There was a highchair by the table and I put Ena in there while I sought a mortar and pestle. I found nothing suitable in an otherwise well-equipped kitchen, so I began to open doors: three pantries containing far more food than the inhabitants of this house could eat, a small room for washing and folding linen and, finally, a proper workroom that any apothecary would have been proud to call their own. Shelves stocked with bottles of dried herbs and tinctures, all neatly labelled in a hand I recognised from the letters my mother had sent to Óisín. There are crucibles and a small fireplace, cauldrons and copper bowls, tubes and pipettes, three quite large boxes made of glass with silver locks on them – and a range of mortars and pestles.
The remains of a shattered jar had been swept into a corner and there was a dried-up brown stain on the floor not far from it – badly cleaned up. It appeared my mother left in a hurry and forgotten to tidy up after herself. At the very back there was a trapdoor and I would have continued to poke about curiously but cries from an unhappy Ena reminded me of my purpose. I located arrowroot powder amongst small bottles and took it and a mortar and pestle back to the kitchen proper.
I ground the herbs, found a bottle of port, mixed some of it in along with the arrowroot, then rubbed it on her gums.
At first she appeared outraged and opened her mouth wide all the better to get the screams out, but the paste was fast-acting and before she could wail, her expression changed. She smacked her lips as the pain began to lift, and she looked at me in wonderment. Soon she was smiling and giggling, an impressive transformation from the small vile demon with whom I’d originally been presented.
She is well looked after, plump and clean, her hair is thick and shiny and her eyes bright. Clearly, however, the housekeeper has no knowledge of home remedies. Perhaps I will tell her. Perhaps I will not. Any road, the child will sleep much better for it tonight and so will Nelly.
After that I took her for a walk around the grounds. I told her the names of all the trees and flowers, of their properties and what good and ill she might do with them. I asked her questions about our parents that she’s too young to answer. Ena just laughed up at me, touched my face and pulled my hair. When we strolled by the lake I watched her gaze turn towards the dark, still water and I thought for a mad moment about taking her for a swim (no waves, no throwing, no fierce Aoife shouting from the shore), but as we got closer I saw there was no sign of any shallows, any bank where we might do something so harmless. I thought of the mer, then, and though I could not imagine how they might get here, I backed away and returned with the child to the house.
In the kitchen I filled a bottle with milk and then in the nursery fed her as I read aloud from Murcianus’ Book of Fables – my mother has clearly collected the same books as at Hob’s Hallow – something about foxes and crows and cheese and stones. Her eyes glazed over and she became fractious – as did mine for that matter – so when I finished the fable, I conjured up something from the O’Malley book of tales, thinking to give her something of our family, though I cannot know what Isolde has shared.
I told her of twins, pearls of the same shell, mer-sisters. Of how they were born of an ill-made bargain between their mother, a mer-queen, and a sea-witch. How, as children, they shared everything; but when their mother died and the sea-witch called for them to pay the remaining tithe, all things went astray.
The sisters agreed they would share the burden: the one would rule in their mother’s stead, the other take her place as slave to the witch, six months about. But at the end of the slave sister’s servitude, the other sister did not return to take her place. She hoped for the longest time, did that first sister, to see her sibling come through the greeny-black depths, but that day never arrived. With time, the first sister, the slave sister, learned all the sea-witch had to teach her, and the sea-witch having no more knowledge to impart, departed from this life, and the first sister, the apprentice-slave, ascended the throne of bones beneath the waves. And year upon year, decade upon decade, century upon century, the first sister received supplications from new maidens who wanted to beg a favour, who wanted to make the sorts of bargains her mother had. And every time, the sister-witch granted a wish, and took in return something precious to the maiden: a tail, a tongue, fall of hair, bright eyes, a voice. And every time, she knew, that her sister-queen had sent those girls as tribute, as a bribe, to ensure the witch did not make her way to the old kingdom and take what was owed her. But one day, one day, they both knew, there would be a reckoning.
Then having told her a story of our family, I wondered if this was perhaps the sort of story that sisters should not tell each other.
By the
