Conn pushed her way through some brambles, grimacing a little as tiny thorns tore at her arms and bare legs. She had spent the last couple of days wandering much of Nana’s property, searching for the family cemetery. She carried a small notebook and pencil, making a rough map and taking notes on the birds and animals she saw. Will had accompanied her one time, but he got tired quickly and wanted to go back home. Emerging from the tangle of brambles, she found herself on what looked like an old road through the woods, now little more than two dirt tracks meandering among the trees.
She began following the old road and, as she rounded a bend, was startled to see Jed coming toward her, mounted on Jack.
“Hi,” Conn said brightly.
“Hi,” he returned, looking around as if hoping to escape.
“Where’ve you been?” Conn asked. “We haven’t seen you for a couple of days. Hey…”
Jed tried to turn his face away as Conn drew near, but she had already spotted his black eye. “What happened?” she asked, laying a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Your father?” she guessed when Jed didn’t answer.
“It’s nothin’,” he said with a shrug. “He was drunk. He didn’t mean it.”
Conn looked up at him, not sure what to say.
“What are you doin’ out this way?” Jed asked.
“I’m hunting for our family cemetery,” Conn said.
Jed pointed. “It’s just down the road a piece,” he said. He edged Jack over to a tree stump and said, “Climb up.”
Conn scrambled up behind Jed, and they ambled down the lane, dappled sunlight and green shadows rippling over them. Within a few minutes, they came to a small clearing on the left side of the lane. Conn slid down off Jack’s back and climbed over a low rock wall forming an uneven boundary around the tiny graveyard. She walked among the gravemarkers there, mostly stone, though a few were made of wood. Jed followed her in, looking as if he couldn’t leave fast enough.
There was one newer grave, with long, unmown grass growing patchily over it. The stone marker read, “Fiona Faolain Cook, born 12-1-1893, died 1-23-1967.” She took out her notebook and began making notes as she wandered among the graves.
“What’re you doin’?” Jed asked.
“I want to know more about my family,” Conn answered absently as she wrote. “Does your family have its own graveyard?”
“Yeah, but we don’t go there,” Jed said.
“Why not?”
Jed looked at her as if this should be obvious. “‘Cause they’re dead. That would be as crazy as goin’ to the witch’s house.”
Conn stared at him. “What witch’s house?”
Jed stared back to see if she was serious. “The witch. The Peregorn witch. Nobody in their right mind goes to that old lady’s house.”
Conn frowned skeptically. “You’re crazy. There’s no such thing as witches,” she said as she resumed her wanderings.
“So,” Jed said, deciding to let the subject of witches go, “what do you think you’re gonna learn here?”
“I’m not sure,” Conn said. “Maybe what things were like for them.” She thought about the curse. “We can learn why they came here, or how they struggled, or why bad things happened to them. They worked hard to make a life here, to make it better for us. Seems we should get to know them.”
Jed seemed to think about this as he followed her around. Most of the names could still be read, though not all the dates could. She found an older section where the headstones were so weathered that she had a hard time making out the names carved in the pitted limestone.
Off to one side were three stones. She realized these stones were carved more crudely, different from the others. She knelt before them, running her fingers over the irregular depth of the gouges in the stones, trying to read them. Each had a single name. “Henry,” she read. The next one was “Ruth.” She moved to the last grave. “Hannah,” she whispered. Suddenly, she felt a familiar chill and the hairs on her arms and neck stood on end. She was overcome with an onslaught of emotions – overwhelming sadness and terrible anger. The feelings passed as quickly as they had come, leaving her woozy and disoriented for a moment. She stood weakly.
“What’s the matter?” Jed asked from a little distance away. “You look like you saw a ghost.” As soon as he said it, he looked around fearfully. “Let’s get out of here,” he said nervously.
Conn followed him back over the stone wall. He helped her climb back up on Jack’s back, and he shimmied up behind her. Nudging Jack into motion with his heels, he turned the horse’s head into the woods along a path Conn had never been on.
Presently, they emerged from the woods into a field that Conn recognized. Within a few minutes, they were in her backyard.
“Hello, Jedediah,” Elizabeth said, carrying a basket of wet sheets out to hang on the line. “What have you two been up to?”
“Jed helped me find our cemetery,” Conn said. “I found Nana’s grave.”
“Really? I never went there often when I was a girl. I doubt I could even find it again,” Elizabeth said. “How about we go after lunch?”
Conn slid down off Jack’s back and Jed reined him toward the lane.
“And where do you think you’re going, young man?” Elizabeth asked with mock sternness as she fastened the sheets to the line with clothespins.
“Ma’am?”
“You can turn your horse out to graze in the barn pasture, and come get cleaned up for lunch,” she said. “And be sure to pump some water for him.”
“Yes’m,” Jed grinned.
Conn opened the gate for him as he slipped Jack’s bridle off and hung it on a fence post. It took their combined weight to pump water into the trough, and then they hurried inside.
“Whoa!”
Elizabeth had just noticed Jed’s black eye. His face flushed pink as she held him gently by the chin to get a better look. Her expression was angry, and he looked at her as though he were afraid she was angry with him. She released him and said quietly, “Go wash up.”
When Conn and Jed came back into the kitchen, Will was already seated at the table, propping his GI Joe against his milk glass. “Hi, Jed!” he said.
“Hey,” Jed smiled, taking the chair next to him.
“William,” said Elizabeth.
Will immediately moved his GI Joe to the floor next to his chair.
After a quick lunch, they all set out by foot for the cemetery. As Jed led them into the woods, Elizabeth pointed off to their right. There, deep in the shadows and so covered by undergrowth that Conn hadn’t even noticed it when she and Jed passed by earlier, was a small log cabin.
“This is the house the slaves used,” Elizabeth said. “Well, I guess they weren’t slaves anymore. I should say the black people who came with Caitríona.”
Next to the cabin was a towering ash tree which had been splintered at one time by a lightning strike. Both tree and cabin were being slowly consumed by an expansive trumpet vine, just beginning to show its red blooms. The little house stood near a large outcropping of rock jutting up out of the ground with a small, clear spring trickling out of a crevice and splashing along a shallow streambed into the woods.
“The black people didn’t live in our house?” Conn asked.
“Well, back then, our house was only the log part where our bathroom is now,” Elizabeth explained. “All the rest was added later. And it wasn’t considered proper for white people and black people to live together.”
“So, only Caitríona and Deirdre lived in our house?” Conn asked. “What happened to Deirdre after Caitríona disappeared?”
Elizabeth thought about this. “I’m not sure. Nana told me the colored people who came with Caitríona raised Deidre, but I never really thought about where they lived. Come on, let’s get to the cemetery,” she said.
They picked their way through the undergrowth back to the path and within a few minutes were in the small graveyard.
Elizabeth stood in front of Nana’s grave, her hand pressed to her chest. “She was a wonderful person,” she said softly.
She wandered and found her mother’s grave. She called Conn and Will to her and they read, “Méav Faolain Cuthbert.” She knelt for a moment, pulling a few weeds. “We need to take better care of this place,” Elizabeth said. “Plant some flowers, mow the grass. Once the house is done.”
They walked on and found a headstone carved with “Deirdre Faolain McEwan.”
“This was Caitríona’s daughter,” said Conn.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “Nana’s mother.” Near them were seven small headstones bearing names and dates of children aged four days to thirteen years. “Oh.” She put her hand to her mouth. “I didn’t realize so many had died. It’s so sad.”
Conn thought again of the curse, and turned to watch Will who was following Jed as he climbed a nearby tree. She thought what it would be like to be standing here staring at Will’s name on one of these stones….
§§§
Caitríona looked up as she heard a small moan from the corner of the parlour where Orla was scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees.
“Haven’t you ever cleaned before?” Ellie had asked, trying to mask her exasperation when neither of the girls seemed to know how to do anything needed in the large house.
“Of course we cleaned,” said Caitríona indignantly, but how to explain that their entire house in Ireland could have fit inside the plantation house’s dining room, and that their floor had been flagstone that needed only daily sweeping, not polished wood planks that needed scrubbing and waxing and buffing.
Caitríona hurried over to Orla now. “Stop,” she commanded. “I’ve got the parlour rug rolled up. I’ll take it outside and hang it. You do the beating and I’ll do the floor.”
Orla nodded, wiping sweat from her pale brow. She was not regaining her strength as Caitríona was. She barely ate, stating she wasn’t hungry, but Caitríona, for the first time since she was little, had as much to eat as she wished. She left Orla in the deep shade of a large chestnut tree, beating the dust out of the rug while she went back inside and took up the scrub brush. She was glad her appetite was good, for the work was neverending. Though the master was not there, the house was kept in constant readiness for him. Ellie had a carefully arranged schedule of rooms to be cleaned from ceiling to floor. Each room had soaring windows that had to be cleaned, curtains and rugs to be beaten, walls to be wiped down, furniture dusted, fireplaces swept and floors scrubbed. And the silver and the china and the paintings and the sculptures – it all had to be wiped down regularly. The only break in the routine came on Sundays, when they only worked a half-day. Orla and Caitríona kept the Sabbath faithfully by reading a bit from their mother’s prayer book each week as there was no church anywhere near.
Caitríona took her bucket of dirty water outside to dump and refill at the pumphouse. As hard as their work was, the slaves’ work was harder. The house slaves had to do the laundry, empty and clean chamber pots, cut and carry firewood, kill and clean the chickens or whatever was needed for meals that day. They hauled water and tended to the large vegetable garden near the house. The rest of the slaves, nearly a hundred of them Burley said, worked the fields. Mostly they were weeding now as they waited for the tobacco to mature to the point where the large aromatic leaves were ready to be cut and hung to dry.
The girls and Fiona had been surprised to find themselves the only occupants of the third floor, though there were ten rooms in each of the four halls forming the house’s square contour. Burley and Ellie shared a small set of rooms off the kitchen, while Mr. Batterston had his own small house nearby.
The slaves occupied a small colony of cabins built under a copse of willow trees. Other than Dolly, only a handful of them were assigned to work in the house. A woman named Ruth was in charge of them. She was also the plantation’s healer, and knew how to make poultices and salves as there were no doctors nearby. Ruth’s husband, Henry, was the plantation’s blacksmith and woodworker. He had his own shop not far from the stables.
“Dolly says it was their grandparents who came from Africa, most of them,” Fiona told the girls. “She’s been here for ten years. Her last master sold her husband and son to someone else.”
“They split a family?” Caitríona asked in disbelief. “Could they do that to us?” she asked Orla.
“I don’t know,” Orla replied fearfully.
“She also said,” Fiona whispered dramatically, “that Batterston has sold slaves. She says he lords it over all of them when the master ain’t here, and nobody dares say a word.”
Though the girls had heeded Burley’s advice and avoided contact with Batterston as much as possible, he had the disconcerting habit of silently appearing in unexpected places, so that the staff never knew how long he had been watching them. His eyes were such a pale gray that they sometimes appeared to be colorless, giving the illusion of pupils staring from the eyes of a predator.
Despite the girls’ efforts to steer clear of him, inevitably, “I was told you both read and write,” he said one day.
They both jumped at the sound of Batterston’s cold voice behind them as they cleaned and dusted the china in the hutch.
“Yes,” said Orla.
“Tomorrow, you will assist me with the plantation’s accounts,” he said, looking at Orla.
After that, Orla was tasked once a week to spend the morning in the house’s study, helping him to update the plantation ledgers.
“He’s cheating on the accounts,” she whispered to Caitríona one night in their room.
“How do you know?”
“Ellie told me they got five sacks of flour and four tons of coal two days ago, but he had me enter four sacks and three tons in the book. I’m guessing he sells the extra and pockets the money.” Orla’s eyes were big and scared.
“Does he know that you know?” Caitríona asked.
Orla shook her head. “No. I didn’t let on that I knew anything.”
“Well, don’t,” Caitríona urged. “And don’t say anything to Burley or Ellie or anyone.”
“But he’s stealing!” Orla protested.
“I don’t care,” Caitríona said emphatically. “He’s dangerous. And if Lord Playfair or his son cared, they’d be here, wouldn’t they?”
As if in response to that criticism, a courier brought word the next day that Hugh Playfair and his party would be arriving within the week. The entire household went into a frenzy of activity.
Ellie came to check on Orla and Caitríona as they cleaned and aired the bedrooms. Their sleeves were rolled back as they wiped down windows and woodwork. “Don’t forget to change the linens,” she said to them.
“But no one’s slept in these,” Caitríona protested.
“Don’t matter,” Ellie said. “The bed needs clean sheets.”
A moment later there was a timid knock on the door. “Excuse me, Miss.”
Caitríona looked up to see a Negro girl about her own age standing in the doorway. Her skin was a beautiful chocolate brown, but her eyes were blue.
“I was sent for the sheets,” said the girl, pointing to the pile of linens they had just stripped off the massive four-poster bed.
Caitríona nodded dumbly and the girl scurried in to gather the sheets. She had difficulty getting everything gathered into her arms – one piece or another kept falling back to the floor. Caitríona rushed forward to help.
“What’s your name?” she asked as she helped tuck the loose ends into the girl’s arms.
“I’m Hannah, Miss.”
§§§
“Conn!”
Conn blinked and looked around. She was kneeling in front of Hannah’s grave marker, though she couldn’t remember walking over here.
“Connemara Faolain!”
She turned to her mother, who was standing with her hands on her hips.
“Are you deaf? Or just ignoring me?” Elizabeth asked with mild frustration.
Conn got to her feet, feeling a little giddy. “Sorry, Mom. I’m coming.”
They all walked back to the house, Conn barely aware of what the others were saying. She’d never had one of these dreams without being asleep before, and it left her feeling disoriented. She didn’t know who Hannah was, but somehow, she was the key to everything.