Miserere Page 10

  “Don’t go!” begged Conn. Caitríona’s shape reformed. “Who was she?”

  “She was everything.”

  CHAPTER 13

  It was still dark out when Conn was awakened by the sound of car tires skidding on the gravel of the drive. She jumped out of bed and ran to her window. Dr. Jenkins was retrieving a large plastic bag from his trunk.

  Cracking her bedroom door open as he came upstairs with her mother, she heard Elizabeth say something about “one o six” and the doctor saying he’d brought ice. She opened her door wider as they emerged from Will’s room, Dr. Jenkins cradling Will in his arms.

  “You stay there,” Elizabeth ordered, her eyes red and puffy. “Close your door.”

  Conn obediently closed her door and went back to her bed. A few minutes later, unable to stand the suspense of not knowing, she got dressed and climbed out her window onto the porch roof. From there, she was able to grab an overhanging limb of the elm tree next to the house, and climb down to the ground. Once down, she crept around the house to the back porch where she could see through the kitchen door into the bathroom. Her mother and the doctor were both kneeling next to the tub; she guessed Will must be inside. The doctor was scooping ice from his bag into the tub. She couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  Suddenly, she heard more tires crunching, and headlight beams swept around the back of the house. Before Conn could escape off the back porch, an old-fashioned truck pulled up and parked. An older woman got out – at least Conn thought it was a woman. She had very short silver hair, and wore dungarees and a men’s shirt. She was carrying a basket as she let herself onto the back porch. Conn crouched unnoticed in the dark as the woman knocked and let herself into the kitchen. Conn crept to the door and peered through the glass. She couldn’t hear what was said, but Elizabeth looked up as if in shock for a moment and then got to her feet and hugged the older woman. Conn watched as the woman went to the stove and stirred the fire while Elizabeth returned to the tub with the doctor. The woman took a jar out of her basket and poured the contents into a pan, heating the mixture on the stove. A few minutes later, she ladled some of it into a cup and brought it to Elizabeth. The doctor propped Will up and they spooned some of the mixture into his mouth. His face was red and sweaty and his eyes were closed.

  Conn watched as her mother mouthed her thanks to the woman, and turned her attention back to Will. The woman moved the pan to a back burner and headed toward the door, barely giving Conn time to back away. Closing the kitchen door behind her, the woman turned and looked at Conn, staring at her wordlessly for several seconds before letting herself through the screen door. Conn resumed her vigil at the kitchen door as the woman drove away.

  Daylight slowly lit the porch and the yard beyond, and still Elizabeth and Dr. Jenkins crouched next to the bathtub, occasionally trying to get Will to take more of the brew Molly Peregorn had brought. For Conn knew now that that’s who the old woman must have been. At one point, Elizabeth came out to the kitchen to make coffee. Dr. Jenkins came and sat heavily at the table, rubbing his tired eyes and sipping his coffee while Elizabeth kept vigil. Conn could see the clock on the wall creeping toward noon. Her stomach growled, but she did not dare go in to get something to eat. She was sitting on a box on the porch, dozing, when she was startled awake by an exclamation from inside.

  Jumping up, she went to the kitchen door, and saw Dr. Jenkins holding a thermometer up for Elizabeth to see. Elizabeth covered her face with her hands and cried, her shoulders shaking. Dr. Jenkins lifted Will out of the tub and they carried him back upstairs.

  Conn knew that sooner or later, her mother would realize she wasn’t in her room anymore, but she didn’t have the energy to climb back up the tree. A little while later, the kitchen door creaked open.

  “You must be starving,” Elizabeth said. “Come on in and eat.”

  Conn obeyed and said, “Sit down. I’ll make us some eggs.”

  “You can do that?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I think I can,” Conn said. She poked the fire back to life, adding a few sticks of wood and put the big cast iron skillet on the burner. The eggs broke and weren’t very pretty, but soon, there were three plates with eggs and toast sitting on the table. Dr. Jenkins joined them as they all ate ravenously.

  “Is Will going to be okay now?” Conn asked hopefully.

  Dr. Jenkins shrugged. “We won’t know for a while yet. But his fever is down, and that’s a good sign.” He drained his coffee cup and yawned. “Keep an eye on his temperature. I’ll be back later today to check on him.”

  ***

  It was nearly a week before Will’s fever broke for good.

  “Well, there is no paralysis,” Dr. Jenkins pronounced on the third day. “I’m fairly certain it would be manifesting itself by now if there were going to be any.”

  Elizabeth spent nearly all her time in Will’s room, still not allowing Conn to see him. She grudgingly allowed her to continue delivering a fresh jar of faerieflies to Will’s windowsill each evening, after inspecting the porch roof herself to see that the pitch was very shallow.

  “You’d better be careful, young lady,” she warned with mock sternness. “If you fall, you’re going to be grounded until you’re old enough to vote.”

  For Conn, the focus on Will meant that she had hours and hours to herself. Once she knew Will was out of danger, she decided she needed to do some more exploring. She shook a few dollars of change out of her piggy bank and rode her bike down to Walsh’s.

  “How’s your brother?” Mrs. Walsh asked, breaking away from a whispered conversation with a woman Conn didn’t know as Conn entered the store.

  “He’s getting better, thank you,” Conn replied politely.

  “What can I get you?” Mrs. Walsh asked as she wiped her hands on her apron.

  “Nothing,” Conn said vaguely, noticing that the other woman was staring at her covertly. “I’ll just look around.”

  “You help yourself, then,” Mrs. Walsh said as she returned to restocking the candy in the glass case.

  Conn wandered around the store, enjoying the breeze from the ceiling fans cooling her sweaty face. She could hear the soft hisses as the women resumed their whispered conversation, but she couldn’t hear what was being said. In one of the back aisles, she found what she sought.

  “Well, I’ve got to run now, Betty,” said the strange woman in an unnaturally loud voice as Conn carried her finds up to the counter.

  “What in the world are you going to do with all these?” Mrs. Walsh asked nosily as Conn deposited an armful of items on the counter. She had a box of colored chalk, a dozen candles, a small oil lamp and a bottle of oil.

  “The chalk is for Will, and we needed extra candles and lamps in case we lose electricity,” Conn fibbed. “Oh, and can I have two licorice sticks, please?” she added as she counted out her change.

  As Conn wheeled home, steering carefully to avoid tipping the oil lamp balanced in her basket, a familiar-looking pickup rumbled into view.

  “Hello, Connemara,” said Abraham, braking to a stop and leaning out the window.

  “Mr. Greene!”

  “How is William?” he asked.

  “How did you know he was sick?” Conn asked, tilting her head.

  “Your mother called Mrs. Walsh to ask for the doctor,” Abraham laughed. “That means the whole county knows.”

  “Well, the doctor says he’s getting better, but he’s still in bed.”

  “And your mother?”

  “I think she’s a wee bit tired,” Conn said, “but she’s all right.”

  “Please give them both my best,” he said as he put the truck in gear.

  “I will, Mr. Greene. Good day to you.”

  Conn pedaled on as the truck drove off. When she got home, she rode straight to the barn. Pushing hard against the lower level door, she was able to inch it open enough to squeeze through with her bag. She went into the second stall. She was fairly certain this was the one with the trap d
oor and, sure enough, when she brushed the straw away, there was an iron ring set into the wood. She pried the ring up and tugged. The trap door came away and propped against the back wall of the stall. She started down the ladder, grabbing her bag as she descended. Peering into the darkness, she saw a small chink in the wall. She wedged the bag inside and climbed back up the ladder to hear her mother calling her from the house. Quickly, she lowered the trap door, scattering straw over top of it, and squirmed back through the barn’s sliding door.

  “Coming!” she yelled as she ran around the corner of the barn.

  “Where have you been?” Elizabeth asked as Conn ran to the back porch.

  “I’ve been to Walsh’s,” Conn said. “Would you be needing something?”

  “Would I be needing something?” Elizabeth laughed. “What are you reading now?” Conn blushed and laughed, too, but didn’t answer. “I just wanted to have lunch with my daughter,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve hardly seen you lately.” She opened the refrigerator. “How about BLTs?”

  “That sounds good,” Conn said. “I’ll make the toast. Oh, I almost forgot,” she remembered, pulling a few crumpled envelopes from the back pocket of her cut-offs.

  “Gee, thanks,” Elizabeth said, flipping quickly through the slightly damp missives.

  “I ran into Mr. Greene,” Conn said as she put two slices of bread into the toaster. “He asked me to give you and Will his best.”

  “That’s nice of him,” Elizabeth said.

  “Do we have any more jobs for him?”

  Elizabeth shook her head as she laid bacon strips in the frying pan. “None that we can afford right now.”

  “Oh.” Something occurred to Conn that she hadn’t considered before. “Are we poor now?”

  Elizabeth turned to look at her. “Noooo…,” she said slowly. “But we have to be careful. We spent a lot of money getting the bathroom and chimney done, and… we have to be careful.”

  Conn thought about this as the bacon cooked. A few minutes later, they sat munching on their sandwiches. “Will is going to be all right, isn’t he?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “It looks like it.”

  “Do you –” Conn began, but paused, biting her lip as she tried to figure out how to phrase things. “From what you told me, only one girl has lived from each generation since Caitríona. Have you ever noticed that?”

  She watched her mother closely to see if this triggered any sense of memory in her expression. Elizabeth frowned as she thought. “You know, I think you’re right,” she agreed, but with no telltale blushing or other sign that she was in any way familiar with the wording of the prophecy. “I never realized it before. Boy, if you believed in such things, you could think our family has some kind of curse or something, couldn’t you?” she said with a small shake of her head as she cleared the table.

  CHAPTER 14

  By October, the tobacco was all harvested and the Playfair party had quit the plantation to return to Richmond.

  “I must declare, I’m glad to see the backs of them,” Ellie confided to Orla.

  All the household staff seemed to breathe easier, for not only were the English gone, but Batterston as well. The tobacco leaves had been dried in the enormous drying sheds, and now wagon loads of the leaves were ready to be sold. He personally accompanied the wagons to the river to see the harvest loaded onto barges and brought to Richmond where he was tasked with getting the best prices at auction.

  “But he won’t be back for weeks,” Burley told Caitríona. “So, until then, we can relax a bit.”

  One particularly fine autumn morning, after she had finished her morning chores, Caitríona went out to the stables. They had only had glimpses of Ewan since arriving at Fair View. She nearly didn’t recognize him as he had grown three or four inches.

  “Caitríona!” he said in welcome as she stepped into the stable’s cool interior. Curious at the arrival of a stranger, the horses approached to stare at the newcomer, their graceful necks arching over stall doors. She patted their faces, tugging at forelocks as she murmured to them. She realized how much she missed being around animals.

  “How are you, Ewan?” she asked, stopping to pat a gray Arabian mare.

  “I’m good,” he said, shrugging philosophically. “Life here is as good as it would have been back in Ireland, maybe better.”

  Caitríona’s face darkened. “For you, maybe.”

  Ewan tilted his head as he considered her. “For you as well, I’m thinkin’.”

  “How so?” she asked, frowning.

  “Well, back home, you would have been expected to marry and start having babies. And I’m thinkin’ that’s not what you would want.”

  Caitríona laughed bitterly. “Hell would freeze over first.”

  “So,” he said, spreading his hands. “Me mam told me before I left Ireland, ‘tis my lot to clean up horse shit, no matter where I am. ‘Tis yours to clean a house. At least here, you’re not cleanin’ for a husband and a bunch of squallin’ babies.”

  She smiled in spite of herself. “Do you always look at things so?”

  He grinned. The mare nudged Caitríona, almost knocking her over. “Would you like to take her out?” he asked. “She’s needin’ to be worked.”

  Caitríona’s eyes opened wide. “Could I? I haven’t been on a horse since we left home.”

  “Sure, but don’t you be tellin’ anyone or it’s both our necks.” He turned toward the tack room. “Side saddle?”

  She scowled at him, and he laughed. A few minutes later, she was astride the high-spirited mare, cantering across the fields. Topping a grassy knoll, she drew the mare up. For a moment, the rolling terrain stretching out before her could have been Ireland. The mare stamped impatiently, and Caitríona let her have her head, rising in the stirrups as the little mare gracefully jumped a gully without so much as a break in her stride. Cantering up the next hill, they neared an enormous oak tree with a wide, spreading canopy.

  A figure lying in the grass under the tree leapt to its feet with a small scream. The mare shied sideways, unseating Caitríona who managed to hold onto the reins as she landed flat on her back. The impact knocked the wind out of her. All she could do was lie there, waiting until her lungs could pull air back in. A figure loomed over her.

  “Are you all right, Miss?”

  Caitríona could not answer immediately. When at last she could force air into her lungs, she sat up, wincing a little.

  “Miss?”

  It was Hannah, looking very frightened.

  “I’m fine, Hannah,” gasped Caitríona when she could talk. “And you don’t have to call me Miss. My name is Caitríona.”

  “Yes, Miss.”

  Caitríona smiled. “What are you doing out here?” she asked as she got to her feet. She spotted a piece of parchment lying in the grass.

  “Nothing,” said Hannah, snatching it up and hiding it behind her back.

  Caitríona looked at her in puzzlement. “You can trust me. I’m not going to tell anyone.”

  Shyly, Hannah held out the parchment. One side was covered in drawings, small sketches of flowers, faces, birds. Crammed into the spaces between the drawings were random letters. Caitríona squinted at them, but they didn’t spell anything.

  “The drawings are beautiful,” she said, “but… were you trying to write something?”

  Hannah lowered her eyes and said nothing.

  “Do you know how to read and write?” Caitríona asked.

  Hannah shook her head. “We’re not allowed. It’s against the law.”

  Caitríona looked back down at the parchment in her hand. “Would you like to learn? I could teach you.”

  Hannah raised her eyes and her face was transfigured. Caitríona had never seen her look so happy. She was beautiful.

  “You would do that?” Hannah asked.

  Caitríona blinked and looked back down at the parchment, nodding. “No one should be able to tell us we’re not allowed to learn.”

  “Us?
” Hannah repeated, puzzled.

  “Slaves.”

  Hannah laughed. “You’re not a slave, Miss.”

  Caitríona let the mare graze as she sat down in the grass. Hannah sat beside her. “Lord Playfair bought you,” Caitríona said, “and he bought Orla and me as well. Our father sold us to him.”

  Hannah frowned, trying to grasp this. “I never heard of a white person who was a slave. What would happen to you if you ran away?”

  Caitríona picked up the piece of charcoal Hannah had been using and began writing as she replied, “I don’t know. But we work for no money. What would we do? Where would we go? And for us, Lord Playfair owns the land our family lives on and farms in Ireland, so if we displease him, he will punish them.”

  She looked over at Hannah. “How old are you?”

  Hannah shrugged. “I don’t know, Miss.”

  “Doesn’t your mother celebrate your birthday?”

  “I don’t have a mother, Miss,” Hannah said softly. “I was sold when she died having another baby. I’ve been here with Ruth as long as I can remember.”

  “I’m sorry, Hannah,” Caitríona said, laying a hand on Hannah’s shoulder.

  Hannah stared down at Caitríona’s hand. “You have very strange ideas, Miss,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Like teaching you to read and write?” Caitríona smiled. “This,” she said, holding up the parchment, “is the alphabet.”

  §§§

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Startled, Conn almost fell over in the grass as she balanced on one foot, trying to put her Keds on. She turned to see her mother watching her through the screen door. “Uh…”

  “Hi!”

  Conn whirled around in the other direction to see Jed loping up the drive, his fishing pole in hand. Gritting her teeth in exasperation, she thought quickly. She turned to her mother and said, “Jed and I are going fishing.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Ummm…” Conn stalled, trying to think of what she’d forgotten.

  “Your fishing rod?”

  “Oh.” Conn grinned sheepishly and came back onto the porch to retrieve her rod from the corner. “I guess that would help.”