11
We lay Aoife out on her bed and Yri assists me to strip away the wet black mourning gown and underclothes. Ciara is still sitting with Maura and I don’t want the old woman told of this just yet for she’ll insist on helping when she’s too weak. I wipe my grandmother’s body down with a damp cloth soaked in lavender, as much to calm her spirit as for the sweet scent. On her right hip is the scar, her brand, the Janus-faced, two-tailed mermaid, the first child’s mark. I touch it lightly before I draw up a sheet to cover her and the one on my own hip seems to burn.
Yri is standing limp and useless. I tell her to bring me the big crimson box from the library desk where I left it this morning. She goes with relief. I wonder if she’s ever seen death before; so soon to join a household, a fresh start, to be faced with this.
I draw up a chair to sit beside Aoife. I hold her hand and contemplate how I feel, how I should feel, how I do feel. Grief-stricken, sad, but still so angry – I can’t deny that. Angry at Aoife and my mother, at Maura and Malachi and Óisín who all knew Isolde had left me behind. That she lived still. My grandparents were pillars of my existence. Pillars are strong, if cold and hard, they are at least a support. I had Maura for kindness and affection; Malachi for gruff gentleness. While it would have been nice to find strength and love in my grandmother, at least they weren’t entirely missing from my upbringing. I look at her hand lying in my own: long fingers, pale skin, blue veins, only one or two liver spots, neat nails. I remember her holding me as a child; I remember her carrying me to the cliffs and showing me the sea, telling me to listen to its song, that we belonged to it, and it to us. Then I remember her taking me to the rocks below and throwing me in. She was willing to sell me to regain a fortune. But I loved her because children always seek something to love, and I’ll miss her nonetheless.
I look at her face and it’s strange to see her without that avid want she always wore, without her eyes bright as they sought opportunities, weaknesses to exploit in no matter whom or which situation. Her lashes are long, like feathers on her cheek. I’ll not see those dark eyes opened again.
Then I notice her neck.
The marks, that weren’t there ten minutes ago when we undressed her, are now clear as day beneath the ship’s bell necklace she wears that mirrors my own. In and around the delicate dip in her throat I can see oval bruises, as if thumbs were pressed there; around the sides, are lines, like fingers applied too hard to gain leverage. And the shape of a bell, too, quite distinct where the pendant was pushed hard against her. They get darker and darker, those marks, as I watch until they’re the purple of a blood blister. I’m reaching out to touch them when the hand in mine convulses and grabs at me and Aoife’s neat nails dig into my skin.
I throw myself backwards with a shriek, tumble from the chair and across the floor until I fetch up against the legs of her dressing table. A gasp comes from the door, and there’s Yri, clutching the big red box in front of her, mouth and eyes wide.
‘Did you see?’ I shout, trying to expel all the fear from my chest along with the air in my lungs. ‘Did you see her move?’
The girl nods.
I roll onto my hands and knees, then use the table to haul myself up. When I think my legs will bear me, I move towards Aoife and Yri takes tiny steps from the doorway until we meet at the bedside. Even as we watch, the bruises on my grandmother’s neck are fading, fading, fading. Her eyes remain closed, the hand that grasped at me is hanging over the side of the mattress with that lack of tension only the dead can achieve.
‘Did you see that?’ I ask and she nods again, but I must be sure. ‘The marks on her throat – them. Did you see them?’
‘Yes, Miss,’ she replies in a trembling voice. ‘Yes, I did. And saw them go too. What does it mean, Miss?’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’
I’ve heard tell how a murdered corpse will bleed if the killer comes close by, but Aoife’s bloodless; I’ve heard of bodies turning to wights before their funeral and running away lest they be put in the earth; I’ve heard, even, of those buried when they appeared lifeless, yet sounds were heard from their graves days or weeks later. When at last someone gathered the courage to investigate, to dig them up, they found folk who’d woken from whatever deathly slumber they’d fallen into in a box that couldn’t be opened for love nor money nor with any amount of prayer. And they were always dead by the time they were reached, even those rich enough to be buried in an aboveground crypt, for the shock of it was enough to carry them off.
But this?
This thing I – we – have just witnessed?
Oh, no. I’ve never heard of its like before.
Yri’s shaking so much I can hear the box rattling. I take her arm gently though it is an effort: instinctively I want to panic, I want to squeeze hard to
