A few hours later, Conn sat on the floor outside her mother’s room. She’d known, after the letter, that this would be a crying night. She listened to the soft sounds of her mother’s sobs, feeling as if the past twenty-four hours had aged her so that she felt much older than eleven. She felt weary with the weight of all that had occurred – the world had changed and she had changed. She realized how childish she’d been to have never questioned that Daddy was alive as her mother clearly had. She ran her fingers over the Celtic cross now hanging around her neck and whispered a prayer for him.
She thought, too, about her visions and dreams of Caitríona Ní Faolain. She wasn’t sure she had actually talked to a ghost, but the words of that awful curse had played over and over in her head. Everything her mother had told her of their family history supported the curse as being real. For some reason, it had not occurred to her previously that, if it were indeed true, then she would live, but Will would not. It made her feel guilty about all the times she’d wished she didn’t have a little brother. And it wasn’t just Will. All the husbands and fathers had died young as well. This realization drove home to her the urgency of ending the curse, but how? She was at a loss to think of what she could do that could change anything.
She sat with her elbows braced on her knees, staring at the wall with her forehead pressed into her hands as she thought. Suddenly, she remembered – the hidden staircase. Caitríona’s appearance that night had driven it from her mind. She tiptoed to her room and retrieved a pair of sneakers and a flashlight. As quietly as she could, she pressed on the moulding and popped the panel open. She clicked her flashlight on and shone it down the narrow stairwell. It looked sturdy enough. She descended a couple of steps and turned back to the panel where she could see a handle on this side of the door for pulling it shut to engage the locking mechanism. She decided tonight was not the night to test whether it worked from this side. She pulled the door most of the way shut, but didn’t latch it.
Sitting on a stair, she quickly laced up her Keds, and then, step by step, she descended. Pausing every now and again to brush cobwebs off her face, she got to a point where the hidden stairwell turned back on itself and continued descending in the opposite direction. It continued this pattern every eight to ten steps so that she soon guessed she was well below the level of the house, but almost directly under the point where she had started.
The stairs ended at a dirt floor and what looked like a rocky tunnel. The air down here was old-smelling and a little musty. The darkness seemed to swallow the meager light from her flashlight so that only a few feet at a time were illuminated. She could see timbers reinforcing portions of the tunnel roof. As she began walking along the tunnel, she realized she’d lost track of the twists of the staircase so that she had no idea which direction she was going. The tunnel twisted to the left and went downhill for a bit, then leveled off. She walked for a few minutes before coming to an intersection where the tunnel forked and a wooden ladder led up into blackness that her flashlight couldn’t penetrate.
She stood for a moment, undecided, and then started climbing. The ladder ended at a trapdoor. She turned her flashlight off, her heart pounding, and pushed cautiously on the wooden trapdoor. Poking her head up a few inches to see over the edge, she couldn’t see anything at first in the darkness, but just as she was getting ready to turn the flashlight back on, she realized there was dim light coming in through grimy windows. She was in one of the stalls in the lower level of the barn. Why in the world would someone have built a tunnel connecting the house to the barn?
Conn carefully lowered the trapdoor and climbed back down the ladder. She considered exploring one of the forks of the tunnel, but realized her flashlight was getting dim. She decided to go back, and was soon glad she had, as her flashlight was nearly dead by the time she got back to the narrow, twisting staircase. She listened at the top to make sure her mother and Will were still asleep, and then crept back to her room.
She lay awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling. She was beginning to realize that her dreams of Caitríona were not like regular dreams. She could remember every detail, more like a story she had read than a dream which faded upon waking. And they seemed to be unfolding like a story, sequentially. What would they reveal about this house and the purpose of that tunnel? She felt again that sense of urgency, as if the sooner she got through the dreams, the sooner a solution to the curse might present itself.
§§§
Within a few days of leaving the barge, Caitríona thought she might rather be on the river again. They had been met in Scottsville by Burley Pratt, a fat, jovial man who had been sent to collect them and the cargo bound for Fair View. The girls and Ewan drove the horses and cattle along behind the heavily-laden wagon while Fiona rode with Burley. Occasionally, they passed large fields of tobacco being worked by slaves, the first Africans any of them had ever seen. The blacks stood to watch them pass, their dark faces impassive under broad straw hats.
The Irish soon wished they had such hats as they trudged along, their fair skin burning and blistering under the Virginia sun. Orla fashioned a bonnet of sorts out of a shawl; it was hot, but it kept the worst of the sun off her head and shoulders. Caitríona stubbornly refused to follow suit. She had barely spoken to her sister since Richmond. Orla, ordinarily not as proud or mulish as her sister, was holding her ground this time, as Caitríona’s words had stung deeply.
“The mosquitoes here are almost as bad as they were on the river,” Caitríona complained as she swatted miserably at the bloodsuckers attacking any bit of exposed skin they could find.
“It’s all them freckles,” laughed Burley from the wagon. “The skeeters sees ‘em and thinks it’s a party.”
He was an older, affable man who liked to laugh and joke. He told them that Hugh Playfair, Lord Playfair’s son, had sent a message that he was in America, but would be staying in Richmond indefinitely, and didn’t know when he would arrive at the plantation.
“How much longer till we get to the bloody plantation?” Ewan grumbled on the afternoon of the second day marching through the hilly country of what they’d been told was Buckingham County.
“Good Lord, boy,” chuckled Burley, “we’ve been on Fair View land since yesterday noon. Five thousand acres, give or take. Mostly bright tobacco, with some corn and wheat and cattle.”
“Five thousand acres?” gasped Caitríona. She couldn’t conceive of so much land being owned by one man. “And we were sold for five.” Her expression darkened as her anger and resentment were ignited anew.
“We’ll be at the house afore supper,” Burley told them. “I bet you ain’t never seen nothin’ like it.”
Sure enough, late in the afternoon, an imposing three story stone house loomed into view. It was sheltered by enormous sycamore trees, their aged trunks a stark white under their thick leafy canopies. As the wagon approached, other servants, both black and white, emerged from the house and the barns to greet the newcomers.
One tall, gangly African opened the corral gate. The cattle and horses rushed in, eagerly crowding the water trough.
Burley climbed down off his wagon, surprisingly agile for such a large man. “Welcome to your new home,” he said proudly, sweeping an arm around at the house and grounds. “Ever’body,” he said to the other staff, “these folks are just over from Ireland, and they’ve had a rough time of it. This,” he clapped Ewan on the shoulder, “is young master Ewan, what works with horses. You’ll be workin’ with Nate, there,” he said, pointing to the tall black man still standing near the corral.
“And the ladies are come to work in the house,” he said leading Fiona, Orla and Caitríona over to a plump woman. “This is Ellie, my wife,” he said, kissing her cheek. She swatted at him good-naturedly. He introduced Fiona and the girls.
“Land sakes,” said Ellie, “they’re just girls, Burley. What was he thinkin’, takin’ such young things so far from their home?”
She clucked and fussed like an old hen, looking the girls up and down and said, “They’re so thin. They need fattenin’ up.”
“Well,” laughed Burley, “we brought some help for that, too. Fiona,” he said, pulling her forward, “is the master’s new cook. This is Dolly, our old cook,” he said, indicating an older Negro woman standing behind Ellie.
From the dour expression on her face, Dolly was not happy about having a new cook on the place. Fiona, shrewd enough to realize the value of having allies rather than enemies in the kitchen said, “Sure, and I was afraid there’d be nobody here to show me how to cook the strange things I’ve heard you eat in America.”
“Oh, not so strange,” Burley laughed. “But maybe not fancy enough for Lord Playfair or his son.”
Caitríona caught a glimpse of movement at a window. She saw a pale-faced man standing there a moment before he moved away. Burley followed her gaze, and said in a low voice, “That’s Mr. Batterston, the overseer. You’d best stay clear o’ him.”
Turning back to the wagon, he called out, “Come on, all. Let’s get things unloaded and get these folks a decent meal.”
They quickly unloaded the wagon, and Orla, Caitríona and Fiona were shown to the servants’ quarters on the third floor. The house, having been modeled after Lord Playfair’s country house in Ireland, had not taken Virginia’s weather into consideration, as the upper floor was sweltering. Forcing open the small window in the room she would share with her sister, Caitríona gasped, “How is anyone supposed to sleep in this?”
“Maybe it gets cooler at night,” Orla said without much conviction. She sat on one of the narrow beds. “At least we each have our own bed. We won’t have to share anymore.”
Caitríona blinked back sudden tears as a wave of homesickness overwhelmed her. “I never minded sharing,” she said softly.