by Hannah Kent
‘But surely, missus, ’tis better to have a child with air in his lungs than shaking as he was.’ Mary’s lip trembled. ‘It put the fear on me, to see him like that.’
‘The fear on you? Girl, you should be afraid to see the fairy strong. You should be afraid to have one of Them amongst us.’ She blinked rapidly. ‘There’s no knowing but that one, himself, there, blinked my man and my daughter. And there you are, playing with it. Doting on it. Cutting its hair and biting its nails and feeding it as though ’twas your own.’
‘He likes the dandelion clocks,’ Mary whispered.
‘As well it might, fairy-child.’ Nóra made to go back inside but paused, turning again. Her eyes were full of tears. ‘I thought ’twas working,’ she whispered, and she gave Mary a look of such wretched sadness that the girl fought a compulsion to go to her, to lay her palms against the widow’s cheeks and stroke her face, and comfort her as she sometimes comforted her mother.
But just as quickly as the impulse arrived, it faded, and Mary remained kneeling beside Micheál. She said nothing, and after some silence Nóra turned back into the cabin, her head hung like the dead Christ.
Mary woke early on St Brigid’s Day to the muted sound of rain falling outside. Gently rolling the boy and checking that his rags were not soiled, she rose and peered at the hearth. At home she and her brothers and sisters had always fought each other for the first peek at the smothered fire, to look for the mark of St Brigid’s passing.
‘There ’tis,’ the little ones would cry, and they would see a soft crescent in the powdered ash that was surely the print of the saint’s holy heel. ‘She has come and blessed us.’
Mary sat on her haunches in the widow’s cabin and examined the raked hearth. Nothing. The soot was as she had left it.
Homesick, Mary walked to the yard door, unlatched the upper half and pushed it out. She leant on the fixed lower barrier, breathing in the smell of rain. A rough day, she thought. A pelting day. Drops stammered in the puddles of the yard.
There was a soft clattering behind her and Mary turned, expecting to see Micheál – woken, fractious, wild.
The St Brigid’s cross. It had fallen from where she had fastened it above the door.
Mary stared at the woven legs of reeds. It was not right. She had fixed the cross tightly, anxious to have its protection, its familiar eye to watch over her at night, to keep the fire from the thatch, to be assured of healing should she need it. To keep the fairies from the house.
Fear dried her mouth. She pressed herself flat against the door and called for Nóra. Nothing. She called again.
There was a low creaking from the next room and the widow emerged, her face soft with sleep. She held her head in her hands.
‘What is it? What’s the matter? You’ll let the rain in. Look, ’tis coming down.’
Mary pointed to the lintel.
‘What?’
‘St Brigid’s cross. Gone.’
Nóra bent and picked up the cross from where it had skittered across the floor.
‘I fastened it, so I did,’ Mary swallowed. ‘What do you think the meaning is in it falling? I never heard of a cross falling. The protection . . .’
Nóra turned the rushes in her fingers, then brushed the dirt from the cross with her shawl and handed it back to Mary. ‘Put it up. It means nothing. ’Twas the wind. The charm is still in it.’
Mary accepted the cross silently. For all the widow’s dismissive words, she knew from the queer look on Nóra’s face that she shared Mary’s hollow nagging that all was not right. There was no wind. None at all.
Something had moved the cross. Something had cast it to the floor.
Nóra stood over the sleeping boy, her face grey. ‘Did it shake last night? Was it sick and vomiting?’
‘No, missus.’
‘Is it after soiling itself?’
‘Not as he was. None of the running and watering out of him. And no fever.’
A pained expression came over Nóra’s face and her eyes glazed. ‘We will never be rid of it with herbs.’
Mary blanched at Nóra’s expression.
‘I’ve been thinking, Mary. Fairies do not like fire. Or iron.’ Nóra’s eyes glanced to the smoored hearth. ‘In the stories they threaten them with it. Tell them to leave or you’ll bring the eye out of them with a reddened poker. Hold them over a shovel.’
‘We held him over a shovel,’ Mary whispered.
‘We hold it over a hot shovel.’
‘No.’
Nóra looked at Mary in surprise and some of the strangeness went out of her manner.
‘No, I don’t think we should be doing that.’
‘We wouldn’t burn it. Just threaten it.’ Nóra bit at the skin around her nails.
‘I think there’s sin in that, missus. I don’t want to.’
‘It won’t leave if we keep giving it herbs, Mary. Micheál will never come back if ’tis just foxglove and mint.’
‘Please, missus. Don’t be burning it up.’
Nóra ripped the skin from her nail, glanced down and smudged the blood. ‘Just the threat would do,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Iron and fire. That is what it surely takes.’
‘Nance. How are you getting on?’
‘Musha, a good day and a bad day, thanks be to God. I was wondering when you might visit me.’ Nance nodded at the straw-seated stool beside the fire and Áine sat down, smoothing her skirts in front of her.
‘I think I am caught on the chest.’
‘Your chest, Áine?’
‘I feel a rattle.’ The woman brought a slender hand up to her throat and blushed. ‘I think ’tis the cold.’
‘A bad chest, is it? And how long have you been caught?’
Áine glanced around the cabin. ‘Oh, a while now. Since the new year. We threw the door open to let the old year out and the new one in, and I think a sickness was in its company.’ She attempted a laugh. ‘Now there’s a catch on me. I cough, sometimes.’
‘How is the damp with you?’
‘The damp?’
‘How have you and your man John stood the cold and the wet? Is the floor of your home dry?’
Áine absently pulled at a loose thread in her shawl. ‘The storms last year disturbed the thatch. And the blackbirds pick it apart. A little rain comes in. We’ll thatch again this year.’
‘And have you enough to eat?’
‘God provides plenty, though the butter’s not coming thick at all. The profit is not in the milk.’
‘Faith,’ Nance said. ‘There’s no profit to be found in the whole valley, as I hear it. But I’m pleased to hear you’ve enough to eat. You deserve it all and more. Will you let me feel for the rattle?’
Áine nodded and Nance placed her hand flat against the woman’s chest. She closed her eyes and searched for the clag on her lungs. She could sense nothing. Áine’s breath seemed normal, although her heart was beating rapidly.
‘Can you feel it?’
‘Hush now. Close your eyes for me, Áine. Take a deep breath.’
Nance felt her hand grow warm against the woman’s clothes. She felt Áine’s desire for a child. She felt how she wanted it more than anything. How when Áine bled, bent double by the pain of it, the woman imagined her body was breaking faith with her, punishing her for its emptiness.
Nance saw Áine forcing herself to rise from bed and set the water to boil on the fire for John’s breakfast. She saw her sweeping the cabin floor while her body knotted and unknotted itself in aimless ferocity. She saw how Áine hated the visitors who came on night-rambling, the men with greasy fiddles in hand, saw how she hated the way the women took up the precious warmth of the fire, how the men threw pieces of potato to the corner of the room for the fairies that she, cramped, falling out of herself, would have to kneel and sweep up when they left.
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br /> Nance saw Áine creeping to the ditch behind the house to replace her rags, marvelling at the violence of her womanhood. The bloody reminder of her unmothering.
There was a cough. Nance opened her eyes. Áine was looking at her, frightened.
‘What?’ she asked, her voice trembling.
Nance removed her hand and pulled her stool closer. ‘You’re a good woman, Áine. Faith, God knows we all have our troubles to bear. And God knows there are enough people in this world who turn their anger onto those around them. But some, I think, turn their anger against themselves. I think perhaps your body is sickening because you are sad.’
‘Faith, I’m not, Nance.’
‘The mind is a powerful thing, Áine. A mighty thing.’
‘Sure, what reason have I to be sad?’
Nance waited. Silence settled.
Áine pulled at the tasselled ends of her shawl. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Nance.’
‘’Tis about a child.’
The woman hesitated, then nodded, miserable. ‘’Twas shameful for me. The night Brigid’s baby died. ’Twas shame in being taken out of there like I was no help at all. Like I was no woman at all.’
Nance said nothing.
‘Sure, I know what they say about us,’ Áine whispered. ‘“A stick of yew in a bundle of kindling.”’
‘You want a child. There is no shame in that.’
‘There is shame in a wife not being able to give her man what he wants.’ Áine looked up, pained. ‘John is a good man, but his family think ill of me. They suspect me because I am barren. They blame poor crops on me. They say the potatoes are in sympathy with me. The cow . . .’ She clenched her jaw and shook her head. ‘All the women here in this valley, they come to my house on cuaird, and . . . sometimes they bring their weans and the children dig holes in my floor and chase my chickens. They make me feel my childlessness. Nance, I think they mock me. One of the women! Her daughter refused to take food from my hand because the girl thought I had been away with Them and that was the reason for my having no children!’ Áine choked back a strange laugh. ‘’Tis not though, is it? ’Tis not the Good People who have had a hand in my . . .’ She brought her hands to her stomach.
‘Would it frighten you to think so?’
‘’Twould give reason to it. But I never did anything against Them. I’ve a mighty respect for the Good People.’ She hesitated. ‘Kate Lynch told me of a woman whose own man struck her with a band of elm to fix a child in her.’
Nance gave a wan smile. ‘Áine, are you asking after a beating of elm?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘’Tis right for you to visit me. Don’t be blaming yourself. There is a natural sympathy in this world. For every ill thing that can come upon us, there’s a remedy to lift it. All cures are within our reach.’ Nance stood and offered Áine her hand. ‘Here, follow me.’
The two women walked out of the bothán and into the cool calm of the evening. Everything was still except for a fog slipping down into the valley from the mountains.
‘’Tis a queer place here,’ Áine whispered. ‘I forget what silence is, married to a blacksmith.’
‘Sure, ’tis quiet. Even the birds are silent in the mist.’
As they drew closer to the woods, Áine fell back. ‘Perhaps I’ll wait for you at the cabin, Nance. Perhaps I’ll come another time. John might be wondering where I’m to.’
‘I’ll let no harm come to you.’
‘How can you see the way? There’s such a fog.’
‘All the better. No one will see us.’
They walked into the trees. The ground was soft with leaf litter and the oak and alder, appearing out of the mist as they walked, sent a slow dripping from the branches above. Áine lifted her face, letting the drops dash onto her forehead, the water trickling down her nose and chin.
‘It has been a long time since I wandered in this way.’
‘Sure, a woman with a husband shares her marriage with the hearth.’
‘Did you never get married yourself, Nance?’
Nance smiled. ‘Ah, ’twas never a one would have me. I spent all my time as a girl in the mountains. I went courting with the sun.’
‘I used to go walking up the mountains as a girl. To the west.’
‘Did you now?’
‘The wind up there always smelt sweeter.’
‘Sure, I know it.’ Nance crouched down and began to rummage amongst a tangle of ferns and ivy. ‘Do you know what plant this is?’
‘Dearna Mhuire.’
Nance plucked the soft, pleated leaves of lady’s mantle, setting them on the ground beside her. When she had a neat pile she crossed herself, and Áine helped her to her feet.
‘What are they for?’
‘You’ll see now.’
Back inside the warmth of the bothán, Nance quickened the fire with dried furze and set her crock, filled with river water, on the flames.
‘Could you know this plant in the wild? Pick it safely?’
Áine nodded. ‘I picked lady’s mantle for my mother.’
‘When the air grows warmer, the leaves will have a dew on them, and the best way to fix a child in you would be to mix that dew with water and bathe in it. Until then, we can hope for the same with an infusion.’ She passed the leaves to Áine. ‘Now. Boil these in a little clean water and drink of it for twenty mornings.’
‘What is that pot there for, then?’
‘Tansy.’ Nance plucked several withered leaves off a dried plant hanging from the rafter and crumbled them into the water. ‘If you cannot go far from the house for the dearna Mhuire, tansy leaves brewed as a tea will also help you.’
The boiling water became aromatic and Nance poured off the steaming liquid, handing a piggin to Áine.
She hesitated. ‘There’s no word of truth in what they’re saying, is there, Nance?’
‘What’s that? What are they saying?’
‘The bittersweet berries. Brigid.’
Nance felt her heart drop, but she kept her face calm. ‘What do you believe, Áine?’
The blacksmith’s wife looked at the cup in her hands, and then, as if deciding, took a long draught. ‘’Tis bitter.’
Nance was relieved. ‘So is life. Make it to your taste, but take care not to use too much. Drink it for seven days. Today will be the first of your seven.’
Áine held her nose and drained the piggin.
‘Will you remember, Áine?’
‘I will.’
‘Distilled lady’s mantle for twenty days and a tea of tansy leaf for seven. And there is something else you must do.’
Áine paused. ‘What is that?’
‘When you turn your cow out to grass, let her eat the flowers of the field and then catch her water. ’Tis all-flowers water. All the good of the herbs she has eaten will be in it, and if you bathe in it you will have their cure.’
‘Thank you, Nance.’
‘And I will hold the charm for you in my mind, Áine O’Donoghue. Know you that. Boil the herbs on a hot turf fire, and all the while I will be holding the charm for you, and we will see you with a child before this year is out.’ Nance gripped her hand. ‘And then you may tell them that there was no harm in that bittersweet.’
Long after Áine had left, Nance sat brooding in front of her fire. For the first time since she had moved to the valley, she felt a threat against her, a summons to prove her ability. When she was younger it had been enough for people to know that she was the niece of Mad Maggie, that she had been taught the cure, shown the ways of the Good People. Then, when she was on the road, they saw the fact of her ability in her loneliness, in the absence of a husband, her crooked hands, her habit of smoking, of drinking like a man. They placed their faith in her because she was different from them.
But now Nance
sensed doubt. Suspicion.
I must get this child back, Nance thought. If I can restore Micheál to Nóra, then they will see that there is no word of a lie in my dealings with Them. If I give Áine O’Donoghue a child, and return Micheál Kelliher to his grandmother, they will all return to me.
Nance shivered, thinking of the foxglove treatment. She had not had another visit from Nóra Leahy, and she guessed that this meant the changeling was still in the house. It had not worked to return her mother either, although they had tried. Maggie had made Nance sit on Mary Roche’s chest to pin her arms to her side, and they had poured the foxglove down her throat while she spluttered and cursed them, while she spat it back in Nance’s face. It had taken a long struggle before the fairy woman had swallowed the liquid, but when she did the change had been unsettling. The heart of the changeling had slowed to an erratic pumping. She had grown listless, then foamed at the mouth with her eyes wide and rolled, had vomited throughout the night. But the lus mór made her docile. Made her quiet when she had been screaming. Made her placid and waxen when she had been red-faced and scratching.
Her da had not liked to see the change, for all he was desperate for his wife to return. He had taken Maggie’s gifts of poitín and gone on rambling, and had not returned some nights at all.
‘Your da only needs a bit of time to himself,’ Maggie had said. ‘’Tis no easy thing to see your wife swept and the violence needed to bring her back.’
Nance, older then, had struggled to remember her mother as she had been before the Good People took her. She had grown used to the fairy woman left in her place.
‘What will you do if there’s no restoring Mam through lus mór?’
‘There are other ways.’
Nance was silent for a moment. ‘Maggie? I want to ask you something.’
‘What is it?’
‘How did you get that mark on your face? You never told me.’
‘I don’t like to be talking of it.’
‘I heard a man saying you got it after your mam was hit in the face with a blackberry. When she was carrying, like.’
Maggie rolled her eyes, began to fuss with her pipe. ‘’Twas not that at all.’