Immaculate Heart (24 page)

“‘Ahh,' the young man said at last, drawing a fine handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his mouth. ‘Had you kept me, this stew would have been my favorite. I have never known such nourishment—not since the last time I fed from your breast, dear Mother.'

“‘How can that be,' she asked plaintively, ‘when you have grown so tall and strong?'

“‘They filled my belly with other things,' he said, and because she was afraid then to ask any more questions, there came a silence between them. Finally the young man laid his kerchief on his knee and spoke as he began neatly to fold it. ‘It did not take them long to come for me, but even now I remember how cold it was, and how wet, up there on the hill. That shiver,' he said quietly. ‘It will never leave me.'

“As he spoke these words, it was as if the old chill spread from his heart into hers, though she could not understand this sympathy, for the babe she'd left wasn't her babe a'tall. ‘They'd already taken you away from me,' she said, and in her voice there was a note of pleading. ‘All that I brought to the hill was the changeling they left in your place.'

“The young man shook his head, but his attitude was one of sorrow, not of reproach. ‘The fairies did come in the night,' he said, ‘but they did not steal me away. They haven't the power for that, though they'll have us believe they do, and in the end that's nearly the same. They could only cast a spell on me through a chink in the shutter, drawing all the warmth and joy out of my tiny heart so that I would seem to you a different babe altogether. They knew then that you would take me up to the hill and leave me there in the darkness, and then truly I would be theirs.'

“The widow clutched at her breast, as if her heart were giving out with the grief of it. ‘How was I to know?' she whispered. ‘How could I be wise to such a trick, and we such simple folk?'

“‘I have never blamed you, Mother,' the man said gently, and when he reached across the table to reassure her, she felt a hum beneath the skin of her work-worn hand.

“‘You must tell me,' she said, her voice choked with emotions she had not known she could feel. ‘I must know. Was it a good life you led with them? What did they teach you, and did you sleep warm at night, and did they raise you with love, as I would have done?'

“The man rose from the table to stand by the hearth and stoke the fire, staring into the flames just as his father used to do. And like his father, he seemed to be lost in his own thoughts.

“For the first time, she uttered the name she had given him, and the young man looked up from the fire. ‘You must not call me by that name,' he said, and a sharp note had entered into his silvery voice. ‘It was lost to me when they took me from the hill.' Another silence settled between them, and the woman felt a kind of shame for all the things she did not know. ‘I shall answer your questions as best I can,' he said at last, ‘though there are certain things I may never speak of.'

“‘I had a fairy mother,' he began, ‘and in the beginning she loved me, in her way, almost as well as you did. Even among the
Shee
there are womenfolk who cannot bear children of their own, and it is this want which leads them to steal away the offspring of humankind. She kept me in a cradle of moonwood carved with scenes of desert caravans, marching elephants, chariots, and epic battles, so that night by night I might dream myself into a future of greatness.

“‘I was schooled in the ways of the
Shee,
but I always knew I was set apart, and I asked many questions that went unanswered. As I grew, a great restlessness came upon me, so that at last my fairy mother was compelled to show me a vision of you in this very room: surrounded by the brothers and sisters I would never know, and my father quietly stoking the fire just as I have done tonight. And I grieved for the life I should have had as your eldest son. She told me I could never go above, that once a human child is taken, there can be no taking him back, but this too was a falsehood. It was a long time before I began to see that the fairy folk hold no reverence for truth—and how can they? For even before they've spoken the lie, they've convinced themselves it is so.' He sighed. ‘After that my fairy mother grew cold to me. I was told I had no further need of schooling, and I became a servant of the
Shee
.'

“The woman was surprised at this, for it seemed to her that this young man was dressed like the son of a lord, with his fine linen shirt all shot through with silver, and his soft leather boots with their shining buckles.

“‘The fairies are, as you have guessed, an immoderate race,' he went on. ‘There is hardly an end to their balls and banquets, so that as they sleep, we must tidy up the remains of one feast only to prepare for the next. Even my schooling was executed in the most languid fashion, my tutor more fond of wine and games and noonday slumbers than any book or map.

“‘In all that they left unsaid, however, and in their eternal pursuit of pleasure, they showed me how to betray them. I learned for myself that I might return someday to the world of men, that all that was necessary was for someone, even one person, to remember me.' He gazed into her eyes with a look of the most ferocious love, and again he frightened her. ‘I heard your prayers, Mother, and I was restored.'

“The woman knew she should feel joyful, but unqualified happiness was beyond her. She had prayed not for the return of this lost son, but for the young man she had thought of as her eldest; and she began to be afraid that perhaps this man, her son, knew this, and harbored a resentment he had yet to show her. ‘They won't come lookin' for you?' she said at last.

“‘They cannot reach me,' he replied. ‘I have come home to you, to till my father's land and to care for the animals, and to be a help and a comfort to you all the days of your life.'

“Oh, how she trembled at this! ‘Forgive me,' the widow said, ‘but I fear what my neighbors will say, for they will not know you. What shall we tell them when they come to call, or if they should meet you down in the village?'

“‘You need only remind them that I am your eldest son,' he said, as if these extraordinary circumstances warranted hardly any explanation a'tall.

“She yearned to make clear to him that the village knew another son for her eldest, that enough time had passed that folk seldom spoke or thought of her old tragedy and they wouldn't believe her if she told the truth, but fear held her tongue.

“‘I'll sleep up above,' he went on. ‘That was always my rightful place, wasn't it, Mother?'

“‘Aye,' said she. ‘That is where you would have slept, once you'd outgrown your cradle.'

“She cleared the table and swept the hearth, watching him as he rinsed his face and hands at the washstand in the firelight. There was still a bit of a glow about him, and she wondered if it would fade with time or if the fairy sheen would always be about him, and if others could see it, too, and if so what would they think of him and how would they treat him. They would set him apart—after all even a man from three miles up the road would always be an outsider to them—but somehow she knew that no matter what looks or words he met with, he'd always have his dignity about him, his quiet confidence. The fairies had been cruel to him, but at least they'd given him that.

“He came to her then, and put his strong arms about her, and kissed her softly on the cheek before climbin' up to the loft. When she said her prayers, she thanked the Holy Father that her eldest, the true eldest, had been restored to her; though in her secret heart she was more than a little afraid that the Holy Father had had nothing to do with it, for the fairy lands lie well beyond the Christian realm, and her child would not answer to the name she had given him.

“In the morning she woke to find her little house still as ever, and her heart seized at the thought that the miracle of the previous evening had been nothing more than a dream. But when she dressed and went to the door, she found her lost son down in the field, mending an old stone wall in poor condition since before the passing of her husband; and when she looked back at her table, she found there a basket of eggs and a jug of fresh milk.

“The widow knew there was magic about him still, for as hard as he worked, he never tired. Whatever he did he made appear the easiest task in the world, even the hoeing and turf cutting that had all but broken her husband's back on the longest days. He'd the fairy airs about him, but unlike the fairies, he would labor cheerfully for hours. He sought no one's company but hers, and he never went down to the pub. But every so often, she would wake to find him comin' quietly down the ladder in the middle of the night, stealing out of the house only to return with the dawn, and she wondered if he'd left behind him a fairy wife.

“The months passed, and the woman received no word from her eldest son—her
second
son—on when he might be returning to take over the farm. This was both a relief and a worry. Her son sometimes referred to her other children, but he never wished aloud that he might meet them, and she wondered if he'd laid down some new piece of magic to prevent them returning.

“At last she received a letter, and another, and another. They were off in Dublin and London and America, busy livin' their lives. One or two sent her money, and her fairy son gazed coldly at the paper in her hand as if she had offended him. These moods of his soon passed, however, and he grew warm and affectionate towards her once again.”

I glanced over and saw Paudie and Leo still hanging on her every word. “And in this way the widow lived out her life,” Tess said, “her joy tempered by an uneasiness of which she could never speak.”

She leaned back on the worn red upholstery and took a breath, just as Leo had done on my first night here. She'd finished her story, and I didn't know what to say, because any compliment I could have given her would have been inadequate.

“Tess, you're a marvel,” Paudie declared, and Leo rushed to add, “She's the finest storyteller of the rising generation, so she is!”

Tess laughed. “Leo still thinks I'm sixteen years of age, instead of thirty-six.”

Finally I said, “I thought he was going to suffocate her in her sleep, or something,” and Tess gave me a weary glance as she lifted the water glass to her lips.

“It's the quiet drama I like best,” she said. “No sword fights or shouting matches. There's greater tension just waitin' on the second shoe to drop. The vague unease, the waiting and wondering.”

Well,
I thought.
You've certainly lived it.

*   *   *

Outside the rain had stopped, and the air was cold and fresh. Leo stumbled out the door of the pub, and Paudie held out a hand to steady him.

Of all the money that e'er I had,
Leo sang in an astonishingly decent baritone,
I spent it in good company. And all the harm I've ever done, alas! it was to none but me.…

For an awkward pause, Tess and I waited behind them, until they began to lumber together down the rain-slicked street. “You'll see her home, won't you?” Paudie called to me over his shoulder. “Good night, and God be with ye both.”

Tess began walking in the other direction, and I fell into step beside her. “Where do you live, anyway?”

“Just around the corner from the youth center,” she said. “We've a house in Ravens Row.”

The walk passed much more quickly than I wanted it to. She stopped outside another whitewashed row house and reached into her bag for her keys. “So this is where you live,” I said.

Tess nodded. “You'd better leave me here,” she said. “It's late. Otherwise I'd invite you in for tea.” She saw me looking up at the darkened windows and said, “The others will have gone to bed long before now.”

“Did they come to the vigil?”

She was sorry I'd reminded her. “Everyone came,” she said as she turned the key in the lock and the door swung open. “Thank you for seeing me home. What if I ring you tomorrow and we'll make a plan?”

“That would be great,” I said, and I watched her weary smile recede into the darkness of the hallway before the door clicked shut.

On the walk back to the B and B, I forgot all about the dead boy, the dying blackbird, the name in Mrs. Keaveney's notebook. I saw Tess taking off her boots and arranging them neatly on a shoe rack beside the radiator, mounting the stairs and treading softly down the hall past the rooms of her sleeping housemates, the other Sisters of Compassion. I saw her closing her bedroom door behind her, taking off that shapeless gray sweater and folding it for another wear. I thought of her shrugging off her bra, her breasts round and lovely in the lamplight, and what a pity it was no one had ever touched them.

 

9

NOVEMBER 13

Dr. Kiely greeted me with a tight-lipped
I've-got-your-number
sort of look on her face. I'd been right to think this was the last time Síle and I would meet. Martin showed me to her room and shot me a wary look as he closed the door behind us.

Síle was standing at the window looking out at the rain. “I love it when it's squallin' like this,” she said without turning around. “I wish we were out in it.”

“Why would you want to be outside right now?” I asked as I propped my umbrella against the radiator and shrugged off my jacket. “I've just come out of it. It's awful.”

She turned from the window then and smiled. “You didn't get wet enough. If you're out a while, there comes a point where it doesn't matter anymore how wet you are. You're soaked to your knickers and you're squelchin' in your boots and you turn your face up to the sky and you laugh and laugh because for once you feel at home in the world. Then you come in again, peel off all your sodden clothes, and put the kettle on. That's the most satisfying moment of the day, even better than the first sip of tea.” She moved to the sink. “Speaking of which?”