Tanith Lee a to Z, page 14
Into the hospitable house, which already blazed with lamps, as if the coming night were dark, the five witches, real and false, waking or unconscious, were hauled, and the door slammed.
Silence came to the hill, until an owl with a cat’s eyes went sailing overhead.
They looked up at the owl, Arrow and his ladies.
Then Arrow said, ‘I will tell you a second story.’
‘There’s no time for tales,’ declared Mariset in a pitiful mew.
‘There is always time,’ said Arrow, ‘for time only exists by the grace of him.’
The Second Story – The Sea Cat
The ship of the thieves was painted black, and it had for a figurehead a wooden man with upraised sword, and in his other grasp, a severed hand. They sailed about, the company, and reckoned they were fair enough. For when they came on another ship they robbed it, but only killed those who resisted them or tried to hide away their goods.
They had besides, these thieves, a sort of lucky thing, or scapegoat. The mate, who liked to carve, had made it from a piece of driftwood, and it was a very rough and graceless wooden cat, with one eye big and round and the other long and narrow. When they had had fortune, the thieves would spill drink on this lucky cat, and when matters had not gone well, they would stick nails in it, kick it, and spit in its face. They called it a name which meant Ratter.
It happened that they had extreme luck for a whole month, and robbed four ships and got away with many excellent prizes, bolts of velvet and necklaces of pearls, and some casks of wine, which they liked a great deal. And one evening, when the sun had just gone down, they saw a storm go by them on the horizon like a moving cliff of wind.
So then they anointed Ratter and sat down to eat.
As they were doing this there came a great shouting from the watch above.
The captain of the thieves ran to discover what went on, and most of his men with him, and looking out from the rail, they beheld something floating on the cradle of the black night sea.
‘It’s a barrel of rum,’ cried one. But another said ‘No, for it cries. It’s a baby.’
Over the sea it came, the floating, crying thing. And the moon began to rise in the east.
Now, they were miles from land, and nothing anywhere in sight. Not an island, not a sail, or anything that they knew of. But there on the water drifted, never going down, shape like a bluish flower. And raising its head it meowed to them. It was a cat.
‘How does it stay up there?’ said one of the thieves And another said, ‘It must swim.’ The captain said, ‘Make haste and draw it up. It’s lucky, and bad luck to leave it there. But don’t say its name.’
So they cast a net and caught the blue cat, and brought it up into the ship. There on the deck it shook itself, and was quite dry. A pretty cat, and small, with a pointed face and wide eyes.
‘Call it Rum,’ said the captain, ‘for that was what we thought it to be at first.’
Then they gave Rum a dish of fish, and Rum sat purring under the masts, and looked at them gently, and washed behind her ears.
‘See, she’s calling a soft wind,’ said one of the thieves, and sure enough this benign wind came, and blew them on where they wished to go.
When they had dined, the thieves sought their bunks, and only the captain and the mate stayed dicing in the cabin where Ratter stood in the corner. Soon enough Rum came in, and purred, then curled to sleep on the captain’s bunk.
‘Look,’ said the mate, ‘how the lamp seems to make Ratter’s eyes move about. He’s jealous of Rum.’
The captain laughed, and just then there began to be shouting again, up on the deck. The captain and the mate went to see, and so they found the thief, who had relieved the watch, standing bellowing, and the thief who had kept the watch lay dead beside the wheel, not a breath in him, not a mark upon him.
‘Men die,’ said the captain. ‘One less is one less to share with. Throw him over the side.’
So they did, and leaving the new watch at his post, rolling his eyes, the captain and the mate went to their rest. Rum was gone, like a virtuous cat, to patrol the deck, and over the ship the cool moon stared. Like a lullaby, slowly rocked the vessel.
At sunrise, there came another loud shouting. Now several turned out. And going up to the wheel, they saw the third new watch had found the second dead, as the second had found the first. And he too lay there, like a log, and not a mark on him.
‘Now something goes on here,’ said the captain. And he set three men to watch and keep the wheel, and had the other one, the second corpse, thrown over the side. Then he went to breakfast, and he and the mate kicked Ratter, and slung some dregs of wine into his face. But they ate well, and sat long, counting the money from the last of the robberies, and seeing how it would go further now.
And once or twice there was shouting up on deck, but often the thieves shouted at each other, for they drank by night and were quarrelsome all day until they drank again.
At noon, a man came to the captain, and he was very pale. ‘Curses on Ratter,’ said the pale thief, ‘I have gone the length of the ship, and every man on her, but I and you, is lying dead, and no mark on him at all.’
Just then, through the door walked Rum, and sat to wash herself at the paws of Ratter. The captain looked at this, and he said, ‘Rum has not been good luck to us, after all.’ And the mate said, ‘She must go over.’ At this Rum gazed at him with her pretty round eyes, and the mate said, ‘But I have no heart to do it.’ Though he had sliced the throats of fifty men.
Besides the captain said, ‘What can Rum do? No more than Ratter can, who’s a block of wood. This is some pestilence. Let’s drink wine, for that is a fine medicine.’
So the three of them, the captain, the mate, and the last sailor-thief, drank cups of wine, and then they went up and looked at all the dead men on the ship.
Some lay at their work, where they had been scrubbing or mending sail. One lay up in the look-out even, head tilted back as if at his ease. The wheel had moved a little from the course, but this they tended to. The captain said, ‘They must all go in the sea or they will stink.’ Accordingly they took each of the men and cast him from the side and the water received him kindly in her long blue arms. ‘Now,’ said the captain, ‘we’ll make course for the nearest port. Think how rich we will be, the three of us.’ And he sent the last sailor to trim the sails, and himself took hold of the wheel.
The captain stood then at the wheel of his ship through the heart of the afternoon, and now and then he quenched his thirst by means of the cask of wine at his side. Once or twice he saw the bluish shape of pretty Rum go up and down, though he paid not much heed. But then in the end, he heard no sounds from the ship, but for the voice of her timbers and the murmur of the sails above. So he shouted for the mate, and next for the other thief, the last sailor left. None answered.
As the sun went over, and the sky deepened, and the calm smooth wind blew on, taking them to port, the captain tied the wheel where he would have it, and drew his knife, and went to see.
He found the last sailor lying amidships, dead as a nail, and a smile on his face and no mark. And the mate the captain found lying against the money chest, with some coins in his hands, and smiling, and unmarked.
Then the captain went to Ratter, and he spat on Ratter and then he gave Ratter some wine. ‘I shall be,’ said the captain, ‘the richest man since the old days. If I live.’
But the captain did not live, for as the sun went down, pretty Rum came softly to the cabin, and looked at the captain. And the captain gazed into her shining eyes, and never, it seemed to him, had he beheld so deep and sweet a sea. And on the sea he sailed, lost in the calm air, and Rum purred, and it was a song better tahn sirens make, or the mermaids who lure men to their deaths. So the captain lay back on his bunk, in a dream, and Rum came gently up his body, and lay on the captain’s face. So as he dreamed he was suffocated, and died in the same way as all the others.
When the captain was quite dead, not a mark on him, Rum jumped down and washed herself, and the wind dropped and the ship stood still on the ocean.
Rum gazed about with her bright eyes, and saw wooden Ratter looking at her.
Ratter said, in the tongue of cats, ‘Now you will go back into the sea, and wait for the next one.’
‘Just so,’ said Rum politely.
‘Take me with you,’ said Ratter.
‘Alas,’ said Rum, ‘regretfully, you can be of no use to me. I am very sorry.’
‘There you are wrong,’ said Ratter. ‘Only grant me the power to move, and I’ll show you what I can do.’
Then Rum flicked Ratter with her silken tail, and Ratter came alive, all wooden, and rough with splinters, with, sticking out of him, all the nails that the thieves had stuck in him, and stained on him the marks of their kicks and cups.
But Ratter stalked, like an old worn chair, down the length of the ship. And reaching the bow, he slipped over. Rum sat by the rail and watched.
To the wooden figurehead, with the sword and severed hand, Ratter went, and climbed upon its face. And there Ratter curled up, as Rum had done upon the faces of the thieves. And presently the sword dropped from the wooden grip of the figurehead, and next the severed hand dropped. And then the figurehead began to buckle and to bend. As Ratter sprang away, the figurehead fell over into the sea, and after this, the ship groaned, and she broke apart as if on a rock, and soon she went down.
Ratter said to Rum as they floated in the sea, ‘You can kill men. I can kill ships.’
Rum said, ‘Then, come with me, brother.’
Mariset sighed, and said, ‘Why tell us this story?’
‘So you may notice,’ said Arrow, ‘that men also fear cats.’
‘If it was true, your tale,’ said Annasin, ‘they have some cause.’
‘Perhaps they do.’
In the village below the lights still burned, though it was late. Noises came dim and fearful from the house of hospitality, and once or twice, even over Arrow’s melodious meowing, they had heard the renting of the witch-finder, though not his words. And later, screams.
‘How sweet it is,’ said Mariset, ‘here in the hills.’
‘How safe it is,’ said Annasin. ‘But I keep thinking, what have they done to me, down there.’
Mariset said, quietly, ‘I have never had a lover.’
Annasin said, ‘You don’t want one, they are clods.’
But then she remembered Arrow and his velvet, and the thorn of pain after the tumult of desire.
And Mariset had stood up, and she rubbed her face against Arrow’s face.
Annasin curled herself into a ball of fur, and closed her eyes and slept calmly, until she heard Mariset screech and the sound of Arrow jumping backwards through a briar thicket in order to escape her claws. Then Annasin got up and went to Mariset and washed her, and they laughed, and Arrow pranced about, spraying the bushes, the moon in his eyes.
‘Is it a fact now we have slept with the Devil?’
‘Who knows?’ said Annasin. ‘Who cares?’
Then all three played again on the hill, but at last the moon set, and then the night was darker. They drank at the pool, and Annasin said, ‘I don’t mean to be abrupt, but I must go back to the village. I must go back into my shape of a woman. Perhaps I’m a fool to do it.’
Mariset said, ‘I was fair of face, I had shining hair. But I haven’t the courage to go back at all. I’d rather stay here on the hills. How cold the mountains look against the stars!’ I release you from my spell, Annasin, so you can go back into yourself. You yourself know well enough how to get out again.’
Annasin picked down the hill like a sleek grey shadow. She stole in among the byres and huts, and never a dog barked. She came into the village street, and there her house was, black as a hole, and all the other houses lit with their lamps.
She ran four-foot to the hospitality house, and outside the horses standing tethered whinnied and widened their eyes. So Annasin loosed herself, and her cat form melted away. One moment she was in the air, and then inside her skin, and inside the house.
The light was dull and low, a sort of brown, and she lay among a heap of groaning, whimpering women, and she hurt.
She realized they had been sticking pins in her and touching her with hot irons, to try to rouse her. Her body was scraped over, in and out of her clothes. Besides she had been tied, by a strong rope and too tight, to a hook in the wall that was meant for meat. And all those other women had been done up similarly.
‘Look,’ hissed a voice. It was Vebya, who bled from her temple and her wrists and feet. ‘Annasin is awake. Oh Annasin – save us. Call a demon to set us free.’
‘That I can’t,’ said Annasin, ‘I’m no witch.’
‘Yes you are,’ cried Vebya. ‘For I saw you float over the meadow.’
‘Yes you are,’ said Chekta, who had been whipped, her dress and her back all ribbons, ‘you light fires by a word. I spied on you.’
‘There is a limit, to what I can do,’ said Annasin.
And nearby, filthy Margotta hawked and spat. Her fingers were broken on her right hand. She said, ‘I’ve call the lords of Hell, but they won’t come, the traitors. Forty years I’ve served them all. And the Devil has had me in my own kitchen. I told it all, to stop the hammer. And I have been loyal, but where is he now, the demon who filled me?’
Then there was a rush of movement, a chair thrust back, and out from the brown light stormed the shadow of the witch-finder. His evil tortured face loomed over Annasin, yellow from the candle that he held. He lifted high the silver cross, and Annasin bowed to it, at which he snatched it back.
‘Do you mock God, you bitch?’ he yelled.
Annasin said nothing.
The witch-finder spat as old Margotta had, but into the sinking fire. He said, ‘Speak up, now, witch, since you have woken. Where have you been on your broomstick or your nightmare horse? Who have you poisoned? Has the Devil had you?’
Annasin compressed her lips. She said, ‘You would do better in the church, father, praying for nicer health.’
‘Rein yourself in, woman. Don’t try to put your curse on me. I am safe in the arm of God.’
‘You will die in seven months,’ said Annasin. And she could have bitten out her tongue. What had possessed her? But it was true, for she saw his skull through his head like a stone in the soup.
The witch-finder struck her hard in the belly, and Annasin fell back. She fell against Mariset’s vacant body, and Vebya shrilled, ‘Make her tell where the other witch is. Make her tell of Mariset.’
But Annasin could not speak, and the witch-finder now was not concerned any more with confession.
‘Tomorrow you will burn, all five of you. Burn and go down to Hell where you belong, and the devil awaits you with his forks and knives.’
Then the old man went back to his chair and poured more spirit into his mug.
The injured women moaned and muttered and grew still.
Annasin thought of how they would burn her as a witch. Her heart broke. There was nothing she could do, nor anything for the others, nor anything for Mariset. Each must save herself as she could, if she could.
And through the cracks in the door and window came the scent of night, over the stink of blood and useless pain and fear and human flesh.
When she had got up the hill again in her slim grey fur, Annasin found Mariset and Arrow at the stream, splashing starlit ripples with their paws.
Mariset ran to her, and Mariset asked, and Annasin told her, bit by bit, unwilling, but holding nothing back.
Cats cry. Of course not with tears. Mariset and Annasin wept by the stream and then they went to Arrow and he curled against them, and they laid their heads on his taut male belly as if for the milk of their mothers.
‘I will tell you now a third story,’ said Arrow, as the stars wheeled slowly overhead.
The Third Story – The Tower Cat
When people heard the sound, echoing over the long fringed grain fields, and up to the bony hills beyond, they would say, ‘The ravens are noisy today,’ or they would say, ‘Listen, it’s thunder.’ Or they would say nothing. But in secret they had a name for it, that sound: the grinding, they called it.
What was ground? It was like bricks, like stones, mashed over and over. Like little stuff worked down to littler stuff. Yet it was never done.
What then did they suppose made the grinding? A church lay on the plain, and in the church was a priest. He was a fat man, tall and black-maned, and he ruled the land about like, a king. Every holy day his church was full; none dared stay away. And he preached harshly. There was no kindness in him. He told them of their vileness and how they would be made to pay for it by a God who, in his mouth, became like a ravening dragon. Then, he would pass a silver bowl among them and they would each put in a gift, all they could afford and more. And at other times he would visit them, the priest, their huts and houses, their farms, the mills and the inns. And whatever he asked for he was given, food and drink, keepsakes, wine and cloth. Even gold rings he was given off their fingers if they had gold rings and now and then he would take a fancy for a girl, and then she must go to him. They hid their sisters, wives and daughters where they could, but it was not always possible. He was a hungry man, their priest.
He was more than that, for sure. How else did he so terrify them? He was a magician.
Some nights, from the top of the church tower, that was high, and rimmed like a castle, cold lights reeled off into the sky. And those that had to pass that church by midnight, did so by going off the road, walking away over the fields, so a new track was worn there.
From the tower too, from its top, came that sound they called, in secret, the grinding. They did not know what it might be and did not care to know. ‘The owls,’ they said. ‘A storm,’ they said, and pulled the blankets over their heads. Some prayed he would die, but bad things happened to those that prayed in this way. One had an axe fall on his foot, and the blade severed it, and he was a cripple. One met something on the hill at dusk, and he went mad; they had to chain him. ‘God bless the good priest,’ they said.
