All the Murmuring Bones

by A. G. Slatter

  Then having told her a story of our family, I wondered if this was perhaps the sort of story that sisters should not tell each other.

  By the time the housekeeper returned – looking more rested but no more friendly – Ena was sleeping peacefully. I told Nelly the child had been a perfect little angel, but I did not tell her why. Before dinner with my uncle this evening, I slipped back into Ena’s room and reapplied the paste to ensure a fine sleep for all.

  Now, as I stand here in the darkness, I feel in these acts – caring for my small sister, reawakening the fields and the orchards – that I am making a place for myself here, at Blackwater. A home.

  Though the house is established, it is new in a way I can’t truly imagine Hob’s Hallow being. That place was so old that its weight sat on me my entire life – the weight of the O’Malleys and their history, the children they had and gave away, their taste for the sea. Though I’ve always hated to swim in it, I miss the stinging smell of the saltwater every day; it runs in my veins and will ever do so. Where I am, it is. Here, however, I am becoming a different thing: an Elliott with all the potential that offers, leaving behind the O’Malleys and their burdens – or at least until my mother returns.

  I can help the livestock as well, but it will be a little more tricky to visit every home and slip something into their feed.

  Now, beneath this moon, I’m aware once again of the strange silence of the place – and startle when a footstep sounds behind me, clear as a bell. I spin around, seeking shapes in the shadows. For a moment there’s a pause, as if a decision is being made. Then there’s a rough grunt, almost badgerish, and someone steps from between the trees into the moonlight.

  Jedadiah, the hard-faced man from the village. He tilts his head towards the base of the tree nearest me, to where the newly cut sigil bleeds its sap into the world.

  ‘Will it work, do you think?’ he asks and that’s not what I was expecting. I don’t answer and he goes on. ‘She used to do it, too. Your ma.’ He grins. ‘Used to take me with her for a while too, when I was younger.’

  ‘Why did she stop?’

  ‘She said it weren’t proper for a married lady to keep taking a handsome lad from his bed at full-moon.’ He laughs. ‘Truth was I had no talent for it. Whatever I touched, didn’t die but it didn’t flourish either. She was too kind to say, though.’ He laughs again and the sound is loud in the clear cold air.

  I put a finger to my lips, but he just shakes his head.

  ‘No one about but me. Them in the big house don’t set foot out in the darkness. Might see something they don’t like.’

  I bristle at his tone. ‘What do you know about them?’

  ‘More’n you do, Miss Miren Elliott.’

  I slip the pocketknife away lest I be tempted to use it. I have to walk past him to reach the road back to the house – I won’t give him the satisfaction of a wide berth, won’t appear afraid. As I pass him, however, he touches my shoulder. Doesn’t grab me and try to pin me in place, doesn’t even keep his hand on me for more than a second. But I stop and look him in the eye.

  ‘Do things seem right to you? In that house? Does it seem right that your mother’s been gone so long? Your father, now he’s feckless, he might well desert us when things get hard, but your mother?’

  ‘I don’t know my mother,’ I say truthfully, painfully. ‘She left me when I was a young child and I’ve no memory of her.’ I swallow. ‘So if you’ve got a certainty that she’d never leave you then you’re far more fortunate than I.’ My voice breaks, just a little.

  He looks at me with pity then and I think that might be the worst thing in the world. I continue on and just before I’m out of sight, I hear him say softly, ‘When you’re ready, come and ask me all the questions you want, Miss Miren. I’m Jedadiah Gannel.’

  Gannel. Lazarus’ son. His tone’s so gentle it makes me want to turn around and go back to him. To ask everything. But not enough. So I don’t. I’m tired and sad, and stiff-necked as an O’Malley. I feel weak and vulnerable and I don’t like that at all. I’ve had quite enough of that and he’s made me doubt, so very quickly and with so very little reason, my uncle and his kindness.

  27

  ‘This’ll be for you.’

  Nelly hands me a folded square of fabric with ill-grace, barely waiting for me to grasp the thing before she lets it fall. I get hold of a corner, the rest slips away like water or a wing, showing a bright, tight woollen weave. A shawl in greens and blues and golds, the pattern exactly like a that on a peacock’s tail. We are at the bottom of the sweeping staircase in the foyer, I on my way to breakfast, she on her way to the kitchen, bearing other offerings.

  It’s a fortnight since my night-time agricultural ministrations, and for the past week things have been appearing on our doorstep each morning. Loaves of fresh bread, pies packed with apple and apricots and cherries and peaches from laden trees. Bottles of fruit cordial. Jars of preserves. Uncle Edward, though surprised by the influx of gifts, is nevertheless pleased. When my parents return, perhaps they’ll be pleased too – perhaps my mother will be delighted at how well I’ve looked after her people, how I’ve saved them from lack.

  ‘My dear, whatever you have done,’ he’d said in measured tones on the third day of largesse, ‘it is very effective.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing special, Uncle,’ I protested, but he gave me a knowing glance as if we were conspirators. I know, having seen how the villagers regard him, that none of them would tell him – although clearly Jedadiah saw fit to let his neighbours know I was in some way responsible. The fields are a waving sea of crops that will be ready for harvest in another week; the trees in the orchards are heavy with ripe fruit the folk of Blackwater can hardly pick fast enough. And the livestock are showing signs of reproducing. In the end I simply offered the remedy openly along with the advice that it is something that worked at Hob’s Hallow. It wasn’t a lie, after all: Maura did use little magics to keep the flocks fertile, the animals healthy. And so, the gifts.

  And now this shawl, which is beautiful and soft and warm.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  Nelly mutters something under her breath. Despite the afternoon hours I regularly spend with Ena to give the housekeeper a rest there’s no change in her attitude towards me. Indeed, it seems worse. The child has flourished, her teeth have begun to come through, relieving the pain, and she’s sleeping all night – which means Nelly is sleeping too. The woman remains unwilling to give up the time my care of the child gains her to herself, yet she seems resentful that the little girl likes me. Would she rather Ena be miserable? Yet she is tender with the babe, I will give her that; she fusses over her as well as any mother.

  ‘What did you say?’ I ask. I’ve kept a civil tongue these weeks, waiting for her to get used to me. But I’m at the end of my tether. She keeps walking towards the kitchen and I follow, glaring at her back, the curls that escape the bun at the base of her neck, and notice again how fine is her dress, yet still ill-fitting; a very well-kept housekeeper indeed. For some reason this enrages me. I raise my voice as I repeat, ‘What did you say?’

  Still she doesn’t respond and I reach out and grab her left arm, pull and she’s swings about. The rage in her face melts my own away; I am merely angry, but she positively loathes me. She wants to do me harm. There is something feral in her expression that makes me think of a wild beast.

  ‘Nelly!’ My uncle barks from the open door of the library and Nelly shrinks away like a dog yelled at by its master. I half expect to see her drop to all fours on the marble tiles, tail between her legs. He hisses, ‘Apologise.’

  It takes a long moment but she does it, forcing the word out between gritted teeth: ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Sorry what?’ Uncle Edward thunders. His face is red with anger.

  ‘Sorry, Miss Elliott.’ She turns away, the glance she throws at him is searing, then heads towards the kitchen once more. We both watch her until she pushes through the door at the end of the co
rridor and it thuds angrily behind her. Edward shakes his head, the tension draining from his face, and he gestures for me to join him.

  There are two seats beneath a tall, arched window. He has been using one, I can tell from where the pipe is smoking in a heavy silver ashtray beside a glass filled with what is a more than generous measure of brandy. We’ve not yet had breakfast. I don’t say anything. I take the chair opposite. He has been reading one of the Murcianus books – Mythical Creatures – the illustrations are beautifully coloured.

  My uncle sits, and sighs, gives me a weary smile. ‘Please forgive Nelly. She is—’

  ‘She is tired. She is on the edge of her nerves. She will be in better humour soon,’ I snap. ‘Frankly, Uncle, I am at a loss as to why you keep making excuses for her.’ I am surprised that I’m speaking so bluntly to him; much as I have liked him, I’ve always kept a distance between the truth of myself and my thoughts, and what I show him.

  He looks taken aback, then something dark swims in his eyes, like a shadowy shape beneath the sea.

  I take a deep breath, then puff it out. ‘I am sorry, Uncle. I am not used to such hostility from servants.’ Which is true, but then Maura and Malachi were more like family than they ever were servants. ‘I cannot try any more than I already have. It matters not what I do, she gets angrier and angrier with me for whatever reason she has.’

  ‘Miren, it is... concern. She is worried for your parents. She worked a long time for them and they have been gone for so long... I am beginning to worry myself. Nelly is one whose fears bubble to the surface in a way she cannot help. Now you and I are far calmer beings, more controlled.’ He smiles lazily. ‘But Nelly is all passion, bless her.’ He holds up a hand. ‘But I will speak to her. Again.’

  ‘Your patience is admirable, Uncle.’

  He smiles. ‘Have you been to the village again?’

  ‘Yesterday afternoon, Uncle. I treated Oliver’s sheep. The last herd requiring my attention.’ In the end it was easier to simply call it “husbandry” and feed the animals of each house – cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, horses – a mix of herbs in a suspension of sour milk with a little of my blood mixed in, brewed in my mother’s workroom off the kitchen. It looked normal enough (as long as no one knew about the blood), and the beasties lapped it up with delight. ‘and to check on the Brune child, Nectan. He’d come down with croup.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And now he is well.’

  ‘You and your home remedies. What a teacher you must have had in that Maura! Your mother was dab hand too.’ He blinks, laughs, corrects himself. ‘When she was here. I assume she still is – and I rather hope she’s on her way back to us and not ministering to every tinker in ill health she meets upon the road!’

  I laugh with him. ‘Maura taught her too. I’m not doing anything different to what she would. That’s our duty to the people in our care, to make their lives less burdensome when they labour for us.’

  It took a while for me to realise Edward Elliott does not like it when I go out on my own. Oh, the gardens are fine, the orchards and fields too, but not the village. A natural concern, I suspect, given how hostile the villagers are towards him, but that hostility no longer seems to extend to me. There are matters they clam up about, but mostly they are happy to have me around, the Coppers and the Cornishes, the Lambournes and the Danes, the Perrys, the Kanes, the Woodfoxes and all the others who now smile and wave when they see me coming. But my uncle’s presence would put pay to that.

  ‘And Jedadiah Gannel. Do you speak with him?’ This has become a regular question, but I can answer it mostly honestly.

  ‘No, Uncle. I do not speak with him.’ And in truth, I do not – not since that night in the orchard. But I have seen him. He watches me and I have found that I look for him. But I do not speak to him.

  It is not Edward Elliott’s fault that they miss my mother so much – he can’t compete with her charm. I fear no matter who had been left in charge of Blackwater during her absence would have met with this unfriendliness. People do not like change – even for three months, which seems such a short time – and it was not his fault that, without Isolde to care for the land, the land ceased to care for its folk. I have noticed, however, that no one mentions missing my father or his ways. There seems to be no hostility towards him, just indifference. I think of Jedadiah calling him “feckless”, just as Aoife did. I wonder that he made so little impression on the world. Yet my mother loves him, surely she does.

  I pluck at the shawl in my lap and make a point of not looking at the glass of brandy at Edward’s hand. He spends a goodly portion of his day in the library, reading and drinking and smoking a pipe. I do not mention that I’ve noticed he does not ride the boundaries, nor check on the crops or the flocks, or go into the village anymore than he must, nor go to the mine or the smelter (both locations which he continues to tell me I’m not ready to visit).

  Uncle Edward has grown used to me; he has realised I am doing the work he has been neglecting. I think it is a relief to him, but he still feels he must appear to be in charge, so the lack of his efficacy will not be so apparent, so glaring. And I in turn make sure to discuss the business of the estate with him as if I, not Oliver Redman, am a manager employed to do such things. I couch it in terms of asking his advice, rather than telling; I begin sentences with ‘As you know, Uncle Edward’, and finish them with ‘Don’t you think?’ Mostly, he agrees with me, although sometimes, just to be contrary, he will contradict me, order an action to which I nod consideration, then ignore completely. I’m polite and respectful of his feelings because he has been so kind to me; and he’s my father’s brother, it would do no good to upset him, to have him complaining about me when my parents come home. Óisín and Aoife taught me how to manage an estate even though there wasn’t much of a one left at Hob’s Hallow. And it’s becoming clearer and clearer to me that my uncle knows very little about managing anything but the level in a wine bottle.

  I wonder why Isolde and Liam left him in charge here; perhaps Liam was blind to his sibling’s faults, perhaps he shared them. But Isolde? Surely Isolde knew better. Then again, perhaps she could refuse her pretty husband nothing.

  ‘Uncle,’ I say, a reckless urge surfacing, ‘might it be possible to visit the mine today? Or the smelter?’

  He shakes his head just as I suspected he would. ‘Not today, Miren, although definitely next week. I would not want you there without me and as you can see I am swamped.’ He gestures at the nothing by which he is swamped. ‘No one will look out for you like family, and I would not trust your safety to anyone else.’

  ‘You are too kind to me, Uncle Edward.’ I smile though my teeth grind against each other. Next week there will be fresh reasons not to visit the mine and smelter. I keep my mouth shut for I am content to playact while building this new life, a new family. He still tells me stories about the Elliotts, but they are often repeated and the details frequently vary from one recounting to the next. He cannot know how, growing up with tales from Aoife and Maura, a tiny deviation from the course of a once-heard story can set my head ringing. His shifts and missteps are, I think, the result of the alcohol. It will steal the memory from man or woman as surely as a hex.

  But I find I forgive him much because I am happy. The continued lack of my parents is an ache, yes. The life I left behind at Hob’s Hallow, for all its recent travails, also hurts me to recall. Maura and Malachi, Óisín and even Aoife, the pain carved in my heart for each one. And I cannot deny that the resentment against Isolde and Liam has in no way diminished. But there is much here to love and rejoice in. There is Oliver in the village who discusses the running of estate with me openly and honestly, and Lazarus Gannel who always passes the time of day. There is Lucy Forsyte who always has tea and biscuits when I pass by her gate and has made me new dresses so I don’t have to wear my mother’s hand-me-downs, and there is her sister Ada, whose handiwork I recognise in that beautiful shawl though there’s no note. There are the children of
the village who run beside my horse when I ride in, and braid flowers into my hair when I let them (it makes me think of Ben and the troupe, and I hope they are well and safe). There is this house, and there is no trace of Aidan Fitzpatrick, and if the green-eyed man sometimes appears in my dreams, grinning at me from two mouths, then it is a very seldom thing indeed. There is Ena, who is sweet. And I will always remember my uncle’s kindness, he will always be twinned with the happiness I am building here. And when my parents return then we shall have an accord.

  ‘Bear with me, my dear.’

  ‘Of course. I do have one suggestion, however?’

  He raises a curious brow but says nothing.

  ‘ Paley Jethan mentioned that there is an annual harvest fete. It will be late this year, but I don’t believe that should stop us. We’ll fit it in well before the winter weather.’ His expression is dubious so I hurry on. ‘Think of the good will, Uncle. Think of how grateful folk are that there is grain to harvest, fruit to preserve, animals swelling the herds, so soon after the fear of want was upon Blackwater. Just a small celebration, Uncle, the memory of it would help keep spirits high when the dark months hit.’

  I hold my breath while he makes his decision.

  At last he nods. ‘But you are in charge of it! And nothing must be done to add to Nelly’s burdens, or I fear even I might not be able to calm her!’

  28

  I’m standing in front of the door to my parents’ rooms in the closed off wing. I’ve not come here before not only because of Uncle’s warnings about the fire damage. I thought I had my bitterness towards my parents under control, that it would wait until their return, that it would be dealt with quickly once we could speak, lance the boil of my anger. But tonight...

  Tonight, the waiting has become too long