The Bitterbynde Trilogy (106 page)

“Vinegar Tom, Vinegar Tom,

Where in the world do you come from?”

‘I said it wrong, but the words rhymed, so Vinegar Tom only tossed me over the wall!'

Rohain gathered a bolt of ratteen and her retinue and went to visit the lady of the apple groves. The narrow track climbed away from the main road and wound over wooded slopes. To the right, the hillsides dropped sharply to the plane of the sea. To the left they escalated to pathless gullies. There, fern sprays prinked the cracks that ran through spills of ropy, wrinkled rock like the sagging hide of some enormous beast, and mist hovered in ravines walled with strange formations in stone, like frozen waterfalls. Ascending, the party passed spindly towers and pinnacles and needles. They went by a rift in a hillside, which emitted occasional plumes of white steam to augment the ambient brume. In deep gullies, water tumbled noisily over pebbles. A light mist rose from the still surfaces of gray rainpools, and from the puddles lying like shattered pieces of the sky clasped between tree-roots.

They passed Vinegar Tom with no difficulty. When they had repeated the rhyme he turned into the likeness of a four-year-old child without a head, and vanished.

The path led them to a level apron where they beheld a vegetable plot, beehives, and a little freshwater runnel skirted by white-flowered cresses. Here nestled a slate-roofed cot, lapped in gnarled-knuckled trees. Purple hyacinths bloomed among their roots. Small birds twittered, and bees gathered in the foaming pink-and-white confectionery of blossom. From behind fissured, sprouting boles, a waif of a child with green-gold hair spied upon the newcomers, then ran away.

Elasaid welcomed her visitors into her cottage.

‘There is more cloth here than the worth of the apples,' she said, unfolding a length of ratteen the colour of stormwrack.

‘Then pay me the balance in histories,' said Rohain.

‘What would my lady wish to know?'

‘The roads you have trod. If it pleases you to tell of them.'

‘Well, I have trod high roads and low and I don't mind telling at all.'

‘Tell me first about yon child with the green-gold hair.'

‘Willingly,' said Elasaid of the Groves, ‘for I love her well. On an evening seven years ago, when the last afterglow of sunset was still reflecting in the sky and the owls were abroad, I heard beautiful singing coming from among the shadows gathering in Topaz Bay. I thought it might be the sea-morgans, and I was eager to see if I could catch a glimpse, so I made my way down to the bay as quietly as I could. However, I was not careful enough—my foot dislodged a pebble, and all I caught was a flash and a glimmer as the sea-morgans dived off the rocks into the tide.

‘In their haste and fright, they inadvertently left one of their babies wriggling and laughing beneath the waterfall that splashes from the cliffs above the bay. When I saw the baby I could not do otherwise than love her. I still grieved deeply for my own daughter, so, rightly or wrongly, I took this child created from foam and seaweed and pearls.

‘I took her, and I raised her as my own. I called her Liban. She is like any mortal child in most ways, but I can never get her hair completely dry, not even in the sunshine and the breeze, and the tang of the ocean is always in it. She loves to wade and play in my spring-fed pond, and among the wavelets down at the shore. She is a loving daughter, but there are those among the island-dwellers who, recalling their lives outside Tamhania where unseelie mermaids cause shipwrecks, deem it terribly unlucky even to speak of her kind.

‘I have tried to make them forget her origin. I have endeavoured to put it in their minds that she was born of me, but some do not forget and they wish her ill. Minna Scales is the worst. She has never forgiven me since the colt-pixie chased her son when he tried to steal my Gilgandrias, those apples which are said to be seeded from the land of Faêrie. The wight gave him “
cramp and crooking and fault in his footing
”—it made him the laughingstock of the village. But I'm not to blame for the colt-pixie chasing him. The colt-pixie is a guardian of apple trees. 'Tis a wight. I have no command over such.

‘Minna Scales will not let up her niggling,' Elasaid continued. ‘“Odds fish!” she says to Liban. “Look how your hair drips water. Go and dry it like a
lorraly
lass!” Liban just laughs at her. We keep to ourselves mostly, on this side of the island. The child is happy. I have learned to treasure every moment of her happiness. I think of the other daughter I had …'

Elasaid's hands trembled.

‘I have not always lived this simple life,' she said. ‘I voyaged here, to Tavaal, several years ago. Long before I came here, my childhood was spent in a tall and stately house with many servants. I married—perhaps unwisely, but for love. Eight is the number of the children I bore.' Her blanks of eyes sank into weary hollows. She rested her still-handsome head on her hand.

‘Evil forces took the first seven from me. I took myself away from the last one. To my eternal regret. For, when I tried to return, I could not. My child, my husband, had gone away in their turn, leaving no trace. I was alone. I searched up and down the Known Lands, to no avail. Finally, sick of the world and its heartbreak, I applied to come here, to live out the rest of my days in seclusion. I found Liban. Abiding with her and my freshet of water, and the apples, I open the doors from one day into the next and close them one by one behind me.'

It was easy to strike up friendships with the good-natured islanders. Elasaid of the rain-eyes was one of many with whom Rohain liked to pass the time in conversation. Another was Rona Wade, the wife of Hugh, whose children had webbed fingers. Rona could never be persuaded to reveal her thoughts and desires, but she knew all that went on around the island, and was happy to share her knowledge.

On a hazy afternoon, Rona Wade and her web-fingered eldest daughter tarried with Rohain by the kitchen door at the Hall of Tana. Outside waited the surly donkey with the empty fish-baskets, while its mistress discussed island lore.

‘Why do the children so often dive near the crescent beach beneath the eastern cliffs?' Rohain wanted to know.

That is where Urchen Conch threw the chest full of money into the water,' said Rona. ‘They are looking for gold coins. Ah, but I suspect you have not heard that tale, my lady!'

‘I have not, and I burn to understand why anyone would throw treasure into the brine! Who is this Conch?'

‘Urchen Conch was a somewhat simpleminded fellow,' said Rona. ‘He lived and died a long time ago. Eighty years ago he saved a stranded benvarrey, carrying her back to the sea. He was entitled to three wishes, but did not know to ask, so she rewarded him with information about how to find a treasure. Doing as she bid, he found a chest of antique gold in a great sea-cavern, but he did not know how to dispose of the ancient cash, and at last he threw the coins back into the sea. It is said he threw them from the eastern cliffs.'

‘What a strange tale!' said Rohain.

She was about to ask further questions when Rona's two younger children came scrambling up the path, apple-cheeked and breathless.

‘Mama!' they cried. ‘Luik what we hae fand under a corn-stack! Ain't it pretty!' Delighted with their prize, they held it high. It shimmered with a downy silverescence—a banner long and wide, rippling in the wind off the slopes. A meadow of moon-grass.

A sealskin.

Gazing at the hide, Rona's dark eyes glistened with rapture. She grasped it, shouting aloud in an ecstasy of joy. The children stood gape-mouthed to see their mother put on such an uncharacteristic display, but she turned to them, her happiness suddenly dimming.

‘I love you, my darlings,' she said, embracing each one hastily, ‘I will always love you.'

The words hung in memory, long after they had been spoken, as if nailed on emptiness. As soon as she had uttered them, Rona fled down the road toward the sea.

The children began to sob. The eldest daughter jumped on the donkey's back. ‘I'm gaun tae find Da'!'

She whipped the petulant beast into a headlong run, and the younger ones went wailing after. But they never saw their mama again.

Rohain wept for the family, and brought them food and gifts.

Next morning, in the breakfast room at Tana, the residents sat down to dine.

The table-setting was a lavish seascape, dominated by a nef centrepiece filled with rock-salt. This nef had been crafted from a nautilus-shell, which rested beneath the superstructure of a full-rigged sailing galleon, modelled in gold and studded with precious gems. Shell-shapes decorated the gold and mother-of-pearl serviette rings. Over their hands, the ewerer poured phlox-scented water from a dolphin-shaped aquamanile. Meanwhile, a page cranked a serinette in a shellwork case; the miniature barrel-organ tinkled prettily, not with a tune but with the song-notes of the sea-curlew.

The sideboard, whose panels were framed by a graceful relief of crayfish and conger eels carved in apple-wood, had been arranged with figurines of water-serpents and merfolk carved from narwhal tusks. The ornaments were inlaid with nacre and the mottled shell of the sea-turtle. Dome-covered chafing-dishes sat atop charcoal braziers. A silver egg-boiler rested over its small spirit lamp. A sand timer was mounted on the lid, showing that the minutes had almost run out.

The Bard sprinkled allspice from a set of lighthouse-shaped porcelain muffineers. The Prince drank from a nautilus-shell beaker mounted in gold. Someone had left a snuff-box lying on the table alongside a miniature ship carved from bone—the box had been made, not unexpectedly, from a deep-bowled, voluted shell, with an engraved silver lid and silver mounts.

Tana's decor tended to be thematic.

‘You have heard the news, my lady?' Master Avenel sipped from a polished driftwood mazer reinforced with a silver foot-rim incised with a pattern of scales.

Rohain nodded assent. ‘Rona Wade has gone.'

‘Aye, gone back,' said the Seneschal, ‘to her first husband. As Hugh returned from the day's fishing, he saw her greet him in the waves. She called a farewell to him. Hugh is a broken man.'

‘Well, he was a thief,' said Rohain, stirring medlure in a cup whose bowl was embraced by the claws of two coralline crabs.

‘Do not judge too harshly, my lady,' Avenel reproached gently. ‘It was love that drove him to the taking of the sealskin.'

‘I beg to differ, sir. Love never steals. It does not subjugate.'

In the pause that ensued, a housemaid limped past the doorway carrying a dustpan and broom, on her way upstairs to sweep and clean the bedchambers. At first, Rohain had taken pains to avoid this young woman, because her uneven gait reminded her of Pod and his unpleasantries. On further acquaintance, she discovered Molly Chove to be an amiable and cheerful lass, who took it in good part when the other servants teasingly called her ‘Limpet'.

‘Master Avenel,' she now said to the Seneschal, ‘is there no help for that lame servant?'

‘Molly got her lameness through her own fault,' he replied, dabbing at his mouth with a linen serviette. ‘A couple of lesser wights inhabit the Hall of Tana—whether they benefit it or not there's no telling, but they've become a habit of a few centuries.'

‘Do they help with household duties?'

‘Maybe,' said the Seneschal, ‘but I think not. They are pixies or bruneys, I believe. So I am told; I have not seen them. Howsoever, our housemaids Mollusc and Ann Chove tell me they were kind to these imps, showing them hospitality and so forth, and in return the wights used to drop a silver coin into a pail of clear water that the wenches would place for them in the chimney-corner of the kitchen every night.'

‘Surely there is water enough for wights in the streams and wells?'

‘Domestic wights are loath to budge from their chosen dwelling. They like to have clean water put out for their drinking and washing. Once, several years ago, the maids forgot to fill the pail, so the pixies, or whatever they are, went upstairs to their room and shrilly protested about the omission. Annie woke up. She nudged Molly's elbow and recommended that they should both go down to the kitchen to set things aright, but Molly, who likes her sleep, said, “Leave me be! Would it indulge all the wights on Tavaal, I will not get up.” Annie went down to the yard and pumped clean water into the pail. Incidentally, next morning she found seven silver threepences in it. Meanwhile, as she was going back to bed that night she overheard the wights discussing ways of penalizing lazy Molly. They decided to cripple her in one leg. At the end of seven years, she heard them say, the lameness might be cured by a certain herb that grew on Windy Spur.'

Did they mention the name of this wonderful herb?'

‘They did, but 'twas such a lengthy and complicated name, Annie could not grasp it. When Molly got up in the morning she was limping, and she has been perpetually lame to this day.'

Prince Edward said, ‘The island's wizard, Master Lutey, has a reputation as an excellent healer.'

‘He has not been able to help Molly, sir,' replied the Seneschal.

‘Then perhaps his reputation is ill-deserved!'

‘Do not, I pray you sir, despise the talent of old Robin Lutey,' said Avenel, ‘for he is skilled—I can vouch for it. Do you know how Lutey came by his powers?'

‘Prithee, remind me.'

‘As a young man he was a fisherman near Lizard Point, farming a little, combing along the beaches after the storms. One evening when the tide was far out he went wandering along the shore seeking for some wreckage-find among the seaweed and rocks. As he turned, empty-handed, to go home, he heard a low moan from among some boulders, and there he discovered a stranded mermaid.'

‘For a shy race, they are seen surprisingly often,' Rohain interjected.

‘Only on Tamhania, my lady,' said Avenel. ‘This is a special place.'