The Good People (7 page)

‘The Devil?’

There was a loud clap of thunder. The women jumped.

‘What a night to be telling of these things!’ Nóra exclaimed.

‘Sure, Nance was a queer one from the start.’

‘Is it not time to eat? Are you hungry? Peg, will you be staying? ’Tis no night for walking.’ For all her desire to be alone during Martin’s wake, Nóra suddenly longed for company. The thought of spending the storming evening alone with Micheál made her stomach clutch in dread.

Peg looked around the empty cabin and, as if sensing Nóra’s reluctance, nodded. ‘I will, if ’tis no trouble to you.’

‘Shall I take Micheál?’ Brigid offered.

‘I’ll set him down.’ Nóra laid the boy in a makeshift cradle of sally twigs and straw.

‘He’s a bit too big for that now, is he not?’ Peg asked. ‘His legs don’t fit at all.’

Nóra ignored her. ‘I’ll go for the milk and then I’ll get us a bite to eat.’ Another roll of thunder sounded above the rain and the spitting turf fire. ‘What a dirty night.’

Peg gave Brigid’s belly a gentle pat. ‘’Tis a good thing you’re here with your man’s aunt and not out in the dark.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘The thunder kills the unhatched birds in their eggs.’

‘Peg O’Shea! Don’t be frightening her with tall talk.’ Nóra lifted a heavy pot of water onto the chain hanging from the hearth wall, squinting in the smoke.

‘Go see to the beast, Nóra. She’ll be in pieces from the storm.’ Peg turned to Brigid. ‘The lightning does be taking the profit from the milk. There’ll be some fearful churning after tonight, you mark my words.’

Nóra shot Peg a stern look and pulled her wet cloak from its rafter and back over her head. She stepped out into the night with her pail, stumbling in the sudden wind, rain lashing against her face. She lurched towards the byre, eager to escape the downpour.

The cow blinked at her in the dark, eyes round in fear.

‘There, Brownie. Easy with you.’ Nóra ran her hands over the cow’s flank, but when she reached for the stool and placed the pail on the ground, the beast started and pulled at her rope.

‘No harm will come to you, girl,’ Nóra crooned, but Brownie moaned. There’s a fright in her, Nóra thought, and hauled an armful of hay into the bracket. The cow ignored it, panting, and as soon as Nóra took hold of her teats, the cow skittered sideways, leg kicking in its spancel. The pail clattered across the floor. Nóra got up, irritated.

Lightning flashed outside.

‘Have it your way, would you,’ Nóra muttered, and snatching the pail, she pulled the sodden cloak back over her head. She staggered back through the pelting darkness towards the cabin, pausing under the thatch to scrape the mud from her feet. As she wiped her heel on the step she heard Peg’s voice, low with conspiracy, coming from inside.

‘Wee Micheál. Would you look at him. He’s an ill-thriven thing.’

Nóra froze.

‘I heard Martin and Nóra had a cripple child with them. Is it true he hasn’t taken a step yet?’

Brigid.

Nóra’s heart began to hammer.

‘I doubt he ever will! Four years old and the state of him! I knew Nóra was after caring for Johanna’s boy, and that there was little keeping body and soul together when he came to them, but one like this? He hasn’t the whole of his sense.’

Nóra felt her face flush, despite the chill. Hardly breathing, she pressed her eye to a gap in the wood. Brigid and Peg were staring at the boy.

‘Has herself fetched the priest for him?’

‘To heal him? I’ve always believed a priest has the power if he wants to use it. But Father Healy is a busy man. A man from the towns – he’s most like spent his life in Tralee or Killarney. And I don’t think he will be troubling himself with poor wicker-legged boys.’

Brigid was silent. ‘I pray to God that mine is right.’

‘Please God he will be. Keep yourself safe and warm. I suspect ’twas only when this one’s mother sickened that he began to go soft in the head and his limbs moved to kippeens. I never heard a thing about a strange child while she was alive.’

Nóra’s stomach dropped. Her own kin, sitting in her house, blacking her grandson. She pressed her face against the door, feeling her pulse jump in her throat.

‘Did Nóra tell you that, so?’

Peg scoffed. ‘What do you think? She won’t have any talk about him. Why do you think she keeps him here like a clocking hen, and none of us knowing the state of him? Why do you think, with her husband just gone, she made Peter O’Connor bring him to me before there was a crowd in this place? ’Tis a rare soul who has set eyes on him, and for all us being kin, I’d not had a good look at the cratur until these past days. You can imagine the shock I had when I saw the boy.’

‘She’s shamed by him.’

‘Well, something’s not right. It must be a great burden. Her daughter dead – God have mercy on her – and now this ailing one to care for all alone.’

‘She’s doughty though. She’ll get on.’

Nóra watched from behind the door as Peg leant back, running a tongue over her gums. ‘She’s got some spine, that woman. Nóra has always been a proud one. But I do be worried after her. Such a dark season of death and strangeness. Her daughter, and now Martin, and the child blighted with it all.’

‘Peter O’Connor was saying he saw a light by the fairy
ráth
in the hour of Martin’s passing. Said he thinks there’s a third death coming.’

Peg crossed herself and threw another piece of turf on the fire. ‘God protect us. Still, worse things have happened.’

Nóra hesitated. Rain dripped down her face, the damp of the cloak soaking into her clothes. She didn’t care. She bit her lip, straining to hear what they were saying.

‘Did Nance keen for Johanna?’

Peg sighed. ‘She didn’t, no. Nóra’s girl married a Corkman some years back. She’s buried there, somewhere out by Macroom. Nóra only heard Johanna had died when her son-in-law came to give her the child. Oh, ’twas a pity. Johanna’s man appeared one night at dusk during the harvest just gone, Micheál strapped on a donkey. Told her that Johanna had wasted away and he a widower. Yes, a wasting sickness, the man said. One day she took to her bed with a pounding head and she never got up from it again. She faded day by day until she had gone completely. And he was in no place to care for the boy, and I know his people thought it only right that he be taken to Nóra and Martin. She never said a word like it, but there was a rumour that Micheál was half-starved when he came. A little bag of bones fit for a pauper’s coffin.’

How dare she, thought Nóra. Gossiping about me on the day I bury my man. Spreading rumours about my daughter. Tears sprung to her eyes and she pulled away from the door.

‘There’s no shame in poverty.’ Brigid’s piping voice travelled over the sound of the wind. ‘We all know the price of it.’

‘There’s no shame for some, but Nóra has always held her head high. Have you ever noticed that she doesn’t talk of the dead? My own husband is long gone to God, and yet I talk of him as if he were still here. He remains with me in that way. But when Johanna died, ’twas as though Nóra struck her daughter’s name from her tongue. I’ve no doubt she grieves, but any memories of her daughter she shares with the bottle alone.’

‘Does she go the shebeen?’

‘Sh. I don’t know where Nóra gets her comfort, but if a woman can find peace in the drink, then who are we to grudge her for it.’

It was too much. Nóra hastily wiped her eyes and, jaw clenched, entered the kitchen, her cloak and face slick with rain. She shut the door against the storm and set the pail on the table under the window, packed with straw to keep the cold out.

The women were quiet. Nóra wondered if they guessed she had overheard them.

‘Did she give much?’ Peg eventually asked.

‘She’s spooked.’ Nóra dragged her cloak off her shoulders and crouched by the fire to warm her hands, her eyes averted.

‘’Twas a time when we couldn’t move for butter in this valley,’ muttered Peg. ‘Now every second cratur is blasted.’

Micheál murmured and, relieved for something to do, Nóra picked him up out of the cramped cradle. ‘You great lad. Oh, the weight in him.’

Peg and Brigid exchanged looks.

‘What were ye talking of?’ Nóra asked.

‘Our Brigid here was asking about Nance.’

‘Is that so.’

‘’Tis. She can’t hear enough.’

‘Don’t let me be interrupting you. Go on with your story, then.’ Nóra thought she caught a glimpse of panic between the women.

‘Well, now. As I was saying, folk back in the day thought it mighty strange for a woman to be living off thin air and dandelions. And they went to the priest about her. ’Twas not Father Healy, but the priest before him. Father O’Reilly, God have mercy on him. He would have none of their suspicion and gossip. “Leave the poor woman be,” said he. Sure, Brigid, Father O’Reilly was a fierce man, a powerful man for those who had no voice or home for themselves. ’Twas he who urged the men to build her the cabin and sent them to her for the herbs and cures. He went to her himself. Terrible rheumatism.’

The water in the black pot trembled. Nóra, lips tight in anger, stared as the rain escaping down the chimney hole
hit its iron sides.

‘What happened next, then?’ Brigid filled the silence.

Peg shifted in her seat, glancing at Nóra. ‘Well, not long after Nance had got her cabin she began to get a name for herself. I was on
the night-rambling one evening, down at Old Hanna’s, and we got to be telling stories about the Good People. And Hanna starts telling us about a fairy bush, a
sceach gheal
that was very near cut down. It was your own Daniel’s uncle, Seán Lynch, that was after doing it. Begod, he’s some fool. Seán, he was a young man then, and he was up by the blacksmith’s with the lads, boasting amongst themselves. Your man Seán was talking of cutting down the whitethorn and the lads were warning him against it. Somehow, word of his daring got back to Nance Roche. Surely you’ve seen where the tree stands, by the fairy
ráth
? She lives near it. And Nance went to Seán’s cabin one night, frightened the life out of him and Kate by appearing in their doorway, and she tells him he’d best leave the whitethorn alone or They would be after him. “That is Their tree,” says she. “Don’t you be putting a hand to it, or I tell you, Seán Lynch, that you’ll be suffering after it. Don’t you be putting a hand to anything in violence.” Well, didn’t he laugh her off, calling her filthy names besides, and didn’t he go to cut the
sceach gheal
that very day. Old Hanna said that she saw with her own eyes how Seán took a dirty great swing at the fairy whitethorn with his axe. No word of a lie, didn’t Hanna see him miss the trunk completely. Didn’t the axe swing through the air, missing the wood and land in his leg. He near cut himself in half. And that is why he has the limp.’

There was a soft gurgle from the floor and the women looked down to see Micheál staring at the rafters, a crooked smile on his face.

Nóra watched Peg lean forward and examine his face, her eyes thoughtful. ‘He likes a story.’

‘Go on, Peg,’ Brigid urged. She was perched on the edge of the settle, the firelight full and flickering on her face.

‘Well, that was the start of it. People saw in that axe swing proof Nance had the fairy knowledge, the
fios sigheog
. Folk started to go to her if they thought Them were abroad and at Their tricks. They thought perhaps she used to go with Them, which is how she got her way of understanding.’

‘I never met a one who was taken by the Good People. I never met a one who was swept.’ Brigid shuddered.

‘I’ll tell you something now, Brigid. This valley is full of old families. For all the folk on the roads, there’s not often room for strangers that don’t marry into the blood. Nance planted herself into this soil with herbs and death-cries and sure hands when a woman’s time came. There was plenty that feared her after the whitethorn, and there’s plenty that fear her to this day, but there’s more that need Nance. And as long as they need her, she’ll be in that
bothán
by the woods. My man, when he was alive, woke one morning with his eye all swolled up and no seeing out of it. He took to Nance, and she said ’twas the fairies struck him in the eye. Said he must have seen them on the road, and ’twas not his right, so they brought the sight out of the eye that saw them. Said they spat in it when he was asleep. But she had the charm. She put the herb in his eye –
glanrosc
, I think it was – and cured the fairy spite out of it. Now, I don’t know whether Nance was ever swept or not but there’s no doubting that she has a gift. Whether that gift is God-given or a token from the Good People, well, that’s not for us to know.’

‘Will Nance be there when my time comes?’

‘Sure, ’tis Nance for you.’

Nóra offered Micheál to Brigid, her voice cold. ‘Hold him while I fix the tea.’

Brigid settled the boy awkwardly against the curve of her stomach. As if sensing Brigid’s strangeness, Micheál stiffened, his arms shooting out from his sides. His mouth crumpled in discontent.

‘He likes feathers,’ Nóra said, easing potatoes into the steaming pot. ‘Here.’ She picked up a small downy feather that had escaped from the chicken roost and was blowing about the room in a draught. ‘Martin always gave him a tickle.’