All the Murmuring Bones

by A. G. Slatter

  She still hasn’t looked at me. In my pocket I can feel the letters I read last night, weighing more than they should. My eyes feel gritty and sore; I know they are red from all the weeping I did, and not even Maura’s eyebright tincture can fix that. I can feel the burn of anger low in my belly, too, but I try to keep it tamped down for I know if I lose my temper now, I’ll never get it back. When you’re angry all logic, all reason, flies out the window, and shouting, as Óisín was fond of saying wisely, achieves nothing – which was amusing considering how many of his discussions with Aoife were conducted at spiteful volume. But the less I say, the more Aoife will offer… I learned about silence from her although she doesn’t seem to recall its lessons now, not when she’s gloating so.

  But I do want to shout, gods know I do. I want to shout and scream and throw things at her that will break her brittle old bones. I want to tell her that for all she rages about my mother, Isolde was no better than her; Isolde who used me as currency to pay for her own escape, just as Aoife will use me to pay for her own grand schemes. I want to tell my grandmother what I think of her, that I’ll do whatever I can to ruin her plans, that I will never marry Aidan Fitzpatrick let alone bed him. But I don’t. Instead I go to the desk, carefully untie the silver ribbon holding the box closed, slip the lid off.

  A spray of swan-white spills out.

  The fifth dress.

  ‘Radzimir!’ says Aoife with satisfaction as she joins me. ‘Hard to find not in black, but here it is. Lightened your cousin’s wallet considerably. Take it out! It should fit perfectly – it’s the same style as the red and black, Madame Franziska and her minions stayed up all night finishing it!’

  Mourning silk for my wedding gown. How appropriate.

  She’s fair giddy, is Aoife, with all her successes. If she had any less dignity, she’d be dancing. How sad that she’s so happy to make me so miserable; that the sale of her only grandchild is such a delight. I don’t touch the dress, though it seems pretty, teardrop-shaped crystals sewn onto the bodice catch the light, and I can see feathers – swans’, no doubt – and roses have been embroidered across the fabric, all in white silk thread.

  ‘Why did you tell me,’ I ask, ‘that my parents were dead?’

  ‘Because they are.’ She runs a finger along an stitched rose stem. ‘They took a fever when you were three, you know this. You were ill too, but you were the only one we could save.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you, child?’

  ‘Isolde wrote letters to Óisín.’ I can almost feel her shake as if hit. ‘After they had left me behind. After they had stolen something from you.’

  I peer at her. She’s looking at me for the first time since I entered the room, properly looking. Does she notice the shadows beneath my eyes from the sleepless night, the tautness in my cheeks, the lines on my forehead, the bruised red of my lips where the footman kissed me hard? Can she divine, simply by staring, what he did to me, all at my will? Do I look angry to her or just ruined? And is she simply trying to calculate how she might still win?

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Enough.’ I’m not a fool, I won’t offer her information she can use. Didn’t she teach me better than that?

  ‘Your mother… your mother… Isolde…’ Aoife sinks into one of the chairs by the fire, all her manic energy fled. I sit across from her. She shakes her head, closes her eyes. ‘Your mother…’

  I wait.

  Then her eyes fly open and they’re nothing more than black pits and her lips draw back over teeth longer than they should, yellowed like a dog’s, and silver tendrils of hair appear to come free of the chignon tight-bound at the back of her head. And I know these things do not happen, but they seem to and these are the details I notice, and then she begins to rage.

  ‘Your mother was a disobedient whore! She cared nothing for this family and what we – I – did for her! She ran away and got pregnant, then came crawling back and Óisín forgave her like the weakling he was. Let her and that cullion live in this house as if nothing had happened, and then to show her gratitude she stole from us!’

  ‘What did they take?’ It’s all I can do to keep my voice steady in the face of her fury. But she’s not to be diverted from her course.

  ‘And they left you. And you Miren, were a price to be paid. You are mine to do with as I wish and you will marry Aidan and you will save this family and you will make good on your mother’s debt!’

  ‘He wants to hurt me,’ I say, and lift my hand, draw back the cuff of the yellow dress, show her the marks Aidan left.

  She tilts her head, hesitates, then says, ‘You just need to learn how to manage him, Miren, that’s all. Don’t be such a child. This isn’t about you or your whims, this is about the O’Malleys, about saving the family, building us up again, making us count for something.’ Her voice goes quiet and she reaches out as if I might take her hand as a gesture of accord or peace or submission at the very least. I do not and her tone becomes a winter wind. ‘You will marry him, Miren, you will have his children and you will dispose of them as you are ordered.’

  And she doesn’t seem to realise she’s just used up her last chance.

  ‘I’ll not marry him, Grandmother, make no mistake.’ I rise and go to the door.

  ‘You’ll do what you’re told!’ Her voice reaches me as I touch the handle, and it’s filled again with all of Aoife’s fire and spite. ‘You’ll do it or so help me I’ll throw you in the sea myself!’

  ‘Just like you used to when you taught me to swim and I survived that.’

  I leave the library. Something thuds against the door as I close it behind me and I’ve no doubt she’ll have thrown a book or whatever she could get her hands on. I must flee. I’ll need money if nothing else; the ring on my finger will fetch a goodly sum, and the earrings and bracelets, but I doubt I can sell any of them in Breakwater. Someone might recognise them – especially the engagement piece –might report me to Aidan before I can vanish. I cannot take a ship for I’d be easy to trace on a passenger list, but I need to get as far away as I can. I remember Aoife locking me in that room in the townhouse. So I go to the one person whom might make me feel safe for a while.

  * * *

  But I can’t find Maura in the kitchen. One of the new girls is there – for a moment I’m still so jumbled from the argument with Aoife that I cannot remember which one she is, then recall that Ciara is thin, Yri plump. Aoife’s always said it doesn’t matter what you call servants, but Maura and Óisín taught me different: Óisín said it made people think you cared, Maura said it was a kindness and a respect.

  ‘Where’s Maura, Ciara?’

  She bobs a curtsey, pausing in the middle of preparing a breakfast that I can’t imagine eating. ‘Still in her bed, Miss. She was asleep, tossing and turning, she didn’t seem well, so I made her a posset and left her to slumber.’

  ‘Are you making a list?’

  ‘Yes, Miss.’ She points to a sheet of rough paper on the bench, held down by the stub of a pencil and some tidily printed words.

  ‘Excellent.’ I turn to leave.

  ‘Are you alright, Miss?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Ciara.‘ I smile distractedly at her.

  Maura’s room is in the attic of the tower (the floor above Óisín’s old suite), up where one is meant to store one’s servants. It’s surprisingly cold there. I’m puffing a little when I reach the landing, pause to catch my breath, thinking how the old woman must feel as she does this climb every eve – I think she must be moved down to one of the ground floor rooms, whether she wishes it or not, then I realise that I won’t be there to oversee it. I walk along the narrow corridor. Two doors are open displaying neatly made beds with small tapestry bags at their foot. The maids have settled in.

  I knock on the last door, Maura’s, and get no answer. My hesitation is brief and I push it to, and heat puffs out. It’s the largest room here, yet still smaller than my suite by quite some margin. But there’s
a biggish bed, two chests of drawers, a wardrobe, a small desk, a washstand, and a blanket box, and I cannot imagine what Maura would have to store in all those things. Then again, this is a huge house, it’s old and so is she: she’s been its curator for so long I’ve no doubt she’s squirreled things away that caught her eye. Things no one would notice missing.

  And why shouldn’t she?

  Does that cavalier attitude to theft come from the fact that my mother’s a thief?

  But Maura.

  Maura’s never sick.

  Not even when anyone else has been sick and she’s nursed them. She never catches anything, has never spent a moment longer in her bed than she had to, and even as her ability to take care of the house has faded with her physical deterioration, she’d still never stopped doing it. The quality has only lessened in line with the degree that she can no longer reach high shelves or low, can’t quite see the dust enough to remove it, and the house is too big, her energy too much on the wane.

  But now, here’s Maura still abed at eight in the morning.

  There’s a fire in the hearth and the space is overheated. All I can see from the threshold is the snowy quilt Brigid gave me, but as I get closer I notice there are spots on it, up the top edge nearest her face. Some are the dark red of dried blood, some bright and new; and Maura’s gasping, eyes closed, a rattle in her chest, a whistle in her throat. I wonder how much of this was there when Ciara came? It would have been very dark, then, easy to miss, and there is more new blood than old so this is a recent thing. The posset is on the bedside table and I can see the pink spot where blood has been expectorated there and almost disappeared.

  ‘Maura!’

  She can only puff at me, her eyes are wide open now, face pale and scared. Her fingers are clenched over the edge of the quilt and it’s like she’s trying to push it off but hasn’t the strength… then I realise that’s exactly what she’s trying to do.

  And I can smell something, too, something cloying. I sniff closely at the quilt and the scent is coming from there. Almost… honeysuckle sweet, jasmine sweet – something I couldn’t smell before, something not activated until a slumbering body’s warmth was present.

  Wild woodbine, if administered incorrectly will cause paralysis… but she hasn’t, I don’t believe, taken it orally. Maura knows better. So…

  I tear away the quilt, throw it as far from the bed as possible, and the old woman sits straight up like a jack-in-the-box, gasping and heaving and trying to get swear words out and air in.

  ‘That fecking thing! That fecking fecking thing!’

  ‘Oh, Maura. Maura, are you alright?’

  ‘Do I look alright?’ She coughs again, but the tone of it has changed, is nowhere near as rough and wheezy. As dire. ‘Why would you give me such a thing?’

  ‘I’m so sorry. It was a gift from…’

  Brigid.

  Brigid.

  Brigid who’s so clever with her hands. Brigid who made this fine present. Brigid who most definitely is not happy about me marrying her brother. The time of great magics may well be gone but there is still harm that can be done with no more than intent and a spell by anyone with the mind to do so. No need for a proper witch or the blood of one, just ill-wishing and determination.

  ‘Brigid.’ I wipe blood away from Maura’s mouth and chin with the corner of a sheet. ‘She meant that for me.’

  ‘Little bitch.’ The front of Maura’s white nightgown is speckled red. ‘Mind you, it’s well-made.’

  I laugh at that.

  ‘I didn’t feel anything until I tried to get out of bed. Imagine that, a good night’s sleep before you die.’

  ‘How considerate.’ I plump pillows and put a few behind her back. There’s a jug of water next to the posset and I pour her a glass. ‘Did she want to kill me, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know, my girl. But… someone would have come looking for you sooner than you came for me.’ She shakes her head. ‘Fool I am to be taken by something so simple.’

  And I feel guilty, though that’s not her intention, she’s merely stating the truth. I fought with Aoife so I came looking for Maura because I needed her. I did things out of my usual routine. Otherwise… otherwise I’d have found her too late.

  ‘Did she just want me ill? Was it a warning? Or just the start?’ I hold Maura’s hand, it’s so light and bony, dotted with age spots and dried blood, though it’s hard to tell the difference.

  We both look at the quilt, lying on the floor like a snake. It is, I think, something to show Aoife. If that doesn’t give her a second thought about this marriage, I don’t know what will. I could run. I should run. Now. But... if this is what Brigid wanted to do to me, what might she try with Aoife who’s pushing her plans to fruition no matter what the objections? I squeeze Maura’s fingers.

  ‘Will you be alright?’ I ask.

  She nods.

  ‘I’ll send up one of the girls to get you washed and comfortable. Stay in bed as long as you want, Maura. I’ll see you’re looked after.’ I rise and pick up the quilt, carefully folding it, then I wrap it in an old blanket that’s draped on the chair, probably the one she replaced with it on the bed. At the door, I turn, remembering why I came up here. I say, ‘Maura, did you know my mother was alive?’

  Her shamefaced expression tells me. I don’t ask why she didn’t let me know. I’m not angry with her, but I feel so hollow you could make a drum of me.

  Downstairs, I go into the kitchen garden where I’ve spent so much time with Maura; I pick cat’s claw and rosemary to make a tea that will take down any inflammation in her throat. I send Ciara with it, to care for the old woman.

  I seek my grandmother, starting in the breakfast room where Ciara has laid out the meal we should have had. No sign of Aoife, but I find I’m starving. I sit and eat porridge and toast, drink two cups of strong coffee, organising my thoughts, practising what I will say and how. Speaking aloud so that my tone sounds reasonable. But really I’m just putting off the inevitable. Eventually, I push away from the table.

  Outside a storm begins to rage and howl, blown up from the sea and wild as can be. I try the library just in case she’s remained there fuming since our argument, but it’s silent. Next her suite in the East Wing, and then all the vacant rooms in there, for naught. And so back to the tower and its empty spaces, even Óisín’s old bedchamber and his study. At last, I try the West Wing. I get tired of carrying the quilt so I leave it in my bedroom. I search the parlours which have been unused for years, the storage rooms and dressing rooms, the bathrooms and privies, the sewing room, the grand hall, the dining rooms both large and small, and the chapel.

  I even go down into the cellar, the place that was forbidden for so long – though the silver locks on the door had not ever been engaged as I recalled, and I’d briefly snuck in there once as a child before Aoife discovered me and spanked me until my arse felt on fire. But there’s nothing there, the space remains huge and dark and the light of my lantern did not reach into all its corners. When I peered into the well, all I could see was the blackness of water at the bottom, and the rippling silver of the grid beneath it. It smelled of dust and old fish and ancient blood and bones.

  In the end I go outside.

  It’s after lunch by the time the storm has passed, though the sky remains grey. I’m not worried – if Aoife doesn’t want to be found, she won’t be. She’s more than capable and childish enough to be stalking along behind me as I search for her. I walk through the freshly washed grounds towards the walled garden I know she likes, where she often sits and schemes. I will tell her about the quilt, show her when we return to the house. I have other questions and I will ask them. And tonight, no matter what, I will leave this house before she locks me in it until my wedding day.

  I come to the heavy iron-banded entrance to Aoife’s garden. The door is ajar and I push through. The area is not large, but it is overgrown with winding paths, so there’s no straight line of sight and you must follow the moss-c
overed flags as if walking a labyrinth. I duck beneath low-hanging branches heavy with rain, smell the competing scents of roses and jasmine. Malachi keeps this place for her, not tamed, and certainly not tidy, but merely ‘at bay’. A wildness she likes that is managed by another.

  At last I come to the corner where there’s a wooden bench, worn smooth by the years of her skirts and the elements against it. There’s a small table with drawers underneath where she leaves a book and a silver flask of whiskey. For a moment, I think she’s asleep, and I call out softly so she isn’t startled. But she doesn’t rouse and as I get closer I realise there’s no movement of her chest, no twitching of her nostrils as air goes in and out.

  I lean over Aoife and stare into her face, dotted as it is with rain, her dress and hair soaked through.

  All the tension of life, everything that kept her still lovely and vibrant is gone and it’s as though the flesh is simply waiting a decent amount of time to fall off her bones. The high neck of her dress looks crinkled, her hair is tumbling down from its careful chignon, but her eyes are closed and I suppose this is what peace looks like. I have no tears, but my heart feels like it’s twisted itself into a ball and is clenching tighter, ever tighter.

  I pick her up and she’s ridiculously light as if it was only her spirit that weighted her to earth… and I think about that storm, the madness and grief of it, and I realise it was for her death. For the last true O’Malley. I carry her from the garden, across the lawns, back towards the house. She’s almost weightless, like twigs wrapped in a blanket. She’s dead, taking all my answers with her.

  11

  We lay Aoife out on her bed and Yri assists me to strip away the wet black mourning gown and underclothes. Ciara is still sitting with Maura and I don’t want the old woman told of this just yet for she’ll insist on helping when she’s too weak. I wipe my grandmother’s body down with a damp cloth soaked in lavender, as much to calm her spirit as for the sweet scent. On her right hip is the scar, her brand, the Janus-faced, two-tailed mermaid, the first child’s mark. I touch it lightly before I draw up a sheet to cover her and the one on my own hip seems to burn.