The Revenge of Bridget Cleary

By Mathilda Zeller

Are you a witch, or are you a fairy, or are you the daughter of Bridget Cleary?

Exiled for a murder her father committed, Brigid has until midsummer to gather what she needs for readmission to her home in the fairy mound: a chest of stolen gold and a chest full of her father's blood. With nothing but her own wits and an ability to be mostly unseen, she takes a position as a scullery maid in a country manor house, where stealing gold is easy as dusting the candlesticks.

When discovery of her thieving becomes likely, she scarpers, embarking on a madcap season in London. With midsummer fast approaching, Brigid must recoup her stolen gold in any way she can, even if it means modeling for a lecherous pre Raphaelite artist, posing as a young debutante to spy on other debutantes, and forming a clandestine Pugilism Club for Young Ladies.

With gold filling her pockets and her father newly released from prison, the path back to the fairies should be clear. Or would be, were it not for her growing feelings for Edmund, the gentle young lord who hired her to spy on his sister; her burgeoning sense of loyalty and friendship to Adelaide, the sister upon whom she was meant to spy; and the unsettling question of whether she should--or even could--bloodily avenge her mother's death.

Inspired by the actual 1895 murder of Bridget Cleary by her husband Michael, the struggle for Irish Home Rule, and events surrounding the late pre Raphaelite artistic movement, The Revenge of Bridget Cleary has been heralded by author Joanna Ruth Meyer as "equal parts haunting, compelling, and throughtful."

From Goodreads:

"If Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell had a baby with Greta Gerwig's Little Women, this is certainly the wild, weird little book baby that would come out."

-W. R. Gingell

"Chaotic but addictive, witty and gut-wrenching..."

-Saily Bhagwat

"I very, VERY rarely cry reading books, but the reveals about the Cleary family were touching enough it pulled out a few tears from me. Okay. I was bawling. And drinking a beer." 

-Irina Kermong

"Simply put, Zeller's writing was brilliant..."
-Billy

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mathilda Zeller
• Release date: Oct 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215588260

Mathilda Zeller

Mathilda Zeller has inhabited 2 continents, 3 countries, 11 of the United States, and 18 towns. Don't ask her where she's from; it's complicated. She endeavors to make you lose sleep with fantasy and horror stories and currently makes her home in the Midwest with her husband, six children, and two cats.

Book preview

The Revenge of Bridget Cleary

Mathilda Zeller

Dedication

FOR MY HUSBAND,

without whose paternity leave

this book would not exist

Epigraph

COME AWAY, O HUMAN child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.  -from The Stolen Child, W. B. Yeats

Irish Terms

BEGORRAH- USED AS A mildly jocular oath

Brid Ui Chleirigh- Bridget Cleary

Dia ár sábháil- God save us

Feck, fecker, fecking- A mild expletive to express disbelief, surprise, pain, or contempt

In ainm Chroim- In the name of Crom (A pre-Christian god)

Leanbh- Infant, babe, youth

Mar Dhea- An Expression of skepticism, i.e. yeah, right!

Content Note

THE REVENGE OF BRIDGET Cleary contains depictions of domestic violence, a scene of attempted assault, and references to sexual assault.

Historical Note

THIS NOVEL IS A STORY set very loosely around the actual murder of Bridget Cleary.

When I say very loosely, I mean the protagonist is the fictional child of Bridget Cleary, and also a fairy. I cannot stress enough that this is a work of fiction.

For context, here is a very brief history of the actual tragedy of Bridget Cleary.

Bridget Cleary was an exceptionally independent and enterprising woman, noted for her beauty and abilities as a dressmaker and milliner. Though she had been married to her husband for eight years, they had no children.

The house the Clearys occupied was locally believed to be the site of a fairy ringfort.

On the 15th of March, 1895, Bridget Cleary was murdered by her husband. Her murder was preceded by torture, including holding her over a fire, kneeling on her chest to force feed her bread and jam, dousing her with urine, and finally dousing her in kerosene to immolate her body. It is unclear whether she was still alive when she was immolated.

Michael Cleary was not the only abuser. At least nine people were charged in this crime, including Bridget’s own father.

The local priest refused to have Bridget buried in the churchyard, though his motives for this are unclear.

The media used Bridget Cleary’s murder to push the idea that the Irish were too superstitious and uncivilized for Home Rule (independence from Britain).

Michael Cleary was sentenced to twenty years in prison, but only served fifteen before he was released. After his release from prison, he immigrated to Canada.

Michael asserted that his true wife was not dead, and would one day return, riding a white horse.

In Which Our Heroine Commits an Accidental Theft

DAMN THIS ENGLISH COUNTRY, damn these heavy ashes, damn Da.

Brigid cursed everything and everyone as she dragged the ash buckets down the dark stone steps. Everything was hotter, colder, sharper, and duller in this body of flesh and bones than it had been as a fairy. Everything was lonelier too, despite her haunting mother’s near constant presence.

Hush now, her dead mother whispered somewhere near her right ear. It’s a good sight better than whoring or starving.

It’s a good sight worse than punishing him who took your life. As Brigid thought it, she felt the sharp injustice of it. She had been there, in the madness when Mam was killed. It was likely she helped spur on her mother’s death. Even if she didn’t mean any harm, the fairies knew what they were doing when they banished her. Still, she missed Ireland and her fairy mound with a pain that pricked down to the marrow.

Stay focused, Mam said. You’ve got three years. That’s plenty of time to steal what the fairies want. Plenty of time to find him.

Not even Mam could directly say it. Besides the stolen treasures, the fairies wanted blood to atone for her sins. Specifically, they wanted her Da’s blood, spilled by Brigid’s own hand. Brigid shuddered. The thought of even seeing Da again made her heart curdle in dread. The thought of being close enough to drive a knife between his ribs? In ainm Chroim, she didn’t even want to think on it.

Brigid knelt at the hearth in the young mistress’s room and began shoveling out the ashes of the nearly dead fire in the grate. Mam left, as she had in the last three rooms. She didn’t like fire, and for good reason. Brigid shuddered again, forcing herself through the motions of her task, packing down the violent memories.

Brigid didn’t like her work, but as Mam had said, building the fires in a big English house was better than whoring or starving, and terrific for thieving the sorts of treasures the fairies would want.

Having built the fire to a crackling blaze, she gathered her things and turned, only to see Lady Adelaide standing before her. The young girl’s eyes were fiercely bright but not entirely conscious.

The first rule of scullery work was to be unseen. Brigid was good at being unseen, and this girl was not awake. If she could take a deep breath, and hold quite still—

The girl lurched forward, throwing herself onto Brigid, embracing her with all the ardor of a starving bear coming upon a honey-swollen hive. The warmth, the feckin’ heat coming off the girl shocked Brigid’s cold, untouched skin. It was the first human touch she’d known in a human body, and it overwhelmed her. Magic roiled up through Brigid as Adelaide’s weight sent them thudding to the floor. She would have struggled, she would have disentangled herself and run, but she was stunned by both the iron embrace and the sheer quantity of magic running through her. It bound her in place, splitting open her mind so that Adelaide’s thoughts and memories came rushing in, replete with stunning, vivid details.

Boredom with the new governess. French. Latin. Dancing. Elocution. Chess with Papa, chasing Edmund in the garden. Gentleness, kindness, love. The rancid smell of Mama’s sick room. The horrible color of Mama’s dead face. After Mama’s funeral, the terrifying pit of emptiness and pain.

Lady Adelaide let her go, falling in on herself as she wept. Shaking, Brigid clambered to her feet and gathered her things, slipping out to leave the girl to her liminal grief.

Mam rejoined her in the hallway. What happened in there? You’re white as a sheet.

I’m Irish, Mam, there’s nothing I can do about that.

You’ve got a bruise comin’ on. Did she attack you?

Brigid didn’t answer.

Ah, magic. I feel it now, oh but it’s thick and deep. Mam gasped. You’ve taken the poor girl’s memories. Brigid, for shame.

I didn’t mean to.

March right round and give them back. That’s not what we came here to steal.

Adelaide’s memories were flowing through her consciousness like a river in August, warm and glittering. Delicious new words. Elegant mannerisms. Light, comfort and security.

No.

What do you mean, no?

I don’t even know how I took them in the first place. You, the Fairy Queen, and the whole court always said I’d barely any magic in me. I don’t have the first clue how I’d give them back. I’d probably explode her head right off her shoulders if I tried. Brigid was prevaricating (what a lovely word!) but it was also a sound argument. She didn’t know how to control the magic that just happened, and it scared her.

Mam made a low brooding sound. This will only cause you grief, and bring grief to Lady Adelaide, too.

Brigid ought to have cared, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so. The memories were too delicious, too diverting. She kept them, hoarded them, and treasured them more than the pearl earrings and emerald brooches she gathered from the forgotten corners of the house. Over the coming years she would steal with abandon, but nothing, absolutely nothing compared to the things she acquired that day in Fortescue Manor.

Three Years Later

EDMUND FORTESCUE'S bedchamber was her favorite to visit, though she had never stolen things from it, at least nothing of real value.

As they did every morning, the violet and rose pastilles waited in a little cut crystal bowl. She slipped one into her mouth, savoring its sweet floral taste, and pocketed the other three for later. As the floral sweet melted over her tongue, her eyes wandered up to the box on the mantle.

Don’t, said her mother. They’ll catch you.

We’ve only got three months left, Brigid argued, moving gingerly towards the box, They haven’t caught me all these years. There’s no reason they’ll catch me now.

The equinox just passed. The fairies will be watching.

It’s the fairies who want the treasure in the first place. And the other thing. The image jumped unbidden to her mind again: the knife in her hand, her father’s warm blood pouring down. She shuddered and pushed it away. We’re running out of time.

The fairies had given her three years. Those three years had dwindled down to three months, and the waning time weighed on her.

Not from him, love. He’s lost too much already.

So have you. She slipped the sapphire ring out of the velvet box and pushed it through the buttons of her uniform, dropping it down the front of her chemise, tuning out her mother’s protests. She knelt to build the fire, and her mother disappeared again.

With her mother gone, Brigid stole several surreptitious looks over at the sleeping figure of Edmund Fortescue, stretched out in his four poster bed. Dark hair curled on his forehead, dark eyelashes curled on his cheeks, and his brow was relaxed and untroubled. He rarely looked troubled when he slept. Her eyes lingered for a moment on the curve of his upper lip. For a moment, she thought of the ring she stole moments ago and guilt flared in her heart. Shoving it down, she swept her eyes back across the room.

Lucky sod, Brigid thought, piling kindling around the little mountain of glowing coals she’d made. Soft bed, warm fire, no ghosts...

Thou shalt not covet. Mam was back. The bond that tethered her to Brigid was stronger than her deep abhorrence of iron or terror of fire.

Fairies don’t care about the Bible, Brigid reminded her out of habit.

When will you understand I’m not a fairy? Mam’s voice was tired.

Brigid sighed. Then why am I?

Mam didn’t answer this question. She never did. Instead, she switched back to the subject that plagued Brigid’s days and nights. You can give Lady Adelaide’s memories back. At least you should try.

A bitter feeling curdled in Brigid’s gut. And what about that which she’s taken from me?

Taken is a strong word. More like the memories you dropped on your way out of robbing her mind, you mean.

When Brigid’s accidental theft of Adelaide’s memories happened, she left something in their place. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but it was wild, perhaps even magic, and it had taken root and sprouted in Lady Adelaide. The leaves in her hair, the soil on her feet, the whispers about her in the servants’ quarters, they were all the product of what Brigid had dropped into Adelaide the morning she’d stolen those memories.

The wilder Adelaide grew the guiltier Brigid felt. The Lady Adelaide was born to a grand old family, and destined for a noble life, and now she grew sideways, like a sapling buffeted by too much wind.

Or a sapling grafted with a foreign branch, Mam corrected. A Fenian branch, even.

Brigid shrugged again. Perhaps the damage was already done. Adelaide would do as Adelaide pleased. Anyway, who was Brigid to try to change the life of a superior? She shifted her bucket of ashes to her other side, and her mother winked away. Brigid breathed deeply, savoring a few more moments’ respite from her spectral mother.

As she emptied the ashes from her bucket, she was careful to pick out the snuff box and pearl combs from visiting guests. She slipped them in separate pockets, secret and safe, muffled by the folds of fabric. It would be enough. It had to be. Surely now she would be able to buy back her place among the fairies. She could give her dead mother a proper burial, to provide that small measure of justice and allow her to leave this world at last. If she stayed much longer in this world of iron and salt, haunted by her mother and trapped in all the pains and frailties of this human body, she would almost certainly go mad.

In Which Our Heroine Receives a Proposition

BRIGID! BRIIIIGID! Cook’s cry echoed across the courtyard like the caterwauling of a feral cat. You’re late on my vegetables! What are you doing out here, watching your hair grow? Lazy girl!

Brigid ran back to the kitchen, where Cook was waiting, her face growing ever redder. She snatched the basket thrust in her face and ducked a blow from Cook’s wooden spoon before dashing back out to the kitchen garden.

When her shoes stepped from the clattery stone pavers to the springy grass, she breathed a deep sigh. Tight strings inside of her relaxed slightly, and an old, deep ember of longing for the wilds of county Tipperary flared in her heart.

Patience, Mam said. And don’t think about where they’re hidden; your thoughts will give you away.

Mam’s instructions had the opposite effect. Reflexively, Brigid glanced over to the far corner of the kitchen garden, to last year’s resting compost heap. There, buried deep under beet peels and spoiled cabbages was her treasure, locked up tight in a box she’d found in an attic corner. Every Sunday in the dead of night, she’d slip out here to deposit her week’s loot——fine lace, antique figurines, bejeweled snuff-boxes and crystal blotters. She never dared stop to count them, but it was becoming a trove, a hoard. Hopefully, it would be enough to satisfy the Fairy Queen.

Today, however, her hoard’s burial spot was obscured by a pair of legs in fine woolen trousers, far too genteel to be in the kitchen garden. They ran up to a waistcoat with a gold pocket watch and a stiff white collar and cravat. Above that, a pair of over observant eyes peered out at her from under a bowler hat.

Brigid knew better than to trust over observant eyes or bowler hats.

Are you lost, sir? she inquired in what she hoped sounded like respectful, rather than exasperated, tones.

The gentleman shook his head, his unblinking eyes never leaving her. He leaned on the garden wall as if he were the master of the vegetable patch. I was, dear girl, but I’m certainly not anymore.

Bridget’s grip tightened around the spade she was holding before thrusting it into the ground. The smell of turned earth and the feel of new potatoes in her hands only did so much to calm her. You’ll be wanting the front entrance. If you just leave out that gate and take a left—

Come to London with me. He had to be at least forty, but spoke with the rakish confidence of some young swain.

Brigid’s stomach lurched. It was far too early in the morning for this sort of tomfoolery.

I’ve got a fine job here already, Brigid reached down into the cool earth and extracted a handful of new potatoes, knocking the dirt off them with more force than necessary.

I’ll pay you twenty pounds a year, the man said.

Brigid froze, and she hated herself for the hesitation. My soul’s worth more than twenty pounds a year, she snapped, starting in on the row of carrots.

I’ll do no harm to your soul, the man said quietly. He pushed off the wall and strode towards her. Brigid glanced at the spade; it was still within arm’s reach. I want to make you immortal, in fact.

Brigid grabbed for the spade. He held up a piece of paper, as both an offering and a shield, bearing her own countenance. It must have been yesterday, when she was out picking peas. With just a bit of graphite he managed to capture an astounding likeness of her bent over the young plants. Her dark hair fell in unruly ringlets out of her cap over her forehead and neck, the sunlight warming her back through her woolen shawl. He had caught the point to her chin and the sadness in her eyes.

It’s...I... Brigid paused, caught off-guard. He wasn’t proposing what she assumed he had. The portrait was not what she’d been expecting, not in the least.

It’s still not respectable, Mam whispered. And it’s dangerous. He sees you too well.

Twenty pounds a year is still not worth my reputation, even as she said it, she couldn’t take her eyes off the portrait. No one saw her, not even Cook, who looked at her a thousand times a day. All the staff’s eyes slid over her as if she were a passing cloud. If she held her breath, she was well near invisible. And here was this man, with no reason to even look her way, who saw her in disarming clarity and detail, and was asking to pay her for the privilege.

Don’t let him turn your head, Mam warned.

I’ve got to get the vegetables inside, Brigid hoisted the basket and tore her eyes away from the sketch.

As she turned her back and strode away the man shouted after her, Thirty pounds a year then!

I can’t be bought, she shouted over her shoulder. It was a lie, and by the looks of the man’s knowing smile, he knew it as well as she did.

WAS THAT MR. BAXBY I saw talking to you in the garden just now? Cook seemed to have forgotten her anger when Brigid returned to the kitchen. You’ll need to watch yourself around those artists, you know. They’re a nasty lot, always turning young girls’ heads with flattery. My niece’s daughter went off to model for one of them in London and was utterly ruined.

Brigid nodded, but kept her eyes on the potatoes she was scrubbing.

He’s no right to be down in the kitchen garden anyway. It’s for servants, not visitors. You let me know if he bothers you again, and I’ll see to it he keeps to the rose gardens. I’ll tell her ladyship about him, I will.

Yes’m. Thirty pounds a year was not an inconsiderable sum. Midsummer was fast approaching, and who knew whether her stolen hoard in the compost heap would be enough, especially if she had to pawn some of it for passage to Ireland? The money would help.

But at what cost? Asked Mam.

Modeling for a pretty picture isn’t a sin. I’ve done it already without knowing.

London is dangerous.

How would you know? You’ve never been there.

Neither have you. But look what these people have done to our own country. Why would you want to venture into the thick of theirs?

Are you listening to me? Brigid startled at the sound of Cook’s voice and the sharp smack of a spoon on her arm. "Daft girl, head in the clouds half the time. Who are you talking to in that head of yours, the fairies?’

Brigid smiled. Fairy.

I beg your pardon?

Fairy. Singular. Just one.

Another smack with the spoon, harder this time. I’ll have none of your cheek in my kitchen. Mind those potatoes.

That’s what I get for being honest, Mam.

Better honest and smacked than lying.

So stealing is fine but lying isn’t?

You’re hardly stealing. They won’t miss anything we’ve taken, and it’s not like you haven’t worked fair hard enough to earn it. Excepting, of course, that ring from poor Edmund.

To borrow a phrase from Lady Adelaide’s lessons, you’re prevaricating, Mam.

There’s a treasure you ought to give back. The poor girl deserves her own memories, love.

Brigid bit her lip. Even if she wanted to give Lady Adelaide her memories back, she didn’t even know if it would be possible. The only chance she’d have would be while lighting the fire in the girl’s bedroom, and what if it didn’t work? And what if Lady Adelaide woke up when Brigid had her hands on her? What then? There was no reasonable explanation for a scullery maid to be touching a daughter of the house in her sleep.

But the other, much larger problem was this: Brigid didn’t want to give away the memories. Not in the slightest.

Pay attention! Cook smacked her with a spoon again. Did you not hear me tell you those carrots must be julienned?

Brigid looked down to the carrots beneath her hands, diced finely under the energy of her thoughts. No, ma’am, I—

You weren’t paying attention again. If I had a shilling for every time you—

Trouble in the kitchen?

A bristling, cold sweat broke across Brigid’s cheeks at the sound of the new voice. She raised her eyes to see Lady Fortescue, stepmother of Edmund and Adelaide, and bane of every servant in the household, standing in the kitchen doorway. She stood with her head bowed and her hands clasped in a way that on any other woman would look like supplication or piety, but on Lady Fortescue, simply looked like a way to conceal whatever attack was coming next.

I have spoken to you about the discipline of the scullery, have I not? her voice had a long suffering and bored tone, but her eyes glittered in the way a snake’s would upon seeing a baby mouse.

Cook wrung her wooden spoon with both hands. You have, your ladyship.

"A few taps with a wooden spoon is inadequate to beat out the willfulness and laziness from those for whom scullery work is the only thing