All the Murmuring Bones

in one of the bedrooms on the second floor where the walls are painted like a garden with bunnies and foxes and flowers and fairies peeking out from behind tree trunks, but there’s barely a stick of furniture, bar an old rocking chair and a broken soot-stained crib with a burnt blanket twisted at its foot. All I could smell in there was old smoke and something else I can’t quite identify, something so faint I might imagine it. The fire had clearly been contained, the curtains and carpet merely singed. I think that this must have been Ena’s room – I recall Edward saying that Nelly and my parents had barely escaped with their lives, but this seems an exaggeration, just as the degree of “ruination” is also. Ena must have been with Nelly or Isolde, although how the conflagration started in here I cannot imagine. Perhaps a lantern knocked over or a candle?

The rest of the wing, however, was perfectly fine. So, my uncle had lied or at least distorted the truth. I feel far better about disobeying him. It makes me wonder what other lies he has been telling me. And why.

My parents’ suite is on the next floor down. The key in the lock moves a little stiffly with disuse, then I push the door open, hold my lantern high.

The room is decorated in shades of silvery blue and stormy green: curtains, bed draperies, quilts, couches and chairs, rugs, the walls. The dressing table is covered with powders and perfumes, face paints, loose jewellery, brushes and carefully created hair flowers and adornments. And dust, still so much dust.

There are two dressing rooms, one to each side of the enormous bed. One contains men’s clothing and footwear. The other women’s dresses. I can see in both spots where items are missing – absences as if dresses and shirts and jackets and trousers have been picked over, taken as a bowerbird steals shiny objects. Natural, perhaps, my parents had chosen their travelling attire – except for the fact that in each dressing room there’s a high shelf running around the walls, and upon each shelf perch cases and trunks; two full sets, my mother’s engraved in gold with “I.E.” and my father’s with “L.E.”.

A small door leads into a bathroom with an enormous clawfooted tub and shelves groaning beneath the weight of bottles of creams and hair washes. Nothing appears to have been taken from here, but I could not swear to it.

Back in the bedchamber, there’s a huge hearth and above it hangs a painting: a handsome dark-haired couple, so very well dressed, the man looks slightly younger than the woman – childbearing will add years to a female face. My father is indeed pretty, and he and Edward do bear a passing resemblance to one another. Around my mother’s neck is a silver chain and on that silver chain is a pendant in the shape of a ship’s bell. I step as close as I can, raising the lantern: I can just make out where the artist has gone to the trouble of detailing the scalloped marks that look like scales.

There is a desk, too, delicate and not overly large, rather a feminine piece of furniture that surprises me. Then again, I know my mother not at all. I assume it is hers, however, because of the large book that rests on its surface. Black leather, scalloped silver shells as a border front and back and the shape of the two-tailed, two-faced mermaid picked out in silver foil. There’s an intricately engraved pen in red onyx beside it and a bottle of ink that appears mostly dried out. I open the cover of the volume.

In a fine hand, a hand I recognise from Isolde’s letters to Óisín, are written tales, O’Malley tales.

Once upon a time, so long ago, nobody but the storytellers remember ...

In a land that never was in a time that could never be ...

In olden times when wishing still helped ...

Once on the far side of yesterday ...

My mother has done what I had planned to do. I wonder how far she has got, if her recall is fresh? I wonder if she will mind if I begin to add to the tome? Will it be a pleasant surprise for when she comes home? I gather it into my arms like a child.

As I’m about to leave, I look up. There are shadows and shapes that catch my interest. I locate more candles and light them, then place them so as to best illuminate the space.

There is a mural painted on the ceiling, a duplicate or as close as Isolde’s memory could get, to the one in the library at Hob’s Hallow. Or I assume so: I recognise some elements, those that were still visible beneath the cobwebs and soot at home. In Isolde’s era, things would have been not so obscured – perhaps with time, Yri or Ciara would have mounted ladders and spring-cleaned to reveal all. Faces here and there, limbs, roiling clouds, a ship’s sail, a sea monster’s tail... only the sea monster isn’t a monster anymore. Or perhaps any less. It’s been turned into a mer or perhaps it always was one.

An enormous sea-queen sprawled across painted rocks, staring down at my parents night after night. Black hair, pit-dark eyes, bare breasts but skin all scaled, and the tail... the tail is split in two, just like the brand on my hip. The brand seems to burn anew though I have no memory of its original application.

I blow out all the candles, then leave – book under one arm, lantern in my hand – being careful to leave no signs of my passing.

Back in my own wing, I walk on tiptoes along the corridor. My uncle’s suite is on the floor above. I’m struck how, just like Hob’s Hallow, there so many empty chambers, but at least once upon a time there were people to fill the spaces there.