Turning the Stones (41 page)

‘But I knew,’ Kitty hisses, ‘that those devils were flesh and blood.’

‘Was anything ever seen of Nora again?’ My voice trembles. What a hopeless question. She was swept out to sea – how could it be otherwise? But it agitates me to find Kitty answering me with a nod. ‘When the starlings arrived later that month I saw her, faith. On Josey’s mountain she was, looking backwards to her home. Others saw her, too. She was seen riding a sea horse across the bay, going as fast as the wind in the sky.’

I am driven to climb to my feet then in order to take upon myself the weight of my emotions – grief on the one hand; wrath on the other. They dangle with equal heaviness like brimming pails suspended from the chains of a yoke.

Captain McDonagh is standing, too, his cloak on his shoulders. He says, ‘I am sorry for the loss of good people, God rest their souls.’

‘The outrage has been on me these many years,’ Kitty says, ‘but I did not have the mastery of myself until now to avenge the O’Hallorans and return Molly to her rightful place. Only as I have grown older has a marvel come in my way and my powers have swelled. When I look into a pool of water, do I see my own reflection? I do not. I see things. Scenes from places far away show themselves to me just as surely as if I were looking in on them from a window. You, Molly, I saw you. Weren’t you walking out of the light into the dark with a man in a coat the colour of heather? I saw how tight he held your arm, and a crowd around you.’

I am shocked to my core. She cannot possibly know of
Johnny Waterland in his violet suit and of his bringing me from the assembly rooms in Soho and walking me through the shoals of gawpers and the scroungers in the square.

Kitty reaches out a scrawny hand to me and I help her to her feet. ‘Don’t you worry now about the she-devil who hurried you off,’ she growls. ‘The greed of her! Hadn’t she a daughter already when she took you from us?’

Oh, Lord! How does Kitty Conneely know of Eliza? Perhaps it is true that she possesses weird powers, although I know that Captain McDonagh will not credit it. But in my state of wonderment I am disposed to believe her. Who is not to say that our feelings and thoughts may be portals to prodigious insights if only we are awakened to them?

Kitty offers me a grim smile. ‘Let me tell you a good one, Molly. That woman of the hat will pay a penalty for the wrong that was done and I will see that she pays. I must do so, for I owe Nora a debt.’

Captain McDonagh with an abrupt movement turns to me and says, ‘Molly.’ At the sound of this name on his lips my heart swells. It sounds easy and right and my qualms about its use slip away. ‘Molly,’ he says, ‘you may come away from this melancholy, now, if you wish, but I must be on my way.’

‘You hound, McDonagh!’ Kitty cries. ‘Do not try to spirit the child away a second time or you will feel the heat of my wrath, so you will!’

‘Why do you ask me such a thing?’ I will say that I feel a tremor of excitement – dare I call it that? – at Captain McDonagh’s invitation.

Instead of replying to me directly, he turns to Kitty and
says, ‘She is not used to a place such as this. And you would have her live here with a crowd of ghosts.’

I bristle at his deciding what must answer for my well-being without weighing my own opinion, and yet I feel a pull towards him. But Kitty’s red-rimmed eyes well suddenly with tears. She has a terrible raw look about her as she turns to me in wordless appeal. How can I leave her now, even though the thought of saying farewell to Captain McDonagh saddens me more than I can say? I must bow to the influence of my conscience.

‘I meant to come to Mrs Conneely and here I will stay, if she will have me.’

‘As you wish.’ Captain McDonagh puts on his hat. He gathers up his saddlebag and lodges one of his pistols in it. ‘I am off now, Kitty,’ he says. ‘The morning is half spent and I have much to do.’

‘And here’s me thinking not a quarter of an hour had passed since you stepped in.’ Kitty has brightened now that she knows that I will remain with her.

The captain says distantly, as if he is thinking of something else, ‘It’s a tricky thing is time.’

‘You are right there, Mac. We will never get to the bottom of it.’

The captain takes one or two steps towards the doorway and then he pauses. Is he about to say something to me? I steel myself to resist him. But he looks past me at Kitty, and says, ‘What is the debt, I wonder?’ Kitty regards him with a careful look on her face. ‘What,’ he presses, ‘is the debt that you owe Nora Mulkerrin?’

Kitty places the back of her wrist to her forehead as if her
head hurts and closes her eyes against an onslaught of pain, it seems. ‘Mike and I were never favoured with a child, have I told you that?’ She opens her eyes and grimaces at the rafters. ‘At any rate, it preyed on my mind. Do you know it destroyed me sometimes to see Nora dandling the babies upon her knee?’ She sighs. ‘It was to the holy well I went again one day and my purpose was to make a vow. I swore I would give up my powers. I would never do cures for others again, if I would only get a little babe in return. That was my solemn promise. I told nobody about this, not even Nora. But from that time onward, do you know –’ Kitty’s mouth twists bitterly – ‘sure, there was no good at all in anything. The killing season came with its cold and the O’Halloran children fell to pining.’ Kitty shakes her head. ‘Nora wanted help from me, of course, to take the sickness off them. She gave me no peace until I would make a cure with
lus-mór
. It is a plant, Molly, well known to influence evil spirits. I made a cure, but it had not a jot of power in it. And do you know why? I would not say over it the words that cause a spell to bind. God forgive me, I did not tell Nora that my cure was useless, and for my sin her children were brought away one after the other. My blazing Mike was taken too for good measure and my heart was shattered.’

Captain McDonagh says, ‘Kitty, I will tell you that there is no human blame in those deaths, and if you think me wrong, then you have a conceit on you beyond all pity. Thousands died in that year through cold and hunger and disease.’ He breaks off with an intake of breath and I can see the marks of sorrow on his face among other untold hardships.

Kitty snaps, ‘You have no understanding of things, Connla
McDonagh, since you do not live among your people any more. In any case, the woman must forfeit her daughter. That is the penalty.’

There is nothing in this cottage but an endless series of shocks. What does Kitty mean by
forfeit her daughter
? Surely she cannot be referring to Eliza. I cannot say whether I have come to this place because of a fateful personal contract driven by a supernatural force, but truly I do not wish Eliza harm. I doubt that Kitty’s powers, whatever they are, will stretch across the sea in their hunt for revenge, but in any case I say to her, ‘Mrs Conneely, I do not wish to play a part in your penalty, however you mean to manifest it. Will you give it up, for my sake, at least?’

‘Yes, give it up, Kitty,’ the captain adds. ‘A curse is an awful thing to take upon yourself.’

Kitty looks at me and speaks with a voice that is hard. ‘You have been influenced by Connla, so you have.’ She grimaces at him and says, ‘I see where your eye lands and what you want to take for yourself.’ Her gaze passes from the captain to me and I flush at her words. ‘But I am more powerful than you, McDonagh. I have turned the stones. I have said all I mean to say, and there’s no use in it any more. That girl there will die and she is meant to die – and Molly will be at home once more.’ Kitty’s face closes.

‘Vengefulness will not bring my family back.’ I sigh. ‘Eliza Waterland and I grew up together, Kitty, and I hold her in affection. Let her alone, please, I beg you.’

Kitty says, ‘It’s strange to our ways you have become, my jewel, like Connla here. He is an outsider now. Nor do you know how things are done. When a heart is killed it must be
avenged. It is a chain of consequence. Sure, it is simple enough to understand – just as earth is to wood and wood is to fire and fire is to stone and stone is to wind and wind is to sky and sky is to rain and rain is to earth. The chain must be closed, faith, or danger and death will attend you. The stones have been turned.’

My head reels with Kitty’s spiralling words.

Captain McDonagh says, ‘Do not let her mesmerise you, Molly. Make a bargain with her instead and she will bend your way.’

‘What do you care, man, for you do not believe me?’ Kitty is standing a little straighter and there is a glitter in her eye that looks as if it could equally blast or bless its object. She says to me, ‘I am all that remains of your people, jewel.’

That is true. She is the keeper of their stories. She knows from whence I came and who I am supposed to be. And I do not wish to abandon her to renewed sorrow. But I cannot let Eliza be harmed. I don’t know if I believe in Kitty’s curse, but she does and I plead with her to overthrow it. ‘Please, Kitty, I cannot stay with you under such a shadow.’

‘You don’t know what you are asking, child! The words that bind a curse are irrevocable. I will not back down from it.’

Captain McDonagh regards her for a long moment. He says, ‘Then you will lose Molly for a second time. Or will you curse me, too, for taking her away?’

Kitty gazes at him with a look that is shrewd as well as anguished. And I – I have the feeling of reaching for something and giving it up all at the same time.

Captain McDonagh says in a deceptively light tone, ‘But
you know that it is pointless to curse me, don’t you, Kitty? Because it is unjustified and it will come back on you. You love this girl more than your own life. Ask her now what you must do to keep her here.’

‘Kitty –’ I turn to the old woman, who is kneading her hands with pent-up emotion – ‘I implore you: unturn the stones.’

The Cove of the Curlew, Connemara
May, 1766

Captain McDonagh proceeds on foot in the forefront, leading the pony. He finds the way with a blackthorn stick, which he prods into the unreliable terrain. I lead the mule and Kitty rides astride her donkey at my back. The stones on which she bound the curse are on the flank of Cashel Hill, she says. She has withdrawn into herself and hunches moodily inside a black mantle that is so threadbare it resembles a large cobweb. Captain McDonagh will accompany us part of the way before diverging to his rendezvous with the French ship.

As we feel our way among the hummocks and the interconnecting flushes of the bog, I play the scene on the strand over and again in my head. I see Mrs Waterland step through the shingle with her discriminating eye searching for what she can find. I can imagine the wanting coming off her like the steam of a melting frost. Did the oarsman mistake Josey’s ash pole for a musket? Did he shoot him out of panic? When Kitty described his stooped shoulders and a small head that thrust out of them like a turtle’s, I recognised Theodore Sutton. I suppose Mr Waterland must have paid him well to forget what took place on that island strand. How else came Sutton by his unlikely house in Parkgate?

Guilt must have been at the root of those gnawings in the
master’s guts and the retchings that have plagued him all these years. I recall the protest of his that I overheard on the stairs at Sedge Court: “Nothing has gone right since you brought that child here!” Now I wonder whether Sutton’s death in the fire was an accident. I wonder if Miss Broadbent’s death was an accident, too. Our governess had a clever mind and she was an acute observer. Perhaps she had guessed that Mrs Waterland’s story about the foundling home was not true. She certainly pressed the mistress on the subject of the admission number, I remember. It was unlike her to be so bold with her employer. But she was distressed in those last weeks of her life at the prospect of losing her post. She might have thought that there was enough at stake to risk bargaining with the mistress in order to keep a roof over her head.

I cannot imagine Mrs Waterland going so far as to take Miss Broadbent’s life in a premeditated way, but she was capable of behaving monstrously on impulse, I know that now. She compounded the wickedness of killing an unarmed man with the snatching of his child. Why did she do such a thing? I believe I know her well enough to be able to say that she did so because the opportunity presented itself. She is a collector, a harvester of objects, and the getting of an object has always meant more to her than the thing possessed. I can attest that there are plenty of gewgaws shelved in Sedge Court’s cupboards that were crowed over in the acquisition and now never see the light of day.

I can understand how it might have excited her to give way to impetuousness. What a relief to disperse the tension of wanting a thing by taking an action no matter how reprehensible. Would not such an act – that is, the decisive assertion
of her will – wouldn’t that have made her feel terribly alive? If she felt the need at all to justify the abduction, I can hear her arguing that the child would be rather better turned out in her new circumstances – and that a person could not be chided for undertaking what was only, in the end, a form of improvement.

I have no memory of travelling in the boat with the Waterlands or of the journey to Sedge Court, or my arrival there. Terror extinguished time and place in my mind. Molly O’Halloran fell into the void, a state without sea and sky, nor form nor matter. Mary Smith – Em– came out of it.

I was severed from you, but my holdfast clung to the rocks. Isn’t it amazing, the power of regeneration? Now Mary Smith is not. But Molly O’Halloran is once more.

*

We are making our way through shreds of mist. I suppose we are not very far from the shore now. In fact, Captain McDonagh has brought us to a pause, his hand in the air. All at once a scalp-prickling sensation comes upon me of being watched. Does someone stalk us on the moor? But I can see nothing out of the ordinary in the scrubby vegetation around us.

Captain McDonagh says, ‘I will leave you and Kitty here, Molly.’

I am dismayed by his announcement. I do not want him to go. Dear God, I so badly do not want him to go.