As the sun rose higher it bathed the hilly landscape in sunlight and cast short shadows beneath the hawthorn hedgerows. Sarah Hamilton went round the house, opened all the downstairs windows, ran upstairs to the bedroom, struggled with the window there – it had a habit of sticking – and then propped open the front and back doors with the heavy metal doorstops John had made as practice pieces when he was still an apprentice.
She was hoping to bring some freshness into the kitchen where she had baked bread for most of the morning and was now boiling potatoes for the midday meal. Standing for a moment at the front door, leaning her tired back against the doorpost, her eyes shaded from the bright light, she decided it was not just mild, it was actually warm, the first day of real warmth after the winter. Not that the winter had been a hard one, she reflected, but for days on end it had been so wet and dreary she would have welcomed snowfall for the bright reflected light and the patches of blue sky that had been absent for so long.
She paused only briefly before going back to her work, well aware that until she had done all the dusty and dirty jobs and no longer needed to lean over the griddle or the fire, she couldn’t go back upstairs with a bowl of hot water. Perspiring and uncomfortable, dusty from both flour and fine ash, she longed to wash and change from her working clothes. Indeed, as the morning proceeded, she realised it would be warm enough to wear the lighter of her two better skirts with one of her pretty handmade blouses that hadn’t seen daylight since the shortening September days had brought the first chilly mornings.
The last of her jobs was bringing water from the well just behind the forge. It was in no way a ‘dirty’ job, given the cobbles were not muddy and were already bone dry after the light showers in the night, but it was a job better done before she went upstairs to add her bowl of hot water to what remained in the jug on the washstand.
However careful you were balancing the two heavy buckets, it was easy enough to trip on a stray bit of metal and spill water all over your skirt and shoes. It was even more likely to spill when her back was as painful as it had become this morning.
As she stepped out of the door and moved along the whitewashed, south-facing front of the house, she heard Sam Keenan’s hammer beating on the anvil. Even if John hadn’t been in Armagh, she would have known it was Sam, the tall, angular journeyman. John had taken him on as his first employee when Sam had finished serving his time with one of the Rosses a couple of miles away at Mullanisilla.
His hammering was heavy and steady; the long, strong strokes were interspersed with lighter ones to disperse the tension built up in the body from the impact of the heavy blows. John’s hammering was much less dense and the small dancing pattern between the heavy blows, which all blacksmiths used to offset the vibrations of the weighty blows, was much lighter than Sam’s. She always felt there was almost a hint of gaiety in John’s rhythm and texture.
As for Scottie and Ben, it was easy to tell when they were at work. With both of them, despite the difference of two years in their apprenticeships, there was a hesitancy in the rhythm. That was something that would go, John had explained to her. By the time they had served their full seven years’ apprenticeship their muscles would be developed. By then they would each be able to lift the heavy anvil unaided. Only then would you hear the pattern that marked out the man, in the same way as his writing would, the way he signed his name, for example. That was, of course, if it was something he could do in the first place.
She had just removed the wooden cover from the well and was about to prime the pump from the jug of water kept under a bucket in the grass beside it, when Scottie dashed out of the forge and stopped abruptly beside her.
‘Let me do that, missus,’ he said quickly. ‘Ye shou’dnae carry them heavy buckets no more than ye shou’d pump up water,’ he said, without looking at her.
She smiled to herself, remembering sadly how protective he had been when briefly, last year, she had carried their first child.
John had been so delighted that as soon as they knew themselves he’d told the good news to all three workers in the forge. Sam, Ben and Scottie had all nodded. Sam and Scottie wished him joy. Sam, married with two children and one on the way, kept his thoughts to himself. When he saw Scottie dash off to carry her buckets, he just smiled knowingly. He had more idea of how a woman would cope when there was no one there to help her.
Ben, of course, despite his extra years of experience in the forge, was so overcome with shyness that he said nothing. To be honest he was silent most of the time. Unlike Scottie, who would have lifted even a sheet of paper if he thought it would help her, Ben seemed indifferent to other people, speaking only when he was spoken to and even then in a halting and stilted way.
Scottie was certainly the lively one of the three. He had a deftness of manner both with objects, like the pump or the bellows, and also with the handling of animals. Whenever there was a young horse, or one known to be nervous, due to be shod, John made sure Scottie was there to hold him, that Sam had not sent him to deliver a repaired or sharpened tool to some farmer who lived nearby, nor was he on some other errand like collecting a bag of turf for making the fire on the stone circle outside the forge when there was the broken hooping on a cartwheel to mend.
Ben had already begun shoeing horses and doing it quite well under John’s sharp eye, but John thought Scottie was still too young and too light of build to begin shoeing himself. He told her that he felt sure Scottie’s soothing manner with animals would make him a great success with the many horses and ponies that came to the forge.
Sure he was still only fourteen and had a bit yet to grow. It would be all the same to Scottie whether his clients were as different in temperament as the tall, nervous hunters kept by the local gentry and the heavy, plodding horses owned by the ploughmen who moved from farm to farm, working for more than one farmer. Scottie would settle them all.
‘Ther’yar,’ he said, opening the wooden lower doors of a tall, glass-fronted cupboard in the kitchen. He swung the buckets and set them down inside without spilling a drop on the recently scrubbed floor. ‘Ye need to mind yersel’,’ he added hastily, as he disappeared at speed back to the shears he’d been sharpening when they’d heard her footsteps on the cobbles.
Sarah sat down in the nearest chair, suddenly very weary, a shooting pain in her stomach momentarily taking her breath away.
‘Perhaps,’ she said to herself in a whisper as she put a hand to her sore back. ‘Perhaps John will have his wish.’
Early last week he’d dropped a shy hint that unless he was mistaken she’d not bled for a wee while now. She’d admitted that she’d been thinking that too, but she then told him the reason she hadn’t said anything was because she didn’t want to raise his spirits and then for him to be disappointed again.
They’d lost their first child after three or four months and John had been distraught, anxious during the day when she was poorly and in pain, and beside himself at night when she couldn’t sleep. Finally, the next day, he’d overruled all her protests and sent Sam to fetch the doctor from Armagh. He was so agitated when the man himself arrived that to begin with the doctor told him firmly he’d never yet lost a father to a miscarriage.
‘Look on it as a try-out,’ he’d added, more gently when he’d examined Sarah, told her what would happen next and gave her strict instructions as to what she was to do. ‘The body needs to be sure all is in order before it goes on,’ he insisted, addressing them both. ‘Don’t hurry to make up for this loss. Give yourselves time. Sure you’ve plenty of time for a fine, long family, if that’s what ye want. This is no setback at all in the longer view.’
But it was Sarah’s neighbour, Mary-Anne Halligan, at the foot of the hill, who had come to visit and spoken even more directly than the Armagh doctor. She was well-known as a midwife even though she’d never had any formal training except what her own mother and grandmother had taught her when she was old enough to help with their work.
‘I’ve hardly iver met a wumman who went the full way wi’ the first’un,’ she began, settling herself comfortably by the fire with a mug of tea and a fresh scone. ‘But the doctors wou’d niver tell ye that. Ach, I suppose they don’ want t’upset ye or get ye worryin’, but shure ask any wumman ye know an’ she’ll likely tell you it were the second, or the third, aye, or even the fourth, God help us, that brought a fine, healthy baby. Don’t pay one bit of attenshun to the Job’s comforters. Ye might well be a ma the nixt time, but give yerself a wee while first to let yer inside settle down. Just tell yer good man when it’s a bit chancy.’
Sarah had no idea what she meant and had to ask.
Mary-Anne looked at her in amazement: ‘Did yer ma niver tell you ’bout these things afore ye got married?’
She’d explained then how she’d lost both parents to the fever one summer long ago and how she’d been brought up by her grandmother who was actually her own mother’s nurse. The old woman had lived with the family for many years and had never married or had a child herself.
Mary-Anne had nodded, said ‘Ach, aye,’ and settled down to tell her how women that were neither rich, nor even well-off, managed to space their children at two-year intervals.
‘If ye don’t believe me, take a luk at the parish register,’ she went on, when Sarah had listened wide-eyed. ‘Clear as spring water, and written there for those that can read, a chile ivery two years for as many as ye want, if ye just keep to the safe times o’ the month. Am not sayin’ but there’s ither ways o’ doing it, an’ some wimen are glad just to say “no”, but shure if yer fond of other, like you and yer man, isn’t it a nicer way o’ doing it?’
Sarah thought over again what Mary-Anne had said as she went upstairs and peeled off her clothes. She stood naked, looking down at her body. Perhaps she was larger, but if she was, it hardly showed. She couldn’t be sure but she thought her nipples were larger and certainly they tingled very often like they had done the year previously. Despite all her doubts, the notebook she kept in the chest of drawers, with her underwear and the folded cloths she used every month, made one thing quite clear. The last time she’d bled was the end of January. It was now the third week in April.
She laughed suddenly. ‘Sure time will tell all,’ she said aloud.
It was a favourite expression of John’s. The logic of it was perfectly clear, but she always insisted that time itself wasn’t the problem. What was hard to deal with was the not knowing. So many things, she insisted, you could cope with, no matter how difficult they were, if you knew exactly what they were in the first place.
He had a way of looking at her, his face immobile, his eyes wide as he took in every word. Well, he was, of course, taking it all in. It was one of the first things she had noticed about him. He listened to what people were saying. If his responses were simple, or homely, it meant he was still thinking about it. Sooner or later, when he’d given his mind to it, he’d come back to the subject again and ask her what she thought of his conclusions.
John had been to school, could read and write, as most blacksmiths could, but as far as she could see it had been a very limited schooling. To her surprise, he knew very little of Irish history, though he had once recited for her the kings and queens of England. He possessed only a few books, but read the local newspapers avidly each week. When encouraged he could tell stories about local characters and events going back well into the previous century.
As she buttoned her blouse and straightened her skirt, which did indeed feel a little tighter on the waist, she remembered him describing in great detail the Battle of the Yellow Ford in 1598 and explaining why the lane connecting the road over Church Hill with the rectory to the east of it was called Bloody Lane.
She felt better as she glanced in the mirror and lifted the heavy jug from the washstand. She made her way down the steep stairs and threw the soapy water away outside the back door, but she left the jug sitting by the door instead of refilling it at the well. She didn’t want to distract Scottie again from his jobs. Sam and Ben might well cope with the extra work, but John was not due back till after dinner time.
She fried up chopped onions and mashed them into the potato with a generous lump of butter, ready to serve onto the three warm plates. Then remembering what John had said, she buttered a piece of fresh bread and poured a glass of milk for herself. She had just brought in a jug of buttermilk and another dish of butter for the table when she heard the scrape of boots outside the front door.
Sam took off his cap and led the way, sniffing appreciatively while Ben and Scottie sat down in their usual places.
‘Are ye off yer food, missus dear?’ asked Sam, dropping his cap on the floor by his chair and making sure the two apprentices had done likewise.
‘No, Sam, I’m not,’ she replied, realising she was indeed very hungry. ‘Boss’s orders. He said if I was going to have my meal with him when he came back I was to be sure and eat a bite to keep me going.’
‘Aye, he was right there,’ he nodded, glancing up at her as she brought the piled-up plates to the table.
She caught the glance and wondered. Sam was the family man and maybe saw what she could not see. Mary-Anne from the foot of the hill came up to see her now and again. She’d spoken more than once of the clues a woman might get if she did but notice them. She said men picked them up as well, but they noticed different things.
‘I mind once a man tellin’ me that he always knew when a wumman was “that way” as he called it, because she had a good colour. “Lit up”, wos what he said. “A brightness in the eyes and a spring in the step” … afore they got too big that wou’d be,’ she added, just to make things plain. ‘An’ indade, I think now he was right. I’ve often seen the signs that a wumman would be sending for me, long before she thought of it hersel’.’
They were all hungry and the food was tasty; all three men nodded when she looked at the cleaned plates and asked if they’d like to scrape the pot. She got up, brought the blackened pot to the table and shared out the remains between them, glad that, as always, she made sure there was plenty. Simple food it might be and very seldom was there meat or fish, but as her grandmother used to say when they sat down to food in their tiny cottage, ‘Isn’t hunger the best relish you could have, and how better to get it than to do your work well.’
There was no doubt the work in the forge made for clean plates.
It was an hour or two later, the dishes washed, two meals safe under enamel plates on the hearth, when Sarah took out her sewing and sat down gratefully by the fire. The morning tasks had been no different from other mornings but she admitted she felt more tired today than usual. Perhaps, she thought to herself, after John came home and they’d had their meal together, she’d walk down to see Mary-Anne while he changed his clothes and went back to the forge. But as she made up her mind that’s what she’d do, she heard a clatter on the cobbles outside.
Smiling with delight, she dropped the sleeve she was working on with the blouse to which it was to be fitted. He was actually a bit later than she’d expected, but it would still be early enough when they’d eaten together for her to go to see Mary-Anne before she started making her evening meal for her husband, Billy and their two sons.
At first she couldn’t make any sense of what she saw. Daisy, the mare, was covered with sweat and was foaming from her mouth; her eyes were wild with fear and a long scrape on her side dripping blood onto the cobbles. The trap was empty, the reins trailing. There was no sign whatever of the materials John had gone to buy.
And there was no sign of John.
She stood there, her heart in her mouth. Something terrible had happened, she was sure, but there was nothing to tell her what it might have been. Or so she thought. It was Ben, Ben of all people, who spoke out when all three of them appeared from the dark doorway.
He stared at the trap as if transfixed, but then, almost unnoticed, he moved round to the other side of the well-polished and much cherished vehicle, John’s pride and joy, the first thing he had ever bought for himself, having saved up for years while working as a smith.
Ben stared at score marks on the side of the trap and then ran his hands over the rim.
‘What is it, man, what can ye see roun’ there?’ demanded Sam, when he glanced over at him and saw, to his total amazement, that tears were streaming down Ben’s cheeks.
‘They ran inta somethin’ about the height of anither trap only stronger like, a dray or a cart maybe. The mare musta took fright. She ran that fast the trap cowped over aginst somethin’ hard. Musta been a stone wall or suchlike an’ the boss got thrown out. We may away and luk fer him on the road,’ he said, turning his back and walking out between the great stone pillars which were the trademark of a working forge or a strong farm.
Sarah looked at Sam and knew from the expression on his face that what Ben had said made sense to him. Scottie hadn’t even heard; his head was buried in Daisy’s neck, his arms around her as he stroked her and comforted her. She was steady now, her eyes no longer bulging, her nostrils no longer dilated. As Sarah stared at the pair of them, she saw Daisy snuffle at Scottie’s familiar, warm work clothes. Comforted by his touch, his enfolding arms and his known voice, she tossed her head, stopped fidgeting and stood quite still.
‘Now don’t worry, missus,’ said Sam quickly, seeing the look of utter distress on her face. ‘Shure the boss is a fine, strong man. If he’s taken a bit of a fall, sure he’ll get over it. I’ll away after Ben and get some of the Halligans from below to give me a han’. We’ll fin’ him all right an’ bring him home straight away, niver ye fear.’
The lovely sunlit afternoon passed so slowly that at times Sarah was convinced the clock had stopped. She tried to occupy herself in the house knowing that Scottie was beside himself and wouldn’t know what to say to her. He’d taken Daisy from between the shafts of the damaged trap, rubbed her down and put her out to grass, making sure she had water and hay. The bleeding from her left flank had stopped so he left it alone, knowing that if he tried to clean the long gash, it might only start bleeding again.
‘A’ll away and watch fer them on the hill and tell ye when they’re comin’,’ he said, appearing unexpectedly, putting his head hastily round the kitchen door and running off without waiting for any answer.
She lifted her head from her sewing lying untouched in her lap and watched through the window as he climbed up the nine-barred gate and then scrambled precariously onto the pointed top of the right-hand gatepost, the one with the best view down Drumilly Hill. There, he settled himself, the light breeze blowing his unkempt red hair across the pale freckles on his cheeks.
It was a long time before he saw any movement at all on the road: a tinker woman plodding up the hill, a child on her back, a heavy case of her wares in one hand, a small boy holding the other.
Scottie watched her move slowly towards him, her back bent with the weight of her stock, both children silent with tiredness.
‘Missus in?’ she asked abruptly, as she drew level with the ever-open gate.
‘Not the day,’ he replied promptly. The missus knew the tinker woman and whether she bought anything or not, she’d always give her bread and tea and milk for the child and the baby.
Her face remained unchanged. Had Scottie paused to ask himself if she believed him, it would have given him no clue to anything she ever thought.
Time passed, the breeze strengthened, the shadows lengthened. His backside had grown numb with cold through the cast-off trousers someone had given to his granny, when finally he caught a movement on the road. It was minutes later before he could make out what it was. Neither cart, nor trap, nor ploughman with horses, but four men carrying a heavy burden between them, one at each corner of a door, on which lay a figure, a white bandage on its head, the booted legs hanging over the end of the makeshift carrier.
He watched as they drew closer, not knowing what to think, unable to see the face of the figure lying sprawled face upwards. It was Sam Keenan at the leading edge that looked up and caught sight of him. In one single gesture he told Scottie the last thing he ever wanted to hear. He simply shook his head.