My Swordhand is Singing Page 5
He stared through the pricking darkness at the hut, but could see nothing, could hear nothing but the water. There was light coming from inside, flickering slightly, as if people were moving around.
Something was wrong. No one ever came to see them, certainly not late at night. He put a foot on the bridge, eyeing the horses as he did so. He didn’t recognize them, but he noticed that strangely they bore no saddles. He turned his attention back to crossing the bridge without making a sound. He succeeded and stole a few hurried paces across the island to the hut, but instead of opening the door and walking straight in as he usually would, he slid close to the wall, crouching nervously beneath the shuttered window.
He could hear voices.
He raised himself on his knees, bringing his ear as close to the window as he dared. He knew that he could not be seen from inside, but still something made him desperate to keep hidden.
Now he could make out words.
“…you have no choice…”
A muffled reply. Peter knew it was his father’s voice, but the words were not clear.
“Once, you would have spoken differently.”
“You cannot refuse. There is no choice. The Shadow Queen has taken your choice away.”
The Shadow Queen. Who was his father talking to in there? Now several voices all spoke at once, urgently.
“…the Shadow Queen is coming.”
“…more hostages.”
“…where is it, Tomas?”
“I don’t have it.”
“You will agree. You have to understand that.”
“No!”
His father again, shouting this time.
There was silence for a short time, then quieter voices, indistinct but insistent nonetheless.
Peter was about to risk moving closer, when the door flew open on the far side of the hut. He dropped to the ground and crawled to the corner by Sultan’s stable. Between the cracks in the planks of the stable, he saw four figures leaving, then crossing the bridge.
The light from the open door shone across the island and the bridge. Its glow was enough for Peter to see the identity of the visitors.
The Gypsies who had been with Sofia in the village.
12
Closer
Agnes closed the door to her mother’s room and leant against the door frame for a moment, her eyes shut, running her hand through her hair. She had lost count of how many times she had been in to check on her through the day, and now the evening was thickening and the long night lay ahead. All day she had been trying to make some sense of her late father’s business. People had come to collect orders that she knew nothing about; there had been arguments. She was exhausted.
She was still furious with Peter, but deep down she knew that was unfair. He had been trying to help. But he was tactless and certainly not as bold as she would have liked him to be. As she would have liked her future husband to be.
She blushed as she considered what she had told no one else, not even Peter himself. And he was poor too, she would never have dared tell her father of her desires. A draper’s daughter does not marry a woodcutter’s son.
Father, however, was gone. Though that was not what her mother said.
Agnes tried to push that thought away as she busied herself for bed. She slipped out of her clothes and into a nightdress, and began to brush her hair, but her fears would not stay away. Her hands began to tremble. She dropped the hairbrush clumsily on a table by the window, backing away from it uneasily. She knew the window was protected, but that didn’t quell her fear.
What if Father had been coming back? To Mother, in the night? She did not doubt for a second that it was possible; everyone knew it. Cattle and sheep had been attacked in recent days too. And it was true that her mother did seem to be getting weaker with every night that passed. Weaker, and paler.
But he would not come in the house tonight, no one and nothing would; she had taken further precautions. There was still tar from St. Andrew’s Eve on each window and door, and earlier in the day she had crushed five whole bulbs of garlic and smeared the paste on every window frame and doorsill.
There was no way in now. Or so she hoped.
She climbed into her own little bed and listened to the noises of the night.
In the street, outside Agnes’s house, beneath her window, a large and bloated figure wavered, trying to come nearer. The figure, dressed in muddy, slightly torn clothes, sniffed the night air, which reeked of garlic.
13
And Closer
Again he sniffed the air. Now he cursed and moved down the street, shambling slightly. Something pushed him away from that house, the house he remembered, but he sensed there would be others.
It was to be even easier than that, however.
Two streets away, a young man called Stefan made a fatal mistake. In fact he had made several, each worse than the last. First, he had decided to spend the evening in the inn, where he had got very drunk with his friends. Second, he had played cards all night, and for some reason had lost every hand, and almost a week’s wages—all the money he had in the world. Then he’d decided to stay in the inn when his friends left together, and to drink until his credit ran out.
Eventually the innkeeper had thrown him out. It was a cold night, but not snowing, and the ground was a mess of old snow and mud and footprints. Stefan had been shuffling home, too drunk still to be miserable about his evening, when he saw someone in front of him, no more than arm’s length away.
Stefan puzzled for a moment to place who it was.
“Crista!” he announced, pleased he had remembered.
It was the draper, the one with the pretty daughter. What was her name? He couldn’t remember at first, then it came to him.
“And how is little Agnes?”
The draper said nothing, and then slowly, very slowly, it occurred to Stefan that there was something strange about seeing Constantin Crista here. If only he could remember what—
Faster than a cat could blink, Stefan flew back against the wall. Crista leant in, pressing him back, holding the young man’s head away to one side with one hand, while using his other arm to hold him fast. He leant his head in closer, his mouth nearing Stefan’s neck.
His lips, now just a finger’s breadth away, parted, and then Crista stuck his tongue out, straight through the skin, right into the artery.
For a moment Stefan struggled to realize he was dying.
14
Creeping
Daylight crept slowly over the mountains, and through the trees, and finally limped along the twisting streets of Chust. It was snowing, but softly. Agnes awoke, her heart feeling lighter than it had done for some time. She went in to see her mother, who smiled and even said she was feeling a little better. Agnes went back to her own room and dressed, then went downstairs to light a fire and make some porridge, picking her way past bolts of cloth stored at random in the hall.
Then she heard shouts from outside, and a scream.
She dropped the pot she was holding and frantically began to pull the barricade of chairs and tables away from the door.
15
The Waters of Chust
Deep in the forest, by the river, Sultan stood patiently. He snorted from time to time, blowing great clouds of steam into the frozen morning air. Nearby—the only other sound to be heard—was Tomas slowly sawing his way through a tree trunk that lay on the forest floor.
Tomas’s mouth was a tight line as he tried to close his mind to everything except the saw and the tree. That was all he wanted to think about, but despite his hangover, and the exertion of sawing, images jostled in his head. He had been made to think about things he had sworn to forget. Who he was, thirty years ago. He paused in his work, exhausted, and glanced at Sultan. It was enough to make him remember another horse he had once owned. A huge stallion called Prince. How they had ridden! And how people had fled at the very sight of them! In his mind’s eye now, Tomas could look to his right, and there was the
King himself.
Mighty. How mighty.
For no more than a second, Tomas remembered glory; then he saw the glory turn sour, as it always had. Peter’s face rose before him, and with it their argument from the night before. Then he remembered what he had done.
He bent to the saw again and worked until he collapsed over the carcass of the tree, fighting for breath, sobbing.
Sultan stamped his hooves in the snow.
16
Agnes
Peter woke late to find that his father had already left the hut. Pulling on his boots and coat, he stamped out into the snowy morning and looked around. The river flowed slowly by as usual, there was no sign of anything strange. No sign even of the hoofprints of the other horses from the previous night. He looked into the stable and saw that Sultan was gone too.
After watching the Gypsies leave, Peter had waited awhile, shivering in the stable. Then he’d gone back to find Sultan, who’d seemed perfectly happy to come home. He had stabled the horse, and gone in.
That was when the trouble began.
More arguments, more drink.
It seemed reasonable enough to Peter to ask why they, or rather why Tomas, had received a visit from Gypsies they had never met before. And what it was the Gypsies wanted, so late at night.
Tomas, however, was saying nothing.
He flung himself around the hut, jar of drink in hand, spilling most of it, drinking some. Peter had never seen him this bad, but for once he was not afraid of his father. He could see something was really wrong. Tomas was agitated as well as drunk, and Peter demanded to know why.
That was when Tomas hit him.
There had been no more talk after that. Peter had gone to bed.
Now he stood in the morning air. Where was his father? He felt the side of his head, where Tomas had struck him, but it didn’t occur to him to feel sorry for himself, just as it didn’t occur to him to be angry with his father.
Finally he thought to check the toolbox in the hut. Tomas’s axe and the best saw were missing. So he had gone to work, that was something, though he was likely to be still drunk from the night before. Well, the cold and the work would sober him up soon enough.
There were sudden footsteps on the bridge, light and fast.
“Peter! Peter!”
Agnes.
She ran to him, right into his arms, without saying another word.
“Agnes! What is it? What’s wrong?”
She said nothing, but trembled against him, her arms clutching him tightly.
“Have you run all the way from Chust?”
At last she lifted her head from his chest and stared up into his eyes. Her face was full of fright.
“There’s—” She broke off and began to sob.
“What?” cried Peter, infected by her fear.
“Another death. Last night,” Agnes wailed.
Peter grabbed her shoulders and held her away, needing to see her face, to see her speak, in order to understand, to believe.
“Another death?”
“Stefan,” she cried. “You know Stefan? The miller’s son? They found him in the street this morning. I saw—Oh, Peter.” She stopped again and began to cry, burying her face in Peter’s jacket.
“That’s terrible,” Peter said. It was all he could think of to say. Poor Stefan. But at least…
At least what? He was dreaming of a girl, and not the one who stood in front of him now. He forced himself to think clearly, to try to help Agnes.
She was mumbling now, almost incoherently, and Peter caught only two words.
“The blood!”
He steadied himself, knowing he needed to calm her down, though he felt far from calm.
“It’s all right,” he said. “You’re safe. You’re all right. It’s terrible about Stefan, but you’re safe. And I’ll make sure it stays that way. I’ll come to your house and stay through the night. Nothing will hurt you.”
“No, Peter, no!” Agnes pushed herself from him, almost screaming. “You don’t understand.”
“What? What is it?”
“Stefan wasn’t married.”
“So?” asked Peter.
“Stefan wasn’t married. There’s to be a Wedding of the Dead.”
“I know,” said Peter. “I know, but that’s normal—”
“But Peter,” she cried, “I’m to be the bride!”
17
The Wedding of the Dead
Nunta Mortului. The Wedding of the Dead.
Stefan had been found in the street with his blood all around him. So that he did not have to suffer the fate of going into the ground as a bachelor, he would be married beside his open grave to a girl from the village.
Agnes was the oldest unmarried girl, and so had been chosen. It had been agreed upon by Anna and the other Elders, and that was that. There was no possibility of refusing.
And after the wedding service had been performed at the grave, Stefan would be buried, while Agnes, in order to serve the period of mourning, would be sent to a small hut at the edge of the forest, where she would see no other living soul for forty days.
Peter had done his best to console her, but what could he say? All he could do was assure her that he would see that her mother was all right, make sure she was looked after, that there was enough food in the house. As for the wedding, nothing could take away her fear of going through with it and of the forty days’ isolation she must endure.
Forty days in a tiny hut, with all contact forbidden. Just within sight of the village, but outside it nonetheless, with the whole mass of the Mother Forest lurking at its back.
Stefan’s was the second funeral Peter had attended in the village, but it was so unlike that of Radu, the woodcutter. Most of the village turned out, and besides, there was the added attraction of the wedding. There had not been a Nunta Mortului for several years, and the bride this time was particularly pretty, which moved the hearts of even the most cynical.
The bride was ready. She had been dressed not by her mother, who was too ill to stand, but by two women chosen by the Elders. She had arrived in the cemetery wearing a long, stiff wedding dress that had been found for her. The dress, however, was a sinister parody of its usual form, having been dyed black; it was to serve as wedding and mourning dress in one. It was completed by a high headdress and a heavy beaded veil, also black, which hid the bride’s face totally. Peter could only guess that it was Agnes from her height and figure. He could see she was having trouble walking; her dress rustled like dead leaves with every uncertain step, and she held her hands clasped tightly in front of her. Maybe it was the weight of the clothes, maybe it was because she couldn’t see, but in his heart Peter knew the real reason. She was scared stiff.
The groom had arrived too. He had been made ready at his home, where he had been dressed in his best clothes, suitable for church. A wedding. Or a funeral. His body had been rubbed with lovage. Protection. His coffin lay uncovered on trestles beside his grave.
The sexton had worked hard on this grave, harder than on Radu’s, but then this was a proper burial, in the graveyard, overlooked by the sow-backed church with its wooden-tiled roof and sharply pointed onion dome. People crowded around, leaning on the fences, hemmed in between other graves, each of which had a wooden grave marker. Most of the markers were brightly painted crosses, set under small wooden roofs to shelter them from the worst of the weather. These little houses were painted too, and bore inscriptions concerning the occupant. A very few of the graves in the yard were stone, the resting places of the richest citizens of Chust.
Around the coffin stood the mourners, around them lay the graveyard, and outside the graveyard lay the village. Beyond all of this stood the endless silent forest, watching the Wedding of the Dead, seeing all, saying nothing.
Peter wrestled to get as close to Agnes as he could, but he was still far from her. Even so, he felt Agnes’s loneliness from where he stood. It was as if her forty days’ segregation had begun already.
As well as Agnes and Daniel there was the familiar figure of Teodor, the feldsher, who stood nearby but took no part in the ceremony. Old Anna stood next to him, her cruel, aged face glowering at anyone who dared look in her direction.
The wedding was soon over, and the burial began. As Stefan’s coffin lid was lowered onto the box, Peter saw Teodor step forward. Daniel reached out and put a hand on his arm, as if trying to stop him from approaching the coffin. Though Peter couldn’t hear what they said, he could tell there was some argument between them. People began to grow agitated; they shifted uneasily, muttering. At last Daniel appeared to relent. Teodor stepped forward and placed various items inside the coffin, along with the body. A net, some whitethorn, and small figures like a child’s dolls. Then the lid was hammered into place and the whole thing put in the ground. As it went, the mourners began to sing, spontaneously, of one accord. They sang the Miorita.
At first their singing was quiet, but as the verses told of the shepherd’s fanciful version of events, of his marriage to the princess of the stars, their voices grew louder and more rousing, until Peter found that despite his skepticism, there were tears in his eyes.
“At my wedding, tell how a bright star fell,
Sun and moon came down to hold my bridal crown.”
As the singing reached its climax, a single image was left in Peter’s mind. The princess from the stars. The young shepherd had found his magical bride, even in death.