A Girl Called Eilinora (3 page)

As promised, once he had bathed and changed and eaten his dinner in front of the roaring fire in the main hall, Owen went down to the kitchen to check on the girl. He had found his own food hard to swallow. Braised beef from the farm, carrots from Dublin, apples from England. The hardship he had seen during the day continued to haunt him. Even after washing, he still felt dirty, and the fire could not shift the cold dread that lingered in his bones.

Pushing his plate to one side, he downed his wine in one gulp. He felt drawn beyond all reason to the girl. He couldn’t get her out of his mind, although he knew he was being irrational. But he needed to know that she was being treated kindly. That she was being fed good food and nursed by one of the kitchen maids.

Now he was amazed at the change in her appearance. She was propped up on a straw pallet leaning against the wall, while Mary, one of the maids slowly spooned a vegetable broth into her mouth. Although she was taking minutes to swallow each spoonful, there was a new vitality about her. Owen instantly understood, it was life.

He squatted down beside the mattress. She smelt better, although still ripe with the smell of peat smoke and ash. It was so acrid that it seemed to burn the inside of his nostrils and his eyes watered. He rubbed his eyes with his thumbs and the cook, Mrs Gibson, used to the smell of people who lived over a fire, took it as a sign of tiredness.

‘Come back in a week or so, master,’ she said to him gently. ‘She will be properly cleaned and much improved by then and ready to be sent back. She has a fierce independence about her, that she has. I’m thinking not many would have survived out on the road as long as she has, not with the rain we’ve had over the last few days and the damp now, surely to God, that would have seen a grown man off. She’s thin all right, not a pick on her bones. But now she is here, we’ll sort her.’

‘Do you think she has the fever, Mrs Gibson?’ Owen and the cook had known each other since he was a boy. She had been kinder to him than his own mother had, even though he’d also received more than one smacked backside. Owen remembered being chased with the broom, for dropping a rat into her large urn of buttermilk to see if it could swim.

‘I’ve seen enough of this over the last two years,’ she murmured. ‘We have had relatives of tenants brought up to the estate in much the same way. I’ve sorted them all out with my broth and put each one back on the Dublin road with enough food to get them to the ferry headed to Liverpool. I hope Liverpool has enough work, because it seems to me as though half of Ireland is heading to her docks.’

‘I’ll return in a week, Mrs Gibson and do as you say,’ Owen said. ‘I always listen to your advice, as you know. And thank you.’ He knew only one thing for sure, and that was that he did not want the girl to leave the safety of the castle, or return to a cottage full of decomposing corpses.

‘I have no idea what you put in this healing solution,’ he said. ‘It must be well prayed over.’

He turned to the girl and asked her gently, ‘What is your name, girl?’

‘She says her name is Eilinora.’ Cook moved back to the fire and stirred the contents of the large black pot. ‘The same name as the witch, Mary tells me, from up on the flat land beyond Bellacorick. Not that I have any notion how Mary knows who is or isn’t a witch. Sure, I have her in mass three times a day, as are all the girls and I cannot think when she was ever up at Bellacorick, either.’

The girl, Eilinora, remained silent, as though to speak would require an effort beyond her means. The girl’s blue eyes held his, in the seconds before they began to close. The thought that they were fathomless crossed his mind and with a start, he saw her smile up at him, knowingly. Owen pulled the blanket up over her shoulders and his own gaze drank in the structure of her face. The angular cheekbones, the matted dark hair and the long, oh so long and thick, black eyelashes, which lay gently on her cheek.

‘We will make you well and sort you out,’ he whispered to her sleeping face, wanting neither Mary, nor cook to hear his words. He made as if to stand from his squatting position and her eyes shot open and flashed with fear, before closing again. She had possibly not slept for more than a few moments at a time for weeks. Now even the defiance, which had sustained her to this point, could keep her awake no longer. She would not die. She would not be eaten by dogs, or attacked by the starved and diseased. She was safe, here in the Ballyford kitchens, she could sleep.

‘I will leave now, cook,’ said Owen, walking past the fire on his way to the back stairs.

As the door banged shut, Shevlin walked in through the back door, on his way from the stables.

‘It will be a late night for us,’ he said. ‘I won’t sleep until the lads are safely back. ’Tis likely they will have a corpse with them and if they don’t, it will be another on the floor for you.’

‘Who is it then?’ asked cook.

‘’Tis young Liam Toohey. We found him on the road in a bad state and saw him set upon by a gang. We couldn’t stop, or they would have had us too. Lord Owen has sent the stable lads out to fetch him.’

Cook blessed herself. ‘God in heaven, what will become of us all?’

‘Is everything well, so?’ asked Mary, worried by the frown on Mrs Gibson’s face.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ replied cook, ‘but, as God is true, there is something afoot tonight. I’m feeling that girl brings trouble with her. It’s only the second time since he married that I have known the master to come down the stairs.’ The cook blessed herself and took her rosaries out from her apron pocket. ‘And what is more, I didn’t like the way she looked at him. Where did anyone get such bold eyes from, they’ll bring trouble, I’m guessing. They aren’t natural, so they aren’t and when were you up at Bellacorick? If she is from beyond the river, we could be in trouble.’

Shevlin listened to the conversation without passing comment and took his food with a nod of thanks. Pulling a chair out at the long wooden table, he sat and ate in silence. He was concerned by what they had seen that day. How long would it be before the gangs began walking up the drive of Ballyford? If they were organized, they could descend on them in their hundreds. He made a note to speak to the sergeant who had called at the castle for Lord FitzDeane only yesterday. As the biggest home in the region, with well-stocked store-rooms and pantries, they were vulnerable and needed troops on the gate. He knew Lord Owen would struggle to agree. It would take someone other than Shevlin to make him see the potential danger. He made a note to contact the constabulary the following morning and ask for someone to visit the castle and speak to Lord FitzDeane.

‘You are eating quietly tonight, what’s on your mind?’ said cook.

Shevlin took the tankard of ale she handed him and gulping it, washed down his food.

‘We need to be on our guard,’ Shevlin replied as he placed the tankard on the table and cast his eyes over to where Mary was covering the girl with a blanket. ‘These are bad days. Things we have no knowledge of are happening out there. Don’t go yourself into Belmullet and don’t let any of the staff leave, either, until I say so. We will have everything ordered in. No one is to go anywhere other than to our own farms and cottages. I am going to ride out to the cottages tomorrow and check everyone is well and that there are no problems and no unwelcome visitors either.’

The wind howled through the large wooden shutters, carrying with it a chilling sound, which filled the kitchen air. It was far off, yet nearby. It was both outdoors and within the kitchen. It was human, but not.

Cook and Mary stopped what they were doing, blessed themselves and Mary began to pray over her rosaries.

Mrs Gibson turned to him with unease in her eyes. ‘That’s it,’ she said, ‘we are done for. ’Tis the banshee, someone will die.’ All three turned towards Eilinora who remained asleep.

‘The banshee?’ Shevlin had heard of it from his own mother, many times. But Shevlin had grown up in the mountains near Croaghaun and he used to tell his mother, they would never hear it up there. Like much else he had been told, he put it down to over exaggeration by people who had little to do on long dark nights, except sit around and amuse each other with stories of make believe.

As he spoke, he heard it again and Mary began to shake.

‘Jesus Christ, it’s just the wind, blowing in through the shutters,’ said Shevlin, alarmed himself, moving from the table to fasten the wooden shutters tighter.

Mrs Gibson pulled Mary into her side. ‘There now. We are all good and well, are we not? There’s nothing going to happen to any of us. ’Tis the poor folk outside of the castle, with no food or crop she is calling for, not us.’ Mary was now crying and shivering.

‘’Tis a bad sign, to be sure,’ whispered Mrs Gibson. ‘I hope them boys are safe out on the road. The banshee doesn’t wail for no reason at all. There is always a death to follow.’

‘Aye, well, it won’t be none of us,’ said Shevlin more confidently than he felt. ‘But we have a responsibility to look out for others and I will wait up until the boys are back.’

Neither he, Mrs Gibson, nor Mary noticed the blue eyes, which suddenly opened wide, or the glance, which darted like a flame towards them all.

Upstairs in the library Lord Owen was sitting at his desk in front of a roaring fire and he also heard the banshee. He had grown up with the dread of the call and as a child, had been frightened more times than he cared to remember by the servants’ stories. Everyone who lived on the Atlantic coast lived in fear of one superstition or another and like Mrs Gibson, he had heard the eerie wailing more than once, most memorably on the night his father died. The old man had lain ill in his bedchamber for months, but when they heard the banshee, the castle staff knew that the end was coming and so did he, and it was the case; within the hour, his father had gone.

*

It was two o’clock in the morning when Lord Owen, dozing in his chair, heard the horses’ hooves and looked out of the window. He had waited up for the boys’ return. By the light of the moon, he saw the stable lads wend their way up the drive and his heart leapt at the sight.

Shevlin was dozing, too, in front of the kitchen range as the boys carried Liam through the back door and into the kitchen, beaten, bruised and bleeding, but still alive. Another pallet was laid on the floor and Mrs Gibson, who would also not see her bed this night, reeled back in horror at the sight of his wasted body and beaten face. Liam was one of their own. She would tend to him herself. At first light, she would be off to consult with Mrs McAndrew before picking the healing herbs, which would help with Liam’s bruises and wounds, but for now, he needed her attention.

‘Praise be to God,’ she said to Shevlin. ‘I think I can fix him, no trouble at all. But don’t tell his mother yet. He can go down to the cottages in a couple of days, as soon as I have him looking less like an animal and more like his mother’s son.’

‘She will be glad to know he’s safe, though,’ said Shevlin. ‘Especially as she thought he was in Liverpool. Something must have happened to him on the way for him to still be here. I will get a message to her later today. Well done, lads.’ The tired stable boys stood by the fire, drinking tankards of warm ale, before heading to their beds above the stables.

‘I will turn the horses out for you this morning, you can all sleep in.’

‘He wasn’t easy to find, they had left him for dead in a ditch. If he hadn’t moaned when we called out, we would never have found him,’ said Pat, one of the boys. ‘Did ye hear the banshee?’ He dropped his voice as he looked at Shevlin.

Shevlin chose to ignore the question. ‘Away to your bed now,’ he said. He didn’t want Mrs Gibson, busy now attending to Liam, to hear them or for that discussion to start up again within her earshot. He walked Pat to the door and dropped his own voice. ‘Keep what you saw to yourself. We don’t want the women worrying. You’re right, there was a banshee call last night, over the castle. Everyone is frightened enough but as we are the men around here, we have to keep things calm and anyway, as I said, ’twas probably just the wind howling through the shutters.’

*

Days later, Liam was back in his mother’s cottage looking purple and a decidedly sickly shade of yellow where the bruises had revealed the severity of the beating.

It took almost a month before Eilinora was strong enough to stand up unaided, and for every day of that month, Lord Owen felt driven to spend an increasing part of his day in the kitchen. He had no idea why. He felt uncomfortable entering what was the servants’ domain, but try as he might, he could not prevent himself enquiring about her health and taking himself down the back kitchen stairs to check on her progress.

Cook had remonstrated with him over and over again. ‘Holy Mother of God, your own wife, Lady Lydia has never visited me as often as ye have, what in God’s name are ye doing down here? I have work to be going on with and ye are upsetting the kitchen staff. You have put us all out of sorts trotting up and down those stairs.’

But it didn’t matter what she said, nothing kept him away. He was drawn to the kitchen more often than he would like and it felt to him at times, as though he was losing control of his own will.

Rumour spread quickly that a fever victim was being harboured in the castle kitchens. Other landlords in the area had written to Owen to ask him for clarification. He was upsetting the status quo if this was the case and the other landlords wished to meet with him, to discuss his behaviour. Lord Urquhart had threatened to write to the prime minister and inform him that Owen’s sentimentality was making life more difficult for those who had need to remain in Ireland and keep order.

He was the first to breathe a sigh of relief when Eilinora began to show signs of improvement without anyone in the household falling ill or dying. There was also immense relief at Liam’s recovery. The boy had put on weight and recovered quicker than Eilinora, but then he had not been as starved or as desperate when he was found.

‘Did ye hear the banshee called on the night they fetched me, Lord Owen?’ Liam asked one night when Lord Owen visited him at his mother’s cottage, wanting to check on him for himself.