Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales Read online

  "Have you a barn?” said Kit.

  "I's a fire,” said Imp Jinny. “Come in and keep wind out. I can see lass is dowly."

  They stamped and dripped and stared. A low room, bronzy with peat smoke, heaped with apples. Sweet and poignant with their scent. And not low after all, but racked and raftered, hung with anything to hand. Bunches of potherbs, besoms and birdsnares, shears and riddles and a swift of yarn. Swags of old washing—smocks and aprons—kippered in the air, as stiff as stockfish. Lanterns and pruning-hooks, ladles and rushlights. Strings of eggshells. Legs of mutton. Riddlecakes hung out to dry. A ball of thorn twigs, trailing ribands and old holly. Jinny ducked beneath. “Mind urchin,” she called. A tiggy drank snuffling at a dish of milk. “Been at wort and gets to singing. Now then, thou rantipole. Mend tongue. Or I'll peg thee out i't apple trees, as a souling for t'birds.” She nipped down a sallowed petticoat from under the thack, took a jacket from a kist, and bundled them at Thea. “Get thee doffed.” She measured Kit with a glance. “Crouch up to't fire. Y'd look a right mawkin in my petticoats."

  "Thanks,” said Kit.

  "Not at all. Thowt it were foxes at my ewes in lamb. Dropped a stitch, I doubt. Tea. Y've tea i’ Lune?” Jinny swung the kettle over the fire; she scrabbled out leaves from a bright tin, painted gaudily with wrens and garlands. “Stockings and all, that's right. Peg ‘em up. Lad can tek blanket. Now then, there's cock broth. And a tansy after."

  Deep bowls of it, fork-thick with leeks and barley, fowl and carrots; Jinny broke them shards of oatcake for to sop the rich broth.

  They ate. The snow pummeled at the windows; their clothes dripped and reeked. Imp Jinny walked to and fro, knitting and muttering and squinting at her heel, in a fury of pins: as thrawn as if her yarn were nettles and all her kindred swans. Born half a sleeve behind and not caught up. You'd think she knit them at the stake. “Purl and plain. Meks three. And—craws eat it!” She knit badly, Kit saw; the yarn snagged on her roughened hands, the stocking bunched and spiralled.

  "Mistress Imp?"

  Jinny turned, twanging with laughter. “And thy name's Kit Catgut. Imp's what I do. Graff apples to crabs. Hast etten Nonesuch? That were mine. And Sheepsnose, out o Seek-No-Further. And I's no Mistress, neither. Langthorn Joan's Jinny. Jane Owlet. Awd keeping pear's what I is. Warden. I'd eat dryly.” The old hands crooked and looped and darted. “So yer out Lune? How came yer by Cloud?"

  Kit, muffled in her patchwork quilt and downheeled slippers, tried for manly. “Seeking work."

  "Can you do owt?"

  "Undo,” said Thea.

  "What I can,” said Kit.

  Jinny pursed her lips. “Work. Well, there's threshing to Swang Farm. A rough gang for lasses; but there's straw and stirabout, and happen a few coppers. Got a knife?” She hefted it and tried the edge. “Aye, that's good.” She gave it back to him. “Ye could try yer hand at binding besoms. Up moor.” She was setting the heel now, storklegged with aggravation. “Come March, ye could clap eggs for Ashes. Do ye not i’ Lune? No? Well, I'll set yer i't road on it. Craws!” Her ball bounded away; Kit caught it. “Thou keep petticoat."

  "Ashes?” said Kit.

  "Eh well, there's always Ashes. Or there's never spring. Gangs out wi’ guisers.” The Horn was rounded of her stocking; she sighed. “And byways, there's a barn up Owlriggs, void and dry. Ye could lig there for a piece. While lambing, anyroad."

  "Many thanks,” said Kit. “How—?"

  "Shake snow from me apple trees, I doubt they'll crack. Lilt me yer fiddle tunes. I like a tune. Can't make, but I graff words til ‘em."

  "Ah. D'ye know this?” Softly, Kit sang through Nine Weaving; then clapped into Jenny Pluck Pears and The Magpie's Bagpipe. No great voice, but a true.

  At his knee, by the fire, Thea crouched and set the cradle rocking to the rhythm of the dance. Full of skeins, it was.

  "Soft,” said Jinny sharply. “Do ye so i’ Lune?"

  "Do what?” said Thea. “Here's an ark for the urchin."

  An odd blue glance; the needles stopped. “Rock empty cradles."

  "No,” said Kit, dismayed. “Moon turn from it."

  Thea said, “I know not what it is. For bread or what?"

  "I see,” said Jinny. “Out Lune of Lune.” She stilled the cradle with her hand. There was a wooden rattle laid in it, a tumbling, turning wren; a doll like a darning egg, a poppyhead unfaced with years; an acorn whirlywhorl. Undone, it spilled a marble in her palm. “That were Het's."

  "Your lass?” said Kit softly.

  "Imped out,” said Jinny. “She were left by ragwell. Anyone's.” She whorled the marble; smiled. “I'd've never such a lass. Wick as thistledown."

  "Ah,” said Thea. “She would braid of her mother then, the moon. I see thine orchard bears the Misselbough."

  Jinny turned to Thea, puzzling. Something rueful; something awed. “So thou'rt Ashes still. Poor lass.” Almost, she touched the girl's thin cheek; but went to feel her clothes instead, turned smock and stockings by the hearth. “When I were Ashes—"

  "Not a lad?” said Whin.

  "What?"

  "Her bairn that died."

  "Drowned,” said Kit. “A lass. She said."

  "I see. Go on."

  * * * *

  Jinny peeled a bowl of russets, broadlapped by the dozing fire. They watched the long curls falling from the bright knife, the brown hands; they smelled the sharp juice spring. “When I were Ashes—forty year ago, and more—I kept back what I got. Oh, aye, come Kindle Night, they'd rived at me and mocked me, for I'd not had maid nor man. Unploughed. Waste o darkness, they'd said. Said nowt would spring of it. But what I'd hid weren't brat, nor siller, nor a gallop on another's hobby. Sitha, when I'd put on Ashes coat, I'd turned and wondered at glory o't world. All turning and endless. Stars and seed. They caught me up i't dance, threadneedle. See, it's endless, yet there's first and last. Same as like a spindle falling, thread and whorl. Same as peel.” And one long rose-moled spiralling fell flawless from the knife. “And I see'd how things go on by dying. How they're born o fallow. That I kept."

  * * * *

  They crossed a watersplash at dawn. The sky had put away its stars, undone the clasp of winter from its throat. It stood, white and shivering, all bare before the sun. No rose: a sudden glittering of frost, a lash of shadows, long and sharp against the fell; and there, where the water sprang, the reddening scratches of the alders. “Withies,” said Kit. “I'll cut, an thou bind them."

  Clumsy with cold, they set to work with knife and twine. The day clouded up. The water brawled. A field away, a boy went huddling in his outworn jacket, toward the lambs. Kit called to him, “Where's this?” but he ran away. The sheep ran too, all which ways down the moor, their rumpling fleeces heavy with the frost. They slowed from a trotting to a trundling, with their stilted lambs beside them, slowed and stilled and cropped. Kit saw the boy again, up lawside in a scud of stones, his hair as white as hawkweed. He peered from behind a sheepfold. Kit swept him a bow, and he ducked.

  "Do you steal children?” Thea said.

  "Some run away with me,” said Kit.

  They sat among the bare wood by the waterside, and ate what they had begged. It was scant enough, cold scrag-end and a lump of pease. A sup of bratted milk. There was twopence in his pocket and his trade in Lune, his fiddle for a ship and wracked, a witch's stolen daughter by his side. My lady's malison on both. He looked at Thea, silvered by the cold fine mist. He'd waked sometimes to see her watching, silent as the moon. He knew her changing face, her dark and bright; he saw and he desired her as he would the reachless moon. Her soul was elsewhere, even as he lay with her, amid the bright leaves burning.

  Jumping up, Kit looked about the lashy wood. “It's almost spring,” he said. “Here's blackthorn out.” It flowered from its bare sticks, white as souls. He gathered twigs of it, the bonniest of all. It twisted, green and sinewy; he'd use no knife. He made a garland of it for her leaf-bright head: a crown too sharp to wear.


  * * * *

  Cross and cross between the ash pegs driven in her crucks, old great-armed Imp Jinny told out her threads. Nine skeins unwinding, drawn as one, and dancing in their creels; then down and down, from hand to peg and to and fro, until their measured ending. Eight of wool; the ninth of moonlight, turning on its reel of dark. She was making a warp.

  The fire was of thorn. It caught the sway and draw and crooking of her arms, and glinted in the scissors at her waist; it cast a creel of her in shadows, cross and cross the room. Our cage is shadows and ourselves.

  As Jinny told her warp, she sang, no louder than the rasp of wool, the crackling of the little flame.

  "O the broom blooms bonny, the broom blooms fair..."

  Cross and cross, nine threads. That's one.

  "I have lost a sheath and knife that I'll never see again..."

  And loop and nine. That's two.

  "And we'll never go down to the broom no more."

  * * * *

  Kit remembered the kitchen in her mother's hall, stoneflagged and cavernous; the table, scoured saltwhite as a strand to windward, heaped with wrack of bloody game. Ah, piteous, their eyes, and taunting now, with acorns rattling in his gut. Blackcock and moorhen, ruffled and agape. Wet heather on a red hind's flank. The lean and louring hounds rose hackling at him, girning with their grizzled lips. They suffered him to pass; but watched him, crouching on their bones or pacing, silent but for rattling chains. Scoured as it was, the kitchen stank of them, of hair and blood and ashes, dust of pepper and old damp. On the great gaunt dresser, fishwhite pewter dully stared. The fire whirred and reeked. And Morag squatted with a hare to gut, limp and lolling in her bloody apron. Madam? I am sent to bid you to my lady. In her closet, she did say. The log fell in; the shadows jumped. And perhaps Morag twitched at her high shoulder, like a preening crow; or it was shadows, or his smoke-stung eyes. She rose to meet him, knife folded in her apron, capped and barbed. I come. Formal and contemptuous, as always. Sheathed. Ah, but where were all the servants in so great a hall? Who scoured and who swept? And he bethought him, late and suddenly: roe deer? On that stony island? What had come of his wits, not to marvel? Yet venison they had at table. No fish but eel pie, not a herring. Nothing salt. Nor sodden, come to that. He saw again the haunch of meat, the charred and shining spit withdrawn, the rusty cauldron tilted by the hearth. The fur and flesh.

  "Love? Who provisioned in thine hall?"

  "Morag."

  "Strange fish she caught."

  "Gulls,” said Thea. “Thou and I."

  "But venison?"

  "Ah. She hunts."

  * * * *

  The witch rose twirling, turning in the air to raven. Or to ravenwise—a something quilled and barbelled, clawfoot, but a woman to the fork. Thrice round the broch she flew, in widening gyres, over scar and thornwood, sea and skerry, tethered by my lady's will. At farthest of her swing was landfall, rust and desolate. The bracken stirred. She stooped.

  * * * *

  Margaret. Do you sleep now?

  I will tell this in the moonlight sliding.

  In my closet, Morag clasped the necklace round my throat. Cold souls, all witches, dead long since; cold hands, that late had plucked and foraged in the hare's blue eager flesh. Untwisting it about my breast, she pinched me with her bloody nails. Is't ripe? And then the long robe on my shoulders—ah, but it was soft as snow, as sleeping in a drift of death. My mother keeps it still. ‘Twas woven with the stars at Annis’ wake: night sky and moonless, shading through the blue, bluegreen of twilight, seen as through the branches of the thorn. And naked else.

  No sun, but at my fork.

  The old crow held the glass. My lady waits.

  I come.

  And in her high unarrased room, from glass to moondark glass, my lady turned and paced. Her iron casket on the table was unlatched. At her throat, she wore the stone it held: no soul, but Annis’ self, the true and only shard of night. The seed of Law.

  I stood, as I was taught.

  She turned and gazed at me. Bare as April.

  I had not yet bled.

  My lady, said I, to the stone. I knew its touch, ah, cold against the skin, and colder deeper still. Within. I knew her famished eyes.

  Her time comes, said my lady to her woman. By this moon. The souls?

  Two are kept, said Morag. I have seeled them for the hunt. A mort in milk, a maid in blood.

  And the third?

  Is come. Seed full. A pretty piece, the huntsman says.

  Shall have his fee.

  My mother touched my chin. Come, Madam. So she loosed the knot, undid the bright coil of my hair; she bid me to her table.

  * * * *

  Whin slept. Lying silent by her, Kit woke long and heard the clash of the sea. He saw its pale thrums shine and ravel. Moonset. Darkness then, the wavebeat of his heart. He counted. Nine for a secret. There was something he'd not told.

  That first night in the mist there was a third in bed with them. Half waking in the dark, he'd pulled her down on him, had murmured, fledged, had entered—ah, not Thea's air and fire, but the lap of earth. His grave. The spade bit deep. He saw the wriggling in the new-turned earth; breathed in the scent of earth and ashes, and of heather wet with rain. Still deeper. There, he touched a stirring, soft as moleskin, soft and dusk, and there, the quick and glistening neb. And at the very deep, a something, thrawn and wet: the root of dark, its flowering.

  * * * *

  The cards. I had forgot them, slid between rough stone and worm-gnawn panelling, behind the kist. You puzzle at them, at this book of scattered leaves. Know thou, they are Cloudish magic. Not my lady's art, but tawdry: a sort of cantrips that their wiling beggars use. Hedge sortilege. I had them of a witch—a windwife or a sailor's whore, I know not. Cast up. Still living, when I'd hauled her on the sand, a-twitch and broken, like a windwracked gull. She'd signed: Take. Keep. A box, a book of spells? Skin bag and oiled silk. I slipped it warily within my skirts: forbidden hoard. And then came Morag with her stone.

  I hid them. From her avid and contemptuous, her pebble eyes, her prying hands: myself I could not hide. And all that winter of my threshold year, I looked not thrice at them. My lady basilisk had work. In the waning of the ashen moon, she called me down, in cold stiff cloth of silver and an iron busk, to look upon the last of three set dishes for my maiden feast. A banket of souls. There were two laid up in store, like picked meats from the cracking of a gilded nutshell bark: a child scarce old enough to call a virgin, the betrothed of an outland king; her nurse. Like cage birds fattening, like haggards, leashed and belled. I'd fed them with my hand. Had toyed: which I repent. A poor mad glowering girl; a woman, silent, spilling milk. I'd tasted of their souls, their essences: green quince and bletted medlar, quiddany and musk. And now the third, but lately come: a hare, caught kicking, from the huntsman's bag. A handful of brambles, green and flowering and all. Leaf and prick. I saw a beardless boy, astonished, ill at ease in country boots. He bowed to me. I took him up.

  Thou turn'st the Hanged Lad on the gallantry; the Hare reversed.

  I see.

  Is't riddles, then? A sort of stars?

  Go on. But soft now, I am at thy shoulder.

  Ah, now thou hast them spread, in knots and gatherings and changeful congeries, across the nighted boards. Just so. They bear the names of earthly tales turned starry, as the Tower, and the Crowd of Bone, and all the figures of the moon and sky. What Imp Jinny called the wood above. And thou art lost in it. Thou hast no clew to wind thee through the mazes of that dance, unfellied and unfretted night. No windrose nor no wheeling Ship. O Margaret, I have read their painted book, an abstract of the airy world. But thou, thou know'st no tale of them, amazed as if thou mansionless looked up at heaven, saw its stars unstrung and scattering like a box of beads.

  I will tell this in the cards.

  Here's a black wench with a cap and anvil; see, she hammers at a fiery heart. That card doth signify that errant star which some call
Mercury. But they do call her Brock. She's a cutpurse of great bellies, and does lighten them; a picklock of maidenheads; a thief of souls. On Whinnymoor she lurks, and bids the silent traveller stand; takes nothing of him naked, but a coin, a clip. Those waifs that shiver, dance and shiver on the moss, in nothing but their own brief souls, she laps in her rough jacket, earth and bone; she slaps them squalling into breath. She is death's midwife and her go-between, the third in marriage beds. Her clip is kindling. Twice did she sain me, doing and undoing: at the door where thou didst enter, love, and at the jagg'd rift of my going hence.

  Here's Burnt Eldins. Burd Alone. She tosses up her golden ball outwith a hedge of bones. Its leaves are hands of children flayed, imploring. She is youngest of the Nine, those stars whose rising into dawn doth mark the stone of winter's death. I had the tale of Imp Jinny, how she winds the clew and finds her sisters locked up in Annis’ kist. How she sets them free. That card I never drew.

  Nor this: Nine Weaving. Eight are painted, bending to their wintry task. Ah, they blaze in their imprisoning. From their tower spills their endless web, the green world and that other, woven with a mingled skein.

  And here's the Rattlebag, turned tail. It shows a lad, whiteheaded as a weed; he claps the crows that flacker from his field of corn, all rooted in a sleeping man, a sheaf whose binding is a belt of stars.

  And turn, and he's the Hanged Lad, brave in winter, mid a winnowing of stars.

  The Crowd of Bone. That fiddle that the old year plays of Ashes, of her bones. ‘Tis strung with shorn red hair. Ah, it burns thy fingers, thou dost let it fall.

  And Ashes. Not her smutched and tangled guise, as black as holly-blotch, that waif in tattercoats that walks behind a wren's cold corse: that is not Ashes but her mute. This Ashes dances lightfoot, and at every step a green blade springs. Her hair's like fires that the May lads leap, a-whirl in wind. Far far behind her is an O, a crow's eye or a cracked bright glass. Her end. But for now, she's walked away from Annis’ glass, her eye of winter, out of that tale into this.