The Wren Hunt

by Mary Watson

  I unfolded a large sheet of paper. It was an illustrated overview of the plan. Things were identified by basic symbols, most of which I couldn’t follow. It was like Sibéal and Smith had invented an entire coded language. I studied the page, trying to make sense of it. I was especially drawn to the careful sketch of an orchid at the centre of the page.

  ‘That’s Calista Harkness,’ Sibéal said from behind me. She picked up a brown marker and leaned over the table, quickly sketching something there. She cut a piece of string and glued it down.

  ‘We’ve thought through everything, Wren,’ Maeve said. ‘Trust me, nothing can go wrong.’

  ‘Nothing can go wrong,’ I repeated. As she moved her hand, I saw what Sibéal had just drawn. Connected by thin string from Carraig Cottage to the Harkness House, then to the nemeta: a small brown wren. Me. I felt tethered by that string.

  ‘Now, don’t forget the lucky hairpins.’ Maeve held out her hand. Two pewter hair combs with short teeth. Fake vintage with roses twisted into filigree. Not my kind of thing.

  Maeve stretched out her hand, insistent, saying, ‘You must wear these.’

  Hesitating, I cast an eye at the picture of Harkness House. Three months of seeing David and the wrenboys every day. Of doing mundane things, just being there among them. Three months of deception, of making sure I wasn’t caught. Watching that I didn’t betray myself with an ordinary word now a potential weapon. Three months of being always, always on guard. Of looking for the right opportunity to find and steal a map from a valuable archive.

  Calista’s boys roughed them up really bad.

  My stomach twisted as Smith caught my eye. Everyone in that room was watching me. I felt a collective intake of breath, a tense beat as they looked at their best hope. Me.

  Mrs Lacey took a wet slurp of tea.

  ‘Wren?’ Smith said. ‘Can you do this?’

  Maybe I wouldn’t have to be there for three months, I told myself. If I was smart about it, I could get the Lucas map and be out in a week or two. Reaching for the hair combs, I turned to Smith.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said to him in a loud clear voice, feeling the dull throb where Sibéal’s stone had struck. I sounded so calm and assured I almost believed it myself.

  SIX

  I just know

  I took a bad turn in Lady Catherine’s walled garden today. As I fell, I sliced my arm on the blade of the garden shears.

  AdC

  I knew the city well. All through my childhood, Smith and I would drive up on Saturdays in his old banger. We’d go to the National Museum and linger in the Treasury. Together, we’d walk down Grafton Street, tramping the red brick smooth. We’d move away from the milling tourists to the quieter residential roads. As we walked, Smith would point out the secret history of the city: there is the Orchard of the Hungry Marys, there the House of the Seven Virgins.

  Our walking bound me to the city, as if we trailed invisible threads that became evermore entangled each time we paced through. At some point I realised that marching me through the city and embedding in me its secret stories was Smith’s way of making sure that I knew I belonged. That I had a place in the world. That I was not simply the darkling child, the poor motherless girl the villagers loved to gossip about.

  But the roads near Harkness House were less familiar. The houses, large and unwelcoming, were hidden behind high walls, and my sense of belonging evaporated. And with it went my confidence.

  It took around ninety minutes, two buses and a Luas tram ride, to travel from Kilshamble to Harkness House, but it felt like I’d gone to another world. Early, I stopped at a small café to shake off my bad nerves. Tea to magic myself brave. I ordered at the counter, where a single barista managed the queue. Perched on a high stool at the window ledge, I took out my notes on Calista Harkness, placing the pages like a tarot spread.

  I didn’t need to look at them. I could hear Maeve’s voice whispering small facts: Calista Harkness was fifty-two years old. Born in Kilshamble, she left for Boston aged five. Returned to Dublin for long visits. Came back for good when she inherited the Langstream Crystal empire, now sold. One brief marriage. One son at boarding school. Paranoid about her personal security. A queen among judges, her titles included Grand Magistrate, Hand of Justice, and First Cleave of all Cleaves. She’d backstabbed her older sister to ascend the hierarchy of judges. The lockdown of nemeta happened on her father’s watch and she guarded it rigorously. Decades ago, he’d advised judges to buy up land containing the remaining nemeta and keep their locations secret. It was a calculated move to cut us off from the source of our strength. And ensure their own unlimited access. Their hatred for us ran deep, ever since we began to rebel against the law of nature as handed down by the judges.

  My ancestors, many centuries ago, realised that the laws as interpreted by the judges favoured their own at the expense of augurs. Laws that insisted judges owned the land and ruled us all. Since the original rebellion, we had rejected the rigid hierarchies of ancient draoithe society. Leaving their brutalities behind, ours was a much fairer community.

  Sensing someone approach, I looked up.

  ‘Mind if I sit here?’ The stranger gestured to the stool beside mine.

  ‘Not at all.’ I gathered the papers and stuffed them into an envelope.

  ‘Let me get that.’ My oversized tote bag was precarious on his side of the ledge. As I leaned across, the barista barked, ‘Large tea,’ and I turned back to see if it was mine.

  I heard my bag thud to the ground. Looking down, there they were, my things spilled on the sticky wooden floor.

  ‘Crap.’ I hopped off the stool and crouched down. I didn’t know where to start: a single lint-covered Mentos, two fake antique lucky hair combs, a knitted hat with an oversized bobble, a letter opener sharpened into a stiletto, and various half-forgotten things that for no good reason I carried around with me every day.

  The stranger bent down to help. ‘That was my fault. Sorry.’

  Glancing up, I noticed his eyes. They were deep sludge. Murky eyes that might have been blue but were darkened to grey. Eyes like the sky on a rainy day.

  Marble eyes.

  When I was little, I loved Smith’s old marbles. Not to play with, but because I’d been transfixed by the swirls of dull colour inside. Even then, I had a thing about colours bleeding into each other. I stared at the stranger’s eyes like I wanted to take them out and hold them to the light, as I’d done with Smith’s marbles. I grabbed my phone and checked for damage.

  The barista hollered, ‘Large tea,’ while the stranger’s hands hovered, then moved to the filigree hair combs. I snatched the tampons, saying, ‘I’m not embarrassed.’ To convince myself that I wasn’t cringing so much that I might shrivel up and die right there. Sibéal would write a gruesome little film about it.

  ‘I didn’t see anything embarrassing.’ He sounded amused. I picked up the Monopoly cat token. My Lego Wonder Woman key ring with its missing arm and faded mouth.

  ‘Except maybe these.’ He held a pair of furry dice that I’d bought for Aisling’s car and forgotten to give her. ‘Furry dice? Seriously?’

  ‘You never know when you’re going to need furry dice. I’d hate to have a furry dice emergency and get caught short.’ I stuffed them back in the bag. No wonder it was so bloody full.

  The stranger handed me the letter opener, noting the sharpened edge.

  ‘Resourceful,’ he murmured, unperturbed by the home-made weapon.

  He picked up my knitted hat with its huge bobble and said, ‘You look familiar, have we met?’

  I studied him. He was attractive, if you liked contradiction: those eyes that were both liquid and stone. Calloused, elegant hands. Sun-kissed in winter. His face was sharp angles with curved lips. The way he spoke was mostly American, but I could hear the Irish beneath.

  I liked contradiction.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He searched my face. ‘Either we’ve met or you have a doppelgänger. Maybe a siste
r?’

  There was something disconcerting about seeing him absent-mindedly twist my bobble with his rough fingers. It was like the spilled contents of my bag allowed him a glimpse into my soul. And it was all big woollen bobbles with fluffy Mentos mints. And makeshift daggers.

  ‘No sister. I look nothing like my mother. And my father was a con man.’

  Grabbing my bobble hat, I shoved it into my bag. ‘I’ll take it from here,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  He picked up a notebook and I caught the edge of a tattoo on his inner forearm. He stood up, placing the notebook on the table.

  ‘I’ll bring your tea,’ he said. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

  Scooping up crumpled tissues and old sweets for the bin, I sat back on the high stool and the stranger with murky eyes returned with my tea. I tried again to look at his tattoo; it seemed only fair, since he’d seen my stuff all over the floor.

  But his attention was on his coffee and his forearm was obscured by the newspaper he was holding.

  ‘You from around here?’ I wanted to confirm my directions to Harkness House. But it came out coy. It sounded like I was looking for a reason to talk to him. Maybe I was.

  Glancing over, he smiled. ‘Yeah, I come here often.’

  As if I was trying to pick him up with some tired line. When he’d been the one with the ‘Have we met before?’

  ‘So. Do you come here often?’ he said, and I couldn’t tell if I was imagining the flirtatious edge to his voice. And I didn’t want to think about how much I was enjoying it. He looked down and said, ‘Wren?’

  I froze at the sound of my name. I hadn’t told him. But then he slid my notebook over. ‘Don’t forget this.’ There was my name, written in silver marker on the black cover. ‘Does it mean something, your name?’

  As I took the notebook I saw the tattoo on his inner forearm. An intricate snake with its tail coiled as it reared up to strike.

  A snake with two heads.

  I let go of the notebook and it fell off the ledge, landing again on the sticky floor. But I couldn’t take my eyes off the snake. It seemed to rear towards me, as it did on my sixteenth birthday.

  ‘No,’ I lied. I was named for the druid bird.

  ‘You OK?’

  I barely heard the words.

  No.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, peeling my eyes from his arm to his eyes.

  His grey eyes.

  Most of the time, I didn’t think about that first vision. Repressed it. Because it marked my failure.

  Before, Smith had always said, ‘Wren’s talent is going to be strong, I just know it.’ And afterwards, his sympathetic silence was painful. With that vision, I moved from being the girl with promise to the girl who was worse than blank. It was the moment when I had let Smith down.

  I knew those eyes.

  I slid off the stool, mesmerised.

  ‘Something wrong?’ the stranger persisted.

  His grey eyes, the snake eyes from my very first vision, held mine even as he retrieved the notebook. He held it out to me.

  ‘No. I, uh, have to go.’ I sounded breathless. My tea untouched, I stuffed the notebook in my bag and left.

  It was a bad sign, seeing that tattoo, those eyes, on my first day with the judges. I couldn’t understand why a stranger was marked with the snake from my vision. The only vision that had ever physically scarred me. It felt like something was screaming a warning: forget the plan. Back away before it’s too late.

  But it was already too late. Turning the corner, I could see a large, unfriendly house at the bottom of the cul-de-sac. I had arrived at the Harkness Foundation.

  SEVEN

  So much fun

  My dear friend Elizabeth accompanied me to see Miss Shackleton’s botanical studies. She captures the essence of the flower and with perfect line and colour. Her orchids are luminescent.

  AdC

  The first thing I noticed about Harkness House was the flowers. There were huge vases of cut flowers in every room, their scents cloying and close despite the tall windows.

  I stood in the marble entrance hall staring at flowers in water. White lilies floated in a bowl on the table in the wide, bright hallway. They made such a pretty pattern. I wanted so badly to fill in the blanks.

  ‘This way,’ the housekeeper said, her dark dress always just ahead of me.

  We walked several corridors until we reached the back of the house, where she swiped a card and entered an open-plan office suite. A hugely pregnant woman looked up from her screen, and back down again. A man right next to the door continued writing in a ledger. I stood there like a spare part.

  After a long moment, Ledger Man, without taking his eyes from the enormous old-style book, called across the room, ‘Someone tell Laney the intern is here.’

  I wondered if anyone had told Ledger Man it was the twenty-first century where balance sheets were now computerised. Going by his spotted dicky bow, I couldn’t be sure.

  No one moved. I stood in the doorway, awkward and spare.

  ‘I’ll find Laney.’ The housekeeper had kind eyes. She crossed the long room to a door at the other side.

  I walked a few steps into the room. The Harkness Foundation was an arts and heritage charity. They took on projects related to art history, listed houses, antiques, and also supported contemporary artists and researchers. Or at least that’s what I gleaned from Smith’s notes.

  Now, what I saw before me was a long room with tall sash windows. Several people at their desks, tapping at computers and looking busy. Framed posters declaring exhibitions, lectures, festivals, retrospectives, walking tours. A small open-kitchen area immediately on my left, a large boardroom table on my right. On the wall was a colour-coded timeline listing different operations and projects, and the duties assigned to each staff member. The panic flared again. I didn’t fit with that. I was all mould and moss and random blotches.

  Two weeks, I told myself, I’ll be gone in two weeks.

  ‘You the intern?’ A voice rang from across the room.

  I turned to see a young, voluptuous woman striding from the double doors on the opposite side. She wore very high, spiky heels. Her hair was an unusual combination of white and light purple.

  ‘I’m Laney, office manager and assistant to Dr Harkness.’ She walked me to the corner, to a wooden desk beside one of the long windows. I looked at her curiously; she couldn’t be much older than Aisling.

  ‘This is you,’ she said.

  On the desk was a bowl-shaped vase of blood-red peony buds curled like fists. Closed like death and secrets.

  ‘You’re here to help around the office. Make tea. Run to the post office. Other errands.’

  I didn’t think she meant to sound imperious. It was just how Laney came across, that thin nose and thin upper lip and posh accent. But I didn’t mind. I’d mop the white marble floors if it got us into the archive.

  ‘In order to develop your skillset, you’ll also be assisting with two projects.’ Laney held up two fingers painted with silver nail polish while I considered whether skillset was an actual word. ‘First, the Arabella Project.’

  ‘The Arabella Project?’ I hadn’t expected this.

  ‘We’re doing a massive campaign for the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Arabella de Courcy, nineteenth-century botanical artist.’

  Or, Arabella de Courcy, mad tree girl who’d died in Kilshamble woods. I wondered how I’d managed to overlook that one of Calista Harkness’s big projects was the Kilshamble tree girl.

  ‘You’ve heard of her?’ Laney was saying.

  ‘Everyone in Kilshamble knows Arabella.’ I hadn’t meant to make it sound so intimate, like we were all on first-name terms.

  Laney nodded. ‘That’s why this year’s internship went to your village.’ She made it sound like ‘your tribe’. Or ‘your planet’. Some distant place she couldn’t begin to fathom.

  I wondered if Laney knew what the village really thought about Arabella, if she knew t
he wild stories about the artist and the tree prince. I’d guess not. I’d imagine that wasn’t the image of Arabella de Courcy that Calista Harkness was trying to promote. But I realised I was glad, that it seemed redemptive somehow, to rescue Arabella’s reputation from lurid village myth.

  ‘The commemoration is our key project these next twelve months, and we’re investing a lot in it,’ Laney went on. ‘Dr Harkness is very passionate about underappreciated Irish artists. She feels strongly that Arabella de Courcy is one of the most talented artists in Irish history and is determined to raise her profile.’

  ‘I haven’t seen any of the paintings.’ I searched my brain for nineteenth-century botanical pictures. Nope, none. It occurred to me how woefully inadequate I was for this arts and heritage internship.

  ‘You and everyone else. But that’s what we intend to change by the end of this year.’

  ‘What will I be doing?’

  ‘We’ve a huge amount of media coverage lined up. Dr Harkness gives talks to schools, museums, galleries and historical societies both here and abroad,’ Laney said. ‘You’ll help me with research, some indexing, and you’ll organise things like her travel and making reservations, and deal with website queries and create her PowerPoint presentations.’

  ‘Admin.’ That sounded doable. ‘What’s the second project?’

  ‘Organising the Lucas archive. That’s a little less glam, I’m afraid. Tedious work, but when it arrives we have to inventory and catalogue everything.’ Laney studied me. ‘I hope you like dust.’

  ‘When it arrives?’ I said. I thought that the archive was ready and waiting for me to snoop through it.

  ‘Yeah, it should get here in the next few weeks. I’d say about three weeks before we’re ready to go in.’

  ‘Three weeks?’ I parroted, my throat was tight and the words sounded thin. The way Laney was looking at me I realised that she was thinking she’d landed a dud.