Miriam's Talisman (34 page)

These are the words that opened my first published book. They are also the words I will use for my last book. This one I write for you. It may be shorter than my other works, a few pages, that is all, but I believe they are the most important words I will have written. And it is for you, Cliohna, you alone. If everything has happened as I plan, it will find its way into your hands. So read these words as if I were speaking to you from the other side of the veil.

I have lived an enchanted life. Oh, that sounds such a cliché, but for me it is a simple truth. Some things you will have discovered by now. There will be more, so very much more, and it is all a gift for you.

By now I will be buried and he will have made himself known to you. At first he will have asked for the talisman and you will have resisted. Very quickly he will have lost interest in it. He will have shown you something of his nature, and others will have told you about the past. You will have drawn your own conclusions. Trust your intuition: it is your best counsellor. There is a little more you need to know, and that I will tell you now. I had better begin in Ireland. Or maybe even before then.

I have always known there was more happening around me than my mortal senses allowed for. My mother used to say I was a little ‘fey', that I was somehow in tune with another world. It is true I have always had an instinct for things. She said things always fell into my lap. Not exactly second sight, but often I could feel when something was about to happen, which path to choose, which move to make. Not always, though. There were heartaches. You were one of them.

I think by now you will have found Harold, and, if he has heeded my letter, he will have told you everything as I asked. He is a good man, much better than I, and stronger too. I think he will outlive me by a few years. And I did love him once, although it is only a memory now, a passion that evaporated like mist clearing when the sun comes out. And there was my child, Hannah. And we were all happy together in our little house in Boston. Except that there
was always something else tugging at the edge of my mind, drawing me away. As if there were something I had lost before I had even found it.

It was not until the letter came with the offer of Ireland that I knew that I had been born in the wrong country. I would have bullied poor Harold into it, but he was already as excited as I was. He had always dreamed of going back to Europe, and when they said Ireland and three years there was no holding him. It was a magical place and a place of magic. The very air sang with it. Harold, naturally, threw himself into his work and I tried to help as best I could while making a home for us all and looking after little Hannah.

The people fascinated me with their strange mixture of religion and folklore. They worshipped the Earth Goddess, of course, only they called her Mary. I started listening to the stories. It was like I was looking for something, even though I knew not what. I became absorbed with the legends, the ancient kings and their tribes, the people who had lived, or those they believed had lived. And then there were the other beings, those who were not mortal, and how the two existed in harmony or in conflict.

Whoever I talked with knew something, a scrap of another tale, or the same tale with a variation: stories within stories. A different history from the one Harold collected, but I thought mine was better; at least mine was still alive. Yes, I started to collect the stories and I had some plan of putting them together, maybe having them published. Harold didn't seem to mind. He was full of his own research. Much of the time he was at the university, and when the weather allowed there were days on end spent at the digs.

I used my time going from one croft to another, or travelling between the villages, seeking out the old ones who remembered what their grandparents had told them. Often I suspected they had made it up, eager for the few pennies I made them take, but if you could have seen how they lived you would not have begrudged them either. But occasionally they had something worthwhile to tell me. And I knew that time was running out, you see. Soon the modern world would find its way there and the ancient voices of the bards would not be heard above the scorn of the young people and their transistor radios.

I used to take Hannah with me when she was not at school. I thought it might stimulate her imagination. She was always such a serious child, so pragmatic, as if she were too old for her years, not from wisdom, but from lack of frivolity. I was the frivolous one. I would tell her that we had come home, this was the land of our birthright; the blood of ancient kings ran in our veins. And I know that is true for me and for you, Cliohna, and blood will out, as they say. But occasionally it skips over a generation.

Poor Hannah. She was always small and frail-looking. But she began to thrive in that clean air, and she ran free as a bird, at least at first, though she was always an awkward child, closed in on herself, her little face pale and pinched. She seemed resentful of me. I did my best to be a good mother to her, yet nothing I did was ever right. I hoped she would make friends with the other children, but she would always shy away from them. I don't know why. I could see she wasn't happy. Perhaps Harold should have taken her with him. But then there would not have been you, my Cliohna, my Little Wren.

So, one day I went to visit a woman who lived on the
edge of the next village. She and her grandmother wove shawls on an ancient loom, then sold them to a buyer from London. It earned a few coppers to eke out her husband's pittance. I had an idea how much those shawls sold for in Bond Street shops, so I always made sure they were paid something for their stories, not that I could afford much. I suppose I felt guilty about how they were exploited without me taking their time and their trouble too.

Anyway, I had called later than usual and the woman was busy preparing the evening meal when I arrived, so it was her grandmother I talked with. The younger one looked haggard, so God knows how long the old woman had lived. She sat in the inglenook, urging life into the fire with a charred stick. The peat was damp and smoked the room out, and her skin was dried and cracked like yellowed paper, as if from years of tending the hearth.

She spoke the name Eriu and I held my breath.

Eriu was one of the daughters of MacGrene, a legendary chieftain, and her name is woven into the fabric of many tales. And of course I knew of the goddess Dana and the Tuatha de Danaan, the Children of Dana. But I had never heard this version before. This is what I wrote down that afternoon.

It was the names, you see—Eriu and Elwyn and Fahran—it was as if they had awakened something inside me, some long-lost memory. I knew I had to find out more.

The shawl-makers lived in the last house of the village, set a little apart from the others, on an unmade roadway that tapered, coiling around itself, as it fought its way around rocky outcrops. Not high enough to be called mountainous, the terrain was nevertheless not easy and few used that path even though it led over the crest and down into the next village. Less exhausting, they said, choosing to go the long way around, but that was more to cover their fear.

The professors believed that there had been a ring fort on the higher ground. They started excavating the area, much to the disapproval of the villagers, who, nevertheless, continued to make us welcome and fed us on tea and scones with lavish helpings of dire consequences should ‘the lady' be disturbed.

The villagers said the hillside was full of ghosts: they believed that their ancestors walked the rocky passes. There were tales of a hard battle and many dead; their bones frequently turned up when fresh fields were ploughed for
planting. There were stories of a noble girl named Eriu, who was buried there somewhere, although no one was sure exactly where. Eriu is not an uncommon name in their history, but this was a local legend, and now, from the old woman, I had found more pieces of her story and was determined to put them into place.

When they found the tomb, Harold came home full of excitement. How old was it? Would there be artefacts? Human remains? Naturally, there was academic argument and speculation, especially as there were some things about it that did not fit into the expected pattern.

But I had already been told the secret of who it was, and I felt dizzy with the knowledge, although I said nothing to Harold and his academics. You see, a few days before I had returned to the shawl-makers and the old woman had told me more about ‘the lady'. This time I had the impression she was expecting me, and her granddaughter left almost as soon as I arrived, as if by prior arrangement.

‘So you want to know more about her, do you?' the old lady said.

‘Yes, that's right. I was told there is a woman buried somewhere near here. Is it the same one? Is it Eriu?'

‘Well, who's to say? I only know what I was told when I was a girl. I'll try to remember, if you wish to listen, that is.'

‘Yes, please go on,' I begged her. And she told me. This is what I wrote down afterwards.