If she had looked behind her, had seen Louisa standing there, Ellen knew she would falter, retrace her steps and go back to her last remaining constant in the world. Louisa was her anam chara, her ‘soul-friend’. Keeper of things that went beyond words, beyond any kinship. Louisa likewise, would understand why she didn’t look back. Louisa was the light of the moon ahead of her, the sheltering stars, the guiding wind at her back. They were two sides of the same coin … maybe even the same side. She would go to the ends of the world for Louisa, and Louisa for her. Now she must go to the ends of the Confederacy – the slave states – to find Lavelle.
She prayed for safe passage and to travel hopefully.
As ever her prayers ended with Mary. She asked Heaven’s newest angel to keep her spirit strong and true. Mary, inviolate, the most beautiful among tainted humanity. Taken, poxed out of life by the most vile, the most hideous of diseases. Mary, touched by the Divine, scarred by the sordid. The Magdalen sin – Ellen’s sin – she had brought to her own child. Her own complicity in Dr Licoix’s evil deeds had been responsible. She had known it to be wrong, inhumane, the children to be harvested thus, like some infected crops. She had gone against her own nature – and nature had exacted its price.
And now …? Now she must find Lavelle. Why? She questioned herself, as if necessary to ask after all this time. Guilt … so that he would absolve her? Vanity … that he still would love her? Everything she touched, it seemed, turned to dust, rancid dust. What if she also brought destruction to Lavelle in order to fulfil her own wayward needs? If she became to him the bean sí – the banshee – harbinger of death … the death messenger?
Now, she was filled with self-doubt. She should have stayed with the men … put them first, not herself. What of Louisa? She too had suffered grievously, lost a brother in Patrick, a beloved sister in Mary? Now she, the only mother Louisa could ever remember, was leaving.
Lavelle! Lavelle! She must keep him fixed in her mind. He would know what was best, what suited.
Lavelle always knew what was right, even when she had argued against him, used her superior intellect.
There were truths, basic truths. These could be argued away by slight of tongue, by intellect, but they could never be denied. Lavelle had truth – he knew things – even when she, by dint of argument, convinced him otherwise. Truth existed of its own accord, it didn’t need explaining. Sometimes she wished she were closer to how she once had been. Rooted in the old safe ways; barefooted, clenching the sure earth, living the meagre life. The hungry years were the best. Then she was selfless, no thought for her own gain. A story at the hearth, a handed-down tune on the fiddle of a winter’s night. The snipe diving at dusk – mionnán aerach – little goat of the air – the wind bleating through its wings; the cuckoo-infested valley in May; a look – a loving cup passed frugally. How far she had come – America, land of plenty, the New World. What did it all mean? And young boys who couldn’t scratch their names, killing each other like savages, dreaming of glory … and liberty? And an imagined America filled with false dawns.
If only she were a philosopher, she could work it all out. Pull the pieces together. She thought she had … many times. Only to have it all fall in on top of her again.
But Lavelle would know. Lavelle knew the ordinary of life.
Lavelle would be her Saviour.