Ellen held Mary’s arm as Louisa made the tiny incisions. Louisa then applied one of the scabs, gouging it into the cuts on her sister’s arm.
‘You must have this protection, Mary,’ Ellen said. ‘The contagion spreads.’
‘The Lord will protect me,’ was Mary’s answer.
‘The Lord protects those who protect themselves,’ Louisa added matter-of-factly.
Mary falling ill with smallpox was Ellen’s worst fear realised. In vain had she and Louisa tried to get Mary to share the burden of care. In the end they recognised that it presented no second thought for Mary. It was ‘in His name’. Risk to self was not even a consideration. To deny Mary that, would have been to inflict indignity on her vocation, worse than any mortal ailment could ever do. Now Ellen assumed that same mantle of care for her sole surviving child, as Mary had so often done for others.
She forbade Louisa to intervene. ‘My life is of little consequence. Your life, Louisa, as matron of this hospital, is of great consequence,’ Ellen said firmly.
At first, Mary had brushed off the notion that she had contracted the disease. ‘I am flushed from overwork, that is all, Mother!’ she had answered, when Ellen had previously raised the question with her.
But that night Mary herself knew. Her temples throbbed, her body bathed itself in perspiration. ‘If it is Thy will,’ she prayed, already reconciled to whatever might come.
Later, Ellen heard her stifle a moan – Mary not wishing to disturb them. Taking her night-light she ran to Mary and put her hand to the girl’s forehead.
‘Oh my child! My poor child! You’re raging with fever!’
‘It will pass, Mother – just a night fever. Go back to bed,’ Mary insisted.
Ellen ran for water, waking Louisa. ‘It’s Mary!’ was all she said.
Then she mopped Mary’s forehead and neck, while Louisa fetched a fan, left behind by a society lady of Richmond.
‘Move her to under the window – the night breeze,’ Louisa said, already at the bedhead. Together they lifted Mary’s cot.
Outside the pale Virginian moon hung there, witness to their feverish efforts to curtail the rise in Mary’s temperature.
Eventually, it seemed to stabilise. Ellen wondered for how long? She ordered Louisa to bed. ‘I will stay with Mary – your work is with many.’
She sat stroking all that remained of Mary’s hair, the beautiful golden-red tresses, long-shorn. A mark of Magdalen modesty. Ellen recalled the hundred strokes she once lovingly administered to Mary and the others each Sunday before Mass. Back when they were small. Then, down they’d all go, over the mountain-pass road to the little thatched church at Finny. Alongside the church, the Finny river, would gurgle its way happily between the two lakes, the Mask and Lough Nafooey. Each vying in grandeur with the other.
‘Mother, you should not be here!’ Mary’s voice drew her back.
Ellen let her hand rest on Mary’s brow.
‘Oh, but I should, Mary. Too long I wasn’t here!’
Mary did not remonstrate with her.
‘Then pray with me – the Holy Rosary,’ she asked. ‘– Our Saviour’s Resurrection from Death. Whatever our suffering, it is of little consequence compared with His.’
Quietly then, the moon giving them its light, they tolled out the Five Glorious Mysteries, with their implicit desire for Heaven and eternal happiness.
Resurrection from the Dead
Ascension into Heaven
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin into Heaven
Crowning of the Blessed Virgin
Into the daylight Ellen sat with Mary, Louisa appearing frequently, the same question always on her lips.
‘How is she?’
And the same answer, when Ellen would tell her, ‘No worse.’
Dr Sawyer came to her bringing some whiskey and quinine, ‘For when the pain comes.’
Mary refused all such medication. ‘I want to be with you and Louisa, not ginned up to the gills,’ she weakly laughed.
Then, the fever revived itself more virulently than before. Ellen worked furiously to quell its worst ravages, and alarmed, sent for Louisa. In turn they tried to wet her lips, first with the quinine, then with the whiskey. Mary resisted so strongly that they desisted, fearing to usurp all of her remaining strength.
Throughout the next day – punctured by all the normal sounds of war – Ellen sat with her child.
The blister-like vesicles on Mary’s face she lanced and drained, in an attempt to decrease the irritation. But the clear vesicles turned into ugly pustules, pockmarking Mary’s beautiful face.
‘Sulphuric ointment might help – if we had some,’ Dr Sawyer advised.
Ellen hurried the ten miles there and back through both sides of the conflict to the nearest hospital to get some. Religiously she applied the sulphuric plasters, cementing them against Mary’s skin to keep out the noxious air. For each of the pustules that Ellen masked it seemed another erupted as quickly to replace it. Then she noted more severely inflamed lesions with hard, everted edges. Different from those already there, these were of a copperhued colour, and rapidly spreading over Mary’s body.
Immediately, Ellen summoned Dr Sawyer, pointing out these new foul-surfaced lesions.
Shubael Sawyer examined Mary, recognising something, his face darkening.
‘Doctor … what is it?’ Ellen asked, riven with panic at what the doctor’s face clearly told. There was some complication. She knew it!
He caught her arm, quickly propelling her away from Mary, only stopping when out of earshot.
‘Tell me, Doctor … tell me … whatever it is!’ Ellen pleaded.
‘Mrs Lavelle,’ he said, in a grave voice, still holding her arm. ‘Sister Mary … your child … Mary has contracted Syphilis!’
She looked at him – it was a mistake – he was wrong – Mary – impossible!
‘The crust …’ Dr Sawyer explained. ‘It must have come from an infected donor. Many soldiers of both sides …’ He let the words trail off, averted his eyes from hers. ‘That by which we sought to cure her has …’ Again he left the sentence unfinished.
‘What chance has she now’? Ellen asked, not letting go of him, feeling that same sensation she felt when first they brought Patrick to her.
‘Less … although the latter infection is of itself not fatal, her constitution has already been seriously weakened by the former. I have no words with which to idly comfort you, Mrs Lavelle,’ the doctor continued. ‘That this should be visited on such as Sister Mary is beyond human comprehension – and the gods do openly weep.’
Presently he returned with an amber bottle. Mercury, the label read. Pilulae Opii with morphine USA Medical Purveying Dept., Astoria.
‘It will ease things for Sister Mary,’ was all Dr Sawyer said, handing Ellen the bottle.
She was distraught. Mary, her child, her last remaining child, her vessel of purity, to be stricken by syphilis – the soldier’s disease. How could it be? How could anything be so cruel? Any God? And she herself had brought the diseased crust to Mary. Not trusted in the healing goodness of the Almighty but rather wanted to interpose herself between Mary and her God. Had wanted of her own accord to be Mary’s saviour. And now … ! Consumed with her own grief at what she had been complicit in, it took some time before Ellen’s thoughts returned to Dr Licoix and his farm – the source of Mary’s infection.
‘Oh, my God!’ she cried out. ‘The children! The children – it’s one of the children!’
Then she remembered the older girl, the beautiful blue-black girl. It had to be her. Her not more than a child – and with the soldier’s disease. She couldn’t dwell on it – how the girl-child … but she resolved there and then, when Mary’s sickness subsided, to return to Dr Licoix’s hellish place and smash open its prison doors. Free the children. But what would she then do with them?
Her mind, agitated by everything that had happened, raced ahead to this new problem. She couldn’t let them run loose in the rampaging countryside. They would be captured again, shot … or worse.
The beautiful blue-black girl leapt into her mind again. The hospital would take them – maybe – in Richmond? If she brought them South they would likely end up again enslaved. North they would become contrabands of war. And the girl at least needed treatment. She heard Mary whimper and for now put all such thoughts of the black children out of her mind.
Often, Mary would call out for Ellen, or Louisa.
The dead were on her lips as much as the living. Her father, Michael and Patrick.
Each fond name was an arrow to Ellen’s heart – the grief of remembrance now bound up with the grief of what lay ahead.
Then, in moments of lucidity, Mary would pray, always pray. The New Testament: ‘Let not this cup pass from me.’ Or the Old: ‘Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither.’
Or, her favourite prayer – to the Mother of God. ‘Hail Mary, full of Grace … Holy Mary … Pray for us sinners now, And at the hour of our death. Amen.’
Once, when Ellen could no longer hold open her eyes, she laid her head beside Mary’s. She had not intended sleep, only rest. When she awoke, Mary was caressing her head as one might a child. At this, Ellen could no longer contain her composure in front of Mary and broke down, the tears flooding her cheeks unashamedly.
‘Oh, Mary, my love!’ she sobbed uncontrollably ‘I’m going to lose you – lose you so soon – I just can’t bear it any more!’
‘Sshh now, a Mhamaí!’ Mary replied, still stroking Ellen’s head, calling her by the old-tongue Mother-word.
‘We will never be lost to each other – you know that,’ Mary said in the softest of voices. She stopped the stroking a moment, thinking of something. ‘A Mhamaí … remember how you once scolded me for calling you that – for using Irish – on the ship, when we first came to America?’
Beneath Mary’s hand, Ellen nodded.
‘You said we should leave behind the old tongue now that we were going to a new land – to America.’ Mary paused, gave a little laugh. ‘Strange, how some things you can’t leave behind, no matter how hard you try? Anyway …’ she continued, ‘I prefer it in the Irish. A Mhamaí! … it’s gentler – more like mothers really are.’
Ellen wiped her eyes. Mary always had a little parable – would never openly chide her for anything.
‘You are so wise, Mary,’ Ellen said, sitting up. ‘Where did you get it all from?’
‘From you and all that went before you,’ Mary answered simply.
‘Mary … I’m sorry for all the …’ Ellen began, but Mary reached over, putting a finger to her mother’s lips, silencing her.
‘We are all vessels of clay waiting to be broken. God has long ago forgiven you as I have … and long before you asked. Now, no more of this – will you sing to me?’
And Mary lay back, closing her eyes, waiting.
Ellen started, an old infant-dandling song. One she would often lilt out to Mary, dandling her on her knees. Every so often bouncing her into the air at the start of each new round of the tune, Mary shouting with glee, wanting her to do it again, and again …
She felt Mary squeeze her hand with the shared remembering, the song soothing both listener and singer alike, binding them together, expressing some unspoken thing between them
Then a softer, tenderer song – Moore. His melodies had found their way even over here, to America. This one written for the young Sarah Curran, engaged to be married to the executed patriot, Robert Emmet.
Rebellions, revolutions, executions – it was the song of mankind – and of Stephen Joyce, Ellen thought. Where was Stephen now in what battle, she wondered?
She felt Mary stir, started singing.
‘Has sorrow thy young days shaded,
As clouds o’er the morning fleet?
Too fast have those young days faded,
That, even in sorrow, were sweet?
Does Time with his cold wing wither,
Each feeling that once was dear?
Then, child of misfortune, come hither,
I’ll weep with thee, tear for tear.’
Somewhere, not far off, the cannons of war boomed, death withering its way on their cold wings.
And those, newly-withered of limb, would tonight have only themselves to sing to sleep. Maybe ‘The Last Rose of Summer’, another of Moore’s love songs and popular with the soldiers. Strange, how they had to come to America to learn them. The songs, as it were, following after the people. It was not the music Ellen had previously known, the songs of mountain, river and stream. Moore’s music was the music of cities, like Dublin and London, for the drawing rooms of fine gentlemen and their ladies. But here, in America, his songs had become the sorrowing songs of soldiers on both sides.
Now she sang Moore’s song for Mary.
‘’Tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone,
All her lovely companions,
Are faded and gone …
‘Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go, sleep thou with them.
‘When true hearts lie wither’d
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! Who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?’
She never felt Mary slip away – just a cooling of her hand. Thinking her temperature had once again abated Ellen kept singing to her, song after song after song.
‘She’s gone, Mother. Mary’s gone!’
Louisa had entered the room, stood listening as Ellen sang her elegy to her last remaining child. Now she had lost every single one of them.
Louisa, too, was filled with the unutterable grief of Mary’s death. She put her arms around Ellen’s neck, resting her head on her mother’s, as Ellen, lost somewhere in the song, still sang to her dead child. Next to her God, Louisa recognised, she loved this remarkable woman more than anything else on this forsaken earth.
‘She’s gone, Mother,’ Louisa repeated, kissing Ellen tenderly. ‘Our Mary is gone.’
They sat a while with Mary, prayed with her. Then Ellen caught Louisa’s hand.
‘She is not going in the lime-pit, Louisa. Mary is not going to be eaten by lime.’
Ellen had seen that before, back in Ireland, at the workhouse. Those dead by famine, moulded by lime into a monstrous and unidentifiable mound. Like a great black sun, the mound rising crescent-like against the workhouse wall, where the lime had eaten both flesh and bone. And the stench, Ellen had never forgotten the stench.
They took Mary. Stole her away into the night. Away, to the far side of the trees.
In a gladed spot, Louisa stopped.
‘Here, where it is green and sheltered, we could gently lay her back to the earth,’ Louisa said.
‘No, Louisa!’ Ellen answered. ‘Mary will not go into a shallow grave, to be picked at by hogs and the prying of soldiers’ bayonets.’
She explained no further, nor did Louisa ask. At the edge of the copse, Ellen motioned Louisa to set down Mary’s body. Louisa then sat on the ground, Mary’s head in her lap, waiting. She watched as Ellen gathered some dry brushwood, set it into the broad-based fork of a low-lying tree.
Her mother was building a funeral pyre – like the pagans of old – committing Mary’s body to the moon and the stars.
Louisa looked upwards – the Handle of the Plough. That’s where Ellen had told them her own parents were, tilling the great wastelands of the sky. Harvesting the heavens to give light to the earth.
Ellen set some leafy boughs above the brushwood. Soft for Mary’s last sleep. Louisa looked at the ravaged face of her sister. Ravaged but possessing such serenity, such peace. Mary had no earthly attachments. She was here in this world only to be the instrument of Him who had created her. Disease, death, rejection, humiliation – all human frailty held no fear for Mary. Everything was His plan. Life led to death. Death led back to Him – to everlasting life.
Louisa whispered aloud the words she had heard her sister so often say, ‘Grains of sand in the desert, Grains of time in an eternity, Inconsequential yet unique.’
Mary was that … unique.
Then Ellen was ready.
Between them they lifted Mary’s slight body, raising it above their shoulders. Slowly, they bore her aloft, procession-like, approaching the burial platform. Louisa gently lowered Mary’s head and shoulders onto the fronded bier. Inch by inch then, stepping backwards, delivering forward the remains of her sister, while Ellen supported Mary’s legs. Then, from the other side of the tree-fork, Louisa settled Mary deeper into the pyre, Ellen assisting her from the opposite side.
They never spoke, except in prayer. Louisa led the Litany of the Dead, Ellen responding.
‘From all wrath’
‘Good Lord deliver them’
‘From the strictness of thy justice’
‘Good Lord deliver them’
‘From the gnawing worm of conscience’
‘Good Lord deliver them’
‘From the weeping and gnashing of teeth’
‘Good Lord deliver them’
‘From eternal anguish’
‘Good Lord deliver them’
‘That thou wouldst deliver the faithful departed from the penalties of sin’
‘We beseech thee to hear us’
When they had finished the monotonous chant Ellen took from her pocket the white oak Rosary which Mary had given to her. Entwined it then through her child’s fingers, the crucifix upright facing Mary. Carefully, Ellen undid Mary’s bonnet and with small surgical scissors, took a snip of her child’s hair. Reverently, she placed the hair into some bandaging linen, folding it over and over, like some liturgical rite, before re-fixing Mary’s headdress.
Louisa watched Ellen whisper something into Mary’s ear … some last intimacy between them. Finally, Ellen kissed her child’s forehead, then her eyes and lips. Anointing her, Louisa thought. As Ellen turned away her hand found Mary’s, held it briefly, bidding it a last farewell. ‘Slán abhaile, a stoirín!’ Louisa heard the final blessing. ‘Go safely home, ashore!’
Ellen moved back, waiting.
Louisa then paid her last respects, touching her sister, talking to her as if she were still there.
Then it was time.
Ellen struck the Lucifer match. It flared in the gloom, catching her face for a moment.
Louisa watched her, started the De Profundis, the great prayer of the soul seeking its God.
‘De Profundis a clamavi ad te Domine!’
‘Out of the depths I cry unto you, O Lord!’
Ellen set the fizzling match against the hem of Mary’s habit, held it there, watching the dark brown heat-spot expand until it took flame, edging slowly into Mary’s shroud. Then it spread, ever-widening its orb, licking now at the tinder-dry wood.
‘Domine exaudi vocem meam fiant.’
‘O, Lord hear my voice.’
Ellen stood riveted to the spot, watching the flame, as if it were a thing apart, had its own beauty and would not, in moments, devour her darling girl.
Louisa ran to her, caught her by the shoulders.
‘Mother! Mother – stand back!’
Then Louisa felt what, at first she thought was a trembling, deep within her mother’s body. Then the low rumbling grew slowly more distinct. Out of the depths of Ellen’s being it rose. Up through her body until, in her throat, it held a moment, transforming itself from movement into sound.
Louisa continued to hold Ellen, trying to quell the trembling. It was her mother’s own De Profundis, her soul crying out for deliverance.
When it did find release, what passed her mother’s lips was no prayer. It was savage, primeval. It came from long before the prophets and the priests. From a time when woman was a beast of the forests – hunting, killing, being killed.
The fearsome keening bruted itself out of Ellen’s body, from her eyes, her ears, her nostrils, the savage mouth. She threw back her head, arms raised, fingers extended towards the flames, shaking off Louisa’s embrace.
‘Och … ! Occh … ! Oochh … !’ The sound came like some strangulated thing fighting for breath. Ooooochón! Ochón! Ochóóóón! Each push of the sound rising the note. Distorting it. Flinging it far above the trees and the heavens, her grief pouring over all. Wave after wave of it, rising and falling – as though a knife, repeatedly plunged and withdrawn. Louisa stood back, the flames lighting the Heavens, consuming their beautiful Mary. Ellen continued her lament, singing now in the language she always had … once.
‘Is briste mo chroí, is uaigneach mo shlí…
Broken is my heart, desolate my life …
… Don’t leave me alive here, behind
With my darling stretched out before me.’
And she cursed God. Cursed the famine that had sent them here to this land. Cursed the unGodly war that had cost her her son, and now her daughter.
‘Curse be upon me for my sin! Curse be on the mother who sees her children die!’
Louisa did not notice Ellen withdraw the curved surgical scissors from her pocket and then open its gleaming jaws. When she did observe it in her mother’s hand, its intent at first escaped her.
As if in another dimension of time, Louisa saw Ellen bare her left shoulder. Then slowly, inexorably, she dug the curved blade into the flesh of her shoulder and dragged it downwards over her breast. Three times, she inflicted the mark upon herself, no outward pain visible. As if flesh and sinew and life itself had already been deadened.
When finished, calmly she returned the surgical implement to her pocket, wiping its blade with her finger. Then she pulled up the shoulder of her dress, covering the gashed limb.
Only then did the sound come again.
Ochón ……… an Gorta Mór!Och, Ochón ……… Americeá! Ochón! Och Ochón ……… An Bás!
‘Famine’, ‘America’, ‘Death’ itself, she lamented.
When she was spent, Louisa went to her.
Drew her down to the ground.
Sat with her into the dying night. She muttering as a child might, mostly making no sense – only their names.
‘Mary … Patrick … Michael … Lavelle.’
Then she would change the order around. ‘Michael … Mary …’ as if to try to make meaning of it. Every so often she would raise her head, look at Louisa, mouth something … reach out a desolate finger … withdraw it again before touching her … start up some old suantraí – a sleepsong for children.
The day edged in on them, greying the ashes of Mary’s funeral pyre. No last glow left with which to comfort them. Only the blackened stump of the tree, ribboned with ash.
‘Dust to dust … ashes to ashes …’ Ellen said, nothing left in her now. Not even grief. She remained on the ground while Louisa rose and went to the tree. There, Louisa gathered within her hand some of the remains of her sister’s bodily life. Safely then, she knotted the handful of ashes within her handkerchief. Next she trailed her fingers through the remaining ashes, finding what she expected – the metal crucifix. She wiped it clean in the folds of her habit, kissed her crucified Saviour and put Him in her pocket. Her own grief Louisa joined with His suffering. Nor did she pass any judgement on Ellen, for the ritual in which they had both participated.
Her mother would need healing now. As much as any of the other poor wretches with whom they daily dealt.
Even, if she would not admit to it. Or ask for it.