by Mary Watson
That’s how they found us, my body bent over Tarc like a question mark. In Arabella’s cottage.
I couldn’t believe how the village didn’t see it. The circle of boys wearing only black jeans, their bodies marked with dark swirling lines. The fire that burned at the heart of the shambles. I couldn’t understand how they didn’t hear the low drumbeats, the chanting from the old slaughter grounds.
I was seated in the sea of unnatural green. Green as my eyes, green as my father’s fingers. The cloying scent of perfume. The kiss of a thousand flowers. Beneath me, a bed of white peonies. My bones turned to liquid as the peonies seemed to twine around me. Their stems curling around my ankles, creeping up my leg.
Cassa’s voice sounded all the while. She spoke in Old Irish, sometimes laying her hands on me, sometimes reaching out and pulling from the sky, the trees, the wind.
One by one, the gardeners came before me. As they kneeled, each of them whispered something I couldn’t understand. A promise, a blessing. They touched my forehead with blood and dirt. Then my chest, my hands. They raised a crystal cup to my lips, one small sip.
When it was David’s turn, he put his hands to my face, my chest. He cut his hand, dotted my forehead with his blood. As he raised the cup to my mouth I thought I saw something mocking in his eyes, a big final ‘Gotcha.’ But it was hard to be sure with his eye slightly swollen, the gash on the side of his face. Then, with the briefest touch to the ends of my hair, he was gone, replaced by the next gardener. And then the next. Until I was faced with Tarc.
Kneeling before me, he touched his blood to my forehead. Like my dress wasn’t already soaked with it. Like it wasn’t already on my skin. Under my skin. He moved deliberately, touching a hand to my chest, then held his hand to mine. Palm against palm. Caked blood on his face, his clothes soaked through. He whispered his promise to me, longer than the others, his eyes steady on mine. The drumbeats grew faster, louder. Around us, the gardeners started moving, half dancing, half fighting; fluid, graceful kicks and turns, squats and leaps. Fierce and exuberant. A celebration. I was filled with the vigour of boys.
Cassa handed me what was left in the crystal cup and I lifted it to my mouth, drinking deeply. A dark infusion of herbs, the taste of something rich and sweet.
I watched the gardeners move with the shadows of the flames, until the peonies drew me down entirely. Until the darkness claimed me completely.
THIRTY-TWO
You’re awake
Since taking on the lily, I have never felt more in command of my own path. Where I will wander, I am certain I will decide.
AdC
The first thing that registered was the pain. It felt as though every bone in my body had been broken. Everything hurt as I tried to sit up in the bed.
I was in a room in Cassa’s apartment. She was in the armchair beside me, her eyes shut. I shifted a little higher and grimaced. I remembered a boulder smacking my ribs. I remembered running through the forest. Cassa’s eyes snapped open.
‘You’re awake,’ she said.
Anxiety squatted in my throat and held me from speaking. Something was wrong. I had to call home. Smith would be worried. And Aisling could tell me if I’d hurt anything seriously and … Then I remembered. The Knot laid out on the war table. Smith with a gun. Tarc pale and cold on stones and twigs and dirt in Arabella’s cottage.
Everything had been a lie. Smith had shot Tarc. I gripped the sheets, feeling the blood draining from my face.
‘Everything was just perfect.’ Cassa’s voice was low, soothing.
‘Tarc.’
‘He’s fine. Anxious to see you.’ She smiled at me, then reached out to smooth her hand down my hair.
And as she spoke, the door opened and Tarc came in. Seeing I was awake, he froze, his hand on the doorknob. His face had taken a beating, there were red and purple bruises on his temple, down his jaw.
‘I’ll leave you.’ Cassa smiled and walked to the door, where she touched a hand on Tarc’s arm.
‘Nearly forgot.’ She gestured to a potted blood-red peony. ‘That’s yours.’
And then she left.
‘You’re OK?’ I searched Tarc’s face for remnants of what had happened to him.
‘I am.’ He took my hand. ‘I know what you did in Arabella’s cottage.’
It seemed so distant, that night in the cottage. His body cold in my arms, his unfocused eyes.
He sat at the edge of the bed and opened his palm. ‘This is yours.’ The lucky acorn.
I took it from him and drew my knees up in the bed, wrapping my arms around them.
‘I owe you my life,’ he said.
‘The trees saved you.’ I had to believe that. I couldn’t think of the alternative. ‘They’ve helped you before.’
‘Maybe.’ He nodded, relieved to have an explanation.
It was my fault he’d been shot. Unable to look at him, my eye fell on the bedcovers, the small embroidered birds escaping their cage. For a long time, we sat in silence while I examined the blue and silver embroidery. The long sash windows. I thought perhaps I should cry, but there was nothing, except exhaustion and a numb anger.
‘They betrayed you, Wren.’ I felt his voice against my hair and the weight of him as he sat on the bed beside me. He pulled me into his arms. The smell of him filled my nose.
‘And I betrayed you,’ I spoke into his chest.
Later that week, I went down to the library. It was quiet, early evening light pouring in through high horizontal windows. Fresh poppies standing watch.
I drifted to the wide archive door, which was slightly ajar, and went inside.
Laney had finished unpacking all the boxes and sorting through the chaos. All the shelves had been neatly stacked and small laminated labels marked the cabinets. Soil and rock specimens had been arranged on a display table.
Tarc was there. He stood at the reading desk, looking down at a book. I remembered another time we’d been in the archive together: the day I’d stolen the map. Not the map of the Daragishka stones, but Basil Lucas’s map of all the nemeta owned by the judges. And I’d handed it to the augurs.
‘It was my fault.’ I explained to Tarc how I’d inadvertently handed over the locations of the nemeta.
‘We weren’t aware that Lucas had compiled the map. There was meant to be only one master list, which Cassa keeps in her safe. He was sometimes a bit rogue.’
‘If you didn’t order the damage of the augur nemeta, then who did? And how did they know where to look?’
‘We didn’t,’ Tarc said. ‘Only our nemeta were damaged.’
‘The spray paint on the Lacey stone? The beech tree in Wicklow?’
‘That beech was one of ours,’ Tarc said. ‘Cassa planned to retaliate. She sent Brian out to track down augur nemeta.’
And I tried to remember that night, how Maeve had let me assume that it was an augur tree without saying it outright.
‘All those nemeta damaged,’ I said. ‘Because of what I did.’
Looking over his shoulder, I saw that he was reading a leather-bound copy of Arabella’s journal.
‘You didn’t start a fire, or raise an axe or throw a can of paint,’ Tarc said as he shut the book. Before it closed, my eye fell on a line: Where I will wander, I am certain I will decide.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.
I was glad to leave. The room was too bright and stylish. Really, I needed a dungeon, some place suitable for misery.
As we walked, Tarc explained. ‘We tried to prevent the damage. But our informant wasn’t reliable. Some nights we were in the wrong location or got there at the wrong time.’
‘Moleskin.’ I remembered Tarc holding him up against the wall. ‘That was your informant.’
‘Yeah, Canty. He played us. Sometimes he’d be spot on, and other times it felt we were on a wild goose chase.’
‘He was meeting with augurs too.’ I remembered Simon talking about him at the power station.
‘The night th
ey damaged the dolmen, we got there as they were leaving. Got into a fight.’
I remembered the morning after, when David had clearly been beaten up.
‘As we fought, one man was standing to the side. Just watching. The others listened when he called them off. I heard one of them saying his name. Smith. When I heard you call your grandfather, that’s when I knew for sure that the damaged nemeta were linked to what was happening with the Knot.’
Dizzy, I leaned against the wall, feeling it hard and straight on my back. We stood in Cassa’s passage, the light streaming in from the tall windows.
‘Do you hate me for it?’ I asked.
‘You didn’t know.’
‘I lied. I stole.’
‘And you’ve paid a heavy price.’ He didn’t look at me as he spoke.
‘But is it enough?’
We stood there, the weight of the last months between us. Both of us hurt, and the bruises and brokenness on the outside only the barest indication of the damage beneath.
Down the passage, David came in through the garden door. He paused when he saw us, then gave a brief nod. He was uncomfortable.
‘Who’s going to be Raker?’ I asked Tarc.
‘Cassa wants me to wait until I’m properly healed before we compete.’ From the look on his face, I could see it was a source of tension.
‘Hey, David,’ I called down the hall. The pink tone in his skin seemed more pronounced than before. ‘How many judges does it take to change a light bulb?’
He glanced at me, uneasy. A slight shrug. Then eyes back to the floor. I realised that I unsettled him. That since the ritual, he saw me differently and that perhaps he wouldn’t want to be Raker any more. It was almost a reversal of the wren hunt. Since that night when he kneeled before me, it was David who seemed caught.
‘Just one.’ I smiled. ‘To hold the light bulb in place while the world revolves around him.’
David immobile at the garden door, uncertain. Trapped. I stood my ground, staring him down until he was forced to look up. Wresting his eye, I saw something that I’d never seen there before: panic.
‘Let’s go.’ Tarc took my hand. Over my shoulder, I saw David looking furtively in my direction.
As the days stretched out at Cassa’s house my body healed. I no longer felt anxious to leave. In those first days, I’d been certain that I needed to find my own place. Maybe leave the city. Find my mother. Cassa might be able to connect me with my father, but I wasn’t ready to ask about that yet.
‘Stay here, for as long as you need,’ Cassa said. ‘You’ll always have a home with me.’
And I stayed because it was easier. My life felt blank, everything was new and undecided. There was comfort in being with familiar people.
We said nothing about Carraig Cottage. Once, when sitting outside, I reached out my hand to Tarc and said, ‘Please don’t do anything to them. Please don’t let them get hurt in any way.’
He didn’t say anything.
‘Promise me you’ll avoid it as best you can.’
He examined me, my bony grip on his shoulder, and gave a nod so short I almost didn’t see it. Maybe I didn’t.
I spent much of those weeks outside in Cassa’s garden. Little by little, I felt put together again. Less woolly-headed. My sense of taste had been restored and I no longer had an appetite for banana peels and apple cores. I didn’t see that much of David and his boys. He was still wary and kept a distance. The others followed his lead.
Of Cassa’s ritual in the old shambles there was little evidence. Every morning I would wake, testing myself to see what remained the same. But it was hard to tell because everything had changed. At night, I would scream through tortured dreams of being snared by the forest. I had nightmares of people stepping out of trees and welcoming me into their fold. In my dreams, they fed me soil and rubbed bark on my bare skin. Smeared petals into my hair.
But I did not feel invincible. I did not have it all.
‘See that flower,’ Cassa had whispered over my shoulder, after placing her orchid beside my new potted peony. ‘Cast all your weakness on to it. That flower is still and pretty. You are so much more.’
I stared at the peony. One closed bud. I felt it, the pull of the peony, as a judge might to her totem. But nothing more.
I was in my room brushing my hair at the mirror, my peony on the dressing table. My skin was clear and my eyes bright after months of looking dull. The stress of the deception must have taken a physical toll and I was glad to be free of it. My hair fell in rich waves over my shoulders. I was glowing.
Tarc came into my bedroom. He slipped his arms around my waist, those golden forearms with their fine muscles, and pulled me against his chest. I touched my fingers to his skin, and in the mirror I saw him dip his lips to my neck.
‘You ready?’ He stepped away, holding my eye in the mirror.
‘Yes.’ I was meeting the Rose Gairdín for the first time. Because of my father, Cassa had assured me there was no question that I belonged. ‘How could they not love you?’ she’d said.
One of us.
I pulled up a strand of hair and pinned it with Maeve’s lucky combs. I hadn’t been able to throw them away.
‘Remember I told you there’d been a break-in here before the security update?’ Tarc said, watching me in the mirror.
I nodded, thinking of that long-ago conversation on the road to Kilshamble.
‘Cassa lost a similar pair,’ he pointed to the combs. ‘Hers were a little different, a faded gold. They’d belonged to Arabella.’
I took a small pair of scissors from the dresser and scratched away at the surface, then I saw the dull gold emerge.
‘They’re hers.’ I began taking the other one from my hair but Tarc stopped me.
‘They’re yours now.’ And he seemed sad. I leaned towards him, my mouth right at his ear.
‘I am exactly the same,’ I whispered.
He smiled at me so brightly, as if he’d been waiting to hear those words. Then he kissed me long and hard.
Pressing his hand to my hip, we went down the stairs together. As we descended, he told me about the families I would meet that evening. He seemed concerned, and it reminded me of that day when I’d held the pen so tightly in my anxiety. But that was long ago and he needn’t have worried. I had never felt more in command of my own path. Where I wandered, I was certain that I would decide.
Acknowledgements
I am so grateful to Claire Wilson, who long ago sensed the story beneath with her spinny eye (magic eye), even when I couldn’t. Who, with Ellen Holgate and her uncanny ability for discerning how to fix things, helped me get it right. You’ve both done so much: thank you for taking that leap of faith that meant everything. Thank you to all the wonderful people involved, both at RCW, especially Rosie Price, and at Bloomsbury: Lizz Skelly, Vicky Leech, Bronwyn O’Reilly, Hali Baumstein, Sarah Shumway, Grace Whooley and the rest of the team who do such amazing work. Thank you also to Anna Swan, Katie Everson and Tilda Johnson.
As always, there’re a load of people that I question, prod and annoy while piecing together the background of a book: thank you. You can unblock me now. Go raibh maith agaibh Muireann Ní Chuív and Pilib Ó Broin for careful reading and especially for helping with the Irish. Thank you Strangers on the Internet who read opening chapters when I was uncertain: David, Carissa, Anna, Cat. Thank you to the lovely writerly women I met along the way: Emma Heath for Project 10/10, and Ash Cloke. Nicole Lesperance, thanks for being the first reader. There’s a range of information about historical gardens, druids, brehon law, folklore, Hy-Breasil and more, available both in print and online – I’m grateful to those who curate this knowledge and make it available, especially the original manuscripts.
Thank you friends and family. From those who were marched through Victorian walled gardens, made to visit stones and dolmens when you thought you were on holiday, to those who feed me bubbles and take me to the movies. Thanks David for chatting gunshot wounds,
I just love how enthusiastic my in-laws are about their work. And always, thank you my gorgeous sisters, all Tilly’s girls really, for being as mad as a box of frogs. You keep me light. I’m grateful to my children for their bickering because it drives me to my study to write. Just kidding. Kind of.
And this is not just the boyfriend thank you: Cathal, thanks for many conversations, for reading so many times, for taking boys on adventures. For caring about the small details and investing so deeply that words like ‘tuanacul’ and ‘Kilshamble’ matter (the English/Irish word origin mash-up there is on me). Thanks for your oblique references, your fine, sharp, dark mind and manly forearms, and most of all, your ability to suggest that one thing I’d never think of, which then somehow hits the perfect note.
MARY WATSON is from Cape Town and now lives on the West Coast of Ireland with her husband and three young children. Highlights of her adult writing career include being awarded the Caine Prize for African Writing in Oxford in 2006, and being included on the Hay Festival’s 2014 Africa39 list of influential writers from sub-Saharan Africa.
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi and Sydney
First published in Great Britain in February 2018 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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Text copyright © Mary Watson 2018
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