a moment her voice had lightened, and there was a spark of warmth in her eyes. "I don't think he could bear the thought that he might have murdered his own child. I found him in the morning, hanging from the tree."
"Oh," was all I could say. "Mrs. Macbean, I—"
"His brother came and took over the farm. It was his right, I suppose. He said we could live here, in your old place. He's a mean man, but he lets us have a sack of oatmeal from time to time."
She licked her lips.
"I found the letter, about the money John owed your father. I'd give it to you if I had it, Maggie, honestly I would. But you can see how it is with us."
She stood up, picked up a cloth that lay crumpled in a corner, and began to fold it.
"I'll just put our things together," she said. "Please, Maggie. Just today. Give us today. I don't know who'll take us in now."
I stood in silence, unable to speak. Known things from the past were shattering to pieces, and the fragments were falling about me. New patterns were being made that I could only dimly see.
Mrs. Macbean bent down to collect her pots that surrounded the unswept hearth.
"Stop," I said. "You don't need to do that." I took a deep breath. "Never mind the money. You can't pay it, anyway. And you can stay here. You can have this place. I don't want it anymore. I couldn't live here alone."
She sank down onto Granny's old stool. A pewter plate fell from her hand and rolled across the floor. I wasn't sure, though, if she had heard what I'd said.
"The house is cursed," she said. "She cursed it. Nothing good will happen to anyone who lives here."
The memory of that dreadful morning when they had come to the cottage with soldiers and weapons, their faces alight with cruel glee, was on us both. I seemed to see Granny, kneeling by the hearthstone, her eyes darting with malice, her voice cracking with hatred.
And if anyone takes this place from me and my granddaughter, he will be cursed, she'd said. And his cattle will die and his children.
I sat down on the other stool. My old stool.
"Listen, Mrs. Macbean." I wanted to touch her hand but was afraid she would recoil from me. "You must believe what I'm telling you. My grandmother wasn't a witch. She wasn't. She didn't kill your baby Ebenezer. She saw he was sickly at his birth. She knew he wouldn't live long, by her knowledge of these things. She was angry and lonely and cruel, but she had no dealings with the Devil."
Mrs. Macbean shook her head.
"Maybe so, Maggie, but I told you, this place is cursed. I know it is. Can't you feel it yourself?"
Was it cursed? Maybe it was: cursed by hatred, anger and misery. I felt something soften and loosen inside me, as if old bonds were breaking. I heard myself say, "Then I'll lift the curse, Jeanie Macbean. I'll bring a blessing here instead."
I knelt on the hearthstone, where I'd cried myself to sleep so many nights as a cold, lonely little girl, and words came to me from some old corner of my memory.
"God bless this house
From beam to wall
From end to end
From floor to roof.
Floor to roof."
I paused. It wasn't quite enough.
"I lift the curse from this dwelling place. Go, vile toad. Flee, cold snail."
I knew it had happened. A kind of warmth, a kind of peace, had stolen into that tumbledown cottage, like the first rays of a summer's sun. Jeanie Macbean had dropped her head down onto her arms, resting on the table, and her shoulders were shaking with sobs.
"Don't cry, Jeanie. Don't," I said. "I'm telling you, there's no curse now. You have no more to fear from my granny or from me. And the cottage is yours to keep."
And I stepped out from that old doorway and ran down the path I'd followed a thousand times before, till I was standing on the beach at the water's edge. Under the clear sky, the sea lay flat and calm. There were no black and silver clouds to break open, as there had been on that day so long ago, when the whale had come up there to die. There was only a haze, soft and blue, that seemed to lift the distant Isle of Arran, making it hover above the water as if it was floating gently down