The Good People (39 page)

How she wished she was back home. She thought of the girls she had seen that May morning, crawling naked through the briars.

God forgive me, she thought.

The river was deep cold, black with tannin. Its touch brought a peal of shock from her lips, and she looked up and saw both women staring at her. Nóra’s fingers gripped the cloth of her apron. ‘It won’t take long,’ Mary heard her say, as if to herself. ‘It won’t take long.’

Gasping in the shock of the bitter water, Mary could see the white of her skin mirrored on the surface. She held the child aloft, his legs dangling. ‘What do I do?’ She had to raise her voice over the rush of the current. It pushed against her hips, and she inched her toes into the mud of the riverbed to steady herself.

‘Put him in the water three times,’ Nance called. ‘Put his head under. His whole body.’

Mary looked at the boy’s face. His eyes canted in his head, sloping sideways as one arm fought the air.

He is full of fairy, she thought, and she lowered him into the river.

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

Yellow iris

D
awn broke as Nóra and Mary
trudged their way back up the slope to the cabin after their trip to the river. Mary’s skin under her clothes felt numb with cold, and she worried that Micheál, too, was freezing. The boy was quiet in her grip, his face scrunched into her neck, his breathing slow.

‘He’s frightful chilled,’ Mary muttered.

Nóra looked back at her, panting as she took long strides up the path. ‘Quickly now. We don’t want anyone to be seeing us. Wondering what we’re after doing away from home at this early hour.’

‘He’s not moving at all. He’s caught the cold.’

‘We’ll be inside soon enough.’ She waved Mary on, clearly frustrated at her slow pace. ‘Quickly!’

Inside the cabin, Nóra grabbed the pail and went to milk the cow, leaving Mary to tend to the fire. The girl’s stomach groaned as she fed twigs to the crackling flames. Three days of fasting, she thought. She already felt lightheaded.

Micheál lay on the settle bed, eyes slipping back and forth. Once the fire was high, Mary picked up the shawl she had draped over his body and held it to the hearth to warm the wool. Before she placed it over him, she peeked at his skin and saw that the boy’s flesh was blue with cold. Without thinking, she picked up one of his hands and placed his icy fingers in her mouth to warm them.

He tasted of the river.

After the cow had been milked and the fire stoked to a rustling pile of embers, Nóra suggested to Mary that they return to their beds for a few hours’ sleep. Mary, stomach rumbling and her eyes aching from the early morning, agreed. She folded her blanket over and tucked Micheál in with her shawl, where, finally warm, he surrendered to sleep. Mary lay down next to him and studied his face. She had never seen his features in such detail. It was usually dark when she lay beside him, and in Micheál’s waking hours she was too busy dribbling water into his mouth, or feeding him, or scrubbing the caked mess from his skinny buttocks, or soothing his rash with tallow to stop and look at him carefully. But now, as the early-morning sunlight cut through the cracks in the door, she saw how his nose was lightly freckled, the crust in his nostrils flaking. His mouth had slipped open, and she could see that a lower tooth in the centre of his mouth was at a strange angle. Reaching gently, so as not to wake him, she placed her fingertip on its tiny, ridged edge. The tooth wobbled, and then, as she added more pressure, came away from his gum and fell onto the mattress.

Micheál stirred, eyelids creasing, but did not wake.

Mary picked up the tooth and held it up to the light. A pearl, she thought. A little pearl. She ran her finger over the rough hollow, briefly filled with wonderment that a fairy child could have something so ordinary, so like a human tooth.

Rising, Mary went to the door, pushed open the top half and – as she had done so many times with her own brothers and sisters – threw the first-fallen tooth over her right shoulder into the dirt of the yard.

That will help keep you safe, she thought, and she returned to the settle bed and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

‘Mary, wake up. Wake up now.’

A rough hand was shaking her shoulder. Mary blearily opened her eyes and saw Nóra’s face – pale, alarmed – above her.

‘Mary!’

Suddenly afraid, she sat upright and looked for the boy. He lay sleeping beside her, his arms thrown above his head. She breathed out in relief. ‘What time is it?’

‘We’ve slept the day through. ’Tis well past noon.’ Nóra was wearing her husband’s greatcoat, its broad shoulders making her body seem small, fragile. Wisps of grey hair fell over her face. ‘Mary, they’ve found a
piseóg
.’

‘A
piseóg
?’ She felt her stomach turn.

‘I was outside passing my water, and I saw Peg coming over the way. She told me. She’s after telling everyone on the mountain. There’s a crowd going there to see it. ’Tis a nest of something. A charm. Something bad.’

Fear flapped in Mary’s chest. ‘Something bad?’

Nóra nodded, picking up the shawl from where it lay over the boy and throwing it at her. ‘Up with you. I want you to go and see it and tell me what it is.’

Mary rubbed her eyes and began to wind the shawl about her head. ‘Who set it?’

‘They don’t know. ’Tis what everyone wants to find out.’

‘Where?’

‘At the Lynches’,’ Nóra whispered. ‘Kate and Seán Lynch.’ She helped the girl to her feet. ‘Go and find out what it is.’

Mary found her way to the Lynches’ farm by following the crowd of people walking the fields. There was a sense of nervous excitement amongst them, of anxious gossip.

‘He was at the scoreground when he saw it. Says he doesn’t think ’tis the first set upon his land.’

‘Musha, I heard him talking of others at the smith’s.’

‘Stones turned up on their edges, branches and plants tied to his gate.’

‘Ah, but this is a right old dark
piseóg
. ’Tis a nest of straw and a bloody mess inside it. Rotting. None of your stones and plants. This is some new darkness. Meant to be found, too, by the looks of it.’

‘Seán’s saying ’twas left by Nance Roche.’

‘The priest has been sent for. ’Tis that bad, that troubling.’

‘Oh, I don’t like any of it.’

They neared the smallholding, and Mary squeezed through the crowd to get a closer look at the
piseóg
. It lay on the ground behind the Lynches’ whitewashed cabin, partly obscured by a dung pile. It was a small thing, a nest, but clearly made by a human hand. There was none of the twigging wrought by beak, but careful, deliberate weaving. In the nest’s hollow was a dark mass of bloody matter in a state of decay. The smell of it seethed in Mary’s nostrils.

The crowd stood around in horror, crossing themselves and whispering out of the corner of their mouths.

‘There’s no saying that’s an accident.’

‘Sure, there’s malice in this. Terrible malice.’

‘What do you think ’tis there? The rot in it?’

‘Would it be a bit of meat, do you think?’

A male voice suddenly rang out amongst the murmuring. ‘The priest is here! Father Healy is here!’ There was a rush of movement as the people parted to let the priest through.

He has come in a hurry, thought Mary. His clothes were spattered with mud.

‘Here ’tis, Father.’ Crabbed hands pointed at the ground where the
piseóg
lay.

The priest stared at it for a moment, fingers pinching his nose. ‘Who did this?’

There was silence.

‘Who here has lost the run of his senses?’ Father Healy glared at the crowd, his blue eyes sliding over excited, fearful faces.

‘Father, there’s none of us knows who set it.’

‘Sure, we’ve just come to see it.’

‘What will you do, Father?’

The priest’s eyes watered at the stench. ‘Bring me a spade.’

One of the labourers sent his son to fetch a tool, and as he waited the priest took out a small clear bottle of holy water, carefully drawing its cork. With an air of great ceremony, he poured a little on the
piseóg
.

‘A drop more, would you, Father?’ piped a voice. There were chuckles from the crowd.

Father Healy clenched his jaw but did as asked, and splashed the nest and the ground around it liberally. When the spade was brought, Father Healy snatched it from the boy and, with an expression of impatience, slid it under the
piseóg
, lifting it into the air. The crowd took several steps back as it teetered on the metal edge.

‘Where is your nearest ditch, man?’ he asked. Seán, face dark with outrage, pointed to a corner of his field. The priest immediately set off towards it, the crowd of people following behind. Mary walked with them, the blood hissing through her veins.

The ditch was wet-bottomed, filled with nettles. Father Healy carefully lowered the
piseóg
down on the drier part of the ditch wall, then wiped the spade on the grass.

‘What now, Father?’

‘Will you bless the spade, Father?’

‘Should ye have not used a stick instead? Will the
piseóg
not poison the work of the spade?’

Father Healy rubbed his eyes, then took out his holy water and flicked a palmful on the blade, murmuring a prayer under his breath.

‘Burn it, Father.’

‘The spade?’ The priest looked momentarily confused.

‘The
piseóg
. Will ye not burn the
piseóg
?’ A man stepped forward, cheerfully offering his smoking pipe.

Father Healy, suddenly understanding, shook his head. ‘The ground is too wet. Seán, will you fetch some dry fuel? Hay, furze. Whatever will burn. And a light.’

For some time there was a buzz of excited activity as the crowd followed Seán back to his cabin, helping themselves to his stores of kindling, furze and animal feed. Seán himself said nothing, although he seemed to smoulder with anger. Mary kept her distance from him, although at one point he caught her eye and held it, giving her a look of such disgust and hostility that she quickly averted her gaze and turned her attention to gathering sticks. Kate, she noticed, stood apart from the crowd, her shawl wrapped closely about her face. She seemed dazed, one eye purpled. At the sight of Mary she flinched, then took three careful steps backwards, spitting on the ground and crossing herself.

They burnt the
piseóg
in the cold, blue arm of twilight, under a pile of wood, turf, dried furze and straw. The fire blazed in the buckled air, the flames carrying a heart of violet. A sign of the perishing wickedness of the thing, Mary thought. It gave her a strange feeling, watching the bloody nest burn, while the priest climbed back on his donkey and the people remained, standing sentry around the fire. Her mind crawled with uneasy thoughts. Who had plaited that nest of straw? What kind of devilment was abroad?

The smell of rot stayed with her long after the fire had died and the people walked back to their cabins, numb with the evening’s chill. For all the priest’s holy water she could still smell the moulding bloodiness of the
piseóg
on her hair long after she returned to Nóra’s cabin.