Singing My Sister Down and other stories Read online

  We joined on behind her, some silent, some wittering (‘To that death-place?’ ‘Oh please, my queen!’). We moved after her, deeply against our will, in our orderly line, through the main town. The peeple in flood around us were too intent upon the dreadfulness to realise we went uncommanded. They flowed past full of fear and excitement and relief, their faces always towards their destination.

  The place was crowded, with an itch in the air; it was the stuff of bad dreams, to have to pick one’s way among such close-packed flimsies. But the platform at the centre, sweet with fresh-sawn wood, was empty, except for two men holding rattle-guns, which smelt not of death but of pride and show. What stank was the blade lying like a moon-sliver on the dark, raised box before them. Through all the crowd there was a craning and a yearning towards this weapon.

  Peeple had brought food baskets, seating, children. As day brightened further, parasols began to open and twirl throughout the crowd. A man close by was selling burnt-sugar. One boy carried a small white rat on his shoulder.

  ‘What breed of wrong-hearted festival is this?’ I asked it.

  ‘I don’t know, but the food is good.’

  The crowd was such that we could only form a line, Booroondoon by the platform and the rest of us sheltering behind her from the full force of the blade’s stink. She rumbled a message: Hold Hloorobn, and I renewed my grasp on Hloorobn’s tail. We were trained to be serene among peeple; their chatter stirred habitual serenity from our bones. But they were not our peeple, and this was not our town, and we were hungry and thirsty and afraid.

  A macao-bird shrieked from the far side of the square: ‘Here comes the fun-man, to start off the fun!’

  Up the wooden steps climbed a much-bedizened person, with a head-plume, and sparkles on his shoulders. He stood tall between the two guards and spread his arms. The crowd quieted, and the plume-man spoke, his high voice carrying to all corners and every crowded balcony of the square. As he spoke, the peeple grew quieter, and their tides of feeling changed from puzzlement, to disappointment, and finally to alarm and unsettlement.

  The macao gave an idiot laugh. ‘No whippings today, folk! The monkeys have got out of their cage! The monkeys are running all over town, teasing the watchdogs and busting out the pantries!’ Peeple began to pack away belongings, and to edge away from the platform through the crowd. The plume-man made a staying motion with his hands, and kept on speaking, but peeple leaked away, until there were perhaps only half their number remaining. Now we could all move up alongside Booroondoon, and Gooroloom and I could press the excitable Hloorobn between us, flank to flank, and hold her steady.

  ‘Here comes the chopper!’ shrieked the macao with glee. ‘And the choppee! Say goodbye to your head, bad monkey!’

  ‘There,’ said Booroondoon. ‘At the great door.’

  Raising my head above Hloorobn’s I saw a little one, all filthy, being stumbled towards us by two men, also in the sparkling uniforms. Peeple spat on him and squeaked at him as he came. An eddy of breeze brought us his dirt and distress, his being undone by fear, but beneath all that, the familiar, fresh-straw smell of our mahout.

  They pushed him up onto the wooden place; they thrust him to his knees there. And someone else had arrived. His close-suit, entirely blue-black, was like a slice of starless night. It covered his face, and stank. Peeple always move too quickly, but this happened in the taking of a single breath. No sooner had we seen him than the blue-black man was making the light flash from the blade, into all parts of the crowd. We were a row of confusions, locked in our mass, as self-less as boulders of the plain.

  Then our little ragged one, our Pippit, lifted his head. His hair like dirty ribbons fell back from his face, and he saw us through his staring tear-filled eyes, and knew us.

  His knowledge clanked closed upon us like the most welcome leg-iron. His mouth moved on the beloved sound of his command. All of us – in a vast sudden relief at having someone to obey, after our weeks of being chivvied by frightened peeple with sticks, after our days of wandering in the wilderness – all of us lowered our haunches and hoisted our heads and forelegs, to stand giant, to show our true height.

  The peeple cleared around us like dust from a sharp blow of breath. Pippit commanded again, and I spoke back as he told me, as did my sisters and our mother our queen. The peeple ran farther away. We spoke with our entire hearts and our full bulk, and every arch and column shook with the noise.

  Pippit’s voice singled out Booroondoon. The rest of us stood giant, proclaiming our hugeness, trumpeting our obedience and our love.

  Their eyes were all in a row, says Booroondoon now, like children peeping over our garden wall, the men’s who held him. The blade-man, he saw me coming; he knew what Pippit was commanding. It happened all so fast – he lifted his sword – he leaped, he was upon Pippit! – and what could I do?

  Nothing but what you did, we reassure her—although, when we saw her fling that blue-black rag out among the peeple, we knew it was a terrible thing she had been driven to.

  And then I could just push the others away. Them I did not injure, those ones, did I? They stepped back quietly; they had no swords, you see, and they had seen what I did to the first – so in hurting one I saved at least two—

  Also, you had him—

  ‘I have him!’ she rumbled to us, and Pippit called us in his bird-voice, even as she swung him onto her head. We moved towards our accustomed order. But seeing Pippit so small and unprotected at our head, and knowing the peeple wished him dead, I pushed forward to precede Booroondoon, as I would have for no other reason, and others came up to shelter him from peeple who might leap up from the sides. Out of the square we went, while the peeple foamed and cried and parted to let us through, and fell back farther as we left the paved part of the town, as we left the housed part, until there were only a few wide-eyed rubbish-pickers’ tinies by the road to watch us pass, with our prize on our head, our live, sweet Pippit, chattering and laughing and greeting us by our bird-names over and over.

  Which is how we come to be here, on this long walk away from all we know. Since we left the road and the land began undulating, ‘Our Pippit may be leading us to the Forest Hills of legend,’ Hloorobn says eagerly.

  Booroondoon in her sadder moments says, ‘He may indeed be leading us into death, for I have never been this way before.’

  ‘And you have been near everywhere there is to be, our queen,’ says Gooroloom, ‘from the log-camp mountains, to the ports, to the road-making settlements all up and down.’

  Says Booroondoon, ‘Yet I know nothing of this place, not its rocks or its creatures, nor how Pippit chooses the way among ten hundred sandhills all the same.’

  ‘Who knows? Who minds?’ says Hloorobn happily.

  ‘None of us, that’s sure,’ says Gooroloom.

  And none of us does. For each evening our sweet Pippit brings us to water and good browsing, and each morning we wake to a spray of his hot little voice, to the blessing of his kisses and his touch as he walks among us. And he lifts us without spike and leads us without wrath. Singing, always singing, he moves us onward, into each brightening day.

  MULLORD RIDES FAST AWAY, to the forest.

  ‘Give me that grey,’ I say to Bandy.

  Bandy hooks the mare out of the stall, and I’m astride and moving before I’ve properly had time to think. Mullord is a small patch of darkness rocking through the dusk. Taking the hill path, as I said he would.

  ‘That wagon will slow them,’ I told Cook and Gerdie. ‘All our master has to do is go over the hills. They’ll camp at Tampton, or at Brittly Spring, under the Seat.’

  ‘Not with that prize aboard,’ said Cook, all in a shiver of delighted horror. ‘Not if they’ve a brain anywhere among their rags and tattles. Bury theersalluvs in a cave somewheres. Magic theersalluvs right off to Arribee, or further. They could do that, theer kind.’

  I can believe it. I can believe Mullord and I are riding out to nothing, to a long night of black not
hing, silent country. So outlandish has the day been, and last night, and yesterday, too.

  But now all will be well. Mullord is back from his travels, and he knows. Whatever can be put right, Mullord will put it. We needn’t twirl our thumbs and worry any longer.

  I throw myself low on the grey’s neck as we go in among the trees. I know the hill path, but not branch for branch as Mullord does. I might not catch up with him; I might meet the both of them coming back, like that time she set out for her father’s hold, in that great temper after they were wed. Yes, I’ll meet them like that, hand-in-hand between the horses, their heads together in close-talk, Mullord’s face with the look on it, like a warm hand has smoothed off all the sternness.

  Except it’s night, rushing night, and it hasn’t happened yet. And sternness wasn’t the word for Mullord when he was told, this evening, as he came in the house-gate. Leermonth and Jamey got to him first, the young bletherers.

  ‘Is this true, Berry?’ he said to me as I hurried up.

  ‘About her ladyship? Every word, Mullord.’

  I saw, ’twas as he heard it fall from my lips that he credited it. Time was when that would have given me pleasure, when I was young and learning the ways of lords; nowadays it’s only my due. All it did this time was bring home, like a hammer blow to my chest, how terrible a thing she had done. To all of us through him, to be sure, but mostly to him; what her cruel cold heart had done upon his true one. I saw her for the child she was, for the thoughtless murdering child, in that moment, in Mullord’s fallen face.

  My cheek is against the grey’s mane, my ear listening past our thunder and branch-crack, up to Mullord on the hill ahead. I can hear nothing, but he must not go too fast, must not tire that big black horse, for all it’s fresh and kept trim for just this use. Them rag-tags may have gone hell for leather, taken fright once they got out, once they sobered up and saw they had a lord’s wife with them.

  ‘Did none of ours go with them?’ Mullord had raged, striding to the stables.

  ‘Mullady wouldn’t let us,’ I said. ‘She cast a pot at Minnow’s head, who would go with her. The woman’s been senseless these many hours since, and the leech don’t hold out hope for her. After that, only the little handmaid would go, and she came back weeping, at noon-tide, saying Mistress had spoken harsh to her and would not have her near.’

  I did not like the look of him, the darting eyes, the snarl on his mouth. If she had meant to send him mad by this, I thought she had perhaps succeeded. And I did not want to see such a noble mind turning.

  And then Bandy was before us with the coalblack saddled and bridled, and Mullord walked straight up onto its back, and off he rode.

  I come out onto the bald hilltop, and in the freedom from branch-thwackings I hear him ahead, well ahead, turmoiling up the next hill. He doesn’t need me; his rage and power will alone accomplish whatever he intends. But could I bear to go back to the keep, and gaze at wall and window? Better to be out and moving, even fruitlessly, than sitting wondering, stilling servants’ chatter. And I would go after him as I would not go after his wife; I’m his, not hers, as I’ve said to Gerdie many a time.

  ‘Get you,’ says my wife, her eyes laughing. ‘One kind word from her and you’d be theirs both.’

  ‘And I might,’ I rally, ‘but the mistress is hardly one for kindness, is she?’

  ‘She isn’t one for anything much,’ says my Gerd. ‘A flash of fire, a prickly bit of lightning. She doesn’t know what she herself’s about, let alone her lord and his lordship.’

  Night falls while we’re in the hills, a clear night with no moon yet. I catch up with Mullord spelling his horse, walking the Grey Comb, a shadow in the starlight.

  ‘Berry,’ he says as I come up.

  ‘Mullord.’

  He’s walking purposive, has not lost his stride. I dismount and walk beside, as I can here, trotting a little to keep up. But he does not disburthen himself to me, for the full length of the Comb; he watches his footing and keeps moving, as if she has a hook in his breast and is drawing him to her through the night, and all he can feel is the pain of it, and work and work to ease it.

  The Plunge by starlight is a dire place, and not something you hurry. You hold yourself by teeth and ears and your horse’s toenails to that cliff, and promise Nature anything if she’ll let you out the other side. You ponder nothing but getting step to step; there’s no time even to curse the lady who brought you here.

  And then I’m wobbling with relief on the flat, and the paler darkness of the road swings out of the trees and into our path, and I think we have a chance again.

  My cousin the innkeeper is already out, with a lamp and fresh horses ready.

  ‘You’re in luck,’ he says. ‘They needed a wheelwright. I sent them over Yarrow way to Dipsy Wheeler, but I don’t know as they’ll make it as far as that.’

  ‘And our lady was among them?’ Mullord cuts in.

  Cousin’s eyes dart aside.

  ‘How was she conducting herself? Tell me true, man. Was she upright?’

  ‘She was upright and . . . she was singing, Mullord.’

  ‘Had they plied her with wine?’

  ‘She-she-she gave every appearance of being sober, sir.’ He busies himself with some harness-straightening at my foot.

  ‘Come, Berry,’ says Mullord, and kicks his horse into a trot.

  My cousin stands back and casts me a look that says, Didn’t we all know it would come to this? and it’s off with us into the night again.

  Heaven Seat pushes its stony shoulders up out of the forest beside us. Mullord disappears into the trees, and my mare follows him. I keep my head down and see almost nothing until we reach the place where we leave the horses. Even walking up to the Seat, there’s only the master’s shape striding against tangle upon darker tangle. When we clear the brush, the starlight makes me squint after such close darkness, and the breeze is sudden and cold.

  She always drew your eye to her, did the mistress. There at the edge of the farmlands spilling along the valley floor, in the golden whirl of the rag-tags’ camp, that’s her dancing, that’s the spinning, sparkling skirt of her. There are other women, of course, but none have cause to move so fiercely. Tiny shouts come up to us, miniature cheers, scrapings of music, fine as crickets’ wheezing.

  And Mullord pauses. I thought he would cry her name out and rage down the hill, dagger drawn. I thought he’d be set afire by the final sight of her, after all this riding, after all this strife. But he pauses, and seems blind, the gleam of their distant camp in both his gazing eyes.

  ‘Will we go down, sir?’ I say, at last.

  There’s time for a reel to finish, a round of gleeful cries, the fiddler to tune up and another faster dance to begin, before he speaks. ‘Yes, Berry, we’ll go down. But slowly, silently.’

  ‘You want to surprise them, sir?’

  ‘I’ll do nothing yet.’

  We slip back into the dark brush, and cross the road at the Seat’s foot, into the more open forest. It’s a while of walking before we hear the music stronger, before shards and flickers of fire-orange show among the trees. Mullord moves quieter and quieter, until he’s like a cat stepping silent through the forest, not snapping twig nor rasping leaf. I stay a little behind him and choose the same quiet places to let my foot fall.

  We come up to the camp behind the broken wagon. The music digs fingers into my brain and twirls it like a top. I remember from last night the feverishness of it, fast impatient music that demands new steps of your feet. Those tunes are the only fine thing the rag-tags have – the rest is missing teeth and leathery skin and ruffianly manners.

  They’ve built up a great fire just like the one in the keep courtyard, a great cone twisting to a sparking plume at the top. They’re all dancing, from the old toothless ones to the little staggerers jigging and tumbling at the edges. And the mistress is being passed (or passing herself – it’s hard to say) from hand to hand around the circle, a whorl within a whorl. H
er fine blood shows, and her less fine – she has bearing, but she also has their energy, their not wanting to be bothered with courtliness, with subtle talk and after-you-no-after-youmullord ways.

  I arrive at Mullord’s side. He stands like a statue; only the gleams in his eyes move. His hands don’t clench; his jaw is not set with rage. What is the man made of, that he can have such outrage before his eyes and be calm? That he can watch his own wife cavort with the rubbish of the earth and keep his temper?

  More astounding still, that he can smile! I stare at him. Yes, it’s true! It’s not just fire-flicker tweaking his mouth, but – what? Mirth? Joy? I hunt and hunt for wryness or bitterness in his face, for poison, for grief. I find none. He might be watching the children’s tourney on Midsummer Eve, benign – charmed even.

  Rage surges at my throat. Were she my wife— But I chose a good wife, one that would steady me in my youth and companion me in my old age. Mullord, steady in himself from his very beginnings – well, what was he after, taking this wild girl to him? She’s ornament enough, but does she care for his holdings and his duty? Does she mind about his people, like a proper lady? I’d swear sometimes he wed her expressly to crumble his keep from within, to stab his right hand with the dagger held in his left.

  Mullord steps out of the forest, idly almost, lightly. I strain after him, frightened to follow, frightened of the noisy dancers and of what they will make of him. And he walks forward unnoticed, to the ring of dancers. And he joins them, and begins to hand the women along, just like all the others.

  I hold my breath as she comes around to him. I watch for the slight change of his rhythm that will mean he has gone for his dagger. She will slump to the ground; the whole spellbound lot of them will fall into disarray, the music will go on for a little, until fiddler and drummer see the confusion and stumble in their rhythm and stop, and then it’ll be all blood and horror, with Mullord in the centre, dealing out the punishment they so richly deserve.