by Hannah Kent
It was only when he walked to the wall to lift a large white stone to mark the unconsecrated grave that he saw Nance. He stopped and stared at her in the moonlight, holding the rock in both hands as though he could not trust his eyes. Then slowly, without a word of greeting, he turned, placed the stone on the disturbed soil and walked away, his arms holding the spade across his shoulders like a man crucified.
Nance stood there in the unfolding dark until the crow of a cockerel broke the stillness of the valley. Casting one long look to where the stillborn lay in the silent, eternal soil, she crossed herself and returned to her cabin.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
Foxglove
Brigid’s terrible labour and the dead child were all the women seemed to talk about in the days after the birth. Mary noticed that they came to the well in greater numbers than was usual, standing in dark clothes like the jackdaws that clustered in the fields. Some wore expressions of sympathetic sorrow, mothers who had lost their own children and who understood the woman’s loss, but some seemed, to Mary’s ears, more interested in finding fault with what Brigid had or had not done to secure the life in her child.
‘David said she did not visit John O’Donoghue to blow the bellows.’
‘Sure, I’ve done that six times and ’tis six fine children I now have in this world.’
‘’Tis a powerful way to promise safe delivery, the bellows.’
‘She was at the wake of Martin Leahy. I saw her. She knelt by his dead body. Do you think there’s something in that?’
‘Ah, but she was not there when the body was coffined.’
‘No,’ said one woman with an air of conspiracy. ‘But where was she? Was she not with Peg O’Shea, who, I hear, was minding Nóra Leahy’s grandson?’
There was a murmur of incredulity.
‘I would not be easy in my mind to stay in the same room as that cratur.’
‘Now, tell me. Do you know what illness is upon him? I knew Nóra was brought the child when her daughter died, but I’ve never seen her with him. I’ve not seen the child at all.’
‘She hides him.’
‘Because he is a changeling! He’s no child at all!’
‘Begod, I’ve heard he will not walk in company, but dances and sings when alone.’
‘And how would you know that, if no one’s with him to spy all that dancing?’
There was laughter, then someone nudged the woman who had spoken and gestured to Mary.
‘You’re the maid of Nóra Leahy, are you not?’
‘Mary Clifford is her name.’
Mary looked up from her well buckets and saw a kind-faced woman sizing her up.
‘Is it true, cailín? What they say about that boy? Is he a changeling?’
Mary swallowed hard. The women were all looking at her. ‘Nance Roche will have him restored.’
The woman chewed the inside of her cheek thoughtfully. ‘You know, I saw a changeling child before.’
‘Hanna!’
There were some surprised chuckles. The woman spun around. ‘’Tis no thing to laugh at. Terrible sorrow for the mother. How would you feel if your own son was stolen and you were left with a bawling withered root sickening in your own child’s cradle?’ The laughter subsided and she clucked her tongue. ‘Good, well. Nance knows what she’s doing.’
There was a cry, and Mary saw Kate Lynch storming through the group, her empty water pail banging against her leg. She was scowling. ‘You should be asking yourselves what hand Nance had in Brigid’s trouble!’
‘What are you saying, Kate?’
One of the women, her throat flushed with excitement, raised her voice. ‘I always knew she was a baby-dropper.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
The woman’s voice fell to a whisper and the others shuffled into a tighter circle. ‘’Tis the word for them. After what they do.’ She glanced at the women, her eyes narrowed. ‘I heard ’tis why she came here, all those years ago – to escape those who would see her hang.’
‘Faith, I’ve always thought she came here running from something.’
‘She’s a baby-dropper. She knows all the ways.’
‘And what ways might they be?’ asked Hanna, staring at the others with distaste.
The woman rolled her eyes, lips moist with scandal. ‘Truth, they call them baby-droppers as they know how to let the baby, when it comes, drop straight into a pail of water.’ She stopped to see if the women knew her meaning. ‘Sure, if the baby drowns in that pail before it takes a breath, then no judge could say it was done intentional.’ She shuddered. ‘Or, soon as the baby is born, she wraps the cord around its neck. Quick, like. Strangles it with its own cord and says it came that way, the poor misfortunate.’
‘Are you saying that Brigid Lynch asked Nance to kill her own child?’
The woman blushed. ‘I’m not. I’m saying you don’t ask a fox to mind the hens.’
Mary had heard enough. She stood up and, thrusting her chin down, made to force her way through the group.
‘’Twas the herbs she gave her.’
Mary paused.
It was Kate Lynch who had spoken. She stood there with her arms held out from her body, her shawl pulled down past her eyes, face shadowed.
‘Daniel told Seán he went to see Nance a few weeks ago. Brigid was wandering in her sleep. He found her in the cillín.’
There was a gasp. Several women crossed themselves.
‘’Tis not the half of it! He asked Nance for a cure for the sleepwalking and Daniel told Seán she gave him berries of bittersweet.’
‘And what is the harm in bittersweet?’
‘’Tis nightshade!’ Kate threw her pail on the road and it rattled over the stones. ‘’Tis poison. Nance Roche is corrupting her own cures. Don’t you see it? You’re blind, the lot of ye. She’s summoning illnesses so she might put food in her mouth.’
‘What do you think it was, then?’ Mary was sitting on the floor with Micheál while Nóra strained potatoes for their morning meal.
‘’Tis just the way of it with some children.’
‘Do you not think ’twas Nance’s herbs that did it?’
‘Herbs?’
‘The bittersweet. Kate Lynch said Daniel went to Nance for a cure to stop Brigid from walking the fields in her sleep, and now they’re saying ’twas the berries Nance gave him that killed the child in her.’
Nóra frowned. ‘We were there. You saw with your own eyes Nance Roche doing all she could to bring that child forth whole and living.’
Mary sighed and absently brushed the hair from Micheál’s forehead. ‘Do you not think there’s some danger in us taking Micheál to her for the cure?’
Nóra glanced sideways at the boy. ‘’Tis not Micheál.’
‘Still, ’tis not likely to hurt him, the herbs, do you think? If ’twas the bittersweet that killed the wee baby . . .’
Nóra slapped the skib of potatoes on the pot. ‘’Twas only a mush of mint, and it did nothing at all! No good. No bad.’ She drew back away from the cloud of steam.
‘Not the mint,’ Mary mumbled. ‘But whatever she’ll be using next. Sure, Nance’ll be using a mighty herb next. Might be a danger in that.’ Micheál gurgled beneath her, and she smiled, gently batting at his swinging fists.
‘What would you have me do, then? Raise that fairy as my own? Have him crying like a bean sidhe every night with no stopping him? Your eyes look like two burnt holes in a blanket, and mine feel the same.’ Nóra picked up a hot potato and dropped it back on the wicker, sucking her fingers.
Mary’s smile fell. ‘I just worry for him, is all.’
‘There’s no point worrying about that cratur. Look.’ She pointed to the boy, her lips pincered. ‘See? It smiles.’
Mary gave the child a tickle on his chest and
he squirmed in pleasure.
‘It has you wrapped around its wee finger.’
‘Why do you call him it?’
Nóra pretended she hadn’t heard.
‘When he’s not after crying or screaming or sleeping he almost looks like a real boy, don’t you think?’ Mary tapped him on the chin and Micheál shrieked in laughter.
Nóra watched them, frowning. The maid looked younger when she smiled. Mary’s face was so often solemn, so often puffy and red-eyed with weariness, that Nóra had forgotten how young she was. How far away from home she was. With the cold sunlight from the open half-door lighting on the red of Mary’s hair, and the girl’s laughter softening her face, Nóra was reminded of Johanna.
‘You must miss your family,’ she said suddenly.
Mary looked up, her face twisting. ‘My family?’
‘Well?’
‘I do.’ The girl looked back at Micheál and ran her hands through his hair. ‘I miss them mightily. All the little ones. ’Twas me that looked after them and I worry for them with me gone and my mam with no time on her hands to be giving them.’
‘You think of them, from time to time.’
Mary hid her face, and Nóra saw that she was pinching the skin on the back of her hand.
She’s trying not to cry, she thought, and a little of the hardness she had felt towards the girl at the sight of her playing with the boy crumbled away. Without saying a word Nóra rose and walked into her bedroom. Lifting the mattress from the bedstead she felt around the rough boards until she found a parcel. She unwrapped it, her heart beating rapidly.
It was as she had left it. A clipping of her daughter’s hair. Rust-red. Bound together with string with the curl of childhood still at its ends.
A comb with only a few of the teeth missing, a stray hair still caught in the bone.
An arbutus carving from Killarney, their initials carefully marked amidst a tangle of carved roses. The mirror it had held had long broken and fallen out, but the wood remained. A wedding present from Martin.
Nóra brought the lock of Johanna’s hair to her nose, searching for the smell of her child, but it had faded. All was straw bedding and dust. She put it back in the cloth with the carving, casting a gentle thumb over Martin’s initials, and returned the parcel to its hiding place.
The comb she picked up and took with her back to the fireside. Before she could change her mind she handed it to Mary. ‘Here.’
The girl frowned, not understanding.
Nóra picked up the maid’s hand and pressed the comb into it. ‘’Twas my daughter’s. She had the same hair as you. Pretty.’
Mary held the comb lightly in her hand and ran her thumb over the fine teeth of bone.
‘’Tis a gift.’
‘I’ve never had a comb before.’
‘Well, now you do.’
‘Thank you, missus.’ Mary smiled, and Nóra brought a hand to her chest at the sudden aching she felt there.
‘Your daughter must have been beautiful.’
Nóra pressed her fingers to her ribs, but the ache deepened. ‘Well, its own child is bright to the carrion crow.’ Her voice shook. ‘You’ll be a mother one day, Mary Clifford. You’ll know.’
Mary shook her head. ‘I won’t be married.’
‘You don’t want children of your own, then?’
‘There’s enough children in this world for me to look after.’
‘Ah, but they’ll grow up. Your brothers and sisters will grow and then you’ll be lonesome for your own.’ Nóra picked up a cooled potato and passed it to Mary. ‘Feed it, then. Go on.’ She began to peel a lumper for herself, watching the way the maid fed the mewling boy. Rather than break off small pieces for the child, Mary took bites of potato flesh, then spat the chewed mush in her hand to slip into Micheál’s mouth.
She caught Nóra’s glance. ‘So he doesn’t choke,’ she muttered.
‘You dote on it.’ Nóra bit into her potato and chewed, watching. ‘That mint. It has done nothing for it. I’ve been thinking. We’ll be taking it back to Nance’s tonight.’
Mary blanched. ‘Do you not want to wait to make sure that the selfheal –’
‘Tonight. There’s no fixing in the boy. There’s none of my grandson returned. How can you sit there feeding the fairy, knowing it has not even enough blood in it to earn its place in Heaven? Knowing that Johanna’s poor Micheál is out with the fairies when he ought to be in here with me?’
‘He has to be fed, still.’
Nóra shook her head and swallowed. ‘I can’t be waiting for the selfheal.’ She shivered, stood and fetched the bottle of poitín from the keeping-hole in the hearth wall. She could feel Mary’s eyes on her.
‘Now, you’re not to be thinking ’tis mine. The drink was Martin’s and ’twas only for the men who came for a night of company.’ Nóra grimaced as she pulled the cork. ‘But I’ve a need to calm . . . I’ve a need for . . .’ She took a tentative sip, closing her eyes, and a vision of her daughter’s hair in its cloth shivered through her. She coughed on the fumes of the drink and offered the bottle to Mary.
The maid shook her head, picking up the comb.
Nóra sat, clutching the bottle. ‘We will take the changeling back tonight, Mary. I can’t be waiting like this. Hearing it scream, waiting for it to change. I can’t be waiting.’ She took another sip. ‘Ever since Nance pronounced it fairy, I can’t help but think on what Johanna’s son will be like. Her true son. He will have grown. I can almost see him . . .’ Nóra lifted the bottle to her lips and took a deeper draught. ‘I dream about him, Mary. I see her boy. A right natural little lad, laughing. I hear him. His voice speaking to me. Just as when I first saw him in his mother’s arms. And I hold him and I tell him of his mother. How good she was, how . . . how beautiful. Oh, she was a beautiful child, Mary. Every night I combed her hair with that you’ve got now. Combed it till it shone. She loved that. I dream of combing her hair, Mary. I dream of the both of them, Johanna and Micheál, and them both alive and with me, and . . .’ She shut her eyes and her voice grew bitter. ‘But then that one starts up with its screaming.’
Mary was silent. She brought a hand to her mouth and spat a gob of chewed potato into it.
Nóra waved the poitín in the boy’s direction as Mary fed him, his body jerking. ‘That one has no love for me. It knows nothing like that. All it is . . .’ She pushed the cork back into the neck of the bottle. ‘It’s all need and no thanks for it.’
Mary wiped her hands on her skirt and eased the child up onto her chest, tucking his head against the side of her chin.
‘But Johanna’s true son . . .’ Nóra took a deep breath. ‘Even in my dreams he is a consolation. He is a gift. Something left for me.’ She looked across at the maid and saw both Mary and the boy watching her. The changeling was quiet, his eyes sloping over her face.
‘Do you know, Mary, in my dreams he looks like Martin.’
Mary glanced at the poitín bottle in Nóra’s hands and began to brush the fairy’s hair. He blinked at the light pull of Johanna’s comb.
Nóra shuddered.
‘Tonight,’ she said, tugging the cork and taking another swift sip. ‘We’ll take it at dusk.’
They returned to Nance’s cabin that evening, the boy bundled in rags, pale legs dangling against Mary’s thin hip. The sky was crowded with clouds threatening rain, but as they reached the end of the valley the horizon broke clear, letting in a late sun. Light fell on the puddles in the fields until they seemed like pools of gold amidst the mud. Mary glanced at Nóra and saw that she had seen the sudden seams of light on the ground too. A good omen. They smiled, and Mary thought the widow seemed calmer for the drink. She had seen Nóra tuck the bottle safely into her shawl before they left.
Nance was sitting on a stool in her doorway, smoking the evening hours. She waited until Mary and Nór
a stepped into her yard before rising and greeting them. ‘God and Mary to you.’
‘You knew we’d be coming.’ Nóra’s words were slurred.
‘Your Mary Clifford there told me that there was no change in him. I thought you’d be here one of these nights.’
‘There’s no change in him at all.’ Nóra reached out to take Micheál from Mary’s arms, but her grip was weak and she stumbled, nearly dropping the boy. Mary quickly grabbed the child and hoisted him back onto her hip. He began to squeal.
Nóra righted herself, blushing. ‘There, see.’ She pointed to the way his legs fell useless, toes pointed inwards. ‘Do you see, Nance? No kick at all.’
‘Mmm.’ Nance narrowed her eyes at Nóra, then took a drag on her pipe and blew smoke over the boy’s face. He needled the air with his cries. ‘Best come in then.’ As they stepped into the cabin, Nance caught Mary’s arm. ‘Has that one liquor taken?’
Mary nodded and Nance ran a tongue over her gums. ‘Right so. Well, put him down.’ She pointed to her bed of heather in the corner. ‘Nóra Leahy, I’ll not be lying to you. The cure of mint and selfheal was a small thing but it proved the child changeling as we suspected. Now, to banish the fairy calls for stronger stems.’
Nóra sat down on the stool by the fire and looked at Nance expectantly. Her face was flushed, her hair dishevelled from the walk outside. ‘What is it you’ll be trying next?’
Nance waited until Mary had settled the boy on her bed. ‘Lus mór. The great herb.’ She showed the women some green leaves, slightly crumpled.
‘Foxglove,’ Mary whispered, her eyes flashing to Nóra. ‘’Tis poison.’
‘Fairy blasts calls for fairy plants,’ Nance chided. ‘And no plant is a poison to the one who knows how to use it.’