A week after Mary’s death, Ellen decided to leave.
Mary’s death was her epiphany.
God could ask no more of her. Nor would she give it.
Mary had freed her of debt to God. Mary and Patrick both.
Somewhere in the distance gunfire cracked and the killing began again. She must find Lavelle – go and find him. Not wait here until he was stretchered into her, like Patrick. Or she stumble over him in the blood-laden, after-mist of battle, a note pinned to his breast so that he could be named and claimed. She did not want to claim him in death. Death was forever, an eternity of remorse that she hadn’t found him in time.
She bade goodbye to the children, hugged each of them, the girl Delta wanting to come with her.
She took her leave of the men, every single one of them. They stood, those who could and cheered her. The remainder raised what crutch or good limb they had left, in a farewell salute.
‘The Union has two million men they say and the Confederates, a million,’ Dr Sawyer told her as he handed her the note. ‘It is an impossible task.’
She knew it was.
‘Life itself is an impossible task, Doctor,’ she replied and thanked him for the note that would garner her safe passage – she hoped.
‘South is it, Mother?’ Louisa asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Louisa! I think so. I have enquired of every Northern soldier who has passed under our care and there is no word of him, even amongst the Irish. He must, after all, have gone South … with Patrick.’
Louisa saw her falter.
‘Are you sure you’re strong enough?’ Louisa started to ask and regretted it, almost immediately.
‘I have never been strong enough,’ her adoptive mother said, no reproach for Louisa in her voice – only for herself.
‘I will storm Heaven mercilessly that you find him … and for your safe return,’ Louisa said, embracing her.
Ellen held her tightly, instinctively caressing her in a slow circular motion, as if to a child. ‘Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone,’ she whispered into Louisa’s headdress.
They parted, all spoken and unspoken between them.
Louisa watched her from the doorway.
It was her way … journeying … a task … an overcoming. It was a curse, a cross on her back. Her mother atrophied when still … facing herself.
Louisa watched Ellen’s back reach the edge of the trees. Already had her hand raised when the traveller’s footsteps stopped and Ellen turned. Just a backward look, no sound, no hand. Then, as quickly, her mother turned on her path and disappeared from view.
Louisa waited, the hand that blessed the traveller still raised, some song from her childhood murmuring up inside her, that the tinker-folk had. Some prayer to the moon, the bright jewel of the night, to light the traveller’s way.
She whispered ‘Amen’, lowered her hand, looking for a moment to where the trees had swallowed Ellen. Then went in to the cries of the anguished.
‘… To the tainted and needy, five senses restore … give song to our voices, sight to our eyes …’
‘Mother … !’ a poor soul beseeched Louisa, his face where it had half been shot away replaced by a thin layer of cork.
‘Mother, put your hand to the good side before I go …’ he pleaded.
She moved towards the man – another voice shouting.
‘Aw shut-up, cork face, for Christ’s sake!’
She sat beside the man, put her hand on his fevered forehead, inadvertently touching the lifeless material. Damp it was, with his own sweat, giving some false semblance of mottled life.
He seized her hand with both his own, holding it there, in case she removed the soothing touch, before he went.
‘Ah thank you, Mother – God’s grace on you!’ the man with the cork face said.
She sat thinking of Ellen, her own mother, until the grip on her arm gave a frightened clasp in the final clutching.