NaGeira Page 3
Why do the people of this place always settle by the coast? Are they too foolish to turn around and see what’s behind them? The forest is warmer and carries fewer dangers. And life abounds here. Mushrooms grow in a single night, moths and flies appear and attract birds which can feed us. In a few months there will be berries too, and nature will bask in plenty. But the planters here have forgotten how to live on the land, if they ever knew. They have come here on the sea to fish upon the sea. Once settled, they look out to the ocean and turn their backs on nature’s stores.
One day they will make maps of this place as they do in England and Ireland. The settlements will show like spiders couching along the ragged coastline while the interior remains a naked, unexplored blank. When I am ill and ready to die, I shall go down to the water where I have no protection. The forest cannot harm me, this I know too well. It eases every sorrow and soothes every pain. When I have had enough of it all, I will turn my back on this protection. I will expose myself to the wretched, heaving ocean. I will let its waves enfold me and pull me to its icy heart. People here have it wrong. The ocean is for the dying, not for the living.
The ocean robbed me of my family when I was still in my prime. My husband, Gilbert, and two fine children, Katherine and John, slain before my eyes, the beach rocks lapping their precious blood. I’ve hated beach rocks ever since. I can see the sun’s glint in their greedy, wet eyes after the tide pulls away.
My younger two, Mark and Mary, were captured by the pirates. I remember how Mary’s infant fingers clawed the air as she was carried away. The rogues’ ship sailed to the rim of the world while I collapsed on the beach, staring and helpless, the tug in my chest growing stronger and stronger. Katherine’s newborn baby, Matthew—my first and only grandchild—disappeared. I did not see the infant taken and searched for him for days—in the forest, along the empty beach, under the woodpile—calling a name his young ears would not even recognize as his own. Matthew was my last hope. I had seen him neither slain nor taken. If I could find his helpless form still living, I thought, it would redeem every sorrow I had ever felt. I could teach him about his parents, his grandfather, his uncles, and aunts. It would bring comfort to an ocean of pain and turn ashes to love.
But the pirates had been thorough. Even our fishing boats were set adrift, and for malice, not for gain. Days later one returned in pieces to the cove, its fire-scorched boards bobbing against the tide. I recognized the debris as the remains of our boat from a piece of charred cloth tied to an oar fastening.
Everyone was dead or taken away. When at last I gave up on Matthew, I wandered our settlement alone. I buried the lifeless, fly-blown bodies and wept over them. For days I stayed alone. Shadows danced over my shoulder, then disappeared as I turned to greet them. Footsteps scrunched through the shingle and voices called in the breaking waves. I ate in misery, feeling solitude like icy fingers about my neck. Then, as autumn turned to winter, I realized I must leave this strange purgatory. Like a fury emerging from its daze and for the first time noticing the hell that surrounds it, I became suddenly frantic, scambling over rocks, brush, and hill until I arrived, bleeding and delirious, to this cove. John Rose, Simon’s father, helped me build a cabin away from the sea and half-removed from the settlement. Rose was a Bible man with tired eyes, hollow cheeks, and a haunted look about his sloping shoulders. He seemed much older than his forty years. With quiet acceptance, he provided for me as he could, leaving food and firewood by my door. We seldom spoke and I was never invited into his home. Whenever I saw him leave a bundle, I would open my door to thank him. He would look up as though he had been spied committing some crime. He would give only the slightest nod before hurrying back to the settlement, to his wife and new baby. Was I a pox, I wondered, to be placated with gifts and sacrifices?
Without question, something kept me apart. It wasn’t me. Neither was it the people from the settlement. It was the terrible thing that had happened to me. Grief and misfortune were great walls through which all words sounded garbled like conversations in a dream. I had been reclaimed from hell, but there was a ring of fire around me still, a ring that would scorch the fingers of any who dared approach. It would have burned my own hands, too, if I had tried to reach beyond the horror of my memory. I might be pitied from afar, but I could not be touched.
All I am—this strange old woman living apart, despised yet tolerated, feared yet sought out for my special knowledge—I am because of the pirates. They left me alive but sealed from life.
———
A twig breaks somewhere behind me. I’m slow to turn these days, especially in the forest. And I know there’s no need. Few beasts exist to threaten me even if I were not protected. Bears are timid and rare. There are no wild dogs, and I know the sound of wolves; they approach gently, their footfalls like rain, their fur like a breeze brushing the undergrowth.
Lowering myself onto a tree stump, I listen. I hear breathing behind me and sense someone’s gaze on my shoulders. The breaths quieten to avoid detection. There is a clumsiness about the presence that can only be human; animals have more grace and are less aware of themselves.
“Come forward and show yourself,” I say.
Nothing happens for a moment. I sit quietly and wait.
At last footsteps crunch closer. A shadow cools my shoulders and the figure passes into the clearing in front of me. I look up and it’s no surprise to see David Butt, his face quivering and anxious.
“Are you following me, boy?”
He shakes his head distractedly before speaking.
“I have to see what you’re doing.”
He looks around at the wet twigs, the swaying ferns and grasses.
“I know Elizabeth Rose came to see you this morning. I know she wants you to make a charm so that someone rich will fall in love with Sara.”
I stare at the youth’s face for a moment. He bites his lip and searches my eyes as though for confirmation.
“How could you make such a guess, boy? Have you been listening at doors?”
His tongue wets his lips. He frowns, despairing. “Then it’s true!”
“No, boy, it’s false. First, though, tell me how you know Elizabeth came to see me. Were you spying?”
“I didn’t need to,” he says, throwing up his hands and pacing a semicircle around me. “Sara told me.”
“Sara? I thought she never spoke to you.”
“She didn’t before this morning,” he says wincing. He circles in the other direction, glancing at me like a wounded dog. “This morning I was sitting on the wharf skimming stones on the water. I cursed myself for going to you. Foolish cures and potions! The sun mocked my fancy as it always does. Then …” The boy circles faster, biting his lip. A curious smile comes to his face. “Then it happened.”
“What happened?” I ask. I’m getting dizzy just watching his mad pacing.
“I didn’t see it coming. I was lost in my thoughts. The planks creaked beside me. That was the first I knew.” He stops, stares at the tree trunk before him, and takes a deep breath. “I turned, and there was Sara. Her shoulder was touching mine. I could feel its warmth through my coat.” He presses his hand to his opposite shoulder, reliving the moment. “She picked one of the pebbles from my open palm,” he whispers mimicking the action. “She skimmed it across the surface of the water, then … smiled at me.” He is still talking in hushed tones, as though imparting the whereabouts of secret treasure. “She asked me why I was not fishing with Uncle. I told her about my hand, how I had burned it … helping you light a fire. She touched my burn with her fingertips.” He stops and looks up to the treetops like a man in torment. “Never, never did I think I would see such a smile from her.”
He emerges from this strange ecstasy and becomes agitated again, clutching one hand in the other and padding around in a circle, like a beast of the forest preparing its bed.
I can’t help smiling.
“So the charm worked,” I say. “What are you worried about?”
“Hands such as mine,” I repeat calmly.
He shakes his head like a dog tormented by flies. Then he takes a step towards me and holds out his palms in a helpless gesture.
“What can you know of love? What can you know of its torment and its bliss?”
His eyes burn with desperation and his brow furrows with a century of trouble.
“When did I become a senseless rock, boy? When did I cease to have blood, skin, and hair?”
“I mean,” he backs away, “I mean it’s just too important to leave it to chance. I must be certain.”
“Certain of what?” I ask.
He looks towards me again. From the scowl on his face you would swear I had poured a jug of vinegar down his innocent throat.
“Certain you are working for me in this,” he says quietly. “Sara told me she knows her mother went to see you. She told me her parents were trying to get a husband for her from Bristol, and that her mother believed you had powers to make sure of it.”
I smile and rise slowly from the stump, brushing myself off. “Help me collect some more firewood.”
“Tell me it isn’t true,” he says.
“I’ve already told you,” I assure him calmly. “There are codes for my profession, even in a place like this. I cannot tell you what Elizabeth Rose came to see me about.” I stare at him hard. “If I am successful, though,” I continue, smiling again, “the result could easily remove the last impediment to a union between Sara and you.”
I let the thought sit with him. Breathing the pine of the forest slowly into my lungs, I turn and trudge on towards my cabin. David follows behind, breaking up sticks and branches.
CHAPTER FOUR
What can I know of love? Am I not a worn-out husk, dried out and splintering through years of sterility? Have I not lived apart from humanity so long that I am turned scaly and cold-blooded? Do I not hiss like the snake and breathe sulphur like the dragon?
It’s true I live apart from others. And it’s true I have played but little role in the lives of this settlement since coming here. I have been a sleepwalker and the people around me are like phantoms. I have outlived horrors that should have incinerated the whole world. And in daring to survive I am given the role most feared by my kind. I have become the hag whose face and form leer from carved doors and gateways in Ireland. I am Sheila Na Gig, the most feared of gargoyles, the vilest of women.
Yet human I am. And tenderness and beauty—the ghosts of those things—are preserved in my heart’s core. I am a jar of aspic within which resides the unblemished memory of a love as fresh as spring. Thomas Ridley with his red lips, his coarse, sandy hair, his watery blue eyes. Thomas Ridley and his way of just staring, neither hostile nor inviting, but a rare and graceful beast of the woods, newly emerged into sunlight.
Why should his memory remain after so many years? Why should it be he to whom my daydreams reach? I have married, been widowed, bereaved, and imprisoned. I have been close to starvation, closer to ostracism. I have had connubial bliss. I have given birth to, mothered, and lost children. All without thought of Thomas Ridley. Or so I believed.
But all loves lead back to the first. Thomas Ridley was the essence from which other loves sprouted. He was the clay of my affections. For whomever love was moulded—husband, child, or friend—there was somewhere a hint of Thomas Ridley. Whenever I closed my eyes at night, my husband’s hair would lighten to sand and his eyes would wash from brown to blue. Whenever I watched him pull his boat onto the sand, his neck sinews bulging, I would smile, part of me recalling a younger man straining as he unbridled his horse. All men’s rituals were an echo of that long-ago morning. And all men were the children of my Thomas.
———
We exchanged not a word in our first three weeks of acquaintance. They moved in briefly, father and son. I watched Thomas Ridley riding circles from my bedroom window. From high in a tree I watched him tramp through the forest beating his stick against the bark. Inside, I watched him eat an apple with a knife, a mysterious and exotic procedure, each angled cut reducing the fruit, his red lips swelling as he bit into the flesh, his pale eyes staring at me through the half light. We were together like this in the pantry, still not speaking, when the front door slammed shut and a voice boomed. I gasped and Thomas did too.
My uncle had returned to find things much altered. There was a commotion, but it didn’t last long. Thomas Ridley and I hardly moved until the door slammed once more. The house was silent and we both knew that whatever had occurred was over now. Thomas turned towards me and our gazes locked. Slowly he took another slice of apple and put it thoughtfully into his mouth. We still hadn’t exchanged a word, but something had altered. I had seen his fear and he had seen mine. We were no longer strangers.
He made another cut, stabbed the piece with his knife point, and lifted it towards me. I was as overcome as I would have been had I witnessed a statue come to life. My face burned and I found myself giggling. How foolish he must think me, I told myself. Yet he continued to hold his gift until I squirmed and shook my head. Finally, he smiled at me and took the apple piece himself. Alone in my room that night, I went over the scene again and again, trying to imagine myself as he saw me, willing memory to make me more sensible and poised.
Two days later, Mr. Ridley married my mother. Then we were packing boxes and barrels for a journey to England. “Peter doesn’t want us to live here anymore,” my mother explained to me. “He says we’re in more danger because we’re Irish. The rebels will take their revenge on us if they break through into the Pale.”
I loved this home and did not want to leave. “Mr. Ridley can protect us,” I said.
I said this because it was something my mother would be glad to hear. In fact, not only did I not value Mr. Ridley’s protection, it was quite an effort to even speak his name. I couldn’t help scowling whenever he was near and never spoke in his presence—facts that my mother had noticed and tried, after her own distracted fashion, to correct. So now my words made her soften towards me as I knew they would.
“He would like to, Sheila,” she said touching my cheek. “But he spends most of his time in London and we must follow.”
My mother flitted into the next room, pointing out articles for the servants to pack. My gaze was drawn through the open front door. Outside, Thomas Ridley threw a stick for one of his father’s hunting dogs. The dog bounded across the gravel, jumped in the air to catch, and then raced back, its golden fur rippling, its tail flapping wildly. I hated leaving, but my idea of home was changing already. The lanky boy shaking the dog’s ears and whispering encouragement was an integral part of that change. He turned towards me, smiled, and raised the stick for another throw. When he leaves this house for England with his father, I thought, he will be ripping the warm hearth from its structure and taking it with him. It was true that the man of the forest was my friend, and that I gained daily comfort among his leaves and branches. But he was to be found anywhere there were trees, and I would discover him again no matter where we lived.
I watched Thomas Ridley hurl the stick. The big animal bounded after, tongue hanging sideways from his mouth. I smiled at the dog. We had much in common, I thought.
———
It was on the road from Bristol to London that he first spoke to me. Our carriage was part of a caravan rumbling east. Our possessions, our servants, and Mr. Ridley’s household made fourteen carriages in all. Mother and Mr. Ridley were somewhere up ahead. Thomas Ridley and I were near the rear of the procession. For the first hour of the journey we sat side by side without any sign of recognition. Both of us watched the barrels and boxes piled up on the opposite seat creaking and bumping together with each jolt of the road. I could tell his posture—hands folded on his lap, head slightly to one side—and I could even hear his breathing beyond the noise of the road.
From Dublin to Bristol had t
aken four days. I had scarcely seen him on the ship and had given up on his company, at least until we reached London. I was not prepared when at the start of the journey from Bristol he opened my carriage door, especially as I had heard Mr. Ridley bellowing instructions that he ride with the groundsmen. I assumed he had made a mistake and would correct himself the moment he saw me. Instead, he hauled himself up and, to make room for himself, picked up the box beside me and added it to the top of the pile opposite. He glanced at me as he sat down and quickly looked away again. I thought I saw a faint blush on his neck, but the light in the carriage was too weak to be sure.
When I got used to him sitting beside me, I took my gaze from the boxes and barrels in front of me and stared out of the window. Sunlight flickered blindingly, blocked then released by overhanging branches. The world was a patchwork of colour and darkness, I thought. My father was slain one day. I fell in love the next. One moment there were robbers, demons, murderers crouching by the highway, the next the sunlight kissed my face and lit up the greenery of the forest like a celebration of midsummer. Wild roses bobbed in the breeze, their petals as red as the lips of Thomas Ridley. Mosquitoes spun in delirium, insane with happiness.
I groaned in pleasure as the sun held its own for a spell. Its heat mingled with the passing breeze caressing my hair and warming my forehead. I had never been drunk but imagined this was how it felt.