“There is nothing so sweet as the sacred springs,” said Glenis.
Anna wiped her mouth. “What makes them sacred?” She was hungry, and they had no more food, having counted on supplies from the next village. Her irritation crackled.
Glenis answered straight on. “There are many such springs all over Ireland. Drink more and see if this one doesn’t fill your hunger. You’ve not had as much practice with hunger, wherever and whenever you’ve come from. What makes them sacred? The centuries of wearied travelers seeking them out, the life of them, unwilling to bend to invaders, all the faith that we put back into them. And the fairies live in and around them. You’re telling me you don’t have sacred springs where you’re from?”
Anna had to think. Had she ever heard of a sacred spring in Massachusetts?
“No, no sacred springs, and definitely no fairies,” she said.
“Well then, it can’t be much of a place that you come from. The land gives us sweet reprieve from all our troubles. What place can be worth living in that doesn’t wash away the strains of living?”
Anna had to ask herself the same question.
They slept amid the ruins, huddled together as tightly as bark and tree, sleeping on a mass of grasses and dried plants, anything to keep their bodies off the cold slab of stones. They put one blanket beneath them, one on top of them, and both their capes on top of that. Anna waited for Glenis to fall asleep, which she did almost instantly, issuing a deep sigh and giving a jerk with her legs, as if she entered sleep by falling off a cliff. When Anna was sure that Glenis was asleep, she drew even closer to her, pressing herself into Glennie’s back, letting her right arm fall across the woman. Anna held on for dear life. If she could keep hold of Glenis through the night, then she’d be brave enough to sleep. But she could not let even Glenis know how afraid she was of traveling the road at night, the possibility of getting caught with the black market goods, of never finding Joseph, of her brother wrangling with traumatic brain injury in their time. She breathed into Glenis’s neck and fluttered into sleep.
The dream. Oh, she was pregnant again, and when the baby came out, it was as small as a kitten. No, it truly was a kitten, a dark tabby with eyes squeezed shut and tiny claws in the limp paws. She had nothing to feed it, no milk in her breasts. The kitten was weak and hungry, and Anna fled to find a grown cat to feed it, to keep it breathing.
Anna was jolted out of her dream by a deep, guttural howl that vibrated her ribs. Glenis threw off the covers, bumped Anna aside, and sat up.
“Oh, Jaysus! Oh, only a dream,” Glenis said, rubbing her face.
“What? You had a dream? You howled like someone about to be killed. What did you dream?”
“Dreams are a jumble of nonsense,” said Glenis uncharacteristically. Under all other circumstances, Glenis willingly saw omens, spirits, and troubles carried on the breezes and every other thing and place. Anna doubted her lack of interest in dreams.
“Tell me,” she said, stretching her legs out as her racing heart began to slow. “Then I’ll tell you mine.”
Glenis stood up, shook out her considerable hank of hair, and brushed her skirt.
“Well, it makes no sense, but I was so awful afraid that my heart felt ripped open. There was a man, see, and I loved him, not that I don’t love my own dear husband, Tom, because you know that I do, but in this dream there was this other man and his eyelids were so swollen that I could only see the center dots of eyes through these slits, and he was looking directly at me like he knew me stem to stern, like he’d seen me naked. And he had snakes or something awful coming out of his head. More like black ropes and from his heart too and right out of his arms. Oh, it was a frightful sight. He couldn’t speak and I knew that, yet I could hear him in my head. He said, ‘Trajectory.’ I’ve never heard this word in my life or said it or know what it means.”
Anna stood up and placed a roughened hand on the stone sill of a window. That’s what Patrick had looked like all bungled up in the ICU, wires flapping out of his head, chest and arms. And a trajectory was like a path or a flight. Maybe like time travel.
“Glennie, here’s my dream. I dreamed I was pregnant and I gave birth to a sick little kitten.”
“If anyone is pregnant, that would be me. I thought as much. I wondered if I was, but this didn’t feel like the other times. But I’m quite sure there are no kittens in here,” said Glenis rubbing her belly.
The women stared at each other, silently exchanging dreams, letting them settle back where they belonged.
“And who was I dreaming about? Don’t tell me you know this monstrous fellow?” asked Glenis.
“He’s not monstrous. That sounds so much like my brother, Patrick. Remember, I told you he’d been hurt.”
“Yes, you did, but I don’t know how much of what you told me was true, given the fantastic story that you told me a few days ago. If I recall, you told me that you and your nephew were on a voyage to France to care for your ailing brother. Was that true?”
“Part of that was true. He was horribly injured in an accident with broken bones and such. But it’s not the broken bones we’re worried about, it’s his head that was bashed. And I told you what was true. I’m from the future, Glennie. Just forget the part about the story I told you about France. It was the best I could do back then. I was afraid to tell you the truth. I’m still afraid, but I’m not alone now.”
They reached Skibbereen by midday, making the journey a good deal longer than Glenis had promised. Any painful memory that Anna had of inadequate airline seating was now overshadowed by two days on the wooden plank seat of a horse cart. She thought that some of her bones might be so shaken that they could now be lost in her body, floating in a confused grid of arms, legs, neck, spine, ankles, and toes. Anna had a compelling desire to go for a run, just for a few miles, to put herself back together again. Could she? She’d have to test out the idea. This could mean that her leg injury was healed, her muscles knitted back as they should be.
Glenis drove the wagon through the village and then along a tiny lane, badly rutted, until Anna’s sit bones could stand it no longer.
“Stop, for God’s sake! If we’re going to the cottage that I see, then please stop and let me walk, or I might become paralyzed.”
Glenis, who had been singing, continued to do so, but she pulled up the reins. O’Connell reluctantly stopped; Anna jumped off and rubbed her butt. Glenis drove on, singing a tale of disastrous love, and the ribbon of notes floated back to Anna.
By the time Anna reached the house, she realized that it was far larger than she had imagined from down below. Thatched like nearly every house she had seen, this one extended to twice the size of Glenis and Tom’s house. A large stable sat to one side. O’Connell was already being tended by two men, who walked him and the cart into the stable. Somewhere, another horse neighed to O’Connell, offering a greeting of familiarity. From the squeal of voices inside the whitewashed house, Anna surmised that Glenis had received a riotous welcome.
Anna walked along the path to the house and noted several cows and chickens. This was a house of abundance compared to most. As Anna neared the last few steps, the door flew open and Glenis emerged, her face stretched into a wide grin and her cheeks flushed.
“Anna, come in. They don’t believe that you’re from America. Say something so they won’t think I’m making up a tale.”
Anna flinched, worried that she had already been betrayed, but no, this was the playful Glenis, just wanting to shock a roomful of people with Anna’s strange accent. Glenis grabbed her by the hand and fairly dragged her into the house. Two little girls hid behind an older woman, who stood on one side of a table, nearest the hearth. An older man rose from a chair and offered her a ready smile that announced the absence of several prominent teeth. At the very moment that Anna stood gawking and adjusting her eyes to the interior, a younger man filled up a doorway leading to the back of the house, backlit by a window. She saw the silhouette of a loose shirtsleeve p
inned up. He had lost an arm and she could not pull her eyes from the armless sleeve. Glenis must have followed her gaze.
“Donal, come meet Anna. She’s about to thrill us with her American accent. And whatever have you done with your arm? I think you’ve lost it.”
One of the girls squealed with laughter and ran to the man, who scooped her up with ease. “Kathleen, have you taken me arm again? I can’t find it anywhere.”
Anna recognized the familiarity of family, of unbridled teasing—not that her own family had been riddled with it, but she had witnessed it enough at her girlfriend’s house when she’d sought refuge.
“Go on, Anna, say something,” said Glenis.
Anna felt like a child being prodded to name all the states or presidents. She felt a deep blush rising.
“I’m very pleased to meet you all,” she said.
After a lengthy pause, the old man said something in Gaelic, and they all exploded with laughter.
“Careful now, she can say a thing or two in Irish and probably understands more than that,” said Glenis. Then she turned to Anna and asked, “Can you mind yourself for a bit while I work out the barter with Donal?”
That’s what Glenis called smuggling: the barter.
After eating a warm custard pudding that only partially addressed her hunger, Anna said she wanted to walk along the hillsides. Maura, the old woman of the house, directed Anna to a path that led to a view of the bay that was reportedly magnificent. Maura put her hand over her heart when she recalled the lookout point.
Anna had explained to Glenis that in general, she needed more breathing space between people than the Irish did. Over the weeks, her walks had grown longer and longer so that she could think.
“My family is smaller than yours and we don’t crave all smashing in together in a small space like you do. I’m not saying one is right and the other wrong. I’m saying that ten people in a room with a peat fire and four pipe smokers is too much for me,” Anna had tried to explain to Glenis during their ride.
“But be sure to stay on the path. The bogs are still terrible. You’ll sink in to your knees and we’ll have to haul you out with the horses,” Maura said.
Anna stayed on the path, fortified by the egg pudding. She felt the protein run through her body like a sentinel, ringing bells and declaring a holiday on hunger. She immediately felt energized and walked for hours until coming to a vantage point, a blunt plateau where sheep, cows, and people had flattened the tough grasses.
She hadn’t thought to ask Glenis what would happen next now that they had delivered the wagonload of black market goods hidden within the thatch. Would they immediately begin their journey back to Kinsale? Anna decided to campaign for at least one day of rest, one day of not bruising her tailbone on the wagon. She stretched languidly along the flattened grass. She was grateful for these moments of privacy, of not being observed, of her careful suppression of twenty-first-century words and phrases. In a flood of relief, she shouted a list of words from her life that had remained chained to the back of her skull. She stood in the center of the lookout and yelled:
Subway
Fast food
Superconductor
Email
Text message
Super Tuesday
Hurricane Katrina
Fucking A
Clean Water Act
Atkins diet
Boston marathon
Health club
Fitness guru
Investment broker
Bar exam
Hybrid car
Caribbean vacation
Red Sox
Divorce court
The list went on and on until she had spit out all the words that had pounded for release. She had known a kid in high school who’d had Tourette’s Syndrome. He’d said that he’d been able to contain his ticks and barks during school, but they’d accumulated all day until he’d gotten home, and then he’d had to empty them out in their two-car garage, barking and twitching his head, touching the doorway one hundred times.
“They never went away,” he had said. “But I could make them wait. I sort of housebroke them.”
Now Anna understood. She got up and scooped up her skirt in one hand and galloped her way down the hill, taking the path that kept her safe from the suck of the bogs. As soon as she saw the house, she adjusted her skirts again and walked empty of all the twenty-first-century words and her need to run.
As she approached the back of the stable, she heard angry voices from fifty yards away.
“You shall not! Have you lost your mind? I’ll not be saddled with her.”
This had to be Donal. Although she had spoken very little with him, she recognized his full-throttle voice. She stopped immediately, fearing that they were arguing about her. If this was true, she wanted to get into the fray, especially if she was the one to be saddled upon someone. If the argument was about another, then she could press into the background. She saw Glenis and Donal emerging from the stable.
“You can’t go, and you can’t take a good horse like O’Connell. He’s the best horse here, and we need him to haul the goods,” said Donal.
“Yes, he’s a fine horse indeed, and that’s why I need to take him to Dromore Hill. He’ll keep a fine pace, you know he will, you know I’m right about this. Give me a saddle and stop your blathering,” said Glenis.
Glenis was leaving? Anna tilted her head to one side. Had she missed something that Glenis had told her? Were they both to ride O’Connell?
“Glennie?” she said.
Glenis and Donal whipped their heads around to face Anna, suddenly seeing her. Glenis looked startled and suddenly younger than she was, like a schoolgirl caught in a lie, eyes big, lips parted, hands open.
“Anna, there is someone who lives past Limerick, a ways out on Dromore Hill, who I’ve heard of all my life. I think she can help your, ah, your delicate situation, and help you find your boy Joseph if there’s anything left of him to find. I’ll take O’Connell by myself, taking the old roads, and I can be there in two days,” she said, reaching for Anna’s hands.
“By yourself? You mean leave me here? Glenis, don’t do it; I won’t hold us up, I promise. I won’t utter one word of complaint.”
“No. I’ve thought and thought about this, and it is a golden plan. You can stay here for a few days, help deliver the load to Glengariff, and then Donal can bring you back to Kinsale. I’ll be riding into the village the very same moment that you arrive, see if I don’t.”
Donal’s chest radiated with rage, expanding it, exploding with red-hot blasts of air. “Have you forgotten the risk, have you forgotten what we’re doing here? Sure you’ve got one woman who lost her way and can’t find her lad. How does that stack up against all of us who face the gallows if we are caught? What the devil is wrong with you?”
Glenis’s chin shook and puckered, and she fought off tears. She faced her cousin, looking up at his angry face.
“I’m sick to death of living to run whiskey, smuggling the barest of things that keep us alive, staying forty paces ahead of the troops. Have you ever felt like you had a choice, that for once in your life all the stars turned just so and the sun and the moon lined up to light your way to do something that truly mattered? Because that’s how I feel at this very moment. I have a chance to do something more than smuggle, so that my children can grow up to be something other than smugglers. I’m not a foolish woman. You’ve known me since I was born and you’ve never known me to do anything but what was right for my family. You must trust me.”
“And just who is it that you must see, who is so almighty important?” he asked.
“Why, Biddy Early, of course. If there is help to be had, it is the great Biddy Early who can help us.”
Chapter 23
Glenis’s euphoria could not be hampered by Donal’s grumbling. When he finally relinquished a suitable saddle for her to use, Glenis grabbed the unhappy cousin and kissed him. She prepared O’Connell, who immediately
picked up her air of adventure. She spoke constantly to the horse in Irish, and his flanks quivered in conspiratorial excitement as she cinched the saddle. Glenis stroked his neck and his long face. Anna could have sworn that the horse understood every word that Glenis spoke. She wondered for the first time if her own sister-in-law Tiffany had been able to speak a secret language with horses, if she had been able to tell the horse of Patrick’s growing anger toward his only son, as if some drug, or a curse, would overcome him when he shouted caustic words that would burn young Joseph. Anna prayed that Tiffany’s horse had listened as keenly on her last day of life as O’Connell listened to Glenis.
Two leather saddlebags were filled with flat breads, along with grain for the horse. The day was bright and warm, so Glenis folded her cape tight and rolled it behind the saddle. She stepped away from the horse and turned to Anna, placing her hands on either shoulder, looking up into her face. Anna could smell the fresh sweat that pumped from Glenis.
“We’ll be back home in Kinsale again, you’ll see. We’ll have worked our way through all this, and the worst that we shall face will be Tom pouting for the first two days,” she said. “And if he’s alive anywhere in Ireland, we’ll find your nephew.”
Anna latched onto her hands with an iron grip. She drew her close and whispered, “I don’t think Donal likes me one bit. And who could Biddy Early be that you’d place such faith in her?”
“Just the most powerful seer in all of Ireland. Even the Catholic priests and the British call on her when they think no one is looking. There’s no one else who can help you the way she can.”
“Then why can’t I go with you?”
They had been through this discussion several times, and Anna knew she sounded like a whining child.
Glenis tested the saddle, giving it a tug. “O’Connell and I can travel light and fast. I don’t want to have to worry about taking care of you on a journey like this. Now, I’ve nothing new to tell you and I won’t tell you this again. I’m leaving you with my most trusted cousin, who truly is a cousin. All I ask is that you take my place in helping him. Just ride with him for a few days. It won’t be so hard, I promise.
Now & Then Page 17
