by Graham Joyce
Her eyes flared open. She rotated her head slowly to look at De Sang. There was lambent fire in her eyes, but for the first time there was also loss, confusion, doubt, hurt. She started to tremble. It was the onset of a fit, the profitless finale of many of these sessions.
"Don't run away, Annis! Don't run away!" He was terrified she would simply hide from the conflict he'd set up for her, hide behind her fit. Already her breathing was deepening and she was closing her eyes. "Keep your eyes open, Annis. Look at me. If you won't tell us, we're going to have to kill Maggie."
She came to again. "You won't." Her demeanour had switched. She'd become protective.
"You said it, Annis! I'm the priest. I'll have her taken!"
"DON'T TOUCH HER!"
"I'll burn her. I'll have her buried alive, Annis!"
"DON'T YOU TOUCH HER!"
"It's why you're still here! If we kill her, we can kill you!"
"DON'T BRANK SISTER! DON'T BRANK SISTER!"
"Then tell Maggie! For heaven's sake, tell Maggie the Death Lullaby! Tell her!"
"I can't! Don't you see I can't!" She was screaming. Crying and screaming.
"You can, Annis! You want to! She can take away the brank!"
"She can't! She can't!"
"Why can't she? Why?"
"Because because because MAGGIE IS NOT MAIDEN!"
De Sang was astonished. Maggie had persuaded him Annis was ready to pass on the secret. She'd been certain. Plausible even. He'd believed it really might happen, if only because of her own conviction. Suddenly he felt crushed, defeated. Not maiden. He understood for the first time it was not that Annis didn't want to pass on the Chain to Maggie; she was unable. In Annis' mind, the Death Lullaby could only be passed on to a virgin. The play had been made, and it had failed. De Sang didn't even know if there was such a thing as a Death Lullaby, or a Singing Chain. The convolutions of Maggie's unhinged mind had simply turned another flip, rendering the solution inaccessible. She had placed herself beyond reach. He had failed.
Behind him the door opened silently. De Sang turned and saw, advancing into the room, an old woman. He thought she must have been eighty years old. Her face was wreathed with care lines and her hair was iron-grey; loose flesh, like wattles, hung from her chin. She walked with a stick, yet moved forward with a light, fluid step. He guessed her name.
It was Liz. Before her was Amy, blinking shyly. Liz had one claw like hand clasped on her shoulder. Ignoring De Sang, she propelled Amy toward the chair. The two women locked eyes. The sky outside was beginning to darken.
"I'll give you a one," said Liz.
"No," said Alex, hovering uncertainly by the door.
"And all things will be well," said Liz.
There was silence.
Liz leaned across the chair, and spoke gently. "This is the gift. She will take away the brank. Come on, old gel. You in your turn. Me in mine. And her in hers."
Maggie shuddered at Liz's words. Then she looked at Amy, her eyes blue glass. "The brank of time," she murmured. She beckoned to Amy with a tiny gesture. "Come here."
Amy looked at Liz. She was afraid.
"Go to her," said Liz. "Remember what I've told you."
She gave Amy a gentle push and backed off. "Well?" she said, turning to Alex and De Sang. "Get you out! This is not for you."
Neither Alex nor De Sang showed any inclination to move. Ash was also hovering in the hallway, having delivered Liz to the house at Maggie's request. Alex started to protest.
"Out!" shouted Liz, rushing at them. "Out!"
Startled, they went, and she slammed the door after them. She took up position against it, like a sentry. "Now," she said, "you have your gift. And the way is clear."
Amy looked at her mother. She was still afraid of her.
She didn't seem like her mother. Behind those features she saw an older face, the face of an enemy. But it had softened. Amy saw pain and sadness and suffering in that face, and a hunger for revenge that had only tormented herself. Amy understood nothing of this, she only felt it. She looked into her mother's eyes and saw again that impenetrable blue glass, and behind that rivers of ice, running, congealing, thawing, refreezing, running free again. The rivers of ice were hundreds and hundreds of years old. Her mother took her left hand and gripped her third finger tightly. She was silent for a while before she intoned in a kind of chant:
"My dark sister was Stella. And hers was Celinda. Hers Isabel. Hers Lizabeth. Hers Jean. Margaret. Ciss. Annie. Hers Peg. MyraRuthRowena. HazelBessElla. Melusine and Mag. Greta-Clara Alwyn. CorrinnaFredaMalekinUlrica. JeanneAmeliaMicol-MaugElfredaMina. Ericalsolda. EilianMurielGwynethMorgan. RhonwenEnaBridged SheelinganMoiraCatti. Una. Hers Tryam. MolleeGlastie BoodKirreeCaithBrythMaeveSheena. Ethna. Etain-RoanneeLhiannon. CarridwenFuamach and Ann and Fionn. Nuala. Sadbh and Lorreeak. And Alethea from across the great sea.
"That is the line. Now it is yours, and you must remember. Many names. But you will remember them all. Because this is the Singing Chain. This is the far memory."
Amy felt her mother's hand tighten round her. finger. The ice rivers were running free.
"Now give her the song," urged Liz. "The Death Lullaby. And you will be free."
Maggie sighed and ran her tongue along her lips, and sighed again.
"Come on, gel," Liz urged, "push it out." But patient, like some shadowy, unknowable midwife at the foot of the bed.
Maggie beckoned Amy forward and kissed her hard on the mouth. She fell back and stared at the ceiling. Then she began singing, so softly Amy had to strain to hear the words, words which meant nothing, but which she would never forget.
Baby born is born to die
Even Mother's tears will dry
By 'n by
All is none and none all
Baby die 'fore baby crawl
By ‘n by
Dead men lie still
But truth they will
By n’ by
When baby live
Then all's to give
By 'n by
When baby live again
No more a witch's pain
By ‘n by
Maggie closed her eyes and went to sleep. Amy stared at the rhythmic rise of her breast and knew that Annis had gone forever, and that her mother would soon be well. Liz came up slowly behind her. She put her gnarled old hand on Maggie's brow and nodded with satisfaction. Then she ran her hand gently through Amy's hair.
"No telling. Ever." Amy nodded. She knew. "When I'm finished, when my time comes, I shall call you, and you shall have my line too. Two lines joined in one. And what a one you shall be!"
Amy looked up at Liz. And her eyes were pure and clear.
FORTY-SEVEN
Maggie was mending. She was well enough two weeks later to make an expedition to see Liz, along with Alex and the children. When they got there Ash was nursing a glass of elderberry wine. He kissed Maggie and told her how much better she looked; he was relieved not to have to pretend it was true. A rose flush was back in her cheeks and she'd regained her lost weight.
Liz pronounced that spring was painting the hedgerows, and that they should all go out for a "blow," but Ash wanted to leave. He made his excuses. Alex tried to persuade him to come along, but he couldn't be tempted.
"That's right," said Liz. "You bugger off."
Ash kissed Maggie again, shook hands with Alex, and got into his car.
"And don't come back till the next time!" Liz growled after him. She opened the gate and they went walking across the field. Her collie stared after Ash as if it couldn't understand why he wouldn't come with them.
Liz was no stranger to Alex anymore. After the evening at his house, Liz had left Maggie to sleep and had taken charge, mobilizing people, giving instructions, heaping abuse where necessary. She'd emerged from the room with Amy to tell them Maggie was "mending" and needed putting to bed. When De Sang said he wanted to give Maggie a sedative after the punishment she'd been through, Liz gave him a tongue-lashing. De Sang looked round nervously f
or someone to grin at, and concluded he had no option but to accept this colourful new authority in the household. Liz snapped at him that he should make himself useful by getting the kettle going, and no one seemed more amazed than himself when he jumped to it.
Hadn't Alex got work? she demanded before scolding him for getting under everyone's feet. She busied herself with cooking up a weak broth, which she stipulated was for Maggie and no one else. Meanwhile Ash, seeing that Maggie was in the safest hands possible, slipped off quietly without telling anyone.
He hadn't the heart to stick around.
Amy had stolen the show by sitting regally in a chair with her hands folded in her lap. Occasionally she would approach Liz and whisper something in her ear, some question or other, to which the old woman would nod and answer simply yes or no; a little conspiracy which vexed De Sang and dismayed Alex. Most of the time Amy sat apart from the others, with her head slightly cocked, as if listening to some internal music, or as if she was counting. Or reciting in time to a rhythm only she could hear.
Sam just seemed baffled by it all. Liz, with whom he never felt entirely secure, had turned the premises upside down. Her presence was like a spice wind blowing through the house. Amy, after receiving permission from Liz, told him he had nothing more to worry about from "the lady," that he wouldn't be troubled again. He sensed that something had happened to Amy, but was no more party to it than were either his father or his erstwhile psychologist. They were all three adrift in the same excluded boat of ignorance, and he sat staring stupidly at his sister.
For the next few days Alex was subdued. A renegotiation of rights had taken place at a mysterious level almost beyond words. He was coming to terms with it. He knew he'd have to yield up his taste for control if things were going to work, and when that actually started to happen, he began to relax; soon he learned that he'd lost nothing but an angry pride.
"You had some idea of what you wanted from our life together," Maggie told him. "And the pictures in your head were more important than the people in your home. You're going to have to fix that."
"What can I do to make you stay?"
"You can't do anything. If I stay now it's because I choose to."
"So if you want to whistle up the wind every time there's a full moon, I have to put up with that?"
She laughed. "I actually don't feel the impulse for all of that anymore. Not today, at least. But I won't go back to the way things were before. I feel like I'm starting over. It's up to you if you want to start over with me."
Meanwhile Alex was feted over his archaeological discovery in the castle grounds. His reports on the excavations appeared in academic and popular journals, and in all his writings he freely acknowledged the mysterious assistance of his wife in the "dig here" episode. He offered the information up to his readers exactly as it had happened, without senseless speculation.
Sam at least wasn't at all unhappy about the idea of going for a walk across the fields. Inside Liz's cottage, he gave the pantry a wide berth.
It was indeed a beautiful spring day. They climbed a stile and walked beside hedgerows cloudy with May blossom. Lapwings had returned to the field in number. Amy had her arm linked with Liz's. Occasionally the old woman would stop and point her stick at something in the hedge or growing in the grass. "Shepherd's purse. Can stop a bleeding wi' that one. You mark it," she said. Or, "Groundsel. Lady's friend. Tell you when you're older about that one."
Sam noticed how closely his mother and father, walking behind Liz and Amy, were marking this blossoming relationship. Amy seemed to glow in the attention. The sun lit up her golden hair and there seemed something changed about her. Tagging along behind, he could only gaze in awe and admiration at his sister.
His shining, dark sister.
Table of Contents
Copyright
Other novels by Graham Joyce:
Dedication
When Alex had ripped
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
S I X
SEVEN
EIGHT
NI N E
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THI RTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN