The Good People (34 page)

‘Hush now. Close your eyes for me, Áine. Take a deep breath.’

Nance felt her hand grow warm against the woman’s clothes. She felt Áine’s desire for a child. She felt how she wanted it more than anything. How when Áine bled, bent double by the pain of it, the woman imagined her body was breaking faith with her, punishing her for its emptiness.

Nance saw Áine forcing herself to rise from bed and set the water to boil on the fire for John’s breakfast. She saw her sweeping the cabin floor while her body knotted and unknotted itself in aimless ferocity. She saw how Áine hated the visitors who came on night-rambling, the men with greasy fiddles in hand, saw how she hated the way the women took up the precious warmth of the fire, how the men threw pieces of potato to the corner of the room for the fairies that she, cramped, falling out of herself, would have to kneel and sweep up when they left.

Nance saw Áine creeping to the ditch behind the house to replace her rags, marvelling at the violence of her womanhood. The bloody reminder of her unmothering.

There was a cough. Nance opened her eyes. Áine was looking at her, frightened.

‘What?’ she asked, her voice trembling.

Nance removed her hand and pulled her stool closer. ‘You’re a good woman, Áine. Faith, God knows we all have our troubles to bear. And God knows there are enough people in this world who turn their anger onto those around them. But some, I think, turn their anger against themselves. I think perhaps your body is sickening because you are sad.’

‘Faith, I’m not, Nance.’

‘The mind is a powerful thing, Áine. A mighty thing.’

‘Sure, what reason have I to be sad?’

Nance waited. Silence settled.

Áine pulled at the tasselled ends of her shawl. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Nance.’

‘’Tis about a child.’

The woman hesitated, then nodded, miserable. ‘’Twas shameful for me. The night Brigid’s baby died. ’Twas shame in being taken out of there like I was no help at all. Like I was no woman at all.’

Nance said nothing.

‘Sure, I know what they say about us,’ Áine whispered. ‘“A stick of yew in a bundle of kindling.”’

‘You want a child. There is no shame in that.’

‘There is shame in a wife not being able to give her man what he wants.’ Áine looked up, pained. ‘John is a good man, but his family think ill of me. They suspect me because I am barren. They blame poor crops on me. They say the potatoes are in sympathy with me. The cow . . .’ She clenched her jaw and shook her head. ‘All the women here in this valley, they come to my house on
cuaird
, and . . . sometimes they bring their weans and the children dig holes in my floor and chase my chickens. They make me feel my childlessness. Nance, I think they mock me. One of the women! Her daughter refused to take food from my hand because the girl thought I had been away with Them and that was the reason for my having no children!’ Áine choked back a strange laugh. ‘’Tis not though, is it? ’Tis not the Good People who have had a hand in my . . .’ She brought her hands to her stomach.

‘Would it frighten you to think so?’

‘’Twould give reason to it. But I never did anything against Them. I’ve a mighty respect for the Good People.’ She hesitated. ‘Kate Lynch told me of a woman whose own man struck her with a band of elm to fix a child in her.’

Nance gave a wan smile. ‘Áine, are you asking after a beating of elm?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘’Tis right for you to visit me. Don’t be blaming yourself. There is a natural sympathy in this world. For every ill thing that can come upon us, there’s a remedy to lift it. All cures are within our reach.’ Nance stood and offered Áine her hand. ‘Here, follow me.’

The two women walked out of the
bothán
and into the cool calm of the evening. Everything was still except for a fog slipping down into the valley from the mountains.

‘’Tis a queer place here,’ Áine whispered. ‘I forget what silence is, married to a blacksmith.’

‘Sure, ’tis quiet. Even the birds are silent in the mist.’

As they drew closer to the woods, Áine fell back. ‘Perhaps I’ll wait for you at the cabin, Nance. Perhaps I’ll come another time. John might be wondering where I’m to.’

‘I’ll let no harm come to you.’

‘How can you see the way? There’s such a fog.’

‘All the better. No one will see us.’

They walked into the trees. The ground was soft with leaf litter and the oak and alder, appearing out of the mist as they walked, sent a slow dripping from the branches above. Áine lifted her face, letting the drops dash onto her forehead, the water trickling down her nose and chin.

‘It has been a long time since I wandered in this way.’

‘Sure, a woman with a husband shares her marriage with the hearth.’

‘Did you never get married yourself, Nance?’

Nance smiled. ‘Ah, ’twas never a one would have me. I spent all my time as a girl in the mountains. I went courting with the sun.’

‘I used to go walking up the mountains as a girl. To the west.’

‘Did you now?’

‘The wind up there always smelt sweeter.’

‘Sure, I know it.’ Nance crouched down and began to rummage amongst a tangle of ferns and ivy. ‘Do you know what plant this is?’

‘
Dearna Mhuire
.’

Nance plucked the soft, pleated leaves of lady’s mantle, setting them on the ground beside her. When she had a neat pile she crossed herself, and Áine helped her to her feet.

‘What are they for?’

‘You’ll see now.’

Back inside the warmth of the
bothán
, Nance quickened the fire with dried furze and set her crock, filled with river water, on the flames.

‘Could you know this plant in the wild? Pick it safely?’

Áine nodded. ‘I picked lady’s mantle for my mother.’

‘When the air grows warmer, the leaves will have a dew on them, and the best way to fix a child in you would be to mix that dew with water and bathe in it. Until then, we can hope for the same with an infusion.’ She passed the leaves to Áine. ‘Now. Boil these in a little clean water and drink of it for twenty mornings.’

‘What is that pot there for, then?’

‘Tansy.’ Nance plucked several withered leaves off a dried plant hanging from the rafter and crumbled them into the water. ‘If you cannot go far from the house for the
dearna Mhuire
, tansy leaves brewed as a tea will also help you.’

The boiling water became aromatic and Nance poured off the steaming liquid, handing a piggin to Áine.

She hesitated. ‘There’s no word of truth in what they’re saying, is there, Nance?’

‘What’s that? What are they saying?’

‘The bittersweet berries. Brigid.’

Nance felt her heart drop, but she kept her face calm. ‘What do you believe, Áine?’

The blacksmith’s wife looked at the cup in her hands, and then, as if deciding, took a long draught. ‘’Tis bitter.’

Nance was relieved. ‘So is life. Make it to your taste, but take care not to use too much. Drink it for seven days. Today will be the first of your seven.’

Áine held her nose and drained the piggin.

‘Will you remember, Áine?’

‘I will.’

‘Distilled lady’s mantle for twenty days and a tea of tansy leaf for seven. And there is something else you must do.’

Áine paused. ‘What is that?’

‘When you turn your cow out to grass, let her eat the flowers of the field and then catch her water. ’Tis all-flowers water. All the good of the herbs she has eaten will be in it, and if you bathe in it you will have their cure.’

‘Thank you, Nance.’

‘And I will hold the charm for you in my mind, Áine O’Donoghue. Know you that. Boil the herbs on a hot turf fire, and all the while I will be holding the charm for you, and we will see you with a child before this year is out.’ Nance gripped her hand. ‘And then you may tell them that there was no harm in that bittersweet.’

Long after Áine had left, Nance sat brooding in front of her fire. For the first time since she had moved to the valley, she felt a threat against her, a summons to prove her ability. When she was younger it had been enough for people to know that she was the niece of Mad Maggie, that she had been taught the cure, shown the ways of the Good People. Then, when she was on the road, they saw the fact of her ability in her loneliness, in the absence of a husband, her crooked hands, her habit of smoking, of drinking like a man. They placed their faith in her because she was different from them.

But now Nance sensed doubt. Suspicion.

I must get this child back, Nance thought. If I can restore Micheál to Nóra, then they will see that there is no word of a lie in my dealings with Them. If I give Áine O’Donoghue a child, and return Micheál Kelliher to his grandmother, they will all return to me.

Nance shivered, thinking of the foxglove treatment. She had not had another visit from Nóra Leahy, and she guessed that this meant the changeling was still in the house. It had not worked to return her mother either, although they had tried. Maggie had made Nance sit on Mary Roche’s chest to pin her arms to her side, and they had poured the foxglove down her throat while she spluttered and cursed them, while she spat it back in Nance’s face. It had taken a long struggle before the fairy woman had swallowed the liquid, but when she did the change had been unsettling. The heart of the changeling had slowed to an erratic pumping. She had grown listless, then foamed at the mouth with her eyes wide and rolled, had vomited throughout the night. But the
lus mór
made her docile. Made her quiet when she had been screaming. Made her placid and waxen when she had been red-faced and scratching.

Her da had not liked to see the change, for all he was desperate for his wife to return. He had taken Maggie’s gifts of
poitín
and gone on rambling, and had not returned some nights at all.

‘Your da only needs a bit of time to himself,’ Maggie had said. ‘’Tis no easy thing to see your wife swept and the violence needed to bring her back.’

Nance, older then, had struggled to remember her mother as she had been before the Good People took her. She had grown used to the fairy woman left in her place.

‘What will you do if there’s no restoring Mam through
lus mór
?’

‘There are other ways.’

Nance was silent for a moment. ‘Maggie? I want to ask you something.’

‘What is it?’

‘How did you get that mark on your face? You never told me.’

‘I don’t like to be talking of it.’

‘I heard a man saying you got it after your mam was hit in the face with a blackberry. When she was carrying, like.’

Maggie rolled her eyes, began to fuss with her pipe. ‘’Twas not that at all.’

‘Were you born with it?’

Plumes of blue smoke in the evening air. The whirring of a summer night.

‘I was swept. Once. Just like your mam. They brought me back to myself with a poker reddened in the fire.’

‘They burnt you?’

‘I was away. The fire brought me round to myself.’

‘You never said.’

‘’Twas when I was away that I got the knowledge.’

‘Maggie, you never said. All these years you’ve been living here with us and you never told me you were swept.’

Her aunt shrugged and absently touched the mark on her face.

‘Does Da know?’

Her aunt nodded.

‘We should do that to Mam.’

Maggie drew on her pipe and let out a shuddering breath. ‘Never on my life.’

‘But it worked!’

‘Nance, we’ll not be putting the fairy out of her with fire.’

Silence between them then. Corncrakes rasping their pattern outside.

‘Did it hurt?’

But Maggie never answered. There was a knock on the door, and there stood the boatmen of the lough, holding the body of her father aloft. Drowned, they said. Under before they could fish him out. Terrible accident. Terrible misfortune for the family. For Nance. Her mam gone soft in the head, and how would she and her aunt keep up with rent? How to stop the crowbars breaking down the door and pulling the thatch apart? They would do what they could but they had families of their own. Terrible misfortune. God be with them.

In her cabin Nance closed her eyes and rested her head on her knees. All this time past, the years lived through, but the sight of Maggie kneeling over her da and the howling between them that night, a cry taken up by the fairy woman in the bed, her mother’s shadow, all ringing in her ears as though she were in that room again with her father’s lungs filled with water. That sound, the mourning of three women all touched by the fairies, all unmoored.

There was no one Maggie turned away afterwards, no matter the sickness upon them or the badness they were after. Her aunt never said, but Nance knew. When the ones with the glower on them came, asking for the tides of luck to be turned, Maggie began to send Nance on errands.