by Hannah Kent
Peg said nothing, pursing her lips.
‘Martin and I, we thought ’twould be best if we kept him from crowds. Kept him quiet with us.’
‘Aye, could be.’
‘Who has an eye to him?’
‘Oh, the house is full of my children and their weans. They give Micheál no mind. And ’tis not as though he’ll be wandering off.’ She leant closer. ‘I didn’t know ’twas so bad with him. All these months you’ve been caring for the boy . . .’
‘Martin and I both. We managed between us. The one could mind him while the other worked.’
‘How old is he, Nóra?’
‘Four.’
‘Four. And no more able to speak than a baby.’
Nóra looked down at the egg the little boy had given her, tracing a fingertip upon the shell. ‘’Tis the illness upon him.’
Peg was silent.
‘He has the ability for it. I heard him speak before. When Johanna was alive.’
‘Was he walking then too?’
Nóra felt ill. She shook her head, unable to answer, and Peg placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘The sky has the appearance of rain. Let’s inside to rest our bones. I’ll pay my respects.’
The turf fire was at a high blaze inside the cabin, and the conversation amongst the visitors was loud. Laughter spilt from a corner.
‘Mmm.’ Peg’s dark eyes flitted over the company in the room. ‘Who brought the drink then?’
‘Seán Lynch brought most of it,’ Nóra replied.
Peg raised her eyebrows.
‘I know. ’Twas not something I expected. Not a generous man.’
‘The only thing that man is generous with is his fists.’ She cast a sly look to where Kate sat amongst the women, picking at her teeth. ‘Seán Lynch would skin a louse and send the hide and fat to market. I wonder what he’s after.’
Nóra shrugged. ‘We’re kin. Don’t you forget that my sister married his brother, God rest their souls.’
Peg sniffed. ‘Faith, he’s up to something. I’d keep an eye to him, Nóra. He’ll be wanting something from you now Martin is gone. That one knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.’
They stared across the room to where Seán sat smoking by the fire.
‘Believe me, Nóra. An old broom knows the dirty corners best.’
They carried the body of Martin to his grave the following afternoon under a colourless sky. The nephews and friends of the man shouldered the rough coffin, followed by other valley men, who would occasionally take turns at carrying the box. It was a long, familiar journey to the graveyard along the road, and the way was slow going. The rains had softened the path into mud and the men trod carefully, anxious not to lose their boots in the suck of it. The women walked behind, sending their cries up into the autumn air, studded with cold. They all knew the way to lead a body to soil.
Nóra gripped her shawl tightly over her head. She could not bear to look at the coffin bobbing beyond the heads in front, and instead cast her eyes to the birds spiralling above the balding branches. She felt strangely dry-eyed, and as she walked through the puddles, glossy with sky, she wondered if some small part of her had died too. The women around her seemed ridiculous in their lamentations, their wet skirts clinging to their legs. Nóra held her tongue still and let her grief sit in her like a stone.
The sight of a funeral drew people from the cabins that sat close upon the road. Children stared with their fingers in their mouths. Men letting their pigs graze on the lane joined the crowd to share a few paces with them, then stepped aside and waited solemnly for them to move on before slapping their pigs’ sides with a switch.
Nóra kept her head tilted to the sky, letting the crowd push her onwards. Eagles circled above the hill heights.
The graveyard, slouched next to the little church and shadowed by an old yew tree, was overgrown, green with grass. The men stumbled over the tussocks and carefully set the coffin down beside the hole that had been dug in readiness. Father Healy was waiting for them, slack-jawed and slumped with the spine of a scholar. When his gaze sought out Nóra she pulled her shawl low over her forehead and cast her eyes to the ground.
The service was brief. The priest led the prayers in his halting voice, and Nóra felt the wet ground seep through her skirts as she knelt. She watched as her husband was lowered into the ground, watched as the gravediggers lay sods of grass over the lid of the coffin so that the earth might fall gently upon the wood.
When all was done and there were no more words to be said, and the hole had been filled with the rough black soil of the valley, the people placed their clay pipes upon the grave mound and left. As the crowd followed the curve of the hill down towards the valley, Nóra looked back at the churchyard. From a distance the pipe stems looked like nothing more than a smattering of slender bones, cleaned by birds.
The wind rose as Nóra walked the road after the funeral, at first in a crowd, and then, as people turned off towards their own cabins, in a smaller, silent number. By the time she was hobbling past the ash trees and up the muddy slope to her house, she was alone and the wind was peeling off the mountain crags into the valley, full of bite. A hard rain had started to sting and her knees felt the promise of another storm.
As Nóra approached the cabin she could hear screaming coming from inside. Micheál. The door was ajar, and as she entered she noticed that her house had been cleaned, all evidence of the wake removed. New rushes lay spread on the floor, a bright fire was burning and Peg O’Shea was seated next to it, cradling Micheál and laughing at Brigid, who was wincing at his pitching voice. ‘You’d best be getting used to that,’ Peg was saying, rocking the red-faced boy. Her smile faded as Nóra walked in.
‘Martin is buried, then.’
Nóra sank down on the settle bed next to Brigid, relieved to have the house empty of people.
‘And a crowd to bury him too. That’s a blessing. Move up to the fire. You’ll perish in the cold.’
Nóra held out her arms for Micheál and leant her cheek against his head. The weight of him in her arms, and the ragged, humid cries addressing her skin, made her feel careworn. Her bare toes ached with the cold.
Peg was watching her. ‘They’re a comfort, children.’
Nóra closed her eyes and pushed her face into the fragile scoop of his neck. His chest tightened beneath her hands as he screamed.
‘Thank you for minding him.’
‘Don’t you say another word about it. I’ve been praying for you, Nóra. God knows ’tis been a bad and troubling year for ye.’
Nóra released her hold on Micheál, laying him out on her lap. Tears streamed down his face. She began to rub his limbs as she had seen Martin do, straightening his wrists back from where they bent inwards, fingers as stiff as pokers. At her touch Micheál ceased crying, and for a moment she thought he looked at her. His pupils, so dark against the blue of his eyes, seemed to fix on her own. Her heart leapt. Then his gaze slid from her face and he began to howl, his hands buckling back into crooks.
Nóra stopped rubbing him and stared. She was struck with the memory of Martin holding Micheál in his broad hands, spooning cream into his mouth.
How could you leave me alone with this child, she thought.
Peg reached across the hearth and gently smoothed Micheál’s hair. ‘Sure, he has Johanna’s colour.’
Brigid glanced at Nóra.
‘I know she was a great loss to you,’ Peg continued. ‘Is é do mhac do mhac go bpósann sé ach is í d’iníon go bhfaighidh tú bás. Your son is your son until he marries, but your daughter is your daughter until you die. And now, to lose your man . . . Isn’t God cruel, taking those we love most?’
‘We all bear our cross,’ Nóra murmured. She lifted Micheál higher onto her lap. ‘What’s troubling you then, little one?’
‘Oh, Nóra, he’s be
en squalling fit to wake the dead, the poor cratur. Full of noise and tears, and for what? All these days past too. How do you sleep with him crying so at all hours?’
Micheál screamed louder than before. Tears crawled down his flushed cheeks.
‘Did you feed him?’ Brigid asked, taking Nóra’s cloak from the settle and draping it across the low beam by the fire.
‘Did I feed him?’ Peg gave Nóra a glinting look. ‘I’ve had five of them myself, and sure, Brigid, ’tis a miracle they all lived to have their own, for I never once fed them but set them to the wind. I’ll say, ’tis a good thing you know what you’re doing, for the moon looks full with you.’ She sucked her remaining teeth. ‘Such company you send me, Nóra. This wean and cailín. Well, ’twas right to be keeping them away from the trouble.’
‘I hope I’ve kept it out of danger.’ Brigid put a protective hand over her stomach. ‘Dan wouldn’t have me in the house for the pig kill.’
‘I knew a woman once,’ said Peg. ‘She was a doughty thing, had no time for old ways and full of pride. Well, didn’t she set herself on catching the blood off the table when the time came for slaughter? And didn’t her husband try to stop her? But for all the strong man he was, she had her way. And you can be sure, that child she was carrying came out with a face like raw liver and a mood to match.’
A dull murmur of thunder rolled overhead and Brigid grimaced. ‘Is that so?’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t tempt the Devil. You wouldn’t be messing with blood or bodies in your state.’
‘It put the fear on me, what that old biddy said. The one with the white hair.’
‘The bean feasa? Sure, Nance Roche has a peculiar way.’
‘I haven’t seen her before. I thought she was only a kind of handy woman.’
‘Have you not? No, well, she keeps to herself. Until she feels the call on her. Or others go calling for her.’
‘Or there’s the promise of a warm cabin and a bite to eat,’ Nóra added. ‘I’ve never gone to her for the cure, and Martin only once or twice. And yet there she was at the wake. To keen.’
Peg gave Nóra a searching look. ‘She has a way of knowing when she’s needed.’ Her voice was quiet.
‘But why have I not heard anyone say she has the knowledge?’ Brigid asked.
‘Begod, whether you go to her or not, ’tis not something you talk about. People go to her for the things you wouldn’t want a priest to know about, or your own mother to see. And well, sure, there’s some folk think her name brings misfortune. She puts the fright on them.’
Brigid leant forward, curious. ‘And why’s that? What did she do?’
‘A great crime to be sure.’ Peg winked. ‘She lives by the woods on her own. That’s enough to set tongues going. There’s plenty that go to her though. Aye, they do be saying she has the cure. Not like some of them who say they have the charms when all they have is a desire to part you with your whiskey.’
‘I knew a Cahill, a cousin of my mam, he had the cure for the shingles.’
Nóra clucked her tongue and rocked Micheál. The exhausted child was finally falling into a whimpering sleep. ‘Folk come all the way from Ballyvourney for the charms of Nance Roche. Eight hours hard walking for a man there and back, all for her to whisper something in his ear and look at his warts.’
Peg nodded. ‘Musha, Nance of the Fairies, they call her. Nance na bPúcaí. There are plenty that will have nothing to do with her on account of it but more who go to her because they believe it so.’
‘Do you believe it, Nóra?’
Nóra shook her head dismissively. ‘I don’t like to talk of it. The world is full of things I don’t pretend to understand. They used to say she was going with the Good People, whether ’twas true or not.’
‘Peg,’ Brigid whispered, glancing to the door as if suddenly expecting it to fly open, ‘is she in league with Them? What does the priest say?’
‘Father O’Reilly always had a kind word for her when he still walked this earth. Some men of the Church might say she’s no person of God, but those who have gone to her say she never performed any cure, only in the name of the Blessed Trinity. Oh, did you hear that now?’
Nóra flinched at the low growl of thunder. ‘God be between us and harm.’
‘Does she not have a man? Children?’
‘No husband I ever heard of. Peg?’
The old woman smiled. ‘Not unless she has a fairy man out by the ráth. Or that old goat of hers is really her husband, changed by the Good People.’ She laughed, as if tickled by the idea.
Brigid was thoughtful. ‘The way she came in, her hair all wet and the white lips of her. She looked like a ghost. She looked like someone’d been spending the night trying to drown her in a puddle. And the eyes of her – the fog in them. How can a woman with the cure be going about with eyes like that in her head?’
‘You’d do well to keep on the right side of Nance Roche,’ Nóra admitted.
Peg chuckled and wiped her gums with a corner of her apron. ‘Brigid, all you need to know is that woman was born at the dead hour of night and so has a different way of seeing.’
‘Has she always lived here?’
‘Oh, long enough now to scare my children and my children’s children. But not born here, no. I remember when she came. There were lots of people on the road in those times. Nance was just another poor wandering woman. The priest took pity on her, young as she was then, with no soul to help her. The men built her a bothán, just a wee room of mud by the wood. No potato garden to speak of, but she has chickens. And a goat. Oh, she’s always put great store by goats. ’Tis all well for a woman to be living off sloes and hazelnuts and praiseach in the kinder months, but when she first came we were all expecting her to come knocking and begging for lumpers come winter. But didn’t she keep to herself, and didn’t she stay that winter, and the next and the next, until folk started saying that ’twas not a natural thing for a woman like her to be living fat off weeds and berries. Some thought she was stealing at night. Others thought she was in league with Himself.’
‘The Devil?’
There was a loud clap of thunder. The women jumped.
‘What a night to be telling of these things!’ Nóra exclaimed.
‘Sure, Nance was a queer one from the start.’
‘Is it not time to eat? Are you hungry? Peg, will you be staying? ’Tis no night for walking.’ For all her desire to be alone during Martin’s wake, Nóra suddenly longed for company. The thought of spending the storming evening alone with Micheál made her stomach clutch in dread.
Peg looked around the empty cabin and, as if sensing Nóra’s reluctance, nodded. ‘I will, if ’tis no trouble to you.’
‘Shall I take Micheál?’ Brigid offered.
‘I’ll set him down.’ Nóra laid the boy in a makeshift cradle of sally twigs and straw.
‘He’s a bit too big for that now, is he not?’ Peg asked. ‘His legs don’t fit at all.’
Nóra ignored her. ‘I’ll go for the milk and then I’ll get us a bite to eat.’ Another roll of thunder sounded above the rain and the spitting turf fire. ‘What a dirty night.’
Peg gave Brigid’s belly a gentle pat. ‘’Tis a good thing you’re here with your man’s aunt and not out in the dark.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘The thunder kills the unhatched birds in their eggs.’
‘Peg O’Shea! Don’t be frightening her with tall talk.’ Nóra lifted a heavy pot of water onto the chain hanging from the hearth wall, squinting in the smoke.
‘Go see to the beast, Nóra. She’ll be in pieces from the storm.’ Peg turned to Brigid. ‘The lightning does be taking the profit from the milk. There’ll be some fearful churning after tonight, you mark my words.’
Nóra shot Peg a stern look and pulled her wet cloak from its rafter and back over her head. She stepped out into the night with her pail, stumbling
in the sudden wind, rain lashing against her face. She lurched towards the byre, eager to escape the downpour.
The cow blinked at her in the dark, eyes round in fear.
‘There, Brownie. Easy with you.’ Nóra ran her hands over the cow’s flank, but when she reached for the stool and placed the pail on the ground, the beast started and pulled at her rope.
‘No harm will come to you, girl,’ Nóra crooned, but Brownie moaned. There’s a fright in her, Nóra thought, and hauled an armful of hay into the bracket. The cow ignored it, panting, and as soon as Nóra took hold of her teats, the cow skittered sideways, leg kicking in its spancel. The pail clattered across the floor. Nóra got up, irritated.
Lightning flashed outside.
‘Have it your way, would you,’ Nóra muttered, and snatching the pail, she pulled the sodden cloak back over her head. She staggered back through the pelting darkness towards the cabin, pausing under the thatch to scrape the mud from her feet. As she wiped her heel on the step she heard Peg’s voice, low with conspiracy, coming from inside.
‘Wee Micheál. Would you look at him. He’s an ill-thriven thing.’
Nóra froze.
‘I heard Martin and Nóra had a cripple child with them. Is it true he hasn’t taken a step yet?’
Brigid.
Nóra’s heart began to hammer.
‘I doubt he ever will! Four years old and the state of him! I knew Nóra was after caring for Johanna’s boy, and that there was little keeping body and soul together when he came to them, but one like this? He hasn’t the whole of his sense.’
Nóra felt her face flush, despite the chill. Hardly breathing, she pressed her eye to a gap in the wood. Brigid and Peg were staring at the boy.
‘Has herself fetched the priest for him?’
‘To heal him? I’ve always believed a priest has the power if he wants to use it. But Father Healy is a busy man. A man from the towns – he’s most like spent his life in Tralee or Killarney. And I don’t think he will be troubling himself with poor wicker-legged boys.’
Brigid was silent. ‘I pray to God that mine is right.’