No Country: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

steer—for in her moments, Brigid was like one possessed, and her rosy lips gripped my soul in a sweet vise of torment.
    •  •  •
    I WAS BORN in April 1826, some months after my da was dead, but my ma kept our Aherne name bright and ran a good shop, selling dry goods and needles, yarns and pots, wool, seed potato and other sundry things, and hive honey besides. I never wanted for warm clothes, or potatoes and bread, and milk or cheese, which I always shared with Brendan.
    My mother, Maire Aherne, stood tall, her flaming hair red-gold, a marvelous tangle to her waist. On those days she washed her hair, it would hang, straight and burnished; then as it dried—and it took time in our Ireland—the natural currents of her hair would begin to crisscross each other, as if in preordained order, becoming a mass of curls. A simple toss of the head, a shake with both her strong white hands, fingers run through the shiny mane, and it was done, as if all her hair had waited to fall into place.
    Ma lived as if she were from another, more shining world. Few men had the presence of mind to try her with compliments, for in her manner there was something so direct and clear, so unexpecting of any such levity, that most men who came to the shop would shuffle their feet, and buy, and take their mumbling leave. The women would talk to her about their troubles but stop if any man came in—or any grown child too close.
    Oh, she knew how to laugh—aye! —and she was greatly fond of shy Brendan with his head in a muddle of poetry. Our home was not unlike other cottages in Mullaghmore or Dromahair or Lissadel. It was small, but ours was neater, with redder flowers, it seems in my memory. She would make Brendan tell all the poetry. And she, her voice deep, told her favourite poems, which I remember in snatches.
    On every pool there will rain
    A starry frost . . .
    The herons are calling
    In cold Glen Eila
    Swift flying flocks are flying
    Coming and going . . .
    Sweetest warble of the birds . . .
    Each resting stag at rest
    On the summit of the peaks.
    That was her favourite. It was a list, a litany, and I do not truly know why it thrilled my heart so:
    The stag of steep Slieve Eibhlinne
    The stag of sharp Slieve Fuaid
    The stag of Eala, the stag of Orrery
    The mad stag of Loch Lein . . .
    Brigid used to come in with her mother since her childhood. My ma would give her a kiss, and even as she spoke to Brigid’s mother, smoothed the child’s hair, handing her a bobbin or such to keep her little hands busy.
    Since I had my first kiss, Brigid became shy of my mother—as if she thought my mother was all-knowing. In time I found her rose-petal nipples, which grew magically taut, and made me stand still and hard. But my ma said not a word, and watched my awkwardness with a smile out of the corner of her eyes, I knew I was growing up and that she knew it and was letting me grow without intruding herself in that strange and new place, and I was that grateful to her.
    •  •  •
    O UR FIREPLACES KEPT us warm, and in their embers we cooked our sod-grown potatoes, delicious as no other, cool and earthy to the touch, cooked to perfection in our very own sod-fed embers, and a lick of sea-salt dried off our Sligo Bay. That was how home tasted: The warm praties with but just a whiff of the peat and Irish mothersoil. I know it in my heart, my mouth and nostrils.
    Yet it was far from tranquil in my heart. Between lessons, Mr. O’Flaherty had always told us something new about Ireland. I sat transfixed, listening to our sad and sorry history, brooding, nursed upon the history of all our wrongs.
    When the Eighth Henry broke with the Holy Father in Rome, he began the burning down of all our sacred monasteries. In the past, the pious and outraged voices of our priests would be heeded—or at least heard. Our religion itself was now an anathema, another hard reason for the English Crown to send out its troops and its steel. Our very means