Scarlett

by Alexandra Ripley

  One by one the wise woman piled blood-stained towels atop one another until the hole in the window was filled. Then she turned. “Light the lamps again,” she said. Her voice was hoarse, as if she had rust in her throat.

  She took off her wet black shawl, folded it neatly, placed it on a chair. Beneath it she was wearing a brown shawl. That, too, came off and was folded, put on the chair. Then a dark blue one with a hole on one shoulder. And a red one with more holes than wool. “You haven’t done as I told you,” she scolded Colum. Then she walked to the smith and kicked him sharply in the side. “You’re in the way, smith, go back to your forge.” She looked at Colum again. He lit a lamp, looked for another, lit it, until a steady flame burned in each.

  “Thank you, Father,” she said politely. “Send O’Neill home, the storm is passing. Then come hold two lamps high by the table. You,” she turned to Mrs. Fitzpatrick, “do the same. I’ll ready The O’Hara.”

  A cord around her waist held a dozen or more pouches made of different-colored rags. She reached into one and withdrew a vial of dark liquid. Lifting Scarlett’s head with her left hand, she poured the liquid into her mouth with her right. Scarlett’s tongue reached out, licked her lips. The cailleach chuckled and lowered the head onto the pillow.

  The rusty voice began to hum a tune that was no tune. Gnarled stained fingers touched Scarlett’s throat, then her forehead, then pulled up and released her eyelids. The old woman took a folded leaf from one of her pouches and put it on Scarlett’s belly. Then she extracted a tin snuff box from another and put it beside the leaf. Colum and Mrs. Fitzpatrick stood like statues with the lamps, but their eyes followed every move.

  The leaf, unfolded, contained a powder. The woman sprinkled it over Scarlett’s belly. Then she took a paste from the snuff box and rubbed it over the powder and into Scarlett’s skin.

  “I’m going to tie her down lest she injure herself,” the woman said, and she lashed ropes from around her waist below Scarlett’s knees, across her shoulders, around the sturdy table legs.

  Her small old eyes looked first at Mrs. Fitzpatrick, then at Colum. “She will scream, but she will not feel pain. You will not move. The light is vital.”

  Before they could reply she took a thin knife, wiped it with something from one of her pouches, and stroked it the length of Scarlett’s belly. Scarlett’s scream was like the cry of a lost soul.

  Before the sound was gone the cailleach was holding a bloodcovered baby in her two hands. She spit something she was holding in her mouth onto the floor, then blew into the baby’s mouth, once, twice, thrice. The baby’s arms jerked, then its legs.

  Colum whispered the Hail Mary.

  A whisk of the knife cut the cord, the baby was laid on the folded sheets and the woman was back beside Scarlett. “Hold the lamps closer,” she said.

  Her hands and fingers moved quickly, sometimes with a flash of the knife, and bloody bits of membrane fell to the floor beside her feet. She poured more dark fluid between Scarlett’s lips, then a colorless one into the horrible wound in her belly. Her cracked humming accompanied the small precise movements as she sewed the wound together.

  “Wrap her in linen then in wool while I wash the babe,” she said. Her knife slashed through the ropes binding Scarlett.

  When Colum and Mrs. Fitzpatrick were finished, the woman returned with Scarlett’s baby swaddled in a soft white blanket. “The midwife forgot this,” the cailleach said. Her chuckle brought an answering throaty sound from the baby, and the infant girl opened her eyes. The blue irises looked like pale tinted rings around the black, unfocused pupils. She had long black lashes and two tiny lines for eyebrows. She was not red and misshapen like most newborns because she had not passed through the birth canal. Her tiny nose and ears and mouth and soft pulsing skull were perfect. Her olive skin was very dark against the white blanket.

  63

  Scarlett struggled towards the voices and the light her sedated mind vaguely perceived. There was something . . . something important . . . a question . . . Firm hands held her head, gentle fingers parted her lips, a cooling sweet liquid bathed her tongue, trickled down her throat, and she slept again.

  The next time she fought for consciousness she remembered what the question was, the vital, the all-important question. The baby. Was it dead? Her hands fumbled to her abdomen, and burning pain leapt at her touch. Her teeth bruised her lips, her hands pressed harder, fell away. There was no kicking, no firm rounded lumpiness that was a questing foot. The baby had died. Scarlett uttered a weak cry of misery, no louder than a mew, and the releasing sweet draught poured into her mouth. Throughout her drugged sleep slow weak tears seeped from her closed eyes.

  Semiconscious for the third time, she tried to hold on to the darkness, to stay asleep, to push the world away. But the pain grew, tore at her, made her move to flee it, and the moving gave it such strength that she whimpered helplessly. The cool glass vial tipped, and she was freed. Later, when she floated again to the edges of consciousness, she opened her mouth in readiness, eager for the dreamless darkness. Instead there was a cold wet cloth wiping her lips, and a voice she knew but couldn’t remember. “Scarlett darling . . . Katie Scarlett O’Hara . . . open your eyes . . .”

  Her mind searched, faded, strengthened—Colum. It was Colum. Her cousin. Her friend . . . Why didn’t he let her sleep if he was her friend? Why didn’t he give her the medicine before the pain came back?

  “Katie Scarlett . . .”

  She opened her eyes halfway. Light hurt them, and she closed the lids.

  “That’s a good girl, Scarlett darling. Open your eyes, I’ve something for you.” His coaxing tone was insistent. Scarlett’s eyes opened. Someone had moved the lamp, and the dimness was easy.

  There’s my friend Colum. She tried to smile, but memory flooded her mind, and her lips crumpled into childlike bubbling sobs. “The baby’s dead, Colum. Put me to sleep again. Help me forget. Please. Please, Colum.”

  The wet cloth stroked her cheeks, wiped her mouth. “No, no, no, Scarlett, no, no, the baby’s here, the baby’s not dead.”

  Slowly the meaning became clear. Not dead, said her mind. “Not dead?” said Scarlett.

  She could see Colum’s face, Colum’s smile. “Not dead, mavourneen, not dead. Here. Look.”

  Scarlett turned her head on the pillow. Why was it so hard, just to turn her head? A pale bundle in someone’s hands was there. “Your daughter, Katie Scarlett,” said Colum. He parted the folds of the blanket, and she saw the tiny sleeping face.

  “Oh,” Scarlett breathed. So small and so perfect and so helpless. Look at the skin, like rose petals, like cream—no, she’s browner than cream, the rose is only a hint of rose. She looks sun-browned, like . . . like a baby pirate. She looks exactly like Rhett!

  Rhett! Why aren’t you here to see your baby? Your beautiful dark baby.

  My beautiful dark baby. Let me look at you.

  Scarlett felt a strange and frightening weakness, a warmth that washed through her body like a strong, low, enveloping wave of painless burning.

  The baby opened her eyes. They stared directly into Scarlett’s. And Scarlett felt love. Without conditions, without demands, without reasons, without questions, without bounds, without reserve, without self.

  “Hey, little baby,” she said.

  “Now drink your medicine,” said Colum. The tiny dark face was gone.

  “No! No, I want my baby. Where is she?”

  “You’ll have her next time you wake up. Open your mouth, Scarlett darling.”

  “I won’t,” she tried to say, but the drops were on her tongue, and in a moment the darkness closed over her. She slept, smiling, a glow of life under her deathly paleness.

  Perhaps it was because the baby looked like Rhett; perhaps it was because Scarlett always valued most what she fought hardest for; or perhaps it was because she’d had so many months with the Irish, who adored children. More likely it was one of the wonders that life gives for no cause at all.
Whatever the origin, pure consuming love had come to Scarlett O’Hara after a lifetime of emptiness, not knowing what she lacked.

  Scarlett refused to take any more pain-killer. The long red scar on her body was like a streak of white-hot steel, but it was forgotten in the overwhelming joy she felt whenever she touched her baby or even looked at her.

  “Send her away!” Scarlett said when the healthy young wet nurse was brought in. “Time after time I had to bind my breasts and suffer agonies while the milk dried up, all to be a lady and keep my figure. I’m going to nurse this baby, have her close to me. I’ll feed her and make her strong and see her grow.”

  When the baby found her nipple the first time and nursed greedily with a tiny wrinkle of concentration on her brow, Scarlett smiled down at her with triumph. “You’re a Momma’s girl, all right, hungry as a wolf and fixed on getting what you want.”

  The baby was baptized in Scarlett’s bedroom, because Scarlett was too weak to walk. Father Flynn stood near the Viceregal bed where she was propped up against lace-trimmed pillows holding the baby in her arms until she had to give her over to Colum, who was godfather; Kathleen and Mrs. Fitzpatrick were godmothers. The baby wore an embroidered linen gown, thin from washings, that had been worn by hundreds of O’Hara babies for generation after generation. She was named Katie Colum O’Hara. She waved her arms and kicked her legs when the water touched her, but she didn’t cry.

  Kathleen wore her best blue frock with a lace collar, although she should have been in mourning. Old Katie Scarlett was dead. However, everyone agreed that Scarlett should not be told until she was stronger.

  Rosaleen Fitzpatrick watched Father Flynn from hawk-like eyes, poised to snatch the baby if he faltered for a second. She’d been speechless for a long minute after Scarlett asked her to serve as godmother. “How did you guess how I feel about this baby?” she asked when her voice returned.

  “I didn’t,” said Scarlett, “but I know I wouldn’t have a baby if you hadn’t stopped that monster woman from killing her. I remember a good bit about that night.”

  Colum took Katie from Father Flynn when the ceremony was over and put her in Scarlett’s outstretched hands. Then he poured a tot of whiskey for the priest and the godparents and made a toast: “To the health and happiness of mother and child, The O’Hara and the newest of the O’Haras.” After that, he escorted the doddering saintly old man to Kennedy’s bar where he bought a few rounds for all there in honor of the occasion. He hoped against hope that it would stop the rumors that were already flying all over County Meath.

  Joe O’Neill, the blacksmith, had cowered in a corner of Ballyhara’s kitchen until daylight, then scuttled to his smithy to drink himself brave. “Though Saint Patrick himself would have needed more than all the prayers at his beckoning on that night,” he told anyone who would listen, and there were many.

  “Ready was I to save the life of The O’Hara when the witch come through the stone wall and throws me with terrible force onto the floor. Then kicks me—and I could feel in my flesh that the foot was no human foot but a cloven hoof. She cast a spell on The O’Hara then and ripped the babe from the womb. All bloody was the babe, and blood on the floors and the walls and in the air. A lesser man would have sheltered his eyes from such a fearful sight. But Joseph O’Neill saw the babe’s fine strong form beneath the blood, and I’m telling you it was a manchild, with manhood plain between its limbs.

  “ ‘I’ll wash the blood away,’ says the demon, and she turns her back, then presents to Father O’Hara a spindly frail near-lifeless creature—female and brown as the earth of the grave. Now who will tell me? If I didn’t see a changeling, what was it I saw that terrible night? There’s no good will come of it, not to The O’Hara nor any man who’s touched by the shadow of the fairy babe left in place of The O’Hara’s stolen boy.”

  The story from Dunshaughlin got to Ballyhara after a week. The O’Hara was dying, said the midwife, and could only be saved by ridding her of the dead babe in her womb. Who would know these things, pitiful though they were, better than a midwife who’d seen all there was to see of childbirth? Of a sudden the suffering mother sat up on her bed of pain. “I see it,” says she, “the banshee! Tall and clad all in white with the fairy beauty on its face.” Then the devils drove a spear from Hell through the window and the banshee flew out to wail the call to death. It was calling the soul of the lost babe, but the dead babe was restored among the living by sucking out the soul of the good old woman who was grandmother to The O’Hara. It was the devil’s work and no mistaking and the babe The O’Hara takes for her own is nought but a ghoul.

  “I feel that I should warn Scarlett,” Colum said to Rosaleen Fitzpatrick, “but what can I tell her? That people are superstitious? That All Hallows’ Eve is a dangerous birth date for a baby? I cannot find any advice to give her, there’s no way to protect the baby from talk.”

  “I’ll see to Katie’s safety,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick said. “No one and nothing enters this house unless I say so, and no harm will come near that tiny child. Talk will be forgotten in time, Colum, you know that. Something else will come along to weave tales about and everyone will see that Katie’s only a little girl like any other little girl.”

  A week later Mrs. Fitzpatrick took a tray of tea and sandwiches to Scarlett’s room and stood patiently while Scarlett bombarded her with the same plaint she’d been making for days.

  “I don’t see why I have to stay stuck up here in this room forever. I feel plenty well enough to be up and about. Look at the lovely sunshine today, I want to take Katie out for a ride in the trap, but the best I can do is sit by the window and look out at the leaves falling. I’m sure she’s watching. Her eyes look up and then follow them floating down—Oh, look! Come look! Look at Katie’s eyes here in the light. They’re changing from blue. I thought they’d turn brown like Rhett’s because she’s the spit of him. But I can see the first little specks, and they’re green. She’s going to have my eyes!”

  Scarlett nuzzled the baby’s neck. “You’re Momma’s girl, aren’t you, Katie O’Hara? No, not Katie. Anybody can be a Katie. I’m going to call you Kitty Cat, with your green eyes.” She lifted the solemn baby up to face the housekeeper.

  “Mrs. Fitzpatrick, I’d like to introduce you to Cat O’Hara.” Scarlett’s smile was like sunlight.

  Rosaleen Fitzpatrick felt more frightened than at any time in her life.

  64

  The enforced idleness of her convalescence gave Scarlett many hours to think, since her baby spent most of the day and the night sleeping, exactly like all other infants. Scarlett tried reading, but she had never cared for it, and she had not changed in that way.

  What had changed was what she thought about.

  First and foremost, there was her love for Cat. Only weeks old, the baby was too young to be responsive, except in reacting to her own hunger and the satisfaction of Scarlett’s warm breast and milk. It’s loving that’s making me so happy, Scarlett realized. It has nothing to do with being loved. I like to think Cat loves me, but the truth is she loves to eat.

  Scarlett was able to laugh at the joke on herself. Scarlett O’Hara, who’d made men fall in love with her as a sport, as an amusement, was nothing more than a source of food to the one person she loved more than she’d ever loved in her life.

  Because she hadn’t really loved Ashley; she’d known that for a long time. She’d only wanted what she couldn’t have and called that love.

  I threw away over ten years on the false love, too, and I lost Rhett, the man I really loved.

  . . . Or did I?

  She searched her memory, in spite of the pain. It always hurt to think about Rhett, about losing him, about her failure. It eased the pain some when she thought about the way he’d treated her and hatred burned away the hurt. But for the most part, she managed to keep him out of her mind; it was less disturbing.

  During these long days with nothing to do, however, her mind kept going back over her life, and she co
uldn’t avoid remembering him.

  Had she loved him?

  I must have, she thought, I must love him still, or my heart wouldn’t ache the way it does when I see his smile in my mind, hear his voice.

  But for ten years she had conjured up Ashley in the same way, imagining his smile and his voice.

  And I wanted Rhett most after he left me, Scarlett’s deep core of honesty reminded her.

  It was too confusing. It made her head ache, even more than her heart. She wouldn’t think about it. It was much better to think about Cat, to think about how happy she was.

  To think about happiness?

  I was happy even before Cat came. I was happy from the day I went to Jamie’s house. Not like now, I didn’t dream anybody could ever feel as happy as I do every time I look at Cat, every time I hold her, or feed her. But I was happy, all the same, because the O’Haras took me just the way I was. They never expected me to be just like them, they never made me feel I had to change, they never made me feel I was wrong.

  Even when I was wrong. I had no call to expect Kathleen to do my hair and mend my clothes and make my bed. I was putting on airs. With people who never did anything so tacky as put on airs themselves. But they never said, “Oh, stop putting on airs, Scarlett.” No, they just let me do what I was doing and accepted me, airs and all. Just like I was.

  I was awful wrong about Daniel and all moving to Ballyhara. I was trying to make them be a credit to me. I wanted them to live in grand houses and be grand farmers with lots of land and hired hands to do most of the work. I wanted to change them. I never wondered what they wanted. I didn’t take them just the way they were.

  Oh, I’m never going to do that to Cat. I’m never going to make her different from what she is. I’m always going to love her like I do now—with my whole heart, no matter what.