‘Have I, Mr Vasquez?’
Her breathing was troubled, her face hot and cold by turns, and it seemed to her that her steps were awkward and ill-placed with every step.
Side by side they were walking, and all at once she noticed that he was holding her hand in his; and it was done so smoothly, and felt so natural, that she hadn’t even been aware of the moment when the thing was done, and had it been him taking her hand, or her taking hold of his? This thought made her burn, and she envied him the safety of his mask, and she was looking away across the water and feeling she ought to be saying something and that they ought to be speaking, the way their silence was too eloquent of itself.
So ‘From what part of Spain are you from, Mr Vasquez?’ she asked him; to which he laughed and answered, ‘From no part of it at all, Maid Snowflake, but it was this blessed bit of an island saw me born and raised. And my name isn’t Vasquez at all, but of my true name I’ve no more of a notion than yourself, the way my natural parents didn’t see fit to own me. They gave me up at birth, and I was a foundling child, not so very far from here as things go.’
Then he was asking after her birth and upbringing. To such questions the maid had prepared many a glamorous answer, but to this man she could only tell him the truth of herself, little Sini, and her sisters Grisalta and Merrwyn.
‘Ah,’ he answered, ‘I’d have liked to have known your sisters, you make them sound so appealing,’ and Mielusine bit her lip, thinking he was right to say so, and that her sisters were beautiful, and put her to shame even to be speaking of them.
‘Faith, my own home life was no finer,’ he said lazily, seeming unaware of her confusion. ‘The way my foster father was only a countryman, but a farmer of his own land at least, and never a tenant on an English lord’s lands.’
‘But how is it everyone calls you with a Spanish name?’ she asked.
He paused in his step, and tossed a stone out into the lough, and gestured across it with a cípín to the village lights across the way. ‘It happened out there, outside of the mists, in Ireland,’ he said. And for the first time she heard pain and anger back of the laughter in his voice.
‘My foster father went to war against the English at Boyne, like all proper men of blood and fire – not that they were victorious for all that, or for all that their cause was the just one of their own freedom and homeland. And ever after,’ said Vasquez, ‘I held it hard against the English, the way I was sure that my own father had fought against them and fallen, and that, lacking their taxes and rents and takings of land to feed their King’s men’s appetites, my own father and mother would have been glad to keep me and raise me in comfort and honor. Instead I was bred up like an alien child in a drafty poor farmhouse, and saw my foster father old and broken after his defeat, and not even brave enough to flee. And my foster brother was not much better, studying all night like a priest, and not daring to raise his eyes against the English lords.
‘But myself now,’ he said, ‘I minded me of my true parentage, and I raised my eyes against the lords, and more than my eyes, and I was fighting them at every turn, until in the end the King’s law hounded me, and I had to flee across the sea. First I went into France, where so many of the princes of Ireland had gone to after Boyne; but I drifted farther away, hating even to be looking on the sea that lapped the English shores. I went into Spain, and took to calling myself Vasquez, though it wasn’t until this Night that anyone was believing I was Vasquez, though I am, as yourself can plainly see, one of the Black Irish, and dark as any man from Granada. And my blood,’ he said with a rueful little laugh, ‘runs as hot.’
And as if to prove it was so, he stretched his arm out over the water, and caught a snowflake in his weather-strong palm; and straight away the snowflake burned to water on his dark skin.
There followed a silence. At length Maid Mielusine put her hand out and let it rest on his shoulder. She was feeling a longing to be alongside him, and comfort him for all his pains and dreadful, manly hatreds burning away in him and disfiguring him underneath his laughter and jests.
He rose of a sudden, cast aside the cípín, and led her away. Before them the ground of the crannog stretched to its farthest point, where the lady’s garden was, and the byre of her hunting hounds. Vasquez stopped of a sudden, and looked back. She stopped along with him.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
He wasn’t answering at first, but still stared back. The Moon was almost fallen, and much of the abbey was sunk in gloom, and the first of the witchlights, floating about the abbey’s walls, were sparking and starting to glow, but not lighting the shadows much.
‘I thought I saw someone.’
He turned back to her. And then the eyes in his mask fell on her as if they saw her for the first time, and she swayed slightly forward, closer into his body, so that she could feel the warmth of his chest in its nearness to her breast, and she bit her lip, and right away stopped that, the way he was looking now at her lips and her mouth, and she didn’t know whether to close it or smile with it, only it felt suddenly huge and ungainly spread across the lower half of her face; all of Lady Agatha’s lessons were lost to her then; she found herself leaning forward even more, and he was bending and inclining towards her, and she saw his firm full mouth, and resolute chin, under the shadow of his mask. He turned his head and looked away.
‘Who’s there?’ he muttered, and she heard a note of danger in his voice.
He took a step back and drew his cloak across his shoulders. Mielusine looked.
‘It’s no one at all,’ she answered, but he was gone, and already swiftly striding through the mists at the end of the crannog, and turning beyond the lady’s garden past the byre.
Then she was ashamed, and for a moment she wanted to run after him, only her feet wouldn’t move at all, and she looked back in terror at the abbey. She saw a dark, tall, and lean shape emerging out of the gloom, attended by seven of the swimming witch fires.
‘Why,’ she said, ‘It’s only Mr Mac Bride, who has charge of all the fires and candles here. He’s not a creditor of anyone.’
But the sight of him, and the thought of herself white and nearly naked, alone on the ground by the water’s edge, shamed her and shamed her for what she’d been desiring, and she went back into the abbey, and didn’t follow after Mr Vasquez. And it was a long time, she was feeling guiltily, before she’d be seeing him again.
* * *
BUT IT WAS NOT Mac Bride alone. For the way of it was, an hour earlier, in Arianna’s bedchamber at the top of the tower, Gwangior, her champion, awoke. And he reached for the lady, but she was not there in that room. And he found his hand bare: there was no ring upon his finger.
Then he knew that she had cast him off.
And all at once fear took hold of Gwangior, who had never known fear in all his thieving life; and he shuddered and shook, and threw on clothing and fled down the Hundred Steps and a Step, and out into the mists; it was his frantic footsteps Vasquez heard.
And Gwangior found a Swan barge waiting, and a ferryman at the ready for him, despite the hour. Gwangior searched the boatman’s face; there was nought but stone to see there, and never any feeling at all. It was as though the man saw nothing before him other than a dead man, and a set of bones.
Gwangior shook all over, as if with ague.
But in the heights of the tower, Arianna let clothe herself, and she clothed herself in soft-tanned leather, with a jaunty cocked cap; and she took up a bow, and arrows.
And Arianna went down to her pen, to her hounds. There she let drop a shirt that she had herself stripped from Gwangior’s chest whenas they twined together: all stained with his sweat and his scent it was.
‘There, my darlings, you know what you are to do now, do you not?’ she purred; and all the hounds leapt at her skirts. And the lady Arianna passed with her hounds across the lough, and in the darkness of the mists somewhere in the orchards, amidst the wild apples, pears and quinces, there were dark doings and th
e sound of a man screaming, screaming without end, full of bloody horror and pain, until at last it fell stop, and was drowned in the howling of ferocious hounds.
And all dainty and trim, Arianna returned to the crannog, and behind her the ferryman poled the Swan barge, bringing back the torn and mangled body of Gwangior. In the boat before, Arianna sat calmly, and daubed with her kerchief at her tears.
20. Of the Dancer
FOR SIX DARKNESSES of the moon the witchlights were swimming low about the grounds, shrunken and dim; the candles went unlit, and merriments were suspended. And Arianna dressed darkly, darkly veiled, mourning Gwangior, who had been in the day the fiercest highwayman in the British Isles.
For a time Agnes gained upon the steps, the way the robbers weren’t going out on their kailees. She reached as far as the thirteenth step; she’d never seen so many clean at once. Eudemarec came to pay her a call from time to time, and his words lightened her labor. But it was not long to last.
When the candles were burning again, the witchlights swam up higher in the air, and the robbers were dressing more boldly than ever, if that was possible. Many were going to the dancing hall, to watch the dancers practicing: reels and wild jigs, contradances, quadrilles, minuets, pavanes – all the elder dances, and the ones they were creating. In the day the dancing hall had been the Lady Chapel. Huge it was and starry bright, the way the fishy witchlights loved to swim high up under the stone ribs of the arches.
All the dancers practiced hard, most of all the nine who were the lady’s wards, the way their time was coming. ‘Let you wait, now,’ they were whispering, and laughing slyly at Mielusine, who didn’t understand. ‘Wait for a masquerade!’ Mielusine was grateful for a moment of rest now and again, the way her legs were sore and burning.
On the close of that moon, while the robbers fared abroad on their kailees, the Swan Boat put out onto the lough. Aboard were three: two ferrymen, and a third figure clouded in a dark red cloak. They poled out so deep in the mist they were not seen from the crannog at all. The middle figure slipped out of the dark red cloak and sank into the waters of the lough, sank deep into the black waters of the lough.
Later on, the Swan Boat was poled back to the crannog. Two ferrymen poled the boat, and between them stood the Lady of the Lough, holding a reed, and it was white-naked she was, standing in the belly of the boat. Her face was pale as a new lamb’s pelt, and her dark hair streaming wetly down her back, and her body small as a virgin’s. She gave the reed to a man standing at the edge of the crannog, and he bowed to her and welcomed her into a great, warm, mantling cloak; the color of the cloak was as silver as herself.
‘Let her bless you, young lady,’ said Mac Bride, the way it was himself welcoming her. The old man bent like a stork, and kissed her two hands.
‘Only you, Mac Bride?’ she asked him, very calmly. ‘I was looking for another.’ Then naked under the warm white cloak, she passed him up the crannog unseen into the lady’s garden, and the silver-chased gate shut fast behind her.
The ferrymen nodded to the old countryman, the way they were mute; he gave them silver coins and sent them back to the landing; himself he walked round the circle of the crannog three times with a lantern in his hand, cleansing it free of all sin.
He never knew – or did he, now? – of the black-shadowed niche in the abbey wall, where someone was standing watching him. Agnes held her breath, and watched him pass. When the witchlights were fading, she went back into the abbey and to the Hundred Steps and a Step. And she never told Mac Bride of seeing him circling the crannog, nor of anything else she’d seen.
* * *
THE WINTER was long, it lingered all year, and the weather held cold and black, and snow ever falling out of mist over the lough. Only the wan lights of the village, reflecting off the water amongst the reeds and sedge, showed there was any world at all beyond the crannog. By an open window in the dancing room, Mielusine would go gazing into the lough, resting upon a high railing in the wind, thankful for its coolness.
Eudemarec had told her of Agatha. ‘Will you not help me keep her spirits up?’ he had asked. ‘For she must be surely lonely, toiling the long hours at her endless task.’
Why, she was wondering, would she not see Agatha? The answer was coming to her, only this, that she had betrayed her teacher. But she didn’t know how.
When the Moon rose, the other dancers went to their beds, hot baths, and suppers with their lovers. Mielusine lingered over the lough, warming herself in a velvet cloak Ino had given her out of their winnings. Mielusine understood that she was wealthy now, the richest of the wards, with as much money in her bank as the boldest bandits. She didn’t know what that meant, and little she cared, though she was glad to see Ino rubbing his hands and dancing his jigs at their fortune.
Little flakes of snow were wetting her cheeks, and she turned and went in, the way she knew the Moon now was somewhere up in the blackness behind the clouds.
She went out to the coiling stair and looked at the woman on the steps. That one had all her mind on the third step, scrubbing and rinsing and scrubbing again in the sallow light of a greasy candle.
For a time the Maid was lingering by the hangings, watching. She thought, Surely she is much changed from the time I knew her in the wood. But how? Perhaps that she is younger.
The woman on the step heaved her shoulders, stood and carried out her pail for fresh water. Mielusine stepped behind the hanging.
Back once more in the silent, solemn hall, Mielusine lighted a candle at the edge of the stage. The witchlights were dark, and only a hint of the moonlight gleamed off the leading in the colored windows high up in the walls of the ancient Lady Chapel. She thought of Vasquez. How long it had been since she’d seen him!
Already Lughnasadh had gone by, and the rogues and minxes had laughingly all made their handfastings, moons and moons ago. Soon, too soon, Mielusine would have to dance before the lady and the court; and she wasn’t ready at all. She stepped up on stage, took off her cloak, and began to dance. Round and round she flew, and it seemed to her that for the very first time she was getting the reel right, and showing some grace; and the prettiness of her gestures was entering into her. And the prettier she felt, the lonelier she felt, so that it was like a great ache inside her, black and chilling as the wet outside the windows.
‘You will always know love, Mielusine,’ Lady Agatha told her once. ‘You like a man, you fancy him; still and all it is not love, the way you are doing what you want. Then he is on your mind; it isn’t that you want to be thinking about him, indeed you don’t; all the same you do. You are bound by a fever, and you’ll not want to think it love, the way it comes only from your blood and the edges of your bones.
‘Is it love , you are asking? If you are afraid, then it is love.’
Mielusine stopped her dance of a sudden. She heard someone clapping in the darkness beyond the stage. She skipped to retrieve her cloak and hide herself.
‘Who is it? Who’s there?’ she called.
A figure emerged, ruddy in the candlelight. The man stopped clapping, picked up the candle, and offered Mielusine his hand. He wore only a wide sleeved shirt and muddy riding breeches. His hair was clubbed and powdered. She could not see his face, the way he wore a bodach mask, and it the most grotesque and ridiculous the maid had ever seen.
‘It is Maid Mielusine, is it not? You’re damned pretty, dancing here alone on a dark moon!’
‘Hello, Mr Vasquez,’ she said.
* * *
AGNES found a cat upon the steps, intrigued by the smell of the soap. She was a fat, white puss, with long hair, a small face, blue eyes, and a tight black collar.
Agnes set down the pail, smiling.
‘Well-met, puss!’ she exclaimed. ‘Did Mac Bride bring you from the manor? He never told me so.’
The cat bounded up in her lap, asking Agnes to scratch her chin. Agnes caressed her. The cat’s droning song reminded her of happier times.
‘How sleek is y
our coat! Now, someone has been brushing and combing you, taking great care; and I know Mac Birdie was never doing any such thing as that.’
Agnes frowned, stroking the cat. She looked out the window. High up, the walls of the bell-tower were dim and dark in the snow. It was said the Bacach had had his rooms there, when he lived.
The pails, the brushes, and the rags Agnes put away in the closet; and carrying the cat in her arms like a child against her breast, she went out into the snow, crossed to the tower, and began to climb into the dark.
* * *
‘DO NOT STOP,’ said Vasquez. ‘Dance again. Dance for me now.’
‘Yes,’ breathed Mielusine.
She slung the cloak from her shoulders and began to dance for him. He moved with her, holding the candle between them, the better to be watching her. Mielusine was looking into his eyes in the mask, paying no mind to her steps. Her body had no weight at all.
He set the candle on the floor and took her hands. ‘Now let you dance with me,’ he said. So they did.
He was holding her very close, and through her shift she was feeling the heat of him. And watching. What would his kiss taste of? Would it be sweet like cake, biting like porter, or fresh like a pear?
‘Come,’ he murmured, wrapping her in her cloak. ‘Do not dress. All are resting save the gamblers; none will see you.’
They went onto the dark lawns by the lough. For awhile they were walking in the snowy mist, not speaking, only walking in the snowy mist.
He leaned up against her, pressing her upon a iron gate. His mask was dark against the smearing lights of the village far away across the lough.
‘Why,’ she breathed, ‘do you always wear this mask?’
He kissed her ear and answered, softly, ‘The way I cannot rest, Maid Snowflake.’
‘But do you never dream?’
‘To dream,’ he laughed, ‘perchance to sleep.’
‘It’s sad,’ she said, ‘you make me. Who can cheat his dreams and not go mad?’
‘I am mad,’ he answered, kissing her. ‘What else would you be asking of a will o’ the wisp, a Beltane child, a Tinker’s foundling?’