ABOUT THREE A.M. the little redhead began to wail angrily. Whatever had bothered her last night was bothering her again.I jumped out of bed and dashed into the nursery before the wolfhound woke up and before Nuala heard the wailing. I was still soaking wet. The nursery was thick with humidity as if it were high August. The stench of dying nature permeated the air. Sure enough, in the moonlight my daughter’s face was screwed up in an angry knot and she was shouting out her young lungs. So, I picked her up out of the bed, cuddled her in my arms. I decided that I had better sing a lullaby too. The only lullaby I know is the Brahms lullaby, and I have only the vaguest notion of what the words are. Still, under the circumstances, I began to sing it.
Lullaby and good night
With roses be delight
With lilies be decked
Is baby’s sweet bed …
With roses be delight
With lilies be decked
Is baby’s sweet bed …
I hummed the next stanza. Nelliecoyne’s wailing diminished somewhat but she was still one very angry little six-month, going-on-seven-month-old child.
I looked out on the Lake, illuminated as it was in the glow of the moon, once more a silver plate on which
little diamonds twinkled. No boat, not that I expected there to be one.
My third time through Brahms’s lullaby, the child’s wailing had diminished to soft weeping. Then Nuala Anne, accompanied by a fretful Fiona, appeared, this time clad modestly in her robe. She was sleepy-eyed and smelled of sex and springtime.
“Dermot Michael Coyne,” she said impatiently. “Sure, isn’t your voice enough to keep the baby awake for the rest of the night? Let me have the poor little tyke!”
“You should have heard her before I started to sing,” I protested as I turned Nelliecoyne over to her mother. Nuala crooned an Irish song. The baby shut her eyes.
“Lullaby, lullaby,
Sweet little baby,
Don’t you cry,
I’d rock my own little child to rest,
In a cradle of gold on the bough of a willow,
To the shoheen ho of the wind of the west,
And the lulla low of the soft sea billow.
Sleep, baby dear,
Sleep without fear,
Mother is here beside your pillow.”
Sweet little baby,
Don’t you cry,
I’d rock my own little child to rest,
In a cradle of gold on the bough of a willow,
To the shoheen ho of the wind of the west,
And the lulla low of the soft sea billow.
Sleep, baby dear,
Sleep without fear,
Mother is here beside your pillow.”
“Och, isn’t it that boat out there again tonight?” Nuala whispered to me. “Sure, it’s a strange one, isn’t it now, one of them paddle-wheeled things? And what’s the name on it?”
Fiona was, thank God, not staring at the Lake. Rather she sat on her haunches, content that Nelliecoyne was no longer wailing.
“Would it be something like the City of Benton Harbor?”
“Sure, that’s what it is. It’s a strange-looking boat, I’ve never seen one like that before in all me life.”
I was silent for the moment because there was no
paddle-wheeled steamer on the Lake, only the smooth water in the moonlight.
“You do see it, don’t you, Dermot Michael?” she asked anxiously.
“Nuala, it’s not there. The paddle-wheeled steamer the City of Benton Harbor sank in Lake Michigan one hundred years ago.”
Nuala looked at the Lake, she looked at me, and then she looked at the little redhead now calm in her arms.
“Oh, Dermot Michael, whatever are we going to do?”
That was, I thought, a very good question. However, I knew that we would now have to figure out why the psychic vibrations were happening and how Nuala Anne was to bring peace to the ghosts which were haunting Grand Beach.