Secrets of Carrick: Merrow

by Ananda Braxton-Smith

  We put him in the cow-byre with Breck and Bo. I made a bed of clean straw and we laid him in it. Ushag brought out the new rabbit-and-hare rug and covered him. She brought out her box of cures and simples. Then we lit the rushes and looked him over closely.

  He was a terrible sight. His lips were white and split, and his eyes swollen top and bottom so that they were only slits in his face. He looked like he’d been dragged over a barnacle-bed with his limbs all sliced and bruised; there wasn’t an unscraped spot left on him, but his poor body had given up on bleeding and the ragged edges of his wounds had grown grey. His toes and fingers had puffed up like sea-squirts. As he dried, his body grew more rimed with salt. My aunt rubbed her hands together, opened her box and started bustling about.

  The palest of blue eyes stared out from within the near-drowned man’s swollen face, and watched. Once, his lips opened and let out a small, dry sound. I bent down to hear him and he grasped my arm and mumbled something in a rasping, lumpy talk. I put my ear to his mouth.

  ‘Ískaldr,’ he breathed and fell back still gripping my arm. As I loosed his fist from my arm I saw the figure of a merrow on it. Its tail circled his wrist and its flowing hair held ships and whales and smoking pipes.

  I went back to the beach to fetch the catch. It took me until well past midnight and when I came home, Ushag had bathed the blue man’s wounds. She was sitting by him as he suffered from a Recurring Senselessness. She sat by him all night, combing the grit and tiny crabs out of his long yellow hair.

  Chapter Eight

  Water-Horse

  AUNTIE USHAG FILLED THE BLUE MAN with cowslip and masterwort, and after he’d puked and was dead to the world she bathed him in wolfsbane and yarrow. Calmly, she bound his eyes with the Blessed Thistle and sprinkled powdered bloodstone into his head wound, and then said that to really help him she needed her old bone-stones but she’d lost those years ago. She said she thought he’d broken his nose and, as if she did it every day, she stuffed a mustard ball up each nostril saying that would have to do for now. They made a sickening grating sound as they went in.

  She filled the room with her busy-ness. Breck and Bo chewed their cud and watched her curiously. I listened to the insensible man trying to suck air through his broken nose and suddenly I’d had enough of sick rooms, silence and cow shit.

  ‘Ma has a pile of healing stones around the…’ I nearly said altar but changed my mind at the last moment. ‘Hearth,’ I finished. I didn’t know any longer how my aunt would feel about anything. ‘I’ll go fetch them, shall I? There’s all sorts.’

  Ushag nodded without looking up from the man, and I went.

  It was dawn-break as I left the yard and it took me until mid-morning to get to the Slevins’ place. Scully was grinding their meal by the well, talking to himself under his breath. As I came close he just raised his voice and talked to me instead. ‘I was just saying we have a visitor from the monastery,’ he said. ‘The Prior himself has come to save my mother from herself. Listen…’

  The Prior of the Little Brothers of Perpetual Patience was preaching in a rumbling voice to Ma about her altar. I could tell he’d had time to sink to his most deep and impressive tones. Ma’s own voice was high-toned and getting higher. Right now she sounded somewhat like an albatross.

  ‘I can’t be taking away Old Breeshey’s bowl, Father, and you shouldn’t ask it.’

  ‘Our Lord doesn’t want you worshipping other gods, Mary dear, and you know it. He’s jealous of other gods.’

  ‘Breeshey’s not a god! She’s a…well…she’s just Breeshey. And She’s been living here in those horns since before you came and I can’t just ask her to go now. It’d be terrible unthankful.’ Ma paused and added sulkily, ‘Jesus has never asked it of me in any of our little talks and if he can see my point, I don’t see why you can’t.’

  ‘The Lord Jesus wants you down at the chapel, and living the good and Christian life so you can be with him in Heaven. Don’t you want to go to Heaven, Mary?’

  Ma looked at him suspiciously. ‘Well, now…that depends on who’s going to be there?’ she asked. ‘I mean, apart from the lovely boy Jesus, that is.’

  ‘All the good, Christian souls you’ve ever known will be there,’ said the Prior brightly.

  Ma’s face didn’t change a jot but her eyes glazed over.

  ‘All those poor babies of yours,’ he added with a cheerful smile but she just looked sadly out the door. I knew she was thinking of the Other things they’d buried in her children’s graves. She saw me standing in the shadows listening and pulled me inside with relief.

  ‘Here’s Neen Marrey from the cove, Father. Her aunt is that Ushag Marrey who gave you the troubles a few years back. Say hello to the Father, Neen.’ She gripped my hand and didn’t let go.

  ‘Hullo, Father,’ I said.

  The Prior didn’t exactly give me the glad eye.

  ‘Hello, Neen Marrey.’

  I grew restless under his gaze. In spite of his crusted habit and a tongue and beard red from wine, he made me feel dirty. He looked at me like I was planning something lawless and indecent, and if he could look long and hard enough he’d find what it was in my face. He found nothing though and turned back to Ma.

  ‘The Return is expected any day now, Mary — we’re all getting ready down at the Abbey — and I do want to see you and your unlucky boy in Glory. I believe I’d miss you too much if you weren’t there.’ His eyes twinkled at her. She twinkled back as though she couldn’t help it. ‘You know you’re my favourite pagan. Ha! Ha!’ His laugh gave Ma a chance to drag the talk back into our world.

  ‘You’re a terrible man and I shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t stop you at the gate of your very own heaven with all your…ways.’ She smiled broadly through the black stubs of her teeth.

  At once, they both turned to me expectantly. I’d been struck somewhat disgusted by the aged flirting and I had to be elbowed by Ma to find my tongue. ‘What?’ she asked me.

  ‘Ushag says to say we’ve fished a man up in the gillnet and he’s broken his nose and can we have any bone-stones you have lying about?’ I asked in a rush.

  ‘A man is hurt!’ shrilled Ma, and the Prior jumped. ‘Why didn’t you speak up straightways?’ She started cramming the stones into a bag. ‘I’ll come with you. Father, you’ll have to excuse us.’ She stood up. ‘A man is hurt. We’re off.’ She was hopping about like a robin in her relief.

  The Prior stepped forward and took the rattling bag off Ma’s shoulder. ‘I’ll be coming too,’ he said and patted her hand. ‘Maybe I can help in some small way.’

  Ma swapped the irritated eye with me but there was no refusing him. Scully joined us and, even with us making slower time because of Ma and the old Prior, we were back at our yard by mid-afternoon. There’s nothing like pure curiosity to drive the oldest, the sickest, and the slowest legs.

  When I’d set out, the day had again looked to be settling in hot and skyclad and it was with thankfulness that on our way to the roundhouse, the sky mottled and an onshore breeze picked up. There was even some dark cloud out at the horizon. Maybe it would rain tonight and all the over-hot humours of the last weeks would cool. We arrived just as the lightning and thunder started up.

  Auntie Ushag came into the yard to look at the sky. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of the Prior but she nodded civilly enough at him. I had secretly hoped for sharp words, at least, and possibly even fists but he just nodded civilly back. It was a shame. I’d have put my money on Auntie Ushag getting the better of him any day.

  ‘Now, now. Here we are, here we are.’ Ma headed off my aunt and, taking the rattling bag off the Prior, led the way into the byre. One-by-one we four squeezed ourselves into the tiny sage-sharp room, pushing the protesting cows out of the way. In the blaze of almost all our store of tapers and rushes, Ma leant over the sleeping man. She studied his face and lifted the rug from his torso.

  Standing up slowly she turned and folded her hands over her belly.

>   ‘He’s a wiggynagh,’ she said. I didn’t know what she meant. ‘A man from up in the north,’ she explained. She swapped a quick look with Ushag. ‘And a fine-grown one at that.’

  Ushag’s face stayed cold. ‘Maybe under all the muck,’ she said, tipping up the bag of bone-stones and laying them out.

  When all the stones were on the ground, we found a few that looked like noses. There were some like fingers, some like hips and others like knees or elbows. There were a pile of broken bronze shells. One even looked like a giant stone beetle but I don’t know what you’d use that for. Ma and Ushag chose the likeliest nose-stone and carefully tied it to the man’s face. At this, he began to stir and the two women watched as he slowly regained his senses.

  ‘He looks like a raider,’ said the Prior, pushing forward. ‘He has the height, the scars. And the look of killing about him. Where did he come from?’

  ‘From my gillnet,’ said Ushag shortly.

  ‘Why’s he so white and yellow?’ I asked.

  Under his skin-pictures he was as white as the Prior’s collar and his hair was yellow like primroses. Nobody on Carrick looked like that; we were all dark-haired, or red. Though plainly the others had heard of his people, I’d never been told about them.

  ‘His folk live with the ice and snow. They have no sunlight in winter, and nothing but sunlight in summer,’ said the Prior, as if he were saying a lesson. ‘They grow so tall to be nearer the sun in summer. Their pale skin sucks in all that season’s light and heat, and stores it in their hair. That light and heat is then released through the dark winters, allowing the pale races to survive that crisis.’

  We all looked around at the others. Nobody seemed convinced. I looked to Ushag but she just shrugged and raised her eyes to heaven.

  ‘He’s awake,’ said Scully just then.

  I turned and the Northman’s startling and skyclad eyes were looking straight at me. Those eyes were like slits of blue sky and not common blue sky either, but the kind of skies we’d had recently, so pale as to be almost white. He opened his cracked, balm-daubed lips and I thought he smiled at me.

  ‘Njótið heilir handa,’ he croaked and reached out one huge hand toward me. He tried to say something more but choked instead. So he put his hand on his heart and smiled at me. His split lips bled a little. ‘Goð pika…’

  ‘Look out.’ The Prior hopped forward into the light and stood between me and the Northman. ‘He’s saying “girl”. They’re blood-soaked, war-wise men, this lot. They have no respect for women.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about him and his people, for a priest who came to us beardless and hasn’t left Carrick since,’ Ushag snapped, lifting a cup of burdock and honey to the sick man’s lips.

  ‘We had a northern novice in my first posting,’ answered the Prior with no temper on show at all. ‘I was very young. I’m afraid I often found him more interesting than my prayers.’ There was a silence, in which the Northman sipped and swallowed and made hoarse sounds in his throat. ‘He told such stories! I learnt a little of their language and ways.’

  ‘Hefir thú sét skip?’ the Northman said lifting himself on one elbow.

  ‘He’s asking about his raid-ship,’ translated the Prior.

  ‘We saw no ship,’ Ushag replied, and squatted by his bed. She shook her head vigorously. ‘No ship. Only you.’ She pointed her finger at his chest. The Northman seemed to understand. He lay back in the rabbit-and-hare rug and sighed. I thought it a sigh of relief.

  ‘These men worship only war,’ the Prior went on importantly. ‘The northern novice couldn’t stand to be without his weapons and war-weeds. In the end he killed the cook and left us in the middle of the night.’ Under its scrapes and slashes the Northman’s face seemed kind to me. The Prior’s face, on the other hand, had grown proud and a little cruel. ‘According to the bishop, the wiggynagh are to be swallowed up entirely in the last days…along with all witches and charmers and healers…’ Ma, Scully and I looked at the floor, but Ushag met his eyes and he dwindled under her disgust. ‘And all the others…’ he said, his voice dying away.

  ‘Well, well, that’s a lot of folk, Father,’ muttered Ma giving Ushag the wary eye. ‘Just look at that sky. It’s getting late now. You’d best be heading down or you’ll miss evening service.’

  The Prior had been pricked by Ushag’s scornful eye, and had found his preaching voice again. ‘Late, is it?’ he began. ‘It’s more than late, Mary. It’s almost too late! The millennium is upon us with all its incests and adulteries, its lies and frauds and self-loving ways.’

  ‘Honest now, Father, none of us here love ourselves so you just save your worry for those who need it.’ Ma tried to calm him but he wasn’t done yet.

  ‘Did you hear, Mary, about the twins down at Strangers’ Croft?’

  Ma nodded. ‘Poor little mites,’ she said.

  ‘Poor little mites, my elbow!’ He leant in toward her. ‘They’re signs! Unnatural little twinned signs!’

  I was all at sea. What was he talking about? And why was he calling Ma Mary? Her name is Mureal. He was like a madman. Ushag was furiously rolling torn cloths for bandage and pressing her lips together.

  ‘We asked for signs and now they’re here. It starts. Those twins are only the beginning. There’s reports through England of headless infants who eat their meal through their navels, and depraved doubly-sexed individuals getting themselves offspring alone. The signs are here all about us; some have skeletons outside their flesh or are furred all over, or fledged. There are even some who are gilled and webbed.’ His voice trembled with disgust. ‘There are those with scales dwelling among us.’ I hid my hands and Ushag saw. She put her arm around my shoulder, and she was shaking and making fists.

  ‘Go fetch a jug,’ she whispered to me.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘The signs are all around us but we won’t read them,’ the Prior finished sadly.

  ‘Well, that’s quite a story and I’ll be sure to learn more of it another time,’ said Ma fussing at his collar and cloak. ‘I’m thankful for your care of us, Father, I really am but it’s time for you to be at chapel. You’ll be late and the congregation all let down if you don’t leave right this moment.’ She took him firmly by the shoulder. ‘Thank-you for all your help and Scully will walk you safe to the path.’ She steered him toward the door. ‘You’ve been such a help to us poor women and I’ll surely be seeing you in the church…’ He plainly didn’t want to go. ‘…Soon.’

  ‘I don’t need your boy to see me safe. You know, maybe I should stay. That one there could be just biding his chance to loot you and…’ He looked at me then at my aunt. ‘And worse,’ he said meaningfully. Anybody would think I hadn’t grown up with the wild animals and with the spring about me, with Breck and her seasonal bull, or that on drunken market days in town I went about blind. I knew what he meant.

  ‘We can look after ourselves, man.’ Auntie Ushag tried to keep her voice low and calm but didn’t quite manage it. Ma crowded the Prior toward the door but it was too late. My aunt had lost her battle with her temper. ‘You can take your jealous god, and his milksop son…’ she started, with Ma making little distressed noises and trying to cover his ears. She flapped her shawl like a crow at the Prior’s head until she forced him out into the yard with Scully following and sniggering. A scarlet-faced Auntie Ushag followed them out into the yard, hands-on-hips and booming. ‘…And your book of secret rules, and your thieving taxes, and child-pope, and your dooms and signs, and you can shove them all right up your…’ She stopped and took a long breath. ‘Your holy fundament,’ she said at last and went back inside the byre.

  Scully bust right out laughing. I slapped him on the back of the head. ‘Sssh!’ I hissed, delighted. ‘What’s a fundament?’

  The Prior left, alone, and we all followed Ushag inside.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Ushag, who was now white and trembling.

  We all muttered that it was ‘all right,’ and ‘entirely unders
tandable.’ And then Ma said, ‘What a day! We could all do with a meal and a brew.’

  She left Scully and Ushag and me sitting around the Northman as he slept, and when she came back with the mead jug and broth I was almost asleep. We ate in silence, and drank draughts of the warm, sweet mead, and gently we all settled. The thunder had stopped but it hadn’t rained. There had been a red-sky at sunset so tomorrow would be clear and hot. We sat in a shrinking circle of light at the bed of the Northman and it was as if we were the only beings in the world. Outside the light anything could be happening, but inside the circle we were as we ever were.

  ‘You know I heard a story once about a girl who fished a man out of a lake.’ Ma slipped a sly glance in my aunt’s direction. My aunt sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, go on Birdie,’ said Ma. ‘It’s a good one.’

  There was no answer from Ushag so she carried on. I felt myself drifting sleepily, like weed on the surface of water. There were clouds inside my head, then I was the clouds, and then I was the blue sky and the clouds just kept passing. The story came from faraway.

  ‘A girl was grazing her cattle at the High Lake when she came upon a man, soaked and bubbling from the mouth, by the water’s edge. He was covered in weed, as yours is Ushag Marrey, and he was big and brawny and so beautiful she decided she’d keep him, and she took him home on the back of one of her red cows. She nursed him back to life and then set the arrangements for a wedding.

  ‘She’d only known him a month.

  ‘The day before the wedding she was up by the lake again gathering wildflowers for her dress when she came upon a frisky horse. A stallion it was and big and beautiful and she thought how marvellous her man would look sat up on this fine beast, and set about catching it for him.