A Pocketful of Crows Page 2

  I took this fair maid by the lily-white hand

  On a green mossy bank we sat down;

  I gave her a kiss on her sweet rosy lips,

  A tree spread its branches around . . .

  The very next morning I made her my bride,

  Just after the breaking of day;

  The bells they did ring, and the birds they did sing,

  And I crowned her the Queen of the May.

  What witchcraft is this? What malady? I try to purge myself of him with wormwood and valerian. I am no village maiden, to sigh over bells and songbirds. I am no girl of the Folk, to dream of weddings and garlands. I should not have taken the village girl’s charm from the branch of the hawthorn tree. The hawthorn is vengeful and cunning and old – to steal from her was a mistake. I pull the piece of scarlet silk from the heart of the adder-stone and throw it onto my cooking fire. The stone I drop into the stream, to tumble back towards the sea. The hawthorn will forget, in time, and things will be as they once were. And yet, for all that, William remains in me, like a splinter in my heart. And when I sleep at last, I dream of a night in midsummer; and in my dream he is warm and sweet, and tastes of blood and strawberries.

  Three

  Today I am a speckled frog in the rushes by a lake. The lake is deep and black as bog: its waters cold from the mountains. A dozen waterfalls and streams come to plunge their feet in the lake: otters live on the islands that rise above the surface. Today it is raining; soft fine rain like stitches of the finest silk. And yet there is no joy to be had, not in the lake or in the woods, not in the rain or in the open sky, for my love is far away and there is no pleasure without him.

  His name is William MacCormac. I heard it from a white-headed crow, who heard it from a black sheep, who heard it from a tabby cat that lives in a dry-moated castle. The castle belongs to a rich old man called Sir James MacCormac. He is the laird of this piece of earth, and William is his only son.

  The travelling folk have no castles, no wealth. We do not hold lands or territories. Instead we have the mountains, the sea, the lakes and the moors and the rivers. This is our inheritance. But William will one day inherit everything his father owns: the castle, the horses, the farms, the sheep, the gold, the grain, the granaries. All the tame things his father owns will pass into his service. By the reckoning of the Folk, William will be a rich man. And rich men are courted wherever they go, by noblewomen and village girls; by commoners and courtesans. One day he will fall in love, and that girl he will marry. And their names will be spoken aloud in the church, and wedded to one another. And she will wear a muslin veil, and he will wear a garland. And he will give her a golden ring, to bind her to him for ever. And he will never once be mine, or look at me with love in his eyes, for who could love a brown girl who never stays in her own skin?

  I wish I had kept the adder-stone. Such a stone is a powerful charm, and looking through the hole in its heart by the light of a tallow candle, you can see as far as the ocean – even, perhaps, through castle walls. If I had kept the adder-stone I would watch him as he slept. I would watch wherever he went, until at last I tired of the game. But the charm is lost, though the spell stands strong, and all I can do is hope to forget the young man in the May-green coat, who crowned me with wild roses . . .

  Four

  Today I am a nightingale at your bedroom window. My song is sweeter than honey, and yet you do not hear me. Instead, you sit in your chamber and read from a book bound in red leather, and sometimes you sigh and look outside, but you cannot see me, nor do you know how eagerly I watch you from my stony perch.

  There is a sprig of whitethorn lying by your bedside. Ill luck to the sleeper who lies by the may. Tonight I shall go into a mouse, or a rat, or a housecat, and steal into your bedroom. There I shall take the bad-luck bloom and leave a wild rose in its place – a wild rose, like the ones you placed in my hair. A wild pink rose, still fresh with the dew, and tender as the morning. And then, maybe, you will think of me, and know that I still think of you.

  A cat yowls in the darkness. I would not choose to travel with her. Housecats are at best only half-wild; fawning and purring for favours. But no one questions a housecat, or hinders her coming and going. Why do you sigh, sweet William? Why are you so restless? I scratch at your door: you let me in. I caper and purr at the touch of your hand.

  ‘Puss, puss,’ you say. It is almost a name. What a strange thing it must be, to be named. What a strange and terrible thing. No man will ever name me, not as a cat, and not as myself. And William is drawn to wild things, or he would never have looked at me.

  ‘Puss, puss.’ I take a giant leap onto the silken coverlet. Your bed is as big as my cabin, all drawn with curtains of heavy brocade. My claws are sheathed in gold and silk. There is a good fire in the hearth. My fur is alight with fireflies.

  Are you lonely, William? Let me sleep beside you. I will be your companion tonight. I will guard your slumbers. No mouse or rat will dare to show its whiskers at your threshold. I shall sleep on your pillow, and purr, until you are mine for ever.

  So this is what it must feel like. To be a named thing; a tamed thing; a pet. Of course it is foolish and absurd, and yet it feels good to be here at your side, your hand moving gently against my fur. Just for today, it feels good to be tame, and besides, who else but I need know? I sleep, and by your side I dream of things I never knew I wanted, and before dawn I slip away back into my own skin, for to travel too far can be dangerous, and we may never find ourselves again if we stay away too long. I slip into my own skin, and lying on my bracken bed, I think of William, and smile, and look up at the waning moon under the tapestry of the sky.

  Five

  Today, I am a wild brown goat upon the craggy mountainside. Down in the village, I can see the shepherd with his flock on the hill; the farmer with his plough horse. Down by the church, there’s a wedding, with bridey-cake and garlands. Marry in May, you’ll regret it for aye. And yet the bride seems happy enough in her veil like a beekeeper’s net. Both are keepers of the hive. Both shall have their honey.

  Every night this week I have spent sleeping by William’s bedside. Instead of hunting with the owl or running with the vixen, I have been a tabby cat, purring, playful and content, watching William as he sleeps, sitting in his lap as he reads, accepting morsels from his hand. And now I know that this feeling is not a curse, or a spell, or a dream. It is as real as the starry sky, and the hot blood of the rat I caught last night in the castle kitchens. This feeling, at once so strong and so sweet; so real, and yet insubstantial. I have been warned against it, and yet it does not seem so dangerous. And besides, my William is not at all like the other young men of the Folk. William is kind, and good, and passionate, and caring. William does not belong behind stone walls and battlements. And William is lonely, and wild, and longs for someone to care for.

  As I crop the heather a kestrel calls from the open sky: Stay away. Stay away! She means it as a warning. The travelling folk are quick to learn of any breach of the laws of our kind. Mine is not an offence – not yet – but it is a cause for concern. Stay away, shrieks the kestrel. Stay away from William MacCormac.

  I have heard this warning many times over the past days. It comes to me from the sheep on the fells; from the hare in the long grass; even from the wild bees in the forest canopy. Bees, bees, your master is dead. Will ye work for the new one?

  I shake my horns at the kestrel. I do not need its warning. I’ll go to the castle as I please, and no William shall snare me. I shall go into a cat, and sleep on his pillow all night long. Not because he is my love, but because I do as I please, and no one tells me what to do. And maybe because of that warm hearth, and the coverlet all silk and gold, and the scent of him, and his hands on my fur, and his voice like antler-velvet—

  High on the rocks, a mockery of crows takes up the warning. Beware! But I am already on my way, travelling first into a fox, and then into a warbler, and then into the purring cat, while out in the night, the owl s
creams – Fool! Love-tamed fool! – and the mice, growing fat and bold, dance in the dying firelight.

  June

  The Rose Month

  Sumer is icumen in

  Lhude sing cuccu

  Groweþ sed

  and bloweþ med

  and springþ þe wde nu

  Sing cuccu –

  Cuckoo song: 13th century

  One

  Today I am a skylark, tumbling high among the clouds, flinging my song against the peaks, dancing with the rainbows. Who could have known love would be like this? Why did no one tell me?

  Last night I was a tabby cat, just like every night last week. I slept on William’s pillow and purred, and watched him as he slumbered. But I was no longer content. I wanted more than this. And why not? Why should I alone be denied something that any village girl can know? Our kind have so many powers. Why should love be forbidden? And so, at last, I came to my love, not as a fox, or a nightingale, but as myself, in my own skin, warm and brown and naked. He opened his eyes and looked at me. His eyes were summer in a glass.

  ‘How can you be here?’ he said. ‘Are you a fairy, or a dream?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I have dreamed of you,’ he said, ‘since the day I first saw you. You stepped out of the trees like a forest doe. And then you were gone just as suddenly, and I thought I would go mad with wanting you.’

  ‘I was never gone,’ I said. ‘I was here all the time.’

  And then the heat was upon me, not as a doe, or a wolf, or a lynx, but – and for the first time – as a woman.

  So, this is love, I told myself, as berry-brown and petal-pale we lay together flank to flank. And with his hands, and with his mouth, he made me sing like a nightingale, and soar like an eagle, and howl like a wolf, and scream and squall like a mountain cat.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said, when at last we were spent. ‘Tell me your name, at least, so that I can write it on my heart.’

  I smiled, and did not answer.

  ‘But how will I find you again?’ he said. ‘For I must see you again, or die.’

  ‘I’ll be here,’ I told him, ‘for as long as there are fish in the sea, and stars in the sky, and birds in the air, and dreams in the hearts of the Folk.’

  He said: ‘That isn’t long enough.’ And then he kissed me and I soared like a lark, and came down laughing and filled with love, and swore I would be his for ever.

  Two

  Today I must gather wood and supplies. For three days my hut has stood empty. For three days my firepit has been cold, and my willow traps have gone unchecked. I know all this because I travelled into a roe deer this morning, and saw the coloured things by my door shining in the sunlight, and the white-headed crow perched by the door, and heard its harsh-voiced warning. And this morning, a great black dog came to sit by my bedside, and when I looked into its eyes, it growled and said: Come home. Come home.

  But William does not want me to leave. ‘What do I care for your hut?’ he says. ‘What do I care for your willow traps? My home is a castle. You are its queen. You will eat roast guinea fowl, and strawberries from my hothouse. You will drink the finest wines, and taste the most delicate pastries.’

  I try to explain that my people have different – wilder – ways to the Folk. We make our bed under the gorse, and travel with the seasons. We have no home, no family, not even a name to bind us.

  ‘Then take my name,’ says William. ‘My house is proud and noble. I will share my name with you if only you will stay with me. My father is a wealthy man, gone to fight a foreign war. When he dies – which may be soon – I shall inherit his fortune. You shall have gold, and silks, and furs. You shall have horses and servants. You shall have everything you desire, if only you will stay with me.’

  I have no need of silks and furs. I have no need of servants. I have the silk of the dragonfly’s wing, the snowy coat of the winter hare. I have the gold of the morning sun, the colours of the Northlights. And I can go into a horse, and run across the marshlands, or travel with the wild geese as they fly towards the sun—

  But I can say none of this to my love, who looks at me so tenderly. And so I promise to stay, and he laughs, and pulls me into bed once more, and draws the curtains around us like the tent of a travelling chieftain, and tells me I am his bonny brown girl, and that he would rather die than be parted from me.

  Three

  ‘You are my bonny brown girl,’ he says. It is the first time that I have known anyone call me beautiful. My people are not beautiful, not as the Folk understand it. We have no love for artifice. We do not try to change ourselves into what we should not be.

  Not for us the scented oils, plucked eyebrows, ironed hair. Not for us the shaven leg, the corset, comb and mirror. Not for us, the curling pins, the powder and the rouge pot. For my William, I would try. I would pretend to be tame, if it meant I could stay by his side. But my hair is a blackberry tangle impossible to comb through. My eyes are black, my brows are thick, my body strong and sturdy. And William loves the fine black silk that lines my legs and armpits, and the roundness of my breasts, and the soft broad curve of my hip, and would not see me change a thing.

  Except that here, in his castle, if I am to be seen by his folk without causing a scandal, I need to wear suitable clothing, and bathe, and learn to read my letters, and dress my hair in the manner of those village girls I so despise.

  ‘When my father returns from the wars,’ he says, ‘I want him to cherish you as I do.’

  ‘And would you cherish me more,’ I ask, ‘in velvet than in wolfskin?’

  ‘Velvet or wolfskin, homespun or silk, you will always be my love. But my people must respect you. I want them to call you My Lady. I want them to serve you as they serve me. And besides,’ he says, taking me in his arms, ‘just imagine how much more beautiful you will be in a gown of silk, with pearls at your throat, and satin slippers on your feet?’

  And so I accepted, to please him. What harm can it do, after all, to pretend? When I travel as a hawk, I do so in borrowed plumage. How is this any different? And when I take off my borrowed clothes, and lie with him, I will always be his wild brown girl from the forest.

  He found me a maid from the village. The maid is called Fiona. A rose-pink, cowslip, buttercup girl, without a hint of wildness. He brought her here to wait on me, to lay out my clothes and brush my hair, but I can see the look in her eyes, and I know that she despises me. And sometimes I catch her looking at him, and I know that she is thinking: What does he see in a nameless brown girl? How has she bewitched him?

  But William does not see it. He says: ‘Fiona is a good girl. She will teach you all you need.’

  This makes me angry. How can he believe that girl could possibly teach me anything? Does Fiona know how to catch a salmon with her bare hands? Does she know how to soar with the lark, or climb to the eagle’s eyrie? Does she know how to make a charm blacker than the darkest night, to steal the soul of her enemy?

  He sees the look in my eyes and says: ‘Poor Fiona. Surely you are not jealous of her?’

  I turn away and will not speak.

  ‘That mooncalf? That dough-faced ninny?’ he says. ‘That sighing, simpering little miss, not fit to kiss my lady’s feet?’

  I laugh at the absurdity. The wild folk do not envy the tame. I feel ashamed that William thinks me capable of such thoughts, and I take him in my arms, and laugh, and tell him how much I love him. And so, Fiona is with me now every hour of every day. She wakes me in the morning with a cup of chocolate. She fetches water for my bath, and scents it with rose oil and lavender. She brings me books from the castle library, and helps me to make out the words. She brings me clothes and jewellery belonging to William’s dead mother. I wear a dress of crimson velvet, with petticoats of scarlet silk, and my hair is caught in a jewelled net, and my feet crammed into high-heeled shoes. There are rings on my fingers, and bracelets all along my arms. This way, William tells me, I can live in the castle without alerting suspicio
n. This way, I look like a lady, he says, and not a brown girl from the woods.

  ‘But I am a brown girl from the woods,’ I say, laughing, in spite of my unease.

  But my William does not laugh. Instead he looks very serious. I must make an effort, he says. The servants are bound to his father. He is the laird of the castle, and they will relay any news to him. This is why I must dress like a lady, and have a maidservant with me, and learn to read, and to use a fork, and not to run, or shout, or laugh.

  ‘If you really loved me,’ he says, ‘you would do this for my sake. Instead, you treat it like a game. Understand that if my father does not approve of my lady-love, he will cut me off without a penny. Is that what you want?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I say. And yet my heart aches. Why does he care so much for these things? Castle walls, and servants, and gold are nothing compared to our freedom. We could have the moors, and the lakes, and the open skies, and the mountains. We could live in the forest, alone, and be everything to each other. But William, I know, would miss the comfort of his home, and hearth, and his bed with the silken coverlet. And it makes him so happy to have me here. I must not be ungrateful.

  But, for all their obedience and calling me My Lady, I know that the servants despise me. I have seen them watching me, and once I went into a rat that lives in a hole by the pantry door, and heard one of the chefs discussing me with the Master of the Wines.