Nory Ryan's Song (2 page)

C
HAPTER
2

I
hurled myself along the road, thinking about the bailiffs and Devlin, who collected the rents for Lord Cunningham. They’d tear down the roof of the Neely house and pound at the beam until it splintered in over the hearth. Nothing would be left but dust, and chunks of limestone, and bits of thatch settling on the floor.

Cat would be sobbing, her tiny face blotched, and her mother rocking back and forth outside, both of them with nowhere to go. Devlin would never let them stay with another family. “Lord Cunningham wants to clear this land,” he’d say, “not add more faces to each house.”

I crossed our own field, seeing my sister Maggie drawing a picture on the wall of the house. Three-year-old Patch was dancing around her. “Me,” he was saying. “It’s my face.”

They didn’t see me, and I didn’t stop. What would I say to Anna? I wondered.
My da will be home soon, long before the rent is due
, I’d tell her.
We will give you back the coin straightaway. But right now we could save Cat and her mother
. Even the thought of knocking on her door dried my mouth and dampened my hands. But if she said yes I could bring the coin to Cat and put it into her little fist. When she opened her hand, her mother would see it.

I picked up my skirt and catercornered across Anna’s field, one hand covering the stitch in my side. I could feel my fingers trembling. I went up the path then before I could change my mind, rapped hard on the door, and stepped back.

Nothing happened. I leaned forward and knocked again. The door stayed shut. Where was Anna? Where had she gone? Was someone’s baby being born in one of the far glens?

From far away I heard the men shouting. I went out to the path to see if she was coming.
Please come, Anna Donnelly. Please
.

I turned and looked back at the thatch. The coin was right there. It was so close I could climb up and reach for it.

And then the door opened.

My hand flew to my mouth. I stepped back, so frightened I hardly remembered why I was there.

Anna stared at me with faded blue eyes, her head to one side.

I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t speak.

She took a step outside, listening to the men shouting in the distance. “They are putting the Neelys on the road?” Her lips were puckered, with deep lines around her mouth.

“Lend me a coin for them,” I said in a rush. “I will pay you.”

“And how will you do that?”

“My da will be back. He’ll give it to you. I know he will.”

A louder sound in the distance. Was the house going under?

Anna looked up, thinking, frowning. “I will give you the coin,” she said, “but you will pay for it another way.”

“What do you want?” My lips felt strange as I said it.

“Work for me. Help me gather my weeds and dry them.”

I took another step back, suddenly shivering, holding my hands under my shawl, wanting to run, wanting to go to my own house and be safe. Go to Anna’s house? Help Anna? I could hardly breathe. “I will,” I managed to say.

She pointed to the roof with her cane. While she watched I used the stool to climb. I reached into the thatch, feeling the thick straw dig into my skin and under one of my nails. And there was the coin.

I flew up the road, holding it so hard it made ridges in my palm.

A knot of people were gathered in front. Francey Mallon, my sister Maggie’s beau, was sitting on a stone wall, his face dark with anger, staring at Devlin the agent. And the house: only stone walls standing, dust still rising from where the thatched roof had been. Cat and her mother were gone.

I pulled my shawl closer. “Where are they?” I asked a woman who was peering inside. I stood on tiptoes in back of her. The beam of the house had splintered as it fell. It lay in two great pieces on the floor. A rush potato basket lay on its side, empty.

“Can I take the basket, sir?” the woman asked the bailiff.

“Where are they?” I pulled at her sleeve, pulled hard.

She slapped at my hand. “The basket, sir?” she called again.

“The Neelys,” I said, holding on to her sleeve.

“Gone.” She motioned over her shoulder with her thumb. “Debtors’ prison, maybe. They owed rent, owed it for a long time. Someone said they’ll be sent to Australia.”

I looked at her, horrified. “But that’s where criminals go.”

“I don’t know,” she said, her eye still on the basket. She turned away from me, half ducking inside to pick it up.

Gone.
Poor Cat. Poor Mrs. Neely
.

I loosened my clenched hand and looked down. Anna’s coin could go back into her thatch. I wouldn’t have to go to her house. I wouldn’t have to learn her secrets. Her magic. I wouldn’t have to see the
sídhe
under her table.

Just under my feet was something of Cat’s, a small piece of yarn she had worn in her hair. I reached down to pick it up.
Australia
, I thought.

I circled the house, passing the Neelys’ dog, a great black-and-white sheepdog without a name. She lay in front of the tree, tied to the trunk with a piece of rope. When she saw me she lifted herself to her feet, her tail beginning to wag. I could see how thin she was, how easily you could count her ribs. Did she know she had been left there, that Cat and her mother would never come back for her?

I swallowed, watching her sink down again when she realized I hadn’t come to let her loose. Her eyes drooped as she rested her head on her paws. I tried not to think of what would happen to her.

Then suddenly someone shouted. “You!”

I looked back over my shoulder at the bailiff’s angry face. And I was more frightened than I had been of Anna Donnelly.

I began to run and didn’t stop until I reached the cliff road. Then, more slowly, I climbed until I reached the top and sank down to lean my head against the cool rocks of St. Patrick’s Well.

A footstep in back of me. The bailiff?

I jerked and opened my hand. The coin slid into the well and Cat’s bit of yarn after it. For a moment I could see the glint of the coin, and then it was gone, down, down into water so deep no one would ever find it. The yarn floated on top for a little longer before the water covered that, too.

I turned. The Neelys’ dog stood there, the rope still around her neck, the frayed end trailing on the ground. My arms went around her as I sank down to unknot the rope. I rested my head on her matted fur, thinking. The bailiff hadn’t called me. He wanted the woman next to me and the basket.

I had lost the coin. The precious coin.

Gone forever.

And I would have to go to Anna’s
.

The dog’s back was warm and her ears soft against my fingers. She whined a little and began to lick my face.

At last I stood up. The dog wagged her tail just the least bit. I sighed. “Come,
madra,”
I said. “We’ll go home.”

C
HAPTER
3

M
y middle sister, Celia, sat on the wall of the yard, knitting a shawl. I closed my eyes for a moment, thinking of the one I was knitting. It had a hole I could stick my thumb through, and bits of thistle somehow poked through the stitches. A great mess. And Celia had lost no time in telling me so.

She looked up, her eyes widening when she saw the dog. “Where is your head?” She shook her needles furiously.

Fourteen, only two years older than I, and she wanted to be my mother.

“Look at the size of that beast,” she said, twitching her little nose like Mallons’ goat. “He’d eat as much as I do.”

“She. Her name … is Maeve.” I walked around Celia and inside, blinking in the dim light and nodding at Granda.

Muc the pig in her corner pen snorted when she spotted the dog, and Patch dived into the straw of his bed.

“She won’t hurt you, Patcheen.” My voice was aimed at the doorway. “She’ll be after Celia.”

“Really?” Patch said. He raised his head.

“Not really. She’s a grand dog. I’ve named her after Queen Maeve.” I looked down at her. Her muzzle was white, with small black dots where her whiskers grew, almost like the freckles on Maggie’s cheeks.

Where was Maggie?

“Grand?” Celia came in with the knitting spilling to her knees. “How do you think we’ll manage with another mouth to feed?”

“We just won’t feed you, my girl,” I said. Big Maggie would have laughed, but my heart wasn’t in the teasing. All I could think of was Cat, gone forever, and the coin, and Anna.

“If she sees the potato basket,” Celia said, “that
diabhal
will eat them in a gulp.”

“She might take your leg as well,” I told her. “But she’d be poisoned straightaway.”

Granda coughed, his hands over his mouth. I knew he wanted to laugh too, but he wouldn’t look at me. He didn’t want to tell me what I knew. We could never feed the dog.

“Wait till Maggie sees …,” Celia began.

“Where is Maggie?” I asked.

Celia frowned. “Out and down the road with Francey. He came not two minutes ago and wanted to tell her something.”

I nodded. About the Neelys, I was sure. I thought about feeding their poor dog.

“Where is the fishing net?” I looked at the rafters. “The one for fresh water.”

Celia shoved the knitting into a basket. Her voice was softer now. “Not Lord Cunningham’s stream, is it? You’ll find enough trouble without poaching there.”

“Poaching?” Granda raised his hand to rake his fingers through his white hair. “That is our land, Irish land. Our stream and our fish. Cunningham, a man who comes once a year, has it all by the terrible might of the English.” He turned back to the fire, muttering. “We are paying rent on land that truly belongs to us.”

I put my hand on his shoulder and patted his thin back. Then I reached for the net that was looped around a hook. “I won’t get caught. Sean Red will be there too,” I said. “He always is.” I flicked my finger at Celia. “I will feed the dog without taking anything away from the rest of you.”

I waved to them from the door, watching Celia’s face change as she looked at Maeve. “She’s a lovely dog.” Her voice floated after me. “Oh, Nory, I will help feed her.”

I leaned back in and twitched my nose for a little
Thank you
, then crossed the yard and climbed over the rocky wall. Next to me, Maeve scaled it easily.

“We’re going to Cunningham’s stream,” I told her, feeling a jump in my throat, picturing Cunningham’s face, red and mottled from too much mutton. He’d send Devlin his agent to put us out of our house in a breath if he wished, just the way he had the Neelys.

Once I had been hiding, crouched down in the reeds along the stream. I had watched Lord Cunningham talking to Devlin as he fished. He waved his hand at the fields and the cliffs above. “I’d like to get rid of all of them. Filthy hovels, filthy people. I would tear down the houses and let sheep roam among the rocks.”

I had wondered where the filthy hovels were. I had wondered about the filthy people. And then I knew. I was one of the filthy people who lived in a filthy hovel. I thought about our house. It was warm and cozy. When the door was closed, the fire lighted the pictures Maggie had drawn on the walls and made wonderful shapes that reached up and up, following the smoke out of the roof, finding their way up to the cliffs.

I saw Cunningham’s big house now, with its huge stone wall, and farther down was Devlin’s. Even that was larger than any in Maidin Bay.

“Not a sound.” I put my hand on the dog’s soft head.

Small bushes hung on to the sides of the stream in front of us. It was a ribbon of water, dotted with rocks like black turtles raising their backs to the sun.

Sean Red was there somewhere, waiting to surprise the fish. Even I wouldn’t be able to spot him unless I caught a glimpse of the flame of his hair.

I slid down the bank and landed in the mud at the edge. Lord Cunningham was probably at his dinner, thinking of the fish that had been cooked for him instead of the ones Sean and I would take.

And then Sean was next to me, pointing along the rocks under the water where he had strung his net. I tucked up my petticoat and waded into the icy water.

“Don’t splash,” he said as I wound my net a few feet away from his.

“Don’t you splash.” I flicked a few drops at him.

He laughed. He was never cold and I was always shivering.

“Where did you get him?” Sean asked, thumb pointing at Maeve.

“Her?” I bit my lip. “I found her.”

Sean was satisfied. I would have been asking question after question, but he was looking down into the stream, waiting for his fish.

We stood there for a long time. My toes were numb and my ankles. Sean stood stone-still, almost carved into the river, waiting.

A small, silvery school of fish came, veering away from Sean’s net, around the rocks, and caught by mine. We slapped at them, tossing them up on the bank. I was soaking wet, freezing. My face burned, my eyes teared. Maeve dashed after the flapping fish.

The water swirled as a larger fish broke the surface, chasing the school of fish ahead of it. Now it was caught. It swam along the net, trying to escape.

We dived for it together. I flung myself across the rocks on top of it, Sean yelling, both of us breathless. “A beauty,” I said.

“It’s huge,” Sean said.

Then suddenly a man on a horse splashed down the shallow thread of water toward us. Lord Cunningham! He shouted as he rode, the tails at his coat flapping against his boots, his riding crop in his hand.

I tried to scramble up, but my petticoat was heavy with mud and water, and the rocks were slippery under my bare feet.

Sean held the big fish under one arm. At the same time he put his hand on my back, trying to push me up the bank.

At last I heaved myself over the top and reached back to help him. But Cunningham leaned over the side of the horse. “Give that fish back,” he shouted, his face red. He lashed out with the crop, catching Sean on the shoulder, tearing his shirt.

Still Sean tried to hold the fish, tried to crawl out of the horse’s way.
“Rith leat,”
he called to me. “Run.”

Above the horse’s hooves we heard a deep growl. Maeve, teeth bared, tore into the water.

In that instant I saw the bailiff coming, saw us out of our house. I saw Celia’s face.

“Stay, Maeve,” I called to her, terrified. “Stay.”

The dog stopped, that good dog, stood as still in the water as Sean had done. Then a miracle! Something else caught Cunningham’s attention. A man on a horse was riding toward the big house. We scrambled away as Cunningham turned his horse and splashed through the water, riding back the way he had come.

Maeve shook the water off herself, panting, and nosed into my hand. “A fish for you, two fish,” I said when I caught my breath. I looked at Sean. “Do you think Cunningham knew who we were?”

“He mixes all of us together.” Sean rubbed his shoulder. “We’re safe, I think.”

“One thing,” I said slowly. “He will not forget Maeve.”