Lib turned away in revulsion.
“Jesus said she was only sleeping, and he took her by the hand,” Malachy went on, “and didn’t she get up and have her dinner?”
The man was in a dream so deep that Lib couldn’t wake him. He clung to his innocence, refusing to know, ask, think, question the vow he’d made to Anna, do anything. Surely being a parent meant taking action, rightly or wrongly, instead of waiting for a miracle? Like the wife he was so unlike, Lib decided, Malachy deserved to lose his daughter.
The pale sun edged lower in the sky. Would it never go down?
Eight o’clock. Anna was shaking. “How long,” she kept mumbling. “Be it done. Be it done.”
Lib had Kitty warm flannels at the fire in the kitchen and then laid them over Anna, tucking them in on both sides. She caught an acrid whiff. You, she thought. Every flawed, scrawny, or bloated part, every inch of the real, mortal girl, I treasure you.
“Will you be all right if we go to the votive mass, pet?” asked Rosaleen O’Donnell, coming in and hovering over her daughter.
Anna nodded.
“Sure now?” asked the father at the door.
“Go on,” the girl breathed.
Get out, get out, Lib thought.
But then, after the couple withdrew, she hurried after them. “Say good-bye.” Her voice a low caw.
The O’Donnells goggled at her.
Lib whispered, “It could come at any time now.”
“But—”
“There isn’t always a warning.”
Rosaleen’s face was a torn mask. She returned to the bedside. “I think maybe we shouldn’t go out tonight, pet.”
Now Lib cursed herself. Her one chance, the one possible time to put her outrageous plan into action, and she’d thrown it away. Did she lack the nerve, was that it?
No; it was a matter of guilt, because of what she was about to try. All she knew was, she had to let the O’Donnells take a proper leave of their child.
“Go on, Mammy.” Anna’s head lifted heavily off the bed. “Go to the mass for me.”
“Will we?”
“Kiss.” Her swollen hands reached for her mother’s head.
Rosaleen let herself be pulled down. She placed one kiss on Anna’s forehead. “Good-bye now, lovey.”
Lib sat turning the pages of All the Year Round blindly so none of them would guess how much she wanted this to be over.
Malachy leaned over his wife and child.
“Pray for me, Dadda.”
“Always,” he said thickly. “We’ll be seeing you later.”
Anna nodded, then let her head drop onto the pillow.
Lib waited for them to go into the kitchen. Their voices, Kitty’s. Then the thump of the front door. Merciful silence.
Now it began.
She watched Anna’s narrow chest rise and fall. Listened to the small creak of her lungs.
She hurried into the empty kitchen and found a can of milk. Sniffed it to make sure it was quite fresh, and found a clean bottle. She half filled that with milk, stopped it up with a cork, and chose a bone spoon. There was a discarded oatcake too; Lib broke off a piece. She wrapped everything in a napkin.
Back in the bedroom, Lib drew up her chair very close to Anna. Was it sheer hubris to believe that she could succeed where everyone else had failed? She wished she had more time; greater powers of persuasion. O God, if by any chance there is a God, teach me to speak with the tongue of angels.
“Anna,” she said, “listen to me. I have a message for you.”
“From who?”
Lib pointed upwards. Her eyes rose too, as if she saw visions on the ceiling.
“But you don’t believe,” said Anna.
“You’ve changed me,” Lib told her, honestly enough. “Didn’t you once tell me that he can pick anyone?”
“That’s true.”
“Here’s the message: What if you could be another girl instead of yourself?”
The eyes went wide.
“If you could wake up tomorrow and find that you’re somebody else, a little girl who’s never done anything wrong, would you like that?”
Anna nodded like a very small child.
“Well, this is holy milk.” Lib held up the bottle as solemnly as any priest in front of an altar. “A special gift from God.”
The girl didn’t blink.
What gave Lib’s tone conviction was that it was all true: Didn’t the divine sunshine soak into the divine grass, didn’t the divine cow eat the divine grass, didn’t she give the divine milk for the sake of her divine calf? Wasn’t it all a gift? Deep in her breasts Lib remembered how her milk had run down whenever she’d heard the mewing of her daughter.
“If you drink this,” she went on, “you won’t be Anna O’Donnell anymore. Anna will die tonight, and God will accept her sacrifice and welcome her and Pat into heaven.”
The girl didn’t move a muscle. Her face a blank.
“You’ll be another little girl. A new one. The moment you take a spoonful of this holy milk—it has such power that your life will start all over again,” said Lib. She was rushing so fast now that she stumbled over the words. “You’re going to be a girl called Nan who’s only eight years old and lives far, far away from here.”
Anna’s gaze was dark.
Here’s where it was all going to fall apart. Of course the girl was sharp enough to see right through this fiction, if she chose. All Lib could gamble on was her instinct that Anna must be desperate for some way out, longing for a different story, inclined to try something as improbable as tying a rag on a miracle tree.
A moment went by. Another. Another. Lib didn’t breathe.
Finally the muddy eyes lit like fireworks. “Yes.”
“Are you ready?”
“Anna will die?” A whisper. “That’s a promise?”
Lib nodded. “Anna O’Donnell dies tonight.” It occurred to her that the girl—who was so rational in her own way—perhaps thought Lib was giving her poison.
“Pat and Anna, together in heaven?”
“Yes,” said Lib. What had he been but an ignorant, lonely boy, after all? Poor banished children of Eve.
“Nan,” said Anna, repeating the syllable with a grave delight. “Eight years old. Far, far away.”
“Yes.” Lib was well aware she was taking advantage of a child on her deathbed. She wasn’t the girl’s friend at this moment; more like a strange teacher. “Trust me.”
When Lib produced the milk bottle and filled the spoon, Anna shied away a little.
No reassurance now, only rigour. “This is the only way.” What was it Byrne had said about emigration? “The price of a new life. Let me feed you. Open your mouth.” Lib was the tempter, the polluter, the witch. Such harm this sip of milk would do to Anna, shackling her spirit to her body again. Such need, such cravings and pains, risk and regret, all the unhallowed mess of life.
“Wait.” The girl held up one hand.
Lib shook with dread. Now, the hour of our death.
“Grace,” said Anna. “I must say grace first.”
The grace to take food, Lib remembered the priest praying for that. Grant her the grace.
Anna dipped her head. “Bless us O Lord and these thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty, amen.”
Then her ragged lips parted for the spoon, as simple as that.
Lib didn’t say a word as she tipped the liquid into the girl’s mouth. Watched the throat move like a wave. She was ready for choking, retching, cramps, or spasms.
Anna swallowed. Just like that, the fast was broken.
“Now a little crumb of oatcake.” As much as Lib could hold between finger and thumb. She put it on the purplish tongue and waited till it had gone down.
“Dead,” Anna whispered.
“Yes, Anna’s dead.” On an impulse, Lib brought her palm down, covering the girl’s face and closing the swollen eyelids.
She waited a long moment. Then: “Wake up, Nan. Tim
e to begin your new life.”
The child’s wet eyes blinked open.
Through my fault, through my fault. It was Lib who’d bear all the blame for luring this radiant girl back into the land of exile. Weighing her spirit down again, anchoring her to the tarnished earth.
Lib would have liked to give her more food right away, to fill that shrunken body with four months of meals. But she knew the danger of overtaxing the stomach. So she put the bottle and spoon into her apron with the bit of oatcake rolled up in the napkin. Little by little; the way out of the mine was as long as the way in. Lib stroked the girl’s forehead very lightly. “We must go now.”
A quiver. Thinking of the family she was leaving behind? Then a nod.
Lib wrapped the girl up in the warm cloak from the dresser, put two pairs of stockings on the misshapen feet as well as the brother’s boots, mittens on her hands, and three shawls, making a dark bundle of her.
She opened the door to the kitchen, then the two halves of the cabin’s front door. Sun blood-red in the west. The evening was warm, and a lone hen clucked in the yard.
Lib went back to the bedroom and scooped her up. Not heavy at all. (She thought of her own baby, that minute heft in her arms, as light as a loaf of bread.) But as she carried the girl around the side of the house, Lib could feel her own legs shaking.
And then there was William Byrne holding his mare, looming out of the dark. Even though Lib had been watching for him, she jumped. Had she lacked faith that he’d be there as he’d promised?
He said, “Good evening, little—”
“Nan,” Lib interrupted before he could wreck things by saying the old name. “This is Nan.” No going back now.
“Good evening, Nan,” said Byrne, catching on fast. “We’re going for a ride on Polly. You know Polly, I believe. You won’t be scared.”
Huge-eyed, the child said nothing at all, only wheezed and clung to Lib’s shoulders.
“It’s all right, Nan,” said Lib. “We can trust Mr. Byrne.” She met his eyes. “He’s going to take you to a safe place and wait with you, and I’ll be along in a little while.”
Was that true? She meant it, if that was enough; she wanted it with all that she was.
Byrne jumped up into the saddle and leaned down for the girl.
Lib inhaled the scent of the horse. “You were seen leaving this afternoon?” she asked, delaying them for one more moment.
He nodded, patting his satchel. “While I was saddling up, I complained to Ryan about having been called back to Dublin posthaste.”
Finally Lib held out her burden.
The girl clung hard before letting go.
Byrne got her settled on the saddle in front of him. “It’s all right, Nan.”
He gripped the reins in one hand and fixed his eyes on Lib in a curious way, as if he’d never seen her before. No, she thought—as if he were seeing her for the last time and memorizing her features. If their plot went awry, they might never meet again.
She tucked the food in his satchel.
Has she eaten? he mouthed.
Lib nodded.
His grin lit up the darkening sky.
“Another spoonful in an hour,” she murmured. Then she went up on her toes and kissed the only part of him she could reach, the warm back of his hand. She patted the child through the blanket. “Very soon, Nan.” She turned away.
When Byrne clicked his tongue and Polly moved off across the field—heading away from the village—Lib looked back over her shoulder and saw the scene for a moment as if in a painting. Horse and riders, the trees, the fading streaks in the west. Even the bogland with its patches of water. Here at the dead centre, a sort of beauty.
She hurried back into the cabin, feeling to make sure that her memorandum book was still in her apron.
First Lib knocked over both chairs in the bedroom. Next her own bag of equipment; she kicked it towards the chairs. She took her Notes on Nursing and forced herself to toss it onto the pile, where it landed open like a bird’s wings. Nothing could be saved if her story was to be convincing. This was the opposite of nursing: a rapid, efficient work of chaos.
Then she went into the kitchen and retrieved the whiskey bottle from the nook beside the fire. She sloshed the stuff across the pillows and dropped the bottle. She picked up the can of burning fluid and shook a quantity all over the bed, the floor, the wall, the dresser with its little chest tipped open, baring its treasures. She put the lid back on the can only very loosely.
Lib’s hands stank of the burning fluid now; how would she explain that afterwards? She rubbed them hard on her apron. Afterwards didn’t matter. Was everything ready?
Fear not. Only believe, and she shall be safe.
She grabbed a lace-edged card from the treasure chest—some saint she didn’t know—and lit it in the chimney of the lamp. It flared up, the holy figure haloed with flame.
Cleaned by fire, only by fire.
Lib touched it to the tick, which puffed to life, the old straw hissing crisply. A burning bed, like some miracle in bright pastels. The surge of heat on her face reminded her of bonfires on Guy Fawkes Night.
But would the whole room go up in flames? This was their one slim chance of getting away with the fraud. Was the thatch dry enough after three days of sunshine? Lib glared at the low ceiling. The old beams looked too sturdy, the thick walls too strong. Nothing else to be done; the lamp swung in her hand, and she hurled it into the rafters.
Rain of glass and fire.
Lib ran through the farmyard, her apron flaming in her face, a dragon she couldn’t escape. She beat it with her hands. A screech that sounded as if it were coming from some other mouth. She stumbled off the path and threw herself down into the bog’s wet embrace.
It had been raining all night. The constabulary had sent two men down from Athlone, even though it was the Sabbath; right now they were picking through the mucky remains of the O’Donnells’ cabin.
Lib was waiting in the passage behind the spirit grocery, her burnt hands swaddled in bandages, reeking of ointment. Everything hinged on the rain, she thought through waves of exhaustion. On when the rain had begun last night. Would it have put the fire out before the beams could fall in? Was the narrow bedroom reduced to indecipherable cinders, or did it tell—plain as day—the story of a missing child?
Pain. But that wasn’t what held Lib in its grip. Fear—for herself, of course, but also for the girl. (Nan, she called her in her head, trying to get used to the new name.) There was a stage of starvation from which there could be no recovery. Bodies forgot how to deal with food; the organs atrophied. Or perhaps the child’s small lungs had strained too long, or her worn-out heart. Please let her wake up this morning. William Byrne would be there to take care of her, in the most anonymous lodging he knew in the back streets of Athlone. That was as far as he and Lib had planned. Please, Nan, take another sip, another crumb.
It occurred to Lib that the fortnight was up. Sunday was always meant to be the day when the nurses reported to the committee. Two weeks ago, newly arrived, she’d imagined herself impressing the locals with her meticulous account of exposing a hoax. Not looking like this: ash-streaked, crippled, trembling.
She was under no illusions about the conclusions that the committee members were likely to reach. They’d make a scapegoat of the foreigner if they could. But what exactly would the charge be? Negligence? Arson? Murder? Or—if the police realized there was no trace of a body in the smouldering mud—kidnapping and fraud.
I’ll join you both in Athlone tomorrow or the next day, Lib had told Byrne. Had her confident manner fooled him? She was inclined to think not. Like Lib, he’d put on a brave face, but he knew there was a strong possibility that she’d end up behind bars. He and the girl would board a ship as father and child, and Lib would never breathe a word about their destination.
She checked her notebook with its blackened cover. Were the final details plausible?
Saturday, August 20, 8:32 p.m.
>
Pulse: 139.
Lungs: respirations 35; moist crackling.
No urine all day.
No water taken.
Inanition.
8:47: Delirium.
8:59: Breathing very distressed, heartbeat irregular.
9:07: Gone.
“Mrs. Wright.”
Lib fumbled the book shut.
The nun was at her side, dark under the eyes. “How are your burns this morning?”
“They don’t matter,” said Lib.
It was Sister Michael, coming back from the votive mass, who’d found Lib last night, who’d dragged her out of the bog, led her back to the village, and bandaged her hands. Lib had been in such a state, no acting had been required.
“Sister, I don’t know how to thank you.”
A shake of the head, gaze lowered.
One of the many things on Lib’s conscience was that she was repaying the nun’s care with cruelty. Sister Michael would spend the rest of her life convinced that the two of them had brought about, or at least failed to prevent, the death of Anna O’Donnell.
Well, it couldn’t be helped. All that mattered was the girl.
For the first time, Lib understood the wolfishness of mothers. It occurred to her that if by some miracle she came through today’s trials and got away to that room in Athlone where William Byrne was waiting, she’d become the girl’s mother, or the nearest thing to it.
Take oh take me for thy child, was that how the hymn went? In times to come, when Nan-who-was-once-Anna blamed someone, it would be Lib. That was part of motherhood, she supposed, bearing responsibility for pushing the child out of warm darkness into the dreadful brightness of new life.
Mr. Thaddeus walked past just then, with O’Flaherty. The gleam had been knocked off the priest; he was showing his age. He nodded to the nurses, gloomily abstracted.
“There’s no need for you to be questioned by the committee,” Lib told the nun. “You know nothing.” That came out too brusque. “I mean, you weren’t there—you were at the chapel—at the end.”
Sister Michael crossed herself. “God rest her, the creature.”
They stepped aside to make room for the baronet.
“I shouldn’t keep them waiting,” said Lib, moving towards the back room.
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