The Whitest Flower

by Brendan Graham

  But there was no sight of Katie at the workhouse.

  Then they searched the streets, calling out her name softly into the huddles of people, aware of the plight of those who looked vacantly at them. Trying not to disturb them, to step round those who lay on the ground in small heaps of two or three.

  They searched, and called, calling and searching well past the hour of midnight, the three of them tired and fatigued, with hope fading of ever finding Katie. But still not wanting to give up.

  Faherty and the girl, after feeding and bedding down Nell, had come back to look for them.

  Now they all stood disconsolate, wondering where next to look in the town. Faherty ran through the names of the streets and lanes, making sure they had missed none of them.

  Then, out of the darkness, the call came: ‘A Mhamaí, a Mhamaí!’

  Ellen’s blood almost froze with the sound she knew so well, the way they always called her in Irish.

  ‘Katie!’ She spun round to see the child coming towards her in the dark, arms outstretched for its mother.

  Ellen ran to her and swept up the ragged little bundle into her arms.

  ‘Oh, Katie! Katie, a stóirín, you’re safe! You’re safe!’ she cried, holding the child into her shoulder, kissing, and kissing again the matted red hair against her face.

  ‘Mary! Patrick!’ she shouted. ‘She’s safe! Katie is safe! Thanks be to God! She’s safe!’

  Mary and Patrick ran over to where their mother stood with Katie in her arms. The child, obviously very weak and in distress, just acknowledged all this fuss by repeating, ‘A Mhamaí, a Mhamaí!’

  Ellen held Katie out from herself to let Mary see her twin sister.

  ‘Now, Mary, I told you, everything’s all right – we’re all together again, and Katie …’

  She stopped – seeing the look on Mary’s face.

  ‘A Mhamaí …!’ Mary was looking at her twin sister. Her face was stricken with sheer terror, her speech falling back into her first tongue with the shock of what she was seeing.

  ‘O, a Mhamaí,’ she cried. ‘Ní hí sin Katie!’

  57

  ‘Ní hí sin Katie!’ – She’s not Katie!

  The words struck Ellen like a thunderbolt.

  ‘Of course she is, Mary! Look, she’s …’ Then she stopped, peering at the child, who only said, ‘A Mhamaí, a Mhamaí!’ to her.

  ‘Oh, God! Oh, God!’ Ellen’s hand flew to her mouth as if wanting to block the words coming out, wanting to stop them, so that what was happening would stop. ‘Oh, no! It isn’t … it isn’t her!’ Ellen cried out, not believing what she was saying, looking from one to the other of them, seeking some explanation.

  How could she have made such a mistake? And she, Katie’s mother? The one who had brought her into the world.

  The child looked at Ellen, looked at Mary and Patrick, looked at Faherty and the silent girl, forlorn, lost in the middle of all of them. Only wanting to find her mother. Any mother. ‘A Mhamaí, a Mhamaí!’ she cried, frightened now. Hopelessly, she reached out for Ellen, tears filling her eyes, wanting desperately to be the child wanted by this woman who had held and kissed her.

  Wanting desperately to be Katie.

  Ellen felt so dashed down, so guilty. Yet again, her hopes had been raised. Yet again, they had been shattered, smashed to nothing. Now what was she to do about this child, who, with her tousled red hair, she had thought was Katie? She couldn’t just leave her here, let her go back into the night to keep searching for her mother – a mother who in all likelihood would be unable to care for her anyway. Maybe even was dead by now. But she couldn’t keep collecting every child she happened upon. She still had to find Katie.

  In desperation she turned to Faherty. ‘Mr Faherty, what am I to do with this poor child?’ she asked, hoping, by some miracle, that the coachman had the answer. It was too much. This Famine was too big for any one person to do anything about it. There were thousands like the child, God love her. She was so like Katie. Ellen looked at her again. So like her.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I’ll take her back to the house, to Herself. She can have a bed there with us for the night. Tomorrow, we’ll have a search for the parents, and if we can’t find them, or they don’t want her – and they mightn’t … Well, then, the nuns won’t turn her out.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Faherty!’ Ellen said, much relieved at the solution that he had come up with.

  He took the child, who went willingly enough, but still calling, ‘A Mhamaí!’ to Ellen as she left.

  Ellen found the whole episode very upsetting. Not only was there nothing she could do, but in a way she felt outside all the desolation that was about her. She was here for one purpose only and that was to get her children – to get Katie. Then she would be gone, out of Ireland, leaving it all behind her. Leaving them her own people, all behind her. She realized she hadn’t asked the child her name. Nor did she know the name of the silent girl. That was it – victims became nameless in the midst of such horrors. Like the thousands in the unmarked graves at Grosse Île, or the thousands who went into the lime-pit here. But each of those people’s deaths was a tragedy in itself, as awful as any other. As awful as Michael or Annie, or the silent girl, or the crying child. It was all lost when it was in thousands or tens of thousands. When they couldn’t be named. But each one – each person – was a heartbreaking story. An individual nameless tragedy.

  Faherty returned shortly. He was excited, having rushed back to them with his news.

  ‘The road to Castlebar, ma’am,’ he said to her, all of a fluster, as if she would know at once what he meant. ‘They’re on the road to Castlebar – the childer!’

  Tired Nell was hauled back into service again and harnessed to Faherty’s carriage, and with Faherty’s ‘gee-up there, Nell’ they headed down the town, across the Carrowbeg River, and up where the hill rose out of Westport, and on to the road to Castlebar.

  Everywhere were the never-ending fearful sights of people along the roadside, lying down in sleep or in death, or somewhere between the two. They slowed, calling out her name into the midst of each group.

  ‘Katie! Katie! Katie!’ But they got no response. Nothing.

  The huddles of people along the ditches were now fewer in number, and they were at less frequent intervals. The journey to Castlebar exacting its toll on them, selecting the weak and the near-dead.

  Ellen looked back. ‘All those people! All those poor people!’

  It was Mary who saw her first.

  ‘Katie! Katie! Katie!’ her twin shouted wildly.

  Mary had leapt out of the carriage before Ellen had fully grasped what was happening. Now she, too, jumped out after Mary, who ran back behind the carriage and over to the roadside grass.

  ‘It’s her! It’s her, a Mhamaí!’ Mary shouted, delirious with joy. ‘Patrick, it’s Katie – I found her!’

  Mary was first to Katie, repeating her name, over and over again. She threw herself on her twin sister, who lay on the ground, and hugged her.

  ‘Katie! Katie! Katie! It’s me, Mary!’ she said excitedly, shaking her twin.

  But Katie, weakened, hungry, only looked back at her. In vain, her lips tried to get out the sound of the word ‘Mary’.

  Ellen reached them.

  ‘Mary, let her up – you’ll smother her!’ she said, concerned.

  Mary scampered up, but it made no difference to Katie. She just lay there.

  Ellen knelt down beside her. ‘Katie, a stóirín, it’s me – I’ve come back for you!’

  The child scarcely moved.

  Ellen put her hand to Katie’s forehead – it was hot to the touch. Gently she brushed back the curls and knotted strands of hair that fell about the child’s face.

  ‘Come on now, a stóirín!’ she said, bending close to her child, her arms underneath the wasted body, cradling her.

  As she bent over Katie, Ellen heard, in a voice so weak, so whispered, that she could scarcely pick out t
he words: ‘A Mhamaí, a Mhamaí – tá tú ar ais …!’

  ‘Yes, Katie, dear, I’m back. I came back for you,’ she said tenderly, her voice breaking with grief.

  She lifted her daughter – skin and bones was all Katie was – and saw the sunken cheekbones of that once-bright face, the hollow look in those once mischievous eyes.

  Ellen knew Katie wouldn’t last long, even before she saw the dark brown blotch on her tongue.

  An fiabhras dubh. Katie had typhus.

  In the lightening dark of the August morning, Ellen held her darling child in her arms. From the height above the town where they stood she could see the Reek. The high mountain of St Patrick towered over them, dwarfing them, magnifying her grief.

  She looked down at Katie.

  ‘Will she be all right?’ Mary asked her, putting her hand up to Katie.

  Ellen hadn’t the heart to answer her.

  ‘She’ll be all right now,’ Mary said, not asking any more, just wanting to believe it. ‘Now that we have her back … Won’t she, Patrick?’

  Like his mother, the boy did not answer her.

  Ellen was heartbroken. She’d come back – she’d kept her word to them! God, what more could she have done? But it all was at nothing now. She was too late for Katie.

  She’d seen it so many times before in the fever sheds – her child was too far gone, too weak to fight the fever.

  Ellen started walking back towards Westport, carrying Katie in her arms, ignoring the carriage.

  They had just crossed the dip of the road back down into Westport when they came for her.

  She had walked, unaware of anything, only the child in her arms, Mary at one elbow, Patrick at the other. Behind them Nell and Faherty, with the silent girl in the back, made up the procession.

  Silent as the darkest hour before dawn was, and locked in her grief, Ellen never heard them, never saw them approach until she felt the hand come down on her shoulder.

  She offered no resistance, even before Sergeant Moriarty asked: ‘Now will you accompany us quietly, Ma’am?’

  It was all so unreal. There they were, on the road between Westport and Castlebar, people strewn all around them, like rags on the roadside. Faherty and the silent girl. Patrick rescued. Mary rescued. Katie dying in her arms. The holy mountain staring down at her, judging her. And the hand of the law, heavy on her shoulder, arresting her.

  ‘Let her go! Let her go!’ shouted Faherty, breaking through to her. ‘Can’t you see her child is dying? Let her go!’

  ‘Faherty, I know you,’ Sergeant Moriarty of the Irish Constabulary said threateningly. ‘This woman has committed a most serious crime. She’ll get a fair trial.’

  ‘Fair trial, mo thóin!’ Faherty swore at the sergeant. ‘Look at her face, look what he done to her – she was right to shoot him! If it was an Irishman she shot, there’d be no trial at all! Who’s going to be tried for all these?’ he demanded, pointing back along the roadside, littered with bodies which the Peelers must have passed. ‘Fair trial be damned!’ he cursed at them again.

  ‘Faherty,’ Sergeant Moriarty warned, ‘you’re asking for me to feel your collar, too. Maybe a night or two in the gaolhouse would do you no harm – at least keep that old nag of yours from fouling the street!’ he added, drawing guffaws from his men.

  Ellen ignored them. It was all part of the unreal dream. The only reality was Katie in her arms.

  Dying.

  Later, she barely noticed the clank of the key as it locked her and Katie into the cell of the Westport gaolhouse. The sergeant had allowed her to keep Katie with her, and had put them into a cell on their own. Faherty had taken the others.

  They gave her some water and threw in a crust of stale bread. She soaked it in the water, mashing it in her fingers, then forced it into Katie’s mouth. She held Katie’s nose, making the sick child swallow it.

  Ellen then tore off a piece of her underskirt, dipped it into the water, and washed the grime and dirt from the child’s face – uncovering the old Katie, as it were. Bit by bit, the white and freckled skin of her child was revealed to Ellen.

  Katie seemed to like this, and made some low murmuring sounds. Ellen talked to her, tried to soothe her fever, all the while cronauning to her, as she had done with Annie.

  Maybe there was a chance yet – maybe Katie would come out of it. In the end she had known Annie wouldn’t, but Katie was older, stronger, and with the bit of food in her … Maybe this once, God would favour her and not take the child. After all she had been through, maybe He would spare her this. No, she decided, not for herself. She wasn’t going to ask for anything for herself any more. No, it was for Katie, to spare her, to let her live and see the New World. And give her the chance of a new life there beyond in Boston.

  ‘It can’t all end like this, Katie,’ Ellen whispered in the cell, gazing on the freshly cleaned face of her child, half-expecting a cheeky back-answer. But there was none.

  Ellen forced some more of the mashed bread between Katie’s lips.

  She’d seen people come out of the typhus before. Hadn’t she come out of it herself?

  She wondered about Patrick and Mary. Thank God she’d got them safe. Now that she had, that didn’t seem to matter so much, only that she hadn’t saved Katie.

  For her child to die in her arms, in a gaol in her own Ireland would be too much for her to bear. It would finally break her. What use would Boston be to her now – without Katie? What use anything?

  On the second day in Westport Gaol Ellen had a visitor. Immediately she saw the long black cassock swirl at the door of the cell she knew who its owner was. Father O’Brien!

  She was stunned and genuinely glad to see him. But how did he know?

  The young priest looked tired, had aged more than he should have. ‘God be with you, Ellen Rua. I’m here in Westport now – Mr Faherty came to me.’

  ‘Dia’s Muire dhuit,’ she said back to him in Irish.

  ‘You never changed, I see,’ he said, good-humouredly, acknowledging how she hadn’t let it go that he had addressed her in English. ‘You look different, Ellen, but you never changed.’

  How wrong he was – if only he knew, she thought.

  ‘Your face – what happened to your face?’

  When she told him, he insisted on bringing in Sergeant Moriarty to be a witness to her injuries. ‘It could stand well to you in the court, Ellen,’ the priest told her. ‘Mitigating circumstances – self-defence,’ he explained.

  After Faherty had told him her story, and about the child, Father O’Brien had come prepared. He had with him the Oleum Infirmorum – the oil of the sick – blessed by the bishop on Holy Thursday. And a small crucifix. The gaoler procured for him two candles, blessed on Candlemas Day, and the priest lit them either side of Ellen as she held the child.

  ‘In nomine Patris et Filii …’

  She blessed herself with him.

  Then he began the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. The Last Sacrament, she thought to herself. It was good she had washed Katie before he came.

  ‘One of the effects of the Sacrament, Ellen,’ he gently explained, ‘is the restoration of bodily health … if this is for the good of Katie’s soul.’ She prayed fervently it might be. The reason for the other effect he didn’t tell her – that as Katie crossed the threshold of death the devil would make his final attack to win the child’s soul. The Sacrament of Extreme Unction would ward off such dangers.

  She listened, offering her own prayers for Katie, as he anointed her with the consecrated oil of olives. ‘Per istam sanctam unctionem et suam piissimam misericordiam indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid per … Visum’ – Through this Holy unction, and through His most sweet mercy may the Lord forgive thee whatever sins thou hast committed by … sight.

  She watched as he signed each of Katie’s closed eyelids. As he made the tiny crosses with his thumb, first on the right eye then on the left, Ellen wondered what sin of sight it was the child could have committed that needed such forgiv
eness?

  Then Auditum – the sense of hearing – he anointed her ears.

  Odoratum – the sense of smell – Katie’s nostrils.

  Gustum et locutionem – her mouth – always full of questions, interruptions, Ellen remembered, a great sadness coming down on her.

  Tactum – touch – the palms of Katie’s hands.

  At Gressum the priest gently raised each of Katie’s feet – the feet that so often landed her in mischief. Tenderly he anointed each instep in turn. ‘Per istam sanctam unctionem … Gressum,’ laying them down again against the folds of Ellen’s dress. Then he put holy water on both mother and child, sprinkling it over them with the sprig of a small-leafed plant.

  Father O’Brien concluded the ceremony by giving Katie the Last Blessing.

  Then it was done. Her angelito was now ready.

  He stayed with her a while, comforting her, talking to her. He was now the curate in Westport. The Archbishop had moved him – thought he could go places if he kept his nose clean and out of politics.

  He had been grief-stricken when he had heard about Michael, blaming himself for having brought him to the workhouse. By the time he knew, it was too late – she had left for Australia.

  She didn’t comment, made it easy on him. Then she told him her story, cutting back about Australia and what she had already confessed, but mentioning Roberteen and Martin and Biddy.

  He said he would visit her before the trial and speak on her behalf at the assizes.

  She thanked him for everything and he left.

  Father O’Brien came every day for the next three days, seeing how they were, praying over them, sneaking in tiny parcels of food. ‘For you and Katie,’ he said.

  Katie had not gotten any worse. Maybe the Sacrament, the oleum infirmorum had restored her as Father O’Brien had said. Ellen herself thought she saw signs of improvement, and kept whispering and singing to her. She felt that the child heard her, and sometimes Katie would respond, mumbling a few words.

  The night before the trial she sat up with Katie as usual, telling her stories of Ngurunderi, and Pondi, the giant Murray Cod, and how Annie was in the starry Milky Way, sailing through the skies in Ngurunderi’s canoe.