The Bitterbynde Trilogy (81 page)

‘Marveling, the farmer walked on. He was passing a spinney of chestnuts when he saw a thrush trying to escape from a kestrel, which stooped to kill it. Momentarily setting aside his woes, he seized a pebble from the roadside and hurled it at the hunting hawk. The kestrel fled, but the thrush returned. It fluttered down to perch on the bough of a thorn bush, regarding its rescuer with a bright and knowing eye.

‘Seeing such a look, the farmer was hardly surprised when the bird opened its beak and spoke to him in melodious tones.

‘“You acted in kindness. Now I will reward you with the answer to your second question. If a broody hen sits on an egg for fifteen days, that egg will hold a chicken without a bone yet formed in its body.” The man gaped at the little brown bird, but it trilled three musical notes and flew away.

‘The farmer was vastly encouraged. “Two answers!” he said triumphantly to himself. “Two answers have I!” Then he thought, “But what good are they if I cannot find the answer to the last question?” And he almost despaired.

‘As he tramped on his way, frowning and cogitating about the third riddle, there came to his ears a pathetic wailing. In the hedges bordering the road, a rabbit was trapped in a wire snare. Its crying moved the man to pity. Crouching beside the creature, he gently set it free, expecting it to run away forthwith.

‘Like the thrush, it focused its gaze upon him. This time, he was not astonished, yet a sense of wonder welled in him.

“‘Sir,” piped the rabbit, “you have done me a favour, therefore here is the final answer you require. If you cut off a lock of hair, it will come away from the body without shedding one drop of blood. As for the oldest creature on your farm, why the looking-glass will answer that.”

‘When the farmer blinked the rabbit was gone, but he threw his cap into the air and ran jubilantly home. Hurrying to the chicken coop, he placed an egg under a broody hen. When fifteen days were past he took the shears and chopped off a lock of his own hair. Then he went out into the orchard and gathered a great bough of pink-and-white cherry blossom. Throwing his cap in the air, he whooped for joy.

‘He could hardly wait for night to fall. At sunset, he stuck a sprig of rowan in his cap and went down Willowvale and up to the top of the Culver. There he sat down and bided his time, and the stars came out over his head, and the night was warm and still, and yet he kept vigil. After a time he heard music and laughter, which seemed to be emanating from beneath the hill, and soon the Faêran came. They were annoyed to see him there, but they could not touch him because of the sprig of rowan, and they could not abduct him because he had failed to transgress their code. When he showed them the blossom, the egg, and the lock of hair, they had to give him back his daughter. At first she gazed at her father in bewilderment, as one who has woken from a dream, but then she gave a cry of happiness and threw her arms around him. They returned home together, and never again did she try to spy on the Faêran.'

With a discordant twang, a string broke on Toby's lyre. At the sound, the listeners started.

The Faêran had their own laws,' continued Ercildoune after a sidelong glance at his apprentice, ‘as this tale shows. And when those laws were broken, they meted out their own forms of punishment. Yet they were not unmerciful. First, they gave the farmer opportunity to reclaim his kin. Secondly, they tested him to see if he was worthy of reward. Because he showed kindness, they themselves gave him the answers to the riddles. Kindness in mortals was a virtue which they esteemed highly.'

‘Also great courage,' Alys contributed.

‘Aye, and neatness and cleanliness, and true love, and the keeping of promises,' added the Bard.

With a practiced air, Toby removed the broken string from his lyre and unrolled a new one.

‘I have learned,' said Rohain, ‘that they delighted also in feasting, dancing, and riddles—a merry race, it seems they were, but also dangerous.'

Ercildoune, leaning on his elbow, called for a page.

‘Bring piment!' he said. ‘Does m'lady like piment?' he added, turning to Rohain.

‘I know not what it is.'

‘A brew of red wine, honey, and spices.'

‘I am certain it would please me.'

The Bard snapped his fingers and the lad hurried away. Toby plucked a rising scale of liquid notes to tune the string as he tightened it.

‘Did they live under the hills?' pursued Rohain. ‘Was their Realm underground, in caves?'

Ercildoune laughed. ‘Not underground, not under water, not under or over anything. Faêrie lay elsewhere. It was Away. The traverses that linked Aia and the Fair Realm—some called it the Perilous Realm—used to lie in such places as eldritch wights now see fit to haunt. There was an access under the Culver, as under certain other hills. These green mounds were known by many names, such as
raths, knowes, brughs, lisses
, and
sitheans
or
shians
, but passage existed also under lakes, in coppices, in wells, in high places and low. So you understand, Rohain, the little girl gathering primroses did not look into an underground cavern—she looked through a traverse into the Realm itself.'

‘Well,' said Rohain, ‘abduction seems severe retribution for an unwary glance.'

‘It seems so to us,' agreed Ercildoune. ‘Howbeit, bearing in mind that the Fair Realm could be a place of delight, the Faêran may have viewed it merely as a way of preventing the child from telling others all that she had seen, and thus pre-empting an influx of human gawkers. Generally, they considered mortal spying to be an outrageous crime and they were swift to avenge, as I shall relate. But first allow me to provide you with a further example of traverses and mortal transgression.'

A hallmarked lore-master, ever enthused by his trade, the Bard launched into another story.

‘There was once a Faêran right-of-way at Lake Coumluch in the mountains of Finvarna. Coumluch is a solitary lake with a mist of white vapors ever on it and lofty cliffs rising all around. For most of the year the lake waters were unbroken by any reef, rock, or isle, but every Whiteflower's Day there would be an island in the lake's centre, and at the same time a Door would appear in the face of the cliffs. The Door stood open, and if anyone should dare to enter they would follow a winding stair descending to a long, level passageway. This traverse beneath the lake was a right-of-way into the Fair Realm. At the top of a second stairway, another Door led out onto the island. Fair and stately was this domain, with its long, verdant lawns, its great drifts of perfumed flowers like clouds of coloured silks and confetti, its arbors dappled with freckles of golden light and lacy shade.

‘The Faêran made their bedazzled guests welcome, bedecking them with garlands of flowers. They plied them with dainty viands and refreshing draughts, which were not of the Fair Realm but had been brought—stolen, perhaps—from Erith; for the Fair Folk did not wish to capture their guests, only to entertain them, before letting them go. Neither would they allow the Longing for Faêrie to come over them. Eldritch wights struck up tunes on their fiddles—Faêran musicians rarely played for the amusement of mortals—and the guests were invited to join the dancing. In mirth and revelry the day fled by, and as evening drew in the mortals must take their leave.

‘The Faêran imposed only one condition on their visitors: that none should take anything from the island. Not so much as a blade of grass or a pebble must be removed. The gifts of flowers must all be put aside before the guests went down the stair to the passage beneath the lake.

‘For centuries, this condition was met. Eventually, however, one man's curiosity overcame him. Just to see what would happen, he plucked a rosebud from his garland before he put it aside, and slipped the bud into the pocket of his coat.

‘Down the stone stairs beneath the lake he went with the rest of the departing crowd. Halfway along the passage he felt in his pocket, but the rosebud was no longer there. At this, terrible fear gripped him, for he guessed that the Faêran had ways of knowing about transgressions like his. He hastened to the Door in the cliff face, and passed through it, and all the jovial crowd with him. As the last guest made his exit from the right-of-way, a voice cried, “Woe to ye, that ye should repay our hospitality with theft.” Then the Door slammed shut and, as usual, not a crack remained to show where it had been.

‘But from that day forth, the island never reappeared on Whiteflower's Day, nor was there ever again any sign of the Door in the cliff face. The Faêran of the Isle never forgave mortals for that theft. They withdrew their annual invitation and closed that Gateway forever. Thus was one of the traverses to the Fair Realm sealed, never to be reopened, but it was only the first. Later, at the time of the Closing, all the rights-of-way were barred forever.'

‘Why?' asked Rohain.

‘Mortals have done worse than steal flowers from the Fair Realm. Some of the Faêran were greatly angered by the deeds of our kind. They wished to have no more commerce with us.'

‘And you say that these traverses were barred forever? Can they not be reopened?'

‘No.'

‘Perhaps it is for the best,' suggested Rohain. Alys nodded.

‘Never say so!' cried the Bard, now heated. ‘Aia has lost its link with a world of wonder such as mortals can only dream of. The Fair Realm was and remains a perilous land, aye, and in it were snares for the unwatchful and prison towers for the foolhardy, but it was far-reaching and unfathomed and lofty and filled with many things: all kinds of birds and beasts, shoreless oceans and stars beyond measure, beauty that is spellbinding and dangerous, gramarye both rich and strange, joyousness and sorrow as piercing as any Dainnan blade. In that Realm a man may have considered himself lucky to have roamed.'

A lonely thread of music arose from outside in the night. Somewhere, someone was playing a reed flute. The thin piping in the key of E-flat minor jarred with Toby's recommenced strumming in some major key. Eventually the swooping notes and trills trailed off into silence.

The Bard said loudly, ‘Where's that piment?'

Two pages came hurrying in, one with a tray of goblets, the other with a steaming jug and a towel. The fragrant brew was poured. The trio at the fireside drank a toast to the King-Emperor, after which Ercildoune commenced his next tale.

‘If you wish to understand more about the Faêran,' he said, ‘you must hear the tale of Eilian.'

Rohain inclined her head.

‘Back in those olden times when the ways were still open, an old couple came to Caermelor from the village of White Down Rory, to get a maidservant at the Winter Hiring Fair. They saw a comely lass with yellow hair standing a little apart from all the others and they spoke to her.'

‘A Talith maiden?' murmured Rohain.

‘Aye, a Talith maiden, brought low by circumstance. She told them her name was Eilian, and she hired herself to the couple and accompanied them to their dwelling. In the villages thereabouts it was customary for the womenfolk to while away the long Winter nights by spinning after supper. The new maidservant used to take herself out to the meadow to spin by moonlight, and some passersby said they saw the Faêran gathering around her, singing and dancing. Springtime came. As the days grew longer and the hedgerows budded and the cuckoo came back to the greenwood, Eilian ran away with the Faêran and was not seen again. To this day, the meadow where she was last seen is known as Eilian's Meadow, although folk have long forgotten the reason why.

‘The old woman who had been Eilian's mistress was a midwife, and her reputation was such that she was in great demand all over the countryside, but she did not get any wealthier, because those she tended were as poor as herself. About a year after Eilian's flight, on a cold, misty night with a drizzle of rain and a full moon, someone knocked at the old couple's door. The crone opened it and looked up to see a tall gentleman, wrapped in a cloak, holding by the bridle a gray horse.

‘“I am come to fetch you to my wife,” said he.

‘Suspicious of the gentleman's exceptionally comely countenance and not altogether pleased by his haughty tone, the midwife was about to refuse, but a strange compulsion came over her. Despite herself, she gathered her gear and, getting up behind the stranger on his horse, rode with him until they came to Roscourt Moor. If you have ever been to Roscourt Moor you will have seen the rath they call Bryn Ithibion, the great green hill rising in the centre of the moor. Bryn Ithibion resembles a ruined fort or stronghold, crowned by standing stones, with a large rocky cairn on the north slope. When the midwife and the stranger reached it, they dismounted and he led her through the side of the rath into a large cave. Behind a screen of donkey's skins at the farther end, on a rude bed of rushes and withered bracken, lay the wife. A smoky wood fire smoldered in a small brazier, hardly taking the dismal chill off the place.

‘When the old woman had helped the wife to give birth, she sat on a rough wooden stool by the fire to dress the baby. The wife asked her to stay in the cave a fortnight, to which she agreed; her old heart pitied the wife, you see, for the birthgiving had grievously worn and pained her, and her surroundings were shoddy. Every day the tall stranger, the husband, brought them food and other requirements, and every day the child and the mother grew more healthy and robust.

‘One day, the husband came to the old woman with a curiously carved little box of green-hued ointment, telling her to put some on the baby's eyelids but forbidding her to touch her own eyes with it. She did as he bade, but after she had put the box away, the old woman's left eye began to itch and she rubbed it with the same finger she had used on the baby's eyes.

‘Instantly she beheld a wonderful sight. The cave had disappeared, and in its place was a marvelous paneled chamber, decorated in green and gold, fit for royalty. Instead of being seated on a wooden stool before a guttering fire in a brazier, she found herself in a high-backed, carved chair near an open hearth, from which a glorious warmth was blazing. Deep-piled rugs covered the polished floor, gorgeous tapestries adorned every wall, and a gold-framed mirror spanned the mantelpiece. Stifling her gasps of amazement, she crept across to where the lady lay asleep, no longer upon rushes, but on a featherbed endowed with sheets of ivory silk, the most luxurious pillows, and the richest of embroidered counterpanes. None other than the lovely yellow-haired Eilian lay sleeping there! The baby, too, who had before seemed a very ordinary little chap, was the comeliest child the midwife had ever nursed.