“Tessie Ryan,” Katie told me. “The raggedy Ryans.” Tessie’s husband, Neddy, worked around the place for Owen and did duty days for the landlord. Katie said to watch what I said to her because she twisted everything. Neddy Ryan was small, too, and both of them had twitchy noses that Katie said put her in mind of two rabbits. “But their daughter Mary’s a lovely girl,” Katie said. “Minds my Annie sometimes.”
We watched Tessie go up to Michael and heard her ask to see the gold sovereigns. Michael brought them out of the sack he had tied to his waist and laid them in her cupped hands.
Don’t, I wanted to say. Don’t.
“They’re heavy and very cold,” Tessie said. “Never held as many as this. My father had a gold coin we pawned with a gombeen man, but we couldn’t pay the interest on what we borrowed, so we lost the coin.”
Tessie fingered the sovereigns. The good fortune of others made begrudgers of some. This woman is trouble. Another reason to keep the knowledge of Patrick Kelly to myself. What if there’s a reward out for his capture?
Mam looked away from Tessie, who still clutched the money. Poor critters, she’d be thinking. No sense of the wide world.
“I left my pipes at Máire’s. Let me get them,” Michael said as he put the coins back into the bag.
He’ll hide the money in Máire’s cottage, then carry it up to Owen’s shed and bury the money deep and safe.
Máire and Johnny led the crowd out onto the hard-packed sand on the strand in front of the cottages for the dancing. Bits of pink-and-purple clouds lingered in the sky, their colors reflected in the Bay. “Great to dance so near the waves,” Katie said as Michael piped the first reel. The Bearna people, well used to one another, stepped through the set fast and sure—come together, four hands, two hands, hands across the back. Máire pulled the Rahoon ones into the dance. Farmers and fishermen mixed, swinging one another’s wives and daughters, the strand full of music and motion as the sky eased into night and the Bay disappeared into the dark.
Behind the seawall, I saw a little girl crying. I went over to her. “What is it?” I asked. “Come and join the dancing.”
She cried harder.
“What’s your name?”
“Mary.”
“For Our Lady. That’s my sister’s name, too, though she says it the Irish way, ‘Mah-ree.’ . . . Can you say that?”
“Mah-ree,” she said through her sniffles.
“Lovely,” I said. “Now, won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”
“I’m afraid of this big water.”
“Don’t be. The Bay’s behaving itself tonight—so quiet and gentle. When the tide’s out like this, there’s shiny stones at the shoreline. Would you like one?”
She nodded. She took my hand and let me lead her to the water’s edge. I picked up a round pink pebble streaked with green and silver and put it in her hand. She rubbed the stone and smiled at me.
“Can I keep it?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t tell my mother.”
“Who’s your mother?”
“Tessie Ryan.”
“Oh. Well, uhm . . . see the fellow playing the pipes? That’s the man I’m to marry.”
She looked over at Michael and back to me. “You’re lucky.”
“I am,” I said, and hugged her.
Mary ran over to Katie Mulloy, who held her wee Annie. Mary showed the stone to the little girl, who laughed.
On the strand, Máire and Johnny lifted their arms and clasped hands to make a bridge for the dancers. Dennis and Josie, the girl he was courting, ducked underneath. Mam and Da followed, with dozens of couples coming behind them. Faugh-a-Ballagh! Clear the Way!
The reel ended. Michael sent out the first notes of a jig. Owen Mulloy found Granny. A space was cleared, and the two of them began dancing. Granny kept her shoulders and arms still, stomping her heels and toes, fast and furious. Owen Mulloy was hard-pressed to match her, but keep up he did. The other dancers made a circle around them, clapping and shouting.
It was Owen who cried, “Enough! A recess, Michael, please!”
“We’re celebrating our wedding before the marriage,” Michael said to Owen Mulloy as he drank from the jug Owen had carried down from Askeeboy. I sat between them on the seawall.
“No bad thing to have a quiet ceremony. Major Pyke needn’t know,” Mulloy said, “stuck away like he is in that big gray stone house at the edge of a cliff up the coast. All the furniture, crystal chandeliers, and carpets in the place come from the other side of the world, paid for on the backs of the likes of us. And Her Ladyship, whose money keeps the whole shebang going, wanders around like a ghost, drugged to the gills with laudanum. The young Captain stays away, off with his regiment. A place to avoid, I’ll tell you that.”
Long after the full moon rose over the water, Michael and Champion led the Mulloys and the Rahoon people up the hill by its light. Máire didn’t go home but sat whispering with me at our doorway as the short summer darkness gave way to dawn.
I told Máire why my wedding would be quiet and quick. “Máire, he was disgusting, that old Major, the way he looked at me.”
“I know,” she said. “Not pleasant to have men’s eyes trailing over your body that way.”
“But, Máire, I thought you liked the attention.”
She shook her head. “Nice when
Johnny
calls me his Snowy-Breasted Pearl. But one of his sisters heard him and told her husband, and now other fellows call me ‘Pearl’ to my face.”
“I didn’t know.”
“They wouldn’t say it in front of the family,” she said. “It does give me a kind of power. I can keep men guessing with a bit of banter, a joke. But sometimes I wonder, Who’s Máire, and who’s the Pearl?”
“Máire, I think I understand. I have someone inside me who’s Honora but not Honora, and she says the most outrageous things. But, Máire, I can let both of them speak to Michael.”
“And I have released my snowy breasts to Johnny,” she said. “Into his hands I commend my—”
“Máire, that’s blasphemy!”
But we both started laughing.
Then Johnny shouted from their cottage, “Máire, have you no home to go to?”
“Your Pearl’s ready!” she said, then whispered to me, “I hope he is.” She winked and was gone.
E
VEN A QUIET
wedding costs something, what with the jugs of poitín and the priest’s fee. Da didn’t want Michael to spend one of the gold coins and take away a father’s right and privilege. So we were to wait until the boats went out and Da had a good catch to sell.
The Claddagh Admiral decided the fleet would set out three days after the fifteenth of August. I was up with Da, three hours before first light, helping with the nets and sails.
“See, Da,” I said, “I made a packet of oat cakes, and here’s your salt and ashes.”
“Thank you, Honora.”
I wanted to say: Special for you, Da, this last time before my wedding. But that sounded ill-omened. I looked over at the small spirit house Da had built so many years ago as an offering to the winds and said a prayer.
Máire and I stood on the strand with Mam and the other women as the twenty Bearna boats sailed into the still-dark Bay to join the Claddagh men, all of them following the Admiral’s white sail just visible against the sky. A fair wind moved the fleet down the center of the Bay.
“Going well,” Máire said.
“Johnny’s boat’s already up with the leaders,” I said.
“He likes to be one of the first.”
Mam and I spent the next day at Knocnacuradh, cleaning the cottage while Michael helped in Owen’s fields. The Rahoon people and the Bearna fishermen had joined in the meitheal that built our cottage, set apart from the clachán above the tight circle of cottages on the brow of the hill.
“From up here, we can see Galway Bay,” Michael had explained to Owen Mulloy.
Owen had not been pleased. He’d found us tracing out the shape of the rooms with pebbles a week after the Galway Races. “If you don’t live in the clachán, there’ll be remarks passed, Michael,” he’d said.
“What remarks?” I’d asked.
“Well, Honora, you’re not a farm wife, things you don’t understand.”
“What things, Owen?”
But he didn’t answer. Unlike him. Then in a rush, “It’s Tessie Ryan. She’s telling the women you have notions, Honora. Your ed-u-ca-tion, and then . . .” He’d turned to Michael. “Fisherwomen are known to boss their men, Michael. Going back and forth to Galway City—what do they do in town?”
“They sell fish,” Michael said. He’d folded his arms and swayed forward and back a bit. I’d not seen his face so set-looking. Angry.
Owen Mulloy didn’t notice, talking to me. “Tessie says your granny works spells and your mam brews potions from herbs picked at the full moon.”
“Medicine,” I’d said, “for women giving birth. My mam’s the midwife in our village.”
“I told the others that,” Owen had said, “but then Tessie started going on about your sister, the one called the Pearl. Some stories she picked up, so . . . better she doesn’t visit. . . .”
“Stop right there, Owen,” Michael had said. “I’ll not live in a place where Honora and her family are not respected. All bargains are off. Come, Honora.”
Michael was being im-pet-u-ous, Owen had said. “Put the cottage in the clachán. Prove Tessie Ryan wrong.”
But Michael wouldn’t listen. “We’re off, Mr. Mulloy. Thank you for your help with the race. Keep your fee, but please return the rent money.”
“Go, then.”
Owen Mulloy’s temper had flared. He’d started hopping around, pointing his finger at Michael’s chest. Did we feel no gratitude? He was only trying to let us know. Michael’d been breathing heavy. Owen’s lucky he’s the smaller man, I’d thought, or Michael would punch him.
“Michael,” I’d said. “Wait.”
“
Wait
?”
“I know you want to bring these fields to life.”
“Not if you’re misunderstood and insulted.”
“What if I want to stay?” I’d asked Michael.
Then Michael had looked at me. “You choose, Honora.”
Owen had started sputtering. “You’d let
her
decide? A woman dictating to her husband?”
And that had riled Michael again—the two of them began shouting at each other.
“Michael, Owen, stop! Would you both listen to me? Owen Mulloy, surely you know the story told about the wife of the fellow you’re named for—Eoghan, the chieftain?”
“Not the time for a story,” Michael had said.
“Always time. Fadó,” I’d intoned as the both of them glared at each other.
Better make this quick, I’d thought as I began one of Granny’s best tales: “The Cailleach at the Well.” The cailleach, or hag, looked after a well deep in the forest, I told them. Very old and wrinkled, she was, with a wart on her nose.
“One day, the seven sons of the chieftain Eoghan came to the well, very thirsty, hot from their hunting. The hag held out a golden cup filled with water. ‘You each may have a drink,’ she told them, ‘but first you must kiss me.’”
And now Michael and Owen were listening, leaning against the old stone wall.
“The brothers refused her. ‘Too ugly,’ one said, and they rode away. But the youngest, Niall, stayed. He looked into the woman’s eyes and saw kindness there, and loneliness. He kissed her rightly on the lips, and she gave her cup to him. He drank.
“‘You will have the Sovereignty of Erin,’ she said. ‘You will be chieftain.’
“‘I won’t,’ he said. ‘I’m the youngest of seven brothers.’
“Now, among the old Irish,” I’d reminded Michael and Owen, “the eldest did not necessarily succeed his father. Any son or nephew might be chosen. Still, Niall felt he had no chance.
“But the cailleach said again, ‘You will have the Sovereignty of Erin, and when what I say comes true, you must marry me. Promise me.’
“‘That’s a promise I can make,’ he thought. No fear of being chieftain, so he agreed to marry her. Not too long after this, Eoghan, the chieftain, died, and who was selected? Only Niall. The night before he was to be inaugurated, Niall found the hag waiting for him in his tent. She’d come to claim what he’d promised. In those days a promise was a promise, and terrible consequences befell a man who broke his word.
“Niall put his head in his hands. No escape. But when he looked up, he saw a beautiful young woman standing before him. ‘Where’s the other one?’ he asked.
“‘I am she,’ the woman said. ‘I’m under a spell. For twelve hours of every twenty-four I can appear as you see me now. But for the other twelve, I will have the form of the hag. Now, what’s it to be?’
“‘What do you mean?’
“‘As your wife, shall I be as you see me now by day, or by night?’
“He thought long and hard. If he picked ‘by day,’ all the world would see he had a beautiful wife, but then at night she’d be the hag. Why not have her beautiful by night and keep her to himself?”
Owen had interrupted me. “Go for the night!” he’d said. “Who cares what people think? If you’ve got a gorgeous woman in your bed and no one the wiser . . .” He’d stopped. “Go on, Honora.”
“And then Niall thought about the woman. How did she feel? And he said to her what Michael said to me: ‘You choose.’ And the spell was broken. She could be her true self, lovely all the time. She became queen of Tir Eoghan and the happiest woman in Ireland.”
Owen had gotten off the wall and taken my hand. “That’s a mighty story, and I take your meaning.”
“You do?”
“I’m going to tell Tessie Ryan to shut her gob. And will you be choosing to stay with us, Honora?”
“I will,” I’d said. “In our cottage on the high hill.”
“You choose, Honora,” Michael had said, and by all that’s sweet and holy, I have chosen well, I thought as Mam and I worked.
“A wonderful view, isn’t this, Mam? And Michael says one day we’ll have a window.”
We set the pot Michael bought in Galway City on the iron hook in the hearth.
“I wouldn’t say anything to Tessie Ryan about a window.”
“I won’t, Mam.”
“I noticed there’s milkweed down the boreen, and marshy places have irises, which can be useful,” Mam told me. “I’ll give you a list of healing plants to look for and note the best time to pick them. Some need a full moon, others dawn.”
I wouldn’t be mentioning
that
to Tessie Ryan, either.
Hard to live two miles away from Mam and Da, Granny, Máire, and the boys, I thought as Mam and I started down the hill on the Ballymoneen Road.