Mistle Child (Undertaken Trilogy) (40 page)

The rich smell of mold and earth was in his nose and mouth at once. A familiar smell. A grave smell. The floor of the hollow was deep with soft soil, and in the center was the robin’s little mound of leaves. It looked to Silas like a small burial. Without hesitating, acting purely on instinct, he gently pushed his hands down through leaf and loam. Tiny pebbles, acorns, and cool dirt pressed against his skin. He probed a little farther. Perhaps eight or ten inches below the surface, Silas felt something not-earth scrape his hands. He drew it forth.

It was a small parcel, perhaps twenty inches long, made from thin oilcloth or perhaps from a sheet of uncut vellum. It was slightly rounded and a little open at one end, very stiff. Inside it, Silas heard a soft rattling. He climbed out of the tree with the parcel, careful not to spill its contents. He could sense the presence of remains, and in that instant, he understood what, or rather who, the Mistle Child might be.

Sitting on the ground in the fading light, surrounded by the snaking roots of the great tree, Silas opened the parcel.

Within were tiny bones and a small book. He opened the book briefly, and knew he’d found what he was looking for. His eyes welled with tears, for there, within the tree, was a place where hope had been hidden, but only sorrows had grown. He closed his eyes, feeling for the presence of this lost child. He sat for many moments, but no ghost appeared and he knew whatever else the tree had been long ago, it was now only a quiet grave.

He put the bones and the book back inside their vellum coffin and came away, carrying the Mistle Child in his arms. Silas followed the robin through the trees toward the lights now flickering in the distance.

As Silas approached the summer house, the robin departed. Night had fallen. The trees and hedges all about were strung with little fairy lights. Persian carpets covered the lawn and large tapestry cushions were strewn in all directions. Cousins lounged everywhere, laughing softly. Great lanterns dotted the lawn, and on low tables, drinks awaited their drinkers in cut crystal glasses and decanters that caught the light of constellation and candle both.

In the midst of the resplendent setting, Ottoline silently held out her arms to Silas, welcoming him back. She gestured to a place among some large pillows near a lantern. Silas sat down and opened the little parcel as if in a trance. The bones rattled softly as he took out the book. Its cover and pages were very thick, and when he held it in his hands, he could sense love and sorrow and fear pressed into it. He gazed over the small, hand-bound volume. On its cover were written the words
Booke of Erth
. Silas turned the pages and touched its inscriptions with his finger. He could feel the presence of the author. There were brief entries that seemed to be her own personal thoughts. Then there were lines of verse, perhaps hers, perhaps merely scraps of song from her time that held her heart and framed her own life’s sad tale. Silas breathed in, smelling the loam still clinging to the parchment. His heartbeat slowed and the words rose up in him, filled him, until there was nothing else but what the nameless girl had written hundreds of years before.

Silas did not realize that he had begun to read aloud. The jeweled lantern lit his face, and in his eyes shone the glow of memory. His voice rose, and some of the lines spilled forth like a song, as though Silas had lived through those long-ago days himself. The words of the girl who’d written the
Booke of Erth
became his words and it sounded like two voices spoke as one as the story ascended into the evening air. The chatty cousins were spell-stopped, there upon the rich carpets lit by lantern and star.

One of the cousins silently rose from the carpet and, drawing her shawl over her head, took on the character of the girl in the story, not in mockery, but with absolute solemnity, as though she were miming events she once saw herself. A young man joined her—the fellow Ottoline had once called the girl’s “paramour”—and as Silas read, he knew that here, before him, moving in pantomime, was the same youth who had been the girl’s undoing in some ancient past. The young man was unchanged, handsome and lithe, timeless, a young lord of a thousand summers, barely able to remember, until now, his former lover . . . one little bird from so many that once flew across the forest where he had hunted long ago.

He cometh to my house and below my window singeth sweetely to me. Each night, these wordes from him to me he calleth so faire. And in the light of the moone he stands and with his songs putteth me to swoone. . . .

Between March and April

when spring beginneth to spring

The little bird hath all her will

On her branch to singe.

I live in love longinge

For the fairest of all things—

She may my bliss bringe;

I am bound to her will.

A fortunate gift I have received

From heaven it is to me sent.

From all other women my love rent

And lighteth on Alysoun.

And I do meet him in the wood so wild

and he singeth to me in wordes milde.

Where be they that before us were,

Who hunted hawk and hound so long ago

And owned all the field and all the woode?

We are yet here, my lover telleth me plain.

And I know he speaketh well.

For in this wood we ride

And lo! my belly swells

All fulle with his pride.

My father sayeth women flaunt their pride

and spring becomes them ill.

If I cannot hide my sin

then lost to fortune, I shall flee

and dwell in the wilde wood.

And tho winter cometh in, we warmed shall be

All by the flames of my lover’s love,

My little child and me.

All our Summer tyme now

endeth

Where to my love his love

sendeth?

Merry it is while summer lasts,

With birds in song;

Oh, now threatens north winds blasts

And storms so strong.

Oh, oh! But this night is long

And I do bear such wretched wrong,

In sorrow and mourn and fast.

For his love in sleep I slake,

For his love all night I wake,

For his love mourning I make

More than any maid.

Blow northern wind!

Send thou me my sweeting!

Blow northern wind! Blow, blow, blow!

Thoughe deepest winter now lay all about,

My father cometh hunting in wilde rout.

No more songs my lover maketh me

I sing only winter that blighteth ev’ry branch on ev’ry tree.

Winter wakeneth all my care;

Now the leaves waxeth bare;

Oft I mourn and in despair

Sigh when he cometh in my thought

How this world’s joy

It goeth all to nought. . . .

My child,

Once I did come here and put my back against this great oak tree.

Now I place you inside and pray my father shall not find you, ever.

May your own sweet father soon come here!

May his people hold and keep you dear!

Oh, folk of skin moste bright

gather ye up this innocent wight.

My child, I pray you shall go

Free from all my cares and worldly woe.

Now, child, take my name for all your own

Though my name be all covered o’er with sin

On you, in death, may it be washed clean again.

Alysoun, Alysoun, no longer named I

Alysoun, your name shalle be, when I do die.

And now I put this child of earth in earth.

Earth take of earth, earth with woe

Earth other earth, to the earth do go

Earth laid earth in the earthen trough

Then had earth of earth earth enough.

I am nameth Alysoun and do love well my forest childe. Alysoun I nameth her so she shall remember in what world is next her mother dear who must needs leaveth her where she were born. And so her mother’s name shall be upon her always even though her mother’s loving hands may not.