The Darkling Bride

by Laura Andersen

  She set Cullen the task of trying to get the cryptic Winthrop to release any information about the Gallaghers’ financial affairs, specifically during the children’s minorities, and mulled over which member of the unhappy marriage to tackle first. It would have to be Kyla, she decided. The woman seemed much nearer to collapse than her husband.

  Then her direct line rang. “Inspector McKenna?”

  It was the young man from the National Library. “Do you have something for me?” Sibéal asked.

  “I don’t know if it will be of any use to you,” he answered, “but it’s certainly interesting. There’s a manuscript of some sort—the date on the first page is 1882.”

  Sibéal remembered Carragh Ryan’s story about a Victorian writer: he came to write a book, and ended up marrying the daughter and heiress of the house. She felt as though she were on a precipice, that last, breathless moment before tumbling down the slope into understanding. “What does it say?”

  “There’s a dedication, like you find in most books. It reads: ‘For Jenny. And in memory of James Michael Gallagher, gone too soon and left unmourned.’ ” The man paused. “Then there’s a signature: Evan Chase.”

  * * *

  —

  Aidan spent the night in a Dublin hotel and in the morning walked to the General Register Office. His route took him through St. Stephen’s Green, up the pedestrian and tourist-friendly Grafton Street to Trinity College, then west to Dublin Castle. He remembered his father bringing him here, touring the remains of the stronghold built by King John of England in 1204. “Almost as old as Deeprath,” Aidan had said, somewhat disappointed to realize his home wasn’t absolutely unique.

  “Yes,” his father had laughed, “but King John’s descendants aren’t still living in Dublin Castle today, are they?”

  The castle, for so long the center of English political and military power in Ireland, was today a combination of tourist site, police offices, and government buildings. Including the General Register Office and its public research facility, which held the records of Irish births, marriages, and deaths back to 1864. Just far enough back to be useful to Aidan.

  God bless Father Hennessy, for the priest had given him several pieces of information to help solidify his vague instincts. Five surnames—Byrne, Farrell, Lynch, O’Brien, Ryan—and two places—Wicklow town and Wexford. He began calling up records to examine and threw himself into research.

  Aidan knew he had forgotten himself too much since returning to Ireland. Not everything that had happened since he was ten years old was a mistaken attempt to wall off his past. He was thirty-two and old enough to know at least some of his talents, and he knew that he’d been a bloody good Arts and Antiquities officer because he was tenacious when on the scent. Willing to plow through financial records and auction catalogs and witness statements from long-ago cases that might hold a hint to a missing artwork or a current crime organization using art as capital. He had an almost sixth sense for relevant information that he used today by pretending this case had nothing to do with him, but was simply a random crime to be unraveled.

  With the records not quite reaching the Famine years, Aidan had to make some educated guesses about which families in the two towns might have had ties to Deeprath Castle. Just because they bore one of the surnames Father Hennessy had listed didn’t mean they were relevant. He could hardly research every O’Brien in southern Ireland, for example. But census records helped narrow things down, with occupations listed, and slowly his mass of indecipherable notes began to narrow into a single line of inquiry.

  In 1865, Elinor O’Brien married Robert Lynch in Wexford. The bride was twenty-four, making her just old enough to remember the Famine and, quite possibly, the Gallagher family who had sheltered them. It was certainly true that both Elinor’s father and her new husband worked at a Gallagher-owned import company in Wexford. In 1866 came the birth of their first child, a daughter named Mary. They had five more children over a period of eleven years, before Robert Lynch’s death in 1877 at the age of forty.

  Though focused on dates and facts, Aidan felt the tendrils of grief and hard work and poverty woven into this story. Even if he hadn’t felt that he was on the right track, he might have kept researching just to find out what happened to Elinor and her children.

  In May 1881 the birth of Rory Lynch, “bastard son of Mary Lynch,” was recorded. The girl, still living with her widowed mother and siblings, had been only fifteen. Perhaps it was for the best, then, that the baby died just four months later. Easier for Elinor’s daughter to make a new start, one would suppose. But if she had, it had not been in Wexford. In fact, not just Mary Lynch, but Elinor O’Brien Lynch and every one of her children vanished from the county records after September 1881.

  They must have moved elsewhere. But where, and how? Widowed mothers with large families to care for rarely had the resources to relocate, even if they were able to find work. What had happened to Elinor Lynch, her daughter Mary, and the rest of them after 1881?

  When he came to himself and checked his watch, Aidan was startled to find he’d been researching for six hours. No time now to try and trace the Lynches. They might have gone to any county in Ireland. Possibly even to America. He might be intellectually curious about them, but at the moment he had what he needed. If it wasn’t exactly what he’d been looking for…But then, he’d come here today not knowing what he was looking for. Just following his mother’s trail and his own instincts.

  He turned on his phone upon leaving and found eight missed calls from Inspector McKenna and one from Winthrop. He listened to the messages both had left, swearing aloud in surprise several times. The library was set on fire? Carragh was accused? The Rathdrum police took her to the station for questioning?

  His first call was to the solicitor, telling him to get over to the station at once, ensure that Miss Ryan’s legal rights were being respected, and to get her released if he could. Then he called Sibéal McKenna.

  “Where the hell have you been?” she yelled at him as though she were his sister. “Never mind. Miss Ryan has been taken to Rathdrum—”

  “I know. I listened to your message. I’ve sent my solicitor over to take care of it. Look, Inspector, would you meet with me tomorrow? I think I’ll have some information for you by then—information you will want.”

  “Is that so? Well I have information today. There was a document case found amongst the bones and fallen stone from the tower.”

  “Yes,” he answered warily, his pulse quickening.

  “It contained a manuscript that a National Library specialist is examining. The cover page appears to have been written by Evan Chase and contained a dedication to James Michael: ‘gone too soon and left unmourned,’ ” she quoted. “Tell me, Lord Gallagher, why would Chase write that about his son, who lived to be ninety-two, and whose funeral in 1972 was attended by hundreds of mourners?”

  Aidan thought rapidly—almost as rapidly as his heart was beating. “I appreciate the call, Inspector. I have things to do now. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  He could almost hear her shouting at him even after he’d turned off his phone.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Carragh had Winthrop drop her off at the top of the castle drive, and felt serious qualms as his car disappeared. Had it really been less than two weeks since she first came here? Impossible to remember any time before Deeprath Castle. Or envision any time after.

  Each step down the drive increased her sense of unreality. There was a shivery quality to the air and a gossamer look to the trees—as though reality itself was fading in and out. Or, perhaps, fading from one time and sharpening into another?

  The castle frontage reared up before her, and there was nothing in that sight to indicate whether she still stood firmly in 2015 or had slipped into another time stream. Get a grip! she scolded herself, and wondered about the best way to get inside without being seen.

  The answer was obvious—the library. The outer priest’s door had b
een pulled open by the firefighters, and it seemed no one had bothered to close it since. Stepping gingerly past the scorched rood screen, she stared mournfully at the wreckage of the main library. She couldn’t work in here even if she’d wanted to. But right now her object lay beyond.

  She pulled out her sturdy flashlight (best gift ever, she silently thanked her father) and switched it on. Even if the electricity at the castle was working—and she hadn’t seen any lights in the windows—those lines did not extend to her destination.

  Slipping on the mess of chemical foam and fire debris, Carragh edged her way to the keep door. Here, the damage was the worst. The family cabinets and the Bride’s Tower entrance had clearly been the targets of the arsonist’s anger. She could only be glad that the keep itself hadn’t been set on fire. The shell and stairs might be stone, but the levels could have collapsed on one another if that had been the intention. But she didn’t think so, having a feel for her opponent now—a person anxious to mislead and misdirect, not destroy the very fabric of the castle.

  She shone the flashlight up the spiraling steps and took a deep breath. A series of deep breaths. It didn’t make stepping into that claustrophobically dark space any easier.

  The late afternoon sunlight pierced through the arrow loops and the lancet windows on each level. The frozen-in-time sitting room had the best light, for it had been set up in what was undoubtedly the original solar, the level on which the lord and his family and most important retainers had lived in relative comfort. There were more windows here, a little wider than the ones below, and fitted with glass sometime in the nineteenth century. Carragh opened all the interior wooden shutters. She had not spent any time here in daylight since her first brief exploration, so she turned off the flashlight and made a more detailed examination.

  This time she wasn’t exploring for curiosity’s sake, she was looking for a few specifics. She took down every remaining book on the fitted shelves and examined each from front to back. Nothing loose fell out, and no notes or marks had been made in the text. She had to discipline herself from imagining Jenny turning these pages and wondering if she had found pleasure in reading or just a tedious method of passing the time. This wasn’t about identifying with Jenny Gallagher. It was about teasing the truth from the myth. Or if not truth, then at least the facts.

  She found nothing in the books. Nothing in the cupboards and linen chest but fragile remnants of cloth and dust. She even turned the carpet over to ensure there were only floorboards beneath. She left the Louis XV walnut desk for last.

  The outer drawers held blank writing paper embossed with the Gallagher griffin at the top, some dried inkwells, and a beautiful fountain pen with gold nib, etched with geometric designs in red and black. Carragh couldn’t help but hold it, running her fingertips across the surface and appreciating the weight of it in her hand. Then she replaced it where she’d found it and continued her hunt.

  She pulled down the sloping cover to its desk position and began on the inner drawers. Expecting only more emptiness, she searched quickly. In the fourth drawer, to her surprise, she found a single cabinet photograph.

  The four-by-six-inch photos had been a popular item in the late nineteenth century: the images, usually sepia-toned, were pasted to a cardboard backing, then displayed on cabinets. Carragh had seen some in her grandmother’s attic. The photo she was studying now showed a young woman with abundant dark hair plaited in the semblance of a band framing a rounded face. She wore a loose-fitting robe of some dark material, probably because she had recently delivered the baby she held in her arms. The infant was little more than big eyes, a rosebud mouth, and a drift of dark hair all drowning in the traditional long white ceremonial gown of the Victorian infant.

  It was one thing looking upon the oil painted version of Jenny Gallagher’s face. To see the purity of her profile, the curve of her cheek, and the not-quite visible smile with which she looked on her son gave Carragh an uncomfortable sense of spying on an intimate moment.

  The desk held nothing else.

  There was nothing left to examine but the upper floor and its haunting walls. Someone in the past had put a more modern oil lamp in the sitting room and a convenient box of matches. Oh, who was she kidding? “Thank you, Lily,” she murmured, and was only a little startled at the soft laugh that echoed in her ears.

  Lamp in one hand, flashlight in the bag slung over her shoulder, Carragh moved cautiously up, her irregular breathing fluttering her lightweight jumper. I’m coming, she thought. Help me find what you need, Jenny.

  There was no way she could read large swaths of the writing directly on the walls, but she needed to try. If she was right, then just two or three sentences was all she needed to confirm her suspicions. Someone had made sure to destroy the enlarged photographs and her laptop. She didn’t necessarily need either one.

  With her memory of the section she had transcribed, Carragh scanned the walls a few inches at a time, starting to the immediate right of the staircase. Soundlessly, she repeated the distinctive phrases she could remember: disdaining those spirits…darkening days and endless nights…first sin of the fae…the darkling shadows…

  And at last she found it.

  The Bride had forgotten them. She had fled her bright world for the darkling shadows of the mortal one and counted her people well lost for her pride. But sin casts a long shadow. Where one child is lost, another may be found. If the girl would not return of herself, then let her pay the price.

  Where one child is lost, another may be found.

  Carragh thought of the photograph below, of a mother’s love, of a woman judged mad and locked up to…what? Keep her from harming herself? Keep her from harming others with her ravings?

  Or to keep others from the truth?

  She continued to scan the walls, looking for more than just vague hints. But when it came, it was in a form she could never have guessed. My child, my heart, my baby lost…At first she couldn’t think where she’d heard that phrasing before. And then, as clearly as though he were standing next to her, she heard Aidan reading aloud in the library:

  “My child, my heart, my baby lost

  I will find though balked and crossed.”

  They locked her in a tower bossed

  With iron locks, and grief did frost

  The Dark Bride of Deeprath.

  The words on the wall were not arranged in the same visual form—but they were undoubtedly from the Poem of the Bride. The poem dating from the era of Evan Chase, captured only in a privately printed family book. A poem—it now seemed—written by Jenny Gallagher.

  And painstakingly copied out by hand by the boy called James Michael Gallagher.

  Something sounded in the staircase and Carragh’s head jerked up. That hadn’t been any sort of ghostly noise. She heard it again: a series of rhythmic knocks coming from the direction of the enclosed stairs. With a firm grip on her flashlight, she called out, “Who’s there?”

  “It’s just me.” Aidan appeared, hands spread out as though ensuring her that he wasn’t going to attack. “I wanted to make sure you heard me coming.”

  She blinked and realized it had grown dark outside. “What time is it?”

  “Just after nine. How long have you been here?”

  “Didn’t Winthrop call and report on my movements to the lord of the manor?” He raised one insolent, interrogative eyebrow, and she nearly flung the flashlight at him in an excess of nerves. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Dealing with my sister,” Aidan answered evenly.

  Only then did Carragh remember that awful moment when he’d learned of her affair with Philip. She braced herself for whatever came next, but he merely said, “Then I spent time with Penelope and after that I had some things to set straight.”

  What kind of time did you spend with Penelope? Not that it was any of her business. Not at all. Certainly not after…was it really just yesterday?

  “What are you doing up here?” Aidan asked her.

>   “Presumably what you meant me to do when you told Winthrop to bring me back here. Unraveling this puzzle to its end. I assume that’s what you’ve been doing as well?”

  He simply smiled. “Come down and we can share.”

  The lights were still out, but he led her to the kitchen and the marble-topped island used by generations of cooks to knead dough and press out cookies and chop vegetables. Mrs. Bell kept multiple oil lamps for her use there, and soon they had plenty of light.

  “She doesn’t mind us in her kitchen?”

  “I sent them home for the night.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you think?” He held her gaze steadily. So, he’d reached some of the same conclusions she had. “Whatever happens next, it’s a Gallagher problem.”

  “All right,” Carragh agreed. “Tell me what you found.”

  “After I took Kyla home, I went to see Penelope and had her hypnotize me. It worked. I remembered what happened in the half hour or so before I found my father. Then I went to see the family priest, then to Dublin for some research, and back again to Kilkenny earlier this evening.”

  “Why Kilkenny again?”

  “To prove a point. I proved it.” He pulled a notebook bound in peacock blue leather from his backpack. “I found my mother’s missing journal.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  September 1992

  CLUE #5

  This is it, my love. One to go. The hunt ends at the spot where you asked me to marry you. Not the Official Proposal—in the castle drawing room with all your family present—but the one just for us. Remember?