Isolde
Óisín knew she yet lived but he told no one. My parents have money – had it then – yet she did not offer to send any relief; does not ask after me. Óisín didn’t write to beg aid – and how could he? She gives no address – but then it’s not as if she didn’t know the state of the O’Malleys when she fled. When she stole whatever she did and left me behind in place of a payment. If only she’d sent something, I wouldn’t have been sold to Aidan. Aoife would have had her fortune, she’d not have thought to match me with him. Or would she? She always had plans, and if she’d had money, she’d have been in a better position to negotiate with him.
‘She’d have done anything, wouldn’t she? Aoife?’ I ask and there’s a catch in my voice. I don’t know why I expected her to have loved me more than she did or at least more than her plots and plans. I touch my necklace, play with the bell, hear the gentle noise of its tongue against the body, dulled by my fingers.
‘Ah, missy. Your grandmother... Most people give back to the world the same treatment they received. Aoife was used as a bargaining chip by her parents and she wasn’t of a mind to deal with you or Isolde any differently.’
‘Her? What happened to her?’ I laugh, thinking I know everything about her.
He pauses, hesitates so long I suspect he’s fallen back to his usual taciturnity. This is, in fairness, the longest conversation I can ever recall having with Malachi. Even when he taught me to ride horses, how to groom them, he was economical with his speech. Then he says, ‘They made her marry her brother.’
‘What?’ It’s like he’s slapped me. ‘What?!’
‘Óisín. He was her own brother. O’Malleys haven’t answered to anyone for the longest time, missy. Their parents thought there’d be another child, that there’d be a third and the pact could be honoured again. The mother was pregnant, and they sent Óisín off to a monastery near Lodellan to learn his craft, to be the tithe to the Church. I think they hoped he’d return as a bishop for Breakwater... but Saorla miscarried again and again and by the time Aoife was eighteen there was no longer any hope of another child, so... the parents sent for Óisín. They thought… they thought brother and sister would strengthen the bloodline.’
I stare at Aoife’s calm face, willing her to wake, to answer all my questions, to hear an apology that’s not mine to make. But she’s gone and I know she won’t be back, there’ll be no more signs or wonders or horrors from my grandmother.
‘She was bought and sold. Her parents failed to lift the O’Malleys again, when there’d been so much hope. Any wonder she was obsessed with succeeding when her whole life had been consecrated to it and warped out of true? Who was to gainsay her? And Óisín, gentle boy raised by god-hounds? Who was he to defy such a sister? Some folk make a point of not visiting pain on others when it’s been done to them; most people, though, think it’s their due to inflict a little of their own agony. Aoife was no better than anyone else.’
I look at him, and he continues.
‘Any wonder she was determined you’d be the instrument of salvation? Marry you off, take your children, dispose of them in the old way? Feed the sea its due, get your fortunes back? See the O’Malleys great again? What’s the cost of that against your little life, your happiness? Still and all, it’s hard to forgive a graceless heart.’
The lads from Breakwater would have told him why they were there. Maura would have told him about the upcoming marriage. And I wonder at the fingermarks on Aoife’s neck. I wonder that Malachi was the one who kept the garden for her. That he would have known where she was. And I wonder how much he hated and loved her. I wonder if there’s still enough strength in his gnarled old hands to have made those marks and if her final success was the last straw.
Then he leans forward as if he can hear my thoughts, ‘I’d never have hurt her, missy. For all she could be hard, when my wife and child died, she was kind. For a long while I drank a lot and wouldn’t allow anyone close. When your grandfather grew tired of me, Aoife was the one who intervened, told him that a life blown off course needed as much time as it needed to find its way again, but that I would. And I did.’ He sits back. ‘She could be awful as you know, she was as wilful as the storm, but she did have kindness in her and sometimes she let it out. Mostly, though, she was so concerned with rebuilding, saving what was slipping away because that was the burden her parents passed on. It marked her like a map and she couldn’t ever see beyond the lines of that landscape.’ He draws on the pipe, a cloud of blue smoke encircles his head. ‘Very few people are entirely good or bad, missy, but some ignore the calling of one or the other better than the rest of us.’
I’m silent for a long moment. A tear creeps down my cheek, but my voice is steady when I say, ‘Thank you, Malachi.’
Then he points the pipe at me; I rise and open one of the windows to let fresh air in. ‘There’s one more thing you need to know about your mother, missy. Everyone loved her, even Aoife. Loved her a great deal. She’s was your grandmother’s greatest hope.’
‘Did Aoife’s heart break when Isolde ran?’ I think of her rage whenever my mother was mentioned.
He nods. ‘Perhaps, but more than anything your grandmother didn’t like being defied. I could tell
