Gracelin O'Malley

by Ann Moore

  “Don’t count on it,” she said.

  “No.” And then he grinned wickedly. “But am I not the father of a feared revolutionary? And might there not even now be rebels in the wood?”

  Grace’s face was grim. “God only knows where he is, Da.”

  “But God knows right where we are, Grace, and He’ll not abandon us.”

  She hugged him quickly, nearly crushing him to her, then scooped up Mary Kathleen and the carpet bag in one arm, the other hand on the handle of the pistol, extra caps and powder in her pocket. Patrick kissed his granddaughter’s head and tousled her golden hair.

  “Off with you now, wee Mary Kate.” He winked to ease her fear. “We’ll play a bit of a game, if you like.”

  She nodded soberly.

  He put his finger to his lips. “Now hide away with your mam, like a good girl, and I’ll come find you when it’s time.”

  The shouting was louder now and Grace slipped out of the cabin, crouching behind the low stone wall as she made her way up the hill past the bothan to the sheep hut. She looked back once and saw Patrick standing in the door, urging her on with his hand, and then he went around the side. From the hill, she could see him start down the lane at a trot.

  It was only a matter of minutes before she smelled smoke and realized they were burning the roof off Neeson’s cabin, and most likely O’Daly’s next. She could hear the screams of a girl and the angry shouts of young men, but not the low voice of her father. Suddenly a shot rang out and all fell still. Another shot followed.

  Grace looked into the frightened face of her daughter.

  “Come,” she whispered. “We’ll go higher up.”

  They crept out of the hut and up to the top of the hill where Grace and Sean had played in the hollow tree as children. She’d not been there in years, but was relieved to see the tree still stood.

  “Pretend you are a wee elf,” she told Mary Kathleen. “And this is your home in the wood. Crawl away inside and I’ll lay these branches across the opening to make you invisible. Here’s your elfin child.” She put Blossom into Mary Kate’s arms. “Hold her close and sing a quiet lullaby whilst I go and hunt our supper.”

  Mary Kathleen looked doubtful, but crawled into the hollow trunk and sat down, her eyes wide with uncertainty.

  “And now to make you invisible!” Grace said with desperate cheerfulness, covering the hole until she could no longer see her daughter’s face.

  “Mam!” came a frightened cry from within.

  Grace closed her eyes, hand on the branches. “Be brave, wee elf!” she whispered. “Sing your song, and I’ll be back before it’s done.”

  There was no answer and Grace’s heart was torn. She tucked the gun more firmly into her waistband and began to run along the top of the ridge until she was above the O’Daly and Neeson cabins.

  Lying in the road were Shane O’Daly and the younger Neeson boy. A soldier sat nearby pressing a bloody cloth to his head. Patrick was trying to calm Niamh, his arms around the hysterical girl, while Mister Neeson attempted to pull his son Paddy off a soldier who had drawn a knife. Ceallachan stood across the road, watching the outbreak with scornful amusement. At his command, soldiers were carrying out the meager possessions of the O’Dalys and dumping them in the road. Furniture smashed and dishes shattered, curtains were torn from the windows and the glass of a small picture frame was ground under boot heels. Niamh stopped shrieking and sat on the ground, dazed, cradling her husband’s head in her lap.

  Ceallachan yelled to one of the soldiers, but they pretended not to hear and continued razing the cabin. He screamed again, and when still they ignored him, he walked over to the dead boy himself, grabbed his feet by the boots, and tried to drag him away from his widow. Patrick moved forward to stop him, and Neeson let go of his son long enough for the boy to escape and attack the agent. Ceallachan scrambled away, drew his pistol, and fired wildly. Patrick crumpled to the ground, and Neeson and his boy moved back in horror. Grace stuffed her fist into her mouth to keep from crying out, and froze, crouched against the wall, until Ceallachan drew back his pointed boot and kicked her father viciously in the head, shouting curses all the while.

  With a stealth that belied her pounding heart, Grace crept down through the bushes and sparse trees, staying low behind Neeson’s wall until she was close enough to take a shot. Her hand shook, but she steadied it with the other, supporting the barrel in a crevice of the wall as she drew a bead on Ceallachan. She held her aim for a split second, then fired, ducking down behind the wall, eyes squeezed shut in hurried prayer. Cautiously, she rose again to see what had happened, and there was Ceallachan fallen to his knees, a dark red stain spreading out on the cloth that covered his thigh. He clutched the leg with both hands, screaming in pain and fury, spittle flying from his mouth. The soldiers froze where they stood; no one came to his aid. She aimed and fired again, this time hitting him square in the forehead. His eyes went wide with surprise and he toppled over, facedown in the dirt. Then panic set in. The soldiers—afraid of being fired upon—grabbed Neeson and Paddy, and pounded them with small clubs, while another hauled Niamh to her feet and held her in front of him as a shield. She struggled to get away as Neeson and Paddy began to crumple beneath the relentless blows. Grace made herself wait for a clear shot, sweat running down her forehead and stinging her eyes. There it was—and the soldier holding Paddy collapsed, dead. Paddy rushed to help his father, but was immediately attacked by the knife-bearing soldier, who plunged the blade up to the hilt into the boy’s arm. Grace inched forward, fearful of hitting Mister Neeson or Paddy; closer, closer, and then she aimed and fired another round. In the confusion that followed, Niamh twisted away and the last two soldiers ran for their horses, leaping upon them and galloping at full speed away from the wreckage. Grace fired her last round at the backs of them, then stood and shook out her hand, cramped from squeezing the trigger.

  Niamh saw her first and called to the others, who stared at Grace as though she were a ghost. They watched the apparition pick her way through the rocks, and then their mouths fell open in amazement when they recognized Patrick O’Malley’s daughter. She ran across the road and knelt by her father, her hand slipping under his shirt to his chest.

  “He’s still alive,” she said grimly. “Help me get him up.”

  Neeson and Paddy came at once and together they carried him to the stone wall across the road, propping him up so that he sat. He gasped and hacked against the lack of air in his chest, spit up, then weakly opened his eyes.

  “By God, if this is Heaven, I’ve been cheated,” he wheezed.

  “Hush, now.” Grace felt along his shoulder for the place where the bullet had entered. “You’re a long way from dying, Da, but you’re hurt bad enough.”

  Neeson had gone to his youngest son, kneeling beside him in the dirt. He laid a hand upon the boy’s chest and said his name, shaking him when his eyes did not open. Blood bubbled up between his lips and trickled down the side of his face. Neeson crossed himself and bowed his head. His shoulders shook as he wept. Paddy came quietly to his father and put an arm around him.

  “There’s not much time,” Grace said quietly.

  “I’ll not leave him lying in the road.” Neeson choked back his tears, reaching out to touch the boy’s face and smooth back his dark hair.

  Grace’s heart raced with anxiety; any minute the soldiers might return with help to finish the job. “Put him in O’Daly’s cabin,” she directed. “Burn it down.” Her eyes fell on Niamh. “Best to lay Shane there, as well,” she added, gently.

  Niamh let out a wail and clung to her husband, sobbing, “No, no, no,” as Mister Neeson rose slowly to his feet and went to her. He put his great arms around her shoulders and eased the pregnant girl to her feet, murmuring in her ear all the while. She moaned and began to crumple against him, but he held her firmly, forcing her to take one step and then another, guiding her away from the boy who had been her husband.

  Paddy lifted up the body of
his young brother and carried it into the empty cabin, returning a moment later for Shane, eyes lowered as he picked up the boy and bore him inside, as well. Mister Neeson led Niamh to the wall next to Patrick, then, with Grace helping, made small twists of long, dry grass with which to set the cabin on fire. They circled the small hut, lighting the edges of the roof, then throwing their torches in the door. The fire caught and spread, and they backed away from the heat to stand beside Niamh and Patrick, silently watching as the flames consumed it, sending into the air blackened bits of straw and thatch. There was a great whoosh as the roof collapsed and yellow flames shot out the windows. Mister Neeson helped Patrick to his feet and they backed even further down the road, still unable to take their eyes off the funeral pyre.

  “We must go,” Grace said at last. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Aye,” Neeson said. “But where?”

  “They say there’s food to be had in the city, if you can make it that far.”

  “Is that where you’re headed?” He watched the thick black smoke pile up overhead.

  She put her arm around Patrick’s waist, supporting him. “I’ve got to get the shot out of his shoulder and let him rest.” She looked up at the hills. “And I’ve got my daughter, as well.”

  “We’ll wait and go together.”

  Grace shook her head. “They’ll be looking for us.” She glanced at the dead soldier in the road. “We’ve killed one of their own, now, Ceallachan, as well, and they’ll be back with a hanging rope, sure enough. You must go on ahead. We’ll be but a day or two behind you.”

  “Will you go up into the woods, then, until he’s fit to travel?”

  “Aye.” Grace bit her lip.

  Neeson examined her face, then nodded reluctantly. He turned to his son. “We’ll keep Niamh with us?” he asked, and the boy put his arm around her shoulders protectively in answer.

  “God be with you, then,” Grace said, tears welling in her eyes. “Go safely.”

  “And you.” Neeson gave a little bow, dignified to the end. “We’ll be looking out for you in the city.”

  She watched them start off down the road—the fraught, weeping, widowed girl supported on either side by a man gone suddenly old and his last living son—and then she tightened her grip about her father, turned him around, and guided him slowly back down the empty lane.

  Thirty-one

  GRACE eased Patrick onto the pallet still lying on the floor of their cabin, then scrambled up the back path to retrieve Mary Kate, whose hands were covering her face, mouth opened in silent scream. She calmed the child as best she could, then carried her back to the cabin, setting her in the corner with Blossom while she tended to Patrick. When she looked up, Mary Kate had escaped yet again into the safety of sleep, clutching her doll and breathing heavily. Relieved that the child would not have to witness yet another grim scene, Grace quickly sterilized her sharp paring knife over the fire. Patrick grunted when she slit the ragged wound in his shoulder, and again when she dug out the blunted ball with her fingers. She cleaned and dressed the wound, and made a cold compress for the knot on the side of his head. After brewing up the last of the medicinal herbs for him to drink and filling her pockets with bits of raw potato, Grace again picked up Mary Kate and they all crept over the hill to sleep in the woods in an abandoned botha, though Grace sat wakeful that long first night. She roused them at first light and led them for two days through the woods until she felt it was safe enough to join the silent travelers on the road to Cork City, relieved at last to be anonymous in the throng. She had Mary Kate tied to her back, the carpetbag in one hand and a walking stick in the other. Patrick walked slowly beside her, a blanket over his shoulders, a hat pulled down over the mess of a bruise that shadowed half his face. She’d thrown the revolver and caps into the river in case they were stopped by soldiers.

  She had not been in the city since the day she’d ridden to the docks with Brigid, Phillip, and Edward Donnelly, and it was worse than she’d remembered. The streets were packed with ragged beggars, and filthy crowds sat outside the workhouse and hospital. Loaves of bread were piled up in the bakery window, and sausages hung visible in a butcher shop, but now that there was food to be had at last, few had money to buy it. As mouths salivated and eyes narrowed furtively at meat and bread and cheese so close, yet unavailable, the smell of riot hung thick; the smell of sickness mingled with it, clinging to clothing and doorways, fetid and dank, as ripe as the smell of death that blew overhead from bodies piled up behind the hospital waiting to be burned. Patrick pulled the blanket tight across his nose and mouth, Grace tied a cloth around her own and adjusted Mary Kathleen’s face so that it pressed into her shoulder. Now that they were here at last, she wondered what on earth to do. The days on the road had been spent trying to keep moving, keep fed, keep warm against the chill of early October nights. She had only thought to get to the city, get to the docks. Here, she had hoped to find word of Morgan or Sean, and some kind of a plan, but as she looked around at the hundreds of exhausted, starving faces, her hope turned to hopelessness. She dared not ask for anyone by name and she had seen no familiar faces. Irish could no more be trusted than English; reward money was too tempting in light of the food that could be had. She made her way along teeming streets to the docks, where several vessels were loading, masts and spars waving in the choppy sea; there, she sat down on a crate and untied Mary Kathleen, shifting the child to her lap.

  “Musha, we’re here now,” she murmured, pulling the kerchief away from her mouth and breathing in the salty air.

  Mary Kathleen roused herself and looked around, then faced her mother.

  “Where’s this?” she asked plaintively.

  Grace mustered a smile. “Cork City,” she announced. “A grand place once, and grand again, sure enough, though crowded now and smelly.”

  Mary Kathleen nodded, wrinkling her nose. She laid her head against her mother’s chest and sighed.

  “We need to eat.” Patrick rose unsteadily to his feet. He had not weathered the trip well, and his wound was beginning to stink. He was pale, despite the purple and green of his bruise, and sometimes he frightened her by not knowing where he was upon waking. “I’ll fish here.”

  She looked into the greasy water and spied an arm floating out from behind a piling. “No, Da,” she said. “We’ll eat nothing out of here. Sit and rest a bit while I think on what to do.”

  She bit her lip, remembering the Dublin docks where she’d stood as a bride, watching the emigration of sons and daughters, mourned by families weeping and wailing and praying over their beads for children they never expected to see again. Leaving Ireland was like leaving life, and no one wanted their children to go from it. But that had been before—now, the emigrants waited quietly, thin and haggard, holding the hands of gaunt children, no one mourning their leaving, as it was death they left behind and life they sought in the far away. These weary travelers would be weeks on the sea, but few carried much in the way of provisions, having nothing left to carry, and Grace wondered what would happen to them when they landed in the new land, empty-handed. Would clothes and food miraculously appear? Jobs and food and cabins be handed out like ale and tobacco? She prayed God it might be true, for sure she was that Sean had landed with little more than a coat to keep him warm and a cough rattling around his chest from the damp at sea. She stood stiffly and stretched, then put out a hand, which Mary Kathleen took at once.

  “I’ll walk a bit and see about food and shelter for tonight, Da,” she said. “You stay here and don’t move, for I’d hardly know how to find you in all this crowd.”

  Grace marked the street and the name of the boat that anchored closest to her father, then walked along the dock, turning into an alley when she smelled the tantalizing odor of roasting meat. It was strongest in front of a small, grubby pub for soldiers and Grace boldly took up a place outside the door, lifting her hand to each group that came reeling out.

  “Please, Captain,” she begged. “Have you n
ot a penny or a bite of meat for my hungry child?”

  Some turned a piteous glance in her direction, but most ignored her, having become numb to the sight of starving women and hollow-eyed children. Others, full of drink, offered lewd suggestions as to how she might earn the odd penny and more. Grace’s face turned red with these propositions, and she pulled Mary Kathleen into her skirts, covering the child’s ear with the palm of her hand.

  “Missus Donnelly!”

  She glanced up warily out of the corner of her eye, and then raised her head and smiled with relief.

  “Henry!”

  He was with a group of young men who hooted and nudged one another until he glared at them and barked a reprimand. When they’d staggered off, he took Grace by the arm and led her away from the pub.

  “What in God’s name are you doing here?” he asked anxiously. “This isn’t a fit place for a person like you.”

  “Then what is it you’re doing here, Henry Adams?” she scolded.

  They stopped at the end of the alley and he smiled, despite his alarm at her condition. “It’s good to see you,” he allowed. “I’ve thought of you often. And how’s the young patient?”

  “Hallo, Henry,” Mary Kate said shyly, peeking out from behind her mother’s muddy skirt.

  He bent down and patted her head.

  “You’ve had a long trip, haven’t you?” he said, then looked at Grace. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “We’ve come to find …” She stopped. “I don’t know. Gran has died, you see, though not of fever. And Ryan and Aghna have gone to Galway …”

  “Oh, no.” His face went pale.

  “Aghna never got well, you, know, after Thomsy died, and Ryan thought that maybe being with her own people …”

  He shook his head. “They’ll be lucky to reach it alive,” he said. “Let alone find any family. What about your father?”

  “Shot by Ceallachan and the soldiers come to evict our lane and tear down the cabins.”