Miserere Read online

  “He’s only drinking because he feels bad,” said Orla.

  Caitríona stared at her in disbelief. “He should feel bad,” she retorted. “I hate him!”

  “You don’t mean that,” Eilish said sharply.

  “I do mean it,” Caitríona replied emphatically. “I hate him. I will never forgive him and nothing you say will change that.”

  The day the wagons came for them, Niall wasn’t there. Eilish, thinner than ever, held her girls to her, whispering to them in the Irish. Orla and Caitríona both clung to her tightly.

  “I want you to take this,” Eilish said, pressing a small book into Orla’s hands. “It’s not a full Bible, only the Gospels and Psalms, but I want you to read from it every Sunday. I’ve no idea if there’ll be a church where you’re going.”

  “But Mam,” Caitríona protested, “the nuns gave you this.”

  “And I’m giving it to you,” Eilish insisted.

  Perched on top of crates in one of the wagons, the girls watched their brothers and sisters huddled together in the doorway waving to them, but Eilish stood off to one side, one hand clutching her dress over her heart as if trying to hold the broken pieces together.

  After three days of slow travel, the bedraggled group neared Cobh. The traffic on the road increased and the drivers insisted that everyone ride to avoid getting separated. Orla grabbed tightly to Caitríona’s arm as the wagon rattled noisily over the cobblestones toward Cobh’s wharves. None of the Irish bound for Lord Playfair’s plantation had ever been to such a large city. They were overwhelmed by the noise. There were shops and vendors, people shouting, children running and laughing. The streets were littered with piles of manure and puddles of urine, animal and human. As they got closer to the wharves, there were corrals holding horses, cattle, sheep and pigs as well as wire cages containing chickens and geese – all waiting to be loaded onto one ship or another. The drivers guided the wagons to the pier where was anchored the ship that would take them to America. The lead driver barked at them to get out, and remain next to the wagon until it was time to board ship. Clutching their small bags to their chests, the girls watched the wagons being unloaded, the heavy crates and trunks hoisted in huge nets onto the ship where they were carried below deck to the cargo hold. Nearby, the horses and livestock added their terrified cries to the general din of the docks as they were walked up a wide gangplank directly into a lower hold of the ship. A short while later, as the Irish were ordered to board, Caitríona paused on the gangplank to look back, hoping for one last glimpse of the hills and colors of her beloved home, but all she could see was the confusion and filth of Cobh.

  CHAPTER 5

  “I won!” Will yelled as his back tire skidded, sending a spray of gravel and dirt flying.

  Conn skidded up behind him and started to point out that the only reason he’d beaten her to the general store was because their mother had called her back to the porch to give her some letters to mail, but at the look on Will’s face, she just shook her head. Back in New Mexico, back before Daddy was MIA… she would have argued that it wasn’t a fair race, but now, “You won,” she agreed. She leaned her bike against the store’s front porch and followed Will inside.

  He went straight to the glass case to decide what candy to purchase with his allowance. Conn deposited her letters at the small window that opened into the post boxes, and went to look at fishing poles – cane rods with reels. Her heart sank when she saw the price.

  “Can I help you, young lady?” Mr. Walsh asked, mopping his forehead with a large, checkered handkerchief.

  Looking at the coins in her hand, she asked, “How much are fishing hooks?”

  A few minutes later, she and Will were rocking on the front porch. Conn admired the sharp points on her three new fishing hooks, trying to ignore Will as he gnawed on a licorice stick.

  A familiar truck pulled up to the store. “Good morning, Connemara, William,” said Abraham as he climbed out of his vehicle.

  “Hi, Mr. Greene,” Will grinned, revealing black teeth.

  Abraham leaned over to peer at what Conn was holding. “I didn’t know you fished, Connemara,” he said, sitting in the next rocker.

  “I do,” she said. “Do you?”

  “I do indeed,” he replied. “If your mother gives her permission, I’ll take you one day soon.”

  “Me, too,” Will said eagerly, not wanting to be left out.

  “Mom might say you aren’t old enough to go,” Conn said quickly. Sometimes, she got tired of Will always horning in on her adventures, and then getting too scared to have adventures.

  “When are you coming back to our house?” she asked.

  Abraham rocked and said, “After I finish fixing Mrs. Whitney’s roof, I’ll come and fix your chimney so you can use your fireplace this winter.”

  Mrs. Walsh came out onto the porch. “Oh, Abraham, I got your usual grocery order all boxed up.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Walsh,” Abraham replied. When he didn’t get up immediately, she went back inside.

  “Mr. Greene?” Conn began. “Do you know anything about our house being haunted?”

  “Who told you that?” he asked, frowning.

  “A boy, Jed Pancake,” she said. “He was in the woods when we were fishing.”

  Abraham nodded a little. “Jedediah is a good boy at heart, but…” he paused. Conn could tell he was trying to decide how much to say. “He’s left on his own a great deal,” he said at last. “He could use a friend like you.

  “Well,” he said, getting to his feet, “I must be on my way.”

  He went inside to collect his groceries and came back out a moment later. “I’ll see you both soon,” he said as he put the box into the bed of his pickup and drove away.

  Mrs. Walsh came back outside and said, “I’ve got your mail bundled up to take back to your mother,” as she wiped down the rocker Abraham had been sitting in. Conn noticed she didn’t wipe any of the others.

  As she put the mail in her bike’s basket, Conn also realized that Abraham hadn’t answered her question about the house being haunted.

  “Come on,” she said to Will. They got on their bikes and began pedaling home, a much harder task since they were now going mostly uphill. No cars or trucks passed them on the dry, dusty road.

  They stopped to rest in a shady section of the road, and were both startled when a large brown horse with black mane and tail walked out of the woods onto the road not twenty feet from them. Sitting astride the horse, riding bareback, was Jed, wearing the same patched overalls.

  Conn’s jaw dropped. “You have a horse?” she asked enviously.

  Jed nodded. “This is Jack,” he said, patting the bay’s neck.

  Conn lowered her bike’s kickstand and walked over to Jack, holding a hand out. Jack lowered his large head, his gentle brown eyes blinking at Conn as he sniffed.

  “His muzzle is so soft,” she said.

  Jack snorted, startling her. She jerked her hand away, and then blushed, embarrassed at her reaction. Jed surveyed her from his vantage point on Jack’s back. “You wanna ride him?” he offered.

  Conn’s eyes got big. “Could I?” She was almost as scared as she was excited. She’d ridden ponies, but never a full-grown horse.

  Jed slid down and led Jack to a nearby log so Conn could scramble up. Once atop Jack’s back, the ground looked very far away. Jed handed her the reins, but kept hold of the bridle as he walked Jack up the road a way and back again.

  Conn’s heart was pounding, but she would have died rather than admit she was frightened. She slid down off the horse’s back. “Thanks,” she said breathlessly.

  Jed grinned. Up close, she could see he had a few freckles sprinkled across his nose and a small scar on his lower lip.

  “You want a ride?” he asked, turning to Will.

  Will shook his head vigorously.

  “I got real fishing hooks today,” Conn said brightly. “Mr. Greene said he’d take us fishing sometime.”


  “Abraham? The nigger?” Jed asked.

  Conn’s fists balled up and her face turned red. “Don’t you dare call him that!” she said angrily.

  Jed stepped back hastily as if he were afraid Conn might hit him. “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. It’s just the way folks talk,” he sputtered, confused as what he had done wrong.

  “Well, it’s a nasty word,” Conn said, still fuming. “Nobody should be called that. Our parents say it doesn’t matter what color someone’s skin is, even if it’s polka-dot.”

  Jed chortled. “Polka-dot? Who ever heard of a polka-dot person?”

  Conn held out a vividly freckled arm. “I’m polka-dot. So if you’re going to call Mr. Greene a bad name, you might as well call me one, too.”

  Jed blinked at her. “I didn’t mean nothin’,” he repeated.

  Conn calmed down a bit. “Okay, then.” She walked back to her bicycle. “Mr. Greene is one of the smartest people I know.”

  “Well, I know he can fix just about anything,” Jed said, eager to stay on Conn’s good side now that she wasn’t yelling anymore. He led Jack alongside Conn and Will as they walked their bicycles.

  “It’s not just that,” Conn said. “He reads Shakespeare.”

  “What’s that?” Jed asked.

  Conn looked at him as if she thought he was smarting off, but she could see he was serious. “Shakespeare was one of the greatest writers ever. He lived in England, about a thousand years ago. Mr. Greene taught about him when he taught school.”

  Jed’s eyebrows raised. “That nig –” he stopped abruptly as he remembered. “I mean, Mr. Greene used to be a school teacher?” he asked incredulously.

  Conn nodded. “He’s very smart.”

  Jed thought about this. “Could I… could I come when y’all go fishin’?”

  “Me, too, right?” Will reminded his sister.

  “Maybe,” Conn teased. She looked back over at Jed. “Yes. I suppose you can come, if you mind your manners.”

  Jed stared at her as if he had never seen anything quite like her. “Yes’m.”

  Conn giggled at being addressed like a grown-up. “Here’s our road,” she said as they came to their lane. “Thanks for letting me ride Jack,” she said, giving the horse another pat.

  “You’re… you’re welcome,” Jed said, hesitantly, as if he wasn’t certain he’d come up with the appropriate response.

  Conn and Will climbed back on their bikes and pedaled away toward the house. Conn turned and gave one last wave before Jed disappeared from sight around a curve. By the time they got home, Elizabeth had lunch ready. She sent them to wash up. As Will chattered about their encounters with Abraham and Jed, Conn pretended to wash her hands so she wouldn’t wash away the horsey smell on them.

  “Pancake?” Elizabeth was saying as Conn came back into the kitchen. “There are a lot of Pancakes around here. I went to school with some of them. How old is Jed?”

  Conn and Will looked at each other. “We forgot to ask,” Conn said. “Mr. Greene said he could use a friend. Why would he say that?”

  Elizabeth looked up. “I don’t know. But if Mr. Greene said it, there must be a reason.”

  “Jed said our house is haunted,” Will suddenly remembered. “It’s not, is it?”

  Elizabeth stared at Will for a few seconds before saying, “Of course not.”

  But Conn couldn’t help noticing her mother had the same expression she’d worn last Christmas when Will came running home crying because one of the kids at school had laughed at him for believing in Santa Claus.

  “He’s real, isn’t he?” Will had wailed.

  “Of course he is,” Elizabeth said, a little color rising in her cheeks.

  Conn stared at her mother now as Elizabeth’s cheeks burned scarlet and she quickly got up to clear the table.

  §§§

  It was dark most of the time. Thirty-five Irish had been crammed into a hold fitted with thirty narrow bunks, fifteen on each side. There were two small wooden portholes on each side of the hold which could be opened in calm seas, but most of the time, the only light came from guttering wicks set in a few small dishes of rancid whale oil, producing a pungent smoke that intensified the other foul odors filling the hold: urine, vomit and feces, some it contained in overflowing buckets, but mostly swilling about on the floor of the dank hold.

  The bunks were packed in so tightly that, when lying in one, it felt like a coffin, Caitríona thought. She and Orla and a few others shared bunks at the start of the ten week voyage, but soon, that wasn’t necessary anymore. Seven died in the first two weeks. Still weak from years of near-starvation, many of them weren’t strong enough to survive the inhuman conditions.

  “I’ll bet the horses and cattle have better,” Caitríona complained bitterly one day as the hatch was opened and a basket of moldy bread and smoked sardines was lowered down to them.

  Every few days, they were made to go above decks, at least those who could stand, so that they could carry up the waste buckets to be emptied over the side of the ship and the floor of the hold could be sluiced with clean salt water. The revulsion etched on the faces of the crew and the English passengers made Caitríona’s face burn with shame. Keeping her eyes lowered didn’t shut out the disgusted whispers. Sometimes the passengers didn’t bother to quiet their voices. One young lady, wearing an elegant silk dress and sitting under a parasol, said loudly to her companions, “My father says the Irish should be exterminated, like rats. What their potato famine started, we should have finished. They breed like vermin; they spread disease like vermin. Really, I don’t know why they’re even on board.”

  Caitríona blinked back hot, angry tears as she felt Orla squeeze her arm, silently begging her not to say anything. She knew that if she made trouble, her ration and Orla’s would be withheld, but her heart burned with a hatred such as she had never known.

  One day, before they were ordered back down below decks, one of the sailors climbed out of the hold with another blanket-wrapped body draped over his shoulder. Without so much as a prayer or a reading of the poor soul’s name, the body was dumped into the sea.

  Caitríona and Orla both made the sign of the cross and whispered, “Pater noster, qui est in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum; adveniat regnum tuum; fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra…”

  “His name was Cían O’Rourke,” she wrote in her journal later. “He was to be one of the stable boys at Lord Playfair’s plantation. I fear no one will ever know what became of him, or any of us. It will be as if we never existed.”

  §§§

  Conn’s eyes opened. Groggily, she looked around and only slowly realized she was lying on the floor in her room. She wasn’t on a ship; she wasn’t surrounded by death. Picking herself up, she saw the scattered drawings of horses she had been working on before she fell asleep. Except it hadn’t felt like regular sleep or like a regular dream. It had felt so real, she could almost smell the stench of the hold in her nostrils.

  Downstairs, she heard her mother call her for supper. She rubbed her eyes, trying to get rid of the feel of the dream. “Coming,” she called, but at her door, she paused, looking back at her bedroom as if… “Don’t be daft,” she whispered.

  CHAPTER 6

  “My goodness, Mrs. Mitchell,” said Abraham in wonder as he looked the house over, “you’ve worked miracles here. And it’s only been a few weeks.”

  Elizabeth had been steadily painting the house, one room at a time, so that gradually, the house was losing its musty, unlived-in smell.

  “Thank you, Mr. Greene,” she said, smiling proudly. “With a little more help from you, I think we’ll make it through the winter.” Her expression clouded at the realization that as May was coming to an end, she was planning – having to plan – to be here long-term. Maybe permanently.

  “Anyway,” she said brusquely, “there are a few things I still need your assistance with.”

  Conn and Will were delighted to have Abraham back with them. They
helped him mix the mortar as he re-pointed the chimney stones where the ivy had worked its tendrils in between the stones, loosening some of them. He would not allow them to climb the ladder.

  “It’s too high,” he said. But he did talk to them while he worked. The children lay on their backs in the grass, watching him high above them as they talked about books and stories they had been reading.

  “Did your family read this much in New Mexico?” Abraham asked curiously.

  “No,” said Will. “We had television. But we don’t get any channels here. Just radio.”

  Abraham laughed. “That is true, William. Our mountains block the television signals, I guess. And we’re too far away from any large cities with television stations.”

  “Well, I always read a lot,” Conn said with a superior air.

  Abraham smiled. As he moved higher, it became more difficult to talk. He asked, “Are you sure there’s nothing your mother could use some help with?”

  Guiltily, Conn sat up and looked around. She wasn’t sure why, but it wasn’t as much fun helping Mom as Mr. Greene. They went to find her. She was on her hands and knees, her hair tied back with a bandana, scrubbing the wainscoting in the dining room. A thick layer of dust and grime had built up on the mouldings, and it all needed to be wiped down before it could receive a fresh coat of paint.

  “Can we help?” Will asked.

  Elizabeth looked up in surprise. “Wow,” she said, dabbing some sweat off her brow with her forearm, “that’s the nicest offer I’ve had in weeks.”

  She helped them fill buckets with clean soapy water. Will stayed downstairs with her while Conn went up to the second-floor hallway. She began working on the wainscot next to her mother’s room, the spot she leaned against each night. Her mother had cried less frequently the last few nights. She never cried during the day, Conn realized as she scrubbed. Last night, Conn had stayed for only a few minutes and then crept back to bed.

  She moved to the opposite bit of wall adjacent to the stairs. As she rubbed her wet rag along one vertical moulding, she heard a soft metallic click, and she realized that the inner panel of the wainscot had popped out toward her just a bit.