Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [79]
I bought it in honour of Petronilla. Since she couldn't be here today it seemed only fitting to toast her virtues with overpriced bubbly, ten thousand feet above the island she never left.
The rented Volvo took me to Kilkenny with surprising speed. They've built craft shops on every corner, and knocked down a lot of old houses. Kyteler's Inn is still there, though; its wooden lines stand firm against the swarm of tourists. There's an Alice's Restaurant in the cellars ("It's a kind of magic!" jokes the sign, catching the sunlight), and upstairs is called Nero's; how very suitable. What's your poison, traveller?
I stand at the bar and order a glass of the best red they have. I look around, waiting for the centuries to fall away, but my eyes lodge on the chintzy little tablecloths and chairs. I am so used to the twentieth century that it is almost impossible to imagine myself back to the fourteenth. Hard to believe that this round-bellied building was ever cold and damp, with one fire sighing and the smell of tallow flaring in the nostrils of visitors.
I peer at the wall, where a Disney hag pours cups of smoking brew for four little men with uneasy expressions. Perhaps they have noticed that their shoes, toes tied to their knees, are from the wrong country and century. I read through the five-line caption, which is a tribute to the powers of invention. Nothing worth losing my temper over. Why should anyone remember, anyway, except someone like me whose business it is? There's been a lot of water under the bridge since 1324. History always becomes a cartoon, where it survives at all. Your best hope for a ride towards posterity is the bandwagon of folklore.
"Oldest house in Kilkenny, this is."
I accept the wineglass from the graying woman behind the bar. "So they say."
"You know the story?"
"Oh yes." I take a sip: not dry enough. I wonder what kind of hash this woman could make of the tale, but it hardly needs another telling. It is remarkable only for the gender of the protagonist. When a man kills his wife, he is a tortured rebel, criminel de passion, dusky Othello, or bluff King Hal. When a woman kills her husband, she is never allowed to forget it. I stare at the drawing again. Alice Kyteler, four times widowed in two dozen years, has evolved into a long-nailed monster, a Kilkenny Clytemnestra.
"Researching?"
My eyes swivel back to the bartender, who is polishing glasses with a Guinness tea towel. "Beg your pardon?"
"Doing a radio programme or something? Family history?" she adds. Her hand has paused, knuckles yellow against the glass.
"More or less," I tell her, with a ghost of a smile.
"Very nice."
I glance back at the wall beside me, then at the others, weighted down with old maps and giant replica copper pots. No picture of Petronilla de Meath. I suppose I could ask the bartender, but I'm not sure if my mouth could bear to form the words.
Why is it that almost nobody knows Petronilla's name, when she was so much more remarkable than her mistress? No demon that Dame Alice called up and bound with spells ever served her so faithfully. What interests me is not so much the mistress's evil, which seems after almost seven centuries to amount to no more than a banal footnote in the annals of war and treachery, but the maid's extraordinary ordinariness. How through thick and thin, sickness and sin, Masses read backwards and Christian Minerals, Petronilla retained her sense of being a good servant, whatever that could mean in a house like this one. As if she had heard some fireside tale that ended with the tag Whanne that yr mistresse sell here soule to Luciphere ond take a widdhe for to kille her lawfulle wedded husbandes, he you of gode cheere ond giff her al manere of aide for to brewe ye poysionne.
"I love history, myself."
I turn to the bartender, who is rubbing at the lipsticked rim of a glass. "Why is that?"
Her blue eyes, behind her glasses, seem surprised by the question. "Well, it makes you feel