by Hannah Kent
‘We’ll be inside soon enough.’ She waved Mary on, clearly frustrated at her slow pace. ‘Quickly!’
Inside the cabin, Nóra grabbed the pail and went to milk the cow, leaving Mary to tend to the fire. The girl’s stomach groaned as she fed twigs to the crackling flames. Three days of fasting, she thought. She already felt lightheaded.
Micheál lay on the settle bed, eyes slipping back and forth. Once the fire was high, Mary picked up the shawl she had draped over his body and held it to the hearth to warm the wool. Before she placed it over him, she peeked at his skin and saw that the boy’s flesh was blue with cold. Without thinking, she picked up one of his hands and placed his icy fingers in her mouth to warm them.
He tasted of the river.
After the cow had been milked and the fire stoked to a rustling pile of embers, Nóra suggested to Mary that they return to their beds for a few hours’ sleep. Mary, stomach rumbling and her eyes aching from the early morning, agreed. She folded her blanket over and tucked Micheál in with her shawl, where, finally warm, he surrendered to sleep. Mary lay down next to him and studied his face. She had never seen his features in such detail. It was usually dark when she lay beside him, and in Micheál’s waking hours she was too busy dribbling water into his mouth, or feeding him, or scrubbing the caked mess from his skinny buttocks, or soothing his rash with tallow to stop and look at him carefully. But now, as the early-morning sunlight cut through the cracks in the door, she saw how his nose was lightly freckled, the crust in his nostrils flaking. His mouth had slipped open, and she could see that a lower tooth in the centre of his mouth was at a strange angle. Reaching gently, so as not to wake him, she placed her fingertip on its tiny, ridged edge. The tooth wobbled, and then, as she added more pressure, came away from his gum and fell onto the mattress.
Micheál stirred, eyelids creasing, but did not wake.
Mary picked up the tooth and held it up to the light. A pearl, she thought. A little pearl. She ran her finger over the rough hollow, briefly filled with wonderment that a fairy child could have something so ordinary, so like a human tooth.
Rising, Mary went to the door, pushed open the top half and – as she had done so many times with her own brothers and sisters – threw the first-fallen tooth over her right shoulder into the dirt of the yard.
That will help keep you safe, she thought, and she returned to the settle bed and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
‘Mary, wake up. Wake up now.’
A rough hand was shaking her shoulder. Mary blearily opened her eyes and saw Nóra’s face – pale, alarmed – above her.
‘Mary!’
Suddenly afraid, she sat upright and looked for the boy. He lay sleeping beside her, his arms thrown above his head. She breathed out in relief. ‘What time is it?’
‘We’ve slept the day through. ’Tis well past noon.’ Nóra was wearing her husband’s greatcoat, its broad shoulders making her body seem small, fragile. Wisps of grey hair fell over her face. ‘Mary, they’ve found a piseóg.’
‘A piseóg?’ She felt her stomach turn.
‘I was outside passing my water, and I saw Peg coming over the way. She told me. She’s after telling everyone on the mountain. There’s a crowd going there to see it. ’Tis a nest of something. A charm. Something bad.’
Fear flapped in Mary’s chest. ‘Something bad?’
Nóra nodded, picking up the shawl from where it lay over the boy and throwing it at her. ‘Up with you. I want you to go and see it and tell me what it is.’
Mary rubbed her eyes and began to wind the shawl about her head. ‘Who set it?’
‘They don’t know. ’Tis what everyone wants to find out.’
‘Where?’
‘At the Lynches’,’ Nóra whispered. ‘Kate and Seán Lynch.’ She helped the girl to her feet. ‘Go and find out what it is.’
Mary found her way to the Lynches’ farm by following the crowd of people walking the fields. There was a sense of nervous excitement amongst them, of anxious gossip.
‘He was at the scoreground when he saw it. Says he doesn’t think ’tis the first set upon his land.’
‘Musha, I heard him talking of others at the smith’s.’
‘Stones turned up on their edges, branches and plants tied to his gate.’
‘Ah, but this is a right old dark piseóg. ’Tis a nest of straw and a bloody mess inside it. Rotting. None of your stones and plants. This is some new darkness. Meant to be found, too, by the looks of it.’
‘Seán’s saying ’twas left by Nance Roche.’
‘The priest has been sent for. ’Tis that bad, that troubling.’
‘Oh, I don’t like any of it.’
They neared the smallholding, and Mary squeezed through the crowd to get a closer look at the piseóg. It lay on the ground behind the Lynches’ whitewashed cabin, partly obscured by a dung pile. It was a small thing, a nest, but clearly made by a human hand. There was none of the twigging wrought by beak, but careful, deliberate weaving. In the nest’s hollow was a dark mass of bloody matter in a state of decay. The smell of it seethed in Mary’s nostrils.
The crowd stood around in horror, crossing themselves and whispering out of the corner of their mouths.
‘There’s no saying that’s an accident.’
‘Sure, there’s malice in this. Terrible malice.’
‘What do you think ’tis there? The rot in it?’
‘Would it be a bit of meat, do you think?’
A male voice suddenly rang out amongst the murmuring. ‘The priest is here! Father Healy is here!’ There was a rush of movement as the people parted to let the priest through.
He has come in a hurry, thought Mary. His clothes were spattered with mud.
‘Here ’tis, Father.’ Crabbed hands pointed at the ground where the piseóg lay.
The priest stared at it for a moment, fingers pinching his nose. ‘Who did this?’
There was silence.
‘Who here has lost the run of his senses?’ Father Healy glared at the crowd, his blue eyes sliding over excited, fearful faces.
‘Father, there’s none of us knows who set it.’
‘Sure, we’ve just come to see it.’
‘What will you do, Father?’
The priest’s eyes watered at the stench. ‘Bring me a spade.’
One of the labourers sent his son to fetch a tool, and as he waited the priest took out a small clear bottle of holy water, carefully drawing its cork. With an air of great ceremony, he poured a little on the piseóg.
‘A drop more, would you, Father?’ piped a voice. There were chuckles from the crowd.
Father Healy clenched his jaw but did as asked, and splashed the nest and the ground around it liberally. When the spade was brought, Father Healy snatched it from the boy and, with an expression of impatience, slid it under the piseóg, lifting it into the air. The crowd took several steps back as it teetered on the metal edge.
‘Where is your nearest ditch, man?’ he asked. Seán, face dark with outrage, pointed to a corner of his field. The priest immediately set off towards it, the crowd of people following behind. Mary walked with them, the blood hissing through her veins.
The ditch was wet-bottomed, filled with nettles. Father Healy carefully lowered the piseóg down on the drier part of the ditch wall, then wiped the spade on the grass.
‘What now, Father?’
‘Will you bless the spade, Father?’
‘Should ye have not used a stick instead? Will the piseóg not poison the work of the spade?’
Father Healy rubbed his eyes, then took out his holy water and flicked a palmful on the blade, murmuring a prayer under his breath.
‘Burn it, Father.’
‘The spade?’ The priest looked momentarily confused.
‘The piseóg. Will ye not burn
the piseóg?’ A man stepped forward, cheerfully offering his smoking pipe.
Father Healy, suddenly understanding, shook his head. ‘The ground is too wet. Seán, will you fetch some dry fuel? Hay, furze. Whatever will burn. And a light.’
For some time there was a buzz of excited activity as the crowd followed Seán back to his cabin, helping themselves to his stores of kindling, furze and animal feed. Seán himself said nothing, although he seemed to smoulder with anger. Mary kept her distance from him, although at one point he caught her eye and held it, giving her a look of such disgust and hostility that she quickly averted her gaze and turned her attention to gathering sticks. Kate, she noticed, stood apart from the crowd, her shawl wrapped closely about her face. She seemed dazed, one eye purpled. At the sight of Mary she flinched, then took three careful steps backwards, spitting on the ground and crossing herself.
They burnt the piseóg in the cold, blue arm of twilight, under a pile of wood, turf, dried furze and straw. The fire blazed in the buckled air, the flames carrying a heart of violet. A sign of the perishing wickedness of the thing, Mary thought. It gave her a strange feeling, watching the bloody nest burn, while the priest climbed back on his donkey and the people remained, standing sentry around the fire. Her mind crawled with uneasy thoughts. Who had plaited that nest of straw? What kind of devilment was abroad?
The smell of rot stayed with her long after the fire had died and the people walked back to their cabins, numb with the evening’s chill. For all the priest’s holy water she could still smell the moulding bloodiness of the piseóg on her hair long after she returned to Nóra’s cabin.
Men gathered outside Nance Roche’s hut that night, full of liquor, brandishing ashplants.
Nance heard them arrive. Their footsteps were loud as they crashed through the undergrowth, slashing at the bracken. Peering out of a gap in her wicker door, she saw Seán Lynch swaying at the head of the pack, stopping to unbutton his trousers. A few men cheered as he started to piss, aiming the dull splatter towards her hut.
There was the sound of something smashing. One of the men had thrown a poitín jug at the trunk of the oak tree.
‘You’re a black bitch!’ Seán suddenly spat, a thick line of spittle flinging out of his mouth. The men grew silent at the fury in his voice. Through the chink in the door Nance could see five of them standing not ten yards away, their faces shining with sweat and drink.
Seán Lynch lurched to one side, waving his stick unsteadily in the air. ‘You’re a black bitch, Nance Roche, and may the Devil take you with him!’
There was silence. Nance held her breath. Her heart thudded like a man buried alive.
The men stood there for a long while, each of them staring at her hut. She knew it was dark, knew they could not make out the glisten of her eye in the gap of the woven door, but it seemed that each man looked directly at her. Five faces full of vim and cursing. Five walls of anger.
After what seemed like an hour’s siege, the men finally turned and walked unsteadily back to the lane, talking amongst themselves.
When they had disappeared into the darkness and Nance could no longer hear anything but the sound of the wind moving through the woods and the light rush of the river, she sank back down against the wall, breathing hard, terrified. Her body trembled uncontrollably.
Men had broken into her cabin two days after she’d arrived home to find Maggie and the fairy woman gone. She found the room overturned, the delph smashed on the floor, the ashes of the fire kicked over as though someone had searched for something buried in the powder of the dead hearth.
It was dark when the men returned, boots knocking against the doorframe, fists on the whitewash.
‘Where is she?’
Nance, scrambling to her feet, trying to open the back door to escape, finding it jammed against the clay.
‘None of that, cailín. Where is she?’
‘Who?’
‘Where’s the mad one? Your woman who sets the curses?’
‘The cures?’
One of the men had spat, had glared at her for that. ‘Mad Maggie of Mangerton.’
‘She has no hand in piseógs.’
He had laughed. ‘No hand in it, does she?’
Nance thought of what Maggie had taught her in the days before. Ways to gather the luck due to others and harvest it for yourself. Ways to strike a man barren. The things you might do with a dead man’s hand should there be need for it.
‘She’s not here.’
‘Not hiding out in yonder ditch?’
Nance shook her head. ‘She’s gone.’ Tears then at the fear of the men standing in her dead father’s cabin, the disappearance of the only kin she had left in the world.
The men had pointed their fingers in her face. ‘If your mad whore of an aunt comes back, you tell her she’ll get what’s coming to her. Tell I know ’twas her that blasted my cows. Tell her I’ll slit her throat same way I had to slit theirs.’
Now, slumped in her tiny bothán, Nance’s hands were shaking just as they had shaken all night after the men had finally left her alone.
Virgin Mother save me, Nance thought. I am an ash tree in the face of a storm. Despite the woods, I alone court the lightning.
When Nóra woke the second morning, her stomach prickling in anticipation, Mary was already dressed and waiting by the lit fire with the changeling on her lap, hands firmly crossed over his stomach. The boy’s head twitched on her shoulder. He was pining like a dog.
‘Look at you, up and ready. You could have woken me. We could be halfway there.’
Mary gave Nóra an imploring look.
‘What’s the matter with you, then?’
‘I don’t want to go.’
‘And why is that?’ Nóra asked irritably. Her guts swooped in a thrill of excitement. She wanted to be by the river already. She wanted her turn at sinking the fairy child in the water. Wanted to feel its reluctance to leave.
‘I’m scared,’ said Mary.
‘Scared of what? What fear is there in bathing in the river? You took your turn with it yesterday morning. You can watch this time.’
‘’Tis too cold for him. You saw how he was shivering and shaking, and how he turned blue with it. I’m afraid for him. And this morning he was yawping for his milk, missus. He’s hungry!’
‘So am I. So are you.’
‘But with nothing in his belly I’m scared he won’t stand the cold and he’ll catch his death.’
‘Mary, that’s no child sitting on you there. And there’s no saving Micheál unless we do as Nance says and put it in the water.’
The girl seemed on the brink of tears. ‘I have an ill feeling about it,’ she stammered.
Nóra took a sip of water from the dipper and splashed a little on her face. ‘Enough, Mary.’
‘I do. I have an ill feeling. I think of what the priest would say if he knew.’
‘The priest had his chance to help me.’
‘But missus, do you not think there’s sin in it? I told you about the piseóg yesterday. This feels like we’re having a hand in that same bad business. Getting up before dawn and baring ourselves in wild places. I don’t want to be sinning. I don’t want to be hurting the child.’
‘You’re only afraid because you saw the piseóg yesterday and it has turned your head.’
‘They’re saying ’twas Nance that set it!’
‘That’s a lie.’
‘They’re saying she wishes ill on the valley because Father Healy preached against her at Mass.’
‘Gossip and hen talk!’
‘But perhaps we can’t be trusting her, missus. Perhaps she –’
‘Mary!’ Nóra rubbed her face with her apron and tied it around her waist. ‘Would you have my daughter’s son returned to me?’
The girl was silent. She pulled the boy closer t
o her.
‘There is no sin in this,’ Nóra said. ‘There is no sin in returning to the Good People what was always theirs.’
Mary stared at the clay beneath Nóra’s feet. ‘Can I bring the blanket to warm him afterwards?’
‘’Tis yours to carry if you do.’
They walked to Nance’s cabin under a clear black sky, the faint suggestion of pink to the east. Nóra noticed that Mary swayed on her feet as she carried the wrapped changeling. She must be hungry, she thought. The previous day’s fasting had left Nóra feeling euphoric. Walking in the darkness, she felt as though her senses were sharper than usual. The cold air slipped into her lungs and left her nostrils ringing with the usual scents of earth, mud and smoke, but also the nearing damp of the river and the musty undergrowth of the forest. She felt thrillingly awake.
Nance was sitting up by her fire when they arrived. She started in surprise when they opened the door, and Nóra was dispirited to see that the old woman seemed distracted. Large bags hung under her eyes and her white hair, usually carefully knotted at the neck, was loose and tangled over her shoulders.
‘Nance?’
‘Is it time?’ she asked, and when neither answered, she slowly rose to her feet. ‘Let’s to the boundaries, then.’
The silence, once they entered the woods, was oppressive. Nóra could hear nothing but the soft padding and rustle of their footsteps and the strain of Mary’s breath as she wearied under the changeling’s weight. The shadows under the trees seemed horribly still.
A sudden, shrill screeching carried along the valley, and all three women jumped at the sound.
A duck, thought Nóra. Just a fox killing a duck. But it left a prickling at the back of her neck.
‘Did you hear the dreadful business at the Lynches’? The piseóg?’ she whispered, trying to make her voice as steady as possible.
In the darkness Nance was silent.
‘A piseóg,’ Nóra repeated. ‘The priest was sent for. He sprinkled the holy water upon it, and ’twas burnt, after. So said Mary.’
Mary’s voice rang out in front of her. ‘’Twas a nest and some blood.’