by JoAnn Ross
Jamie couldn’t decide whether to be happy or sad about that. He certainly didn’t want his ma to be imprisoned for murder. But to never have to worry about his da again …
“Jamie.” Amazingly, his mother’s voice had regained its usual calm tone. “I want you to go into the house and ring up the surgery. Tell Dr. Erin what’s happened here. Ask her to come as quickly as possible and to bring her medical bag.”
As if unable to bear touching her husband any longer than necessary, she rocked back on her heels. “And you’d best be ringing up Sergeant O’Neill, as well.”
“Jaysus, Ma!” Bringing the Guards into this was, in Jamie’s mind, a foolish thing to do. If Sergeant O’Neill came, wouldn’t he have to arrest her?
“Don’t be using the Lord’s name in vain,” she said absently, which even through his shock and distress, struck Jamie as a strange thing for his mother, who openly followed the ancient religion, to say. “Now please, darling, do as I ask. Then stay in the house. I put your sister down for her nap when we came back from your aunt’s. She shouldn’t be alone.”
Jamie desperately wished Alec was here. His ma would listen to the Yank. But he’d taken Zoe into town. As he’d watched the car disappear down the road, Jamie had been pleased they’d be about buying him a gift. Such foolish childish things no longer seemed important.
“But Ma—”
“It’ll be all right, Jamie,” she repeated what she’d told him so many other times over the years. “I promise.”
Jamie didn’t want to leave. But he also knew his ma would be in even more trouble if his da bled to death while he stayed here arguing. So he gave her a quick, hard hug, wishing he was grown up enough to take care of her as she’d always taken care of him, then raced toward the house to make the telephone calls.
If he’d looked back, he would have seen Kate exchange the shovel for a pitchfork. She stood over her unconscious husband, the sharpened tines pressed against his broad chest. Just in case.
26
CADEL HAD REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS enough to begin cursing a blue streak by the time he’d been put on the ambulance stretcher and taken away to the hospital in Galway. Although her nerves still felt as numb as the stones in the nearby ancient circle, Kate nearly wept with relief when Sergeant O’Neill assured her that since she’d been acting in self-defense, and in the defense of her young son, he wouldn’t think of pressing charges against her.
“Now Cadel,” he said with a meaningful glance toward the ambulance pulling onto the road from the driveway, “is another matter altogether. He’ll be charged with assault, which should be keeping him away from you and your children. For a time, at least.”
He didn’t sound all that convinced that her husband wouldn’t be back. In truth, neither was Kate. But having been granted a reprieve, she decided to be grateful for small favors.
Shortly after arriving and ensuring that her patient would live, Erin O’Halloran Joyce had rung up Nora, who’d come straightaway from her farm to ensure that Kate was truly all right.
“Why don’t you take a nice shower to wash off the barn dirt and calm your nerves,” Nora suggested as she took in the smears of drying blood. Kate silently blessed her for refraining from mentioning the scarlet handprints she knew from past experience would be staining her face. “Then take Jamie for a relaxing stroll on the beach.”
“Brigid might wake up from her nap.”
“I believe I can take care of one wee little girl,” Nora said dryly. “Having practically raised my younger brother and sisters as well as my own children.”
Grateful for the opportunity to talk with Jamie without interruption, to assure him that such horror would never be repeated, Kate quickly showered and changed her clothes—tossing the blouse away so she’d never have to look at it again in this lifetime. Soon she and her still shaken son were walking together, hand in hand, on the beach.
The tide was coming in, rolling onto the sand in long breakers that would retreat, leaving a sparkling silver trail of shattered shells and sea foam in their wake, only to return, even stronger. As she had, Kate mused.
Despite today’s setback, her little family had grown secure in the past years since that awful day of the rape, when Nora’s Yank had tracked Cadel down at the Irish Rose, beat him to a bloody pulp, then convinced Cadel that it would be a great deal safer for him to move away from Castlelough.
There had once been a time when Jamie couldn’t dare look any adult man in the eye; now today, he’d had the strength to attack the very same man who was infamous for bullying everyone who had the misfortune to cross paths with him.
“I was proud of you today,” she said as they walked side by side, barefoot through the rising water. “What you did was wonderfully brave. Though,” the mother in her felt obliged to point out, “extremely reckless. And dangerous.”
“He was hurting you,” Jamie responded simply. “Since I’m the man of the family now, it’s my duty to take care of you.”
“Oh, darling.” Her heart turning over so that it felt like a three cornered stone in her chest, she knelt on the beach, mindless of the sea foam dampening the spirit-lifting long scarlet skirt she’d changed into.
Holding him by his slender shoulders, she looked her young son straight in the eye. “You’re a fine, brave lad. But a lad nonetheless. It’s my responsibility to take care of you.”
He thought about that for a moment as a trio of breakers washed over them, nearly up to his knees, dampening the legs of his jeans. “Perhaps we can take care of each other,” he decided, seeking compromise.
“We’ll argue about the matter later,” she decided, not wanting to get sidetracked. She stood, inhaled the healing tang of the sea and took his hand in hers again. “For now, let’s go sit up higher on the rocks before we get washed out to sea and end up in America.”
“That might not be so bad,” he said as they scrambled over boulders draped with moss and wet green kelp to higher ground. “I’ve always wanted to go to America. Rory said it’s a grand place.”
“So I’ve heard.”
She and Jamie found a perch midway up the cliff, out of the wind. “As brave as you were, I’m sorry Cadel behaved so horridly.” Despite having taken out his frustrations on her for years, today’s terrifying incident was the first time her husband had actually physically threatened one of her children.
“I hate him.” The hand she wasn’t holding curled into a small tight fist. His voice, which Father O’Malley assured her was the finest in the Holy Child School’s boys’ choir, was low and tight and strained with resentment.
“I know.” She uncurled the small tense fingers, one by one. “And I suppose your feelings are perfectly natural, given the fact that Cadel is not the easiest man to get along with—”
“He’s a bully.”
Kate couldn’t argue with that. The sad truth was that in her desperation to protect her family from the shame of her unwed pregnancy, she had married an ill-tempered bully whose naturally cruel temperament was made even worse by his affection—nay, his overwhelming need—for whiskey.
“But hating anyone is a waste of energy, darling. It hurts you more than it does the person you’re directing all that emotion toward.”
“I don’t understand why you don’t just cast a spell on him and turn him into a snake.”
“Now, you know very well that I wouldn’t be doing that kind of magic.”
She had, admittedly, secretly, been tempted to try over the years. But ever aware of the natural law that whatever you did to another returned many times magnified, Kate had avoided giving in to temptation where her brutal husband was concerned.
“Besides, there aren’t any snakes in Ireland. I’d certainly not want to be the one responsible for changing that.”
She’d hoped to coax a bit of a smile out of him. Instead, his scowl only darkened. “But if he were a snake, we could cut off his head, so that would be the end of him and the snake.”
His child’s atte
ntion momentarily drifted. “Do you believe St. Patrick really drove all the snakes in Ireland into the sea the way Sister Mary Immaculata says?”
“Well now, that’s one popular story.”
Grateful for a momentary change in subject, Kate leaned back on her elbows and watched a pair of seabirds building a nest high on the cliff. She’d have to remember to bring the children back here when the eggs hatched.
“There is, however, an even older one. Going back to the Ancients.”
“The one about the River Barrow.” It was certainly not the first time Jamie had heard the tale, yet interest lit up the small face that was so gloomy only moments earlier. Kate decided her son was as eager for a respite from thoughts of Cadel O’Sullivan as she was. “Will you tell it to me?”
“I suppose we have a wee bit more time before we need to be getting back.” She knew that Nora would stay as long as she was needed. “Some say that there never were snakes in Ireland,” she began.
“Because they didn’t make it across the land bridge before the water turned Ireland into an island,” Jamie offered with a nod.
“That’s what I learned in Brother Sebastian’s science class when I was a bit older than you are now. The nuns, being of a more traditional and fundamentalist mindset, preferred to tell the legend of Patrick, as they seem to still be doing.
“Yet many of the old timers believe that Diancecht, the ancient god of medicine, is the true reason we’d be having no serpents in this fair land.”
“Because of Morígú.”
He’d heard the story at least a hundred times and never seemed to tire of it. Kate suspected he could tell it as well as she. In another age, when there was only one true way, she might have encouraged him onto the druid path in hopes he might become a bard, one of the keepers of the Celts’ oral history. Since he was a lad born into modern times, she tried to ensure that he had knowledge of both Catholicism and the old ways so he’d be free to choose his own path.
“Aye,” she said, returning her mind to her tale. “The way I heard it from me own grandmother Fitzpatrick, who first told me the story when I was a girl, was that the fierce wife of the heaven-god had borne a son whom Diancecht recognized as being cursed from birth. He counseled that the wee infant’s heart should be opened on the spot.”
“So he did. Even though he had to kill the baby.”
“And wasn’t that the saddest part of the business, even though he knew that the babe’s innocent spirit would go to the Otherworld and be reborn.”
Kate sighed, thinking, as she always did when this tale came up, how tragic it would be for any mother, even one as fierce as the wife of the heaven-god was alleged to be, to lose a child.
“Still, I imagine it grieved him to declare such a sentence on a child who’d yet to have his naming ceremony. But his diagnosis proved true, because within that wee heart, he found three infant serpents which Diancecht, with his godly wisdom, understood were malevolent spirits who would be capable of eating every single person in Ireland if allowed to grow to full size.”
Jamie’s confrontation with his father was momentarily forgotten as he considered that unsavory possibility. “If I were Diancecht,” he declared, with the youthful self-confidence that had first begun to bud after Cadel had left their home, “I’d quick take my sacred knife and cut off their heads.”
“Well, now, I believe he did just that. But then, to avoid the evil which even their beheaded, dead bodies might do to our people, he burned them into ashes, then flung those ashes into the nearest river.”
“Because the ashes might carry their spirits and be evilly charmed.”
“Aye, that was his reasoning. And, once again wasn’t he proven right when indeed, the ashes were so venomous the water boiled up and destroyed every living creature in it? Which is why, ever since that day, the river has been known as the River Barrow.”
“Because barrow means boiling.”
“Aye.” She smiled and ruffled his windblown hair. “Your Irish is improving day by day.”
“I know. Brother John says that I have the best pronunciation in the class. But that’s because I have you to practice with. A lot of the parents don’t speak the old language.”
Or practice the old religion, he did not say. There had been a time when Kate had worried that by being so open in her druidic practices, she might cause her son difficulty in such a small parochial community as Castlelough. However, the secret truth was, that even many of those who showed up every Sunday morning to hear Father O’Malley say the Roman Mass, secretly clung to more than a few of the old beliefs. Tradition, as even Cromwell himself had discovered, did not die easily out here in the Irish west.
“If you made a spell and turned my da into a snake,” Jamie suggested, returning the conversation to its original track, “we could do like Diancecht and cut off his head, then throw him in the river.”
“But we’re not gods. And wouldn’t that be murder? Since we’d be killing a man and not a snake?” she asked gently.
He sighed, surrendering the suggestion. “I’d mostly forgotten about him after he went away.” He fell silent as they both watched a seabird dive into the waves and come back out with a sparkling silver fish in its beak. “There’s something that’s been worrying my mind.”
She put her arm around his small slumped shoulder. “And what would that be?”
“I’m afraid that I’ll grow up to be like him.”
“Of course you won’t.” Kate was quite honestly shocked that her son might have been troubled by such thoughts.
“He’s my da. Maybe getting drunk and mean is in my blood. Aren’t you always talking about bloodlines?”
“For horses,” she said quickly. “It’s different with people.”
“Are you sure?” The small, earnest freckled face that looked up at her was filled with a desperate hope that nearly broke Kate’s heart.
“Positive.” She deliberately did not mention Biddy Early’s genetic contribution to the family bloodline, which had made such an inescapable difference in her own life. She dampened her fingers with her tongue and smoothed down the unruly cowlick at the front of his head that was a replica of his father’s.
Kate realized that this was the perfect time to tell Jamie the truth about his parentage, but the words she’d been practicing for so many years in her head would not come to her tongue. Coward.
“You’re a fine lad, a wonderful son, and Brigid couldn’t be asking for a better big brother. You’ve no need to ever worry about behaving like your … that man.”
Jamie’s jaw tightened. He turned away and stared out over the sea, which was beginning to be gilded with copper and gold. As she did each day, Kate took a moment to sing a brief, silent farewell to the setting sun.
“Ma?”
“Yes, darling?”
“He wouldn’t be doing it, would he? Taking me away from you, that is?”
“Of course not. You know how your father says things he doesn’t mean when he’s been drinking.”
His relief was palpable. “Good.” He turned back toward her. “I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”
“Then we won’t,” she agreed. “We’d best be getting back to the house. It’s time for me to start supper and your sister will be waking from her nap.”
As they walked back along the cliff, near the circle of stones that had once belonged to the Ancients, Kate wished she could only have foreseen today’s events and prevented her son from being traumatized.
When Cadel had first left, her flashbacks had been nearly constant. Indeed, there’d been occasions when she’d not been quite sure what was real and what was memory. But until Alec MacKenna’s arrival, she’d gone months without a single instance. And even on these recent occasions with him, she’d managed to keep a hold on reality. She was proud of her progress, but a new fear that she may have caused the same problem in her child was chilling.
“I love you, Jamie lad.” Swept by an immense wave of emotion, even st
ronger than the tides below them, she pulled him into her arms, and hugged him tight, daring to risk the Fates by wishing she could keep him forever safe from harm.
“I love you, too, Ma,” he said when she’d finally loosened her grip enough that he could breathe. “You’re the best ma in Castlelough. In County Clare. Even the entire world.”
She laughed as he flung his thin arms out in a broad gesture meant to encompass that world. Then sent a small silent prayer to those ancient, hopefully benevolent gods who dwelt in the Otherworld that Jamie would still believe that when he discovered she’d been lying to him his entire life.
“Do you think he’ll like the book?” Zoe asked as she and Alex drove back from the village.
“Sure. James and the Giant Peach is a classic. You sure got a kick out of it when you were his age.”
“Yeah.” She smiled at the memory. “I remember liking it because of how it began.”
“You liked the idea of parents getting trampled by a runaway rhinoceros?”
“Not because of that. But most of the stories written for kids are really sappy. When the writer started out that way, then had James have to go live with terrible Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spider and become the saddest and loneliest boy you could find, I figured he wasn’t going to talk down to me. And that he’d tell a really good story.”
“You figured right.” Alec smiled over at her. Zoe smiled back. It was, he thought, one of those rare Kodak moments he’d have to freeze in his memory to enjoy again later. “Mrs. Monohan says Jamie’s got all the Harry Potter books, so it stands to reason he’d like this one, too.”
“Yeah. He’s going to freak when he sees what else we bought.”
“You think so?”
“Are you kidding? There’s not a kid in the world who wouldn’t want to eavesdrop on grown-ups.”
“Yeah.” He hadn’t thought of that until the friendly shopkeeper had already wrapped the Spy Kit in the colorful dinosaur paper. “That’s what worries me.”