“A wonderful little girl.”
In what sense? Virtuous? Or exceptional? Clearly the chit had them all charmed. Lib looked hard at the priest’s curved profile. “Have you ever advised her to refuse nourishment, perhaps as some sort of spiritual exercise?”
His hands spread in protest. “Mrs. Wright. I don’t think you’re of our faith?”
Picking her words, Lib said, “I was baptized in the Church of England.”
The nun seemed to be watching a passing crow. Avoiding contamination by staying out of the conversation?
“Well,” said Mr. Thaddeus, “let me assure you that Catholics are required to do without food for only a matter of hours, for instance from midnight to the taking of Holy Communion the following morning. We also abstain from meat on Wednesdays and Fridays and during Lent. Moderate fasting mortifies the cravings of the body, you see,” he added as easily as if he were speaking of the weather.
“Meaning the appetite for food?”
“Among others.”
Lib moved her eyes to the muddy ground in front of her boots.
“We also express sorrow over the agonies of Our Lord by sharing them even a little,” he continued, “so fasting can be a useful penance.”
“Meaning that if one punishes oneself, one’s sins will be forgiven?” asked Lib.
“Or those of others,” said the nun under her breath.
“Just as Sister says,” the priest answered, “if we offer up our suffering in a generous spirit to be set to another’s account.”
Lib pictured a gigantic ledger filled with inky debits and credits.
“But the key is, fasting is never to be carried to an extreme or to the point of harming the health.”
Hard to spear this slippery fish. “Then why do you think Anna O’Donnell has gone against the rules of her own church?”
The priest’s broad shoulders heaved into a shrug. “Many’s the time I’ve reasoned with her over the past months, pleaded with her to take a bite of something. But she’s deaf to all persuasion.”
What was it about this spoiled miss that she’d managed to enrol all the grown-ups around her in this charade?
“Here we are,” murmured Sister Michael, gesturing towards the end of a faint track.
This couldn’t be their destination, surely? The cabin was in need of a fresh coat of whitewash; pitched thatch brooded over three small squares of glass. At the far end, a cow byre stooped under the same roof.
Lib saw all at once the foolishness of her assumptions. If the committee had hired the nurses, then Malachy O’Donnell was not necessarily prosperous. It seemed that all that marked the family out from the other peasants scratching a living around here was their claim that their little girl could live on air.
She stared at the O’Donnells’ low roofline. If Dr. McBrearty hadn’t been so rash as to write to the Irish Times, she saw now, word would never have spread beyond these sodden fields. How many important friends of his were investing their hard cash, as well as their names, in this bizarre enterprise? Were they betting that after the fortnight, both nurses would obediently swear to the miracle and make this puny hamlet a marvel of Christendom? Did they think to buy the endorsement, the combined reputability, of a Sister of Mercy and a Nightingale?
The three walked up the path—right past a dung heap, Lib noticed with a quiver of disapproval. The thick walls of the cabin sloped outwards to the ground. A broken pane in the nearest window was stopped up with a rag. There was a half-door, gaping at the top like a horse’s stall. Mr. Thaddeus pushed the bottom open with a dull scrape and gestured for Lib to go first.
She stepped into darkness. A woman cried out in a language Lib didn’t know.
Her eyes started to adjust. A floor of beaten earth under her boots. Two females in the frilled caps that Irishwomen always seemed to wear were clearing away a drying rack that stood before the fire. After piling the clothes into the younger, slighter woman’s arms, the elder ran forward to shake hands with the priest.
He answered her in the same tongue—Gaelic, it had to be—then moved into English. “Rosaleen O’Donnell, I know you met Sister Michael yesterday.”
“Sister, good morning to you.” The woman squeezed the nun’s hands.
“And this is Mrs. Wright, one of the famous nurses from the Crimea.”
“My!” Mrs. O’Donnell had broad, bony shoulders, stone-grey eyes, and a smile holed with dark. “Heaven bless you for coming such a distance, ma’am.”
Could she really be ignorant enough to think that war still raged in that peninsula and that Lib had just arrived, bloody from the battlefront?
“’Tis in the good room I’d have ye this minute”—Rosaleen O’Donnell nodded towards a door to the right of the fire—“if it wasn’t for the visitors.”
Now Lib was listening, she could make out the faint sound of singing.
“We’re grand here,” Mr. Thaddeus assured her.
“Let ye sit down till we have a cup of tea, at least,” Mrs. O’Donnell insisted. “The chairs are all within, so I’ve nothing but creepies for you. Mister’s off digging turf for Séamus O’Lalor.”
Creepies had to mean the log stools the woman was shoving practically into the flames for her guests. Lib chose one and tried to inch it farther away from the hearth. But the mother looked offended; clearly, right by the fire was the position of honour. So Lib sat, putting down her bag on the cooler side so her ointments wouldn’t melt into puddles.
Rosaleen O’Donnell crossed herself as she sat down and so did the priest and the nun. Lib thought of following suit. But no, it would be ridiculous to start aping the locals.
The singing from the so-called good room seemed to swell. The fireplace opened into both parts of the cabin, Lib realized, so sounds leaked through.
While the maid winched the hissing kettle off the fire, Mrs. O’Donnell and the priest chatted about yesterday’s drop of rain and how unusually warm the summer was proving on the whole. The nun listened and occasionally murmured assent. Not a word about the daughter.
Lib’s uniform was sticking to her sides. For an observant nurse, she reminded herself, time need never be wasted. She noted a plain table, pushed against the windowless back wall. A painted dresser, the lower section barred, like a cage. Some tiny doors set into the walls; recessed cupboards? A curtain of old flour sacks nailed up. All rather primitive, but neat, at least; not quite squalid. The blackened chimney hood was woven of wattle. There was a square hollow on either side of the fire, and what Lib guessed was a salt box nailed high up. A shelf over the fire held a pair of brass candlesticks, a crucifix, and what looked like a small daguerreotype behind glass in a black lacquer case.
“And how’s Anna today?” Mr. Thaddeus finally asked when they were all sipping the strong tea, the maid included.
“Well enough in herself, thanks be to God.” Mrs. O’Donnell cast another anxious glance towards the good room.
Was the girl in there singing hymns with these visitors?
“Perhaps you could tell the nurses her history,” suggested Mr. Thaddeus.
The woman looked blank. “Sure what history has a child?”
Lib met Sister Michael’s eyes and took the lead. “Until this year, Mrs. O’Donnell, how would you have described your daughter’s health?”
A blink. “Well, she’s always been a delicate flower, but not a sniveller or tetchy. If ever she had a scrape or a stye, she’d make it a little offering to heaven.”
“What about her appetite?” asked Lib.
“Ah, she’s never been greedy or clamoured for treats. Good as gold.”
“And her spirits?” asked the nun.
“No cause for complaint,” said Mrs. O’Donnell.
These ambiguous answers didn’t satisfy Lib. “Does Anna go to school?”
“Oh, Mr. O’Flaherty only doted on her.”
“Didn’t she win the medal, sure?” The maid pointed at the mantel so suddenly that the tea sloshed in her cup.
“That’s right, Kitty,” said the mother, nodding like a pecking hen.