Death and the Lady (6 page)

“You made him.”

“Would you rather he came back with fire and sword?”

For a moment they faced one another, like fire and sword
themselves. Mère Adele shook her head and sighed. “It’s done. I can’t say I
want it undone. That’s a wanting I’ll pay dearly for in penance. You—maybe you’ve
paid already. You never should have left your Wood.”

“No,” said Lys. “I don’t think that. But that I’ve stayed
too long—yes.” Mère Adele started a little. Lys smiled a thin cold smile. “No,
I’m not in your mind. It’s written in your face. You want me gone.”

“Not gone,” said Mère Adele. “Gone home.”

Lys closed her eyes. “Sweet saints, to be home—to live
within those walls again—to be what I am, all that I am, where my own people
are—” Her breath shuddered as she drew it in. “Don’t you think I’ve tried? That’s
why I came here. To find the door. To break it down. To go back.”

“You didn’t try hard enough,” said Mère Adele. “
Won’t
again. Always
won’t
.”

“Not my
won’t
,”
said Lys. “My king’s.”

“Yours,” said Mère Adele, immovable. “I can read faces, too.
Are they all as stubborn as you, where you come from?”

“No,” said Lys. Her eyes opened. She drew herself up. “Some
are worse.”

“I doubt that,” said Mère Adele. “You’re welcome here. Don’t
ever doubt it. But this isn’t your world. We aren’t your kind. You said it
yourself. You love us, and we die on you.”

“You can’t help it,” said Lys.

Mère Adele laughed, which made Lys stare. “Go on, child. Go
home. We’re no better for you than you are for us.”

Lys was mortally insulted. She was older than Mère Adele,
maybe, and higher born. But she held her tongue. She bent her head in honest
reverence. If not precisely in acceptance.

The Wood was cold in the grey light of evening. No bird
sang. No wind stirred the branches of the trees.

Lys had tried to slip away alone. She should have known
better. This time it was not my fault, not entirely: I had followed Francha. So
we stood on the porch of the ruined chapel, Francha with both arms about her
waist, I simply facing her.

“If the walls can open at all,” Lys said, careful and cold, “your
mortal presence will assure that they stay shut.”

I heard her, but I was not listening. “Are you going to
leave Francha again?”

Lys frowned and looked down at the child who clung to her. “She
can’t go, even if I can get in.”

“Why not?”

“She’s human.”

“She can’t live in this world,” I said. “She was barely
doing it when you came. When you go, she’ll die.”

“We are forbidden—”

“You were forbidden to leave. But you did it.”

Lys had her arms around Francha, almost as if she could not
help it. She gathered the child up and held her. “Oh, God! If I could only be
the hard cold creature that I pretend to be!”

“You’re cold enough,” I said, “and as heartless as a cat.
But even a cat has its weaknesses.”

Lys looked at me. “You should have been one of us.”

I shivered. “Thank God He spared me that.” I glanced at the
sky. “You’d best do it if you’re going to. Before it’s dark.”

Lys might have argued, but even she could not keep the sun
from setting.

She did not go into the chapel as I had thought she would.
She stood outside of it, facing the Wood, still holding Francha. It was already
dark under the trees; a grey mist wound up, twining through the branches.

Lys’ eyes opened wide. “It’s open,” she said. “The walls are
down. But—”

“Stop talking,” I said. My throat hurt. “Just go.”

She stayed where she was. “It’s a trap. Or a deception. The
ban is clever; it knows what it is for.”

Francha struggled in her arms. She let the child go. Francha
slid down the curve of her, keeping a grip on her hand. Pulling her toward the
Wood.

She looked into wide eyes as human as hers were not. “No,
Francha. It’s a trap.”

Francha set her chin and leaned, putting all her weight into
it. It was as loud as a shout.
Come!

“Go,” I said. “How will you know it’s a trap till you’ve
tried it? Go!”

Lys glared at me. “How can humans know—”

I said a word that shocked her into silence. While she
wavered I pushed, and Francha pulled. Dragging her toward the thing she wanted
most in the world.

Later it would hurt. Now I only wanted her gone. Before I
gave in. Before I let her stay.

She was walking by herself now, if slowly. The trees were
close. I could smell the mist, dank and cold, like the breath of the dead.

“No!” cried Lys, flinging up her hand.

Light flew from it. The mist withered and fled. The trees
towered higher than any mortal trees, great pillars upholding a roof of gold.

The light shrank. The trees were trees again, but their
leaves were golden still, pale in the evening. There was a path among them,
glimmering faintly as it wound into the gloom. It would not be there long, I
knew in my bones. I braced myself to drag her down it. What would happen if it
closed while I was on it, I refused to think.

She set foot on it of her own will. Walked a step, two,
three.

Turned.

Held out her hand. She was going. I had won that much. Now
she offered me what I had made her take. The bright country. The people who
knew no age nor sickness nor death. Escape. Freedom.

From what? I asked her inside myself. I would grow old no
matter where I was.

“Let Francha have it,” I said. “Maybe you can heal her;
maybe she’ll find a voice again. Maybe she’ll learn to sing.”

Lys did not lower her hand. She knew, damn her. How easily,
how happily, I could take it.

My fists knotted in my skirt. “I was born on this earth. I
will die on it.”

Francha let go Lys’ hand. She ran to me, hugged me tight.
But not to hold. Not to stay. Her choice was made. Had been made at harvest
time, on another edge of this Wood.

Lys looked as if she would speak. I willed her not to. She
heard me, maybe; or she simply understood, as humans did, from the look on my
face. She said nothing. Only looked, long and long.

The path was fading fast. She turned suddenly, swept Francha
up, began to run. Down into the glimmering dark; down to a light that I could
almost see. There were people there. Pale princes, pale queens. Pale king who
was not cold at all. Almost—almost—I could see his grey eyes; how they smiled,
not only at the prodigal come home, but at me, mere mortal flesh, alone beside
a broken shrine.

I laughed painfully. She had my wedding cloak. What Claudel
would say when he came back—

If he came back.

When,
said a
whisper in the Wood. A gift. A promise.

I turned my back on the shadow and the trees, and turned my
face toward home: warmth and light, and my children’s voices, and Mamère
Mondine asleep by the fire. Above me as I walked, like a guard and a guide,
rose a lone white star.

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Death and the Lady

A Story from the World of The Hound and the Falcon

Judith Tarr

Book View Café Edition July 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61138-285-3
Copyright © 1992 Judith Tarr

First published:
After
the King: Stories in Honor of J.R.R. Tolkien,
ed. Martin H. Greenberg. (Tor, 1992)

Cover design by Leah R. Cutter

v20130627vnm

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Judith Tarr
holds a PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale. She is the author of over three dozen novels and many works of short fiction. She has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and has won the Crawford Award for
The Isle of Glass
and its sequels. She lives near Tucson, Arizona, where she raises and trains Lipizzan horses.

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“Quis est homo?”
“Mancipium mortis, transiens viator,
loci hospes.”

—Alcuin of York

“What is a man?”
“The slave of death, the guest of an inn,
a wayfarer passing.”
—Helen Waddell

“Brother Alf! Brother Alfred!”

It was meant to be a whisper, but it echoed through the
library. Brother Alfred looked up from his book, smiling a little as the novice
halted panting within an inch of the table. “What is it now, Jehan?” he asked.
“A rescue? The King himself come to drag you off to the wars?”

Jehan groaned. “Heaven help us! I just spent an hour
explaining to Dom Morwin why I want to stay here and take vows. Father wrote to
him, you see, and said that if I had to be a monk, I’d join the Knights Templar
and not disgrace him completely.” Brother Alfred’s smile widened. “And what
said our good Abbot?”

“That I’m a waste of good muscle.” Jehan sighed and hunched
his shoulders. It did little good; they were still as broad as the front gate.
“Brother Alf, can’t anybody but you see what’s under it all?”

“Brother Osric says that you will make a tolerable
theologian.”

“Did he? Well. He told me today that I was a blockhead, and
that I’d got to the point where he’d have to turn me over to you.”