Free Tales from the Tent by Jess Smith Page B

wood and up the road.
    The big man rather sheepishly rolled over from the broken branch and landed inside the mausoleum. Mary and Babsy were already protesting their innocence, saying the padlock on the gate leading
to the inner chamber had already been interfered with. It didn’t take long to see they weren’t the first intruders. The padlock was indeed wrenched off and lay in segments upon the
stone floor. Very quietly they pushed inside and began whispering. Mary laughed at this and said she hardly thought the inhabitants were likely to hear them. Inside the dome, as far as the eye
could see, were inscribed stone squares circling round the floor and going round and round all the way up to the ceiling. These were obviously containers for the ashes of departed family members.
Some were little children who’d died of illnesses, some were soldiers lost in battles dating back hundreds of years, some were young women and old men, there were dozens of them. Big Wullie
began to feel a strange panic in his chest and shouted at my sisters to ‘get the hell out of this icy place!’ Soon the threesome were heading back up the old track road to tell Auntie
Annie about the creepy mausoleum of the landed gentry.
    She was livid and told him so. ‘Better the man you’ll be if you took no part in the disturbance of the dead! See if I find out you had an evil hand in that kind o’ thing then
you’ll feel the other side o’ ma haun.’ Auntie Annie was brandishing the soup ladle as near her man’s face as she could, and if big Wullie hadn’t said what he said
next then he wouldn’t have felt its soupy wallop.
    ‘I only had a wee peep inside, wife, and by the way, what’s wrong with the other side o’ your haun?’ Silly big fool of a man. Everybody who knew Auntie Annie knew her
arm-reach was longer than that of any living man, you see she never misses.
    Without seeking another word from the lassies or her man, she went back to stirring the soup. When we all gathered for supper she told us about the mausoleum. My Mammy, although she’d had
a grand day at the hawking with me, was furious and didn’t half lay into Mary and Babsy. She left Renie alone, knowing she’d have no stomach for such desecration. For the next hour the
crack made no mention of the building that housed ‘gone over the other side folk’.
    Usually when we had eaten, we took our last long walk of the day—you know, the one that needs a lot of privacy. Men went in one direction, women the other. Somehow or other, though, in
that particular gloaming we found that our paths met down on the old track road, standing outside the place of dead folks. Strange that we were all of the same curious mind, would you not say,
reader?
    Daddy hoisted Alan up, then said he’d go in last, let all us healthy youngsters go first. Mammy and Auntie Annie stood at the bottom, point-blank refusing to go any further. Portsoy was
confident enough that there was still spunk in his bandy legs to tackle the climb.
    Inside (and I can verify this because I was the first in) was an altar with a tiny casket in the middle, but, sad to say, its contents were long since scattered over the stone floor. ‘This
must have been a very important baby to be placed in this position,’ I thought, ‘and all these names—wow!’ My eyes circled up and round the dome.
    ‘Would you look at those words,’ whispered cousin Nicky in my ear.
    ‘What words?’ I asked. Nicky took my chin and directed my gaze upward towards a long narrow stone cemented between the memorials to two Earls. It read:
    No eye shall gaze upon our rest,
    Unless it is in Heaven.
    No hand shall lay upon our rest,
    Unless it is forgiven.
    I didn’t quite understand those chiselled words, nor did I understand why there were spirals of icy-cold winds breathing sharply against my ankles. Still, all the while the voice of yon
old woman echoed loudly in my head: ‘Angry is the Banashen when graves have been