“He’s a bloody coward,” Caitríona grumbled to Fiona and Dolly as she cut up potatoes for the evening’s dinner.
“He’s not stupid,” observed Fiona. “He knows what’s coming and he wants no part of it.”
A couple of weeks previously, Burley had managed to get hold of a Richmond newspaper detailing the secession in February of seven states to form the Confederate States of America, and predicting that Virginia would join them if the newly-elected Lincoln followed up on his declaration to raise troops. War seemed imminent. Almost immediately, Hugh Playfair had announced plans to leave, and had done so two days ago.
“So, he runs off to England, leaving Batterston in charge again,” Caitríona said, whacking at a potato with her knife.
“He’s really goin’ back to England?” Dolly asked. “Did Miss Orla tell you?”
“Orla didn’t tell me anything,” said Caitríona flatly. It was true, though Orla’s tears over the past several days had been enough to confirm what the staff guessed.
Fiona and Dolly exchanged looks. It was no secret that Caitríona and Orla barely spoke to one another anymore. What no one knew was that, aside from the necessary communication for work, they hadn’t spoken at all since their argument. Caitríona stayed in her wing when upstairs, not wishing to know when Orla was or wasn’t in her room.
The only light for Caitríona during these dark days was the brief bits of time she got to spend with Hannah. It was only a moment here and there, but the look in Hannah’s eyes was enough to gladden Caitríona’s heart. Her only other consolation was her journal, nearly full now, in which she reminisced about Ireland and their family, remembering happier times. Strange, though, that they should seem happier when there had been so much misery.
“Where is Miss Orla?” asked Dolly now. “She should be in here helpin’.”
Ellie heard this last as she bustled into the kitchen. “She was sick again. I sent her upstairs to rest.” She gathered up some clean dishes to carry out to the hutch and left.
Caitríona’s head snapped up as Fiona mumbled, “Sure, and it’s the nine months’ sickness or I’m much mistaken.”
By April, the war had begun and Virginia was indeed joining the Confederacy. Fiona’s instincts proved to be accurate. Orla was clearly pregnant, becoming, if possible, even more beautiful. Caitríona often caught Batterston watching her wistfully, wishing to possess something that could never be his.
Ellie had wanted to write Hugh Playfair and tell him of the baby, but Orla refused. “That would be a wonderful letter for his wife to find,” she said.
Perhaps it was the impending arrival of a new Faolain, but Orla broke down and approached her sister one evening, saying, “Caitie, this rift between us has gone on long enough. Can’t we let bygones be bygones?”
Caitríona averted her eyes from her sister’s swollen belly and said coldly, “You’ve made your choices, but you’ll not drag me into your shame. I want nothing to do with you or your bastard child.”
Walking away, she could feel her heart harden as she heard Orla’s heartbroken sobs.
***
Though war had been declared, it felt far away from Fair View. As the summer passed, the plantation saw occasional movement of newly-conscripted Confederate troops in their gray uniforms marching east. Batterston eagerly did business with the officers, selling them provisions despite Burley’s protests that there was no guarantee more would be coming.
In August, screams rent the air, but it wasn’t the war. It was Orla.
Ellie rushed into the kitchen carrying an armful of clean sheets and towels. “Take these up to Ruth,” she said, handing the bundle to Caitríona.
Ruth, as the only healer for miles about, was also the only mid-wife. She had been summoned when Orla went into labor early.
“She should have at least another month,” Ellie fretted as she took Ruth up to the bedroom where Orla lay struggling. “The baby hasn’t turned.”
Batterston had protested. “You know these rooms are for the family.”
Ellie puffed up like an angry hen as she retorted, “Well, seein’ as there’s none of them here now, we’re usin’ that room! We don’t need to be runnin’ all the way to the top of the house.”
Orla’s labor had so far lasted over thirty-six hours. Apprehensively, Caitríona carried the linens upstairs, stopping in the hall as another horrendous scream could be heard.
Hannah rushed out, calling, “Where are –” She stopped as she saw Caitríona’s waxen face. Taking the linens, she hurried back into the room with one more quick glance at Caitríona as she shut the door.
For Caitríona, time ceased to exist. It might have been hours, or days. People came and went from the room, but finally, Orla’s screams stopped. Vaguely, Caitríona became aware of the squalling cries of a newborn. From where she sat in the hall, her arms wrapped around her knees, she raised her head hopefully. This was a sound she’d heard many times at home, with each new brother or sister. The bedroom door opened and Ellie came out, carrying an armful of bloody linens. She paused as Caitríona got stiffly to her feet.
“I’m so sorry, dear,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. She laid a gentle hand on Caitríona’s arm. “Don’t go in yet.”
But Caitríona pulled away and entered a nightmare. Hannah gasped and hastily pulled a blanket over Orla’s splayed body, but not before Caitríona saw the massive pool of blood in which she lay.
Ruth had the baby wrapped in a tight bundle, an unbelievably small bundle. “It’s a little girl,” she said, tears running down her cheeks. “A beautiful baby girl.”
Caitríona glanced down at the tiny face with a shock of black hair peeking out from under the blanket.
“She needs to eat, Miss Caitríona,” Ruth said gently. “I’ll take her to a woman who can nurse her, all right?”
Caitríona nodded dumbly, and turned to the figure lying in the bed. Hannah hesitated a moment, and then backed out of the room, pulling the door shut.
Lying there, with the blanket covering her, her long black hair cascading over the pillow, Orla looked as if she were asleep. Gazing at her sister’s beautiful face, Caitríona was struck by her resemblance to their mother. The beads of Orla’s rosary were visible under the neck of her nightgown. Caitríona came to the bed, and gently worked the rosary over her sister’s head, untangling it carefully from her hair, not wanting to hurt her. Bent close, she could see Orla’s eyes under her half-closed lids, already becoming cloudy and dull. How was it, she wondered, that a body could be alive, a light burning behind the eyes one minute, and the next… nothing. Just… nothing but a shell. Lungs that would never breathe again, eyes that would never look at her….
Caitríona slipped the rosary over her own head. Clutching the crucifix, the sharp corners dug painfully into the flesh of her hand, stopping her from thinking about how she’d never told her sister she was sorry, about how she never got to say good-bye….
Behind her, she heard the bedroom door open and shut, and suddenly Hannah was there. She folded Caitríona in her arms and Caitríona clung to her as tightly as she could, trying to quell the grief and darkness rising within her – shadows so deep, she felt they might engulf her completely, leaving her no more than a wraith upon the earth.
§§§
Conn woke with a gasp, sitting bolt upright in bed. Breathing hard, she wiped tears from her face. Deirdre hadn’t been Caitríona’s child at all. She was Orla’s. She sat there, digesting this new information, wondering what else had been passed down in error. She could still feel Caitríona’s horrible regret and her despair.
Wide awake now, she quietly closed her bedroom door and got her flashlight. From the bottom drawer of her nightstand, she took the oil cloth bundle containing Hannah’s pages. Flipping through them, she paused at a sketch of Orla, her long black hair pulled back to reveal her beautiful face and graceful neck. Near the back of the assembled pages was a series of quick sketches of Deirdre, maybe a year old.
She rewrapped the pages and put them away. Turning off her flashlight, she lay back in bed, thinking. She was just beginning to drift back off to sleep when, suddenly, she sat up again as she thought she heard whispered voices coming through the screen.
“I don’t think –” said one voice.
“Just do it!” a second voice cut across the first one.
Then there was a crash of broken glass, followed quickly by another crash of more glass.
Conn jumped out of bed and met her mother in the hall. They both ran downstairs in their nightshirts and bare feet. Seeing nothing amiss in the sitting room or dining room, they rushed through the swinging door into the kitchen where they could see the window over the sink was shattered. A flickering light was coming from the bathroom.
“Stay back!” Elizabeth commanded as she ran to the bathroom and saw flames licking up the log walls of the room toward the roof, fueled by some kind of liquid that appeared to be splashed onto the logs. She grabbed a bucket from under the bathroom sink and ran to the tub. Turning the water on full blast, she threw bucket after bucket of water on the flames, eventually dousing them, leaving the wood charred and blackened, with smoke and steam billowing through the broken window and out into the kitchen.
Coughing, Conn made her way to the back door to open it, treading carefully to avoid stepping on the broken glass. She flipped on the light switch next to the door and saw a paper-wrapped object on the floor. Picking it up, she untied the paper from a weighty rock and unfolded it to read, scrawled in nearly illegible writing, “NIGER LOVERS.”
“What happened?” Will asked in terror, peering through the swinging door.
“Stay there,” Conn said. “There’s broken glass everywhere.”
Elizabeth emerged panting from the bathroom, tears streaming from her eyes, both from the acrid smoke and from her fury. “What’s that?” she demanded, snatching the paper from Conn’s hand.
Her lips compressed to a narrow line as she walked across the kitchen to the telephone.
“Ouch!”
She lifted a bare foot to find a piece of glass embedded in her heel.
Conn turned to Will. “Go upstairs and get our shoes, will you?”
“And my robe,” Elizabeth added.
Will ran to do as they asked.
“Sit down,” Conn said, bringing a kitchen chair for her mother, watching where she stepped to avoid the glass.
Elizabeth gritted her teeth as she pulled the shard from her right heel. Conn handed her a towel to stem the flow of blood. Elizabeth pressed the towel to the cut.
Will returned quickly and tossed shoes and robe from the doorway, staying on the dining room side. Conn put hers on and helped her mother slip her left shoe on as well as her robe.
“Can you dial for me?” Elizabeth asked. Conn passed the handset to her mother, stretching the cord nearly its entire length as she dialed the operator on the telephone.
The kitchen clock read five a.m. as the flashing lights and sirens of the volunteer fire department’s only truck pulled up. Three firefighters came rushing in, hose unfurled, ready to go to work, only to stop abruptly as they realized the fire was already out.
Dejectedly, a couple of them began winding the hose back up as the third, who seemed to be in charge said, “You better wet that roof real good so it doesn’t spark and get goin’ again.”
They brightened somewhat, eagerly hauling the hose back outside to turn on the pump on the truck and begin dousing the shingles over the bathroom as the third man checked out the remnants of the bottle that had smashed against the logs, igniting everything.
Sheriff Arnold Little arrived in his cruiser a few minutes after the fire truck. Belying his name, he grunted as he tried to dislodge his immense belly from behind the steering wheel. The buttons of his hastily donned uniform shirt were strained to the point of bursting as he hitched his pants up, only to have his gun belt immediately pull them back down again.
Peering into the bathroom, he said in a slow drawl, “Now, Danny, don’t you go messin’ with evidence.”
The firefighter straightened up. “Smells like it was filled with kerosene, Sheriff,” he said, pointing to the shattered remains.
“Well, don’t touch it, case we can lift some fingerprints,” the sheriff replied, yawning. Turning to Elizabeth, he asked, “Any idea who did this, Miz – ?”
“Elizabeth Mitchell,” she responded. “And, no. I do not have any idea who would do this.” She hobbled to the table, where the crumpled piece of paper lay. “There was this, also,” she said.
He peered at the paper, turning it over in his hands. After a long moment of apparent thought, he drawled, “Well, this is interestin’, but I’m not sure what we’ll be able to tell from it.”
“Don’t you think there might be fingerprints on it, too?” Conn asked pointedly.
Sheriff Little frowned, puckering his lips as he put the paper back on the table. “I doubt it,” he said dismissively.
A new set of headlights flashed through the window as they heard another vehicle pull up. A minute later, Molly Peregorn burst into the kitchen, carrying a canvas bag over her shoulder.
“How did you –?” Sheriff Little began, but Molly pushed past him to Elizabeth.
“Are you and the children all right?” she asked. “What happened?”
Quickly, Conn and Elizabeth told her about the voices, the smashed glass and the fire. Turning to Sheriff Little, Molly said, “Arnold, I assume you’ve already written this down?”
“I’m getting’ to it,” he blustered, patting his pockets for a small notebook and pencil.
He began jotting the details, but before he could ask any questions, Molly asked Conn, “Did you recognize the voices?”
Conn shook her head. “No, they were kind of whispering, but loud. But there was this,” she said pointing to the scribbled note.
Molly looked at and shook her head. “What a pity,” she said.
“What?” Sheriff Little asked, frowning.
“That they don’t know how to spell,” Molly said drolly as Conn burst out laughing. “You’re obviously looking for someone pretty stupid, Arnold.” She knelt in front of Elizabeth, taking a small bottle from her bag. “Not that that helps much around here,” she added in an undertone, as she swabbed the laceration on Elizabeth’s foot with an antiseptic. She bandaged the foot as best she could, and Elizabeth gingerly forced her foot into her shoe.
She and Elizabeth went to the bathroom to survey the damage. “What a pity,” Molly repeated, sincerely this time. “I don’t think it’s beyond repairing, though.” She turned to Elizabeth. “It’s a good thing you got down here as quickly as you did, or the whole house could have gone up.”
Elizabeth’s eyes filled with tears as she considered that possibility.
“There, there,” Molly said consolingly. “You’ve got more folks looking out for you than you know,” she said with a meaningful glance toward Conn.
Sheriff Little asked for a grocery bag for the bottle fragment in the bathroom. “I’ll be in touch, Miz Mitchell,” he said, his face red with the effort of bending over, “but I don’t ‘spect we’ll have much luck findin’ out who done this.”
The fire truck tore up a good bit of grass maneuvering to get back down the drive, and Sheriff Little’s cruiser followed after them.
“Sit down,” Molly said, “and let me make you some coffee.”
She expertly fired up the wood stove and put the pot on while Conn got the broom out and began sweeping up all the broken glass. “You don’t think…” Conn began.
“What?” Elizabeth asked.
“You don’t think Jed’s father would have done this, do you?” Conn asked. “He hates Mr. Greene, and probably us, too.”
Molly shook her head. “Sam Pancake can be an ornery cuss, but he’d never do anything this dangerous. No,” she mused, “this sounds like the work of some of those boys who like to dress up in white hoods.”
Elizabeth’s head snapped up at this. “They’re here?” she asked in disbelief.
Molly raised one eyebrow. “West Virginia may have left the Confederacy, but that doesn’t mean the people here are any less ignorant when it comes to race.”
“Can I come in now?” Will asked, still standing in the doorway.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said, holding her arms out to him. He rushed to his mother for a hug as he cried. “It’s okay. We’re all okay.”
“Well, it’s a cinch no one’s going back to bed now,” Molly said. “We might as well have breakfast, too.”
Conn helped her fry up some bacon and eggs while Will was put to work making toast.
“How did you know we were in trouble?” Elizabeth asked as they ate.
Molly’s eyebrows raised as she said casually, “Oh, a ghost told me.”
Will’s eyes were enormous as he repeated fearfully, “A ghost?”
“Oh,” Molly said, waving her hand dismissively, “this is a friendly ghost.” Her gaze met Conn’s for a moment and she winked.
At the reference to Caitríona, Conn recalled her dream, and the tragedy of Orla’s death. “Deirdre was Orla’s baby, not Caitríona’s,” she blurted without thinking.
“What?” Elizabeth asked, startled.
“I… I had a dream last night,” Conn said, kicking herself for not keeping quiet, “that Orla died when she had Deidre. Caitríona raised her, but she wasn’t her baby.” She cast a quick glance at Molly, begging for help.
“We’ve always held that it’s a great gift to receive glimpses into the lives of our ancestors,” Molly said as Elizabeth’s expression darkened with worry. Deciding that this was a good time to change the subject, she stood and carried her plate and Elizabeth’s to the sink. “Would you like for me to stop by Abraham’s place and let him know you’ll need his help?” She turned to look back at Elizabeth. “Unless you’re too scared to have him back,” she added.
Her taunt had the desired effect as Elizabeth’s eyes blazed angrily. “Too scared my – eye,” she quickly amended with a glance at the children. “They are not going to tell us who we can and can’t have as our friends.”
“Good for you,” Molly said with satisfaction as Conn and Will grinned at one another. “Then I’ll have Abraham stop by as soon as he can.”