by Hannah Kent
Mary’s heart began to pound in fear, as though the current of her blood had changed direction. ‘You’ll not be giving it to him for the eating, will you? Just for the soles of his feet like before?’
Nance regarded Mary with a smoky eye. ‘You have a right to trust me.’
Nóra nodded absently in agreement.
Mary bit her lip. She felt sick. The cabin air was hot and stuffy, and she could smell the goat waste lying in the drain. She closed her eyes and felt sweat break out on her upper lip. In his dark corner, Micheál was bleating like a lamb separated from its mother. A strained wavering cry sounding over and over.
‘’Tis a bath we’ll be giving him tonight,’ said Nance, and she placed the foxglove leaves in a large pot of water. Nóra rose to help her lift the black crock directly on the embers of her fire.
‘We’ll wait until ’tis warm enough for the water to take on the power of the lus mór,’ Nance said, settled back on her stool.
‘There’s no need to have the boy on the bed when I might hold him,’ Mary said. Without waiting for the women to respond, she rose and stumbled to the child. His eyes darted over her face as she approached. Mary picked him up, her eyes averted from his lolling head, the quiver of his face.
‘She’s forever holding it,’ Nóra muttered to Nance.
‘It keeps him from crying,’ Mary said.
‘Well, there’s truth in that,’ murmured Nance. ‘Not a sound from him now.’
Nóra frowned. ‘But sure, aren’t you holding it the whole night long, and it screaming like you’re about to cut the throat of it?’
Mary tucked Micheál close against her chest, and arranged his legs so that they fell neatly over her knees. ‘I think it does calm him some. To be held.’
Nóra blinked slowly, staring. ‘It screams and screams.’
Nance was thoughtful. ‘’Tis no harm in the girl holding the changeling, Nóra. Sure, ’tis right that she be kind to it for the sake of your Micheál with Them.’ She picked up a piece of knotted rag and soaked it in goat’s milk, handing it to Mary. ‘Here, give the cratur this to suck on.’
They waited for the water to take hold of the plant. Nóra sat staring at the leaves floating in the crock, her hands trembling. When Nance handed Nóra a small cup of poitín the widow drained it in silence.
When the water had warmed, Nance and Nóra hauled the pot off the embers and Nance motioned to Mary. ‘Take the wee dress off him now. We’ll put him in the bath.’
Mary’s mouth was dry as she lay Micheál on the floor and began to unwrap the clothes from his body. She could feel the women’s eyes on her, feel the fragile neck of the boy cradled in her hand as she lifted his skull off the floor to slip the cloth over it. As she took the last of the rags off him, his white body purled in gooseflesh.
‘The water won’t burn him, will it?’ she asked.
Nance shook her head, reaching for the boy. Together they eased his dangling legs into the crock. ‘Down into it now. That’s it, girl. Hold his arms. Don’t be getting the water on your skin. Dip him in so.’
The boy’s eyes widened at the heat of the water, then fixed on the shadows moving against the wall.
‘He’s too big,’ Mary gasped, breathing hard. ‘I don’t think he’ll fit.’
‘Sure, the fairy’s all bones. We’ll get him in there.’
Water lapped over the side of the pot as they folded the boy’s arms across his chest and slipped him into the crock. His knees bent high about his neck.
‘Let go of him now.’
Mary hesitated. ‘If I let go of his head he’ll knock it on the side of the pot.’
Nóra’s voice came out in a husk. ‘Do as Nance said, Mary.’
Mary took away her hand and the boy’s head dropped to the side, his ear close to the water. The women stepped back and watched him.
‘The fairy in him is suspicious,’ Nance muttered, and Mary saw the truth of it as soon as the words were spoken. Micheál’s head lolled back above the water, his chin pointed to the soot-stained rafters. A shudder went through him like wind rippling over water and he yelped, tongue stretched.
‘That’s the fox cry of him,’ Nóra whispered.
Mary felt her stomach cramp and she could not tell if it was from fear or excitement. The darkness seemed to hum around them.
‘Now we must give him the juice of it.’ Nance leant forward and reached for the boy’s chin. At her touch his jaw snapped shut, hinges of muscle suddenly tense. Glancing back at Nóra and Mary, Nance tried to slip her finger between his lips and behind his teeth, but the boy jerked his head, struggling.
‘Mary. Open his mouth for me, would you?’
‘’Tis as though it knows,’ Nóra marvelled. ‘It knows we’re after banishing it.’
‘Mary?’
Mary knelt by the crock and reached for Micheál’s mouth. He groaned as she touched him, his arms wresting and splashing the water from the pot. She recoiled, waiting until the boy had stilled and she wasn’t in danger of the liquid spilling on her. Then she reached for him again and gently inserted the tips of her fingers between his lips. Micheál looked at her from the corner of his eye, his head slumped towards his shoulder. The pink gleam of his inner lip sat beneath her fingers. She could feel the hard press of his teeth.
‘Will this hurt him?’ she asked.
‘Not at all,’ Nance reassured her. ‘Remember, girl, we’re only after sending him back to his kind.’
Mary felt for the gap in the ridge of teeth and, quickly pushing her fingers into the wet of Micheál’s mouth, pressed down on his molars. His jaw dropped open. Nance pinned one crooked finger on his tongue and squeezed the juice of foxglove leaf down his throat.
‘There. ’Tis done.’
Mary pulled her fingers from the boy’s mouth as though she had been burnt. When she glanced down at them she could see the vague imprint of his teeth on her knuckles.
‘What do we do now?’ Nóra asked. Mary turned and saw that the widow was swaying behind them, grey hair sticking to her forehead in sweat.
‘We wait,’ Nance said.
Micheál sat scrunched in the crock, moaning, disturbing the water like a fish in a pail. Mary thought that perhaps the warm bath comforted him, had lifted the chill from his marrow and soothed the flaking rash on his back. His eyes were glazed and his cheeks flushed red, and she thought that, for the first time since she had seen the child, he was peaceful. She exhaled in relief.
Then, slowly, so that at first it was almost imperceptible, a shaking rose in him.
‘So it begins,’ Nance murmured.
The shaking grew stronger. He tremored like the crushed catkin of birch, like the fluttered seed of an ash tree, and within minutes the convulsions grew so violent that he seemed to be shivering out of his skin.
Panic flared in Mary’s chest. ‘Nance?’
‘The herb is doing its work.’
Water splashed from the pot as the convulsions turned to thrashing. Micheál’s head swung forward, his chin suddenly tight against his throat. Water swallowed his face.
‘He’ll drown,’ Mary whispered. She reached for Nance’s shoulder, but the woman gently pushed her back.
‘Nóra. Lift him. Help me lift him.’
Nóra, looking bewildered, drunk, did as Nance said. Together the older women lifted the convulsing boy, wet-skinned and dripping, from the bath of boiled leaves. He shook in their grip like a rabid dog, his mouth rent open in a terrifying gape, arms rod-straight and trembling, and his head shaking from side to side as though in terror of what was being done to him.
‘Mary! Open the door for us.’
She held her breath in horror, unable to move.
‘Open the door!’
A strange noise began to come from the boy. A shrill gasping, as though there weren’t enough air in the wo
rld and he was struggling to breathe.
‘Open the door! Mary!’
Mary, fear sparking through her, did as she was told. She ran to the door and pushed the wicker open to the night, then shrank back against the wall. Outside the night sky was gripped with stars.
Nance’s face was solemn, intent. She looked at Nóra with her clouded eyes, trying to catch her attention. ‘Help me swing him,’ she said. Nóra nodded, jaw clenched in concentration. Holding the shaking boy firmly about the ribs and shoulders they staggered to the doorway.
‘I’ll say what must be said, and you’ll help me swing him. Don’t let go, only swing him out the door. Back and forth with him.’
Nóra nodded, mute.
‘Mary! Get the shovel from the corner of the room. There. Quickly now!’
Mary, a plummeting in her bowels, did as she was told.
‘Set it under his legs. Under him, as though he were sitting on it. Nóra, hold tight of him. Now we’ll swing him.’ Nance closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘If you’re a fairy, away with you!’
Following Nance’s direction, Nóra swung the boy out towards the darkness. Her fingers gripped the sinewy knot of his shaking shoulder.
‘If you’re a fairy, away with you!’
Mary grasped the shovel tightly, holding it under Micheál’s swinging legs, stretches of bone heaving out towards the woods, the flare of his rash dull in the firelight.
‘If you’re a fairy, away with you!’
They swung him towards the night and its harbour of sprites; the crouching, waiting cunning of the unseen world. Mary held the shovel and they swung him like a body from a scaffold as he shook under their hands. And when they lowered him to the ground, she cast the shovel aside and picked him up and wrapped her shawl against his clammy, trembling nakedness, his skin now pricked with cold, and as she held him to the warmth of her chest by the fire, she felt the pulse of his unnatural heart slow, until it seemed to pattern out into a beat she no longer recognised.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
Germander speedwell
One week after she had delivered Brigid of her still, unbreathing son, Nance returned to the Lynches’ cabin with her arms full of germander speedwell. She had dreamt of Brigid every night since the birth. Had felt the painful pull of her breasts, full of unsuckled milk, and had woken, wild, turning to the woods to hunt down milkwort, speedwell and watercress, and all the green that might calm the summoning on the girl’s body.
When first light spilled in haze over the mountain summits she walked into the valley and knocked on the Lynches’ door.
Daniel answered, his face gored with lack of sleep.
‘What do you want?’ he asked.
Nance heard the gravel in his voice and simply showed him what she carried in her basket.
‘What’s that for then?’
‘To ease her pain, so it is.’
‘She needs more than herbs,’ Daniel said, leaning against the doorframe with crossed arms. When Nance peered past him into the room, he blocked her view. ‘I think you’ve done enough here, Nance.’
‘Let me see to your wife, Daniel.’
‘She’s not been churched yet.’
‘I know. Let me see her. I can help her.’
‘More bittersweet, is it?’ Daniel’s mouth twisted and he leant forward and stared Nance hard in the eye. ‘I told you,’ he spat. ‘I told you she went walking to the cillín, and you did nothing. And now our baby lies buried there.’
Nance held his eye firm. ‘It happens, so it does, Daniel. No one bears the fault for it. We did all we could for it, I promise. ’Tis just the way of the world. ’Tis just the will of God.’
Daniel ran a hand over his unshaven chin, his blue eyes hard. ‘Who is to say that those berries didn’t kill my son?’
‘The bittersweet was to help her sleep and nothing more.’
‘So you say.’
Nance straightened her back. ‘Daniel, I’ve lived long years upon this earth. I’ve delivered more children than I can count. Do you think I’d turn murderer upon babes in my late hour?’
He laughed, his breath vapour in the half-light. ‘Yes, well. Can you blame a man?’
‘Will you let me tend to her?’
‘Like I say, Nance, she’s not been churched. You’re the one always talking about spirits. Are you not afraid she’ll poison you with her unclean breath? The sin of the birth is on her.’
‘I have no mind of churching. That’s the priest’s business. That’s the Church, so it is. I’m here as her handy woman.’
‘Aye, her handy woman. Some handy woman.’ He nodded to the lane. ‘Off with ye.’
‘Will I leave the herbs with you then?’
‘Off with ye!’ His voice rang out in the early morning. A flock of starlings lifted out of a nearby ash tree.
Nance eyed him, then placed the basket of herbs on the ground. ‘Use them as a poultice,’ she said, but before the words were out of her mouth, Daniel stepped forward and kicked the basket clear off the ground. He was breathing hard, his anger two pink spots in his cheeks.
Nance froze, her heart suddenly crossways. She looked to the ground, stared at her toes, their yellow nails.
The air was charged. Neither of them moved.
There was a slight creaking by the cabin and both Nance and Daniel turned at the sound. The door was pushed out, and Brigid stood there in the gap, her head resting on the doorframe. She was pale, her dark hair undone and tangled about her head. She cast a long look at Daniel, and Nance thought that something passed between them. Then, without saying a word, she retreated back into the house, closing the door behind her.
‘I can help her,’ Nance said.
Daniel stood with his head bowed, and then tramped across the yard to where the basket had rolled to a stop. Nance watched as he stooped and picked her herbs out of the mud in clumsy handfuls and threw them back into the basket. He wiped his hands on his trousers and offered her the creel. ‘Go on home, Nance.’
‘Would you not give her the herbs yourself?’
‘Please, Nance. Go on home.’
‘All you need do is wash them and press them into a poultice.’
‘Please. Nance. Go on home!’
Nance silently accepted the soiled herbs, her tongue dry. Without meeting Daniel’s eye, she turned and walked back to the lane.
A change had come over the boy, although it was not as Nóra had hoped. Every morning, while it was still dark and the cock had not yet crowed, she woke, bleary-eyed, and fumbled her way out from the bedroom to stand over the sleeping maid and the changeling beside her. Nóra hovered above the settle bed, draped in Martin’s greatcoat, trying to make out the child’s features. Each morning he seemed to be neither asleep nor awake, but in a strange, slit-eyed daze. At times he moved, but there was little of the vigorous jerking of before. Instead he seemed to list between loose-limbed stillness and an eerie trembling, like the tremor of an aspen tree. She examined his mouth, wondering if it lay slack as any normal child’s would in sleep, or whether it was the slung yawn of the fairy. Sometimes she saw the boy’s tongue slip out over his lips, and her heart would pound in anticipation of hearing him speak, of the return of language.
Nóra stood like this over the settle bed one morning, thinking that perhaps the foxglove had worked, that the breathing coming from the boy was the beginning of words, when Mary gasped awake. She shrank from the sight of Nóra hunched over, staring.
‘You frightened me.’
Nóra hunkered down over the child on her knees, inclined her ear towards his mouth. ‘I thought I heard the shape of a word.’
Mary sat up, her hair mussed from sleep. ‘You heard him talking?’
‘Not talking. But a sound. A breathing. As though he were about to whisper something to me.’
&nb
sp; They listened for a moment, but Micheál’s lips were sluggish, unmoving.
‘He was sick again in the night.’
‘Sick?’
The maid gestured to a pail beside the bed, a cloth swimming in the dirty water. ‘Retching up over himself. All over with the sick of him, the piss of him.’ She drew closer, her forehead crinkled in concern. ‘He trembles.’
Nóra stood up, fingers pulling at her bottom lip. ‘Surely that is a good sign.’
Mary picked up one of Micheál’s limp hands, considering it. ‘He is not as he was before.’
‘The lus mór is working in it.’
Mary stroked the little hand. ‘He is as my sisters were before they died. All loose. No sound coming from him at all.’
Nóra acted as though she had not heard. ‘’Tis cold, Mary. Get up and unrake the fire, would you?’
The girl placed the boy’s hand back under the blanket. ‘You don’t think he’ll die, do you?’
‘God willing, the fairy will die if that’s what it takes for Micheál’s return.’ Nóra opened the door and peered out into the fog of the morning.
Mary stilled. ‘You want him to die? The fairy?’ She joined Nóra at the door. ‘Missus, sure, is there not sin in that? The foxglove poisoning him like that?’
‘’Tis no sin if ’tis the fairy banished. ’Tis no matter. No sin in seeking to rid the fairy and save Micheál.’ She turned and gripped Mary about the shoulder. ‘’Tis a good thing, what we’re doing for it. Can you not see that the scream is gone from it? The kicking and punching and all the fighting in it? If we can banish the fairy and fix it to leave, the Good People will have Their own back, and I will have mine. The foxglove will work and God be praised for it. Now, would you not light the fire? The cold is on me.’
The girl obeyed, retreating to the hearth where she began to fuss amongst the coals.
Nóra turned to the view of the misty valley. Through the gloom she could see the shifting of cows already turned out of byres, hear the clank of empty milk pails and the voices of women. The brief glimmer of new-lit fires as doors were opened and closed. And down by the river, the dark mass of evergreens and the hatched outline of bare branches. Nóra thought she could see the whitethorn of the Piper’s Grave and, as she stared, a flitting light in the murk around it. Like a candle flame quivering, held by someone moving in and out of the darkness. Like a rushlight lit and blown out into smoke, and lit and blown out again by the breath of someone unseen.