Dame Ana

“Yes,” she said, “you can spend the night. Come in.”

If this was the first house of the village, I was not where I'd thought. It had been downhill all the way since I took that twilit shortcut off the road, groping through rough barked trees, bracken and brambles thrashing at my knees, and the sharp yowling of foxes far behind me. Yet it seemed now, at her doorway, as if the ground fell away below me on all sides.

“Come in,” she said again.

It is bad to lose your path in the dark, alone, and I stepped over the threshold, out of the soughing night. A spatter of rain tossed in the branches behind me. The wind shivered in my collar. But the light of the house fell over me, and I stood in a bowl of warmth that quenched my fear.

The room was tall, and the lights set low in it, so that long shadows shifted above us like bats as the fire crackled. She was tall too, and a dusting of the shadow rested on her pale hair like an inverse crown. Her face was narrow and bony, the face of a hard worker who is always tired.

“Do you need to eat?” she said.

I was hungry, but I hesitated. The house was fine enough, but with that thinness I was afraid she had not enough to share.

“You do,” she said, and smiled, a wan little smile. “Sit down.”

I unfastened my wet jacket and hung it over the back of the chair. I sat down. A clock was ticking in another room, the comfortable echoing tick of a swinging pendulum, and I fancied I heard a response to it somewhere, an urgent little tick in double time from a different timepiece, hasty, nervous. Tick.

Tick-tick.

Tick.

Tick-tick.

I watched the fire, and listened, trying to place the sounds, but too drowsy to get up and find their source. Here she was, back with soup and a tall mug of dark bitter.

“Eat,” she said, and passed me a spoon, burnished in the fire-light. The soup was good. She watched me as I ate it, though, and that was less good. Suppose this was her supper? I took a long pull at the beer.

She gave a little sigh, as if it were she who was replete.

“What is your name?” she said. The way she said it was eager, strange, and I paused, looking at her again. I drew in my breath to answer.

The clock struck, and it struck to me in the beat of an old song, one I had heard sung last a long time before. The taste of the beer brought it back to me as well, the end of an evening in a hot tight-elbowed inn, shoving my way to the taps, and behind me a buzzing hubbub as men settled down, ringing in the ballad with a hand-held bell.

I put the mug down on the table, softly.

“Dame Ana,” I said to her.

She gave a shiver. “That's not your name,” she said. She was seated now, and still the shadows hung around her hair.

“It's yours,” I said, “and I have walked in at your door, and I have eaten and drunk before you, but I will not give you my name.”

“No?” she said, and it was not really a challenge, just a sad little scrap of hope. She smiled. It was hard work, enticement, work to the bone. She had failed.

“They still sing about you,” I said.

“It will be a long time until morning,” said the Dame. “Sing me the song they sing.”

“It's a while since I heard it,” I said. “Let me see.” I did not care to sing it to her, and my voice was not strong, but I cared still less to refuse her. I cleared my throat and began, the notes falling awkward into the deep silence. The clocks had stopped.

“Dame Ana's house is on the hill,

Its door is open wide,

And she is gracious to her guest,

To him that steps inside.”

“That's good,” she said, leaning forward.

“Dame Ana's house is in the dark,

It is no house by day,

She is a lady of despair

But willing will he stay.

She has no gifts to give to him,

No silver and no gold

But he will wait and sit with her

Until the world is old.

'Oh give to me your name', she says

'And sup you full, my sweet,

Though I will nothing take myself,

Since ghosts may never eat'.”

She laughed to herself, and her face was suddenly vivid in the firelight. She was no ghost.

“Little they know,” she said.

“Are you a lady of despair?” I asked, and I smiled at her.

“Keep singing,” she said, and there was too much force in it, just a little too much. The clocks were ticking again, one slow, one fast, and I had not defeated her at all. This was her second ruse to keep me here. I stood up and pushed back the chair, for I would leave if I could, now; now in the deep of night.

She stood too. She was tiny, wraithlike, a doll. No ghost, a fay. Fairie.

“How many days?” I cried. “How many years?” Willing will he stay. Until the world is old. I threw the beer-mug in her face and overturned the table at her, leaping towards the door.

The catches stuck. I wrestled them. They yielded. It was locked tight, but the key was in the lock. I had not given her my name.

It opened outwards and grey dawn shimmered beyond. It could not yet be dawn. She scrabbled behind me and clutched at my wrist, wailing.

“Only one night,” she said, “only one night. I was lonely.”

I wrenched myself free, into the sodden fingers of fog, and flung myself downhill through the trees.

“I was lonely,” she called behind me. A smell of mould rose from the fallen leaves.

One of her nights, or one of mine? How long? How long?

I would know when I got to the village.