The Bitterbynde Trilogy (80 page)

Rohain ignored these compliments. Her new servant chattered more than necessary, yet she continued to prove herself a cornucopia of information about Court matters.

‘When I told Dianella she would look well in green,' said Rohain, ‘why did she exclaim, “Odd's fish, how revolutionary!”?'

‘My lady, the green is not to be worn. Not as a main colour, anyway—only in bits for decoration, and then not the proper leaf green.'

‘Why not? Is it forbidden?'

Viviana was taken aback. ‘Wear they green in the Sorrow Isles then, m'lady?'

‘No, no, but tell me.'

‘It is not forbidden, exactly, but it is not done to wear the green.'

‘The Dainnan wear it—a kind of green, at least.'

‘Begging your pardon, m'lady, it is not exactly green that Roxburgh's knights wear, but the colour
dusken
. 'Tis as if a dyer mixed together brown paint, a little grayish, with mayhap a pinch of saffron—'

‘And a good helping of grass green.'

‘—and perhaps a hint of green.
Dusken
is not truly leaf green or grass green, m'lady, 'tis in the shaded of dusty bracken-fern.'

‘I see. What of green furnishings?'

‘They are allowable.'

‘And what of emeralds?'

‘Green jewels ought to be worn with discretion. Royal purple is forbidden, of course,' added the lady's maid warily, anxious not to offend her mistress by implying she was ignorant of such matters.

‘Of course,' replied her mistress. ‘But royal purple is reserved for royalty. Why should green be held in reserve?'

‘Oh well, it was the colour most favoured by Themselves, and old customs die hard, m'lady. It was unlucky for mortals to wear it. Green was only for the Faêran.'

The subject of the Faêran interested Rohain. For further information she went to Alys-Jannetta of Roxburgh, the wife of the Dainnan Chieftain. The Duchess, a level-headed gentlewoman of assertive spirit, liked to ride and hunt and shoot with a bow. On her chief estate she had a rose garden that she often tended with her own hands, not being afraid to dirty them. Rohain found her bold bluntness refreshing.

‘I will give you one view,' said the Duchess, ‘and others will give you another. For my part, I hold no good opinion of Themselves—as a race, that is—and I think it well that the Fair Realm was sundered from us so long ago. The old tales tell all. It was one law for mortals and another for the Faêran. A haughty folk they were, proud and arrogant, who thought nothing of stealing mortals who took their fancy. But if you would hear tales, why, there is only one man who knows them all and tells them so well, and that is our Royal Bard, Thomas. Come, we shall attend him.'

It was Ercildoune who opened up the subject of the Faêran for Rohain as never before; he who possessed an inexhaustible supply of stories concerning them, he who awakened her interest in their lore and history and taught her of their beautiful, dangerous, vanished world; the lost kingdom, the Fair and Perilous Realm of the Faêran.

The Bard's palace suite was decorated to a musical theme. Across the tapestries on the walls of the Tambour Room, scenes from history and legend spread themselves. Here, seven maidens harped beneath flowering horse-chestnuts. There, a youth played a gittern to charm an evil lord into sleep, that the musician might recover his stolen wife. On another wall, a virgin beneath a green oak tree sang a unicorn to her side. Farther along, a row of trumpeters sounded a fanfare of triumph to a flower-strewn parade.

The room was crowded with crested arks and dark cabinets thickly carved with leaves, rosettes and lions. A clear, red fire burned in the grate, beneath a chimney-piece whose side-panels were a carved marble relief depicting the beautiful water-wights, the Asrai, lyres held in their slender fingers. Inscrutable footmen in the pale-blue-and-gold livery of Ercildoune stood to attention at the doors.

The Duke of Ercildoune welcomed his guests and settled them near the hearth. His apprentice Toby strummed softly. A small lynx purred on a ragged appliqué cushion that it had previously shredded with its claws. Five tiny moths flitted along the ornately carved friezes and architrave moldings then fluttered down to the thickets of candles, to dance with death. Viviana arranged her mistress's skirts. The Duchess of Roxburgh toyed with a tasseled fan, occasionally glancing at the velvet-draped windows that looked out over the Winter Garden, across the city to the ocean. A chill mist was rising from the river. The first star of evening had already punctured a sky both clear and dark. In the still and crystalline air, frost threatened.

To the Bard, Rohain said, ‘Your Grace, during these days I have passed at Court I have heard somewhat of the Fair Realm, and it has whetted my appetite, for I have little knowledge of the place or its denizens. Will you tell me more?'

Ercildoune's demeanor altered subtly at her words. From being the jovial host, he seemed to metamorphose, to become a stranger, remote, staring now into the fire.

‘The stars,' he said suddenly. His visage sharpened to a wistful look.

Rohain waited.

After a pause, he continued: ‘The stars. So beautiful, so mysterious, so alluring are they—so unreachable, pure, strange, and glorious that they could only be of Faêrie. Go into the wilderness on a clear night and look up. Look long. Then you will have seen something of Faêrie.' His voice roughened to an uncharacteristic huskiness. ‘Or behold, at dusk in Springtime, drifts of white pear blossom glimmering palely through the gloom, for the turn of the seasons is evanescent as the beauty of the Fair Realm, which slipped through mortal fingers like handfuls of seed-pearls. The power of the Fair Realm cannot be comprehended.'

He gazed into the fire's red world. Eventually he added, ‘The Realm is a place with no frontiers.'

‘You speak with longing and love, Your Grace,' said Rohain wonderingly.

‘Anyone would long and love, who had heard even a tenth of what I have heard.'

‘Yet is it a place? Did it exist?'

‘Fie! Never say that it did not—I will not brook it!'

‘Forgive me! I did not seek to denigrate that which stirs your passion.'

‘Nay,' the Bard replied hastily, ‘you must forgive
me
, Rohain—I spoke too harshly just now.'

‘Well then,' she answered lightly, bantering in the manner she had learned at Court, ‘if I am to forgive you, you must give me a tale about the Faêran, so that I can come to know them better.'

‘Gladly, for this is a subject dear to my heart.'

He drew his chair closer to the hearth.

The Faêran,' he began, pronouncing the word as if he spoke some ancient, arcane spell, ‘had many names; the Gentry, the Strangers, the Secret Ones, the Lords of Gramarye, and other kennings. Their Realm had many names also. Some called it the Land of the Long Leaves. Before that, it was called Tirnan Alainn.

‘Most of the Fair Folk were well-disposed towards mortals, but there were those who harboured ill-feeling for, dare I say, the deeds of mortals are not always courteous. Of all the faults of Men condemned by the Faêran, they despised spying and stealing most of all.

‘Long ago, before the ways between the Fair Realm and Aia were closed forever, there were places in Erith which the Faêran favoured above others. Willowvale, in northern Eldaraigne, was one of these. At night, the Faêran would ride out through a right-of-way that used to lie under the green hill called the Culver, and go down to Willowvale. There they would bathe in the river and sing in harmony with the water as it flowed over its rocky bed, glinting beneath the moon's glow.

‘One blossom-scented twilight in Spring, a little girl who was gathering primroses by the waterside heard the sound of laughter and music coming from the Culver, so she walked up the hill to investigate. The right-of-way lay open and she dared to peep inside. There she saw a sight to gladden her spirits: the Faêran folk, in their beauty and their gorgeous raiment. Some were banqueting, others were whirling about in graceful, lithesome dances. The child hastened home to inform her father, but the good farmer could not share her delight, because he knew that the Faêran would come for her. They guarded their privacy jealously. Any mortal who spied on them would either be sorely punished or else taken away to dwell forever with them, and he did not doubt that they would choose to take a little girl so fair and mild.

‘Because he cherished his daughter and could not bear to upset her, the farmer did not tell her what would happen to her for spying on the Faêran. He hastened straight to a wise carlin who knew something of the laws of the Gentry.

‘“They will come for your daughter at midnight tonight,” she told him, “yet they will be powerless to take her if utter silence is maintained throughout your farmstead. When they come, you must ensure that there is no noise, apart from any made by the Faêran themselves. Even the faintest sigh, the softest tap of a fingernail, will shatter the charm.”

‘Away to his house hurried the farmer. That night, he waited until his daughter had fallen asleep in her bed. Then he herded all the geese and hens into their coops, removed the bells from the necks of the milch-cows before shutting them into the byres, and locked the horses into the stables. He gave the dogs such a large dinner of bones and scraps that they lay down to sleep at once, their stomachs distended. He tied down anything that might sway or squeak in the slightest breeze. Then he went indoors, and laid the rocking-chair on its side, that it would not rock, and doused the hearth-fire so that there should be no spitting or snapping of sparks, and he sat down in the dark, cold, silent cottage to await the Faêran.

‘At midnight they came.

‘The latch on the garden gate went
click
and the hinges creaked as it swung open, then the farmer heard the clopping crunch of horses' hooves coming up the path. When they discovered the place so soundless and frozen, the riders hesitated. The farmer sat motionless and held his breath, lest they should hear even the slight whisper of the exhalation. The silence deepened, the minutes lengthened. The blood pounding at his temples sounded to him as loud as a blacksmith's hammer. Then he heard the clatter of hooves turning around—the Faêran were leaving. He let go of his breath with no noise at all, but alas, he had overlooked one thing. At the sound of the Faêran horses beneath the window, the little spaniel that slept at the foot of his daughter's bed jumped up and barked. The charm was shattered. Instantly the farmer hastened up the stairs, his heart bolting, only to discover his worst fears realised. The bed was empty. His daughter was gone.

‘Devastated by his bereavement, he resolved to try everything in his power to regain her. So wild was he with anguish that immediately, without waiting for the dawn, without eating or drinking, he made haste again to consult the carlin.

‘“Even in this extremity I can give you advice,” said she. “Nonetheless, the challenge will be fraught with difficulty. You must take a sprig of rowan for protection and go to the Culver every night and lie down on top of it. Should they Themselves come to inquire your purpose, you must ask them to give back your daughter, but I warn you, what they may ask in return may not be easily guessed.”

‘The farmer did as she had advised and on the third night the Faêran appeared before him and asked him why he should be so bold as to lie down on top of the Culver.

‘“I am come to ask for my daughter who you took from me,” he said.

‘“Well then, you shall have her back,” they said, “if, before Whiteflower's Day you bring to us three gifts—a cherry without a stone, a living bird that has no bone, and, from the oldest creature on your farm, a part of its body given without the shedding of any blood. If you come back with those three things, we will give you your daughter.”

‘Hope sprang afresh in the farmer's heart as he departed. But then, he asked himself, “How can there be a cherry without a stone, save that I should cut the stone out of it? But I am certain that is not what they mean. As for the bird, I could kill a hen and take its bones out, but how shall I find a living bird with no bone? And what of the last part of the riddle—could it mean milk from my old cow, Buttercup? Yet milk is not really part of an animal's body. What if I cut off the tips of her horns? But wait—is not Dobbin the cart-horse older than Buttercup?” He tormented himself looking for the answers but could find none, and the carlin could not help him further. Unable to rest, he took to roaming through the countryside, asking himself those questions over and over, and querying whomsoever he met, but with no success at all, and Whiteflower's Day was drawing closer.'

The Bard leaned to caress the soft fur of the lynx. Taking advantage of the interlude, the Duchess of Roxburgh said, ‘Whenever I hear this tale I wonder at the thickheadedness of that farmer. How could anyone not guess the answers to such simple riddles?'

The Bard smiled, saying, ‘Not all folk are as clever as Alys of Roxburgh.'

‘Hmph!' she returned, feinting a slap at him with her folded fan. ‘Go on with the tale!'

‘Barely three weeks remained before Whiteflower's Day,' resumed Ercildoune, ‘when, as he trudged along the road, the farmer met a beggar.

‘“Prithee, sir,” said the ragged fellow, “can you spare a crust? I am famished!”

‘“A crust and more,” said the farmer feelingly. Opening his leather wallet, he generously handed out bread, cheese, and apples. “I know what suffering is,” he said sadly, “and I would alleviate the distress of others if I am able.”

‘“You have succored me,” said the beggar as he accepted the food, “and in turn I will give you aid. The answer to your first question is: a cherry when it is a blossom, clasps no stone.”

‘In amazement the farmer stared at the beggar, but the old fellow just walked away, smiling. Although he seemed to walk slowly he was along up the road in a trice and quickly disappeared around the corner. The farmer ran to catch up with him but when he rounded the bend all that he saw was the long, empty road stretching away to the distance, and no traveller upon it.