Wise Child Read online

  "I could train her to work," she said. "There are no lazy girls in my house." I had seen her children, anxious and worn, little workhorses before they were eight years old. They did not get to school much, and when they did they had swollen eyes from weeping and the marks of beating on them. I could feel my aunt tense beside me.

  "What other offers?" said the priest, apparently indifferent as to who should take me in. There was another long silence, and I began pressing my nails tightly into my palms to resist the fate of being taken by Greta.

  "I will be glad to care for her, if she would like that,” Juniper’s deep, husky voice suddenly said. I had not noticed her before, but there she was, a head taller than anyone else, standing in the circle directly facing the priest. They made a contrast—the fair-skinned, blushing priest and the dark, glowing woman. Fillan's hand tightened even harder on my shoulder—there was no love lost between him and Juniper.

  "She shall have a Christian home," he said dismissively.

  "I will send her to Mass, of course," said Juniper. Fillan ignored her, but I could feel his hesitation. A murmur was running around the circle. Nobody liked Greta very much, and they did not want to entrust a child to her. Perhaps too they were afraid of making Juniper angry, since they feared her powers. In any case they felt a pull toward Juniper—she was their magic woman exactly as Fillan was their priest. They did not care to have to choose between them.

  "Why not let Wise Child herself choose." said Juniper. The people murmured again. I had turned scarlet with the embarrassment of this terrible occasion and the agony of having to choose. For the first time in my life I looked squarely at Juniper. I saw her slender height, the laughter lines in her face—even at this moment she had a merry expression, her lips parted over strong white teeth. She had deep, dark eyes that had looked on sorrow somewhere; she wore a dark-red dress (our women dressed themselves in brown or black) and a great ruby on her finger. Under the big straw hat her skin was a rich olive and her hair glossy black, like my own.

  I glanced at Greta, at her small, bitter face closed like a trap, at the long, scrawny arms with which she slapped her children. I looked too at the two children standing beside her, with their cunning, suspicious faces. I could not possibly live with Greta; yet Juniper, we all knew, worked for the Devil, and if I worked for her I might be damned forever. I wrung my hands at my terrible predicament.

  Just then Aunt Morag, poor, fearful Aunt Morag, who lived in dread of Gregor's temper and who rarely raised her voice outside her own home, spoke up in a loud, clear voice.

  "There is Finbar's opinion to be considered," she said.

  "Finbar?" said Fillan in surprise.

  "Before he went away, he foresaw the possibility of his mother’s death, and that Wise Child would need a home until he returned. He said that if that should happen, she was to go to Juniper, that he had asked Juniper to undertake this for him, and that she had agreed."

  Juniper neither confirmed nor denied this; she just smiled. It took me a few moments to understand it. Child as I was, I knew perfectly well that Aunt Morag was lying. It would not occur to Finbar to plan for my future in that way—he would never have anticipated the problem—so Aunt Morag must be lying for a purpose. The purpose, I knew at once,

  was to give me a sort of cue, the cue that it was all right to live with Juniper, no matter what I had been told about her. I responded instantly and automatically.

  "I want to live with Juniper," I said.

  The priest blushed more furiously than ever.

  "Is there not a Christian home that will take this child?” he asked. The people murmured amongst themselves again. They knew very well that Juniper could afford to feed me better than any of them could. It was all very well for Fillan—no hungry children waited in his house.

  Uncle Gregor, perhaps not wanting to be outdone by Aunt Morag, perhaps feeling that it was time to exert some sort of patriarchal right over his female possessions, intervened at this point.

  "If it was Finbar's wish . . ."he said. (Perhaps I do him an injustice. Perhaps he too was genuinely anxious about what would become of me.) Fillan knew that he was defeated—the anger showed clearly enough in his face.

  "Very well then," he said, "the cailleach shall take her." There was a slight shock of surprise at hearing him use this word. It was a word you used behind people's backs, not to their faces.

  "Good," said Juniper. "Wise Child, you will need to sit with your grandmother before her funeral. After the funeral Tillie and I will come and collect you." She gave me her warm friendly smile, slipped through the crowd, and was gone. The crowd began to disperse, too, not in its usual gossipy fashion, but quickly and silently, as if something distasteful had been completed, and then I was walking home with my aunt and cousins. I walked apart, angry at my public ordeal, but above all frightened. What had come

  to me that I, alone of everyone I knew, had to live with a witch? Nobody spoke about it, but about halfway home Colman slipped his hand into mine. I did not acknowledge that he had touched me, but I did not let go.

  It was the custom to sit up with our dead, and that night my aunt and I dutifully took our seats beside the body of the old woman, who now looked so different that I did not feel she was my granny at all. They had tidied her hair and dressed her in a gray dress that I recognized, but it was the expression on her face that was quite different. After what seemed an age, Colman slipped into the room and began to sit too. It was indescribably boring just sitting there, and I wept quite a lot—not for my grandmother, who seemed to be all right, but for myself, who was henceforward a lost soul. My aunt heated some soup on the fire at about mid-night, which was a great treat—I realized that I was starving—but soon after that I seemed unable to keep my eyes open any longer. The next thing I remember is seeing bright sunlight shining on the bed, and Colman and I were both lying in it together. Colman was still asleep, and so was my aunt, still propped awkwardly in her chair. I thought, /want my grandmother buried so that life can begin again, but then I remembered what that life was to be. I wept quietly. Colman woke up and saw the tears on my cheeks. He was never a child of many words.

  "Finbar may be back anytime," he said.

  "I'm frightened," I sobbed.

  Colman did not try to comfort me, knowing that in my situation he would be equally frightened himself. Later in the day my other cousins, less kind than he, remembered all the child gossip they had ever heard about Juniper. Like me

  they were fascinated and excited by the idea of magic but also afraid of it, partly because they thought it was wicked and also because they were afraid it might hurt them. It was said that witches brought diseases, poisoned crops and animals, and killed people they did not like.

  "She has these two huge cats that are her familiars, and they talk with her just like people!"

  "She rides on her broom. On moonlit nights you can see her outline against the moon."

  "She meets with the other witches sometimes, and they all dance without their clothes on, and they ..." Mair went off into a gust of giggles and began to whisper some-thing in Seumas's ear so that he began to giggle too.

  "They say that under her house there are enormous caves with big piles of jewels—rubies and emeralds, gold and pearls."

  "She gives you honey drinks that make things look all different."

  "I bet the Evil One"—Domnall crossed himself—"comes there often . . . that there are ghosts in her house . . .unquiet spirits . . . that she summons up the dead . . . that there are murdered children there."

  I stamped my foot.

  "Stop it!" I said. "Finbar will be home soon, and then I will go to live with him." But I was very scared.

  My face was washed, my poor uneven hair was combed back and stuck down with grease, which Juniper told me later made my eyes look enormous and my forehead white and bare. I was put into a black gown, too big for me, that I kept tripping over, and I wore my good leather shoes that I was so proud of.

  My uncle, Conor, and some other men carried my grand-mother's coffin out of the house, and I was glad to see it go, for in the hot weather the body seemed to make a strange, sweetish smell in the house that I hated, and I was bored with all the sitting still, and the watching. Watching what? There was nothing to see.

  I had chosen the things I was going to take with me—a winter smock and a summer one, my smart stockings my grandmother had knitted in wheel stitch, my hood and cloak, a doll called Nan, a rope for skipping, and a mouse Colman had once carved for me in wood. My aunt packed them in my basket with an apple and kissed me tenderly.

  "You know that we love you. Wise Child, and that you are our kin. If you are in trouble, Gregor and I will help you. You are like our own child." Not enough like your child to live with you, I thought angrily, but I was sobbing too much to speak.

  So I walked behind my grandmother's coffin with my eyes swollen with crying, my throat dry and full of a lump I did not seem able to swallow, wearing the ugly black dress that was too big for me. On the way to the church it started to rain, and before we got there we were soaked, hair like rats' tails, shoes squelching along the track, which was dissolving into mud. The rain matched my mood, the sad-ness that lay on me like a weight, the sadness that my grandmother was shut away in a box and would soon be shut in the earth, the sadness that I was lost and unloved and had a terrible fate before me. From deep in my memory came the recollection of another loss, of realizing, not swiftly but slowly, that Maeve the Fair was lost to me forever. I was now nine years old and nobody wanted me except a witch.

  "I bet she'll make you her apprentice," Seumas said. "Witches choose little girls to be their apprentices. Then you’ll be a witch too."

  "Shut up!" Bride said. Obviously Aunt Morag had re-buked the children for frightening me.

  "The first thing I will do when I'm a witch," I said to Seumas, "is turn you into something horrible—a tadpole. “Already I had a picture of myself stirring some fetid brew over a fire with bits of live creatures chopped up in it. My heart turned over with fright and disgust.

  Juniper was not in the church, but when the coffin was carried out into the churchyard, she was in the group that stood around the grave. She stood respectfully, with a thoughtful look on her face, as Fillan Priest said the prayers, and when the coffin was lowered and people threw flowers down onto the lid, Juniper threw some poppies and cornflowers she had been carrying. Tillie was tethered by the churchyard gate, and when the funeral was over. Juniper stood waiting for me there. No good-byes were said—I was still a part of the village—but people waited and watched while Juniper picked up my bag and tied it onto Tillie’s back. The two of us set off together in silence, one on each side of the donkey. I looked back only once, when we were a long way down the road. They had all gone by then, except for Colman, who was wearing a white woolen smock, much patched at the elbows. (My aunt could not afford to dress us all in black for her mother's funeral.) He stood there, a tiny white speck in the road, still waving to me. I waved back. As we turned the last corner and disappeared, he gave the cry of the curlew that we had so often used to summon each other, stealing secretly out of bed on summer nights. I wept for the life that was gone.

  2. THE WHITE HOUSE

  IT WAS a long way to Juniper's house. We passed along the side of a field full of ripe barley, and across another field, and through a gate, and over a stream by a plank bridge. Later that bridge was to terrify me, but I was too frightened of Juniper at that moment to have fear to spare for the narrow plank and the rushing water. I was sniffing back the tears. Juniper did not mention my tears, but I did not feel she ignored them either. She just walked along, occasionally speaking to Tillie and sometimes humming a little tune to herself.

  It was raining again, and I could feel the wet squidging horribly in my shoes; miserably I knew that the brown leather would stain my lovely stockings, and I wept again because of that. I walked more and more slowly, but this time Juniper did not suggest that I ride on Tillie's back. The track had started to wind very steeply uphill. It seemed unfair that I had to puff and pant as well as cry. The two of us labored up the track—Juniper had stopped humming

  now—toward the white house with the stone walls. I had always lived in a little round house made of timber and mud—nearly everyone I knew except Juniper lived in that sort of house.

  "Stop a minute," said Juniper. "It's misty today, but it’s a wonderful view." There was the village with all its little beehive-shaped houses and gardens, and the barns and fields in different colors, and the Big Ditch beyond that and the palisades that were built to keep away the foreign devils, and then farther away the blue heath and the shore and the sea, and the distant islands, and beyond that the mountains whose peaks were in sunlight. It was a glorious sight. In the village itself there were tiny antlike figures of people.

  "Nearly home," said Juniper.

  We reached the lip of the cliff and passed over it. We were on the roof of the world now. The white house was very close, bigger even than I remembered it. We passed through a gate, through a wilderness of flowers—nobody grew flowers, just things to eat. Then we went up some shallow steps and in at the door. My heart was beating very fast, so it was quite hard to breathe.

  My first feeling was one of space—it was the biggest room I had ever seen, with a flight of stairs leaving it from one corner. In the middle was the great hearth, and al-though it was August there was already a fire burning there that filled the house with the comforting smell of peat. Around the fireplace was a kind of step with cushions upon it, and there were two huge cats already sitting there just as the children had said there would be. Seeing me look at them, Juniper introduced them.

  "This is Pearl," she said, waving her hand at the white cat. "And this is Ruby"—indicating the gray one. Both cats looked up as if they were curious about me and then stared straight in front of them again.

  "Why Ruby?" I asked, speaking for the first time since leaving the village. "She's not red."

  "It's her eyes," said Juniper. "They glow in the dark like rubies. Besides, I love rubies."

  In front of the fireplace was a carved chair where I knew Juniper must sit, and beside it was a small chair with a green cushion.

  "That is for you," said Juniper.

  "For me?"

  "I was expecting you."

  I sat down in the chair, and Juniper started unfastening my wet shoes and easing off my stockings.

  "How fine your stockings are!" she said admiringly. In the village we never praised another's possessions, still less their children or their animals, for fear of attracting the Evil Eye. Her praise did seem odd.

  Then she helped me pull off the clammy dress that I hated and wrapped a soft blanket around me. I sat in my green chair, which was very comfortable, and Juniper brought me a hot drink. I remembered about the honey drink that made you see everything differently.

  "What's in it?" I asked suspiciously, thinking, I'll have to eat and drink sometime.

  "It's tea," said Juniper. "One I drink on special occasions, made out of my very best herbs."

  I sipped it carefully, waiting for it to make me feel funny and ill, but it tasted so delicious, and I had been feeling so cold, that I could not stop drinking it. It was sweet without being cloying, and fragrant like flowers. I was tempted to ask for more, but I did not want to give her any encouragement. I began to feel relaxed and sleepy, but in order not to doze off I studied the room, in particular the floor covering. I had never seen any covering on a floor except rushes and herbs, but I knew that this was a carpet. It had interesting beasts on it, beasts that I would like to see for myself one day. Juniper told me what they were—a leontosaurus, which is a bigger and fiercer sort of lion; a gryphon, a dragon; and a big winged lizard. Over the fireplace, facing toward the village, was a round mirror.

  On the other side of the room was a huge table set on a flagged floor. There were shelves around it that held cooking pots and earthenware jars and vats that I later discovered held liquids the color of straw, or pond green, or dingy black, or the brilliant hue of Juniper's ruby ring. There was a big sideboard with earthenware pitchers and plates on it, and a huge pestle and mortar. From the ceiling hung bunches of plants, some of them wrapped in muslin. Afterward I was to discover that if you went through a door behind the table, you came out into a cool dairy that ran along the back of the house. It too had a flagged floor, white walls, and marble tables, with tubs and churns and jugs and strainers, and newly scalded cloths hung up to dry. In one corner was a quern in which I would laboriously grind our meal.

  Presently I got dressed again in my brown smock, a dry pair of stockings, and the leather slippers Finbar had brought for me on one of his travels.

  "I bet Finbar gave you those," said Juniper, rather im-pertinently I thought, so I did not reply. Then she said she

  must go and milk the cow and I, if I wished, might explore her house.

  As she spoke I began imagining the ghosts and dead babies in the cabinets and in the attic, but I said nothing. It seemed safest to let her think that I was stupider than I was.