Chapter 17
There were no more friendly meetings at the neighbors’ houses … no gatherings … no song, no merry laugh of the maidens. Not only were the human beings silent and lonely, but the brute creation also, for not even the bark of a dog, or the crowing of a cock was to be heard.
“Where are ye going?” Michael asked from the dining table as I emerged from the elder girls’ shared room. Almost the whole family sat—with only Da absent—ten pairs of eyes staring at me as if I had sprouted a second head since my arrival from Dublin the day before.
Tucking in a loose strand that had escaped my braided bun, I ran a hand down the bodice of my Big House uniform, brow raised. Where else would I be going?
“To work.” I crossed the bare main room to join them, lips pursing as I realized Michael wasn’t in his uniform. “Did his lordship give ye leave for the digging?”
Michael’s eyes widened, and he glanced from me, to the dark brown bread in his hand before laughing. It wasn’t a hearty sound, but weighted with disbelief—enough to set my heart racing.
“Michael,” Mam warned softly.
“Arra, Mam!” Thumping a fist against the tabletop, Michael scraped back from the table and stood as the half door opened.
Da walked in, wooden cup in hand, thin steam rising from its contents against the brisk morning chill.
“Enough, Michael,” Da said, handing the cup to Síofra. She took a sip and passed it to Nancy, who took a sip, then passed it on.
My brow furrowed.
“Change into regular clothes, Maggie. I have a job of my own for ye.” Da looked tired, and I bit my bottom lip, trying to make sense of it all.
“Is it the wedding?” I asked, taking a step forward.
Christ, I knew something was amiss, and it was a fair bold thing to march up to the Big House as if nothing had happened, but I had to survey the lay of the land.
If Teddy and I were to work through the hurdles, I needed to know what had happened.
For though a part of my heart had died along with our babe, I could forgive him for abandoning me in my time of need, if only he would explain.
I could find a way to begin again. “I can’t be working at the Big House if I’m to join the family. ”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, give me strength,” Michael swore, starting for the door. “Did ye lose yer brain along with yer babe?”
The air left my lungs, and the sting of tears burned my eyes.
A slap resounded through the room, and Michael stumbled into the table.
“Get out, and cool off.” Da’s voice cut through the wide-eyed din. In all my life, Da’d not once taken a hand to any of us. “And don’t ye dare come back ’til yer ready to apologize to yer sister.”
Pale-faced, Michael clutched his cheek, glanced at me, then nodded and left the house.
“A sup for Maggie, Mam,” Da said, quiet again, pointing to the wooden cup that had made it to Mam.
She handed it to Da, and he took a step toward me to offer it.
“A sup, mind. Everyone needs to make do with this much, lest the pig grows too weak for market. It’s our last one, and we need a good price to make rent. ”
I glanced into the cup, and my brows arched as the coppery tang of fresh blood assaulted my nostrils. Things were so bad we’d resorted to letting the only livestock we had left?
“Keep your strength up.” With a warm smile, Da patted my shoulder before turning on his heel and disappearing into his and Mam’s room.
“Drink up,” Mam said softly, eyes glistening with tears as her lips curled into a weak smile.
I brought the cup to my lips.
And tipped it back.
But I didn’t drink. They were in more need than I—I who’d been fed the best of everything these last few months. I who’d ached with loneliness, while everyone else ached with want.
Changed into everyday attire—a chemise worn beneath a gray woolen skirt and faded black bodice—I strolled, shawl clutched tight around my shoulders, on my way back from doing business. Da had gathered the tenants a week prior, and a plan was formed.
If the crop failed again, he’d use whatever coin he had left, buy supplies, and dole it out to get us all through winter. That was the job Da had for me—to purchase enough grain to last the season.
The market, spanning the length of the stylish main thoroughfare—four carriage-widths wide—from square to wharf, was busy, thick with people if not coin.
Most bartered with pieces of fabric—some the very clothes off their backs.
But most were there to stare down the vendors, hoping against hope that a charitable soul might part with a morsel or two to keep away the pain.
“Wella wisha, Mistress O’Shaughnessy.”
I turned to my left, with a ready smile. ’Twas Bridie Moran, from Scattery Island, here to sell estuary-caught bass and flounder.
“Hello, Mrs. Moran. Soft day,” I noted, referencing the steady drizzle that showed no sign of letting up.
“Aye, soft indeed,” she said, throwing a glare at the thick clouds in the sky afore glancing back at me. “The rot came here again too?”
I nodded, and she sniffed the air.
“If I don’t live to smell it again, ’twill be an ease to me.” With a sigh, she gestured at her ware. “Can I interest ye in fish?”
My stomach growled with want, but I shook my head. “I’m that sorry, Mrs. Moran. ’Tis only I’ve spent the quarterly on grain for the tenants.”
“Aye, ’tis hard times, and worse ahead.” Bolstering her posture with two firm fists pressed either side of her waist, she stared me dead in the eye.
“We’ll weather this, Mistress O’Shaughnessy.
Mark me. If the Crown turned Ireland into a labor camp to keep England fed so their own people could work in factories, it’ll send aid.
And surely a queen would have more heart than a king. ”
I bit my lip. By all accounts, Queen Victoria was a young woman of eight-and-twenty, fully ruled by her Parliament, so I wasn’t sure if her having a heart would do much to sway the men who made the laws that caused this mess to begin with.
“God willing,” I prayed.
She nodded. “Will ye be at the parish hall this evening? I hear his lordship called in a seanchaí.”
A seanchaí? His lordship wasn’t one to initiate entertainment for the town, so his calling in of a wandering storyteller must have meant a great celebration was in order for the family and the village.
My brow furrowed, but I quickly righted my face. “Given all that’s happening, I wouldn’t miss it.”
And that was the truth. A lighthearted evening filled with joy might just be what the physician ordered.
“Make way!” a man bellowed, and I whipped my head around as the crowds parted, a wave of people jumping backward as a carriage barreled through from the direction of the wharf.
I stepped around Mrs. Moran’s stall, but froze when I spied the crest of the Moore-Vandeleurs etched in gold upon the door.
“I said, make way!” The driver bellowed, as an elderly man fought with a mule laden heavy with sacks. The driver abruptly pulled up his two-horse team, jerking the carriage to a halt.
My eyes drifted to the closed curtains of the windows as the driver shouted for onlookers to help the man so they could be on their way, and a pale hand pulled the curtain aside as the obstacle was removed, allowing the driver to spur on the horses.
It was a second—just enough for me to catch a glimpse of his face, his handsome face framed with beautiful blond curls, and my heart purred to life.
If he was coming from the port, then he’d arrived by ship, and that meant one thing.
Teddy must have been abroad, and I, like a fool, had been sending letters to his university residence.
And now he was home.
My pulse ignited with vigor, and I knew exactly what I must do.
Without haste, I said my farewells to Mrs. Moran and ran to pen a note to Teddy and leave it in our correspondence spot in the summerhouse.
Whyever he was sent abroad as I labored, abandoned, in Dublin mattered not. For he was here at last, and together we’d find a way forward. Because I could not let all that work—or love—go to waste.
Tonight. Eight.
That’s all I’d managed to write, with naught but the juice of two o’er-ripe blackberries on a swath of linen ripped from my chemise. All paper, lead, and ink had been sold off for the precious grain I’d procured—so I’d learned—and I had to make do with what was available.
I’d had no trouble getting in and out of the summerhouse, though part of me had hoped Teddy would simply be waiting there, hopping from foot to foot, in hopes that I’d show up.
But never mind that. Teddy was home, and we would talk, and he would explain everything.
For the first time in months, I felt like I could finally breathe, filling my lungs with hope and excitement so vast that I practically skipped my way to the parish hall that eve to listen to the seanchaí.
In the hall, I sat next to Michael, who hadn’t spoken a word to me since his outburst that morning. But I cared naught, because all would turn right in the end.
“’Twas a bleak summer.” The seanchaí—an elderly man, dressed in rags, sporting a silver beard that melded into long, almost-white tresses dotted with burrs—sat upon a stool in the middle of the hall, hands clasped atop an old wooden cane that had seen better days.
“Not like this one, or the last. Jaysus, despite the troublesome harvests, at least we had heat. I mean truly bleak—cold and miserable, the kind that turns bog to marsh, and no amount of drying would turn out turf.”
A murmur rose, a wisp of ghostlike fog that gripped us all. We all knew those kinds of summers.