I hang my coat to dry on a hook set into the wall by the fire, my trousers follow suit and I remain in just my shirt which is mostly dry. I untwist the bun my hair’s been in for days, feel the tension release in my scalp as I massage it with my fingers. There’s a rough scab over the cut from the Breakwater dock, and it itches rather than aches. Soon it will be gone entirely.
I clean off the tabletop and make a meal of bread and dried meat, sitting in the sole solid chair. It feels strangely civilised after all the days on the road, eating by campfires first with the troupe, then on my own. How quickly that became normal that this should feel so alternate now. There’s a tin cup overturned but clean and a small cauldron beside the hearth. I put it outside the door until it fills with rainwater, and brew a strong black tea with the leaves Maura packed.
I’ve not touched the winter-lemon whiskey, though I’ve yearned to, but keeping my wits about me is paramount.
When I’m done, I wonder if I’ll ever bear eating bread and dried meat again, once I’ve found “home”. I take my mother’s three letters from the front of the duffel and read them once more – as if their contents might have changed – while I wait for the tea to steep. The first offers me as a price. The second merely tells how after a shaky start they are doing well, that she hopes he cares enough to hear this, that she misses him. She does not ask after her child. And in her last is the name of their new home and the promise to write no more.
No other mention of me but that I am part of a bargain. It’s as if I ceased to exist once she gave me up. I read all the letters again to see if there’s something I missed. I hold them to the light of the lantern, thinking perchance something might be seen in the smoke, but no.
North of Bellsholm, more or less. Perhaps it was all a lie. Perhaps these letters are nothing but untruths to lull Óisín into a false sense of security, to stop him from hunting for them, or perhaps merely a torment for the life he’d given her.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
And I feel a rage erupt inside me, a fire shooting through my veins. In a fury that would have made Aoife proud, I stand then raise the only intact chair and smash it against the stones of the chimney breast. Tears, and inarticulate shouts are all I can muster, but it simply boils down to why?
And how? How could my parents leave me behind so easily. It wasn’t as if I was newborn – I was three, a small person not a damp dribbling, shitting lump. Was I so unlovable? Did they dislike me so much? Was I nothing more, from conception, than a part of a plan, a toll to be paid?
When my tantrum runs its course I’m so very tired – so tired that I almost don’t take precautions. I don’t like the smell of the beds, the two that aren’t wet from the leak, so I pull out my bedroll and spread it in front of the fireplace. I take the sack of rock salt Maura insisted I carry – it’s getting light now, but I purchased another in Bellsholm – and I make a rough circle around the bedding, with enough space that I can roll over in my sleep without fear of breaking the boundary. I also make a line of it in front of the door and across the windowsills. I put the pocketwatch beside me where it can be easily seen and I slide my knives beneath the bedroll. I lie down and am asleep in a trice, every ounce of spare energy seared away.
* * *
Three raps on the door come less than an hour before dawn, or so my pocketwatch tells me. My exhaustion was total and I’ve slept entirely through the night. I think perhaps the owner has returned. But who knocks on their very own door? The fire is still burning, brighter and longer than it should, and I can see clearly around the room. Three raps once more and I say nothing. Then again, three raps and I think perhaps that will be all, for three is a magical number, isn’t it? A number of secrets and messages and gods. Then a voice, a lad’s, ‘Please, Miss, we beg your aid. Please, Miss, we’ll not hurt you, but we need your help.’
As I check the circle of salt around me is intact, I slip my knives up my sleeves. I say, ‘Come in’ and immediately regret it.
The three men from the gallows shamble over the threshold. That’s when I notice that the rain has run under the door and melted away the line of salt there. It’s taken so long otherwise I suspect they’d have been in here much earlier. Still, they didn’t need to knock, so perhaps they’re being polite for some other reason.
The marks of death have been erased. They’re not quite solid, yet they lumber beneath their own weight as if all they remember is being men and alive, and are still anchored by that. I can see through them to the remaining night and rain beyond the open doorway. It’s not a clear view, not a perfectly clean window, but like a fog shifted in a breeze, a fog that thickens and thins, thickens and thins. Their faces are as they were before the birds took their tithe, but the young men don’t look any better for it: their expressions are avid, malign, and I’m grateful to Maura for her tales and the sack of
