Chapter 31
Before our merciful intervention, the Irish nation were a wretched, indolent, half-starved tribe of savages … notwithstanding a gradual improvement upon the naked savagery, they have never approached the standard of the civilized world.
Scritch.
The strike of a match sent the hairs on the back of my neck to attention, and I glanced at Lady Catherine—boots crossed atop the library desk, chair tipped back as she casually touched the flame to the bowl of her pipe, tobacco overtaking the musk of leather and ink that permeated through shadowed rows of bookshelves.
I sat opposite, in my usual chair, the desk between us, but this time was different.
This time, the sleeping bulk of a child weighted not only my arms, but my heart, my soul.
My son, my Diarmuid, blond curls crushed against my shoulder as I cradled his body, chest rising and falling, cheeks pink as sleep drew bubbles of saliva through pursed, plump lips.
I looked at him, this miracle I’d never dreamt of, this babe I’d never truly mourned, and I saw Michael in him.
In the curve of juvenile fat protecting high cheekbones.
In the downward slant of his outer eyes.
He would look like his uncle, for sure. And that meant Mam was in him, and Da.
Everything, and everyone—every ancestor—who had made me.
This was their legacy, this grandchild they’d never held.
This babe who’d been cruelly ripped from my torn womb and declared dead. Alive. Well.
And rage became my calling, my vocation, sending a chill up my spine before settling into an unsteady shake that threatened to flay skin from bone. Mine own, Lady Catherine’s, Teddy’s.
My eyes sliced right, and I caught a flash of callused hand clutching the back of my chair. Cormac, a rock at my rear. My last line of defense in the battle to come.
Blood pounded against my temples, but that hand shifted and came down on my shoulder—a steady heft to lessen the burden.
“So this is yer babe, the one ye thought dead and buried.” Dropping the clipped facade of a noble Anglo-born, Lady Catherine fell into the low-born brogue that marked us all.
She mulled over the words around the bit of her pipe, and I fixed her with a glare—not that she noticed, for she’d thrown her head back and now stared at the ceiling. “And ye’ve remembered everything?”
“I have, aye.” I barely managed the response, but as Diarmuid whined in his sleep, all rage dissipated as instinct overcame all else. I rocked him, gathering him up before placing my lips against his ear. “Shhh, love. Hush. Mammy’s here now. Mammy’s here.”
“I can take him,” Cormac offered, voice low as he bent over my chair.
“Such a pretty painting.” Swish thump. I shot a glance in Lady Catherine’s direction. She’d swept her boots from the table and snapped her chair steady on all four legs. “The three of ye there. Looking like a family. I approve, of course. But yer high horse of a mother might not, nephew dear.”
Without a word, Cormac stepped around the chair and bent to speak to me. I glanced at him. “If ye trust me to take him, I’ll not leave this room.”
I’d not trust any to take him, this child who had already been taken. “I trust ye to hold him.”
With a nod, Cormac scooped an arm beneath Diarmuid, and I lifted my precious gift into his arms before rising. He sat in my place, and I stalked toward the desk, placing myself between my child and Lady Catherine.
“How do we fix this?” I asked, slamming my palms on the surface of the desk, leaning over ’til she and I were naught but a nod from collision.
“Ye said we could fix this, you and I. Whatever ye put in that incense worked its magic, and I remember all of it. Every last detail. But for the life of me, I can’t begin to fathom how killing my child would appease the demon ye convene with. ”
Lady Catherine smiled, a slow stretch of lips that warned of coming danger, and I jerked away, righting myself to full height.
“It might hurt Teddy, aye. But ’twould hurt me m-more.” My voice broke at the last, and the telltale sting of tears burned the backs of my eyes. I shook my head. “No more of this. He’s alive, and that’s enough. I demand to break our contract. I don’t need yer land.”
“Unfortunately, breaking that contract means death for us both,” Lady Catherine stated, sitting back in her chair. “The Cailleach told ye, did she not? That if ye fail in yer task ’tis you who will pay with blood?”
I nodded.
“I have ’til the new moon to find another if I’m to survive.” Rising, Lady Catherine smoothed her skirts and turned to gaze out the window, drawing a deep drag of pipe smoke as she stared out into the night beyond.
“Surely another wouldn’t be so difficult to find—” I began, but Lady Catherine whirled on her heel.
“The new moon is two nights from now. Not nearly enough time, and my life will be forfeit without good reason. If I’m to die, it’ll be because I decided the hows and whys,” she hissed, smoke trailing in the wake of her words, a mythical dragon in all its glory.
“If you’re to survive, we must fix it all before then. Something has gone sorely amiss.”
A mewl from behind drew my attention, and I turned with a start. Diarmuid stretched his little arms over his head, and Cormac shifted the child’s weight as he settled back into the chair.
“Then tell me how.” The plea was a breath, a charm, as I faced her once more. She who had offered the world, she who would take it all away—like those who had fooled me before.
“They told ye he was dead?” she asked, sitting once more.
But the casual indifference she wore but a moment before had vanished, replaced with a veil of exhaustion that hunched her shoulders and drew all brightness from those piercing eyes.
Our gazes locked, and she nodded. “I wanted to care for them all, ye know. The villagers. I suppose it came from being dirt poor as a child. Cormac might know something of it, if his mam ever told him. I have the Sight, as ye know, and worked my ways to catch my husband’s eye.
But he wasn’t good for the people. The estate?
Aye. He was great at running all that, but we were naught to him, even myself.
Animals, he called us. Filthy, flea-bitten, and not worth a penny. But I endured.”
She ran a hand over her face, and I pursed my lips.
“At first, I only summoned the Cailleach when needed, and she and I parted ways when the work was done. I had hoped, especially when Wilhelmina came into our lives, that he’d soften, but alas.
Bad enough she was half-Irish, he used to say.
But witch spawn?” Lady Catherine laughed, and the sound made the blood freeze in my veins.
“He embraced her in his heart for a time, but like all things, that didn’t last. I suppose I’d had enough when he refused to summon the only doctor for miles when she fell ill.
“God’s will,” he’d said. “The blessed English were never meant to breed with Irish animals.” She paused, then locked her glare with mine, and those eyes penetrated deep, straight through to my soul.
She continued. “I killed him when she passed away, and that vengeance sealed the bond between my mistress and me, keeping her tethered to this world and this house to me.”
Lady Catherine pushed off her chair, and the movement set my heart alight, pounding its warning: run, run away! But I held my ground.
“I didn’t know then that our strange coexistence would eat away at my body and mind.
That some days I would not be myself, that the guilt of keeping the Cailleach here would make me despise the person I’d become.
My village is safe, but what of the country?
And yet I couldn’t sever the tie. If I did, the village would come to ruin.
Ye were not the first,” she mused, voice soft as she glanced at me.
Thud, click. Thud, click. Boot and cane, she stepped around the desk.
“Wilhelmina died when she was naught but six summers old, and with Charles cold in the ground, I had need of the Cailleach’s help to run things here.
To ensure my people prospered. But the price was always steep. ”
“Ye took in girls like me, to replace yer daughter,” I guessed, remembering the vision I’d had.
She nodded. “They all came from hardship, all with rage. Ye see, the Cailleach needs vengeance to manipulate the féar gortach into ensuring the land here flourishes, and a sacrifice is required every few years. But a sacrifice does not always mean blood—revenge comes in many forms. When their vengeance was realized, those girls moved on as promised, each with whatever it was they desired most.” She smiled then, and I took a step back.
“It was tempting to keep that first girl as my own. Wouldn’t life with me be better than any out there?
But once her true vengeance was spent, I would’ve had to turn to the villagers for sacrifice, and that I couldn’t do.
They’d already paid the price for my protection, so I turned to the outside for willing girls and lured them with a tale.
In exchange, I experienced the ghost of motherhood, turning each into the daughter I’d lost … if only for a time.”
I froze. “Lured them with a tale?”
Lady Catherine scoffed. “No solicitors are coming, Wilhelmina. The inheritance is safe.”
“Ye lied to them, to me?” A cold sweat slicked my palms, and I shot a wild-eyed glance over my shoulder to ensure Diarmuid still slept in Cormac’s arms—he did.
“Not fully,” Lady Catherine countered. “I did promise that a solicitor could arrive at a moment’s notice, after all. And did not a storm-tossed solicitor harken our door this very night?”
Teddy. I gave her my full attention once more.
“Ye were a tough one, Maggie O’Shaughnessy.
” Thud, click. Thud, click. Closer and closer she came.
“The herbs help with the remembering, but ye fought it so fiercely. And still ye don’t recognize the truth of it all.
The Cailleach can only decide the punishment based on yer own feelings, yer own conclusions, after ye live those memories once more.
Ye have focused on that man upstairs … but is that the truth of it? ”
I balled my fists and took a step forward to meet her advance.
How dare she? Teddy had doctored his lordship’s books to have us evicted and Da labeled a felon.
Teddy had known I was in Dublin. Teddy hadn’t written.
Teddy had wed another. If Teddy had talked to me, if someone had explained the gravity of the situation before I’d boarded that coach bound to Kilrush, none of this would have happened.
I could have escaped from Lady Grace’s Dublin residence before they conspired to take my babe.
I could have disappeared so Da could still be land agent, and though things might have been hard, surely my family would have weathered the storm.
Everything was because of Teddy.
Thud, click. Thud, click.
“Are ye certain? Certain enough to wager the life of yer child?” Lady Catherine asked with a sigh, skirts kissing mine as she leaned forward, bringing her lips to the shell of my right ear. “What happened that night, in the summerhouse?”
“The summerhouse?” My brows furrowed as I glanced at her.
“The night of the céilí. The night before ye were all turned out by Moore-Vandeleur.”
“I met Teddy …” I trailed off and pursed my lips. I had written him a note … to meet at eight. To talk. To share our loss and ask what had happened. Where he’d been. And the next day, the bailiffs came.
“Did ye relive that memory?” Lady Catherine asked, her breath tickling my neck. “What really prompted the Moore-Vandeleurs, who undoubtedly knew ye were back in Kilrush, to suddenly cast out yer family?”
“I—” No. I hadn’t relived it. Now that I thought about it, my memories had skipped from running toward Kilrush House to suddenly being evicted, and my blood ran cold.
“There are times when good must turn to evil to make things right.” The tickle of Lady Catherine’s breath startled me back to reality. “And now ’tis your turn.”
I reared back, a yelp dying in my throat as an invisible vise squeezed my chest fit to bursting.
“There are some things I can’t condone, not only as a mother, but especially as one who’s lost her own child, and I’m oh so very tired.
’Tis exhausting, all of this, keeping track of the villagers, drawing power from their payment to have strength enough to control the Cailleach, and I knew this had to be the last arrangement, for it’s time to make things right.
The key to everything is locked away in that missing memory, Maggie.
But it’s shoved down so far I fear ye’ll need a little help from the power I draw on to remember it.
I wish ye a long and happy life with yer child, for this is the last and only thing I can do for ye now,” Lady Catherine said, a soft smile lifting her lips as she pressed something hard, with edges, into my hand.
“Ye’ll find everything ye need in the top drawer.
When I realized something was amiss, I took the time to put ink to paper.
Remember me fondly, if ye can. I’m afraid this is the only way to fix it. ”
And without another word, Lady Catherine pulled a dagger from the pocket of her skirt and sliced the blade across the pale white column of her throat.