The Good People (21 page)

It was not the beating. Mary had seen children younger than Micheál smacked into yesterday by their mothers in Annamore. She had felt the weight of a man’s swinging arm at the northern farm.

It was the cruelty in the blows. The widow had looked demented. She had brought the nettles down on Micheál’s skin like he was nothing more to her than a stubborn nag, or a carcass to be flensed. It turned the pulse of her heart.

The nettling had not looked like a cure. It had looked like punishment.

The slope was greasy with snow and mud and Mary found her feet sliding on her way back to the cabin. More than once she had to use her hands to scramble up the hillside, and she felt the smear of mud on her face when she wiped her swollen eyes. On the way to the river she had taken the path leading from the lane, but in her haste to return she had run towards the woods where the ground was most steep. The air burnt in her lungs. Suddenly, the soil beneath her left foot gave way, pain flared through her and she fell to the ground.

Mary let go of the dock leaves and gripped her ankle in both hands. She blinked back tears and sat there rocking in the mud, chest heaving.

I want to go home.

The thought ran through her like a thread, drawing tightly, until she felt puckered with longing.

I want to go home.

Clenching her teeth, Mary tried to stand. It was no use. The tendons in her ankle sprang with pain. Sitting in the mud she let the tears come. She hated the valley. She hated the brittle, unnatural child, and the damp loneliness that hung off the widow like a mist. She hated the broken nights and the smell of piss that clung to the cripple’s clothes, and she hated the pity in the face of the old neighbour. She wanted her brothers and sisters. She wanted the feel of the younger ones’ fingers combing her hair by the fire. She wanted the cheerful noise of the babies, and their red-cheeked faces, and their little hands on her shoulder, waking her in the morning. She wanted David and his solemn understanding.

’Tis too much, Mary thought. Why is the world so terrible and strange?

‘I never saw anyone cry so bitterly.’

Mary flinched. An old woman stood behind her, wrapped in a tattered shawl, dragging a broken branch.

‘Are you hurt?’ The woman bent down, concerned. Mary, too surprised to move, stared back. The woman’s skin was creased and her eyes were clouded, but there was softness in her voice. She reached out and placed her ancient hand on Mary’s bent knee.

‘You’re hurt.’ The woman answered her own question. ‘Sit still for a moment now.’ She fussed with the broken branch and Mary saw that she had been using it as a sled. It was piled with lumps of turf, dung and plants. The woman carefully took these off, placing them on the ground beside her, and snapped off the smaller twigs. She soon had a rough stick, which she gave to Mary.

‘Try standing, girl. Take this.’

Mary hauled herself upright onto her good foot, and planted the stick firmly into the waterlogged ground.

‘Now, put your other arm about my shoulders. I’m taking you to my home. I can do something for you there. See, that’s my cabin.’

‘What about your turf?’ Mary sniffed. She could feel the thin ridge of the woman’s shoulder blade against her arm.

The woman grimaced under her weight. ‘Never you mind that. Can you hobble along, so?’

Mary leant heavily on the stick and held her sore foot aloft. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

‘I’m as strong as an ox.’ The woman smiled. ‘That’s it. This way.’

They stumbled back down the slope until they reached the dirty clearing beside the woods. A small mud cabin stood against a wall of alder trees, their bare branches knotted with the old nests of birds. There was no chimney, but Mary could see smoke listing from one end, where a gap in the thatch admitted it to the open air. A tethered goat grazing on the grass at the woods’ edge looked up at their voices. It stared, gimlet-eyed, at Mary.

‘You live here?’

‘I do.’

‘I thought this cabin was abandoned.’ Mary could hear the river in the distance.

‘I’ve lived here twenty years or more. Come in, girl. Come in and sit by the fire.’

Mary grasped the doorframe of the cabin and hopped inside. From the clearing the
bothán
had looked crude and damp, but the room was surprisingly warm. The floor was covered in cut green rushes, which gave off a clean, sweet smell, and a turf fire burnt upon a large hearthstone, away from the wall. There was no window to admit the light, but the fire’s glowing heart prevented the darkness from gloom. Mary, glancing up, saw a vast number of St Brigid’s crosses, blackened by years of smoke, fixed against the rafters around the low ceiling. In the corner of the room stood straw baskets, some filled with ratty, uncarded wool.

‘Are you a
bean leighis
?’ Mary asked, gesturing towards the drying herbs dangling from the rough-hewed crossbeams.

The woman was washing the mud off her feet and hands on the threshold. ‘Have you not seen a one with the charms before?’

Mary shook her head, her mouth dry.

‘Sit down on that stool there.’ The woman shut the door and the room became darker, the firelight throwing long shadows against the walls. ‘My name is Nance Roche,’ she said. ‘And you are the maid with Nóra Leahy.’

Mary paused. ‘I am. I’m Mary Clifford.’

‘’Tis an unhappy house you’re in.’ Nance sat beside Mary. ‘Nóra Leahy is an unhappy widow.’

‘Aren’t all widows unhappy?’

Nance laughed and Mary noticed her bare gums, the few teeth bunkered in them. ‘Not every dead husband is mourned,
cailín
. Nor every wife.’

‘What happened to your teeth?’

‘Ah, there was time enough for me to lose them when I’d nothing for them to do. But here, let me take a look at you.’

Mary extended her bare foot in front of the fire, feeling the warmth of it against her sole. ‘’Tis my ankle.’

Nance examined the swelling without touching her. ‘Musha, so ’tis. Will you let me give you the cure?’

Mary’s eyes were wide in the dark. ‘Will it hurt?’

‘No more than it does now.’

Mary nodded.

Nance spat on her hands and lay them gently upon the ankle. ‘Christ upon a cross. A horse’s leg was dislocated. He joined blood to blood, flesh to flesh, bone to bone. As He healed that, may He cure this. Amen.’

Mary crossed herself in imitation of Nance, and as she did so she felt a slow rising of heat against her skin, as though she had drawn too close to a flame. But the pain faded, and she exhaled at its lessening. She tried to stand, but Nance shot out a finger in warning.

‘Not yet. You’ll need a poultice.’ She stood and, as Mary watched in curiosity, filled a chipped earthenware bowl with plants from a basket covered with a damp cloth.

‘What are those herbs there, then?’ Mary asked.

‘Oh, that’s my secret.’ Nance picked up an egg and cracked it sharply on the bowl’s rim, straining the white through her crooked fingers. When the egg had separated, she slipped the remaining yolk into her mouth and swallowed it.

‘Do I have to eat that?’ Mary asked, pointing to the bowl.

‘’Tis for your skin and not your belly. Royal fern, watercress, nettles.’

‘Nettles?’ Mary couldn’t keep the panic out of her voice.

‘They’ll not hurt you. I’ve soaked them and that takes much of the sting out.’ Nance pestled the plants with a worn wooden beetle.

Mary closed her eyes and remembered the angry welts on Micheál’s legs, the widow’s wrapped hand bringing the nettles down on his skin. Her stomach clenched and she suddenly vomited, the splatter hissing on the fire.

‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped, and vomited again.

Mary felt hands smoothing the hair off her face, Nance’s bony fingers rubbing her shoulder.

‘There now,’ she said. ‘There now.’

A dipper of cool water was brought to Mary’s lips.

‘I’m sorry,’ she stuttered. She spat out the acid bile and felt the sting of it in her nostrils.

‘Ah, you poor thing. You’ve had a shock.’

‘’Tis not my ankle.’ The touch of the old woman reminded Mary of her mother. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she felt the residual sting of the nettles on her palm and sobbed.

Nance picked up Mary’s hands and turned them over, studying the welts. Her brow furrowed. ‘Is she hurting you?’

There was a long silence.

‘Mary Clifford. Is it Nóra Leahy that did this to you?’

‘Not me,’ Mary finally blurted out. ‘Him. Micheál. She’s after hurting him.’

Nance nodded. ‘The cripple boy.’

‘You know about Micheál?’

Nance released the girl’s hands and tucked her shawl firmly about her. ‘I’m hearing a lot of talk about that child. A lot of rumour.’

‘He’s not natural,’ Mary hacked. ‘And she knows it. She hides him! She has me hide him because she’s frightened of what people will say of him. But they already know, and they say he is a changeling and to blame for everything, and she is punishing him for it.’ Mary felt the words tip out over her tongue. ‘She whipped him with nettles. She drinks and she has a look in her eye that puts the fright on me. They’re astray, the both of them. I’m scared of what is going to happen.’

Nance held her smarting hands tightly. ‘There now,’ she soothed. ‘You’ve found me, now. You’ve found me.’

Micheál had finally stopped crying. Nóra offered to take him from Peg’s tight clutch, but the older woman simply stared her down. ‘Sit you there by the fire and breathe some sense back into your head.’

‘I wish Martin were here,’ Nóra gasped. She felt as though her soul was grinding itself into powder under the weight of her own unhappiness.

Peg’s voice was stern. ‘Of course you do. But Martin is with God, and you’ve a right to be getting on with life in the best way you can.’

‘I wish Martin was here,’ Nóra repeated. She could feel the blood beat in her face. ‘And I wish that it was Micheál who was dead.’

Peg sucked her teeth.

‘I would carry Micheál to the graveyard and bury him alive if my daughter would come to me!’ She fell from her stool onto all fours. ‘I would!’ she screamed. ‘I wish it were Johanna with me!’

‘Enough!’

Nóra felt two rough fingers pinch her chin and pull her head upwards.

‘Enough,’ Peg hissed. Her grip was firm. ‘Nóra Leahy, you think you are the only mother to lose a daughter? Five children I have buried in the
cillín
. Five.’ Her voice was calm. ‘’Tis a great misfortune to lower two coffins in one year, but ’tis no reason to let your heart and mind go to the dogs and to be crying and crawling about the house like a man senseless with drink taken. And don’t you be screaming of murder for the valley to hear. Don’t you be threatening worse things to this child than what has already befallen him.’

Nóra pushed Peg’s fingers away from her face. ‘Who are you to tell me what shape my loss can take?’

‘Nóra, I want to help you.’

There was the sound of voices in the yard outside. The women exchanged looks.

‘Who is that?’ Nóra hissed.

‘Is it Mary with the dock leaf?’

‘’Tis not her voice.’ Nóra got to her feet and fixed the bolt on the door, then waited by the wall, her ear craned to the gap in the doorframe.

There was a sharp knock.

‘Who is it?’ Nóra cried.

‘Nóra Leahy, you’d best be opening to me. I’ve your Mary here, and a sorry state she’s in too.’

Peg’s eyes widened. ‘Nance? In God’s name, Nóra, let the woman in.’

Nóra wiped her eyes on her sleeve and undid the latch. Light flooded the cabin.

Nance stood before her, the old woman’s eyes swimming in their clouded, bleeding blue. She was bundled against the cold, a straw basket over one arm. ‘You’re in a bad way,’ she murmured. ‘Secrecy does not agree with you.’

Nóra felt Nance take in her tear-stained face, the scratches on her wrist, fingernails bitten down to the painful quick. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Your girl rolled her ankle by the river and I found her there. I’ve come to see her home safe, but I think . . .’ Nance peered past Nóra to Peg and the boy at her chest. ‘I think, Nóra Leahy, that you have further need of me.’ She placed her free hand on Nóra’s shoulder and, pushing her out of the way, stepped inside.