by Hannah Kent
‘Kate’s gone?’
Peg nodded. ‘Aye. I’d bet my good leg and my bad that the poor woman won’t be coming back.’
Nóra was thoughtful. ‘And Áine?’
‘She lives. I heard Brigid Lynch has been going in to care for her.’
‘Thanks be to the Virgin.’
There was silence.
‘Peg, I thought for a moment . . . When I came back, I thought I heard him in the bedroom.’
‘Nóra . . .’
‘I thought ’twas him. Peg, when I was up in Tralee, I kept dreaming of him. Dreaming I’d return and he’d be here, waiting. That perhaps there was some delay on him that morning in the river, that it would take time before he was restored to me.’ She began to cry again. ‘Peg, the fear was on me that I’d be hanged and he’d be here waiting for me!’
‘Oh, Nóra.’
‘Waiting for his grandmother, but she’d be lying in the pit at Ballymullen!’
‘There, now. You’re not to be hanged. You’re back where you belong.’
‘But he’s not here!’ Nóra shook her head. ‘Oh, I can’t stay in the valley.’
‘Nóra, there’s no place else for you to go.’
‘Look!’ She swept her arm around the empty cabin. ‘This is all the home I had, and ’tis gone to me. I am all alone. All alone, and no choice but to go in with Daniel and Brigid when I was the woman of my own house.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘Martin is dead. Micheál . . . He’s not here.’ She clutched at her heart. ‘I don’t know . . . I don’t know what has happened.’
Peg took up her hand and stroked it. ‘Ara, you’ve got me, have you not? And ’tis a blessing to have your nephews, God protect them. You’ll keep company with Brigid, and sure, ’tis no bad thing to be in a full house.’
‘Full house or no, I am alone,’ Nóra whispered.
‘Come now, woman. Count your blessings! You’re not alone – you have plenty kin in this world left to talk to and share the heat of a fire with. God knows it has been a terrible winter for you, and a terrible hardship it must have been sitting in gaol thinking you’d be gone to God. Nóra, there’s none that envy you for that. But you’ve come home to hens in the roost and cream in the pot that you might be taking with you. And would you look next to you, Nóra, for don’t you have old Peg too?’
Nóra squeezed Peg’s hand. ‘Do you think . . . Micheál, it might be that he’ll come home to me. One day . . .’
Peg pursed her lips.
‘He will. For that was no human child. Was it, Peg?’
‘No,’ murmured Peg eventually. She rubbed Nóra’s hand. ‘No, Nóra.’
‘And it may be that he’ll come back.’
Peg gave her a long look. ‘But if it happens that he stays away under hill, with the Good People and the lights and the dancing . . . Well, ’tis worth knowing that there is always worse misfortune to be had.’
There was a sound at the door and Nóra looked over to see Brigid staring in at them, a large basket in her hands.
‘God and Mary to you, Nóra Leahy.’ Brigid blinked at her, unsmiling. She was pallid from her time indoors, and Nóra thought she seemed frail.
‘Why, Brigid! ’Tis good to see you up and out,’ said Peg, a note of forced cheerfulness in her voice. ‘I’ve not seen you since your churching.’
‘A lot has happened since I saw you last.’ Brigid stepped over the threshold and stood by the dead fire, looking down at Nóra. Her face was blank. ‘Daniel said they very nearly hanged you.’
Nóra nodded, her mouth dry.
Brigid’s expression hardened. ‘Dan said Nance deserved to hang. For what she did to Áine. For the piseóg. For the bittersweet.’
Nóra stared at her, unable to speak. It was Peg who answered.
‘Brigid, come now. Let’s have none of that. I’ll tell you something. Nance was always a strange one amongst us, but ’tis no rhyme nor reason behind her murdering babies and catching women on fire, no matter the preaching Father Healy has against her. Áine’s skirts caught as women’s skirts sometimes do, and ’tis no use in blaming another for the fire’s liking of a low apron. And did Nance not do her best to be with you in your time of need?’
Brigid paled, still looking down at Nóra. ‘She did it, didn’t she?’
‘Did what?’
‘She drowned that boy.’
Peg glanced between them, her beady eyes alert.
‘’Twas fairy,’ Nóra croaked.
Brigid chewed her lip. ‘Did you see her? After the trial?’
‘No. I lost her in the crowd.’
‘Do you know if she was thinking of returning to the valley?’
‘’Tis where she lives. She’ll be wanting to get back to her cabin. ’Twas all I could think about on the road. Getting home.’
Brigid shook her head. ‘She’ll have no home here. Not now. Get what you need, Nóra. I can’t be waiting all night. ’Tis near dark.’
Peg held out a hand. ‘Brigid? What are you saying, child?’
‘’Tis her fault, after all. Come on, Nóra. You can’t be staying here.’
‘Brigid. What is happening?’
‘Dan said I wasn’t to tell. Nóra . . .’
‘What?’
Brigid bit her lip. She was breathing quickly, gripping her basket so hard that her knuckles were white.
Peg was reaching for her blackthorn stick. ‘Let’s go, Nóra. To Nance’s.’ She shuffled towards the door, looking sickened.
Nóra started rising to her feet.
‘There’s nothing to be done,’ Brigid burst out. ‘’Tis decided.’ She shot a finger out to Nóra in warning. ‘’Twas decided when you were away. And you are lucky that ’twas not decided against you!’
Nóra’s stomach swooped in fear. Slowly, her hands trembling, she took Brigid’s proffered basket and silently began to collect her belongings.
Nance stood by the woods, gazing at where her bothán had stood. Four days’ slow walking on the road from Tralee, the long shuffle home on feet stippled with pain, and the cabin was gone.
They had burnt her out. All was ash.
She sank down in the long grass at the edge of the clearing, in the shadows where she would not be seen from the lane, and, exhausted, she slept. She curled into the sweet-smelling summer ground and let her fatigue overwhelm her, until the evening breeze began to blow. She sat up to a sky washed in red cloud.
They must have been careful about it, she thought, sitting up against a tree and looking out over the scorched ground. Had they heaped the roof with dried fuel? Maybe they had quickened the flames with poitín. The fire had been high – the uppermost leaves of the nearby trees were black, and half the trunk of the oak was burnt. She stood and walked to the tree and ran her hands carefully over the sooted bark. Charcoal crumbled away, leaving her fingers dirtied. Without thinking why, she brought her palm to her face and blessed herself with the ashes.
Nothing was left. Nance stepped over the crumbling lengths of cindered beams that lay on the ruined ground, poking amongst them for any belongings that might have survived. She found what remained of her gathered wool, once carefully combed and carded, and now a hairy clot upon the ground. The smell of smoke was thick. There were no herbs left. Her stools, the turf, even the clay pots of fat had been burnt to nothing.
It was only when she found the small iron clasp of her goat’s lead that she felt the surge of grief, gutting her as swiftly as the swoop of a knife. She closed her eyes and folded her hands tightly about the flaking metal, and imagined Mora, the door shut against her, the fire rising about her. Crying, she began to dig in the ashes for bones, but the light was fading and she could not tell what might be the handle of her tin pail, and what might be the slender remains of her faithful goat.
The night fell starry. The moon rose thin-lipped. Nance sat dow
n in the dead embers of her home, and dug with her hands until she felt the residual warmth of the fire in the soil. She lay in it and blanketed herself with ashes.
Nance gasped awake the next morning at the sound of footsteps. Hauling herself up out of the weight of soot, she looked wildly around her. It was not yet dawn, but the sky had paled to the blue of a robin’s egg.
‘Nance?’
She spun around. A man stood at the edge of the fire’s dark stain, peering intently at her.
Peter O’Connor.
‘I thought you were dead,’ he said, covering his mouth. He stepped over and helped Nance to her feet. She noticed he was trembling.
‘Peter. God bless you.’
He was staring at her, sucking his bottom lip. ‘Praise God they freed you,’ he stammered.
Nance placed her hand on his forearm, and he gripped it, overcome.
‘I thought you were gone from me,’ he choked out. ‘There was so much talk of the trial. They were saying you’d be hanged or sent away. And you only trying to help.’ He raised her fingers to his face and pressed them against his stubbled cheek, chin quivering. ‘I was afraid for you.’
‘They could not touch me.’
‘I was afraid for you, Nance.’ He turned away, wiping his eyes. When he turned around again, he was calmer.
‘They have burnt me out,’ Nance said.
‘When the verdict was heard, ’twas decided.’
‘Seán Lynch.’
‘He came back and found his wife gone and his money with her, and he came here the night before last. He had an anger in him.’
‘Kate Lynch is gone?’
‘Swept. He was in a state, Nance. He thought you had a hand in it. I couldn’t stop them.’
‘I know.’
‘I tried.’ Peter placed a hand over his eyes. ‘He had a party of hard men behind him. I’m sorry for it.’
‘’Tis not your fault.’ She took him by the shoulder and he leant into her touch.
‘You never did a thing against me. Against anyone.’
They sat in the ashes then, until rain appeared on the hilltops in the distance, and the lowing of animals filled the air.
‘You can’t stay here,’ he said.
‘No.’
‘Come with me.’
He took her to his cabin, tucked on the raw face of the mountainside, helping her up the steep slope. As they approached he began to explain what had happened.
‘They did it at night. All of the men except John O’Donoghue. He wouldn’t have a part in it.’
‘Daniel Lynch?’
Peter frowned. ‘All but John and myself. But when I saw the pack of them going off after sundown, I followed.’ He looked at Nance, disgusted, then motioned her inside the cabin.
Nance stood for a while in the darkness, then gasped.
Her goat stood in the corner of the room, tethered to a battered dresser, piles of droppings at her feet. The exhaustion and relief Nance had been suppressing since the trial suddenly overwhelmed her, and she staggered towards Mora, falling over and throwing her arms around the animal and her familiar warmth, her smell of hay and milk. She rubbed her face in Mora’s coat, her eyes suddenly wet.
‘My dear one. Oh, my dear one.’
‘They were going to slit her throat.’
Nance stroked Mora while Peter stood aside, watching.
‘I thought she was dead,’ Nance murmured, finally releasing the goat and gingerly drying her eyes with her dirtied shawl. ‘You took her.’
‘I would not let them kill her like that. Now, Nance. Would you not lie down and close your eyes for a small minute? You must be dead tired from the road. ’Tis a long way you’ve come.’
Nance slept in the quiet cool of Peter’s cabin that day. From time to time she woke and saw him sitting in the doorway, squinting out across the rain-soaked valley, or walking softly about indoors, setting the room to rights. At dusk he woke her and handed her a piggin of warm goat’s milk, a cold potato. He watched her as she ate. ‘You’re looking mighty thin on it, Nance.’
‘’Twas little feasting to be had in Ballymullen.’
‘I was meaning to tell you. You’re welcome here, Nance. With me. ’Tis not much, what I have, but there’s no kin of mine left in the valley and . . .’ He flushed. ‘What I’m trying to say is that I could marry you. There’s nothing they could do then. Against you.’
‘I’m an old woman, Peter.’
‘You’ve always been kind to me, Nance.’
She smiled. ‘An old woman without a man is the next thing to a ghost. No one needs her, folk are afraid of her, but mostly she isn’t seen.’
‘Will you think it over? I’m an able man.’
‘I will, Peter. Thank you, I will.’
They said little else that evening. Peter sat by the hearth while Nance rested on the heather, and occasionally they looked at one another and smiled. When night had finally wrapped itself around the cabin, Peter said the rosary, and they washed their feet and lay down to rest by the smoored fire.
Nance rose before dawn. Peter was still asleep, snoring softly where he lay by the raked hearth, sprawled, arms above his head. He looked older in sleep, Nance thought.
Quietly, so as not to wake him, she unraked the embers on the hearthstone and selected a fat lump of charcoal. She let it cool as she milked Mora, and when she had the pail filled, she placed the drink and the dead ember on the dresser and blessed them both.
Then she untied the goat and silently left Peter’s cabin.
Her bones ached. Nance set out towards the lane, the goat’s rope loose in her hand, limping from the soreness in her hip.
When did I become so old? she wondered.
The air was sweet and damp. A morning mist rolled down off the mountains and their purple skins. Hares moved lightly through the heather, white tails scuttling through the dark tangle of brambles before the rowan trees, blossom-white, the clover. The lane was empty before her, and there was no movement in the waiting valley, no wind. Only the birds above her and, in the slow unpeeling of darkness, a divinity of sky.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This novel is a work of fiction, although it takes as its inspiration a true event of infanticide. In 1826, an ‘old woman of very advanced age’ known as Anne/Nance Roche was indicted for the wilful murder of Michael Kelliher/Leahy (newspaper accounts list different names) at the summer Tralee Assizes in Co. Kerry. Michael had been drowned in the river Flesk on Monday, 12 June 1826, and had reportedly been unable to stand, walk or speak.
At her trial, Nance Roche claimed that she had been attempting to cure the boy, not kill him. The boy had been brought to the river in an attempt to ‘put the fairy’ out of him. Nance was acquitted on these grounds.
There have been several recorded cases of death and injury suffered as a consequence of people attempting to banish changelings and recover those believed to be lost to them. The most famous of these cases is that of twenty-five-year-old Bridget Cleary, who was tortured, then burnt to death by her husband and relatives in 1895, in Co. Tipperary. Angela Bourke’s The Burning of Bridget Cleary (1999) is an outstanding account of this case, and I recommend it to anyone curious to discover more about how and why such tragedies have occurred in Ireland and abroad. The Good People: New Fairylore Essays, edited by Peter Narváez (1991), also provides modern-day considerations of the medical afflictions possibly suffered by those considered to be changelings.
Irish fairy lore was (and remains) a deeply complex, ambiguous system of folk belief – there is little that is twee or childish about it. As Bourke mentions in her preface to Burning, ‘A large part of this book is concerned with considering fairy belief as the products of rational minds, operating in circumstances that are outside the experience of most people in modern, literate societies.’ In writing this work of fiction I h
ave sought to portray fairy and folk belief as part of the fabric of everyday rural nineteenth-century Irish life, rather than as anomalous.
In creating the fictional character of Nance, I drew heavily on the stories and accounts mentioned in Gearóid Ó Crualaoich’s The Book of the Cailleach: Stories of the Wise-Woman Healer (2003), and the fairy stories of Lady Augusta Gregory, Thomas Crofton Croker, and Eddie Lenihan and Carolyn Eve Green’s Meeting the Other Crowd: The Fairy Stories of Hidden Ireland (2004). Nance’s use of and reference to herbal medicine was informed by Patrick Logan’s Making the Cure: A Look at Irish Folk Medicine (1972), Niall Mac Coitir’s books Irish Trees: Myths, Legends and Folklore (2003) and Irish Wild Plants: Myths, Legends and Folklore (2006), as well as the work of John Windele, James Mooney and W.R. Wilde on superstitions and popular practices relating to medicine and midwifery, much of which was published in the mid-nineteenth century.
My depictions of Irish rural life in the pre-famine days of the nineteenth century were informed by many sources, including but not limited to the work of Kevin Danaher (Caoimhin Ó Danachair), E. Estyn Evans’ Irish Folk Ways (1957) and the scholarship and publications of Claudia Kinmoth, Jonathan Bell and Mervyn Watson, Patricia O’Hare, Anne O’Connor and – the ‘bible’ (as I so often heard it called) – Seán Ó Súilleabháin’s extraordinary A Handbook of Irish Folklore (1942).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
While researching this book I was blessed to have the opportunity to meet and speak with many erudite historians, curators and academics who generously gave up their time to answer my sometimes strange (and often ignorant) questions about Irish folklife. Thank you to the National Folklore Collection at University College Dublin for its vast specialist library on folklore and ethnology, and to Bairbre Ní Fhloinn for her assistance, suggestions and time. Thank you to Clodagh Doyle, curator at the Folklife Division of the National Museum of Ireland, for the tour and for offering me access to the division’s research library. Immense gratitude to Stiofán Ó Cadhla from the Department of Folklore and Ethnology at University College Cork for his correspondence and for providing me with much invaluable research material. Thank you to Sarah O’Farrell and Helen O’Carroll from Kerry County Museum in Tralee for their assistance and kindness, and for allowing me to borrow the ‘treasure chest’ of information from the Poor Inquiry. Thank you to Patricia O’Hare from Muckross House Library for generously giving me a private tour of the grounds and permitting me access to the library records.