‘It’s been such a long time.’ Sarah grinned at Bridget.
‘Aye, I had to do it with that one too.’ Bridget inclined her head towards Michael. ‘He was an awkward feeder.’
Sarah held her free arm out to her daughter and Michael, who were still hovering in the doorway. ‘Come and see,’ she said.
‘Is it a boy?’ Mary Kate couldn’t help herself. She gasped and clasped her hand over her mouth at the sight of the now snuffling and silent bare baby boy, swaddled only in a towelling nappy.
Michael walked almost in slow motion to the bed.
Bridget was piling her potions back into her basket, minding not to interrupt the moment of introduction. She set great store by what happened in the first hour, in more ways than one.
Sarah grasped Michael’s hand and as she did so, the tears fell out of her eyes and onto her cheeks. ‘It is,’ she answered, and then again, ‘Look, see.’
With one hand on the carved wooden headboard, Michael leant over and kissed away the tears from his wife’s face and the top of his son’s downy head. It seemed to Mary Kate, as her parents spoke to each other in hushed and intimate tones, that she no longer existed. It was the three of them – they had forgotten her. Granny Nola was down on her haunches, busy scooping up the bloody sheets into the wicker basket, her long skirt and apron trailing on the floor. Bridget was standing at the pine table under the open window, silhouetted in the moonlight shining through the curtains, which were now still and flat against the wall. She was rinsing out one of her dark green bottles with water from a jug.
Mary Kate was standing in the doorway of a room filled with activity and yet she felt suddenly invisible. She looked at the carved wooden post at the foot of the bed and then down at her scuffed boots. She was used to her parents kissing. They were the most tactile of couples and she had grown up with all of that; she was often a part of it as they hugged together, she high up in her father’s arms. But right now they were laughing and crying all at the same time, which was new and made her feel uncomfortable, not least because she had never once seen her father cry.
As if she could sense her strange loneliness, Bridget turned to look at her and smiled. ‘You got to stay up late, Mary Kate,’ she said as she forced the straw stopper back into the bottle. ‘Life is going to alter for you after today.’ And then without Mary Kate knowing why, Bridget stared at her and seemed to freeze.
Nola stood up, the basket firmly tucked under one arm and resting on her hip, and placed her free arm around Mary Kate’s shoulders. ‘I’ll light a lantern for you to return, Bridget. Tig is waiting to walk with you and see you and Porick safe back. I’m not sure Porick can drive tonight. He’s been in the bar waiting for ye. He can just about walk, let alone drive the cab.’ And then she told Bridget the most welcome news. ‘Josie has sent over some stew. She’s sent a pot for us and one for ye both, to take back for you and Porick.’
Bridget smiled. Josie never let a bit of meat go off. If it was on the cusp, she would throw it into a pot and donate it to some poor family in need. She usually headed out to the sod houses on the Mulranny road, where children lived too close to the earth for a long life and parents laboured on their own smallholdings or on the farms of those that had enough work to feed them. ‘Thank her for me and tell her I’ll return the pot tomorrow before she goes to Mass.’
‘Go on, sit on the bed,’ said Nola as she bent her head and placed the almost reluctant Mary Kate next to Sarah. Once she had sat herself down, Mary Kate looked up at Nola and Nola was relieved to see a nervous smile cross her face.
Bridget then lowered her voice and, looking over to Sarah, whispered to Nola, ‘It took every drop of the motherwort I had to get that little fella out. Will you be around for the night?’
‘I can be,’ said Nola. ‘Why? Are you worried?’
‘Not at all. She’s fine, sure enough, it’s just with so much of the motherwort, I think it would be best, in case she bleeds. I’m not happy with how much blood she’s lost already. But, sure, she was fine with Mary Kate and so she should be again now.’ Bridget placed her hand on Nola’s arm to stem the look of alarm in her eyes. ‘She will be fine, I’m telling ye. Sure, would I be leaving if she wasn’t?’
Michael and Sarah had dried their eyes and silence fell as they both watched their baby take his first snuffling feed. It was as if they were witnessing one of the wonders of the world.
Bridget moved towards the bed, close to where Mary Kate was sitting, which was as near to her mother as she could get. ‘Would you look at the size of you, Mary Kate,’ she said. ‘My, you’ve grown a foot since I last saw you, I swear. Let’s hope he grows as fast.’
‘You haven’t seen Mary Kate for months,’ said Michael. ‘You need to get to Mass more often, Bridget.’
‘Mass!’ Bridget snorted. ‘Father Jerry has banned me. Said I had to stop using my potions on people and leave them to the power of prayer. I told him, not fecking likely. I’ll go tomorrow to say thanks for this little fella’s safe arrival though.’
‘What in God’s name did you do that made him so unhappy?’ Nola asked.
‘Sure, nothing at all. I put the dead hand of Annie, JP’s mammy, on the McAffy girl when she was sick, and Jesus, he near hit the roof. I didn’t know he was outside the cottage talking to the son. Annie had only been dead for not an hour and a half, her hand was only just cold, she hadn’t yet passed over and the McAffy girl, she had the malaise so badly. It worked, though. I placed Annie’s dead hand on her head and held it there for just the five minutes or so and she hasn’t stopped running around since. Whenever I see her, she makes me stand and watch her do a jig, just to prove she’s better. But you see that’s what he doesn’t like, that it works so well, and his prayers don’t always, you know. And besides, I do go to Mass, he never turns me away. I go to the Angelus though, when it’s quiet and no one can hear him giving out to me in the confessional. I said to him, “Are you going to pay for our keep then? Me and my fecking lazy bastard, we’d starve if I didn’t make my potions.” Right, I’ll be off now then. Nola will be staying the night, Sarah. Michael, you know where I am if you should need me, don’t you?’
Michael shifted on the edge of the bed and slipped Mary Kate across to her mother as he stood up to help Bridget with her basket. ‘Look,’ he whispered to Mary Kate, ‘isn’t he the grandest little fella you ever saw?’
Mary Kate looked down at her brother’s red face and all the anxiety she had felt for the entire day slipped away. It was as though her heart had stopped. She gazed up into her mother’s face, which swam before the river of tears in her eyes. Her mother looked concerned, a worried frown crossed her brow. ‘Mammy,’ said Mary Kate and held out both of her arms. She had no idea why, but she was about to cry.
‘Here, come here, would ye.’ Sarah laid the exhausted baby on the bed next to her with one arm then extended her other arm and cradled Mary Kate into her. She cuddled her into her chest and against the bare breast the baby had so hastily but uncomplainingly been plucked from. She rubbed her hands over her hair and kissed her head and face and wiped her tears away.
‘My first job is to always keep you safe, you know that, don’t you? You were our firstborn and that makes you special. You were so special, isn’t it a fact, I couldn’t bear to share you, and so I waited so long to have this little fella.’ Mary Kate let her sobs go as Sarah wiped her face with the corner of the sheet. ‘There now, stop, nothing has changed. We just have a new member in the family. Finnbar, we are going to call him, isn’t that right?’ Sarah looked up to Michael, who nodded.
‘Aye, Finnbar Malone,’ he said, as though practising how the name sounded out loud.
Mary Kate, for once void of protests as her mother covered her in kisses, thought to herself that in her young life this was the first time her mother had ever lied to her. How could she say nothing was going to change? It was a lie. Even at her young age, she knew that from this moment on, nothing would ever be the same again. They wer
e no longer just three.
Bridget picked up her shawl, threw it around her shoulders and nosily descended the wooden stairs with Nola behind. Within seconds, Mary Kate could hear Nola banging around in the kitchen. The tantalising smell of stew floated up the stairs and made her mouth water. She was starving. Someone had come in through the back door and Mary Kate could hear the voice of Tig Devlin, ready to lead Bridget and Porick home. ‘Keeva is desperate to come over,’ he said.
‘Right, Nola, if Sarah can have the luxury of you here for a few days, leave her in bed. Her milk will come in better that way because isn’t it a fact, the minute she puts her feet on the floor, it will dry up.’
Michael went over to his tin, took out a pound and gave it to Bridget.
‘If you need me, send Tig,’ she said. ‘Get her churched as soon as she gets out of bed – I don’t need Father Jerry on me back no more. Make it there as soon as you can and then you can have the christening and the party. I’ll be thanking you for this, Michael.’ Bridget placed the pound into the pocket of her apron. ‘Goodbye, Sarah. Come on, Tig, keep the lamp high and in front, we don’t want to be tripping over any sleeping goblins on the way back, now do we. They won’t be expecting us at this hour.’
*
Tig had sat Porick down by the fire in the McAndrews’ cottage before he left. Bridget occupied herself refilling her bottles before she came to join him.
‘Ye took your time with that one. Losing yer touch, are ye?’ Porick was hail-fellow-well-met to strangers, a surly man to his wife.
Bridget would have loved to have brought the pan of stew down on his head, even though she’d carried it carefully up the hill, over trench and rut, and past the curious eyes of unseen animals, not to mention more than a dozen goblins, roused by their footsteps and the lamp.
Porick had busied himself around the fire while she was sorting out her basket. ‘I hope those four potatoes was for me, because I’ve ate the lot.’
‘Since when have you had four? ’Twas two each. If we had four each, we’d be out of potatoes weeks before the next harvest, as well ye know.’ Each potato was counted and layered in straw on the shelf above the cow. The cow was munching and settled and Bridget looked down and saw that the metal pail was full and the cow had been milked; she wondered which of her neighbours had called in to help.
She thought she heard Porick snort with laughter. ‘We have the stew,’ he said.
Bridget lifted the pot out of her basket and placed it on the wooden table. She cleared away the straw that Josie had packed around it to keep it warm and untied the cloth. Laying the muslin cloth out, she picked up her spoon from her clean tin bowl, which sat next to his, and began to eat. ‘If you want any, you can fetch it yourself. But I suppose you are too full of the stout and potatoes now.’
Porick looked sideways at her. The tantalising aroma had reached him, but he didn’t speak; he didn’t dare. With Porick and Bridget there were no big fights or rows, it was a war of attrition, each aiming to have inflicted the greater number of wounds by words at the end of the day.
After a few spoons, Bridget found she could no longer eat. ‘Come, take your fill,’ she said as she stood and wearily made her way over to her bed. ‘There’s no better stew than that made by Josie, but it won’t last till tomorrow. She doesn’t use the best meat for what she gives away for free. Eat.’
Porick didn’t need to be asked twice. With a scraping of his chair and a grudging, muffled thanks, he sat at her place and ate noisily.
‘Ye have the grace of Murphy’s pig,’ she said as she lay down on her side of the straw mattress and stared up at the thatched roof. She mulled over the delivery of Finnbar in her mind. ‘I won’t be sleeping the night,’ she said to Porick.
The only reply was his slurping on the stew. She shut her eyes, but the demons would not leave her. She was being warned and she had no idea by who or about what. In that damp and almost pitch-black room, she felt the premonition. She had seen it in the dazzling eyes of Mary Kate as the little girl had looked up at her, and it lay heavy on her heart.
*
Father Jerry waited until Teresa had retired for the night before he unlocked the chest at the foot of his bed. She had tried to find the keys to it, this he knew, but they lived around his waist, day and night, and had never been removed since the chain-link had been fastened on to him by the bishop on the day he’d arrived. It had been the same for every priest of the Sacred Heart since who knew when. He had received his instructions in a tone both grave and clear. ‘This is your responsibility alone. Should you die, instructions are in Galway as to what will happen in that eventuality. Do not speak of your responsibility. The knowledge must die with you. The Pope himself and a small number of people at the Vatican are the only people aware outside of Ireland. Do you understand?’ He did understand. It meant that the responsibility being placed on his shoulders was immense, and he would receive a special place in heaven. He understood that he had been chosen. But now he was in danger. He had a job to do.
He lit a lamp and placed it on the wooden table next to the chest, then fell to his knees and said his first prayer of penance. He was wearing a white calico nightshirt and nothing else. Taking a deep breath, he lifted the lid, removed the heavy leather and brown-paper covering and gasped as emotion gripped his throat and tears filled his eyes. He had the same reaction every time. He pulled his nightshirt over his head, naked before his penance and God. He knew there had been attempts by the warrior monks during the Crusades to have the chest and its contents removed and sold to Rome, but Tarabeg had been saved by the words of St Patrick himself, written on the scroll he now lifted from the top of the chest and held in his hands: ‘A message from Patricius to the people of Tarabeg.’
The scroll declared Tarabeg to be a place where no man would be touched by evil, a place that would be saved as heaven on earth by the protection of the word of St Patrick, who, in the writing on the scroll, said that he had found the people of Tarabeg to be the happiest, the kindest, the most godly and loving that he had met after landing on the shores of the west. That among the druids and heathens he had encountered in other lands, the people of Tarabeg had been the most welcoming of the deeper knowledge of Christ. The scroll was adorned with shamrocks, inked in St Patrick’s own hand. It described Tarabeg as a place where the Holy Ghost was present in every home, residing in its people and lifting them up to a spiritual plane enjoyed by no other community in the land. It finished with the instruction that the scroll must never leave Tarabeg. If it did, the Holy Ghost would leave with it. It must reside within the church built by the people who had converted to Christ and had erected his house near the river. The scroll concluded with a flourish: ‘All this upon the order of St Patricius.’
‘Where have I gone wrong? What have I done wrong?’ Father Jerry moved the scroll for fear his tears of penitence would stain it. Laying it down, he lifted out the cilice, a full-length hair shirt spiked with sprigs of dried heather and gorse that his predecessor told him had been threaded through the fabric by St Patrick himself. The heather and gorse sprigs turned mainly to dust and so, once a year, Father Jerry painstakingly replaced them.
He slipped the shirt over his head and flinched as the sharp sprigs pierced his skin. The shirt was open at the back. Bending, he lifted the leather whip and began his act of corporal mortification. Evil was running through the boreens of Tarabeg. He had been vigilant, he’d thought, but eight years ago there had been a murder, and now this, the revelation and confession of Theady O’Donnell. His heart had broken when Theady told him of the things Mr O’Dowd had done, and the things Mr O’Dowd had made Theady do to him. A man he had trusted, believed, called his friend, and all along he’d been practising his own form of evil, right under Father Jerry’s nose, using him. The Devil had been laughing at him, had taken him for the fool he truly had been. Tomorrow he had work to do, and he would need the help of every villager, but throughout this night he had his penance to pay.
Chapter 22
Michael woke in the early hours, sat bolt upright and thought he had died and gone to heaven at the sight of Sarah and Finnbar in the bed. It had been the dream that had woken him, as it often did. Someone was shouting at him, warning him, trying to wake him. ‘Michael! Michael!’ the voice implored. He was sure it was his Grandma Annie. His heart pounded with the adrenaline of fear. The curse cast on Sarah by Shona played heavy on his mind, but as he looked over at her and his son, his heartbeat slowed and he chastised himself for being ridiculous. The candle in the lantern on the press was only halfway down. Together with the last of the embers in the hearth, it threw a warm glow across the room and chased away his demons.
It had been near midnight before he and Sarah had fallen into a deep and contented sleep, both aware that it was one of the most special nights of their lives. They were high on the miracle of new life and neither could stop staring in wonder at their son, who lay in the bed between them.
‘He has your nose,’ said Sarah.
‘God help him,’ Michael exclaimed. ‘But thanks be, he has your eyes. Does he not look just like Mary Kate did the minute she was born? ’Tis impossible to tell them apart.’
Nola had brought into the room the carved crib that every Malone baby had lain in since Seamus was born. A mattress of fresh straw lined the bottom and sides, and tucked around it was brand-new linen, testament to the growing prosperity of the Malone family. But Sarah had refused to part with her son. ‘I’ve only just laid me eyes on him and I’ve waited so long, I’m keeping him with me.’
‘I expected you to say that, Sarah. I did,’ said Nola. ‘I said to Seamus, “I wouldn’t be worried about carrying it down from the farm today, she will do it her way, will Sarah.”’ She smiled, satisfied that she’d done all she could for her daughter-in-law, and took herself and Mary Kate off to bed.
It was a sin for Michael to sleep in the bed with Sarah until she’d been churched. For the next week he would sleep on a truckle bed next to the fire in the kitchen. But Sarah pleaded with him not to leave them. ‘Don’t go to the kitchen,’ she said. ‘Stay here with us for tonight.’
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