The Secret of Witch Hazel

By James Comins

In an English colony in Northern Ireland, the children of the invaders gather to be chosen at the spring hiring fair. Francis Mansfield stands in the line, unaware of his family's role in conquering the Emerald Isle and enforcing its subjugation. All he knows is his arms didn't grow. His body looks like a girl's, and his mind runs circles around his stolid family and friends. He knows nothing about himself except that he has a saint above his head and a straw dolly in his pocket, guiding him. Who then will choose him, and what work will they choose him for? And who will stop the coming war between the English and Irish?

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Comins
• Release date: Feb 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370475131

James Comins

James Comins is the author of Fool School and Fool Askew, formerly available from Wayward Ink, "Notes Found Inside the Body of the Convict Clarence Skaggs," published in CrimeSpree Magazine #48, and other stories. He currently lives in New Orleans.

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The Secret of Witch Hazel

by James Comins

Published on Smashwords

Copyright 2018 James Comins

This eBook may not be excerpted or used for commercial or noncommercial purposes without written permission of the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, places, events or locales is purely coincidental.

Other books by this author

Lenna and the Last Dragon

Lenna's Fimbulsummer

Lenna at the All Thing

The Stone Shepherd's Son

Casey Jones is Still a Virgin (for older readers)

13 Stories to Scare You to Death

My Dad is a Secret Agent

Where the Cloud Meets the Mountain and the Mountain Disappears

The Dark Crystal: Plague of Light

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Table of Contents

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Epilogue

Acknowlogies and Apoledgements

About the Author

for Sloane

Part I

In the town of Calumny Colony, on the day of winter's end, the youngest lads and gels of able body take themselves to the frosty village green, keeping back from the flock of glaring sheep and the four derelict neats and the hairy ring-nosed bull that tends the neats, and they form a line.

I'm in the line.

It isn't really so long a line. Right now there's twelve of us, although I know for a fact Phelim O'Hara will show up late and I know Junie Edwards hasn't finished her workdress. A raunch hoar-mist is up from the mounds of the oldgraves--the newgraves are up on a hill you can't see from the flatland village, unless you're crazy Dacy Jack and live in the hills yourself. Mother Gibbet always says it's death breath. Never smiles, Mother Gibbet. Never smiles.

Tom John is swatting the air with a withy branch, and in the hoar-mist, Thorntown's daughter chucks a well-aimed pebble and it lands on Tom John's ear. Tom goes fury and switches Boad beside him. It takes Boad the better part of a minute to convince Tom he hadn't done it. Eventually Tom John hears the Thorntown girl laughing her clop off some spots down the line, hiding in the mist, and he tries to jab her with the withy switch. Funny thing is, there's a bit of an unwritten rule amongst the kids in the line at winter's end. No one says it, but you don't swap places with the ones beside you. It's rules. Once the line is formed, you stay. So when Tom John realizes his withy won't reach, he doesn't slide over a place for better poking. He'd rather, I'm not guffing, break the line and dash to find a longer branch. When he returns, Taverner the taverner takes it from him and swats him on the breech once and breaks the new longer branch in half over his knee. And that's how things are right now.

A bit of tinder like Tom John might have the guts to break the line, but I don't. I'm staying still, I'm not looking at Chuff to one side nor the Butterfield girl to the other, and in the hoar-mist I wouldn't see much anyhow. In my pockets I've got a luckdoll my sister braided for me before she died. You're allowed to have your hands in your pockets here, it's one of the rules, and I'm running a thumb over the big button on the doll, three times around one way, three times the other, and each time round I say a prayer to my personal saint, I've named him Saint Glimmer the Frog in the Tree, and he's a frog I once saw in a tree and it was night and I made him a saint when I went to pray, and he's my saint, and all he needs to do is shine his eyes at night and all your troubles are lifted from your breast and taken to the God-in-heaven to deal with. That's how saints do it.

It's more than an hour, and the sun comes to the clouds and the clouds are bright white and start to boil and it's day. The of-the-village who care at all turn out in second best frocks and black hats that look either like anthills or like buckets on a well, and they gather on the green with their hands up their sleeves and the mist is melting and now it's just cloud wisps and Wool saunters through the crowd and it's begun.

"Hiring, hiring, lad and hen,

It's morning now, and it's morn we begin.

First day of spring to the last day of fall,

Show your good worth or nothing at all."

Henry Wool is a good half-century, and he's led the line for half that. Built like a crooked piling, his neck is long, tallwise, and sunken-in, inwise, like a waterbird's, and his head's always backbent like he's a rooster calling cookaroo at dawn through a clipped hay-colored beard. Everyone likes him. Likes him so much they call him in from his fields to settle law claims when the ealdor can't sort things out, and after the claim is settled Henry Wool takes both sides drinking and singing till they're friends again. That's the sort he is.

"Yan is the farmer who prospers the plough

Tan is the husband who suckles the sow

Tether's the miller who blisters the grain

Mether's the brewer who waters the lane."

It is always boys first, it's the way of it. I'm not strong enough to bale hay or lift tuns. My arms didn't turn out. That's what my old man tells people. Mam likes to tell people it isn't rickets. She says that first. I've got arms and legs, she says, they're just made for going up, not over. I think I've got limbs like a gel's, softened and skin-and-boney and reluctant. I've got the belly of a lass, too. But in the line, arm strength is first and chiefest of virtues. When I was young I'd watch the farmers bending their arms for the lads, telling them to grip their hairy fists and pull their clenched arms open. If you can't grip to their liking--and I know I can't--then you'll wait down the way to who needs you next. No gel can grip strong enough to lift a tun except Lady Miss Hays. She's worked at the Duck Stout since I was wee.

"Pumpf is the blacksmith who toils the heat

Sether's the butcher who hangs up the meat

Lether's the whitesmith who crowns the king's head

Dove's the good carpenter, keeps snow off our bed."

It's true, by the way. Marysbourne Tenancy's south to us, they've got silver, and they specialize in dredging it out and carting it up to us. Our Jew, White, buys it and works it. Long time since King Charles commissioned a new crown, but he did once. Came from Calumny Colony, although they sent it to Belfast to be gilded in gold, too. Still called the Calumny Crown.

Now it's the song of the women's turn to pick.

"First of the fair are the shearers, raking in the barn

Next are the spinners and carders, pulling wool to yarn

Then the mortars and dyers, making bobbins to glow

And last the goddess-weavers, warping blankets for the snow."

They don't let line-hired weavers make the patterns, so there isn't a need for them to be the most skilled or have any proficiency. They just run shuttles for the patterners. It's arm strength for the gels too, so, and patience, and once in a maker's moon the women choose a boy who's missed the first pass of the men but has got enough patience and not too much pride and who'll card for them. It's not fancy, but it's work. I imagine myself there, and it's not too much shame for me really. Really it's not.

"A town needs a midwife, and she'll have her pick

The abbess needs wailers to keep out Old Nick

The singer and storyer, to keep up the town's will."

Henry Wool seems to sing a bit gasta at the last line:

"And the old fair-woman lives under the hill.

Now that's our song, I've sung it fine

Now choosing be! It's me for a pin'."

And with that, the skelly-town frame of tall good Henry Wool bows and tosses a wave to the colonists (and those who might not always have been so) and saunters off toward the Duck Stout.

Now it's a matter of who picks whom.

Three farmers pass me by. Cuthman's the oldest of them, and his gray chest hair drifts in the carven sunlight and he ignores me and I'm not surprised. About ten more my age have filled out the line by now, and that will be all of us. Junie's dress has some ratty wide stitches, and I guess she's done the last of it while the rest of us were standing in the hoar-mist. She's pulled it on quick and run out and she'll soon see what a half-made workdress will become at day's end.

Billy Tremble asks Tom John to step out and grip his hand. Tom John takes the hand and hefts, and Tremble squeezes right back, and there's a mighty struggle, and at last Tom John roars and snorts and lets out a mighty curse and Billy Tremble slaps him for blasphemy and pushes him back in line.

Boad leaves with Cuthman. Billy Tremble circles back up the line, snapping half an eyeful at my small misshapen body before trundling on to Chuff, tucking a finger around the boy's leathery full muscles, and gesturing him to follow away.

The third farmer, Hagee, lets a thick waterfall of oily saliva leave his mouth in a foul stream and stalks away empty-handed. Sometimes there aren't enough who're strong in arm.

Phelim O'Hara leaves with the husband, but he doesn't want to go. Out loud he says, It's me for Taverner, but Taverner's here and he says O'Hara goes with the husband or with no one at all, and that's how it is with the spring line. Phelim mutters somewhat about mucking out pigs, taking an overtone of distaste, and the husband calls it indecent cheek to complain at honest toil, and sure and maybe he wouldn't have Phelim O'Hara after all, and O'Hara shuts his gnashers and follows off toward the big barns.

The miller is Brammy Gordon, and Gordon's a sour man whose wife is buried, and the vicar says Gordon now sees skulls under faces, and I can't see skulls even if I try, and the vicar says Gordon's built himself dusty bones from the dusty old mill, and I'm of a loose fear he'll pick me.

Brammy Gordon smells not of bones but of licorice. He's got a tin of the stuff from far parts, and stuffs it into his mouth sooner than let it get away from him. His teeth are fair black, but you can't tell if it's natural or if it's the licorice. The smell surrounds him for ten foot each way, and my mind makes it the smell of a boneyard, only that's foolish.

Gordon stops before Deane Tanner and takes him by the chin and moves his face around. Pouting gruesome, the miller pinches Deane under the eye, tugs an earlobe, lifts the lad's upper lip to see his teeth like a soldier buying a gee, till you'd half think he's hiring an embalmer. Tanner seems hot to rebel, but he’ll have O'Hara's scolding in mind, so he takes it. The probing continues to the neck, where Gordon seems to be testing Tanner's glands, as if he's apt for a goiter. Then the nose, and a dark smirk is on the thin man as he peels open Tanner's nostrils, looking for bats up there.

Brammy Gordon takes his time, turning Tanner's face to pudding, and gets to slapping when Taverner steps up once again and pushes the miller away from the line with both hands. And now all is revealed: the miller slips on the melting frost and like a lace-doll lands, body aflail, on his arse and all his limbs fall evenly in each direction, somewhat crooked, like they're not completely his anymore, and his tin of licorice soars like a well-kicked football bladder and all the candies, if you want to call them that, go each way, and the miller begins moaning like the mantlepiece of a drafty topchimney and Taverner is over him and he says, Not much cover for the smell, was it? and he kicks the tin out of Gordon's reach.

I've not seen any man on Henry Wool's list struck off it for misbehavior before. Boys, sure. Everyone knows an obstreperous foal needs breaking. Only, bothered with wine as the miller may be, it's fair strange for a public man to be such an intemperate menace. We're all breathing better as Taverner and Hagee drag the miller out of the green.

And Taverner returns. He faces Deane and says, You've a raw spine, haven't you? You stood where you were.

Deane rubs his nostrils and nods.

Will you work for me? Taverner asks. Lady Miss Hays needs a cart-driver to the coast, one who'll not drink up on the way.

And Deane says, I can drive, and Taverner says he damn well knows he can drive, but will he do it without cracking open a whisky-barrel? Deane says he will, and off he's sent. Only this time Taverner doesn't leave the green, he's still the hand of reason here; for Henry Wool won't strike lad nor man. So Taverner stays, and the pumpf in line steps forward. The blacksmith.

Again there's not a feather's chance in a barn fire I'd be picked by Mate Graham. Shame, actually. Mate Graham is one of the jolliest men I know. He's the sort who begins his day at the baxter's, where he'll buy a whole row of sugarcakes with molasses that came on a ship from Port Royal, and he'll take the tray to the furnace and roll up his sleeves and strap on his big apron and begin singing, and as he hammers he stuffs his face cheerful, and if you've got an order he'll trade you a sugarcake for your order, and you get to stay and watch him bend oregrounds black to horseshoes and turn out posts and stretch doorpins. So for cakes I'd beg Mam and the old man to reshod Pan's Piper our gelding, and once a year they'd do it. You'd take their scratch and Pan's Piper to Mate Graham, stand Pan's Piper in the cross-stall and steady him by the bridle as Graham and his boy tap in clean shoes, and he'd give you a molasses sugarcake to eat, and you'd get to hear him sing.

I'd like to be Graham's boy.

You might imagine that blacksmiths need to start strong in the arm, but it's not that way really. Smithing starts out with bellows, and one who works the bellows long enough and shovels in enough bog coal from south market will build arms.

I hope that's true and not a lie I'm telling myself.

Mate Graham is going down the line, recognizing faces he knows and greeting them. Martha Ferguson, hallo, you'll be a wife and a half someday. Brighton Graves' lad, is that me belt buckle? Fine work if I admit it, stay humble afore the Good Book as I do. Ah, there's Blanche Suj'John, I finished your da's gate yesterforeday, hinges good as Scottish. And Lucy Eggy.

It's Agee. She's gone cross.

My, little miss, that's a face to crack an Ag! and he laughs and laughs and Lucy Agee goes red.

And Francis Mansfield. That's me, now. He's skipped a few he doesn't have trice to say to, but he knows me. He's beardless, with a big face both English and Irish, it's got jolly wrinkles and a smile that lasts for miles with clean teeth inside, his skin is dark as a peach from the heat, and he folds his great arms and he'll craic with me, and I smile and I want him to laugh, I do love Mate Graham in his way, and so I leap forward and hold up my bit of a bicep and I roar like a lion, and it works, he gives me a great duck-laugh and a hug and then I feel a bit girlish and embarrassed and I'm faintly joyed that Chuff wasn't there to give me grief afterward.

And Mate Graham moves on.

Dooley, you're chipper. Mind the heat, do you?

Nossir, says Dooley. And that's Mate Graham.

The butcher is--I don't know his name. Funny. Mam and Da call him the butcher, and our neighbor Don Edwards calls him the butcher, and Taverner calls him the butcher, and that's the butcher's name, is the butcher. He's not Irish, not Scottish, not of the Pale or Wexford, and no one knows him. He keeps, is how we say it. That's what we say, the old lad is a loner, he keeps. It's our way of talking.

Four boys are left in the line as the butcher approaches: There's me, Tom John, Younger McCraigh, although we call him Fitz because his black hair and round face look naught like his White Irish father, and a boy who got named Abednego Born-in-the-House-of-the-Christ Cullough because his daft father went to seminary for a year.

The butcher advances. I'll try to describe him. He's a quiet man, the sort who makes others quiet in kind as soon as you see him. Sometimes you feel cold before you know he's in the room. When he's in your space, you freeze like a beaten dog, waiting to see what comes next. His hair is loose and straight brown, his lips are sour, and while he's not exactly the dusty gravedigger that Brammy Gordon is, he's of a pair of eyes that hunt, and fingers that flex very slowly, as if they're reaching for a knife to cut off heads with. He's tall as a tree, too.

Smells of man's power, the butcher.

A hand like a ham lands not on Fitz, whom he stands before, but on the Butterfield girl. She squeaks.

Miss, he rumbles. You've an eye for animals.

The Butterfield girl can be seen most days in the open pasture, working with the calico shepherd dogs in rounding the sheep. Wears no shoes. Carefree thing, the Butterfield girl. Her eyes travel up to the butcher. Bet she's not so carefree now. She nods; an eye for animals. The man must have as much an eye for human beings as for the animals he cuts up.

Then you can steady them for me, he says, and the Butterfield girl falls to tears where she stands. The butcher shows no expression, but he says, Tomorrow sharp at dawn.

Sounds of weeping run far from the line as she flees. The girl who loves animals will slaughter them now. I see the sense in it, from a butcher's perspective, but it wasn't kindly done.

White's next. The Jew is thin and his beard is wide and he smiles but not affably. His arms are not enormous, they're sleeved in black cloth like a priest's, but his fingers show decades of diligence in jewelrymaking. My family never once bought silver. It's not our place.

Catch, he says to me. A coin tumbles in sunlight and lands. I don't move, it would be strange. White stoops and moves to Tom John and snaps the coin. He leaps for it and misses. White sniffs. Mac? he says in a family-familiar way. How does the Jew know Fitz? The McCraighs were ancient chieftains once, and I suppose they might have sent for some Gaedelic idolatry piece made of silver. I wouldn't know about Gael affairs. Both my parents came from east of the sea and south of the wall.

The day is open and the crowd wakes and chatters. The lowing of neats rolls over the green, and I badly want someone to tell me I'm theirs. I'm not allowed to make them pick me, but I want them to.

Mac finds the coin on the ground and returns it. White moves on.

What's your name? he asks the boy whose father went to seminary. The boy's name is Abednego, he says. White smiles, doesn't throw the coin, and gestures Abednego to follow.

This is it. Me, Tom John, and Fitz, and there's one man left to choose us. Suddenly I'm self-conscious of the shape of my body, my pale stick-arms and stick-legs and skin-ribs and that thing I can do where I make my belly fold up like a vertical kiss by squeezing in my belly muscles. I want for the carpenter, Stub McDougall, to choose me. I could be a carpenter. I can carry wood. I can strike a nail and fit a joist or roof beam. I could do that. My hand grasps my sister's luckdoll and I pray for the correct job and there's cuts and abrasions on my mind to think I'm not for being a man at all and that I'd have to stand in my own humiliation like a very old dog who's lost control of his peeing while women choose me. And then there's the End of the Line, where the one or two most worthless of all wait for the soildrivers and small farmers to claim us, and if there's naught who'll take you in Calumny they send you to Marysbourne Tenancy without telling anyone, only everyone knows everyone in every town, and if you see a stranger in the colony line it's always someone who's failed in another. It's the way.

Stub McDougall points to me. I practically die of happiness, I run toward him and I'm chosen.

He points to Fitz. We're both going, we'll be together. Fitz is right puny but at least he's not a brute. It'll be nice to have company.

Stub points with his missing fingers to Tom John. All of us.

Stand straight, put your dexter arm out.

The three of us stand together and roll up our white sleeves and make a fist.

I'm going to lose this one, aren't I?

A stump of a thumb touches my bicep and starts to squeeze. Nasty feeling, you can see where they sewed his thumb closed, there's knobs of skin. I try to fight the pressure but I've got naught to fight it with. He presses down to the bone, leaving a hard print that looks near blue from old blood. Blue blood's thought to be English, and I'm Anglian, and that's not best admired by anyone.

For all his vain fury, Tom John's got a flop of fat for arms, but he fights off the Stub-stump anyway.

Fitz has normal arms. Everyone knows he's not a real child, he's ill-born, so no one wants him, but Stub McDougall couldn't give his left stub for birthright. A rude man. Fitz has a chance. I find goodwill enough to muster a good wish for Fitz, who's as hard up as I am to be chosen. Still, I wish the carpenter would choose me, so I'd have a man's profession.

Lean? McCraigh? the carpenter says. They come forward, and I drift back. Have you steady hands?

They hold up their hands and try not to show how loose with fear they're shaking. Anticipation. McDougall sniffs through a sandy mustache and nods. The villagers part as Lean and McCraigh follow him out from the line where I am condemned to stand my whole life forever.

There's another rule that says once you've found your place in line you stay no matter how you feel. It isn't done for a boy to leave the line early and accept poverty and unemployment as his lot. You find your place and you stay. It's not until midnight that losers like me get to leave.

And that was all the men.

Sun and field. Warmer; no mist. Shops are daubed white and brown, all diagonals and pebbly roofs. They wait for new occupants. The grass is long and new and not yet trimmed