The Good People

by Hannah Kent

‘I think they meant to be rid of the changeling.’

  ‘Mary, forgive my insistence, but if they meant to be rid of the “changeling”, as you call him, and you knew that would mean the boy would be drowned, why did you let them bathe him at all? Why not alert the neighbour you speak of, as you did when you saw Mrs Leahy “nettling” Micheál? Why not send word to the priest?’

  ‘I did not think they meant to kill Micheál.’ Mary could hear the uncertainty in her own voice. Her hands had begun to shake again, and she gripped her skirt.

  ‘Then why take a small, helpless boy and bathe him in the river?’

  Mary looked over at the dock. Both Nance and Nóra were staring at her, their hair lank and loose. Nóra was trembling, as though suffering from a fever.

  Mary took a deep breath, the cloth pulling tight against her ribcage and the wild beating of her heart. ‘’Twas done with the intent to cure it, sir. To put the fairy out of it.’

  Mr Walshe smiled. ‘Thank you, Mary.’

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  Elder

  Nóra thought that she would never be warm again. She could see the glisten of sweat on the foreheads of the lawyers despite the early hour, could see people in the vast, shuffling crowd fan their faces and mop their brows with handkerchiefs, and yet she shivered as though she were standing in the snow against a high wind.

  She wondered, not for the first time, if she was turning mad. Time no longer seemed to tread past in measured steps, but flung forward and back. The trial had bled from the previous day of the assizes into the next, but as Nóra stood, tense with the pressing threat of a full and painful bladder, she could not remember who had testified. As soon as one witness stepped forward to be examined, she looked and saw another in their place.

  It was only Mary Clifford’s testimony that she remembered in detail. She stood in the dock, shaking, and saw again the girl tilting from one foot to another under the pinch of questioning. Her gaze, when it met Nóra’s, had seemed firm. For a brief moment Nóra could have sworn that it was her own redheaded daughter kissing the book, swearing an information against her.

  My mother, who killed my son.

  They are going to hang me, Nóra suddenly thought, and she gripped the fetters about her wrists. Beneath the droning of the Crown counsel, she thought she could hear the rattle of her teeth.

  Nóra tried to focus on the new witness gesticulating to the court. She recognised him as the policeman who had arrested her in the cabin. He had shaved for the trial, she noticed, and she pictured him standing at a slip of mirror that morning, strop and razor in hand, while she had lain in her cell, picking at the skin of her feet. Nauseous. Sick with anxiety. Did he have a wife to boil the water for his shave? Had his breakfast been cooked for him? Nóra pictured the policeman carefully scraping the blade along his neck, until she felt a tightening around her own throat and, sickened, stared at the floor.

  ‘And tell me,’ the counsel was saying to the constable, ‘what was the state of Anne Roche when you arrested her?’

  ‘I went inside the house and saw the prisoner on her hands and knees. She was taking the ash from the hearth. I thought she was a woman out of her mind, and I said: “Anne Roche, do you know why I am here?” and she did not answer me. I told her I had a warrant for her arrest, and asked her if she knew where the body of Micheál Kelliher was, for she was accused of drowning him that morning. She answered me, “The Good People took Micheál and left a fairy in his place,” and ’twas only when I asked her where the body of the fairy was that she took me to the deceased.’

  ‘And where was the grave?’

  ‘The grave was in an abandoned area known locally as the “Piper’s Grave”. It had not been dug deep, sir. The body was partly visible through the soil.’

  ‘Did the prisoner seem distressed?’

  The constable cleared his throat. ‘She seemed surprised to hear that Mrs Leahy had been arrested also, and asked if there had not been a little boy with her. When asked which child she meant, Anne Roche replied, “Micheál Kelliher.”’

  ‘She said this despite having brought you to the grave and body of the deceased?’

  ‘That is correct, sir.’

  ‘Was there anything otherwise remarkable about the prisoners’ appearance or attitude at the time you arrested them?’

  ‘The clothes of Mrs Leahy were wet through. Sodden. We surmised that she had been in the river at some point that morning. There was the smell of river mud about her.’

  ‘Were the clothes of Anne Roche also sodden?’

  ‘No, sir. And I thought that was curious given both Mary Clifford and Mrs Leahy told me she had also been in the river, until the prisoner explained that she had bathed the child – the changeling, as she called him – in an undressed state.’

  Nóra’s body ached. Every night in the gaol she had pictured her empty cabin in the valley, imagining the creak of the door and Micheál entering the room, looking for her. She wondered what he would be wearing. What the fairies might have clothed him in. Perhaps he would be bare, and she imagined her grandson crawling under Martin’s greatcoat, curling up on the cold straw mattress, or by the dead ashes of her fire, and waiting for her to return. Imagined the small round of his face peering out the window, imagined him standing in the yard as the wind tousled his hair, looking along the broad flank of the valley for the sight of his grandmother walking the lane.

  He will be frightened, she thought. It may be that he has returned and is frightened. He is only a little boy.

  What would happen if she were hanged? Would he stay in her cabin until the grass grew long at her door? Would he leave and wander, lost, until he grew as thin as the one they had put in the water?

  ‘Honora Leahy?’

  Nóra started and lifted her face, biting down on her knuckle. The courtroom was staring at her.

  The policeman who had been talking was no longer there. Instead, the lawyers and the judge were looking at her expectantly.

  ‘Honora Leahy?’

  She looked at Mr Walshe, who was urgently gesturing for her to move to the end of the dock.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Would you kiss the book and give your oath?’

  Nóra did as they asked. She took the Bible into her trembling hands and felt the weight of its pages.

  ‘Honora Leahy, can you please describe the state of Micheál Kelliher when you first took him into your care?’

  Nóra gazed around the courtroom, her eyes landing on the faces of the jurymen. They were looking at her with interest, their foreheads wrinkled.

  ‘Mrs Leahy, do you need me to repeat the question? How did you come to care for Micheál?’

  Nóra turned to the lawyer. Someone in the crowd coughed. ‘’Twas me and my man both. My daughter, Johanna, had passed and ’twas her husband that brought him. He was all bones and we were worried for him. He looked starved. He was not walking, but I thought then maybe it was only a weakness.’

  ‘And was this the first time you had seen your grandson?’

  ‘I saw Micheál a time before. Two years ago. But he was a well boy then. He was talking and he had the use of his legs. I saw that he was well with my own eyes.’

  ‘Mrs Leahy, your husband died shortly after Micheál was brought to you, is that not true?’

  ‘He died in October.’

  ‘It was surely a great misfortune for you to find yourself a widow and the sole support of a cripple boy?’

  Martin, his eyes pennied, stomach offering up the plate of dried herbs, pinched and pushed into clay pipes and the smoke blown over his greying skin. Martin, smelling of the sky, of the valley, dropping to the earth with a hand over his chest while lights flared under the whitethorn.

  ‘Mrs Leahy?’ It was the judge who had spoken. ‘Can you please answer the questions when addressed?’

 
The prosecutor frowned. ‘Would you say it was difficult to be widowed and the sole support of a cripple?’

  Nóra licked her lips. ‘’Twas a great sorrow to me.’

  ‘Mary Clifford said that the boy was a burden to you without the assistance of your husband. Is that true?’

  ‘Yes, he was a burden. That is why I hired her. For the extra pair of hands.’

  ‘Mrs Leahy, Mary Clifford also said that, while she was in your service, you stopped referring to your grandson as Micheál, but called him a “fairy”. She also said you referred to the child as “it”. Can you please tell the court why you stopped referring to Micheál Kelliher as your grandson?’

  Nóra hesitated. ‘I had met my grandson before. There was no likeness between the one I had met and the one delivered to me. At first, I thought that he was only ill, and I tried to cure him, but the cures did not work and ’twas because the boy was a changeling.’

  ‘Where did you believe your true grandson to be, if he were not with you under your care?’

  ‘Swept. In the fairy fort. With the music and the dancing and the lights.’

  There was a ripple of hushed conversation through the crowd.

  Nóra closed her eyes. Under hill. Under whitethorn. On the fairy wind with a weed to carry you, to bring you to the boundary places, the threshold between this world and the other. Swept away from all anger, all suffering. Not good enough for Heaven and not bad enough for Hell. All places. In the air, in the soil, in the water.

  ‘Mrs Leahy?’

  Nóra felt lightheaded. She opened her eyes and suddenly recognised her nephew, Daniel, standing still and pale behind a sea of heads. She stared at him, her heart lifting, but he lowered his gaze.

  ‘Mrs Leahy, having a cripple child in the home can be a terrible shame. A sorrowful burden. Your own servant maid has said that Micheál was forever crying, unable to feed or bathe himself, unable to speak or – indeed – love. He kept you from sleeping. And you, recently widowed and no doubt still in the grip of grief!’ The man’s tone changed. ‘You were surely frustrated by Micheál’s cretinism, Mrs Leahy. Angry, perhaps. So angry you saw nothing wrong in whipping a helpless boy with nettles you had deliberately and with intention picked for the purpose of applying to his skin.’

  Nóra shook her head. ‘’Twas to restore the moving to his legs.’

  ‘So you say. But to no avail, Mrs Leahy. And so, as Mary Clifford has said, you turned to the services of Anne Roche. Had you ever consulted Anne for her “cures” before this time?’

  ‘Had I gone for the cure?’

  ‘That is what I am asking, yes.’

  ‘I had not, no.’

  ‘And why was that?’

  ‘I had no reason. My husband . . .’

  She remembered the dead ember hidden in the pocket of Martin’s greatcoat. Embers carried for protection. Where had it come from? From what hearth, what fire?

  A glowing coal carried three times sunwise around the house for luck. An ember thrown into the potato field on St John’s Eve. A coal drawn thrice over a nest in which birds are ready to hatch. A live coal placed in feet water to preserve a man during an absence from the home.

  An ember to save against the trespass of evil spirits.

  ‘Can you please repeat that, Mrs Leahy? The court cannot understand you.’

  ‘My husband had gone to Nance. Once. For a hand.’

  ‘A hand?’

  ‘’Twas ice. Ice cold and no moving in it. And she healed him.’

  ‘So you knew who she was and were familiar with her position in the community as a quack doctress?’

  ‘I knew she had the knowledge.’ Nóra felt Nance looking at her then, and a sudden flare of uncertainty rose up in her. ‘’Twas her who said it was fairy, and ’twas her who offered to banish it!’

  The prosecutor was thoughtful for a moment. ‘It must have been a great relief to you, Mrs Leahy. A helpless, onerous child filling you with shame and grief and trouble, and lo – a woman who tells you he was no child at all, but a fairy. How relieved you must have felt to discover that you bore no duty towards him! How easy to have your own disgust and horror sanctioned with the knowledge that it was not your grandson!’

  Nóra stared at the lawyer as he threw his hands up in the air, gesturing to the jury. They looked uncomfortable. She shook her head, unable to speak. They could not understand. They had not seen the great change in the child. There had been no human in the boy, in the bones brimming with fairy, the sour-skinned squall of him. If only she could return to her cabin and find her daughter’s boy, show them the child returned to her.

  ‘Will you tell the court, Mrs Leahy, if you agreed to pay Anne Roche for this great alleviation of guilt and trouble?’

  ‘She does not take money.’

  ‘Please speak up!’

  ‘Nance does not take money. Eggs, chickens . . .’

  ‘She takes payment in kind, is this what you are saying, Mrs Leahy? Was this the arrangement made between the two of you? That she would pronounce your crippled grandson a fairy, then work to put the fairy out of it through application of nostrums, herbal poison and, finally, drowning, and in kind you would supply her with the food and fuel she needed to survive?’

  ‘I don’t . . .’

  ‘You must answer yes or no, Mrs Leahy.’

  ‘I don’t know. No.’

  All Nóra could think of as she stood there, hearing the counsel repeat his questions, was that her body was failing her. She trembled uncontrollably, her bare feet curling in cramp on the floor as she attempted to keep up with his questions. Had she been glad to see the foxglove taking its effect on the child? Had she been saddened when it had not killed him? Had she been in the river the morning Micheál was drowned, and if Nance was in a state of undress, why had she been fully clothed? Why did she insist on referring to the child as a fairy when, as she had heard, Micheál’s body had been found? Had she panicked and fled when she realised he had drowned, or had the drowning been her intention all along?

  He was saying she had killed him. There was a pricking between her legs and, horrified, Nóra felt warm drops of urine roll down her thighs. She brought her hands to her face and began to weep in shame.

  A hushed silence then. When Nóra opened her eyes she saw Mr Walshe rising out of his seat, his lips pursed in thought.

  ‘Is it true that you wished the best for the boy in your care, Mrs Leahy?’

  Nóra’s tongue felt sluggish. She opened her mouth but no sound came out.

  Mr Walshe repeated his question, as though he was speaking to an invalid. ‘Mrs Leahy, is it not true that you nurtured the boy when he came into your care? That you sought assistance from a doctor?’

  Nóra nodded. ‘Yes. In September.’

  ‘And what treatment did the doctor prescribe for your grandson?’

  ‘Nothing. He said there was nothing to be done.’

  ‘That must have caused you great distress, Mrs Leahy.’

  ‘It did.’

  ‘Mary Clifford, the Crown’s witness, said that you sought assistance from your priest, Father Healy, also?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And what assistance did he offer you?’

  ‘He said there was nothing to be done.’

  ‘Mrs Leahy, am I correct in saying, then, that when the most careful nurture failed to restore the boy to health and strength, when neither doctor nor priest were able to avail you with medicine or help, you sought to find a cure via the only other means available to you? Through the local doctress, Anne Roche?’

  Nóra’s voice came out in a whisper. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And when Miss Roche told you that she believed she would be able to restore your grandchild to you, in full health and with all the capabilities and mobility you saw in him when you visited your daughter two years ago, you had hope?�
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  ‘I did.’

  ‘And who could blame you for that, Mrs Leahy? Was it hope that led you to believe that the crippled boy we now understand to be Micheál Kelliher was fairy? Was it hope and a longing to preserve the life of your grandchild that led you to assist Anne Roche in her “cures”?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t understand.’

  The lawyer hesitated, wiped his forehead. ‘Mrs Leahy, did you hope to preserve the life of Micheál Kelliher?’

  Nóra’s head swam. She gripped the irons about her wrist. The fairies do not like iron, she thought. Fire, iron and salt. Cold embers and tongs over the cradle, and new milk spilt on Maytime earth.

  ‘Mrs Leahy?’ It was the judge, leaning forward, his blue eyes rheumy, voice deep and concerned. ‘Mrs Leahy, the court is asking you if you have any further statement to make.’

  Nóra brought a trembling hand up to her face. The iron was cool against her flushed cheeks. ‘No, sir. None other than that I only wanted my grandson with me. None other than that.’

  Nance listened as the man they called Coroner presented himself as a witness, his clipped red moustache uttering words she did not understand.

  ‘Our inquest found that Micheál Kelliher came by his death following asphyxia, caused by inhalation of fluid and consequent obstruction of the air passages. Signs presented were consistent with drowning. The lungs were waterlogged, and there was evidence of river weed in the hair of the deceased.’

  There was no mention of the yellow flaggers on the bank, the unfurling gold against the green and all the suggestion its blossom held. They did not mention the power in the boundary water, in the strange light that flooded the earth before the sun rose, in the actions of hungered hands.

  ‘In your professional estimation, sir,’ asked the counsel, ‘how long would the deceased have been held under the water for drowning and death to occur?’

  The coroner was thoughtful. ‘Given that it seems the deceased was paralytic, either fully or in part, it may have taken less time than what may be deemed usual. I would venture to propose three minutes.’

  ‘That is three minutes of sustained submersion?’