The Good People (33 page)

As Mary walked towards the clumps of rushes, she took deep breaths to clear the dust from her lungs, to take in the smells of the trembling fields. Wet grass, cow shit, turf smoke and clay. Golden discs of coltsfoot and the raggy flowers of groundsel clustered against the dun and green. The day was fresh, slapped with cold, and Mary’s eyes watered in the light.

She had left the child in Nóra’s care, so eager had she been for a minute to herself outside without the twitching weight of the boy against her hip. She had suggested to Nóra that she take Micheál into the yard. Wrap him against the cold and let the sun fall on his pallid skin, while she went for the rushes and made the St Brigid’s cross for the house. But the widow, eyes red-rimmed, had said that she would be keeping it out of sight, and for Mary to hurry and not dawdle but come straight back to the cabin.

Mary’s brothers had always made the St Brigid’s crosses at home. They would walk miles of bog to find the best rushes, pluck out the tangled grasses and wipe them clean of mud, before returning to sit and twist the plants while Mary and the younger children watched.

‘See, ’tis important to pull them, not cut them with a knife. That’s how you keep the holy in the reed. Sure, you fashion the cross with the sun.’

Mary pictured David sitting in the yard, the green rods over his knees, tongue inching from his mouth in concentration as he folded the rushes around each other.

‘What happens if you make the cross against the sun?’

David had frowned. ‘What would you be doing that for now? That’s some contrariness there, Mary. Faith, ’tis with the sun you do be making it, to keep the power in the charm.’

They would watch his quick fingers work the tapered stems until they could see the green pattern take shape. A four-legged cross made in the name of the saint, to bless and hang above the door in protection against evil, fire and hunger. It would keep them safe even as the shine of the green rush dried to straw, and the smoke from the fire blacked it with soot.

Mary wanted a cross to hang in the widow’s house. She wanted to know that she was guarded anew by a nailed blessing. The sight of the boy under the power of the foxglove filled her with a horror so deep and unsettling that she felt calcified with it. There was something evil in his fitting, she knew. Something that made her stomach drop every morning on waking, knowing that she would have to hold the child while his body shook with the supernatural.

Nóra was hunched over her knitting when Mary returned, her hand gripping the bunch of bright rushes. But the boy was no longer in his place by the fire. Mary stood in the doorway, her eyes flitting around the cabin.

She has done something to him, she thought suddenly. She has set him on the mountain, or buried him, or left him at the crossroads. Her stomach knotted with dread.

‘Where’s Micheál?’ she asked.

The widow sniffed and inclined her head to the corner of the room. Mary saw then that the boy lay on the heather Nóra kept for kindling, on his back, unmoving. Her relief, on rushing to him and finding him alive, finding his little bracket of bones still lifting and falling in breath, was overwhelming.

She wedged the rushes under her arm and used her free hands to lift him onto her hip.

‘I’m taking him out for the air,’ she said to Nóra, snatching at the blanket hanging over the settle bed. ‘I’ll watch him while I make the cross.’

Nóra’s eyes followed her as she left. ‘You see anyone coming, you bring it right back inside.’

With the sunlight on his face and the breeze stirring his hair, Micheál seemed to rouse from the limp half-sleep he had lain in since the bath of foxglove. Mary settled him down on the blanket by her feet and, as she perched on a stool and began to weave the rushes, she noticed that his eyes widened, their blue reflecting the sky above him.

‘’Tis a fair day to be out in,’ she murmured, and he blinked, as though he heard her and agreed. She paused to watch him, smiling at the tiny flare of his nostrils, the pink slip of his tongue. He wants to taste the air, she thought.

For all the years’ growing in him, Micheál seemed newborn lying in the daylight. The foxglove had left him pale, as though his skin had never seen the sky. Lying in the light, the sun caught the fragile cartilage of his ears and Mary saw how they grew pink, how they blushed transparent. She noticed the fine blond hairs on the side of his face.

‘’Tis St Brigid’s Day tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Spring is here.’ And she set the rushes down by her feet and walked to where a dandelion grew, its fluffy head of seed nodding in the breeze.

‘See?’ Mary held the downy globe on its stalk above the boy and he looked up at it, his mouth opening. She blew at the clock of seeds and they scattered on the air. Micheál shrieked, his hands suddenly aloft, clutching at the sailing down.

‘There was no cure in that foxglove.’

Mary turned. Nóra stood in the doorway, staring at them.

‘Look at it! As it was before. All the trembling is all gone out of it. The struggle is all gone.’

‘He does seem better.’

‘Better!’ Nóra ran a hand over her face. ‘It screamed in the night again.’

‘I know.’

‘’Tis not better if ’tis back to screaming. ’Tis not better if the changeling has fought the foxglove and won! ’Tis not better if the fitting and the sickening is all out of it, after we’ve spent the time with Nance, after the way we thought ’twas working.’

‘But surely, missus, ’tis better to have a child with air in his lungs than shaking as he was.’ Mary’s lip trembled. ‘It put the fear on me, to see him like that.’

‘The fear on you? Girl, you should be afraid to see the fairy strong. You should be afraid to have one of Them amongst us.’ She blinked rapidly. ‘There’s no knowing but that one, himself, there, blinked my man and my daughter. And there you are, playing with it. Doting on it. Cutting its hair and biting its nails and feeding it as though ’twas your own.’

‘He likes the dandelion clocks,’ Mary whispered.

‘As well it might, fairy-child.’ Nóra made to go back inside but paused, turning again. Her eyes were full of tears. ‘I thought ’twas working,’ she whispered, and she gave Mary a look of such wretched sadness that the girl fought a compulsion to go to her, to lay her palms against the widow’s cheeks and stroke her face, and comfort her as she sometimes comforted her mother.

But just as quickly as the impulse arrived, it faded, and Mary remained kneeling beside Micheál. She said nothing, and after some silence Nóra turned back into the cabin, her head hung like the dead Christ.

Mary woke early on St Brigid’s Day to the muted sound of rain falling outside. Gently rolling the boy and checking that his rags were not soiled, she rose and peered at the hearth. At home she and her brothers and sisters had always fought each other for the first peek at the smothered fire, to look for the mark of St Brigid’s passing.

‘There ’tis,’ the little ones would cry, and they would see a soft crescent in the powdered ash that was surely the print of the saint’s holy heel. ‘She has come and blessed us.’

Mary sat on her haunches in the widow’s cabin and examined the raked hearth. Nothing. The soot was as she had left it.

Homesick, Mary walked to the yard door, unlatched the upper half and pushed it out. She leant on the fixed lower barrier, breathing in the smell of rain. A rough day, she thought. A pelting day. Drops stammered in the puddles of the yard.

There was a soft clattering behind her and Mary turned, expecting to see Micheál – woken, fractious, wild.

The St Brigid’s cross. It had fallen from where she had fastened it above the door.

Mary stared at the woven legs of reeds. It was not right. She had fixed the cross tightly, anxious to have its protection, its familiar eye to watch over her at night, to keep the fire from the thatch, to be assured of healing should she need it. To keep the fairies from the house.

Fear dried her mouth. She pressed herself flat against the door and called for Nóra. Nothing. She called again.

There was a low creaking from the next room and the widow emerged, her face soft with sleep. She held her head in her hands.

‘What is it? What’s the matter? You’ll let the rain in. Look, ’tis coming down.’

Mary pointed to the lintel.

‘What?’

‘St Brigid’s cross. Gone.’

Nóra bent and picked up the cross from where it had skittered across the floor.

‘I fastened it, so I did,’ Mary swallowed. ‘What do you think the meaning is in it falling? I never heard of a cross falling. The protection . . .’

Nóra turned the rushes in her fingers, then brushed the dirt from the cross with her shawl and handed it back to Mary. ‘Put it up. It means nothing. ’Twas the wind. The charm is still in it.’

Mary accepted the cross silently. For all the widow’s dismissive words, she knew from the queer look on Nóra’s face that she shared Mary’s hollow nagging that all was not right. There was no wind. None at all.

Something had moved the cross. Something had cast it to the floor.

Nóra stood over the sleeping boy, her face grey. ‘Did it shake last night? Was it sick and vomiting?’

‘No, missus.’

‘Is it after soiling itself?’

‘Not as he was. None of the running and watering out of him. And no fever.’

A pained expression came over Nóra’s face and her eyes glazed. ‘We will never be rid of it with herbs.’

Mary blanched at Nóra’s expression.

‘I’ve been thinking, Mary. Fairies do not like fire. Or iron.’ Nóra’s eyes glanced to the smoored hearth. ‘In the stories they threaten them with it. Tell them to leave or you’ll bring the eye out of them with a reddened poker. Hold them over a shovel.’

‘We held him over a shovel,’ Mary whispered.

‘We hold it over a
hot
shovel.’

‘No.’

Nóra looked at Mary in surprise and some of the strangeness went out of her manner.

‘No, I don’t think we should be doing that.’

‘We wouldn’t burn it. Just threaten it.’ Nóra bit at the skin around her nails.

‘I think there’s sin in that, missus. I don’t want to.’

‘It won’t leave if we keep giving it herbs, Mary. Micheál will never come back if ’tis just foxglove and mint.’

‘Please, missus. Don’t be burning it up.’

Nóra ripped the skin from her nail, glanced down and smudged the blood. ‘Just the threat would do,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Iron and fire. That is what it surely takes.’

‘Nance. How are you getting on?’

‘Musha, a good day and a bad day, thanks be to God. I was wondering when you might visit me.’ Nance nodded at the straw-seated stool beside the fire and Áine sat down, smoothing her skirts in front of her.

‘I think I am caught on the chest.’

‘Your chest, Áine?’

‘I feel a rattle.’ The woman brought a slender hand up to her throat and blushed. ‘I think ’tis the cold.’

‘A bad chest, is it? And how long have you been caught?’

Áine glanced around the cabin. ‘Oh, a while now. Since the new year. We threw the door open to let the old year out and the new one in, and I think a sickness was in its company.’ She attempted a laugh. ‘Now there’s a catch on me. I cough, sometimes.’

‘How is the damp with you?’

‘The damp?’

‘How have you and your man John stood the cold and the wet? Is the floor of your home dry?’

Áine absently pulled at a loose thread in her shawl. ‘The storms last year disturbed the thatch. And the blackbirds pick it apart. A little rain comes in. We’ll thatch again this year.’

‘And have you enough to eat?’

‘God provides plenty, though the butter’s not coming thick at all. The profit is not in the milk.’

‘Faith,’ Nance said. ‘There’s no profit to be found in the whole valley, as I hear it. But I’m pleased to hear you’ve enough to eat. You deserve it all and more. Will you let me feel for the rattle?’

Áine nodded and Nance placed her hand flat against the woman’s chest. She closed her eyes and searched for the clag on her lungs. She could sense nothing. Áine’s breath seemed normal, although her heart was beating rapidly.

‘Can you feel it?’