Enchanting Cold Blood

by Petya Lehmann

  “Take him home and lay him down where he likes best to be himself. Don't stir him or be talking to him at all, but just to give him a sup of new milk and all the water he asks for. And pay attention now, for this is the powerful cure. The first moth that comes in the house tonight to warm itself at the fire, catch that, roll it in a piece of fat bacon and bury it away. That's the way ye'll catch his sickness and destroy it, if it's God's will.”

  Sabia went to the boy and kindly and reverently made the sign of the cross on brow and breast. He scarcely lifted his head; he had almost taken leave of the visible world: time was nothing to him. His soul sat already by the shore of the seas of the infinite, waiting to hear a voice. Sabia sat still in her chair, while he was carried out in the arms of a strong man. An intolerable sense of grief and woe had of a sudden come upon her. A cold hand clutched her heart, and a cold wind out of the future blew around her, chilling her to the bone, till she shivered and shook. She heard voices about her and at length dragged herself from her abstraction and looked up to meet the eyes of a queer-looking baby that sat on a woman's knee directly in front of her.

  The baby was a very large child about twelve months old, with a head as big as a man's, and quite bald. It had large pale eyes that stared out of its head and apparently saw nothing. It wore a tartan dress of black and red and sat perfectly still on the knee of the bonny, foolish-looking young woman that held it. Anxious and worried she seemed as well as foolish. Her mouth was open, but she lacked courage to speak.

  “What's the matter with the child,” said Nurse Phaire, “or is it yourself that's ailing?”

  “Not the least touch of disease is on either of the pair of us. Glory be to God,” said the young woman. “But I'm harished: I'm demented.”

  “God save you, woman,” answered Nurse Phaire, “and how's that?”

  “I'll ask ye to look at this boy, ma'am. Did you ever see a finer child? Barring that he has no hair on his head and can't speak and hasn't a tooth in his jaws, above or below; wouldn't anyone on earth that had a heart for children call him a beauty?”

  “He's very large for his age,” said Sabia with a feigned cheerfulness, as the boy directed his pale eyes upon her.

  “Well, then,” said Nurse Phaire, “I grant you all that you say of him and welcome. But what's the matter with you at the end of it?”

  The woman drew up nearer to Sabia and spoke in a cold whisper.

  “It's this way, beautiful mistress of the house,” said she. “The mother of him that's married to me says, all's not right with him. She says, he's one of them, you know who. She says, ice won't freeze him, nor water drown him, nor fire burn him. And I'm in dread she'll try her experiments when my back's turned. She'll murder him if she gets the chance. Indeed she's a terrible old woman. She sits by the fire and looks at the child till I think she'll look him silly. Faith, I think it's herself has looked the hair off his head and the teeth out of his mouth.”

  Sabia saw by the young woman's face, which was now red, now pale, that her uneasiness was great.

  “Don't go back home,” she said. “Stay here with your boy.”

  “Wait then,” said Nurse Phaire, “it's better that we should make sure that all's right with the child, and that he is no changeling. Let me tell you this, ma'am. Not one of the sort can abide the look of a pot of eggshells cooking on the fire. If he's one of them, he'll speak out. Mary,” she called, “go and break a dozen of eggs and bring me the shells of them and a pot till I make some soup.”

  “The shells, ma'am?” said the girl appearing at the door.

  “Ay, the shells,” said Nurse Phaire solemnly

  “Holy Trinity,” murmured the girl as she vanished.

  The pot boiled soon on the great hearth, and one by one, the nurse threw in the eggshells. The child remained unmoved, staring at the fire while every one anxiously regarded him. Neither laughter nor expostulation came from his lips. Encouraged by the silence, he turned his face to his mother's breast, stuck his thumb in his mouth and peacefully slumbered.

  “There's not a sign of ill-will in him towards the egg-shells,” said Nurse Phaire. “Miss Sabia, dear, let us see will he dislike the prayer-book? Will I fetch the big one?”

  When the nurse came back holding the prayer-book with the heavily embossed covers, the mother lifted up the child, shook him and bounced him heavily down again on her knee. He uttered a sigh, withdrew his thumb and opened his eyes. Sabia drew near with the open prayer-book in her hands. A beautiful page shone bright there with gold and many colours: the Mother of God sat with her son on her knee and the angels about her. At the sight, a smile spread over the solemn face of the child. He uttered an inarticulate joyous babbling sound and held his arms out to the book. The women crowded round exclaiming and praising the boy.

  “There's a wise man to come of that child,” said one.

  “He has a grand considering head,” said Nurse Phaire.

  “How soft is his cheek!” said Sabia.

  As they all stood so about the boy, tenderly exclaiming on his wisdom, a noise was heard at the door. There was loud talking, a moment's delay; then a young man burst into the hall. The sunlight streamed in with him and showed him deadly pale. He panted and struggled for breath.

  Sabia sprang forward. “Speak!” she said. “Tell it out. What is it?”

  The man's chest heaved as though the walls of it would crack.

  “They're comin'!” he gasped. “They're comin'! Oh, God in Heaven! What a sight!”

  Chapter XXV. - Back to Ardhoroe

  There are many sorts of love. Sabia's love for Estercel was at once steady as the lamp, tall and aspiring as the singing flame: such a love is cleansing, it sweeps out all baser fires, and it runs in the blood like wine and steadies the heart.

  When the lad Murrough came in with his message, Sabia's second self at once knew all that he had to tell her. In these last days, she had had many previsions of misfortune, only this actual one was more bitter than those that had gone before. She went up to Murrough and took him by the sleeve.

  “Is it Estercel?” she said.

  “Ay,” said he, “it's himself sure enough! But it's a dead man on a dead horse I've seen,” and he burst into tears.

  “Where?” said Sabia as she shook him by the sleeve.

  “Coming here by the Dungannon Road,” said he.

  Like a flash, Sabia was off, and every man, woman, and child in and about the place was after her. Down the hill she ran, over the bridge and past the wood. At the turning, she saw a slow-moving crowd coming towards her. In some ways, it resembled a funeral train, but in this case the dead man came first on a staggering horse. No followers of a funeral ever wore such faces of horror and grief.

  Fleet as Sabia was, young Murrough, who was Estercel's own horse-boy, outran her. Tamburlaine, all blind now, was still staggering on, but when he heard Murrough 's shout and felt under his feet the very sound and tread of home, he stopped and began to waver and totter, and his hind-quarters to give beneath him. “I can die now,” he said to himself in his dying mind; “I have brought him home.” The astonishing thing about the horse was how his flesh and his substance, and his youth had vanished away in one night. In the evening, he had been young and comely, round of haunch and back; in the morning, he had come in old and gaunt.

  “Hold him up!” shouted Murrough; “Hold him up, the hero!” and he ran and put his shoulder to his neck. “Keep up a minute, darling, just a minute more, till we take the poor soul off your back!”

  Two more men ran forward and held up his hind-quarters while the women shrieked and cried on Mary and the saints.

  “That's what it is to go out into the bitter world,” said one.

  “Wouldn't you say they'd come back straight out of hell?” said another.

  “Ah, cease shouting, some of you,” said Murrough, “and take the young man down from off his back.”

  At this moment, Sabia ran in. When they saw her, they became silent and drew back, sta
nding circle-wise and bending forward in their pity. It was young life looking upon death, and youth suddenly grown old.

  Sabia looked and looked and yet could not believe what she saw: the open mouth, the grey face, the defilement, the vermin-plagued sores. Paler and paler she grew: was it Estercel? or was it not? It was, and he was dead. Unlike the other women, she never uttered a sound, but raised her head and looked about her; then beckoned: “Dermot, go to the horse's shoulder quick. Murrough, come here and take him down.”

  With her own fingers, she began to undo the buckles and straps. A second man stepped forward. Murrough took the head and shoulders, the other man the knees: they lifted him. Sabia saw marks on the folded horse-cloth.

  “Lay him on the other side,” said she

  When he was on the ground, they saw that the hip-bone had worked through the skin. A shout from the men drew their eyes away: Tamburlaine was now tottering to his fall. Like some gallant ship that dips and founders and sinks, he went down with a groan, for his work was done, and he knew himself at home. There they lay, the two heroes, a few feet apart, and one was as bad as the other. Murrough was distracted between them. But seeing that all the women and most of the men made a circle round Estercel, he stayed with the horse. Unfolding the pad from his back, he spread it over the trembling creature. He ran and fetched water and washed the red foam from face and mouth; then mixed more with spirit from a leather bottle. Dermot held up the horse's neck while he poured it down his throat. Then he sat with the large miserable head on his knee, chafing the bony forehead and neck, calling to him, talking love words, praying him to come back to life while Dermot rubbed the strained and trembling limbs.

  The circle round Estercel opened out in silence as old Nurse Phaire came hobbling in. When she saw the two prostrate creatures who had gone out so gallant and so young, a horror seized her. She tottered in and looked down on Estercel, bending lower and still lower, going down on her knees and staring with gaping mouth as though not believing what her eyes had told her. Then she rose up and, throwing up her arms, began the death chant of the O'Neills. As the old woman occupied the position of family doctor, the raising of the death chant meant that she considered Estercel was past hope. The first note of it struck like a knife to the heart of Sabia: she flew at her nurse and shook her with passion.

  “Stop!” she said, “stop and shut your mouth. Look here, woman devoid of sense. See this hand,” and she held up the long helpless limb. “Look, old woman, the charm is there yet,” and she showed the ring tightly encircling the swollen finger. “He is not dead, and that I know. Leave your foolish canticles. To the work now and bring him back to life, or you shall answer it to me.”

  There was a desperate strength of passion in Sabia that hushed down all resistance and objections. Muttering, the nurse stooped down and laid a hand upon his heart.

  “If he is alive,” said she, “then life and death can co-exist, and death can bring forth life.”

  “It shall,” said Sabia. “Run, Owen and Michael, run as you have never run before and bring back the carrier.”

  The two fleetest runners started out. The May wind blowing behind could not overtake them. Those of the standers-by who wore their mantles laid them on the carrier which was just a broad board with four handles. In deep silence, the body of the young man was placed on the carrier and covered over. The news of the arrival of a dead man (and that, the young Estercel) brought home by his dying horse had got abroad. Men and women kept hurrying in by twos and threes, who, as they joined the circle, fell respectfully silent. Four bearers took the handles, Sabia and her nurse walked behind, and the rest followed in a long weeping train.

  Sabia was full of bitterness. She hated the little birds on the bushes who kept on singing as they passed. She had looked to see the young man returning with glory upon his head and fame in his right hand. She could not bear to see him so abashed before all the people. Where had been his match for stature, strength, and courage? And there he was lying, all doubled up and hideous on a board. It was not that her pride was mortified, but that she felt for him in his physical humiliation.

  Sabia could not know the part he had played, nor how nobly his integrity had upheld him. She could not realise how pure was the heart that had almost ceased to beat. His position looked like defeat, yet, had they but known, it was more really triumphal than the return of a conqueror.

  Chapter XXVI. - Nurse and Tenders

  Lucky it was for Estercel that he had an old woman and a young to doctor him. The tenderness of the one to counteract the experience and ancient knowledge of the other. From the first, Sabia would not be sent away: the intensity of her feeling knew neither squeamishness nor fatigue.

  They laid him down in a recess of the old hall. A chosen number of helpers amounting to perhaps a score were allowed in. The only man among them was the cattle-doctor, and he had small chance of being heard. Soft linen cloths were got ready, and a cauldron of hot water. His rags were ripped off him. Stones were placed in the fire to heat and, wrapped in woollen cloths, were laid about him. His hair was shaved close to his head. With immense cleverness and quickness, these women, so skilled in life and death, washed and cleansed the wounded body, chattering the while like a wood full of magpies and jays. All the while, Sabia hung over her charge.

  “Oh, take care! Gently!” she cried. “Keep him warm, keep him warm!”

  The old women would make a show of him, for his body was full of pricks and wounds that puzzled them, and they could not make out why the ends of his fingers and toes were sore. And his skin was cut where the bands had been, and his flesh all worn away, and the hip-bone laid bare.

  If the women had had their way, they would have had the whole countryside in. The courtyard was crowded, and all along the hillside the people were sitting. Now and then, one of the women would go out and speak to them, and there would be a rush to hear what she had to say. Every man was questioning his neighbour: “Where were Owen and his men? Where had the two come from?” “Had the horse found his way alone?” “Would the young man live and not die?”

  In the hall, the whole battery of Nurse Phaire's simples had been placed on the table where the inquisitive smelled at and tasted them.

  “Bring the salt and fir-tree essence,” said Nurse Phaire. “Let them be rubbed well into his wounds. There is nothing equal to them for cleaning sores.”

  “Do you remember,” said a woman commonly called Catherine the Saint, “how young Shawn got the kick of a horse in his shin-bone, and his father rubbed in salt and fir-tree essence, and the sore spread, and he suffered a year's agony?”

  “That was not the fault of the remedy,” said Nurse Phaire; “the fault was in the nature of the kick.”

  “It is no use your talking,” said Sabia, looking up from where she knelt by Estercel, rubbing patiently his forehead and broad chest. “I will not allow such remedies to be used.”

  Nurse Phaire loudly cleared her throat and bustled round the table looking at her collection of herbs.

  A whole hour they had been at work, and he had given no sign: not a sigh or a flutter of the eyelids. Only now and then, Sabia believed she caught a faint fluttering of the heart. Her despairing glance met the eye of Catherine who answered with a smile. Catherine was a tall and gaunt old woman, with a bony face of a yellow-brown colour, whitish hair, and a smile of heavenly sweetness. It ran upon her countenance like sunlight on clear water, spilling grace and loveliness over figure as well as face. Sabia believed instinctively in the power of the touch. She believed in her own touch, and she had heard that Catherine was a famous rubber.

  “Come you here, Catherine,” she said. “There is life in him, I know, but I cannot reach it. I am afraid he will slip away. Take my place, and I will go to his feet.”

  Catherine, the wise old mother, sat her down upon the floor and took the head and shoulders upon her knees. With her large powerful arms, she cherished him, blew upon his mouth, rubbed and worked the arms, called softly in his
ear, clapped his hands. She asked for spirits and wet his lips and chafed his forehead and breast above the heart. She called for hot woollen cloths and wrapped him round; not for her own son could she have striven more earnestly. Sabia sat at the feet warming them in her hands. Always, her eyes tried to meet Catherine's who avoided them.

  Half an hour more went by, and the slow tears of despair began to drip from Sabia's eyes when suddenly a shock went through her: a slight quiver ran along the limbs. She could have shrieked in her excitement, she looked at Catherine, and Catherine smiled and put a finger on her lip, glancing at the noisy group about the table. The cattle-doctor sat by the fire drinking poteen out of a glass. He saw Catherine's gesture and winked back, putting down his glass and rubbing his hands together.

  Another movement ran through the limbs and another. The eyelids fluttered and sank, fluttered and rose, and the weary eyes looked out. Sabia left the feet and came to him: but the eyelids closed again. She knelt down by him and took hold of his two hands. In all his wanderings, Estercel was conscious of that friendly clasp. For an hour and more, he suffered all the trouble of a drowning man. For a little time, he would come to himself and see the dark rafters of the roof above him and the many shining eyes and pale faces that watched around, Then the roaring of the unshored tides would sound in his ears, and he would sink away into his dream. His senses had been clean gone. Had they not recalled him, he had never thought another earthly thought, never felt another bodily pang. He had found his place in eternity, and miserable and cold was his return to life.

  On his second awakening, he uttered a groan which startled all the hall. The cattle-doctor rose up and came to his side. The women flew round screaming and ejaculating holy words, but Nurse Phaire held up her hand.

  “I will have no noise,” said she. “There are three things required by those who are escaping from death: cold water, silence, and the hand of a friend. There is sense in that eye. He will live now.”

  Half an hour later, Nurse Phaire went out of the hall. Those who remained within soon heard a great noise and shouting. Estercel's eyes questioned Sabia.