The door in her hand was drawing back to close itself, but, taken by a notion that if she let the door close on her she would be trapped there, and tumble down in sleeping till the end of the world, she held it firmly, while she bent forward and down over the figure wrapped up in sheets and bedclothes like a mummy.
‘Sir James! Sir James, can you hear me?’
And she murmured a bit of something else out of Master Aengus’ tables.
And the snow whirled up outside the window, and the door leapt to close itself, and almost snatched itself out of her hand, but she held it fast – and the Sleeper’s breast rose and fell in a sigh, and his lips parted, and one cheek twitched.
‘Sir James, what is it you’re seeing? Can you not see me?’
And a branch threw itself against the window in the wind, and the Sleeper’s eyelids twitched, and underneath them the balls of his eyes darted about.
‘Sir James, what is it you’re feeling? Can you not feel my hand?’
And she reached out and took hold of his thumb.
Then his eyes flew open, his nose snorted in a breath of cold air, his lips parted – his face was full of dread and horror at something – something in the room about him which she could not herself see – and his eyes rolled about, caught sight of her, and for a moment seemed to know her, and sought to warn her, of the dreadfulness of dreams, of the evil of the Night, of the emptiness of desire – when the door leapt back to its jamb, pulling her back, her hand wrenching away from him, and he lapsing at once into a deathlike mask of sleep. Until she fell out into the hall again.
She breathed there uneasily, and felt in the air about her the hostility of the Sleepers, meant for her.
It’s not, she thought to herself, waking they’re wanting – not so long as the Night lasts. How dreadful Night must appear to them, that are not used to it. And she thought, They are dreaming of Day, and let them dream on, without the hindrance of my meddling.
She descended the front steps and went out the main doors, and saw on the drive nine of Arianna’s rogues and jades awaiting her.
One laughed, and drew his silver pistol, and thumbed back the hammer of it.
Very still she stood there. But she would not go back into the house. So she stepped down to meet them.
‘You may take me,’ she told them, ‘and do your worst to me; but you’ll never win him back into that jail.’
One of the bandits jumping down off his horse strode to her, and knelt in the snow in front of her.
‘Lady,’ he said, ‘we’ve no wish to be hurting you. You may come along with us now, or go another way, as pleases yourself. It’s only the Bacach we’re seeking, to carry him back into the mist, and into the crannog. And that for his own welfare, the way there is many a danger for him out in this country. And most harmful of all is that place,’ he said, raising his arm at the house, ‘the way that place, if it find the Bacach again, will see him die and fall down into dust. Never let him come here! Never let him see its walls again!’
‘Thank you,’ she told him, ‘for your kindness. Only, why are you helping me? I’m no friend to the Night or any of you all!’
‘Lady, do not be wronging yourself so! You cleaned the Hundred Steps and a Step, did you not? And do you think any daughter of Day could be doing that?’
Down the long drive she walked, and along either hand of her the robbers and jades in their scarlet and black cloaks bowed, and took off their hats to her. But still in her heart she didn’t trust them, so she went first to the lake, the desolate lake. Where for a time she listened to the wind crying in the dead dry sedge along the ice, crying, ‘Always! Always!’
‘Ah, and we’ll see about that,’ she said, and when the Moon went down into the hill she gave the riders the slip and stole away back to him.
* * *
SHE LED the man down along the Bride. Bandits hidden in the village almost captured him, but knowing the lay of that land, Agnes eluded them, and she took the man away eastaways, across the Blackwater and across the Suir.
A flock of black birds, bigger than crows, flew over their heads, and Agnes felt ill at ease. Were birds not Arianna’s messengers?
‘I feel kinship with the birds,’ said the man, looking up after them. ‘I want to be free like them. Birds, let you be coming back for me!’
* * *
‘IT WAS EVER strange fancies taking your heart,’ she told him, walking in the moonshade of a hedgerow.
After a while he said, ‘What was I like, before?’
And she began to tell him of himself, of the ruined man he’d been, and how he’d wooed her, and how he’d drowned the Sun to win her, and vowed to bring it back.
He only said, ‘It’s the White Hind I remember, and nothing at all before her.’
‘It’s lying you are,’ she answered him. ‘You do remember. You remember it all. You only say you can’t recall it, the way you couldn’t be facing me otherwise.’
They did not speak after that. They went a long way together, fleeing the bandits, hiding under hedges and rocks in the high places.
The man was carrying the mask, looking on it always.
‘Why do you seek the White Hind? What is it you are looking for, then?’
‘I look for myself,’ he answered, gazing on the mask.
‘Are you lost, then?’
‘I am here, but my wholeness is missing.’
‘Go away, Master Aengus! Go where you will never see her, never hear of her, where no one will bring her to your mind!’
After a long while, the man sighed, and lay down with the mask cradled in his arms. He sang, softly, a mad song:
‘Over the earth is moving the wind
Relentlessly; I stand here
Still; she at the back of the wind
And beyond.
‘She travels here, she travels there
Wherever her fancy leads;
But her fancy never leads her
Where I am.’
She stared at him. She pulled at him, but the man wouldn’t be budging from that place, and so she must lie down beside him, and lay the half of her cóta mór across him to warm his crippled leg.
Slowly the stars wheeled into and out of clouds.
About the middle of the darkness Agnes rose, and she took the mask of the White Hind away from him, and going far apart she put it under hard earth beneath the snow.
And she left him, and walked by herself in the snowy Night.
It was three moons, she did not go back to him.
* * *
MEANWHILE the Bacach lay dreaming in the snow. He didn’t know that Agnes had risen from his side, or that she had stolen away the mask, or that she had gone away. He didn’t know that the Man Who Should Have Slept was even then sharpening the points on his arrows. He didn’t know that something else was watching after him from a bit of wood on a nearby hill. That was a little beast of the wood, pale as the snow, delicate and arching as a willow, with small silver horns and a golden torc twisted round her neck.
The Bacach lay dreaming while the White Hind slipped out of the wood and crept down softly to his side. He lay dreaming still while the dark man appeared on a far-off hill, and raised his bow, and shot an arrow into the beast.
The White Hind took the arrow full in her throat, and she staggered, and tarried, dreadful tarrying; she swayed a little over the man laid out on the snow before she fell, heavy falling; and she died.
The man in the dark gray cóta mór stepped down over the Bacach, and troubled his leg with the tip of his boot. The Bacach stirred, but the man bent over and whispered to him, ‘Now, now, brother, don’t trouble yourself! It’s nobody that’s here, it’s nobody at all, only your long lost beloved brother Fergus, come to pay a call! Dream now and stay dreaming! Dream of your love lying and dying for love in your arms.’
The dark man laughed, and uncovered his face. And his face was ghastly and grim and mad, the way he hadn’t dreamed in all the months of the Night. He couldn’t be dreami
ng, you see, and he didn’t dare rest, for fear he might fall asleep like all the Sleepers. Because he was the Man Who Should Have Slept.
‘Well,’ said he, grinning, ‘my brother Aengus, won’t you even bid your dear brother Fergus good-evening? It’s so long since we grew up together, and swore ever to be true to each other, when we mingled our blood together. Where are your fancies, airs, and powers now? Who studied better, you or I? And who learned best?
‘You stayed at home after our father fell, but myself, I took the rebel road, and I went across the Sea for it, and worked on the work of our land, and you doing nothing but studying after your heart’s desire. And I hated you for that, and for the traitor you are.
‘I knew it was your work, when I saw the black spot on the Sun,’ he said. ‘It was in a far land I was then, but I still found the needed ingredients to mix a brew to keep me wakeful in spite of anything you or the old man could do! Oh, this Night of yours is a fine thing, brother, if it let me come back to my homeland, and kiss my kin once more.’
And he said, ‘Oh, I came back again to the Bride, and I waited and watched, until I found your trail. You let my love die, brother, and you stood by while the King’s men hounded me out of home and country, but you never were thinking that one fine night would see me revenged on you!’
The dark man slung off his bow, and put that into the Bacach’s hand; he slung off his pouch of arrows, and tucked it up under the Bacach’s arm.
And he took up and brandished a sword in his hand.
‘What are you thinking, brother Aengus, that you find me with our father’s sword? It was me should have gotten it, not you; I found it again in the Night; it was in a dead hound’s breast; fancy that, right where you left it! You’ll not get this back again!’
The Man Who Should Have Slept turned and left the Bacach with a laugh. And after a time the Bacach was freeing himself out of his dreaming, and stirring and opening his eyes.
He sighed, and saw at his feet a lady stretched out, as lovely as the lee. She was dressed all in white, torn and ragged and airy as lace. Her long throat was arching up his thigh where the old wound beat, and her head in his lap, and in her throat an arrow, and the blood from the arrow staining all the front of her gown, and the snow also all about her skirts and feet and where he sat was red, red with her cold, cold blood.
For a time he was staring at the dead woman stretched out on the snow. He had never seen her before, never in his life; but there was something about her, something – and then he saw in her pale brow by the start of her dark hair two small nodes like the start of silver horns, and round her throat a torc of twisted gold.
The man looked down and saw in his hand his grandfather’s longbow, and a quiver of arrows alongside his leg. He looked up, and his hands cast aside the bow and arrows, and his eyes saw that three blackbirds were flying across the clouds by the Moon, high up away from the Earth.
His cry was choked off under the clouds, and few would have guessed it came out of a human throat.
27. Of the Dark Wood
IT WAS THREE MOONS, Agnes did not go back to him. Then she found his tracks and followed them.
A line of wagons crossed her path. The wagons were brightly-painted and clad with tin, and the pans and pails hanging from the sides rang and clattered like rain.
‘Let her love you, young man! And what are you doing walking through the gentle Night, alone?’
‘It’s searching I am for another. Tall and dark he is, with one white lock, and not strong, the way he is limping. Have you seen him?’
‘Not the buckle of his shoe. But climb up with us, and if we find him on the way, you will, too.’
‘I’ve got to be finding him, do you see. His wits are limping too, and I don’t know what will become of him.’
‘Climb up, and we’ll keep a sharp eye out! We are going to the Fire – do you not count the stars? I’m Bera, and these are my girls Brigit and Buana. And you now, young man, what are we to be calling you?’
She answered, softly, ‘Aengus.’
The old Tinker woman smiled a smile that split the whole of her face in two. She held out her hand. ‘Aengus, climb up, and we’ll look for your friend along the way.’
‘Yes,’ she answered, and taking the woman by the hand, she went up beside the daughters on the plank seat.
The line of wagons sang and rang, down dale, up slope, with lanterns swinging like fire-flies from their tails. Alongside the wagons went many on horseback: some Tinkers like the wagoneers, but the rest wild women and men with pistols and scians at their belts, and eyes bright in the dark. Arianna’s bandits and jades, hunting the Bacach. But they didn’t know her on Bera’s wagon, the way she was another Tinker, and in disguise.
The Tinker girls talked to her, and laid their hands along her knee, and she must be telling them something of herself and the man she was looking for, but she could never remember, afterward, what it was she told them. In her heart she was cursing herself for the harsh words she’d lain on him. In the middle of it she broke down coughing, and staining her handkerchief red, so Bera put her back in the wagon and laid her down, and one of the girls lay alongside of her for warmth. They clucked their tongues and turned their eyes sorry-wise, and the mother shook her head. Then the two girls quarreled over which of themselves would be getting to lie alongside the young man to warm him.
But Agnes was drifting in warm and in dozing, deep into the deep. Dim and faint she was hearing them quarreling, and the words of the tale their ma was telling them to keep them still and attentive; so far away it seemed to her, so far herself seemed from herself!
‘But didn’t she fight against it?’ asked Buana.
‘Oh, it wasn’t that she didn’t,’ answered Bera from the front. ‘But what was it she could do?’
‘Run away,’ said Brigit.
‘Fie now,’ said Bera. ‘She was only a girl, and the other was the Lady of the Lough! Only a few of the gentle people could have stood up to her. And less than a few would have defied her as Princess Maeve was doing.’
Agnes closed her eyes, listening to the Tinker women talking on about the fairy tales as though they were truth.
‘And when will the curse be put off her?’ asked Brigit, the way in stories there is always a way to put off curses, and the way is always found, unlike in life.
‘This is the way of it,’ answered the mother, ‘that Princess Maeve will only return to her own shape upon her betrothal to Prince Og. But Prince Og defied the lady, and she cursed him with forgetfulness, and exile in the Day-land, forever, and there in that place he fell in love with a human girl, a daughter of Adam; and as to Princess Maeve, she followed another path.’
‘Hush now,’ whispered Buana, ‘you’ll be waking young Aengus from his dreaming.’ Agnes felt the brush of soft lips across her brow, and a fragrant breath murmuring, ‘Dream, sweet man, dream.’ So she did.
It wasn’t they not knowing, was she woman or man. It was only they letting people be what they wanted to be. She wore a man’s clothes and a man’s name; so it was a young man the girls tended to, and a young man they carried in their wagon, and laid down on the outer circle in the red light of the needfire.
The heat of the great fire was blackening the hill, melting the snow even outside the rings of wagons, and warming the ground. And the heat of the Fire washed over the young man on the ground in three great waves. It dried her hair, it dried her clothes, it dried her flesh and bones.
* * *
SHE SAT UP, looking in the Fire.
It was a huge beehive risen on the hill. The flames were spiraling up and about, wreathing into smoke. And from one hand a dozen lasses came out of the dark, bearing over their heads a great nest of wildflowers, primroses and brambles, blooming even in the snow in the Night. And atop that nest lay the body of a girl all in white, tattered and airy as lace, with a great red scarf wrapped round and round her throat, and a golden torc clasping round the scarf.
The lasses took the
nest up to the needfire, and they shifted to place it on the top, so that the flames withered the roses and wildflowers, and the thorns sparked, and the body of the dead girl was joining with the smoke, and becoming no more than air itself.
About the needfire were gathered a thousand or more of the bandits and jades, Arianna’s folk. And on the far side of the fire Agnes could see a fine fair carriage, drawn by twelve horses, and Arianna herself was standing there, grieving.
‘But who was she?’ Agnes was asking. To which one in passing answered in low tones,
‘’Twas one well-loved by the old Man of the Bog. But she is flown now with the birds.’
Then Arianna turned on her heel, and went up inside her carriage; her coachman cracked his whip, and lady and robbers and jades rode galloping away into the Night-land, searching for her Bacach as they had done for moon upon moon, with gallous small success.
At which the Tinker lasses and youths came ringing the fire again, and were grasping one another’s outstretched hands, and beginning a slow somber dance. In time the steps of them flashed quicker, the way it was not for long they could be withholding their joy in the great vast spaces of the Night-land. The last of the robber women and men were dancing with them, and their silver spurs were flashing in the fire. From out of the dark on every hand others were climbing, carrying bundles of twigs and logs and many other things, and casting them onto the pile.
More of them came, curious folk, boys and girls, and bent old people, and many tongues were spoken among them, and there seemed no lack of understanding. They wore the dress of different lands; some were fair and some were dark, and some in finery and some in rags. But there was a look and a gleam in the eye of all of them, so that they seemed all kindred.
A child came up to her with a cípín of birch in his hand.
‘What are you burning?’ she asked the child.
‘Whatever we want,’ answered the child, and asked her, shyly, ‘What do you want?’
Bitterly she shook her head. The child moved on around the fire, and she reached into her sack, and took out a book, much used, so that the title on the spine had worn out with smoothness.