine trees stood in a half ring before a snowy hall. Lady Agatha stepped into the untouched snow, feeling it over the top of her shoes, secret and chilling.

  The nine trees were swaying as she passed them. The dim starlight discovered strange features in the bark, like faces smiling and closed.

  At the door of the cottage she halted. Seeping through the cracks of the door was the savor of onions, potatoes, carrots, turnips and gravy. She all but felt her knees give way, the smelling of it was so wonderfully keen.

  Her fist, frozen and hard, rapped upon the
door. A soft voice answered from within. It was a young woman appearing at the door, slender as a grass stalk.

  Her hair was black as black could be, unpinned and fine, clouding her face. Her face was small and delicate. The palest blush colored her cheek, but her skin was else as clear as whey. She wore a simple homespun kirtle, and you would have called it white had you not seen it against her skin. Her fingers were a wonder, slender and long, whiter than the ninth wave of the sea.

  She was the prettiest country-girl Agatha had ever seen.

  ‘Let her love all here,’ Agatha blessed the girl.

  ‘Mary increase you,’ answered the lass for a failte in her turn.

  ‘I can offer you nothing for your pain,’ said Agatha. ‘But will you take me in, and let me warm myself?’

  ‘Surely,’ said the country-girl, pushing back the door. ‘Poor lady, you are burning up. Come in, sit by the hearth.’

  Lady Agatha allowed herself be led across the clean swept earth to a hob-seat on the stones of the hearth. The girl drew off a bit of stew from the cauldron over the fire, pressing a bowl of it into Agatha’s cupped stiff hands, and talking all the while, the way of one too long alone.

  All at once she stopped with a blush of a smile and said, ‘I am Maid Mielusine.’

  ‘I am Lady Agatha.’

  ‘It’s the company I’ll be glad of. I hope you will stay a good long while! I wish we can be like sisters, do you think that may be?’

  Lady Agatha was leaning back against the stone, watching the stew in the bowl on her hands, unwilling to eat it right away, unwilling to show her eagerness. She looked up at the girl, at her trusting eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said. Her voice was hoarse, with a bit of wildness lurking in it; a perilous voice; the voice of a lost soul.

  ‘Oh, but you must be thinking me only too forward! There’s that difference in our stations, after all. But if you could stay awhile, after you are well…’

  ‘Sure, this illness I’ll never be well of,’ said Agatha.

  The girl fell silent, abashed at her own eagerness. Lady Agatha carefully supped the stew, cleaning the bowl and setting it down by the hearth.

  ‘It is calm here in this place,’ she was murmuring. ‘There is peace here, and you are innocent, Maid Mielusine, as I was. The perfume of your innocence pervades your house. I am tired now, and weary so that I wish I could sleep as the Sleepers are sleeping. But it’s the fever dancing round in me, and I cannot rest for dreaming…’