The Wilful Eye Read online

  She leaned on the sill and saw the old, bow-legged beekeeper who dwelt on the land next door. He was in the farthest field from his cottage where he kept his hives, talking with the traveller who had sold the hair ornament to her father. Moth recognised the young man by his green breeches, for though she had not seen his face, she had seen him departing. She could not see it now because aside from the distance, both men wore hats with nets over their faces. Her father had told her the traveller had come down from the mountains to look into trade possibilities on the peninsula, which jutted in an elegant green and gold finger into the sea. Moth had never heard of anyone coming down from the Mountain Kingdom, much less a trader, but her father said he had a note marked with the seal of his king authorising his travel and recommending him as an honest man.

  She wondered if her father had actually read the note.

  Probably the beekeeper was showing the traveller the new hive with the removable frame that he had got from Oranda. There was a little cloud of smoke coming from the smudge pot under the hive, which stupefied the bees so that they would not swarm or sting or hurt themselves. Maybe he was interested in the secret of the special honey that the Middle Kingdom produced, which was famous for its unusual fragrance even in the lands beyond the lacy scalloped shores of Oranda. Dougal could not tell him the secret of the fragrance but Moth knew. The bees collected their pollen from wild roses and the rare black lavender that grew high on the cliffs that rose up on either side of the peninsula like wings, hiding the sea.

  At length Moth’s father and the other masters went out of the parlour towards the mill which was built on a bend of the Esker River. The river ran down from the mountains, and flowed away to the salt sea at the endmost point of the peninsula in Oranda. Moth watched them until they were out of sight, crossing her fingers that they would come up with a sensible idea before they faced the king.

  In any case there was no more she could do. If she had tried to suggest the sort of festival that might be had, they would have laughed indulgently and patted her head. Camber the wheat farmer, a pale-faced man with pockmarked skin and eyes like leeches, would more likely have pinched a buttock if he could manage it without her father seeing. He was a sly lustful man but her father would hear nothing against him. If Moth had told him bluntly that the man molested her every time he could get his hands on her, she was just as likely to find herself shut up in a tower, no matter what he did to the wheat farmer. That was the fate of young women who were put upon by men; somehow it was their fault. Nor could she tell her mother, who took every opportunity to have hysterics. She fainted so often that she had a special swooning couch for it.

  Moth was pragmatic and sensible. With such parents, anything else would have been impossible for her, especially since, like the bees, she had her own secrets.

  She went out to talk to the beekeeper.

  ‘Was that the traveller who is supposed to have come from the Mountain Kingdom, Dougal?’ she asked.

  He nodded. ‘Hearit I got a new sort of hive and wantit a look,’ he said in his toothless garble. ‘I was showing him how the frames need not be fixit. He said it was a marvel. But lookit . . .’ He began to explain how the new sort of hive exceeded the previous fixed-frame hive, and Moth listened though she had heard it all before. She liked the beekeeper because he told her all sort of things her father would have thought too difficult for her to bother her pretty head about. Indeed what she liked most about the old man was that he did not seem to think of her pretty head at all when they spoke. He liked her because his beloved bees liked her.

  She stayed a while talking to him and when the sun began to wester, she thanked him for the candles he pressed on her, and went to pick some beans and carrots from the kitchen garden for supper. She carried the basket of vegetables into the shed and fetched Lavender in to be milked.

  ‘You smell good,’ Lavender told her, as they came in together.

  Moth’s father had given her the mauve-brown cow as a calf, when she was seven and Lavender had been the first animal ever to speak to her. At first Moth had thought the cow was special and tried to get her to speak to the other children and to the farmhands but it soon became clear that she alone could hear her. For a time the other children teased her and she learned to pretend it had been a game. Pretending that an animal could speak was acceptable, but having an animal speak to you was not.

  Not that the cow said anything more than mild bovine pleasantries but all the same Moth loved her and loved milking her, resting her forehead against the cow’s soft hide and listening to her occasional patient sigh. Bees now, she thought, bees were interesting to listen to because of the habit people had of telling them secrets, and because of the bees’ habits of making songs of the secrets and singing them over and over.

  Moth had just finished the milking when she heard the sound of a horse galloping so fast she thought it might be in a bolt. Setting down the brimming pail, she ran outside to see. To her astonishment it was her father, his cape all awry and his wig blown off so that his bald pate shone with perspiration. He pulled up the horse and leapt off, throwing down the reins. Moth hastened to catch them up and opened her mouth to reproach her father, for the mare was gentle and well-mannered and his brutality might have ruined her temperament. Then it struck her that there must be something badly wrong if her father would ride a valuable horse so carelessly.

  ‘What has happened, Father?’ she asked, and noticed with a little thrill of fear that his face was the colour of whey. She took his arm but he shook her off and then, as if for a moment he saw her properly, horror seeped into his eyes. Moth was so amazed she did not go after him when he turned and staggered towards the house.

  The mare asked plaintively if she could have a mouthful of water, and that broke Moth out of her daze. Apologising, she led the poor beast into the stable, brushed her down and gave her water and a dollop of molasses in her oats, all the while telling her what a fine brave creature she was. Horses were always very receptive to praise and the mare nuzzled Moth gratefully. Closing the stable door, she went to get the pail of milk and the beeswax candles Dougal had given her. He had been gifted them by the traveller, who told him the wax was perfumed with oil extracted from heather along Oranda’s shore. When set alight, the candles would give off the scent of the sea. The traveller was seeking a market for the candles in the Middle Kingdom before he returned to the mountains. The trouble was old Dougal, who had no sense of smell but had not wanted to admit it to the young man.

  Moth had promised to try them and let him know in time for him to pass her judgement on to the traveller. But candles were the last thing on her mind as she went into the house and poured the milk into a bowl, setting it in a cool place to let the cream rise. She washed her hands and, taking a deep breath to steady herself, she went into the parlour where her father was sitting in his high-backed chair, staring at the parquetry in front of him. Her mother was standing beside him wringing her hands, but it was only when they both looked at her so tragically that Moth’s heart gave a hard little rap at her ribs.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  Her mother gave her father a piteous look and he heaved a sigh. ‘We were waiting in the audience hall to make our proposal for the festival when a young fellow came in, a troubadour with golden curls that the king has made his pet. He sings and reads the future using cards or smoke or bowls of black ink, that sort of mummery. He sang a song about a clever young woman who outwitted a sorcerer and then he burst out laughing and said was it not a wondrous silliness for he had never in his life met a single woman who was not like every other woman he had ever met. The king agreed and said if he ever met a woman who had any wits, he would wed her. I told Camber standing next to me that I had a daughter who had more wits than most men, and was unique in the three kingdoms if not the whole world and no man but a king deserved her.’

  ‘Father,’ Moth whispered, suddenly terrified.

  He made a little abortive clawing gesture in the air.
‘Camber said you had a touch of magic in your blood for certain sure, since you had snared the good opinion of all the men who knew you.’

  Moth shivered, wondering that her father could not see the nasty sliminess in the other man’s words.

  ‘There was no harm in it,’ her father insisted. ‘But Camber has that booming voice and the king heard and . . . a king is not as other men. He bade me bring you to him and he would taste your magic.’ There was a sick, pleading look in her father’s face.

  ‘But I have no magic,’ Moth said. ‘Whatever he wants I can’t do it and he will kill me.’

  Her father strangely gave a little strangled laugh. ‘You must try to do whatever he asks and then tell him the power has left you. Your beauty will protect you.’

  ‘I am not my mother,’ Moth said.

  Moth’s father gave her a look of furious anguish and lurched to his feet. ‘Your mother will instruct you,’ he said, and swept out.

  ‘You must show him your value, Moth,’ her mother said, suddenly roused. ‘Throw yourself on his mercy.’

  ‘And if he has none?’ Moth asked, thinking of the stories she had heard of the treatment meted out by the king to the horses and dogs and hawks he took a-hunting with him, none of whom lasted long after he had whetted his famous cruelty on them. It struck her with a chill that this test of magic might be another kind of whetting. She had a sudden vivid picture in her mind of Camber, exchanging a gloating look with the handsome, hawk-faced king she knew from the statue in the main square.

  Moth went to her chamber and paced back and forth, thinking of the things she had heard people say of the king. He was proud of his reputation for cruelty, and as changeable as the wind. Once he had told the ambassador from Oranda that a king ought to be cruel and capricious in order to keep his subjects properly submissive and apprehensive of his displeasure. ‘And what ought a queen to be?’ the ambassador had asked, for his ruler was a queen. This was tantamount to a reproof, but the king could do nothing to the ambassador without provoking a war against Oranda, so he kept his counsel.

  There seemed some anomaly in this, and Moth pon- dered it.

  Among the important men of the Middle Kingdom, there was sometimes talk of invading the tiny kingdom at the tip of the peninsula, which was said to be dripping with pearls and jewels, and rich from levying taxes on ships from other lands. Aside from the possibility of appropriating the wealth of Oranda, they disapproved in principle of a kingdom run by a woman, where women did the jobs that were supposed to be done by men and thought themselves the equals of men. Their mutterings would result in their assistants and secretaries squawking and fluttering off like chickens with a fox after them to see to sprucing up the army or training more war horses or to the smithy to see about new weapons.

  But the king did nothing to advance the plot, although occasionally he would proffer so ambiguous a comment that the ministers would fall silent, no one wanting to say anything that might be construed as a disagreement. The rest of the time, he merely sat listening and watching from his hooded eyes. When judgements and laws were being discussed, he left it to his ministers entirely and sometimes he yawned openly and wandered out.

  Was it possible he truly had no interest in acquiring Oranda? As far as Moth had heard, he had never even visited the tiny kingdom, despite invitations from its queen. In truth he seemed almost indifferent to the land he ruled, for he spent most of his time inside his vast black castle. He left it only for his midnight hunting expeditions, always alone and always in the dense forest at the foot of the mountains, said to be inhabited by wolves and ferocious bears and strange misshapen beasts with the faces of men or grizzled children. Moth had heard enough from animals to know the king liked to see things hurt and dying. People said he sometimes brought back strange and dreadful trophies, which he mounted upon the walls of his bedchamber, but that was likely an exaggeration, for few ever got beyond the audience chambers of the castle.

  For all its size and complexity, it housed none of the king’s staff or servants or ladies-in-waiting or ministers. There were only three mute servants who dwelt within the walls in a hut and had the task of shutting the great gates at night and opening them again in the mornings.

  Moth wondered if the queen of Oranda felt uneasy about the ministers’ plotting, for although there was little traffic between her land and the Middle Kingdom, there was enough for rumour to go along as a passenger. Despite only having a little fleet of ships with seamen warriors to protect her realm, she had made no effort to build up a land force. Indeed, according to one tale, when it was suggested Oranda might be invaded by the Middle Kingdom, the queen merely replied that the king would be brave indeed to turn his back on the vast and mysterious Mountain Kingdom whose own ruler was a mighty fighter and half giant besides.

  No one knew what the Mountain King thought of it all, since few ever travelled there from the other two kingdoms. She thought of the young traveller, who might have had something to say about it, if there had been time to consult him, but her mind dwelt rather irrelevantly on the breadth of his shoulders under the long sleek tail of his black hair, and the muscular strength of his arms. Then she shook her head crossly and gathered her wits.

  ‘So where has all this thinking got me?’ she asked herself briskly. ‘The king is by his own account, and that of beasts, a cruel man who loves his solitude and his castle and his hunting, and who does not think much of women. More- over he has a penchant for cutting the heads off people who vex him.’

  ‘You must look on this as an opportunity,’ her mother said, coming in with a tray of lip salves and skin creams and hair ornaments and curling tongs. ‘If only you had not cut your hair, but the colour is lovely, like butter. And your skin is smooth and delicate as an eggshell. You are too thin but there is fragility in that. Present yourself humbly and sweetly, and the king will surely soften. You must not be bold but neither must you cringe lest you make him despise you. There must be courage but humility so that he can admire and pity you. Only then may he fall in love with you.’

  ‘The king wants magic from me. If I am fragile as an egg, and fail him, he will think only to smash me,’ Moth told her.

  ‘You must not talk like that,’ her mother said. ‘You must not think such things.’

  ‘You mean I must not think,’ said Moth, but not aloud. Suddenly she saw it all. The king was like Camber, only his lust was for pain, not flesh, or maybe both. The wheat farmer had recognised himself in the king and had brought Moth to his attention, relishing the knowledge that his master would do to her what he could not. For, once she failed to demonstrate magic, she would be his to do with as he desired.

  That night Moth lay in her narrow bed. She lay very straight with her arms pressed to her sides and legs together as one might lie in a shroud. She imagined her mother bathing her and perfuming her cold skin, weeping tears over the marks that had been made. She watched the passage of the light from the waxing moon move across the floor. She watched the ribboning coils and curlicues of smoke from the candles Dougal had given her. The scent was very strange and she was not sure she liked it. But when at last she slept she dreamed of a vast silvery expanse of water running away to the horizon, heaving up and down and rising to frothy crests that folded in on themselves, and then she dreamed of high jagged mountains clothed in frozen white velvet under the starry sky, a black panther moving quiet as a shadow over the snow.

  Day came and Moth did not want to get up, but she must and so she rose and slipped out in the misty dawn in her old clothes, knowing Dougal would be up with his bees. She had made a promise to the old man and wanted to keep it, but also, she wanted to solace herself with his gentle kindness. He gave her his black-gapped grin and a slice of rough black bread hot from the oven smeared with honey.

  ‘I do not know what other people will make of the scent of those candles,’ she said between bites, ‘but you ought to tell the traveller that I would buy them for the dreams they roused.’ She told the old man of
the shining waves and the white foam peaks and the dark fierce mountains clawing at the sky, and of the panther. He listened wistfully and wished he might smell the dreams as well.

  The mist began to melt away and the air went gauzy pink and filled with the scents of flowers and the morning. Moth did not want to go in, but knew she must be readied for her audience. She did not think it would save her, but at least it would comfort her mother. She was a wilfully foolish but warm-hearted woman with no real harm in her. Moth hugged the old beekeeper and he looked surprised and then gratified as he patted her on the back with his gnarled hands. But then he looked troubled.

  ‘Are ee aright girl? Not being bithered by that sour drake? That Camber, eh?’

  Moth was startled to hear him speak of the wheat farmer in such a way, for she had not thought anyone else saw what he was, but she did not want to burden Dougal with her troubles. He was an old man and no match for someone like Camber, who would be swift to cause harm if he thought Dougal was his enemy. So she assured him brightly that all was well, adding that Camber and her father had arranged for her to visit the king. She had meant to impress and reassure him, but Dougal furrowed his whiskery brows and shook his head. Frightened, Moth kissed his cheek and hurried away.

  The day had dawned fair and stayed that way, but when it was time to go, Moth’s father had the driver get out the closed carriage so that her finery should not be disturbed: her mother had spent hours dressing and combing and arranging her, and she had charged him with ensuring Moth reached the palace unruffled. He seemed quite to have forgotten why they were going to the palace and talked only of the festival of the birds that was to be proposed to the king, remarking that the queen of Oranda held such a festival and since the same birds that came to Oranda also stopped in the Middle Kingdom on their way south, why should they not have their own festival?