“Did youth not wath TV?” Billy Cadogan asked. “We alwayth do. There’s thome cracker programmth on Chrithmath night, tho there is.”
Kinky smiled. “Billy, Radio Éireann didn’t start broadcasting until 1926, and Radio Telefís Éireann, that’s the TV company, not until 1961. We had to amuse ourselves.”
“Sounds like fun,” said Micky Corry.
“It was,” Kinky said, “and it wasn’t just stories. When Da had finished, Connor said, ‘I’ll get my pipes. I’ll be a minute tuning them.’ And off he goes to the kitchen. In a moment, it sounded as if someone was strangling a cat out there.
“When he came back, he sat down, put the bag under one arm and the bellows under his right elbow. They’re called uillinn pipes because uillinn means elbow, and you use your elbow on the bellows to blow up the bag. He gave us all a great grin and said, ‘I suppose when I was tuning up you thought maybe I had the banshee in the kitchen with me,’ and with that he lets go that great laugh of his and starts to play. His fingers flew over the chanter and the drones. I never heard pipe notes so sweet nor a hornpipe, ‘Gusty’s Frolics,’ so happy.
“When he finished, Fidelma said, ‘That wasn’t like a banshee.’
“I could just make out Ma saying to herself, very quietly, ‘Don’t mock the Bean Sidhe. Do not mock her.’
“And later that evening when it was my bedtime and I took my candle and went upstairs to my bed, I had cause to remember Ma’s words.”
11
“Candle?” Eddie asked. “Candle?”
“Bless you, Eddie. Back then, long before you were born, there was no electricity in County Cork except in Cork City, and even in the earlier days of gas lighting, the gas supply never came closer to our farm than to Lissavard, a few miles away.
“The downstairs at my house was lit by oil lamps, great shiny brass things. We had to polish them once a week. They had glass chimneys with a bulge in the middle and the chimneys were surrounded by beautifully etched glass globes. If I close my eyes, I can see the smoke if the wick wasn’t properly trimmed and get the smell of the paraffin yet.” And she could. It seemed sharp and pungent in her nostrils.
“So, with the candle all aflicker making shadows on the whitewashed walls, off I went.
“I’d a ways to go. The staircase from the hall went up to a landing. There were four bedrooms on that floor, for Ma and Da, Siobhan, Art, and Tiernan. The next flight went up to a space under the roof. Fidelma and I had an attic room each. We were a lucky family. For many less fortunate souls in County Cork, a bedroom of your own was unheard of, so.
“I chuckled to myself thinking tonight there’d be a lot of doubling up among the family to make room for the three guests. Art and Tiernan would be together so Malachy could have a bed. Fidelma was giving up her room to Emer and moving in with Sinead.
“At least I’d not be sharing my wee garret with lovesick Fidelma and having to listen to how wonderful Connor was. As if I didn’t know. As if I hadn’t heard it all before. As if I wasn’t a wee bit jealous. Poor man, he’d be sleeping under a blanket on the sofa in the living room tonight.
“When I got to my room I put the candleholder on a wee table by my bed, got into my nightgown, and hopped in under the covers. I would gladly have given Connor my little attic, but Ma said no.
“It was a darlin’ room. My bed was tucked in the low bit under the sloped roof and beside a mullioned window.
“I didn’t draw the curtains for there was nobody for miles to see in. The light from the candle shone only a few feet into the pitch-black night, and for a little while I watched the snowflakes hurry by. The window frame fitted so snugly that not a breath of air could slip into the room. I could hardly hear the noise of the wind in the eaves. I was snug—”
“As a bug in a rug,” Dermot Fogarty said, and sniggered.
“I was so, Dermot. I’d had a lovely day. Maybe the eggnog was making me drowsy, but I picked up my new Christmas book. Ma got me one every year. It was Child Whispers, poems by an English-woman, Enid Blyton. It had just come out that year.
“I’m not sure how long I’d read or whether I’d nodded off, but suddenly there did come a bitter draft into the room. I looked up and shivered, then pulled the eiderdown up round my shoulders. Another draft came more strongly than the first.
“The candle flickered, guttered, and cast horrible shadows on the wall, shapes of bats and bones and wolves.” She paused. “The flame flared, almost died, burnt brightly again, and went out. The dark was so thick you’d have needed a drill to get through it, so.”
Kinky heard a succession of small, startled “ooohs” from her audience.
“Outside, coming from the glass of the window, I heard an awful noise, one to set your teeth on edge, a racket as harsh as a blunt knife on a spinning grindstone.
“It started like the sound of a mouse behind a wainscoting, or boots through dry leaves. It was a shrivelled-up, whiskery kind of a noise. ‘Ah, sure,’ says I to comfort myself, ‘it’s only bare branches rubbing on the glass, even if they do usually make a rat-a-tat noise when they do.’ A row of sycamores stood outside that wall of the house to make a windbreak. ‘It’s only the branches,’ says I, but I snuggled further down the bed.
“I didn’t want to get out of bed to relight the candle. And I didn’t want whatever was out there to come into the room. I just pulled the bedclothes as close under my chin as I could without covering my face; then I pulled the blankets right over my head, but I couldn’t stay there for long. The heat of my own breath soon made the little safe cave under the bedclothes hot as an oven, and so I had to come up for air.
“My first thought was that someone had brought a lantern, the room was so brightly lit. But it was a strange, liquid kind of a light, the sort you might see if you dived under the sea on a sunny day and looked up at the surface overhead. There was a silver to it the like of which I’d never seen. And there was no one in the room.” Kinky paused.
“No one? No one at all?” Colin was trying to control his voice, but she heard a little quaver.
“Not inside the room.”
“Outside? On the landing, like?” Micky held his hands clasped together.
“It was outside the window, and do you know what I saw when I looked out?”
No one spoke. Every head shook.
Kinky took a very deep breath. “And this is what it was. I saw—as plain as I see the nose on your face, Billy Cadogan—I saw a woman.
“The brass neck of her. For a minute I leant forward. I was very cross. She’d no right to be in our tree, so. Who did she think she was, shining her light and waking me up? The cheek of her. I was going to tell her to go away when I heard . . .”
“Heard what?” Billy asked.
“I heard . . .” Kinky deliberately pulled in a short breath and stopped it in her throat, then said, “a high-pitched sound. It was a keening like you might have heard at a funeral, but it was twice as loud as any noise made by mortal woman.”
“The banshee,” Jeannie whispered. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”
“I’m not saying it was the Bean Sidhe, and I’m not saying it wasn’t, but she was old and thin and had on a long white dress under a wide, white cloak, and her silver hair flowed down to her bare feet. And no, she wasn’t floating in midair. She was perched in the branches of the sycamore.”
“So it could have been a real woman,” Colin said. The quaver had gone.
“It could, so. Indeed, so. And maybe she was. She certainly could keen like a real keener, and I could hear the sounds of hands clapping, except her hands, so bony they looked like the hands of a skeleton, were held out to me.
“And I wasn’t angry anymore. I was trembling. I shrank away from them and closed my eyes. I was just going to clamp my hands over my ears to shut out the awful noise when I heard her call one name, clearly and distinctly like a real woman would. I know, for I heard her, and the name she said was—”
Colin and Hazel were mouthing silently
together, “Connor.”
“Connor MacTaggart.” Kinky charged ahead. “Behind me I heard a clattering and didn’t know where to hide. By now, I was crying. Remember, I was only fourteen.”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Kincaid,” Hazel said. “If it had happened to any of us, we’d all have been bawling for our mammies too.”
“I needn’t have, for I saw Sinead in the doorway. The beams thrown by her paraffin light had banished the silver luminance.
“ ‘Are you all right, wee one?’ she asked, moving to my bedside and holding the lamp high so I was bathed in its warm yellow glow.
“ ‘I’m grand, so, but . . . but, Sinead, just give me a hug for I’m all atremble. I think . . . I think I just heard the banshee; indeed I saw her. And you know that when she keens, someone is going to die the very next day.’ I shuddered. The old ones here were Da and Ma, and I loved them both dearly. I didn’t want anything to happen to them. Except she hadn’t called their names. She’d called for Connor.
“I spun back to the window, but there was nothing to be seen but the deep, deep dark—and the snowflakes. Nothing to hear but the rising of the wind of the blizzard outside. And I wondered, for it does snow only rarely in Cork, and I wonder still to this day, did the banshee come because there was a storm or did she start the gale herself? They can do that, you know. So can the Shee.
“Sinead set the lamp on the table and held me close to her. ‘I’ll not pretend you’re imagining things, for didn’t we all hear her too?’
“ ‘What does it mean?’ I asked.
“She had let go her hold a bit and looked at my face. ‘Here,’ she said, and she handed me one of the new Irish linen handkerchiefs embroidered with an S that Malachy, her fellah, had given her. ‘Blow your nose.’
“I did.
“ ‘Ma knew you’d be scared so she sent me up to comfort you and to tell you not to worry about our family. She knows the keening’s not for any of us. She’s seen something but won’t tell the details. You know what she’s like, how she’ll keep her mouth closed when she knows a thing must be and nothing can be done.’
“ ‘Aye, so. We’ve all seen her when the sight’s on her. It must be an awful curse to look into the future.’ ” I didn’t know then what I know now, Kinky thought.
“It would be wheeker,” Colin said. “If I could, I’d tell my Da, like, and he could win thousands of pounds on the football pools.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Kinky said. “It’s not given so people can profit by it. It’s there for the helping of others. Ma had understood what the banshee wanted, had seen what must be, and without telling anyone exactly what it was, had sent Sinead to comfort me.
“ ‘You know very well, Maureen,’ Sinead said, ‘that the banshee doesn’t usually pick on ordinary folks like us. The stories about her are all to do with special families, like the McCarthys of Tipperary and the O’Neills of Ulster, rich people with their own family vault in the churchyard and descendants of ancient kings, so. But aren’t we just the O’Hanlons of Beal na mBláth? So we’ve nothing to worry about.’
“I took a few really deep breaths, then smiled at her. It was true what she said.
“ ‘That’s better,’ she said, and she tucked the sheets more tightly round me. ‘Good night, muirnín,’ says she. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’
“I smiled at the poetry of the two words; ‘moornyeen,’ for darling, and ‘morning.’ Then I put my head on my pillow and tried to sleep. But for all her reassurances Sinead hadn’t told me something I needed to know, and it nagged at me now. Never mind O’Neills and McCarthys. I’d heard the name the banshee, the woman faerie, had called. Were the MacTaggarts of County Cork a special family, or was this spirit sent by the Doov Shee especially for Connor, no matter who his family was?”
12
“Sinead had lit my candle for me before she left. I lay awake, staring out the window. There was no sign of the old woman back in the tree, and the snow had stopped. I could see stars above and moon glow from behind a low cloud bank.
“The storm was over.
“I blew out the candle, but I didn’t think I’d sleep a wink that night. Yet it seemed scarcely had my head touched the pillow when wasn’t the morning sun streaming into the room? I rubbed my eyes and sat up.
“I leant across the bed so I could look out the window. The sky was as blue as blue. The snow had stopped. The last sycamore in the row outside my side of the house lay on the ground. The wind and the weight of the snow must have brought it tumbling down.
“The branches of the tree where the banshee had perched were blanketed, and at its foot a drift was piled smooth and unbroken . . . with nary a sign of footprints either beneath the tree or across the field beside the house.”
Kinky paused. She saw how Billy frowned for a moment; then his eyes widened and he shuddered as he worked out for himself what no footprints might mean.
“It gave me the goose bumps and I didn’t want to be alone, so I washed and dressed as fast as I could and ran down the two flights of stairs.
“Ma was at the range cooking. ‘Good morning, sleepyhead,’ she said. ‘Come and get some porridge. There’s buttermilk on the table.’
“I bade her good morning and to Connor, who was tucking into his breakfast: a plate of eggs, slices of yesterday’s ham fried just so and tasty, potato bread, and drúishin, good Cork blood pudding that would make your mouth water. Ma made her own, you know. I can smell it yet.”
“My Da says drisheen smells like oul’ socks and it tastes like boke,” Colin said and pinched his nose.
The other children giggled
“Your father is entitled to his opinion . . . and I to mine, Colin Brown. I’ll thank you to remember that, so.”
“Yes, Mrs. Kincaid.” Colin sounded suitably contrite.
“Grand. Now, children, you may be wondering where everyone else was.”
“Yes, Mrs. Kincaid,” came the voices in unison.
“Art and Malachy had gone with Emer and Sinead to Clonakilty. Fidelma was tending to the ducks and chickens. Da and Tiernan were seeing to the beasts. The work doesn’t stop for farmers just because it’s Saint Stephen’s Day. Not for shepherds either.
“Says Connor, ‘I’ll be on my way as soon as I finish. After the snow last night the sheep in the upper pasture will need feed taken in to them, even if it’s only a bale or two of straw, but’—he smiled at Ma—‘I’ll not rush such a grand breakfast.’
“Ma’s voice was very solemn. She ignored the compliment and said, ‘Connor MacTaggart, the people in these parts do say I am a wise woman, so. You yourself have said I am.’
“ ‘True,’ he said, a forkful of drúishin stopped halfway to his mouth. ‘They do.’
“I watched the pair of them, the interest in Connor’s eyes, the pity in Ma’s, as she said, ‘I’ve no doubt the faeries are still very, very cross. I’ve no doubt they haven’t finished by a long chalk—’
“ ‘Och, sure,’ Connor said, ‘I don’t want to cause you offence, Mrs.O’Hanlon, but I honestly don’t think the wee folk could hurt anybody.’
“I saw him swallow, fill his mouth, and chew faster, as if he was suddenly in a hurry to finish his meal.
“Ma shook her head. ‘You haven’t asked my advice, Connor, and if you tell me to keep it to myself I will, but if you’ll listen for the sake of Fidelma—’
“ ‘Mrs. O’Hanlon, I’ll listen . . . for the sake of Fidelma, for I’d do nothing to harm that girl or cause her hurt.’ He mopped up egg yolk with potato bread and hardly chewed it at all before it went down his gullet.
“ ‘All right.’ Ma spoke very softly. ‘On today of all days, the feast of Stephen, before noon hour, before the snow flies again—’
“ ‘Come on now, Mrs. O’Hanlon,’ Connor said, glancing up at the clock. ‘There’s not a cloud in the sky from here to Cork City, nor enough wind to make a spider’s web flutter.’
“I saw in my mind’s eye the spider in the mi
stletoe that had frightened Fidelma yesterday. I took a long swallow of my warm buttermilk, and somehow that morning it tasted more bitter than usual.
“As if Connor hadn’t spoken, Ma continued. ‘I’d want you safe and warm inside with a good fire roaring . . .’ She put a hand to her temple, and her eyes went glassy, her voice deeper somehow. ‘For I see gales, and snowbanks, and smothered sheep, and a vixen running on top of the snow, and a raven soaring on the wind.’
“She stopped speaking.
“I shivered. I’d never seen Ma like that before. I didn’t know what to do. I just sat there staring at her, and my mouth wide enough to catch flies. Connor didn’t open his cheep either for quite the while; then he rose.
“Says he, ‘Thank you for my dinner yesterday, my bed last night, and my breakfast this morning, Mrs. O’Hanlon.’ He set his knife and fork on his empty plate and finished his tea in one gulp. ‘And thank you for the advice. I will think on it. But I’ll not let my animals go hungry’—he grinned—‘faeries or no faeries. So thank you very much. Go raibh míle maith agat.’ He stood, his chair legs scraping quickly over the tiles.
“ ‘Tá fáilte romhat; you’re welcome,’ says Ma. ‘And I know you’re no Cinderella who’d to be home before midnight, but heed my words, Connor MacTaggart. Noon. For you heard what we all heard last night.’
“I shivered just to think of that awful screeching, but Connor smiled.
“ ‘I heard a noise all right,’ he said, ‘but I know what it was . . .’ He was speaking over his shoulder as he went to the door to grab his duncher and overcoat.
“ ‘The banshee,’ whispers I.