Nory Ryan's Song (4 page)

C
HAPTER
6

T
oday the sky was blue and the plants high. I was tired of knitting with only the light from the hearth to guide my stitches. I was tired of that one room with its earthen floor tramped down by Ryan feet over the last hundred years. The floor was so uneven that only the three-legged stool was steady on it. And our heels had worn small round bowls into it large enough to hold puddles of mussels before St. Patrick’s Day, and limpets after that.

Fuafar
limpets. I hated the slimy taste of them.

The room seemed so empty without Maggie. I closed my eyes, remembering when Granda taught me my first song: “Wee Falorie Man.” The room was filled with all of us: Granda and Da, Mam and Maggie, Celia and me. I sang it through,
“Rumpty tumpty toddy man,”
as Granda thumped his blackthorn stick against the floor and everyone laughed.

“What are you thinking about?” Celia asked.

“Mam,” I said. “And Maggie.”

“Don’t,” she whispered, holding up her hand.

I took a quick look at Patch. Every time one of us said Maggie’s name, he cried.

“I would go down to the sea today and gather some kelp,” I said, “if only I had someone to come with me.”

Granda nodded. “It’s a good day for it.”

Patch grabbed my sleeve. “I will go to the sea with you, Nory.”

“I knew that, didn’t I?” Celia and I glanced at each other over his head, smiling at him. I tucked up his hem so he could walk easily.

“Someday I will have a suit of clothes,” he said as I turned him around.

“Not yet,
a stór,”
I whispered. “We won’t let the
sídhe
know we have a boy instead of a girl.”

“I know. They’d rather steal boys.” He nodded at me uneasily. “I’m not afraid.”

“No,” I said. “And you will be the greatest help today.” I patted his cheek, then looped the basket over my arm.

We took the path that led down to the beach and back up. A narrow loop it was, full of grass with spikes that rustled as the wind blew, trying to keep us away from the sea.

We went on down the path with Patch pulling on my hand, veering this way and that to pick up stones for his collection. They all looked the same to me, but he’d stare at one and throw it away, nod at another and stick it in his pocket.

“Nice, Patcheen,” I said as he held up a blue one. “It’s like your eyes, blue stone eyes.”

He thought about it. “Yes,” he said, and ran ahead of me onto the sand, ready to chase the seabirds and watch the currachs bobbing beyond the surf. Long Liam and Michael Mallon were out in one of them, fishing.

I shaded my eyes. Was Maggie across the sea yet?
“Number 416 on Smith Street,”
I sang to myself,
“Maggie, and Francey, and Mary Mallon together in Brooklyn, New York.”
Maggie had said it over and over so I’d never forget.

I looked up at the cliffs. A slash of stone, whiter than the rest, pointed the way home for the men in the currachs. “When I see that stone,” Long Liam always said, “I know it’s only a bit of surf between me and the warmth of our hearth.”

Were there cliffs like ours above the houses on Smith Street? I had asked Maggie and Francey about it, but they had shrugged their shoulders, smiling.

Sean came toward me. He passed the spot where the cliffs hung over him in a dark and fearful arch and made the sign of the cross over himself. Up there, years ago, men let themselves down on ropes to narrow ledges. They’d catch the seabirds for their meat and gather eggs from their nests. One of them had been called Tague, Francey had told me. Tague had the courage of Queen Maeve, but without thinking he had reached out in the wind one day, and fallen … fallen.

I shivered, but then Sean was next to me. “The tide is still out,” he said. “Not a bit of kelp coming in.”

I wasn’t disappointed. The tide would soon turn. And if we had luck the water would drag back enough of the weed to fill our baskets for soup, with a little left to sweeten the potatoes.

I looked up at him. “I miss Maggie,” I said. “There’s such a space in our family, a space at our hearth. Do you—”

He held up his hand. He knew I was going to ask about Francey. I should have known he wouldn’t answer. If something could be said in two words, he’d say it in one. But this time I was wrong. “I think of America all the time,” he said. “I think of my sister, Mary, and my brother Francey.” His jaw was clenched. “If it takes me forever, I will be there too.” He touched my cheek, a feather of a touch. “And you with me as well.”

We stood there looking at each other until I remembered Patch. I turned quickly. “Patcheen. You are too close to the edge of the water!”

He raced along the sand, arms out, head up, looking beautiful with his fine light hair.

I felt a quick pain in my chest, imagining the
sídhe
sneaking up from their fairy ring and dragging the boy children down. I chased Patch the way he chased the birds and we fell over each other, tumbling and laughing, with Sean Red in back of us, pointing as the tide began to turn. The green kelp spilled toward us in the curl of the waves.

It was then I heard Celia. She stood at the edge of the path, her skirt blowing, motioning to me. I left my basket and ran, but by the time I reached the spot she was gone. Granda? Was he sick? What had happened?

“Patch,” I called. “We’re going home.”

“Without the kelp?” Then he saw my face and took my hand.

We hurried home to see a brown horse tethered at the end of our path, and our door half open.

Devlin the agent
, I thought. My mouth was suddenly dry. Had Lord Cunningham sent him here? Was it about stealing the fish? And Maeve? I wanted to go back to the strand to hide. But Celia and Granda were alone in there with him. I edged into the doorway to stand against the wall, still holding Patch’s hand.

Devlin sat at the hearth on the three-legged stool. Granda and Celia stood together in the middle of the floor. I could see Celia’s hands trembling just a bit.

Devlin looked up as he saw me. “I’ve been telling the others,” he said, “that I have been to the Mallons’.”

Mallons’? What was he talking about? I looped my shawl over the peg.

“They have done well for themselves this year.” Devlin picked at something in his mustache. “They have built a shed. Improved the property. I have been there to raise their rent.”

Anger burned in my chest, and I could feel it in Granda and Celia. I thought of Liam’s work. The heavy rocks, the hours. I closed my teeth tight over the edge of my tongue.

Devlin stared at the fire. “The rent will be due soon.”

“Not until December.” I could feel Patch shrinking behind me.

“Our da is working for the rent, fishing out of Galway,” Celia said.

Devlin rocked back on the stool. “There is talk of trouble in the fields.”

“What fields?” Granda asked, his voice stronger than I had heard it in a long time. “What trouble?”

Devlin spread his hands. “The potatoes are black. In Sligo.”

“A long way away,” Granda said, but I could see the fear in his eyes. I knew what he was thinking; it was the story of the potatoes failing when Da was a boy. Everything else had gone to pay the rent, and there was no food. People had starved, even one of Da’s brothers.

A thump of fear in my chest. Could it happen to us?

“Sligo is not so far after all,” Devlin said, and stood up. “Potatoes or no potatoes, there will be rent to pay. Without the rent, the tenants will go, and the houses will be tumbled. The sheep will come in and graze on the empty fields. I have come to warn you.”

I could hear Granda’s breathing and see Celia clutch at her knitting. But before any of us could think of what to say, he was gone.

C
HAPTER
7

I
t had been a strange fall, lovely in the mornings, with heavy rain and fingers of clouds reaching down from the cliffs every afternoon. And today was the same. I thought about Anna; I knew I had to go to her. If only I could stay near our fire, picturing horses clopping down Smith Street, Brooklyn, in the orange flames, imagining Maggie home with us.

I left the house with Maeve a step in back of me and walked along the edge of the field. The potatoes grew strong, the leaves large and flat. I pictured roots swelling under the ground, the tubers round by now. My mouth watered. I had a headache because I had given half my breakfast to Maeve. Celia had given half hers, too. I had seen her.

I lifted my head. There was something in the air. A strange smell. I tried to think of what it was, but the wind blew across the field, tangling my hair and pulling at my petticoat. By the time I straightened myself out, the smell had drifted away.

At the stone wall I searched out the sea in the distance. It shimmered in the sunlight, but underfoot my toes squished in the mud, and next to me, Maeve’s fur was matted with it.

Maeve saw something that I didn’t see. A movement in the distance? Something wild? She was off in an instant, ears back, loping across the field.

Da would have loved her. Da with his blue eyes and his laugh like Maggie’s. Da on a ship, sails billowing.

I passed Sean Red’s cottage. A brown wren worked on a nest in the roof’s thatching. Inside, Sean’s mother scolded someone in her rough voice. Just past was the path to Anna Donnelly’s.

The crows
chew-chewed
overhead, but everything else was still. Across the field Anna’s cow lowed, wanting to be milked. I looked for the pail and went across to her. Kneeling with my head on her side, squirting the milk into the pail, I thought how warm and sweet it would be on my tongue. I wished I could hurry home with it, pail and all, bending a little, the wire handles making ridges in my fingers.

I could see all of us in a circle. In the center, the pot of potatoes, small mountains in a sea of white milk.

We hadn’t had milk since last year when Da first came home, and there’d be none this year until he returned.

“Did I ask you to milk my own cow?” a voice asked.

Anna stood at her doorway.

I gave the cow a pat and a push and reached for the pail. I answered her in the same harsh way. “Your cow needed milking.”

“Your tongue is sharp enough to cut a stone,” she said.

I wanted to say that no one’s tongue was as sharp as hers. I never would, though. I raised my head. It almost seemed as if her eyes were twinkling. But then her hand went to her mouth.

I turned to see what she was seeing, and it was Maeve, flying across the field. “My dog,” I said.

“A
madra,”
she said. As small as she was, Anna bent toward the dog, waiting. Maeve passed me and stopped at Anna’s feet. They stood together, faces close. Anna reached out to touch Maeve’s ears, her back, her sides, the dog nuzzling her shoulder.

“My son had a dog like this once,” Anna said.

I couldn’t imagine Anna with a son or a dog.

“Maeve was Cat Neely’s dog,” I said slowly.

“And they are gone,” she said. “And my coin as well.”

I opened my mouth to tell her what had happened. But a sound came from the distance. Someone in the valley had wailed. Someone with a high thin voice.

I swiveled around, the milk sloshing over the edge of the pail. “What was that?” The cow moved uneasily.

Anna raised her head, her sharp chin jutting out. She leaned against her cane with one hand, but the other hand, stained with peat, was up against the cottage doorway, trembling the slightest bit.

Anna hobbled out, going around to the small field of potatoes that wandered up the hill in back. “I can smell it,” she said. “I’ve smelled it before. Years ago.”

I followed her, stopping to slide the pail of milk into the doorway. The smell was stronger now, coming in waves on the wind. And then I knew.

The potatoes.

“Yes. Something poisoning the potatoes,” Anna said as if she knew what I was thinking.

“Not yours,” I told her, looking over the field. I stood on tiptoes to see the edge of our own field, the potato plants as strong and the stems as thick as they had been when I passed them earlier. “And not ours.”

She bent over the potatoes, hobbling from one plant to another, patting the leaves, touching the stems. She turned and pointed to the spade that leaned against the wall. “Bring the loy.”

I hurried back across the field, stepping around Anna’s pig.

I gripped the spade hard.
Think about green leaves
, I told myself.
Think about the sun in the sky and Da fishing on a big ship. Think about good things
.

What else?

A red wedding dress. Number 416 Smith Street in Brooklyn
.

Think about …

Stories of famine, people dying in their houses. Da’s little brother. A boy like Patch
.

Please let the potatoes be all right
.

I dug where Anna pointed, Maeve in the way, ears lifting gently in the wind. I eased the spade under the firm leaves of a potato plant, watching the earth come away in thick clods. The plant tilted, and I edged the spade out again.

Anna leaned over me, leaned so close that I could smell … what was it? A lovely smell. The smell of spring, or fuchsia growing along the walls in August. She reached out to pull the plant up, to touch the small clump of potatoes, brown and firm, to brush away the soil with her wrinkled hands.

“They’re all right.” I let out my breath and uncurled my fingers. I could feel the sun on my head.

Anna’s eyes gleamed. “Fine potatoes.” The lines around her mouth softened. She almost smiled.

“Fine.” I began to smile back, but I felt a sudden pain in my chest:
The coin hidden under the water of St. Patrick’s Well. How much food would it have bought? A coin that hadn’t even had a wish to it
.

Anna shook more soil off the potatoes and her face hardened again. “Not even enough for a meal. A wee meal with almost no milk.” She talked to herself as she walked past me to her door. “It is still a way to the harvest.”

I stood there, tracing circles in the soil with my toes, watching Maeve follow her inside. Then I went after them slowly, not daring to put my foot on the step. “The dog,” I called.

From inside there was silence.

“It’s not that I want her to come with me,” I said.

Anna was back at the door.

“We can’t feed her,” I told her. “There’s not even enough for all of us now.”

She brought her pipe to her mouth.

“Would you …,” I began.

“I would,” she said.

The wail came again. I shaded my eyes and looked across the valley to see the cliffs in the distance and the tree that sheltered Patrick’s Well. Where was that sound coming from?

Anna sighed. “Go back to your own potatoes, this day,” she said. “Go and look carefully. Look for the black.”

I nodded. The smell was stronger now, that terrible smell. “I will come again tomorrow,” I said.

“To spill more of my milk.”

I looked back over my shoulder. She and Maeve stood together. Maeve had decided where she belonged. She didn’t even try to follow me as I crossed the field. When I glanced back, she was looking up at Anna, tail waving like a plume of wheat in the wind. Anna had her hand lightly on the dog’s head, but I could see her face. I could see she was afraid.

I stood there for another moment; then I started for home.