Chapter 4
Four
Thud!
Diving after a sobbing bairn, I looked up in time to see Mairi’s favorite pitcher fall off the table and shatter upon the rush-strewn floor.
A lad of perhaps eight, freckled and with my eldest brother’s stubborn set to his jaw, stuck his tongue out and rushed out the door, an older boy trailing behind him.
I didn’t know whose he was. I never knew whose they were.
I had too many siblings, and my responsibilities around the cruck house gave me too little time to care.
Morven and I had spent nigh on a month cleaning up after these loathsome creatures, and my patience was being sorely tried.
Not only was the house full of children, rowdy, noisy, and mischievous, but their parents also used Mairi Grieve’s funeral as an excuse to indulge in vices of the worst sort.
They paid their own children very little mind.
Bess will look after them, they would say.
We deserve some respite, and after all, Bess has no children of her own.
Not a one of the siblings would raise a hand to help me with the cooking or cleaning, and if I dared to ask them, they begged off on the excuse of grief. Had they treated their own mother thus?
In fact, they often had. I recalled how Mairi was always sweeping away the goose pats Tavish dragged across the floor, how Sorcha had moved far away and, until the funeral, had not been home in five years. Mairi’s children had always been such ingrates, as I recalled.
I had sat by her bedside for many years, alone.
I sighed and wiped an arm across my forehead, went for a broom to sweep up the mess.
On wobbling legs, the weeping child took a step towards the broken crockery, and then another. I had but a moment to determine it would be faster to grab him than to sweep up the broken pitcher, so I enfolded him into my arms.
Tears rolled out from the little one’s big green eyes, and he opened his hand to show me a shard of broken crockery he had picked up, and the cut it had left on his wee finger.
“Och, sweeting, what happened?” I asked. “Did ye cut yourself? ’Tis all right. We can fix that.” I cooed and nuzzled him under his chin. He smelled of green grass and sweet porridge, was soft and warm in the circle of my arms.
With the bairn propped on my hip, I rummaged about in the pantry for Mairi’s hare’s foot clover salve. I unearthed the jar and set the wee lad on the table to apply it. “Show me where it hurts, love.”
The lad held up his finger to show me.
I rubbed the ointment upon it, tearing off a bit of my kerchief to make a bandage, wrapping it around, and finishing with a kiss. “All better now?”
He nodded and grinned, holding out his little arms to give me a big hug.
I lifted him again and kissed him on the cheek. Perhaps here’s one relative I do not mind so much.
I stared daggers at the door through which the older boys had just escaped. “Tavish!” I yelled out into the yard, hoping I might at last drag him away from my sister Sorcha’s ale. “Your lad knocked over the pitcher. Come clean it up!”
If my eldest brother had heard me, he gave no sign.
I was na?ve to expect any different. I might have been a brownie myself, laboring under my family’s noses while they never acknowledged me. It was like they didn’t see me at all.
I sighed and propped the child on my hip. “You see me, do you not?” I asked him.
The bairn nodded, and patted the side of my throat, where my birthmark bloomed red. He was certainly a charming one, with his red-golden curls and rosy cheeks.
He was also getting heavy.
“Now, if I set you down, will you stay put and let me sweep up the broken pitcher?”
The lad nodded, and I put him in the corner of the room. He pulled a string loose from his tunic, and began teasing the cat with it, staying well out of my way.
Too bad I could not say the same for the rest of his kin.
The two older lads came dashing through the house, yelling, and stirring up my freshly swept floor.
From the smell of it, one of them had trod on a cow pat, and both appeared as if they had been rolling in the mud.
Lovely. I yelled after them and they darted upstairs to the loft, no doubt to trail mud all over Eamon’s bed. At least they were out of my way.
I dropped to a crouch beside the broken pitcher, gathering the pieces into my skirt.
In sauntered my brother Tavish, sloshing a tankard of ale.
At Mairi’s funeral, he had been of sober mien, and in his darkest, finest garb.
Now he swaggered from side to side, with a big wet stain on his front I could only hope was ale.
Like the others, he had celebrated Mairi’s life with overindulgence, such a wake as I had never seen.
And I, who cared for her longest and loved her dearly, had been too busy playing housemistress to participate.
I scowled at Tavish as I straightened. “Took you long enough. Did you not hear me call? Your lad broke Mairi’s best pitcher.” Not that she was around anymore to care. A tear welled in my eye, and I wiped it away.
Tavish waved me off and belched. “Always carping ye are, Bess. Seems ye’ve got it taken care of well enough.”
“No thanks to you.” I stood, careful not to drop my gathered shards.
Tavish did not acknowledge my reprimand but laughed and yanked on my plait, as if I were a lass again. He reeked of Sorcha’s ale.
Isn’t that just how it is? People talk about how unreliable the years are in the land of Faery, but to me there is no time so tricksy as when all your elder siblings come home. Even a brief visit, and you turn back into a small and overlooked child.
Cursing under my breath, I took the broken bits of pitcher out to the midden, holding my nose against the stench of dung and rotting food. When I returned, Tavish was looming over his youngest child, and the cat, whom I knew for a canny fae, was rushing out of the way.
Tavish looked to me then something large, base, and inhuman. A lumbering giant with his arm raised to squash the boy like the wee-est of mites. “Broke your grandmother’s pitcher, did you, Jamie?” he bellowed. “Do you know what happens to naughty children like you?” He grabbed for the boy.
Time seemed to flatten; something surged inside me, a call in my blood I couldn’t ignore. “Stop it!” I placed myself between my hulking brother and wee Jamie, who had started crying again. My breath heaved in my chest, but I stood firm and did not cower. “Hit me instead, if ye must.”
And know the wrath of the Underhill when you do.
Tavish’s eyes went wide, as if he saw something in me besides his overworked little sister. He blinked away the cobwebs and lowered his arm slightly.
I pressed my vantage, knowing Jamie was under my protection now, in some way I could not yet understand. “Jamie is a wee bairn, and he did not do it. It was those other miscreants—the dark-haired lad and the freckled one who looks like you. Go after those two if you must—but leave him be.”
Jamie wound himself around my legs, and I put a hand on his back.
Tavish dropped his arm, then took another swig of ale. “Lusty lads. I was the same at their age.”
I knew him then for a foul bully and tasted bitter hate in my mouth.
“So, when it’s a wee tot who broke the pitcher, you’ll raise your hand to him, yet when it’s lads old enough to know better you won’t?
” I shook my head. “Their grandmother is newly in the ground. Will ye not step in and teach them some respect?”
“Lads are just feeling their oats.” Tavish lurched and gestured at Jamie. “That one there’s the uncanny one. Nigh on three years old, and yet to say a word.”
Jamie’s lips trembled, and his green eyes shone wet with tears.
“Like as not, ye’ve not given him a chance to get a word in.
” I lifted Jamie again, and his arms went around my neck.
“Oh, my sweet. My little love, do not fret.” I rubbed his back soothingly, thinking, Nigh on three?
He is small for it, isn’t he? And my brother was such an ungainly oaf. Did they even feed the boy at all?
Tavish wasn’t done. His gaze like flint, he glowered at the child in my arms. “Weakling. We ought to bring him to Carterhaugh and ask the fair folk to take him away.”
Something tightened inside me, squeezing around my chest, and making me hot.
How dare my brother treat his own child like this?
How dare he behave this way to any bairn?
Humans took their fertility for granted, rutting and producing offspring after offspring with no care for how they might feed or protect them, ignoring them then yelling for the slightest reason.
Lightning danced in my fingertips; my arms prickled as though they were full of thorns.
“Woe betide your ill-made face. May your path never lead you home. May your cattle give no milk, and your hens lay no eggs.” I glared at my brother—not my brother, surely, but Bess’s, for I wanted naught to do with the overgrown lout.
“The fair folk would be glad to have your Jamie. I hope they do come take him away.”
My words hung heavy in the air. I wanted to reel them back in, not because I had not meant them, but I felt power dripping off them, stronger than I had intended.
Power I never knew I had, strong enough, perhaps, to summon forth my own fae kin.
I saw shadows on the walls. Would they speak to me now? I shook my head, quick and brief, in hopes they might understand.
The room had gone still. Tavish stared at me, mouth dropping open to expose his rotting teeth. Jamie went quiet, no longer trembling with sobs in my arms.
“Sweetheart, ’tis sorry I am for your father’s cruelty,” I whispered in his ear.
“You don’t belong with him. If I could, I would take you away, deep under the hill, and none should raise a hand or say a harsh word to you ever again.
You would know neither sickness nor hunger, but dance and play with the pixies all day. Would you not enjoy that, little one?”
Jamie nodded and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
The storm melted inside me. He nestled so warm and trusting in my arms. I gently set him down, crossing my arms across my bosom as I locked eyes with Tavish.
He looked away first and spat on the ground. “Slattern. ’Tis you we ought to leave out in the woods. Let the goblins take you, for no man ever will.”
Yes, let them.
For that may be where I truly belong.