Turning the Stones

by Debra Daley

  Barfield springs into my mind. Eliza was travelling with him. If she is here, so is he. The thought makes me giddy with fear.

  ‘Eliza.’ I look into her face. ‘Where is Barfield?’

  She stares at me as if she does not comprehend. I shake her a little to bring her out of her abstraction. ‘Surely you are not on the moor all alone?’

  Eliza stiffens in my arms. She has seen something over my shoulder that she does not like. I turn and follow her gaze. It lights on Kitty, sitting still on her donkey, with a remote air as if she is reposed in some faraway place, inside one of those pools or bubbles where she sees things. The way she is bent over, with her black mantle drawn low over her forehead, makes her look like a large crow.

  Now Captain McDonagh steps forward. His orderly, practical demeanour steadies me. Surely Barfield cannot get at me while I have Kitty’s powers and the captain’s pistols to hand. He says to me, ‘What do you want to do with this lady? Keep her with you or send her with me?’

  Eliza gulps back her tears and stammers, ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Captain McDonagh. He will help you.’

  ‘But where is Johnny? What have you done with him?’

  ‘Johnny? What do you mean?’

  She pushes at me and frees herself from my arms. She has no strength in her, but I can feel the force of her anger. ‘Where is he?’

  In the tone he uses to command his crew, Captain McDonagh advises Eliza to calm herself. He says, ‘If your companions have gone astray, we will ask men in the locality to search for them.’

  Eliza cries at me, ‘You and your scheming! You tricked my brother into coming away with you. You ever wished to thwart us, I see that now.’

  Captain McDonagh says, ‘You and Kitty may go on, Molly, and I will carry her to the cove. I will find someone to return her to Galway, where she may find passage to her home.’

  Eliza pays no attention to the captain’s offer. She whimpers, ’I do not like that creature.’ She means Kitty. ‘Tell her to go away.’

  ‘Eliza, hush.’ I pull the mantle from my head and settle it around her shoulders, but she hardly seems aware of me.

  She cries, ‘Such dreadful things have happened! Mr Barfield has disappeared, too!’

  ‘If Barfield is close by,’ I gasp, ‘then I am in danger.’

  The captain says, ‘Who are you talking about?’

  But seeing the agonised expression on my face, he does not wait for an answer. He says to Eliza. ‘Where did you last see this person?’

  ‘I do not know! He said he was going to judge the lie of the land. We were in a bog. I waited all night for his return. There was no shelter and nothing to eat or drink and it was so dark and I was terrified!’

  ‘Kitty –’ the captain is brisk – ‘the stones must wait. I will not leave you and Molly alone while she is under threat.’

  ‘Do as you please, man,’ Kitty rasps. ‘I am not in it now at all, for it will end as it is meant to.’

  Eliza sobs, ‘I fear that he fell into a sinkhole and was swallowed.’

  And I fear that Barfield is indestructible.

  Each time that Johnny knocked him down with a scornful remark or a humiliating prank, Barfield rose up again as enduring as a cockroach. Johnny made a show of being the more dominant of the two, but I never saw Barfield cowed by Johnny’s superciliousness – there is too much violence in him for that. If Johnny acted the master, it was only because Barfield allowed him to. I imagine that nothing would arouse Barfield’s perverse humour more than to watch Johnny Waterland strut about so very mistaken about the degree of authority at his disposal.

  Eliza will not let me comfort her. She shouts once more, ‘Where is Johnny?!’

  I ask her in bewilderment, ‘How could Johnny be here?’

  ‘You bewitched him,’ Eliza hisses. ‘You took him away from me.’ She appeals to the captain. ‘Barfield told me. She made Johnny run away with her and now she has ditched him.’

  Captain McDonagh is looking at me with an air of enquiry and I worry that he has begun to doubt me. If only I could tell him the events that led to my escape, but I cannot bring them to light. Why can I not do so? Is it because I am a dissembler and my forgetting is only a ruse to board up the truth in its guilty chamber?

  ‘It is not true,’ I cry. ‘I was never in agreement with Johnny Waterland.’

  Eliza pushes at me a bitter face that has broken out into sweat. ‘You liar. People in Bristol told Mr Barfield you were with a gentleman who matched Johnny’s appearance. He told me so.’

  ‘Why should you believe what Barfield says?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

  Because … because I am waking up in a noisome bedchamber that reeks of piss and brandy … and if I can say what happened there, Barfield will be exposed for the rakehell that he is.

  All at once some spark seems to go out of Eliza and she falls to the ground in a faint. The captain props her up and revives her with a pinch of snuff to her nose. He says to me, ‘We must go on now. We have wasted enough time.’

  Kitty begins to cackle again. She croaks, ‘Too late, Molly, my jewel. Too late to take the curse back from the stones.’

  *

  The hill of Cashel looks down on us as we descend in a column towards a cove. Captain McDonagh holds the drooping Eliza upright on his pony. We are on a track bordered by a long chocolate-coloured turf wall, its sods piled on one another at an oblique angle. The wall looks in danger of collapse, but I dare say it intends to endure, held up by the mutual binding of its components. On either side of the track lie endless iterations of gorse and granite boulders. The cove below is sheltered by a tongue of grey-green land and crumpled rocks that are heaped about with yellow seaweed. The tide is full and a boat with distinctive curved lines bobs at anchor close inshore. I assume it is a tender that Captain McDonagh has arranged to take himself, and now Eliza as well, to the French ship that is anchored in the bay. I watch his tall back as I follow him on my mule. I am overcome with sorrow at the loss of him.

  He has not looked my way since we set off from the misty clearing where we encountered Eliza. I sense that some warm feeling that he came to have for me is already fading. Perhaps he believes Eliza’s accusation – that I eloped with her brother and have now abandoned him.

  I glance over my shoulder at Kitty, plodding along behind me. She looks very frail. I know she loves me. It is my duty to stay with her even if her end of the bargain has not held up. There is no time now to go with her to the place where she would lift the curse she placed on the Waterlands – as though that would have made any difference to Eliza. Her state of harm is to do with Barfield rather than any hocuspocus dreamed up by an old hermit woman half deranged by loneliness.

  At that instant there is a bang. Kitty grunts softly, and tries to say something. She tugs at her mantle as if to hold herself together.

  ‘Captain!’ I cry, pulling up my mule. A dark rosette is forming on Kitty’s washed-out shirt. ‘Captain! Hurry!’

  I have reached Kitty – she has pressed an inadequate hand to her breast, but blood spills between her fingers. Captain McDonagh has pulled Eliza from the pony – she is collapsed in a heap against the wall – and he rushes towards Kitty and me with his pistol in his hand. I understand that Kitty has been shot by mistake. Barfield is close by and means to kill me. The donkey brays as the weight shifts on its back and Kitty topples to one side. All of this happens terribly slowly. I catch Kitty in my arms, staggering under the impact of her fall, and drag her to the ground. There is a hole in her chest where the shot has torn up her flesh and her breath makes a rattling sound as though her throat were filled with gravel.

  Bent low under the cover of the wall, Captain McDonagh commands me to sit Kitty up against the turf. He snatches the mule’s rope halter before the animal can abscond. The donkey is out of reach, backing away along the track. Kitty’s eyes flutter shut, her crimson hands are folded in her crimson lap. Her face is waxy and she seems already to belong
to a place far away. The captain whispers in her ear and makes the sign of the cross on her forehead. She groans faintly and her head droops as life pours out of her on its river of red.

  I press my lips to her cool cheek and ask God to commend her soul. She utters a shallow sigh and then she is gone. The captain bends to me with a hoarse whisper. ‘Come away!’ He seizes my wrist.

  There is no time to contemplate the passing of Kitty Conneely – for we are in danger. Barfield will kill me if he can. Because he is a man of violence. Is it the blood pooling around Kitty that speaks to my understanding?

  I do, I understand.

  The door of Barfield’s bedchamber swings open and I see the figures within: Barfield, Johnny, me. But I cannot examine the scene in this present mayhem. We are scuttling at a crouch, Captain McDonagh and I, with the mule for a shield. The animal reaches Eliza. The pony stands patiently at her side, its nose snuffling in the weeds at the foot of the wall.

  A second shot thwacks into the turf.

  The captain glances at his sleeve, which has been torn by the shot’s trajectory. Scarlet spurts at the ripped cloth. ‘It is nothing,’ he growls, and pulls the pony away from its grazing. ‘Keep your heads down,’ he says. ‘We have a minute while he loads another charge.’

  He urges us forward, screened by the animals. Eliza stumbles along, dazed, in a state of shock. At the point where the turf runs out, a short, grassy slope gives way to rocks and the waves. Beyond, the captain’s boat sways on the tide. Between the terminus of the wall and the sea, three or four tallish, squarish boulders lying roughly in a row provide some small cover.

  The captain says, ‘Tie my neck-cloth around my arm, will you, to staunch the blood. Don’t be frightened – the wound is superficial.’

  As I lean close to wind the strip of cloth around his upper arm I can see a pulse jumping in his throat. It is the only sign of his tension.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I ask. He is pulling off his boots.

  ‘Preparing for a dunking. I will draw him out, while you and Miss Waterland reach the shore using the mounts for protection. I will cover you, while you bring the girl through the waves to the boat.’

  ‘But you will be a sitting duck. And there is no sign of Mr Guttery to reinforce you.’

  The captain shrugs and ties his boots together. ‘I took my time getting here, and Mr Guttery is flash enough to find his way back to France on his own.’ He drapes the boots around his neck.

  ‘Captain, listen to me! It is no business of yours to be shot by Barfield. Where is the pistol you offered me?’

  ‘Do as I ask, Molly. Let me fight this out. I am used to it.’

  ‘I do not wish you to be killed! I have already witnessed that once before and it did not please me.’

  His sardonic grin appears. ‘Doubtless I deserve to die, for I have more bad deeds to my name than I should like you to know. There will be nothing lost then if it should come to pass.’

  ‘Cannot the three of us go into the water between the mounts and swim the animals out to the boat as a screen.’

  ‘That will not answer. There is a surfeit of us and the pony and the mule are small as it is. A pair of camels would be ideal, but they come thin on the ground in Connaught.’

  Eliza groans. She is sunk on the ground, her face a clammy grey. ‘You see,’ I press, ‘she cannot proceed unaided and I have not the strength to carry her. Give me the pistol, for you have not hands enough to manage Eliza, the animals and two weapons.’

  He does not want to do it, but he cannot argue against my logic. He brings out the pistol from his pocket and says, ‘You must keep the hammer half-cocked. Should you need to fire, pull it all the way back, like this. You have only one shot.’ My hands are sticky. I wipe them on my petticoat, take the pistol and secure it beneath my waist-cord.

  I am well acquainted enough with him to know that Captain McDonagh will not complicate a hazardous undertaking by admitting emotions into it – and, sure enough, without so much as a ‘Godspeed’, he assembles us between the shifting animals and springs forth, half dragging Eliza, and we stagger away between the twin shields of the mule and the pony towards the slopping breakers. The boulders cast shadows like crooked teeth on the open ground. My heart is in my mouth as I barely prevent myself from stumbling over Eliza’s lagging heels – and then I do trip upon them.

  ‘Go on!’ I cry, trying to scramble to my feet in a tangle of cloth. I have stepped on Mrs Folan’s ancient mantle and it is torn and I must leave it behind as I run to the shelter of one of the boulders.

  I crouch against it with my breath coming and going as effortful as a bellows. There is silence all around save for the soft thump of the animals’ hoofs on the sand and the squawk of seabirds. I steal a peek around the corner of the boulder and see that Captain McDonagh has reached the shallows. He glances towards me and I can sense his concern. That glance revives my spirits and spurs me to dash to the neighbouring boulder. I gesture in the captain’s direction to signal that I am in order and he gathers up the burden of Eliza to carry her through the water.

  My confidence rises. I am sure I can make a successful run to the next boulder, which is three or four yards distant. I reach the lee of that boulder, and the next one, too. Only one more frantic sprint and I will come to the sea. My blood fizzes with intent. I will dive under the waves and use them as cover to reach the boat.

  My hair is blowing in my face. As I raise a hand to subdue it, I realise with a chill that without the disguise of the mantle my identity is completely apparent to Barfield.

  The surrounding quiet is punctuated by the distinct sound of a pistol being cocked. I glimpse a shadow at the edge of my vision. With tremorous hands I jump up and at the same time yank at the stiff hammer on the pistol.

  Nothing happens. My pistol fails.

  A shot clangs on the face of the stone. I see the puff of grit rise from the striking-point and my courage almost forsakes me.

  Only then do I realise that the shot came from the direction of the sea. Has Captain McDonagh fired on me? He has come forward into range – but he is making a sign … he wants me to lie low. Oh God, he was firing to protect me, but now he is hopelessly exposed. My breathing is shallow, my heart squeezed tight by fear. There is a sound in my ears of wind, of waves, of my own blood washing in and out.

  I sink on to my haunches and stare at the useless pistol. Did it jam? And then I hear once more – this time with startling clarity – the heavy click of the pistol’s hammer. He is aiming at my back, I sense that.

  In the distance, but not very far away, Captain McDonagh is shouting in order to attract Barfield’s attention. The mule and the pony are wandering about with an air of confusion.

  I feel very quiet. I anticipate an explosion, a tearing apart of my innards, a splintering of bone. I have the absurd notion that the effect of this outburst will be somehow countered if I remain utterly, quietly composed. Perhaps my amazing stillness will persuade him that time, and by extension the trigger, have been stopped.

  I do not move, but Barfield does, coming from around the wall of turf to smirk into my face. At last I am face to face with him as I always knew I would have to be, even as I fled from him through the English countryside. He looks like hell. Sweating. Mud-streaked. There is a raw-looking cut on his cheek. And yet he retains the power to provoke in me a feeling of ignominy. He has a terrible lunatic eye. I know that look of his. I have seen it before.

  He laughs, in fact, and pipes in that voice whose littleness always takes me by surprise, ‘Put it away, little peach. Don’t you know better than to threaten your elders and betters?’

  I look down at the pistol. My hand is stuck to the grip with Kitty’s blood. Now I see what is wrong. The hammer is only half-cocked. I had not pulled it back far enough. I pull it back. It is fully cocked.

  Barfield giggles again. ‘You will not—’ I do not know what he meant to say, because I squeeze the trigger and shoot him before he can finish his sentence. The sou
nd of the boom hurts my ears.

  I climb to my feet and run towards the sea.

  The Cliona, Bertraghboy Bay

  May, 1766

  Captain McDonagh hauls in the mooring stone and launches us on the turning tide. As we pass over the continents of weed shifting beneath the sea, he sets the dark brown mainsail, his back straining with the effort. The boat is called the Cliona. It heels beneath a westerly, and the sail bellies fatly between the booms. The sea swarms with a tangled mass of kelp, but the Cliona beats through it under the captain’s navigation and we sail forth among twisting channels. The boat is decked forward of the mast and I have made Eliza as comfortable as I can in the low cabin that lies beneath.

  None of us speaks of what has occurred. I direct my attention to tasks – lighting a fire in the stone hearth outside of the cabin, bringing Eliza water from the keg that is stored under the aft platform.

  At first it seems that we will achieve our rendezvous with the French ship before it weighs anchor, but quite quickly, while Captain McDonagh is piloting us towards the lee of one of the numerous small islands in the bay, the air darkens and dampens and the breeze begins to die.

  Fog reaches out from the confusion of islets and rocks and a curtain of mist comes down on us. We slop to a halt.

  In the muffled hush I can hear Eliza babbling with fever. I mash a little of the dried fish with water, and crawl into the cabin.

  ‘Eliza,’ I whisper, ‘be a good girl and open your mouth a little. It is time for your supper.’ The spoon is too clumsy to use. I pinch the mash in my fingers and feed it to her. She manages to swallow a little, lapping it on her tongue like an infant, but her teeth keep chattering with cold and I can see that the effort of eating is too much for her.

  I stretch myself out as well as I can and pull her to me in an embrace to warm her.

  ‘Em,’ she says into the hollow of my collarbone.

  I stroke her hair. ‘I saw you at the George Inn in Reading,’ I tell her.

  She nods and sighs.

  ‘I was shocked to see you with Barfield. Did he tell you that you were the only one who could make Johnny see sense and come back home?’