The Good People (40 page)

Men gathered outside Nance Roche’s hut that night, full of liquor, brandishing ashplants.

Nance heard them arrive. Their footsteps were loud as they crashed through the undergrowth, slashing at the bracken. Peering out of a gap in her wicker door, she saw Seán Lynch swaying at the head of the pack, stopping to unbutton his trousers. A few men cheered as he started to piss, aiming the dull splatter towards her hut.

There was the sound of something smashing. One of the men had thrown a
poitín
jug at the trunk of the oak tree.

‘You’re a black bitch!’ Seán suddenly spat, a thick line of spittle flinging out of his mouth. The men grew silent at the fury in his voice. Through the chink in the door Nance could see five of them standing not ten yards away, their faces shining with sweat and drink.

Seán Lynch lurched to one side, waving his stick unsteadily in the air. ‘You’re a black bitch, Nance Roche, and may the Devil take you with him!’

There was silence. Nance held her breath. Her heart thudded like a man buried alive.

The men stood there for a long while, each of them staring at her hut. She knew it was dark, knew they could not make out the glisten of her eye in the gap of the woven door, but it seemed that each man looked directly at her. Five faces full of vim and cursing. Five walls of anger.

After what seemed like an hour’s siege, the men finally turned and walked unsteadily back to the lane, talking amongst themselves.

When they had disappeared into the darkness and Nance could no longer hear anything but the sound of the wind moving through the woods and the light rush of the river, she sank back down against the wall, breathing hard, terrified. Her body trembled uncontrollably.

Men had broken into her cabin two days after she’d arrived home to find Maggie and the fairy woman gone. She found the room overturned, the delph smashed on the floor, the ashes of the fire kicked over as though someone had searched for something buried in the powder of the dead hearth.

It was dark when the men returned, boots knocking against the doorframe, fists on the whitewash.

‘Where is she?’

Nance, scrambling to her feet, trying to open the back door to escape, finding it jammed against the clay.

‘None of that,
cailín
. Where is she?’

‘Who?’

‘Where’s the mad one? Your woman who sets the curses?’

‘The cures?’

One of the men had spat, had glared at her for that. ‘Mad Maggie of Mangerton.’

‘She has no hand in
piseógs
.’

He had laughed. ‘No hand in it, does she?’

Nance thought of what Maggie had taught her in the days before. Ways to gather the luck due to others and harvest it for yourself. Ways to strike a man barren. The things you might do with a dead man’s hand should there be need for it.

‘She’s not here.’

‘Not hiding out in yonder ditch?’

Nance shook her head. ‘She’s gone.’ Tears then at the fear of the men standing in her dead father’s cabin, the disappearance of the only kin she had left in the world.

The men had pointed their fingers in her face. ‘If your mad whore of an aunt comes back, you tell her she’ll get what’s coming to her. Tell I know ’twas her that blasted my cows. Tell her I’ll slit her throat same way I had to slit theirs.’

Now, slumped in her tiny
bothán
, Nance’s hands were shaking just as they had shaken all night after the men had finally left her alone.

Virgin Mother save me, Nance thought. I am an ash tree in the face of a storm. Despite the woods, I alone court the lightning.

When Nóra woke the second morning, her stomach prickling in anticipation, Mary was already dressed and waiting by the lit fire with the changeling on her lap, hands firmly crossed over his stomach. The boy’s head twitched on her shoulder. He was pining like a dog.

‘Look at you, up and ready. You could have woken me. We could be halfway there.’

Mary gave Nóra an imploring look.

‘What’s the matter with you, then?’

‘I don’t want to go.’

‘And why is that?’ Nóra asked irritably. Her guts swooped in a thrill of excitement. She wanted to be by the river already. She wanted her turn at sinking the fairy child in the water. Wanted to feel its reluctance to leave.

‘I’m scared,’ said Mary.

‘Scared of what? What fear is there in bathing in the river? You took your turn with it yesterday morning. You can watch this time.’

‘’Tis too cold for him. You saw how he was shivering and shaking, and how he turned blue with it. I’m afraid for him. And this morning he was yawping for his milk, missus. He’s hungry!’

‘So am I. So are you.’

‘But with nothing in his belly I’m scared he won’t stand the cold and he’ll catch his death.’

‘Mary, that’s no child sitting on you there. And there’s no saving Micheál unless we do as Nance says and put it in the water.’

The girl seemed on the brink of tears. ‘I have an ill feeling about it,’ she stammered.

Nóra took a sip of water from the dipper and splashed a little on her face. ‘Enough, Mary.’

‘I do. I have an ill feeling. I think of what the priest would say if he knew.’

‘The priest had his chance to help me.’

‘But missus, do you not think there’s sin in it? I told you about the
piseóg
yesterday. This feels like we’re having a hand in that same bad business. Getting up before dawn and baring ourselves in wild places. I don’t want to be sinning. I don’t want to be hurting the child.’

‘You’re only afraid because you saw the
piseóg
yesterday and it has turned your head.’

‘They’re saying ’twas Nance that set it!’

‘That’s a lie.’

‘They’re saying she wishes ill on the valley because Father Healy preached against her at Mass.’

‘Gossip and hen talk!’

‘But perhaps we can’t be trusting her, missus. Perhaps she –’

‘Mary!’ Nóra rubbed her face with her apron and tied it around her waist. ‘Would you have my daughter’s son returned to me?’

The girl was silent. She pulled the boy closer to her.

‘There is no sin in this,’ Nóra said. ‘There is no sin in returning to the Good People what was always theirs.’

Mary stared at the clay beneath Nóra’s feet. ‘Can I bring the blanket to warm him afterwards?’

‘’Tis yours to carry if you do.’

They walked to Nance’s cabin under a clear black sky, the faint suggestion of pink to the east. Nóra noticed that Mary swayed on her feet as she carried the wrapped changeling. She must be hungry, she thought. The previous day’s fasting had left Nóra feeling euphoric. Walking in the darkness, she felt as though her senses were sharper than usual. The cold air slipped into her lungs and left her nostrils ringing with the usual scents of earth, mud and smoke, but also the nearing damp of the river and the musty undergrowth of the forest. She felt thrillingly awake.

Nance was sitting up by her fire when they arrived. She started in surprise when they opened the door, and Nóra was dispirited to see that the old woman seemed distracted. Large bags hung under her eyes and her white hair, usually carefully knotted at the neck, was loose and tangled over her shoulders.

‘Nance?’

‘Is it time?’ she asked, and when neither answered, she slowly rose to her feet. ‘Let’s to the boundaries, then.’

The silence, once they entered the woods, was oppressive. Nóra could hear nothing but the soft padding and rustle of their footsteps and the strain of Mary’s breath as she wearied under the changeling’s weight. The shadows under the trees seemed horribly still.

A sudden, shrill screeching carried along the valley, and all three women jumped at the sound.

A duck, thought Nóra. Just a fox killing a duck. But it left a prickling at the back of her neck.

‘Did you hear the dreadful business at the Lynches’? The
piseóg
?’ she whispered, trying to make her voice as steady as possible.

In the darkness Nance was silent.

‘A
piseóg
,’ Nóra repeated. ‘The priest was sent for. He sprinkled the holy water upon it, and ’twas burnt, after. So said Mary.’

Mary’s voice rang out in front of her. ‘’Twas a nest and some blood.’

‘Sure, the girl told me it smelt like the Devil. ’Twas the way Seán found it. He smelt it out.’

‘Trouble’s coming,’ Nance muttered. She seemed preoccupied. It wasn’t until they had reached the same place in the river that she spoke again.

‘Nóra, ’tis your turn.’

Nóra did not know whether the cramping in her guts was from excitement or fear. ‘What have I to do, Nance?’

‘The rite is the same as before. Do as the girl. Undress and take the wee fairy into the water with you. Be sure to place him all the way under three times. Every hair on his head under the surface. Let all parts of him under the power of the boundary. Let you don’t slip. That river looks mighty high this morning.’

Nóra nodded, her mouth dry. She took off her clothes with shaking fingers.

‘Perhaps I should do it again,’ Mary said. She had crouched down on a tree root and was holding the boy close to her chest. He groaned at the sound of the water, his head thumping against her shoulder.

Nóra held out her arms for him. ‘Enough of that, you know ’tis my turn. ’Tis how it must be. Give it to me, Mary.’

The maid hesitated. ‘Will you be careful with him?’

‘There’s no harm intended,’ Nance reassured her. ‘We’re only after sending the fairy child back to his own kind.’

‘He was so cold yesterday. ’Tis terrible cold for him. And him being so little, so thin.’

‘Give him to Nóra, Mary.’

‘Quickly!’ Nóra stepped over and took the child from Mary’s arms. Letting the blanket drop from his shoulders she lay him on the ground and pulled the dress over his head.

‘You’ve set him on a briar,’ Mary protested. Nóra pretended she hadn’t heard. She picked him up again and the boy suddenly grew angry, squawking, his fists swinging. Nóra felt his head smack against her collarbone.

‘Into the river with you now, Nóra. That’s it. Hold that branch there as Mary did yesterday. Don’t slip now.’

The changeling, when Nóra first held him under the fast-flowing water, opened his mouth in surprise. But it was no more than a baptism, a rush of river into the mouth, and Nóra lifted him into the air before plunging him down again.

‘In the name of God, are you or are you not Micheál Kelliher, son of my daughter?’

She had the sense that the changeling fixed her eye as the water flooded over his face for the third time, bubbles streaming from his mouth. She lifted him, dripping, and the sun broke across the surface. She had not noticed it grow light. Nóra clutched the fairy child against her bare chest and held him there until he burbled the river down her breasts and his lungs grew less ragged. She stood, shivering in the dappled water, and felt that it was true, in one day’s time she would have her daughter’s son restored to her, full-limbed and speaking. Standing in the river, she felt the promise of it in the current’s quiet insistence and in the skylarks above, suddenly praising the sky with flight.