by Ann Moore
“I’ll not fail you in keeping the little one alive,” he vowed fervently. “I’ll watch over him night and day, and he’ll never leave my arms when I bring him across the sea.”
“I know you’ll try,” Grace said wearily from her bed.
Patrick pounded his fist into his thigh. “I will not try, girl! I will do it! As God as my witness, I will do it! Don’t you see, Grace? It’s why I’m still alive after all this. Haven’t I asked the Lord why He’s spared my life and taken so many others worth so much more? And now I have His answer.” He reached across the bed and picked up her hand. “I understand that you can’t be sure—all the wrong turns I’ve made—but please, Grace, please give me this chance to do right by you. Please, darling … for I see no other way.”
Grace wept and Patrick wept, but at last they were calm and talked quietly through the afternoon about the future, even laughing a bit when Grace explained to him about changing nappies.
In the evening a priest came to baptize young John Paul Morgan McDonagh, and with the last of the Holy Sisters’ medicinal whiskey, they all drank to his future—may it be strong and sure—before leaving him alone at last with his mother, who held him long and whispered the tale of his father’s days and how she’d loved him all her life.
Thirty-six
EXHAUSTED, but resolved, Grace rose early to spend the final hour with her son and her father; Patrick kissed her and urged her to be strong, then picked up Mary Kate and held her tightly, promising to see her in the summer sun.
When the carriage arrived, Grace and Mary Kate left them sitting in the small room. At the foot of the stairs, in the entry hall, Barbara and the sisters stood waiting for her. They came forward shyly, murmuring prayers for a safe voyage, pressing into her hand small cards with drawings of Mother Mary and the Sacred Heart, rosaries, a crucifix, Saint Christopher medals, dried flowers pressed flat in pocket prayer books. She accepted each gift gratefully, watching her own slow movements as if in a dream, hazy from the laudanum Doctor Branagh had left for her. He had arrived this morning with Miss Martin from all those years ago, and Grace could still not quite make out how events had turned. She kept looking around the crowded foyer for Mary Kate, though the child clung to her hand.
They helped her out to the carriage, and Doctor Branagh called to the driver to take it slowly down the road. Grace heard the iron gate clang shut behind them, and when she turned, the nuns were pressed against it, watching her go. She looked up to the top floor of the somber gray building and saw her father holding the baby, standing in the window, his hand raised in silent farewell.
The pain of leaving them behind, of having lost Morgan forever, of having lost so many, even Henry—not home and married and raising horses with his father, but dead—seared her heart and rose as such an anguished moan from her throat that Doctor Branagh gripped her shoulders and called to the driver to hurry up now, never mind what he’d said before, be quick about it.
She had thought to die when the letter came, when she read his last words and held in her hand his wedding ring. She had closed her eyes and willed herself away, but a small hand, anxiously wandering over her arm, had kept her from leaving the world, had made her open her eyes again and see the worried, pale face of her daughter, a face that pleaded to be seen, begged not to be left behind. And that had ended her wish to die, for how could she have even considered abandoning this child who had survived against all odds, this child who had lived through so much and still clung to life? She had taken that small, fluttering hand and stilled it against her own heart, had pulled her daughter close and felt the heat of her, the beat of her heart, and had drawn from this the courage to live. The terrible loss of the many was not greater than the love of the one, and so she would endure.
Dr. Branagh’s interns carried her into the private hospital, which was light and airy, despite the lateness of the season. A nurse undressed her and put her to bed; she was soothed to see a cot made up next to it for Mary Kathleen. She watched Miss Martin sit in a chair in the corner of the room and take the child upon her lap. The sound of her voice as she told an old story and the rhythmic rocking of the chair assured Grace that it was only sleep she was falling into and that she would awake before too long.
Within days, Grace was remarkably improved. The nurse had awakened her regularly for sips of beef tea and bites of oatmeal, letting her sleep in between. The heavy bleeding had ceased, though she still wore rags against the spots, and yesterday, she’d gotten up twice to walk, gratified that her legs were steady and her mind clear and lucid. Miss Martin—Julia, Grace called her now—was to arrive after breakfast and make the journey to Dublin with her; from there they would travel to Liverpool, and then Grace and Mary Kate would board the ship for America.
“Well, and isn’t that my favorite sight in all the world?” Doctor Branagh said gleefully, coming in. “Pink cheeks and sparkling eyes!”
Grace was dressed, sitting in a chair near the window, Mary Kate on her lap.
“I’m much better,” she told him. “Thanks to your good care.”
“Isn’t that grand?” He rubbed his hands together briskly, then sat down on the edge of the bed. “And do you feel well enough to travel up to Dublin?”
Grace nodded.
“That’s fine, then. I have complete confidence in you.” He glanced at his pocket watch. “Julia will be here within the hour, and off you’ll go!”
Grace nodded again, slowly this time, as her heart began to pound with great thuds against her chest.
Doctor Branagh noticed her anxiety and put away his watch, glancing at her surreptitiously until she regained her composure. He was suddenly flooded with the memory of the first time he had seen her—so gay in the first days of her marriage, so fresh and beautiful that one wanted to hold her up to the world and say, “This, this is Ireland!” And now she sat, robbed of her youth, robbed of her gaity and her innocence, the luster of her magnificent hair faded and her face marked by grief—yet still hauntingly beautiful beneath it all.
“You’ve suffered more than most, Grace,” he said quietly. “God has dealt you a heavy hand, but you bear up well and we’re all proud of you.”
Tears filled her eyes and she bit her lip.
“McDonagh was a fine man,” he pronounced. “The finest.”
“Aye.” She turned away as if to look out the window. “I can’t speak of him just now, Doctor, if you don’t mind.”
“I know,” he said. “When Missus Branagh died, I wanted to keep the whole of my life with her to myself, for fear it would fade if I shared it out.” He paused. “But I learned that, after a while, talking about her made her more real to me, kept her alive, don’t you know. Because other people had their memories of her to share, as well. I believe you’ve got one yourself.”
“That night at O’Flaherty’s dinner party,” she said, turning back to him. “I was but sixteen then, and didn’t she take me right under her wing like a mother hen?”
He chuckled. “Oh, she liked you tremendously, you a country girl like herself. And she always hoped things would go well for you. We were uneasy about the Squire, you know,” he added. “I’d attended his first wife and the second, and I had reservations as to his … stability.”
Grace said nothing.
“The Missus died of fever last year—so tireless she was looking after those in the lanes that couldn’t make it to the hospital. I warned her, begged her to take heed …” He shook his head.
“She went where God led her,” Grace comforted. “And she did what she felt she must.”
A nurse came in then, bearing a covered tray. The doctor rose and pulled a small nightstand over by Grace’s chair.
“There now, my dear. Your breakfast.” He took the tray from the nurse, uncovered it, and set it beside Grace. “You must eat it all now, both of you.”
Mary Kate’s stomach rumbled and she folded her hands in prayer in order to eat right away.
Doctor Branagh laughed. “That’s the
right idea, wee girl,” he said. “Tuck in and put it all away.” He turned to Grace. “Julia will be here shortly. I’ll see you then.”
Grace fed Mary Kathleen and ate her own porridge. There was plenty and it came with milk and butter, the taste of which still sometimes brought tears of relief to her eyes. She thought again with gratitude of the kindness of the nuns in taking her in, of Doctor Branagh’s attention, and Julia’s concern. God had taken away, but truly He had given in return.
When they had finished, she wiped their mouths, brushed her own hair and braided it, and tied a hat around Mary Kate’s short locks. They were dressed warmly in clothes provided by Julia, and their faces glowed with the heat of their nourishing breakfast.
“Soon, we’ll go,” Grace whispered.
“To America.” Mary Kate tucked Blossom into her pocket. “To Uncle Sean.”
“Aye. And won’t he be the happy man?”
“Will it be like Heaven, then?”
Grace shook her head. “No, though they say the streets are paved with gold and every man has a whole chicken in his pot each night!”
Mary Kate’s eyes widened. “Do I like chicken?” she asked.
“It was your favorite.”
She nodded soberly. “I thought …” She hesitated. “If it was like Heaven …” Her voice trailed off.
“Aye?” Grace encouraged.
“I thought I might see my brothers there,” she finished quickly. “If it truly is like Heaven.”
Grace’s heart turned over and she pulled the little girl close. “I’m sorry about your wee brothers. Don’t I wish they were with us even now?” She felt the hot sting of tears, but willed them away. “But I thank God for you, Mary Kate,” she whispered into her daughter’s musky hair. “You are ever a blessing to me, and come the summer, we’ll have little John Morgan with us, as well.”
They sat quietly until a commotion in the corridor announced Julia’s arrival. There was the clatter of dropped breakfast trays, a nurse’s admonishment about running in the halls, and Julia’s loud cursing. Mother and daughter looked at one another and giggled.
“I like her,” Mary Kate whispered.
“And I,” Grace agreed.
Julia burst into the room, bringing with her the fresh bite of autumn wind. To them, she was warm and funny—winking and making sly jokes about bedpans and disinfectant—but with the nurses she maintained a brisk and businesslike demeanor lest they think her a flighty eccentric making off with reluctant wards.
She organized them into the fast carriage that would carry them to Dublin, their satchels stashed away inside out of the weather, a basket of rolls tucked between them. They all received a warm embrace from Doctor Branagh, who begged Grace to write of their wonderful new life in America, and to remember those who loved her here. And then they were off.
Not an hour out of Cork City and Mary Kate was fast asleep, her head in her mother’s lap. Julia was scribbling away on a pad of paper, cursing every rut and dive the carriage took, so Grace pulled back the window flap for the company of nature. They were in the countryside now, trees nearly stripped bare of their leaves, grass gone brown and withered, awash in mud. The sky was low and threatened rain, but it was a rare cabin that sent smoke up through the rough chimneys—there seemed to be no one about on this day, and she knew then that they still lay weak in their cabins, starving and dying of fever. Her world had changed, but theirs had not. She gazed out at the sweeping landscape, the low stone fences that marked out each holding, one next to the other away off across the valley to the hills, toppled cabins, thatched roofs, empty yards. Her eyes ached with straining to catch the glimpse of a farmer crossing the yard, his wife at the butter churn, children in the lane shouting out their game. There was no one. And then there was a child, solitary, batting at a colored ribbon that hung from a tree branch. She looked for faces in doorways and saw none, but recognized the color of another ribbon. And another.
“What are all the ribbons tied about?” she asked, puzzled.
Julia looked up from her writing, and pulled back her own curtain. “Those are the colors of Ireland,” she said quietly. “To honor our fallen hero.”
Grace stared at her.
“Your husband, Missus McDonagh!” she exclaimed, her smile wry. “The rightful King of Ireland, to hear them talk in the pubs.”
Grace turned to look out the window again, her eyes filling with tears. The trees blurred, and the colored ribbons were smudges of bright and dark streaming past. She wiped her eyes. They were everywhere. Now that she looked, she saw them tied to trees and bushes, fenceposts, gates and shutters, over doors and windows, sailing from pubs and shops, houses, cabins, and hovels. In the bogs, they hung from lean-tos and the handles of spades stuck in the turf.
“It began when word spread of his death,” Julia said. “His men went round and tied them where they’d be seen. The guards caught wind of it and ordered all ribbons to be removed or those responsible would be arrested.” She paused. “The next day there were hundreds tied everywhere, and the day after that, thousands. They say the colors fly for him up and down the coast, and inland all the way to the West.”
“And have men gone to jail for this?” Grace asked, her eyes still on the passing scenery.
Julia shook her head. “They can’t arrest us all,” she said simply. “So they’ve let it go. They think that now our hero is dead, the uprising will die, as well.”
Grace looked at her. “Will it?”
“Never.”
They smiled at one another.
“Did you know him well?” Grace asked after a moment.
“Not as well as I would’ve liked,” Julia replied. “But that’s a story for another day. He was a good friend to me,” she added.
“Aye, he was always that.” Grace leaned back in the carriage, her fingers brushing lightly over her wedding band. “And you’ve become one, as well. I don’t understand it, Julia, but I thank you for all you’ve done.”
“We owe him this,” she said matter-of-factly. “We owe you, as well. You’d have been married to him all your life had the Young Irelanders not caught him up and carried him away.”
Grace shook her head slowly. “’Twas not what God intended. I was married to another, and even if Morgan and I had wed, there’s no saying we’d have lived through the famine or the fevers. No, this was how it was meant to be—God put me where I could be of service to Him, and He did the same with Morgan.” She paused, then smiled. “Did you ever hear him sing?”
Julia laughed. “All the time. What a beautiful voice on that man. He and David—Lord Evans—would sing for hours if we kept their glasses filled and the logs burning. Your brother joined in once or twice, as well, if I’m not mistaken.”
Grace looked doubtful. “Sean? Waste breath on song when he could be talking?” She shook her head. “That doesn’t sound like my brother.”
Julia laughed again, “No, but it’s true. Are you glad to be going to him?” she asked gently.
Grace hesitated, worrying her lip. “Sure and I’ll be glad to see his face again, though don’t I wish it were here in Ireland and times the better for it.”
“Are you afraid?”
Grace looked down at Mary Kathleen lying in her lap. “No,” she answered truthfully. “I’ve lived through everything there is to be afraid of.”
After two fast days of travel, they arrived in Dublin. Julia had booked them into the same hotel where Grace had spent her honeymoon, but in the face of the continued starving outside the door and the gaunt look of the doorman, it was a bitter reunion. She asked at the desk after Alice and was told the maid had lost her husband to fever, and had emigrated with her two children. Grace silently wished her well.
Worn out, Julia drank down a tall whiskey and water, had a bath, and went to bed, leaving Grace and Mary Kate alone to bathe themselves in faded splendor, and to spend their last night in Ireland kneeling before the windowsill, looking out at the gaslights spread across the grand
city of Dublin.
“There’s the River Liffey.” Grace pointed across the city. “You can see the lights on Halfpenny Bridge where your father and I walked one night.”
“What is that great dark forest?” Mary Kate asked.
Grace laughed quietly, mindful of Julia sleeping a bed away. “Phoenix Park. There’s a lovely teahouse in the very center. I’ll take you there one day.”
“Will we come back to Ireland, then?” She looked up at her mother.
Grace smoothed the hair out of her face. “Aye,” she promised. “We’ll come back to Ireland. ’Tis our home, is it not?”
Mary Kate nodded. Grace pointed out the spire of Christchurch Cathedral and told her daughter all about the wonderful dress shops in Sackville Street, where she had once ordered a scarf of Limerick lace and a velvet evening gown, French gloves, and the most beautiful blue bonnet. She whispered about going to the theater and concert halls, to fine restaurants, and to Dublin Castle and the University Library. Mary Kate listened in wonder, her chin resting firmly in the crook of her little arm until she fell asleep and Grace carried her to the grand bed they would share on this, their last night.
And then it was the last morning, the sun bright in the clear, crisp autumn sky. Julia organized their bags and had them carried down to a carriage, which transported them to the docks. There again, she was all business, arranging their tickets and the small cabin that would be theirs for the short crossing to Liverpool. Grace and Mary’ Kate stood on the dock, hand in hand, looking at the tall masts that rocked in the harbor, watching the bustle of seamen around them.