Her parents hadn’t been sympathetic. Appalled, rather, that Lib had been so unlucky as to lose a husband less than a year after catching him. (Thinking that she’d been negligent, perhaps, to some degree, though they never said that aloud.) They’d been loyal enough to help her move to London and pass herself off as a widow. This conspiracy had shocked Lib’s sister so much, she’d never spoken to any of the three of them again. But the one question her mother and father hadn’t asked Lib was, How could he?
She blinked hard, because she couldn’t bear the idea that Byrne might think she was weeping for her husband, who was really not worth a single tear. She smiled a little instead.
“And Englishmen call Irishmen stupid!” he added.
That made her laugh out loud. She stifled it with her hand.
William Byrne kissed her, so fast and so hard that she almost tipped over. Not a word, only that single kiss, and then he walked out of her room.
Strangely enough, Lib did sleep then, despite all the clamour in her head.
When she woke, she fumbled for her watch on the table and pressed the button. It beat out the hours inside her fist: one, two, three, four. Friday morning. Only then did she remember how Byrne had kissed her. No, how the two of them had kissed.
Guilt brought her bolt upright. How could she be sure that Anna hadn’t worsened in the night, hadn’t taken her last ragged breath? Ever this night be at my side, to light and guard. She longed to be back in that small airless room. Would the O’Donnells even let her in this morning, after what she’d said at the meeting?
Lib dressed herself by feel, not even lighting her candle. She patted her way down the stairs and struggled with the front door until the bar heaved up and let her out.
Still dark; a cloud loosely bandaged the waning moon. So quiet, so lone, as if some disaster had laid waste the whole country and Lib was the last to walk its muddy paths.
There was one light in the small window of the O’Donnells’ cabin that had not stopped blazing for eleven days and nights now, like some awful eye that had forgotten how to blink. Lib walked up to the burning square and peeped in at the scene.
Sister Michael sitting beside the bed, her eyes on Anna’s profile. The tiny face transfigured by light. Sleeping beauty; innocence preserved; a child who looked perfect, perhaps because she wasn’t moving, wasn’t asking for anything, wasn’t causing any trouble. An illustration out of a cheap paper: The Final Vigil. Or The Little Angel’s Last Rest.
Lib must have moved or else Sister Michael had that uncanny ability to feel herself being watched, because the nun looked up and nodded a wan greeting.
Lib went to the front door and let herself in, braced for a rebuff.
Malachy O’Donnell was drinking tea by the fire. Rosaleen and Kitty were scraping something from one pot into another. The slavey kept her head down. The mistress glanced Lib’s way, but only briefly, as if she’d felt a draught. So the O’Donnells weren’t going to defy the committee by barring Lib from the cabin, at least not today.
In the bedroom, Anna was so deeply asleep that she looked like a waxwork.
Lib took Sister Michael’s cool hand and squeezed it, which startled the nun. “Thank you for coming last night.”
“But it did no good, did it?” asked Sister Michael.
“Still.”
The sun came up at a quarter past six. As if summoned by the light, Anna lurched off the pillow and put her hand out towards the empty chamber pot. Lib rushed to give it to her.
What the girl retched up was sunshine yellow but transparent. How could this hollowed-out stomach make such a gaudy shade out of nothing but water? Anna shuddered, contracting her lips as if to shake the drops off.
“Are you in pain?” asked Lib. These were the last days, surely.
Anna spat, and spat again, then settled back on the pillow, head turned towards the dresser.
Lib filled in her memorandum book.
Brought up bile; half a pint?
Pulse: 128 beats per minute.
Lungs: 30 respirations per minute; moist crackling bilaterally.
Neck veins distended.
Temperature very cool.
Eyes glassy.
Anna was ageing as if time itself were speeding up. Her skin was wrinkled parchment, blemished as if messages had been inked on it then scratched out. When the child rubbed her collarbone, Lib noticed that the skin stayed ruched. Dark red strands were strewn across the upper pillow, and Lib scraped them up and tucked them into the pocket of her apron. “Is your neck stiff, child?”
“No.”
“Why do you turn it that way, then?”
“The window’s too bright,” said Anna.
Use your influence, Byrne had said. But what new arguments could Lib muster?
“Tell me,” she said, “what kind of God would take your life in exchange for your brother’s soul?”
“He wants me,” whispered Anna.
Kitty brought in breakfast on a tray and spoke in an uneven voice about the extraordinarily fine weather. “And how are you today, pet?”
“Very well,” Anna told her cousin wheezily.
The slavey pressed her reddened hand to her own mouth. Then went back to the kitchen.
Breakfast was griddle cakes with sweet butter. Lib thought of Saint Peter standing at the gate, waiting for a buttered cake. She tasted ash. Now and at the hour of our death, amen. Sickened, she set the griddle cake back on the plate and put the tray by the door.
“Everything’s stretching, Mrs. Lib,” said Anna in a catarrhal murmur.
“Stretching?”
“The room. The outside fits in the inside.”
Was this the start of delirium? “Are you cold?” Lib asked, sitting next to the bed.
Anna shook her head.
“Hot?” asked Lib.
“Not anything. No difference.”
Those glazed eyes were reminding her of Pat O’Donnell’s painted gaze in the daguerreotype. Every now and then they seemed to twitch. Troubles of vision, perhaps. “Can you see what’s right in front of you?”
A hesitation. “Mostly.”
“Meaning most of what’s there?”
“Everything,” Anna corrected her, “most of the time.”
“But sometimes you can’t?”
“It goes black. But I see other things,” said the girl.
“What kind of things?”
“Beautiful things.”
This is what comes of starvation, Lib wanted to roar. But whoever changed a child’s mind by shouting at her? No, she needed to speak more eloquently than she ever had in her life.
“Another riddle, Mrs. Lib?” the child asked.
Lib was startled. But she supposed even the dying liked a little entertainment to help the time pass. “Ah, let me see. Yes, I believe I have one more. What’s—what thing is that which is more frightful the smaller it is?”
“Frightful?” repeated Anna. “A mouse?”
“But a rat scares people as much if not more, though it’s several times bigger,” Lib pointed out.
“All right.” The girl heaved a breath. “Something that causes more fear if it’s smaller.”
“Thinner, rather,” Lib corrects herself. “Narrower.”
“An arrow,” Anna murmured, “a knife?” Another ragged breath. “Please, a hint.”
“Imagine walking on it.”
“Would it hurt me?”
“Only if you stepped off.”
“A bridge,” cried Anna.
Lib nodded. For some reason she was remembering Byrne’s kiss. Nothing could take that away from her; for the rest of her life, she’d have that kiss. It gave her courage. “Anna,” she said, “you’ve done enough.”
The child blinked at her.
“Fasted enough, prayed enough. I’m sure Pat is happy in heaven already.”
A whisper: “Can’t be sure.”
Lib tried another tack. “All your gifts—your intelligence, your kindness, your strength—they’re needed on earth. God wants you to do his work here.”
Anna shook her head.
“I’m speaking as your friend now.” Her voice shook. “You’ve become very dear to me, the dearest girl in the world.”
A tiny smile.
“You’re breaking my heart.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Lib.”
“Then eat! Please. Even a mouthful. A sip. I beg of you.”
Anna’s look was grave, inexorable.
“Please! For my sake. For the sake of everyone who—”
Kitty, from the doorway: “’Tis Mr. Thaddeus.”
Lib leapt to her feet.
The priest looked uncomfortably hot in his layers of black. Had Lib managed to prick his conscience at the meeting last night? His mouth still turned up as he greeted Anna, but his eyes were woebegone.
Lib pushed down her dislike of the man. After all, if anyone could convince Anna of the folly in her theology, it would logically be her priest. “Anna, would you like to speak to Mr. Thaddeus alone?”
A tiny shake of the head.