by Hannah Kent
Nance was silent. She accepted Peter’s pipe, wiped the blood from the stem and let her mouth fill with the rough smoke.
‘You have no hand in piseógs, do you, Nance? Seán’s saying he’s after finding the suggestion of piseógs on his land. Stones turned strangely. Flints pointing at the crop ground.’
‘To lay a curse is to set it on your own head.’
Peter nodded. ‘Faith, I knew you were a Christian woman. You’ve always been kind to me.’
‘Would you tell them when you hear it, Peter? Tell them I have no hand in that badness.’
‘Not even for Seán Lynch?’ He cast her a sideways look.
‘Seán Lynch has been against me for years. If I had it in for him, he’d have been pissing bees and coughing crickets long before now.’
Peter smiled and Nance saw that he was missing several teeth. He took another long draw. ‘Do you think ’tis the Leahy changeling?’
‘You tell them I will have that boy restored. I will have the fairy out and the boy returned.’
‘Has he the evil eye, do you think? Only, it makes sense, Nance. The cratur comes to the valley and ’tis only grief we’ve known since. And a strange kind, too. Eggs of blood and men passing at crossroads, and rumours of hares sucking the cows dry of milk.’ He cast Nance a dark look. ‘The dreams I told you about, Nance. I keep having them.’
‘You dream you drown.’
‘Aye. I’m all under water and there’s hands holding me there. Holding me fast. There’s a burning in my lungs and I have a yearning to breathe, but though I’m looking up and I can see the sun beyond the surface, and the trees, there is a face there too.’
‘Who is murdering you?’
Peter shook his head. ‘I can’t make him out. But Nance . . .’ He sat up on the heather, dropping his voice to a whisper. ‘After today, I’m thinking it might be Seán.’
‘’Tis a dark thing to think of a man.’
Peter was insistent. ‘I couldn’t account for his belting me the way he did. Like he wanted to kill me, so I said. And then, I was sitting there with John and Áine, as battered as a sliotar, and I think of it. He knows I think well of you, Nance. Even mentioned it. And if he’s thinking you’re behind the badness in this place, the powerful mischief going on, well.’ He leant back, raising his hand to his swollen eye. ‘He might have a notion that I’ve a hand in it too.’
Nance sighed. ‘Peter, bless you, no one thinks you’ve a hand in piseógs. No one gives in to that.’
‘They might think you’ve taught me.’
Nance thought of Kate all those years ago. The flashing needle in her hem. Her talk of turning stones, of walking against the sun. ‘If someone has it in for another, the piseógs come natural. God forgive them, they always think of something.’
Peter gave her a careful look, then tapped out the dead ash in his pipe. He was about to refill it when he paused, glancing at the door. ‘Did you hear that?’
Nance listened. The sound came again and they looked at each other, eyes widening. Somewhere in the valley, a woman was screaming.
It seemed that everyone in the fields had heard. As Peter and Nance made their way from her cabin to the lane they saw men running from their work, throwing their tools down and dropping their reins. Women emerged from the cabins by the Macroom road, blinking in the sunlight, children gawping by their aprons.
‘What’s that?’
‘Did you hear it?’
‘Good God, do you think someone’s after being killed?’
‘Where’s it coming from?’
A group of people gathered in the lane, fear on their faces. ‘’Tis not an eviction, surely,’ they said. ‘’Tis not yet rent day.’ Then one of the men pointed at the O’Donoghues’ bellows boy, running full pelt up the road to where they stood. His face was wild, his dirty hair sticking to his forehead in sweat.
‘Help!’ he cried. He stumbled on a rock and went flying on the road, then picked himself up and continued to run, arms wheeling in panic, knees grazed. ‘Help!’
‘Tell us! What is it?’ The men ran to meet him, grabbing his arm and the boy let out a yelp. ‘’Tis Áine O’Donoghue,’ he shouted. ‘She’s caught herself on fire.’
There was a crowd of people in the blacksmith’s yard by the time Peter and Nance arrived, their faces anxious and intent. They stared at Nance from lowered brows as Peter dragged her across the dirt and pebbles into the open door of the O’Donoghues’ cabin.
‘I’ve Nance Roche here! The doctress! I’ve brought her,’ Peter cried, spitting blood and pulling Nance through the doorway. For a moment Nance could see nothing in the dark room. Then she saw two figures on the ground. Áine was writhing on the floor as her husband tried to calm her and hold her down.
There was an awful smell of burnt flesh. The bottom of Áine’s dress was black and burnt, the cindered cloth sticking to her legs. Nance could see her skin through the weave, already blistered and gruesome in moist, pink shine. It looked as though she had been flayed across the shins. Áine’s eyes were shut and her mouth was wide and issuing a hellish scream.
‘God have mercy on her,’ Nance whispered. There was the smell of vomit, and Nance saw that John was being sick on the ground. The sight of the retching blacksmith holding his wife’s blistered ankles jolted her from horrified silence, and she found herself telling Peter to find some butter and poitín, and to get John a sip of water.
Nance dropped to her knees. ‘Áine,’ she said calmly. ‘Áine, ’tis Nance. You are going to be alright. I’m here to help you.’
The woman kept thrashing on the ground. Nance caught hold of her arms. ‘Áine, be still. Be still.’
There was a sudden silence and Áine stopped struggling and fell limp.
‘Is she dead?’ John gasped.
‘Not dead,’ Nance answered. ‘’Tis too much for her to bear. ’Tis a faint. John. John, listen to me. I need you to go outside and tell everyone there to leave. Tell them to go and pray for her. And then I need you to go and fetch me ivy leaves.’
John got up at once and left, lurching sideways across the yard in the disorientation of his horror.
The bellows boy was standing rigid against the wall. ‘We heard her shouting. John and I. We were out in the forge and we heard a screaming. We thought she was being murdered and all. We came in and she was all aflame. John got the blanket from the bed and beat her with it until the fire was out.’
‘He did well to think so quickly.’
Peter was silent for a moment. ‘Look at the legs of her. Nance, will she die of it?’
Nance sat back on her heels. ‘I’ll tell you if there’s need to send for the priest and the sacrament. But now we have to take her to the river. Can you carry her, do you think?’
Peter and the bellows boy lifted Áine from the floor and carried her out of the room. John had sent some of the people on their way, but many remained, watching with hands over mouths, as the men stumbled down the slope to where the river lay.
Peter and the boy held the unconscious woman in the flowing water by the neck and feet. The water was freezing and the men shivered, their jaws locked with cold, their clothes wet to the waist. John had his eyes closed and was praying on the bank, muttering to himself. Peter held Áine with gritted determination, gently lowering her legs into the water in an even, steady rhythm. Ashes lifted from the woman’s dress and were swept away by the current, greasing the surface of the river.
Nance crouched on the bank, watching the men with a keen eye. ‘You will not die,’ she announced to Áine. ‘You will not die.’ She held the hem of her skirt to her waist and filled it with hart’s tongue fern and ivy leaves, plucking them with John from where they grew at the feet of the oak and alder, ash and holly.
The crowd had not dispersed. Many of the valley people were still stubbornly standing in the blacksmith’s yar
d when they returned from the river, dripping and shaking with the cold. The onlookers crossed themselves at the sight of Áine’s burns, but none ventured inside the cabin with them. The hearth had grown cold, and the room was filled with smoke and the smell of burnt hair.
Peter and John placed Áine on the bed in the far corner of the room, and as they settled her on the blanket she murmured, the lid of one eye rising unsteadily before falling shut. Nance ordered Peter to return to the river for more water and asked John to build up the fire. It was only when the turf had been kindled and the flames threw an uneasy glow about the room that they saw the gifts and tokens lying on the cabin’s table. Noggins of butter and a basket of turf and kindling. Someone had placed a small salted nugget of bacon next to some eggs. Yellow flowers for protection: sprays of gorse and a cross woven of reeds. And on the edge of the table, a small, clean folded cloth of dowry linen.
That night was as long as the howl of a dog. Nance sat hunched over Áine for the full, slow swing of the moon, dribbling water into her mouth as the ivy and hart’s tongue boiled on the fire. She urged Peter to give John as much poitín as would send him into sleep on the rushes, and kept the hearth alive, getting up only to refill the piggin of well water, feed the flames with turf and, once, to scrub the blood and ashes off the stone. The woman had left a shadow of her own scorching on the flag.
Shortly before dawn Nance drained the ivy and fern leaves and pummelled their paste into softened butter. She stepped out into the brittle chill and let the rising fingers of sunlight touch the poultice. Then she returned inside and dressed Áine’s raw skin, painting the woman’s wounds with the herbed fat under prayer and a blessing of her own tongue, soothing her with a stream of words that carried in them no other meaning than a calm urgency to stay alive. She closed her eyes and thought of her da and Maggie, and Father O’Reilly, and all those who had seen in her hands a higher healing, who believed she carried a light. And she thought on her light, her knowledge and her cure, and felt her hands grow hot with it, until all suddenly spasmed, and there were rough fingers gripping her wrists and the sound of the clay vessel breaking on the floor, and when she opened her eyes it was Father Healy and Seán Lynch taking her outside, pulling her so hard that her muscles tightened with the pain of their grip, and her toes scraped against the cobbles, and there was the fresh morning air and mud, and she lay in it and there was Father Healy, pale-faced, mouth saying something to John, who argued in desperation, and above her the birds circled and the sun was rising bloody, rising red in night’s slaughter.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Oak
‘You’d think nobody ever died, there were so many there!’
‘Hearing the Mass!’
Peg nodded, glancing down to the wicker basket where the boy was concealed beside her. She and Nóra were sitting out in the yard knitting, taking in the rare sun of a thin-clouded day while Mary washed the child’s soiled rags, steam rising from her barrel.
‘’Tis the fear,’ Peg said. ‘’Tis a nervous time, what with the animals in foal and calf, and the potatoes about to be put into ground. Folk are vexed. They want reassurance that all will be well. They’re praying for the strange happenings to stop. There are them that might not believe in such things but for what has been happening.’
‘Áine.’
Peg crossed herself. ‘God be with her. Yes, Áine, but also your Martin. Brigid. There’s queer things happening up the mountains if you believe half of what goes round. And they’re after finding patterns in it all. They’re after finding reason for it.’
The boy emitted a loud shriek from his basket and the women exchanged glances.
‘’Tis back as it was,’ murmured Nóra, nodding at the child. ‘Pounding its head against the floor, pounding its fists. The lus mór took all the cross ways out of it, but now it’s after screeching for milk again, and scratching the maid.’ Nóra reached down and pushed the boy’s extended arm back into the basket. ‘Will she live, do you think?’
‘Áine?’
‘Aye.’
‘I pray to God ’tis so. There’s a Killarney doctor with her. The priest brought him himself. He’s hard against Nance now, and her that had the knowledge to take Áine to the river.’
‘’Twas swift thinking.’
‘Aye, and I say ’tis what saved her. But Father Healy will have none of it. Tossing her out into the yard like that! Now, I understand he has no time for a woman like Nance, that he does be thinking she’s a wonder maker. But, sure, ’tis a sad day when a priest is pushing a woman into the mud, with a grand age on her too.’
‘’Tis shameful.’
‘Throwing after her all the herbs brought in good faith.’ Peg sniffed. ‘John O’Donoghue asked him to let Nance treat the woman, but there’s no arguing with a priest. Sure, Father Healy will have Nance out of this valley. He’s already after turning minds against her. Nóra . . .’ She stopped knitting and sat the needles on her lap. ‘There are those that used to go to Nance for the cure and now they won’t even look in her direction. A man came the other day asking for her. Said his mother told him of a woman who could take the jaundice out of his child. But would you know, the man he asked was Daniel Lynch, and your own Dan wouldn’t be telling him where she lives. Told him to go on home and that no one with the charms was hereabouts.’
‘Dan’s gone with the shock of the child, may God protect him.’
‘And Brigid too, I’m sure. ’Tis a sad thing for her to be waiting for the churching and no one to be talking with but her man, when what she surely needs is company.’
‘Faith, I can’t imagine Dan speaking out against anybody.’
‘It may be he’s after believing Father Healy. The man is preaching against Nance at the altar. At the Mass he was saying she’s nothing more than a quackered hag, turned to the rot and meddling in lives to bring food to her mouth.’
‘Sure, Kate Lynch was telling all about the bittersweet Nance gave to Brigid.’ Nóra nodded at Mary. ‘The girl heard it herself at the well. Talk of poisoning. I don’t believe a word of it.’
Peg nodded. ‘I don’t believe it either. But Nóra, that’s what folk are saying of Áine.’ She reached out and placed her hand on Nóra’s knee. ‘Someone saw her go to Nance’s. Alone, like. They found tansy and lady’s mantle in the house.’
Nóra shook her head. ‘Sure, Nance was healing Áine with herbs afore Father Healy threw her out. The night she was burnt. They were just for the healing.’
Peg dropped her voice. ‘But that’s not all they’re saying. Nóra, how do you think Áine caught fire?’
‘Her dress caught light. From the hearth.’ Nóra brushed Peg’s hand away and resumed knitting. ‘How many women do you know with a smouldered apron? Begod, Peg, pity on her, but when a woman spends her hours by a fire, she’s bound to be burnt. Áine was unlucky to have it so bad, and God love her and heal her from it.’
Peg took a deep breath. ‘Nóra, I’m with you. I have no hard word against Nance. I believe she has the knowledge. But folk are saying ’twas no ordinary fire Áine was building that burnt her. They found the piss of a cow in the crock.’
‘In the crock?’
‘On the fire. The doctor found it and told the priest, and Father Healy asked John what Áine was doing, boiling potatoes in the water of a beast. John, bless his soul, told him then. ’Twas a cure told by Nance. All-flowers water.’
From across the yard Mary lifted her head and stared, open-mouthed.
‘Áine went to Nance to fix a child in her, so says John, and Nance gave her the herbs. The tansy. The lady’s mantle. She also told her to bathe in all-flowers water. ’Twas when Áine was fixing a bath of it that she caught alight. That’s what the high fire was for. ’Twas when she was following Nance’s charm.’
Nóra looked out past the yard across the valley. There was a softness on the hill, render
ing the distance into golden haze. She could hear the ringing of tools on the air. ‘’Twas an accident, sure. No one is to blame.’
‘I know that, but Father Healy is saying the sin is on Nance. Muttering piseógs and the like. And Nóra, those that have a reluctance to trace it back to Nance’s hand are finding reason elsewhere.’
Nóra noticed Peg’s eyes flicker to the basket, and felt her stomach drop. ‘They’re saying ’tis the changeling?’
‘They’re scared, Nóra. There’s a fear in them.’ Peg sucked her teeth in thought. ‘I don’t tell you this to put the fright on you. But I thought you should know what’s being said in case anyone comes to pay you a visit, like.’
‘I’m going to Nance today, Peg. She will return my grandchild to me. She will bring back Micheál and they will not be able to lay blame at my door.’
‘I pray ’tis so, Nóra. Sweet, sore-wounded Christ. But be careful of folk. I wouldn’t let them see you go to her. I don’t know what they’ll think, but I can tell you, it won’t be good.’ Peg shuddered. ‘Not now. Anyone who still has a desire to go to Nance will be waiting for all this to blow over.’