Her Kind

by Niamh Boyce

Ledrede smiled. Small wonder he spared the world his smiles. I did not answer him; I was finished with his kind of talk. He could cut out my tongue if he wanted to – he was welcome to it. He did something strange then, something he hadn’t done before: he looked in my eyes.

  ‘It’s tonight,’ he whispered. ‘The pyre is ready.’

  A pyre. Fire. He meant to burn me, to burn me. The bishop put his hands over his ears.

  ‘Make her stop, make her stop!’ he screamed to the gaoler.

  I couldn’t stop. The grief cry folded me, put me on all fours, tore my throat.

  I was alone, the bishop was gone. I tried to pray. The shadows of the sinking day played over my hands – this was all I had left, this body, so wretched, so paltry. I held my hands in front of my face, hands that had wound thread, stitched hems, woven wool, reached out for love. Hands worn with lines, lines read by my mother, lines that told of work and love and a daughter, but not of this. These hands had plucked birds, sliced flesh, wiped tears, ground herbs, carried my child, laid her beside me to rest; folded under my head as I dreamt, all kinds of dreams, but never of this. I looked at them till they seemed to be no longer mine. Could they have done things I did not remember? Held the mane of a horse and ridden out into the night?

  I stretched out my arms, held them steady. He thought I could fly, that I could utter incantations and change shape. I changed my shape the only way I could: I crouched small in the corner of the cell. ‘I am not here, I am gone, I am not here, I am gone … this is a dream I shall wake from’ – and I saw myself walk from this place, my bare feet in the snow, hardly feeling the cold. Making footprints all the way to Alice’s door, and it opened for me, and, though a crowd of men stood around the fire, they did not notice me or stop their talk. I passed through, a figment of my own making, walked up the stairs and to the door, and pushed it, and entered. Líadan was there, but she was not a girl – she was old, and was standing at the open shutters looking towards the river, and when I reached out to wipe the tears from her face, she did not seem to feel my hand or know I was there.

  58. Basilia

  Ulf entered with a rush light and fixed it to the wall. He then reappeared with a trencher of food – hard cheese, pickled onions and black bread. Alice picked at it.

  ‘Servant’s food,’ she muttered. ‘What of my husband?’

  ‘Upstairs, making a fine recovery – the Welsh maid showed her face.’

  ‘In my house! So she’ll be lilting in my kitchen, while we’re trapped here like mice!’

  ‘Oh, if she does any singing you won’t hear it, for she went straight up to his chamber.’

  Alice picked up the trencher in both hands and tipped the food into the flames. I reached in and caught a piece of bread.

  Alice was getting more and more bad-tempered. She ordered me to shut the trapdoor, but I ignored her. I waited, watching the black hole in the ground. It looked like a grave. What delayed Mother? Maybe the next time Ulf came through the door, I’d rush past him, escape and find out what was happening at the gaol. My mistress just sat there; she didn’t pace any more.

  From above came cries and the sudden clash of blades.

  ‘Plunderers!’ Alice cried. She grabbed my arm and dragged me over to the trapdoor. ‘Go! Go!’ My foot found the top step.

  The cellar door opened; light tumbled in. I squinted and Ulf ran towards us.

  ‘Down!’ Alice said. ‘Go down, Basilia.’

  I climbed down as fast as I could. Alice came after, her heels stamping on my fingers in her rush. I saw Ulf’s face, his eyes, just before he dropped the trapdoor. I heard him above, thumping on the boards. I prayed he didn’t crash in on top of us. Were he not there, to pull the rush mats across the door …

  Alice rustled and swore soft oaths above me. I dropped suddenly, misjudging the steps. I felt the stone wall against my back. Alice’s gown swept my face as she fell, too. She breathed heavily from the ground; perhaps she was injured. I turned, ran my hands along the wall, felt the grooves of the door. I could retrace our way through the underground tunnels, find the passage into the gaol, a way to my mother. Someone pounded directly above us; I feared the boards would shatter. Whoever it was might feel the difference between what was solid and what was hollow beneath his feet and come looking. I hardly dared to breathe.

  The cries, and blades clashing, and thumping grew fainter, but every now and again something crashed to the floor above. I thought of the brazier, of the flames. Alice did not rise from the ground. I slipped my hand into my pouch; checked my poppet was in one piece. It was. The noise above ceased. I suddenly began to tremble and could not stop. Bells began to ring and ring. All four cathedral bells, chiming against each other. Alice put her hand on my arm, this time not to give comfort but to find it.

  59. Marketplace, Irishtown

  Bells tolled to gather the people. It had occurred to the bishop that the dame might attempt to save the creature, might send armed men. If so, they would find the gates locked, guards patrolling the Breagach, and archers aiming from the walls. People gathered around the pyre, tentative, with questions in their eyes.

  Ledrede drove her forward with his whip, waiting, when she fell, for her to rise and start again. The bishop wished it were Alice Kytler before him. How well she would have burned, her furs and gowns sizzling to ash, leaving old bones, and gold. But with the dame there would be consequences: her magnates and relatives would take revenge. With an outsider, a servant, there would be no revenge.

  The creature stumbled, her gown shredded, her hair loose and uncovered. Dignitaries and clergy craned their necks to catch sight of the stake, the pyre piled high with sticks. The gaoler stepped forward and offered her a cup, and she drank. The bishop approached her.

  ‘Take this chance to properly repent, confess,’ he said.

  She looked up at him and shook her head.

  ‘See how utterly she refuses?’ he proclaimed to the vast crowd.

  The threads of the bishop’s robe shimmered in the dusk. He stood beside the creature and began the Lord’s Prayer, his arms open wide. The crowd recited along. In the silence after Amen, the bishop turned to her, ripped her sleeve and lifted her arm. They saw that it was discoloured and crossed with deep blue scratches.

  ‘Her demon lover slashed secret symbols into her skin.’

  Some blessed themselves, others swore oaths, and someone shouted, ‘Shame!’ The crowd had waited for her to speak, to cry out, to defend her name, denounce the devil, proclaim her innocence, her guilt, anything. But she did not give them that.

  60. Petronelle

  It is already dark. The marketplace is crammed, yet my daughter is not there. She can’t be, for I saw her in a dream, sitting in a boat that rocked like a cradle in vast blue waters.

  Bundles of faggots, logs and branches are stacked around a stake. A high platform, a wooden ladder, wait. My hands are tied, so I stumble, appearing foolish, changed. Not myself, not the woman known to them. Anthony steps forward, offers water I cannot stomach. ‘Drink, it will help.’ So I drink.

  Someone grips my shoulder, guides me step by step up the ladder; catches me when I slip backwards. I do not see his face. The post digs into my back as ropes are pulled across my hips and chest. Whose hands bind them? Do I know him?

  ‘For God’s sake,’ I whisper, ‘throttle me.’ He doesn’t speak.

  The pyre is lit and it smells like autumn. The dry wood crackles. A child runs forward, crying, ‘Stop! Stop!’ He’s pulled back, held fast, legs kicking.

  They’ll see now what I’m made of underneath my clothes, underneath my skin, when my blistering flesh blackens and falls, when my fat melts to grease. They’ll know me to the bone, those that stay till the end. This is their carnival, their miracle play. I am the sacrifice: my hair, my eyes, my tongue, my flesh will turn to ash, will drift on the breeze, will be the air they breathe.

  The sky is black and full of stars. The cathedral bells ring on. The fire rises, attacks my ankles, my legs
, my thighs, my stomach, flames that bite worse than any wolf. I wonder where souls go, and how they go. Are they winged, do they fly? They must do, to leave earth, to reach Heaven, to soar into the arms of the Mother. I imagine mine, flying from my mouth. I am not afraid to die.

  Through the smoke I see my gaoler. Anthony looks at me, and then upwards – I follow his gaze towards the stars, see seeds of silver in the dark. I see fish scales in a blackened pan, the silver skin of Líthgen’s wrist as she turns salmon, grass being whipped into a path by running girls, rivulets crossing my stomach as it grows round, my child’s eyes opening – and I tumble down, down towards a bed of leaves on a forest floor, tumble down and kiss the silver scar on my lover’s lip.

  61. Basilia

  The bells rang, and rang. Finally they ceased, leaving the whole house in silence. Whatever was happening above was over. Whatever they found and took for their own, it wasn’t us. I stood and felt for the door to the underground passage that led to the gaol. I found the latch, and tugged. It did not budge. Maybe I remembered wrong. I pushed, shoved my full weight against it, nothing. I ran my hands along the surface, felt a ridge. A keyhole. I was crying, as I ran my finger over the cold metal slot. All this time I’d been waiting for my mother, the door was sealed against her. I thumped and thumped the wood.

  ‘Stop it, stop it,’ whispered Alice. ‘You’re making a racket. The damn thing is locked. She was never coming.’

  A noise loosened my throat. Alice slapped my face, clamped her hand over my mouth. She was shouting but I couldn’t hear her words: they didn’t reach me, I didn’t want them to. She said it again and again, until they did.

  ‘She’s dead. Your mother is dead. The bishop did it. It’s over. The bells were for her.’

  Everything left me then, all sense, all hearing. I was kneeling. Alice crouched beside me. My mother had died, she told me; she didn’t survive. Survive what? She was in the cells like us. She was to follow.

  ‘Stop wailing. You must measure and balance, and do what you can, not dwell on that which cannot be altered. I couldn’t take her with me, but I could take you. I did that, at least, for her.’

  She could’ve taken her, she could.

  Alice hugged me tight. ‘We are blood,’ she reminded me. ‘We are blood.’

  I pushed her off me. I didn’t want her. I wanted my mother. Alice moved away and climbed the ladder, pushed on the hatch door and stumbled out into the Pledge Room.

  It was Alice the bishop had wanted, not me or my mother. Why hadn’t she offered herself up? I heard her cross the room above, heard the cold clank of keys as she walked. It was never going to be her the bishop killed – the moneylender with powerful friends. Measure and balance, and do what you can. She had hidden down here while my mother was killed. Those that come here, do not return.

  I took the poppet from my pouch. They said we were witches. They said we could brew up love or hatred, start things and end things. I tore the stitching along the side of the doll’s gown, unpeeled the velvet. How perfectly I had finished the small figure. On the stomach were the marks of the blade that had smoothed the bone into shape. It was hard to break, but eventually it snapped.

  I climbed up the ladder. Alice sat on the ground beside the wall of furs. She was rubbing her hip as if injured. I took unsteady steps towards her. I put out my hand and she clasped it. I pulled her up easily enough. Without a word, she disappeared through the pelts. I followed her down. Though it was dim, she unlocked the padlock with ease. As she pushed in the heavy door, I heard a noise behind us. I looked over my shoulder and saw Ulf, just his face, for an instant. He had parted the pelts, looked down and then let the furs fall closed again. He could not be seen, but was still there, watching. Alice hadn’t noticed. She was bending in and out of the small room, lifting out one bag of coins after another and laying them on the steps about my feet. ‘I’ll take good care of you,’ she was saying. ‘With this, we can do anything you want.’

  I rammed into her without a single thought, watched as she fell back on to the bags, her leg at a strange angle. I tried to close the door, seal her in with her beloved coins, but she rose to her feet. We pushed from either side of the door, our faces only a hand’s width apart. I wrenched the door open and, catching her off guard, shoved her to the ground again. She lay there looking up at me. It was just as I had seen before. The dark clay walls, Alice’s terror as she reached out, trying to save herself.

  ‘Basilia,’ she begged.

  ‘There’s no such person,’ I answered. ‘There never was.’

  Líadan

  It didn’t take me long to find Jack. He was near the river, covered in frost-white leaves. He was feather-light when I lifted him. He looked up, and it was as if we had known each other for a very long time, as if he had no doubt that I knew what I was doing.

  Ulf guided us through the mountains, and eastwards. He was well rewarded when he took his leave of us.

  A week later and I am looking at the sea. It lunges towards us in huge waves with gleaming undersides, as if the sky has swooped down and transformed into water.

  I remember Bébinn – as she was before. When I was child enough to love her just for being my mother. I see her hair, drawn into a braided nest. The line at her nape is shaped like a bird, wings outstretched. Her fingers uncurl to reveal an amber bead. My smile makes her smile.

  There is cinnamon dust on her wrists.

  Author’s Note

  Her Kind is a work of imagination. It is inspired by real events that took place in Kilkenny in 1324.

  With regard to the epigraph extracts: some are direct quotations; some are paraphrased; and one is imagined – reflecting the nature of the book itself, a mixture of fact and fiction. Most ‘official’ sources for a historical case such as this one were written by elite males like Richard Ledrede. These accounts are frequently considered to be reliable vehicles for the truth. The bishop’s narrative, for example, is often quoted as unbiased fact. Her Kind is a retelling, one in which a healthy disrespect for ‘official sources’ is vital. It’s not their turn to tell the story.

  All anyone knows of Petronelle de Midia is her name and the date of her death: 3 November 1324. I’ve written this novel to explore what may have happened, to give her a voice. It’s written in memory of her, and women like her.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks are due to the following people. Some generously gave me writing space, some sourced books or gave guided tours, some gave advice and support, or commissioned writing and teaching work: John and Jacinta Scannell, Kate O’Rourke, Noel Fitzpatrick, Catriona Kyles, Sean Hickey, Jennifer Liston, Sarah Barry, Antonia Case, Mary Pat Moloney, Orla Murphy, Catherine Dunne, the Irish Writers’ Centre, Words Ireland, Lorraine Murphy Dooley and Sinéad Gleeson.

  Thanks to Kilkenny Library’s Local Studies Department for access to documents. I also wish to acknowledge the work of L. S. Davidson and J. O Ward, editors of The Sorcery Trial of Alice Kytler: A Contemporary Account (Pegasus Press, 2004), which was a vital resource.

  Thanks to The Banshees, my brilliant writing group – especially Jennifer Wallace and Caroline Sutherland who read an early draft of this book. Also amazing are Irene Kane, Celine Mescall, Marie Hughes, Caroline Waugh, Helena Duggan, Sylvia Martin, and Tom Hunt whom we miss very much.

  I am very grateful to Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill for allowing us to reproduce her stunning poem, ‘We Are Damned, My Sisters’ (from Rogha Dánta, Raven Arts Press, 1988) as an epigraph. Thanks also to Dermot Bolger for his help in this.

  To my wonderful agent, Nicola Barr, for her patience and encouragement. To the team at Penguin Ireland, Cliona Lewis, Aislin Reddie, Orla King, Carrie Anderson and especially to my editor, Patricia Deevy. And to Donna Poppy, for being such a fantastic and meticulous copy-editor.

  Many thanks are due to my family – to my sister Olivia, for the Kilkenny sessions, and always being supportive; to my parents, Anne and Francis, to whom this book is dedicated; and last but not least, to Ros
ie, Joshua, Donagh and Paul.

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  First published 2019

  Copyright © Niamh Boyce, 2019

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Cover photos © Arcangel Images and © Getty Images

  The publishers wish to thank Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill for permission to reproduce her poem ‘We Are Damned, My Sisters’ (translated by Michael Hartnett), first published in Rogha Dánta published by Raven Arts Press, Dublin in 1988

  ISBN: 978-1-844-88434-6

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