She was too good for me,
And an angel claimed her for his own,
And took her from Lough Ree.
Lib pushed the front door of the cabin and the upper half gave way.
Firelight blazed in the empty kitchen. Something stirring in the corner—a rat? Her year in the foul wards of Scutari had hardened Lib to vermin. She fumbled for the latch to open the lower half of the door. She crossed and bent to look through the barred base of the dresser.
The beady eye of a chicken met hers. A dozen or so birds, in behind the first, started up their soft complaint. Shut in to save them from the foxes, Lib supposed.
She spotted a new-laid egg. Something occurred to her: Perhaps Anna O’Donnell sucked them in the night and ate the shells, leaving no trace?
Stepping back, Lib almost tripped on something white. A saucer, rim poking out from beneath the dresser. How could the slavey have been so careless? When Lib picked it up, liquid sloshed in her hand, soaking her cuff. She hissed and carried the saucer over to the table.
Only then did it register. She put her tongue to her wet hand: the tang of milk. So the grand fraud was that simple? No need for the child to hunt for eggs, even, when there was a dish of milk left out for her to lap at like a dog in the dark.
Lib felt more disappointment than triumph. Exposing this hardly required a trained nurse. It seemed this job was done already, and she’d be in the jaunting car on her way back to the railway station by the time the sun came up.
The door scraped open, and Lib jerked around as if it were she who had something to hide. “Mrs. O’Donnell.”
The Irishwoman mistook accusation for greeting. “Good morning to you, Mrs. Wright, and I hope you got a wink of sleep?”
Kitty behind her, narrow shoulders dragged down by two buckets.
Lib held up the saucer—chipped in two places, she noticed now. “Someone in this household has been secreting milk under the dresser.”
Rosaleen O’Donnell’s chapped lips parted in the beginnings of a silent laugh.
“I can only presume that your daughter’s been sneaking out to drink it.”
“You presume too much, then. Sure in what farmhouse in the land does there not be a saucer of milk left out at night?”
“For the little ones,” said Kitty, half smiling as if marvelling at the Englishwoman’s ignorance. “Otherwise wouldn’t they take offence and cause a ruction?”
“You expect me to believe that this milk is for the fairies?”
Rosaleen O’Donnell folded her big-boned arms. “Believe what you like or believe nothing, ma’am. Putting out the drop of milk does no harm, at least.”
Lib’s mind raced. Both maid and mistress just might be credulous enough for this to be the reason why the milk was under the dresser, but that didn’t mean Anna O’Donnell hadn’t been sipping from the fairies’ dish every night for four months.
Kitty bent to open the dresser. “Get out with ye, now. Isn’t the grass full of slugs?” She hustled the chickens towards the door with her skirts.
The bedroom door opened and the nun looked out. Her usual whisper: “Is anything the matter?”
“Not at all,” said Lib, unwilling to explain her suspicions. “How was the night?”
“Peaceful, thank God.”
Presumably meaning that Sister Michael hadn’t caught the child eating yet. But how hard had she tried, given her trust in God’s mysterious ways? Was the nun going to be any help to Lib at all, or only a hindrance?
Mrs. O’Donnell swung the iron crock off the fire now. Broom in hand, Kitty flicked the hens’ greenish dirt out of the dresser.
The nun had disappeared into the bedroom again, leaving the door ajar.
Lib was just untying her cloak when Malachy O’Donnell stepped in from the farmyard with an armful of turf. “Mrs. Wright.”
“Mr. O’Donnell.”
He dumped the sods by the fire, then turned to go out again.
She remembered to ask: “Might there be a platform scales hereabouts on which I could weigh Anna?”
“Ah, I’m afraid there would not.”
“Then how do you weigh your livestock?”
He scratched his purplish nose. “By eye, I suppose.”
A child-size voice in the room within.
“Is it herself up already?” asked the father, face lighting.
Mrs. O’Donnell cut past him and went in to their daughter just as Sister Michael stepped out with her satchel.
Lib moved to follow the mother, but the father held up his hand. “You had, ah, another question.”
“Did I?” She should have been by the child’s side already to prevent a moment’s gap between one nurse’s shift and the next. But she found it impossible to walk away in the middle of a conversation.
“About the walls, Kitty said you were after asking.”
“The walls, yes.”
“There do be some, some dung in there, with the mud. And heather and hair for grip,” said Malachy O’Donnell.
“Hair, really?” Lib’s eyes slid towards the bedroom. Could this apparently ingenuous fellow be a decoy? Might his wife have scooped something out of the cooking pot in her hands before she rushed in to greet her daughter?
“And blood, and a drop of buttermilk,” he added.
Lib stared at him. Blood and buttermilk—as if poured out on some primitive altar.
When she finally got into the bedroom, she found Rosaleen O’Donnell sitting on the little bed, and Anna on her knees beside her mother. There’d been enough time for the child to have gulped down a couple of griddle cakes. Lib cursed herself for the politeness that had kept her chitchatting with the farmer. And cursed the nun, too, for slipping away so fast; considering that Lib had sat through the entire Rosary yesterday evening, couldn’t Sister Michael have stayed a minute longer this morning? Although they weren’t supposed to share their views of the girl, surely the nun should have given Lib—the more experienced nurse—a report on any pertinent facts of the night shift.
Anna’s voice sounded low but clear, not as if she’d just bolted food. “My love is mine, and I am his, in me he dwells, in him I live.”
That sounded like poetry, but knowing this child it was Scripture.
The mother wasn’t praying, just nodding along, like an admirer in the balcony.
“Mrs. O’Donnell,” said Lib.
Rosaleen O’Donnell put her finger to her dry lips.
“You mustn’t be here,” said Lib.
Rosaleen O’Donnell’s head tilted to one side. “Sure can’t I say good morning to Anna?”
Face closed like a bud, the child gave no sign of hearing anything.
“Not like this.” Lib spelled it out: “Not without one of the nurses present. You mustn’t rush into her room ahead of us or have access to her furnishings.”
The Irishwoman reared up. “Isn’t any mother eager for a little prayer with her own sweet child?”
“You may certainly greet her night and morning. This is for your own good, yours and Mr. O’Donnell’s,” Lib added, to soften it. “You wish to prove you’re innocent of any sleight of hand, don’t you?”
For answer, Rosaleen O’Donnell sniffed. “Breakfast will be at nine,” she threw over her shoulder as she left.
That was still almost four hours away. Lib felt quite hollow. Farms had their routines, she supposed. But she should have asked the Ryan girl for something at the spirit grocery this morning, a crust in her hand, even.
At school Lib and her sister had always been hungry. (It was the time the two of them had got along best, she remembered; the fellow feeling of prisoners, she supposed now.) A sparing diet was considered beneficial for girls in particular because it kept the digestion in trim and built character. Lib didn’t believe she lacked self-control, but she found hunger pointlessly distracting; it made one think of nothing but food. So in adult life she never skipped a meal if she could help it.