The House Where It Happened

by Devlin, Martina

  “Where is it? Is it lost?”

  I knelt up, groping at my feet. My fingers touched a smooth, round object, and my stomach flipped over. But I swallowed down my loathing, and took a hold. I didn’t care to think about why it was easy to grip, with a number of holes in one side of it. Then I grabbed Sarah’s hand and we went crashing outside.

  The light hurt my eyes and I closed them briefly, hearing the tide rush in.

  “Ellen, look, it’s the skull!”

  My eyes fell open on what remained of Hamilton Lock. Though I had gone to the Gobbins to find it, holding it – him – in my hand was a shock. My fingers twitched, ready to drop it. But I didn’t let go. I wasn’t about to lose this thing so hard found. Carefully, I pulled my fingers out of the eye-holes, cupping my hand loosely round the back of the head. The skull grinned up at me with headstone teeth. Three or four lengths of black hair stuck to it. The bone was the colour of clotted cream, and shone the way a door-handle does in sunlight. I looked away. Those empty eye-holes gave me the heeby-jeebies. No iron spike could hold that thing down, I thought, but there was a surer way to put paid to Hamilton Lock.

  “What do we do now, Ellen?”

  “We get rid of it.”

  “In a fire?”

  “A fire isn’t hot enough to burn it. We have to find a big rock and use that to smash it.”

  Sarah found me a rock. I set down the skull and looked it over for a weak point on the bone. A shudder ran through me as Hamilton Lock, or what remained of him, looked back. ‘I still have the upper hand,’ the skull seemed to say. I took a deep breath, juked down beside it, and started hammering. The bone was hard: it wasn’t like cracking an egg. But I kept going.

  “What do you think, Sarah? Is it broken yet?”

  “It’s not in bits. But it’s bashed in.”

  The nose and eye holes were one gaping emptiness now, splinters inside the skull and a few scattered near-hand.

  “It’s certainly not whole,” I said.

  “Is it time to go home now, Ellen?”

  “Not yet.” I kicked the gritty sand, but burying it didn’t seem like much of an answer. What was buried oftentimes came to the surface again. Like secrets. “Put your frock back on, while I think.”

  I was buttoning her up when she pointed towards the water. “It’s the Nelson brothers.”

  A boat was rowing not far from us, carrying two fishermen with their catch. They waved, and we waved back. Watching them steer a path through the rocks gave me an idea. I stepped out of my petticoat, and scooped the skull, along with the splinters, into it. Bone was slippery and I was afraid of dropping and maybes losing it. Then I took Ellen by the hand and led her up the cliff path.

  At the top of the Gobbins, I went right to the edge, so close a gust of wind would have blown me to kingdom come. I was standing on the spot where the women and childer were driven over. I strained to listen, superstitious enough to think I might hear an echo of their cries, but the only sound was the seagulls quarrelling in their ill-bred way. I took a deep breath, planted my feet wide, and lifted the skull wrapped in my petticoat high above my head between both hands.

  “Mind you don’t fall, Ellen!”

  “Stand back, chicken.”

  Gathering together every bit of strength I possessed, I flung my bundle as far as I could. It sailed through the air and fell, crashing against the rocks. It bounced back off, landing in the water with a splash. I watched it bobbing below, and noticed how the Nelsons rested on their oars and looked over towards it.

  “Sink, please sink,” I prayed beneath my breath, afraid Billy and Adam might decide to row over, to find out what was there.

  Still, the bundle floated. The petticoat came away from the skull and formed a white, spreading patch on the water. Now the brothers would see what was hidden inside. They might even fish it out.

  I shaded my eyes, staring at Hamilton Lock’s skull. It was laughing at me. Refusing to go under. No more willing to disappear than he was.

  “Take him, he’s yours now,” I begged, aloud this time – not to God, but to the ghosts of the Magees.

  And at that, a wave flicked up, caught the skull and tossed it, before sucking it in.

  It was gone.

  * * *

  Knowehead House was never what you’d call a merry place afterwards – the most I can say is it was back to that manageable twisty I remembered from first going to work there. Hamilton Lock was no longer under our roof. There was no more witching, no more whispering, no more wandering on Master Jamesey’s part, and no more feeling as if somebody was watching you. In time, neighbours took to calling on the Haltridges again, although nobody would ever stay the night. They’d always find some excuse to be on their way.

  Now and again the house reminded us that we only lived there on its say-so. Odd things continued to happen. Sometimes you’d hear feet pattering across the floor and think it was mice, but a search for mouseholes would turn up nothing. Other times, a cold wind would rip through the house when there wasn’t a casement or door open – and if you tried to walk contrary to that wind, you’d be hard pressed to make headway against it. Once in a while, there’d be something more vexatious, as if to put manners on us. Like the time the blankets on my master’s bed were found made up in the shape of a corpse, and we feared it was an omen of a death in the family.

  Which it turned out to be.

  Something in Knowehead could never abide hymn-singing. If any started up, such a creaking of floorboards and tapping on ceilings you never did hear in all your live-long days. In the kitchen, the pots and beakers would rattle on their shelves, and in the bedrooms, the beds would shake on their legs and the water jugs clatter against the basins they stood in.

  The minister came over and tried to settle it. “Hymns keep Christians steadfast,” he insisted. “We must not lose our hymns.” But the Haltridges had to do their hymn-singing in the meeting-house because none was tolerated in Knowehead House.

  I suppose when I list it out like that, it sounds hard to live with. Yet we did.

  Even when the wee missie grew clumsy, forever falling down. At first, we put it down to growing pains. She’d come in to me with her totie knees all smarting from nettles, and I’d have to send Jamesey out for a docken to rub away the sting. “Nettle, nettle, go away – docken, docken come again,” we’d chant, and I’d give her a kiss. This falling over was something she’d grow out of, everyone agreed. But it got so she couldn’t take two or three steps without tripping. And then she couldn’t leave her bed at all.

  The mistress tried everything to save her, bringing in the doctor, who said it was the falling down sickness – as if we couldn’t see that for ourselves – and the barber, with his jar of leeches to set to work on her flesh. “Her blood is boiling. Bleeding her will cool it,” he said.

  But none of their physick worked. Finally, the mistress sent me to fetch water from the chapel well in Brown’s Bay, a cure folk travelled from far and wide to try. But the wee lass faded before our eyes.

  One clammy night I sat with Sarah, on account of the mistress being worn to a thread with nursing her chick. Suddenly, the wee lassie was at her last gasp. I should have run to fetch the mistress, but I didn’t want to leave her. It was over in a flash. There was a rattle in Sarah’s throat, and I felt the spirit leave her body. I opened the casement to let it pass, before closing her eyelids over them blue eyes. I thought I should find some words of scripture to say over her, but all I could bring to mind were the nursery rhymes she loved. “Mary Mary Quite Contrary” and “Hey Diddle Diddle”. The best I was able to manage was, “God bless you, best and bravest girl”.

  Then I called the mistress and she fell to caterwauling – who can blame a mother? – and the next thing you know she had me by the throat, screaming, “Did she say anything? Answer me! Did she speak?”

  “She said nothin’, mistress.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Not a word. She slipped away quiet, into the ar
ms of Jesus.”

  “Pray God it was into His arms she went. Pray God that fiend left her alone at the end.”

  “He has no more power in this house, mistress. Wee Sarah helped see to that.”

  But in her grief, she never noticed my slip.

  Of course, the lassie being taken so early set tongues clacking again. Grief turned the mistress’s hair white overnight, and she took to wearing a yellow wig. As for my master, he was never himself afterwards. Oftentimes, he shut himself into his study and drank steadily till morning. I used to find him passed out in the easy chair by the fire, and put a blanket over him. But don’t think he was drunk – holding his liquor is the mark of a gentleman. It was his way of dealing with his daughter’s loss.

  Wee Sarah died round about the time the witches’ sentence was up, although only five of the eight women found guilty of witchcraft left their prison. Gaol fever took Jane Miller and she went into a pauper’s grave. Janet Liston could thole neither the cell nor the starvation rations – I daresay Lizzie wasn’t able to look about her ma any more, on account of being blind. Maybes what happened to a good girl like Lizzie broke Janet, as much as being in gaol. Before long, Janet thought she was a witch. She yammered about losing a dead man’s hand she used for a charm, and was powerful worked up about it, accusing her cell mates of thieving it. Mister Sinclair went in to wrestle with her, threatening to have her flogged if she didn’t repent, but he could get no sense out of her. Sure her wits were scattered to the four winds. Lucky for her she was at death’s door, otherwise she might never have been let out. How and ever, she had her release by a different way. Janet Liston left the cell feet first.

  As for Lizzie Cellar, she bought her freedom in her own way.

  It happened the final time Lizzie and the others were taken to the stocks. Mercy Hunter went in to watch – anything for a day out. She couldn’t wait to tell me, coming hotfoot from Carrickfergus. It was news I could have done without. But I suppose I had to hear it from somebody.

  “The women were brought out in manacles, and –”

  “Manacled? But why, Mercy?” I butted in.

  “Did’n you know? It happened all the other times. It’s in case the prisoners make a run for it.”

  “Sure how far would their legs carry them after nearly a year in gaol, half-starved?”

  “Would you quit interruptin’ an’ listen to what I have to tell you? Some forward rascals could’n wait for them to go in the stocks afore the peltin’ started, and the lieutenant in charge caught a rotten potato in the back of his fine red jacket. He was turnin’ the key in the prisoners’ chains when he took the blow, and was none too pleased. Then and there, he stopped what he was at and ordered folk to leave off their disorderly ways, or else. He had already unlocked Lizzie’s shackles to put her in the stocks when he turned away to warn the crowd off, because all at once she seemed to understand her hands were free. She lifted up her arms, and the iron cuffs slipped off her wrists, and she gave her leg a shake and stepped out of the one on her ankle. Sure she was skin an’ bone, a breath of wind would a blowed her over. She tipped her head back on her neck, searchin’ the sky for somethin’ – blind an’ all as she was. Maybe it was just to feel the air on her face again. The lieutenant never noticed, too busy argufyin’ with a brute of a fellow who had a handful of wormy apples he was dyin’ to let rip with.

  “Lizzie stood swayin’, free as a bird, an’ a lock of folk near the front started hootin’. At that, the lieutenant spotted her, and he must a thought she was set on makin’ a holy show out of him. He was on’y young, barely old enough to shave, and he panicked. He grabbed his sergeant’s musket off him and pointed it at her, yellin’ his head off.

  “Lizze could’n see him, but she could hear him. She turned to the officer. He guldered again, tellin’ her not to move. An’ if I had’n seen what happened next with my own two eyes, I’d be hard pushed to believe it. Lizzie swung her lame leg, an’ took a lop-sided step towards him. Then another. And she walked onto the bayonet of his rifle. The blade went into her breast, and she shuffled forward and reached for the butt of the gun to push the point in deeper. All the whiles, the lieutenant jus’ stood there with his jaw flappin’ open.

  “Next thing, he let go his musket as if it burned his hands. Lizzie Cellar dropped to her knees with the blade still inside. As she fell, the wind took her bonnet, and you could see her hair had growed back a fair bit. There was another gust, and her hair floated out behind. Her head nodded once, twice, and the third time her chin touched her chest and rested there. Lizzie died in front of us, on the wooden platform where the stocks were set. Not a sound did she make. And I’ll tell you somethin’ better. There was’n a peep out of the crowd, either. Not the tearaways. Nor the ministers. They watched, and they hung their heads, and they tiptoed away.”

  “Ach Lizzie, Lizzie,” I said, my eyes welling up. “I should a made you get clear away from Islandmagee while you had the chance. Instead, I put a cattle halter roun’ your neck an’ led you to that.”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” said Mercy.

  But I did.

  I do.

  * * *

  I saw Margaret Mitchell again once or twice. She set herself up, same as before, trading chickens in the market square in Carrickfergus – looking folk in the eye and gurning at them out of her toothless gob. Gaol didn’t knock the stuffing out of her. While Margaret Mitchell didn’t prosper, neither did she starve. My memory was jogged when I spotted her there, surrounded by fowl, and I minded my master bought our rooster off her. He came back with the bird under his arm, highly amused by the big woman who looked like a man, arms to match a butcher’s and chicken feathers in her hair.

  I mentioned it to my master.

  “You’re mistaken,” says he, looking anywhere but at me.

  “But she saw you had warts on your thumb, master. She told you they’d be cured if you bathed them in water from the forge. You did as she bid, and it worked – just as she said.”

  “That was another woman.”

  “I could swear it was the same one sold you the rooster.”

  “You are wrong. Don’t you dare repeat it to another soul. I never saw Margaret Mitchell before.”

  So I never said a word. Not even to Mercy Hunter, who was always niggling for gossip. In fact, she was worse than ever, because she had time on her hands, heavy with child. She had a new master by now, in a smallholding hard-by Portmuck – and ran rings round him, same as the minister, until he took her to wife in the end. Though not before she had a swollen belly. It raised no eyebrows on Islandmagee – most women had their babbies started before the minister was called on to tie the knot.

  When first I saw her condition, I whispered to her about the herbs the Irish wise woman told me about, but she said there was no need. Her master had vowed to make an honest woman of her. I felt myself shrink, comparing him with my master. Of course, Mercy’s man was no gentleman like Master Haltridge – who could not have made me his wife, even if he was unwed. Still, he did to me what the seventh commandment says a man must only do to his wife and none other.

  And I was a willing partner.

  I never even shared the gossip I heard about Mary Dunbar with Mercy. Mary Dunbar’s name was rarely spoken in Islandmagee afterwards, except once in a while when folk fell to wondering what became of her.

  “I hear she sailed to the West Indies to marry a plantation owner, an’ lives like the Queen of Sheba there with servants to dress her, wash her and hould the spoon to her mouth if she cannae be bothered doin’ it herself,” said Mercy.

  “She wed a minister an’ moved to Scotland,” said Noah.

  At the meeting-house one Sabbath, after the praying was over and folk lingered to chat, all the talk was of how she took herself off to Virginia and passed her days teaching the word of God to the natives in deerskins. By way of remorse for all the trouble she caused, I daresay, though folk never could agree if she was more sinned against than sinning.
r />   But I heard a tale about her. Frazer Bell told it to me, making me swear to hold my tongue as soon as he shared the secret. I always suspected I was the first and last soul ever he spoke to about it. He said Mary Dunbar was put in a madhouse in London-town. He had it off an officer passing through Larne to join his regiment, who shared a table at an inn with him. The officer said she was wed to a doctor in a place called York, a match made by her parents, but after less than a year the doctor decided she couldn’t be sane. Seemingly she made accusations against his sister, saying she was a witch and turned herself into a she-goat to go cavorting, and before Mary Dunbar knowed day was night he had the papers signed and her locked away in an asylum.

  Frazer Bell seemed to take it to heart. Them lunatic places are meant to be a living hell. If you weren’t mad going into one, you’d be mad by the time they carried you out.

  But who knows? Maybes she sailed to the West Indies and lives in the lap of luxury after all. The one thing I can say for sure about Mary Dunbar is that she was never seen about these parts again.

  * * *

  When I study on those events, I think about how neighbours turned their backs on neighbours. How the few were thrown to the wolves by the many. I don’t just mean during the witch trial, though they did it then as well. The Judas kiss I’m talking about was given earlier, in 1641, when the Magees were wiped out by Scotch soldiers bent on revenge. Blood was spilled while neighbours looked the other way.