Sometimes a bloated figure rises from the swaying grass, greying with dark green veins trailing just beneath the skin to carry dead blood. Not ghosts, no, heavier than that, still bodily things: corpsewights. Those who’ve found no rest. Normally they reside in graveyards and lay traps for the unwary, Maura’s said, but these… they drowned, they washed ashore and woke though they shouldn’t have. They don’t wander, they stay close to where they roused for their minds no longer work as they should – lucky, for what might they do if they could find their way home to terrify the ones who loved them in life? The god-hounds say they’ve no soul left but what else might animate them if not that?
I’m not afraid of them. They don’t pursue carriages or horses (they’ve got a dislike for the beasts, and Malachi told me he’d seen a cart horse kick a wight to pieces in his youth), and they’ll only attack if you approach them, or walk over them all unawares, if you get within reach. But attack they will, so I know enough not to wander in the marshes. I wonder, sometimes, if any of them were O’Malleys.
They’re sad things, really, but the coachman must see them too, for I hear the slap of the reins and a hard-breathed command to the horses and suddenly we’re flying. All the grasses blend together, the clouds move so fast the earth might be spinning like a top, and we don’t slow down until we reach the forest.
Here, the trees close in, meet each other above the road and form a canopy. There’s more to fear here, I think, than the marshes: bandits and robber bridegrooms; wolves on four legs and two; trolls come out of the dark places; yellow-eyed boys with cows tails and hollow backs; hind-girls with antlers who dance; bears by day but something else by night; hobgoblins birthed of shadow and spite that will follow you home and steal your sleep for a start. Yet the coachman apparently feels safer here; perhaps it’s the presence of two heavily armed footmen on the rumble seat, and the hefty youth carrying a cudgel sitting beside him. Or perhaps he simply doesn’t know enough to be afraid, not having been raised with all of Maura’s tales of the things that might come for you once the sun has fled.
I put my hand in my pocket, thinking of the thin bundle of letters, then remember I left it at home, slid beneath the mattress of my bed. The lack feels like an old wound, but I recognise that as no more than unsatisfied curiosity.
After a while and to my surprise, I fall asleep too.
* * *
‘Five dresses,’ says Aoife in a tone that clearly states no defiance will be brooked. Yet I can’t help myself.
‘But, Grandmother,’ I say, then drop the words beneath my breath so no one else in this very expensive modiste’s boutique might hear me, ‘the cost.’
Cousin Brigid, who is sitting on one of the pretty pink chairs, sipping elderberry tokay, gives me a glance that says I should know better. She didn’t even grow up with Aoife and she knows better. I think of all the coins – whole coins, entire gold coins, not even snapped and split into smaller change – that will be left here all for frippery.
Yet Aoife merely raises one elegant eyebrow and pats my hand.
Having no sooner arrived at the five-storey townhouse – which is a narrow building that goes up and back, rather than across but is in an excellent neighbourhood – we were out the door again and into the carriage to go shopping, accompanied by Brigid. Our cases were whisked away by an army of servants too large for those meagre possessions, taken up to bedrooms on the third floor or fourth.
Aoife’s already pointed to three frocks, those waiting on the carved wooden dressmaker’s mannequins for customers who are in a rush; these are mostly-made, can be swiftly fitted and altered by the three quick-fingered apprentices who wait on the modiste’s word while one has tea or one’s hair done in the establishments nearby. None of these dresses are black, nor grey, nor even that shade of lilac which might be mistaken for a mourning gown in dim light: emerald green, peacock blue, sunshine yellow. Óisín’s not even a week in the ground and she’s ordering these for me.
‘Now,’ drawls my grandmother to the modiste, Madame Franziska, who is a tiny woman with red hair teased up to almost half her own height, but attired to perfection in a turquoise shot silk suit of long skirt and fitted jacket with slashed sleeves. There’s a white blouse beneath the jacket on which I can see pintucks and a prim collar trimmed with lace, fastened with a gold coin for a button, the head of a goddess carefully kept upright so she’s facing a particular direction as if it’s important for the Madame’s very existence. The outfit is expensive and beautiful, and even the apprentices are better dressed than I. I should simply shut up and let Aoife order these. I should let her worry about where the money’s coming from. I should let her be the adult. I should just be pleased to have something pretty and new and mine for a change, not hand-me-down clothes and second-hand secrets. Mine. ‘Now, something for the playhouse this evening.’
The modiste smiles, clicks her
