by Hannah Kent
‘Do I have to eat that?’ Mary asked, pointing to the bowl.
‘’Tis for your skin and not your belly. Royal fern, watercress, nettles.’
‘Nettles?’ Mary couldn’t keep the panic out of her voice.
‘They’ll not hurt you. I’ve soaked them and that takes much of the sting out.’ Nance pestled the plants with a worn wooden beetle.
Mary closed her eyes and remembered the angry welts on Micheál’s legs, the widow’s wrapped hand bringing the nettles down on his skin. Her stomach clenched and she suddenly vomited, the splatter hissing on the fire.
‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped, and vomited again.
Mary felt hands smoothing the hair off her face, Nance’s bony fingers rubbing her shoulder.
‘There now,’ she said. ‘There now.’
A dipper of cool water was brought to Mary’s lips.
‘I’m sorry,’ she stuttered. She spat out the acid bile and felt the sting of it in her nostrils.
‘Ah, you poor thing. You’ve had a shock.’
‘’Tis not my ankle.’ The touch of the old woman reminded Mary of her mother. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she felt the residual sting of the nettles on her palm and sobbed.
Nance picked up Mary’s hands and turned them over, studying the welts. Her brow furrowed. ‘Is she hurting you?’
There was a long silence.
‘Mary Clifford. Is it Nóra Leahy that did this to you?’
‘Not me,’ Mary finally blurted out. ‘Him. Micheál. She’s after hurting him.’
Nance nodded. ‘The cripple boy.’
‘You know about Micheál?’
Nance released the girl’s hands and tucked her shawl firmly about her. ‘I’m hearing a lot of talk about that child. A lot of rumour.’
‘He’s not natural,’ Mary hacked. ‘And she knows it. She hides him! She has me hide him because she’s frightened of what people will say of him. But they already know, and they say he is a changeling and to blame for everything, and she is punishing him for it.’ Mary felt the words tip out over her tongue. ‘She whipped him with nettles. She drinks and she has a look in her eye that puts the fright on me. They’re astray, the both of them. I’m scared of what is going to happen.’
Nance held her smarting hands tightly. ‘There now,’ she soothed. ‘You’ve found me, now. You’ve found me.’
Micheál had finally stopped crying. Nóra offered to take him from Peg’s tight clutch, but the older woman simply stared her down. ‘Sit you there by the fire and breathe some sense back into your head.’
‘I wish Martin were here,’ Nóra gasped. She felt as though her soul was grinding itself into powder under the weight of her own unhappiness.
Peg’s voice was stern. ‘Of course you do. But Martin is with God, and you’ve a right to be getting on with life in the best way you can.’
‘I wish Martin was here,’ Nóra repeated. She could feel the blood beat in her face. ‘And I wish that it was Micheál who was dead.’
Peg sucked her teeth.
‘I would carry Micheál to the graveyard and bury him alive if my daughter would come to me!’ She fell from her stool onto all fours. ‘I would!’ she screamed. ‘I wish it were Johanna with me!’
‘Enough!’
Nóra felt two rough fingers pinch her chin and pull her head upwards.
‘Enough,’ Peg hissed. Her grip was firm. ‘Nóra Leahy, you think you are the only mother to lose a daughter? Five children I have buried in the cillín. Five.’ Her voice was calm. ‘’Tis a great misfortune to lower two coffins in one year, but ’tis no reason to let your heart and mind go to the dogs and to be crying and crawling about the house like a man senseless with drink taken. And don’t you be screaming of murder for the valley to hear. Don’t you be threatening worse things to this child than what has already befallen him.’
Nóra pushed Peg’s fingers away from her face. ‘Who are you to tell me what shape my loss can take?’
‘Nóra, I want to help you.’
There was the sound of voices in the yard outside. The women exchanged looks.
‘Who is that?’ Nóra hissed.
‘Is it Mary with the dock leaf?’
‘’Tis not her voice.’ Nóra got to her feet and fixed the bolt on the door, then waited by the wall, her ear craned to the gap in the doorframe.
There was a sharp knock.
‘Who is it?’ Nóra cried.
‘Nóra Leahy, you’d best be opening to me. I’ve your Mary here, and a sorry state she’s in too.’
Peg’s eyes widened. ‘Nance? In God’s name, Nóra, let the woman in.’
Nóra wiped her eyes on her sleeve and undid the latch. Light flooded the cabin.
Nance stood before her, the old woman’s eyes swimming in their clouded, bleeding blue. She was bundled against the cold, a straw basket over one arm. ‘You’re in a bad way,’ she murmured. ‘Secrecy does not agree with you.’
Nóra felt Nance take in her tear-stained face, the scratches on her wrist, fingernails bitten down to the painful quick. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Your girl rolled her ankle by the river and I found her there. I’ve come to see her home safe, but I think . . .’ Nance peered past Nóra to Peg and the boy at her chest. ‘I think, Nóra Leahy, that you have further need of me.’ She placed her free hand on Nóra’s shoulder and, pushing her out of the way, stepped inside.
Mary followed, giving Nóra a wary glance as she limped over the doorstep.
‘Are you badly hurt?’ Nóra asked, pointing at the rough bandage.
The girl shook her head. Said nothing.
‘So this is the nettled child. There now. Let me take a look at him, Peg O’Shea. This hidden boy.’ Nance pulled the hood off her head, and took two dock leaves from her basket. Rolling the cloth away from Micheál’s legs, she wrapped the leaves around his calves. ‘You’ve marked him like a cat, Nóra Leahy.’
‘I didn’t mean to harm him. I only wanted to see him well.’ She took a sharp breath. ‘You did the same to Martin. He told me. You brought the life back to his hand.’
Peg passed Micheál into Nance’s outstretched arms. The woman held him for a moment, gazing into his unspeaking face.
‘Your Martin was not as this child is.’
Nóra saw the boy as Nance saw him then. A wild, crabbed child no heavier than the weight of snow upon a branch. A clutch of bones rippling with the movement of wind on water. Thistle-headed. Fierce-chinned. Small fingers clutching in front of him as though the air were filled with wonders and not the smoke of the fire and their own stale breath.
She watched as Nance ran a single fingertip over his forehead.
What had happened? What had her daughter done to lose her son? Had she not crossed his face with ashes? Not bit his fingernails until he was nine weeks old? Not sprinkled his mouth with salt, or barred his cradle with iron? All women knew how to protect their children from abduction. A hazel stick by the door. Milk spilt after stumbling.
Nance lay Micheál down on the rushes by their feet. ‘He is very thin,’ she said quietly.
‘I’m not starving him, if that is what you are saying. He eats and eats.’
‘Whist now. That is not what I’m saying.’ Nance regarded her with a gentle eye. ‘Mary tells me you were given this child when your daughter died, God have mercy on her soul. Did he come into this world a natural child, or has he been changed?’
‘He was a fine boy at his birth, and in the two years after it. But when my daughter began to sicken, he became ill-favoured.’ Nóra swallowed hard. ‘They thought ’twas the cold and the hunger that did it. But my daughter thought her boy was gone from her. She did not see her own son in him. She asked . . .’ Nóra took a deep breath. ‘She asked that he be put outside in the last days of her life.’
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bsp; Peg looked at her with curiosity. ‘You never said a word of this to me, Nóra.’
‘’Twas no sin on her,’ Nóra protested. ‘She was a good mother.’
‘Tell me.’ Nance interrupted. ‘Tell me how he is unnatural.’
‘Do you not see it yourself? Look at him. Nothing of him is natural.’
There was a heavy silence. A gust of wind blew ice under the gap in the door.
‘He screams at night,’ Mary whispered. ‘He will not rest, and he will not lie still in my arms. He kicks and bites me.’
‘There is nothing of my family in that boy.’
‘Sore-wounded Christ, Nóra.’ Peg pressed her fingers to her temples. ‘Faith, I don’t know, Nance. He does not walk. He does not speak.’
‘He tried to pull the hair out of my head!’
Nance studied the boy closely. ‘Fetch me a thread, Nóra,’ she said. ‘I have a need to measure him.’
‘Why?’
‘It may well be that he is full of fairy, or that he has been overlooked.’
‘By the evil eye?’ Mary asked.
‘Aye. That he has been blinked.’
Nóra reached for her knitting and pulled roughly at the wool. She bit a length off with her teeth and passed it to Nance, who pulled it tight between her fingers and held it to Micheál’s toes and hips with a practised thumb, measuring each leg. The wind blew.
‘’Tis as I thought. He is not evenly grown,’ said Nance, ‘and sure, that can be a sign of strange things.’
‘Sweet Christ. Not even the Killarney doctor saw that.’
‘You’re wanting a reason for his being changed, Nóra. You’re wanting a reason for the unnatural in him.’
Nóra’s face pinched in grief. ‘I am afraid . . . I am afraid he is a changeling.’
The old woman straightened her back. ‘Now, that he might be, or he might not. There are ways to see whether the Good People have merely blasted him and taken the growing and thriving out of his legs, or whether . . .’ Nance lay a hand on the boy’s ribcage. His hair had cotted about his temples and his face was flushed.
‘Whether what? Nance?’
‘Nóra, the Good People may have struck your grandson and left him a cripple, or it might be that they’ve taken him altogether and left this changeling in his place. This cratur here might be fairy-born.’
Nóra put her hand over her mouth, nodding tearfully. ‘Mary, you saw it. You saw it the first time you stepped foot in here.’
Mary cast her eyes to the sputter of a rushlight.
‘Johanna. She must have known. A mother always knows her own child.’ Nóra took a shuddering breath. ‘I knew it too. That first time I saw him. I knew because I expected to love him and . . . I thought something was wrong with me. That my heart . . .’ She clutched at her shawl, piercing its weave with her fingers. ‘But this – this would explain it. ’Tis the truth of it. There is no sin in my hard heart against him.’
Peg sucked her gums. She was sitting back, her face in disquiet. ‘And how might we see if he is one of Them or merely suffering the fairy blast?’
‘A change-child is ever eating, never growing. And silence in a child is a sign of the Good People’s spite to us when They have been offended. It is by Their never talking that they might be known. His crying at all hours, that too is a sign of the changeling.’
‘But Nance, surely a child’s cries are no great sign of it belonging to Them. Were that the case, my own children were more fairy than human,’ Peg said.
Nance gave her a sharp look. ‘But your own children have had the use of their legs all their lives, Peg, and even I, in my little house, hear their prattle on the wind.’
‘’Tis the sound of his cry too,’ Mary added. ‘There is a strangeness to it.’
Nóra closed her eyes. ‘Like the scream of a fox.’
Peg reached for the poker and stirred the fire, frowning. A constellation of sparks rose above them.
‘There are ways in which we might ask the fairy to reveal its nature. To see if it is a changeling,’ Nance said.
‘I have heard of those ways,’ Nóra said, a tremor in her voice. ‘Heated shovels and burning coals.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t want to kill it.’
Nance sat back on her heels and gave her a long look. ‘Nóra Leahy, we are not talking of murder. Only threatening the changeling to banish it. I would have your true grandchild restored to you.’
‘My brother told me that those by the sea, they leave their changelings below the high-water mark on the shore when the tide is out.’ Mary’s face was as pale as milk. ‘When the child’s crying can no longer be heard, they know the changeling has fled. ’Tis true,’ she whispered, blanching at Peg’s expression. ‘He heard the story himself.’
‘Many have lost their children to the fairies over the years,’ Nance said. ‘Their wives and mothers too. Nóra, you should know ’tis powerful difficult to recover one taken by the Good People. There are those who have chosen to care for the changeling instead, although they be contrary craturs.’
Mary nodded vehemently. ‘’Tis what I heard in Annamore.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘’Tis a dreadful shame to lose a baby to the fairies, but ’tis best to care for the wee stock they leave behind and hope they bring the child back in time.’
‘I would have Micheál restored to me,’ Nóra said flatly. ‘How can I love this one when I know the wished-for child is with Them? When I might yet see his face?’
‘You would not live with his fairy likeness?’
A stillness passed through Nóra. She sat awkwardly, scrunching her clothes, hardly breathing. ‘I have no family. My husband and daughter are passed, God have mercy on them. I have only my nephews, and this . . . cratur. This changeling, if that is what he is. Folk are talking about him. They are blaming him for Martin’s death, and the omens they see, and the way the winter has dried up the hens and cows. And if what they say is true . . . I must do something,’ Nóra whispered. ‘I must try to have my grandson returned.’
Nance inclined her head to one side. ‘There is a possibility, Nóra, if ’tis fairy interference here, that your daughter and her son are together under hill, in the ráth, dancing. They are fed and kept and happy together.’ She waved her hand towards the door. ‘’Tis an easier life.’
Nóra shook her head. ‘If I cannot have Johanna . . . If there is a chance I could have her true son, Martin’s true grandson, instead of this . . . I will have her true son.’
The fire spat. Flames crept over the broken embers. Nance closed her eyes for a long moment, as if suddenly overcome with weariness, and lifted her palm from the boy’s body. Nóra watched as he snatched at her retreating fingers, catching the back of Nance’s hand with his nails. A tiny scratch opened on the old woman’s papered skin.
‘So it is, then, Nóra Leahy,’ she murmured, glancing at the little bead of blood. ‘Come to me at the turn of the year and we will begin. We will put the fairy out of him.’
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Yarrow
December moved slowly. The women sang to their cows against the heavy-clouded skies, their voices ringing out in vapour. They slipped their hands inside their clothes to warm their palms against their skin and take the shock out of their touch, and milked their beasts with fingers firm and pleading. They pressed their cheeks against the flanks and sang and milked, and prayed to God it was full of butter.
But the milk came meagre, and across the valley only a long churn would bring the butter against the dash. When at last it broke, the women, relieved, took a small ball of the fat and smeared it on the walls of their homes. They twisted the staff three times and placed it across the mouth of the churn, and some tied twigs of rowan on the dash. Others salted the wooden lids.
At night, under a gibbous moon, the women left their infants in the arms of older daug
hters and walked the frosted path to the crossroads on cuaird. They lit around the fire of Áine’s rambling cabin like moths, faces shining.
‘Have you tried a horseshoe?’ Áine was saying. ‘Sure, himself can find you a shoe of one heating and if you tie it to the churn it will bring the butter.’
‘Faith, just a nail would do it.’
‘Or three sprigs of yarrow in the pail when you milk.’
‘And don’t be singing or drinking while you churn. Or starting something with your man. Butter will never come if you’re combing and carding each other.’
The women nodded in agreement. There were six of them gathered, crowded around the heat of the hearth. They scuffed their bare feet on the cobbles.
‘Did you see the ring around the moon tonight?’ asked Biddy.
There was a murmur of assent.
‘Sign of rain.’
‘And all this fog. Fog on mountains, foul weather.’
‘’Tis no weather to be out in, that’s for sure.’
‘I’ve been seeing Nance Roche creeping about the fields these mornings, so I have.’
Several eyes glanced to where Kate Lynch sat huddled by the fire, her arms cosseted around her body.
‘Not even daylight, and she’s shuffling through the mist going from place to place, cow to cow. Cursing them. Putting the blink on them.’
Sorcha gave a nervous smile. ‘Mam, I bet she was only bleeding them.’
‘Aye, she’ll be getting powerful hungry now Father Healy has preached against folk going to her for the cure or the keening. How else does she fit food to her mouth?’
‘I often see her about,’ said Hanna. ‘She walks the long field by the road, gathering herbs at dawn or dusk for the cures. She has the knowledge of what herbs to gather, where and when, and how to keep the power in the plant. And what harm if she’s also after taking the wool from the brambles, if there’s any to be had? Sure, I wouldn’t think anything of it.’
‘Well, I mind her bleeding animals, Hanna, if that’s the mischief she’s up to, and the winter weakening the cows as it is.’ Éilís sighed. ‘Faith, there’s no butter to be had in the milk. There’s no profit at all in the churn. If that one is creeping about in the dark with her knife, plugging the necks of the beasts and boiling their blood with ill-gotten oats, well, I think that’s something the priest should know about.’