Maggie's Door

by Patricia Reilly Giff

  Sean saw the man’s eyes gleam, certain that he would do as he wished. Over his shoulder, Sean could see Mam’s eyes were closed, sunken in her head.

  “Food,” Patch breathed.

  There would be food on the long table in the man’s great kitchen: a leg of lamb maybe, a chicken simmering in broth in the pot swung over the hearth. Eggs in a basket.

  Eggs!

  He took a breath. “Just over the hill?”

  The man pointed with the crop. “And up the next a way.” He shrugged. “It is simple. The groom will come back with the horse, and you will have food for your family.”

  “Sean, do it, a stór,” his mother said without opening her eyes.

  “Well, then . . . ,” Sean said.

  “An egg,” Patch said, almost as if he knew Sean’s thoughts.

  Sean ran his hands over the knobby edges of the posts.

  Without the cart they would never get to the port of Galway. But without something to eat . . .

  “Sean,” his mother said.

  The day was almost over. It would be dark by the time he came back. It was a mistake.

  “We need the food,” his mother said.

  He nodded at the man, not quite daring to look up at him. He’d do it.

  FOUR

  NORY

  She passed a town and glanced at a stone church on a hill, its spires gray against the sky. Someday Patch would build houses and even a church like that, she was sure of it.

  Patch loved to lie on the ground at the side of their house, a meandering line of stones in front of his outspread arms. He’d rearrange the stones, adding to them, piling one upon another.

  “Are you building a great city then?” she had asked him once.

  “It is a house for you,” he’d said, “with a room where you will sing and do nothing but that.”

  “That is a wonderful thing for you to do for me.”

  At first Nory did sing as she walked, bits of song she had made up. But the nights were different. Weird shapes rose in front of her and faded away as she came close to them.

  Only rocks or trees! she told herself.

  But suppose they were creatures who waited to spring out and twist themselves into the length of her hair, which fell to her waist?

  She longed for the sound of Anna’s voice, or Granda’s. She knew what they’d say: Never mind the fear. Make your way to the ship. There is no food left for you in Ireland.

  And now it was not only the nights that frightened her. The days were fearful as well. She didn’t even know when the fear had begun.

  She looked up to realize the road had separated and she was skirting a foamy finger of water. She stopped and followed her footsteps back a long way.

  Suppose she went home to Maidin Bay? Over the last rise she would see Anna’s wee house with plants growing from the thatched roof. Threads of smoke would rise from the hearth, and Anna would hold out her arms. Nory shook her head hard, feeling her hair whip around her. Anna would be furious.

  “No more,” Nory said aloud. She clenched her hands together. After a moment she began to sing again. She walked south.

  Always south.

  She kept the sea on her right side and tried to forget she was alone, that Anna was farther away with each step she took and the ship no nearer than the sliver of moon that slipped in between the clouds at night.

  Sometimes people passed her on the road, people in tatters of clothing, holding out their hands for food, then disappearing in back of her.

  But she wasn’t afraid of those people. It was someone else, someone who was following her. She could hear the footsteps soft on the packed earth of the road, and when she stopped, the steps stopped too.

  “Ah, Nory,” she told herself, but now she whispered. “It’s only the crashing of the waves and the wind across the dunes.”

  She walked faster, panting as she climbed the next hill, then hesitated, trying to decide if she should look back over her shoulder and see . . .

  See what? Nothing? Something from another world? She held her skirt up above her ankles and slid down the other side of the hill, gathering speed, too fast, much too fast.

  She tried to slow down, reaching out to grab the chunks of sea grass in her hands. Just as she reached the bottom, her bag sliding away, something sharp sliced across the sole of her foot.

  She sank down in the weeds at the side of the road, rocking back and forth, watching the blood blot itself in the sand underneath. With one hand she pulled the bag close. Wrapped in bits of cloth inside it were dried stems and leaves and flower petals. Anna’s cures. Houseleek for the eyes, laurel leaves for skin rash. But nothing to stop the bleeding! Had she been home she could have covered the cut with a bit of fur from a hare.

  Stomach heaving, head fuzzy, she thought of it dreamily. Not a hare left in all of Ireland. Since the potato crop had failed, there were few creatures that hadn’t been pounced on for food.

  Somehow the bleeding had to be stopped. What it needed was a stitch with a curved wire and a length of yarn, but she had neither.

  She could see Anna’s face. Do you remember nothing I’ve taught you?

  The web of a spider to cover a wound.

  She shuddered. Instead of looking for a web she pulled her skirt to her knees and used her teeth to tear it. The hem was so caked with mud it was as hard as the stones underneath her. She spat it out, tasting the grime of the road.

  There was no help for it. It had to be a spider’s web, and that spider had to be large enough to have spun a great amount of thread across the grasses. When she looked closely she could see dozens of small insects going busily about their world, climbing the rushes or burrowing along small ridges of sand. Small spiders the color of tea swung themselves across the tops of the reeds. And then she saw the right one: coal black, thick and hairy, with a web it had spun back and forth in the dry grass.

  Fuafar!

  She waved her hands, willing the spider to go away. She thought about killing it with a stone, but she could almost see Granda’s face in front of her. What kind of a thing is that, Nory, he would say, to take its web and its miserable life too?

  She leaned over and blew until at last the spider scuttled away from the windstorm she had created. She raised her foot, stepped on the web, and patted down its gauzy surface so it would cover the cut.

  Brave girl, her sister Celia would say.

  The sea was just beyond a small rise. On one foot she hobbled off the road to reach the strand, then sank down in the damp sand. The water was clean and clear, icy cold, and she washed the hem of her skirt until it turned as blue as it had been the day last year when she had dyed the cloth with flowers from the field.

  She tore off a long strip of the skirt to wind it around her foot, pulling the cloth tight. The blue turned pink almost immediately, but it was finished. She moved away from the sea, curled herself into a ball on the sand, and slept.

  It was entirely dark when she opened her eyes again. She couldn’t see the road in back of her, and just a glint of silver from the sea in front.

  She was thirsty and cold, and her foot throbbed. Her neck prickled.

  Alone, but not alone.

  She twisted her head around slowly, and as her eyes became used to the darkness she saw the shape of the land. She caught her breath. A person, back bent, head up, was watching her from the top of the hill.

  FIVE

  SEAN

  It was late, and still the Englishman’s house was not in sight. The moon was up and fast, rushing through clouds, lighting the fields around a small house.

  The house listed on the edge of the road, almost as if it would slide away in the wind. Both halves of the door were shut tight or Sean would have stopped to ask if they knew how far he’d have to go to find the great house.

  He paused to rest, but only for a moment before he went on. Running was easy for him. Francey had taught him to run lightly, and he had always been able to go on for long distances without becoming breathl
ess.

  Ah, Francey. At the end of this trip was Francey’s house in Brooklyn. He pictured Francey and Maggie, his wife, and beside them his sister, Mary, who had gone to America first, so long ago he had just come up to her waist. He remembered Mary bent over him crying as she hugged him one last time, her cheeks lightly marked by the pits from smallpox.

  At last around the bend he saw the walls and the iron gates, still open. He slipped in between them and went to the gatehouse.

  “What is it?” The guard came outside, an iron pipe in his hand.

  “Your master is on the road back there.” Sean pointed. “He has need of a horse.”

  The man laughed without humor. “Do you think we’d give you a horse?”

  Sean shook his head. “He asked that the groomsman bring him one.”

  The guard waved his hand. “We’ll send one then. Go on.”

  Sean ran his tongue over his lips. They were dry, with the faintest taste of salt from the sea. “His honor said . . .”

  The man turned his back and shuffled to the gates, hefting the pipe in his hand.

  Sean spoke more loudly. “He said that I could have food.”

  “He never gives food. Never once in all the Hunger have I seen it.”

  “And for my family,” Sean said. “My mam and a boy.”

  “Take yourself out through the gates.” The man glanced at the pipe in his hand. “I have no time for you. I have to find the groomsman.”

  The path to the great house was long. The kitchen would be around the back. “His honor promised,” Sean said.

  The man’s mouth twisted. “He gives nothing away.”

  Sean thought of eggs in a basket, a joint of meat on the table. He began to run. Ahead of him were trees and low bushes. If he could just get there, just hide . . .

  He was faster than the guard, younger. He slipped behind a tree, motionless. He could hear the guard’s footsteps, his heavy breathing. And then at last the guard said something under his breath and threw the pipe, which clanged against the gravel path.

  Sean waited precious moments, then went around the corner of the great house to the kitchen. Everything there was dark and closed. He peered through the cracks in the door, trying to see if the fire was high or quiet and banked for the night. Would the guard go to the groomsman first or come to the kitchen?

  “Dia dhuit,” he whispered, his mouth close to the door. He took a chance and pulled on the doorstrap.

  The door opened and the face of a woman peered out, a heavy face with black currant eyes almost hidden in her nightcap. She ate every day, Sean thought, ate well from the Englishman’s larder.

  “Who is it?” The sound of Galway was thick on her tongue.

  “You are the cook?” He looked over his shoulder, his heart pounding, his mouth dry. “His honor said to come for food. I helped him on the road.”

  She opened the door farther for him, and he went inside to see that she had been sleeping. Her straw bed was rumpled with coats piled on top of one another, and only the edges of the turf gleamed red in the darkness.

  The room was as he had pictured it: the table, the pot swung over the hearth, even the eggs in the wicker basket.

  “What is it you want?” she asked.

  There was enough food here to feed dozens of people on the road. He spread his hands wide. “What will you give me?”

  “An egg?” she said.

  He pictured it, cracking the top lightly, sucking the warm liquid. Gone in a moment. Nothing for Mam and Patch.

  “More than an egg.” He hesitated. “There are three of us.”

  She went back to her bed, pattering on feet too small for her bulk. “Take what you can carry,” she said. “No one will know the difference.”

  It was hard to believe his luck. He stopped to crack an egg and, with his head held back, let the inside spill over his tongue. A hen’s egg! He ate another and another.

  He filled his pockets with two others. He wanted to ask if he could take the wicker basket, but already the woman was snoring in her bed, and he was afraid it would cause too much trouble.

  A loaf of dark bread lay in the center of the table. When had he seen bread like that, thick and crusty?

  It was enough. That much would get them as far as the port and the ship.

  He turned, and from the corner of his eye he saw a small tub of lard.

  Lard smeared over bread.

  Lard covering the tops of potatoes long ago, dripping over them.

  Mam had made a sweet cake with lard once.

  He took the tub, balanced it on top of the bread, and was reaching for the door when he heard heavy footsteps outside. Quickly he looked at the woman, but her head was buried under the coats. In two steps he was at the archway to the hall. He ran soundlessly, glancing up at the curved stairs, then darted through an open door into a room and almost without thinking crouched in back of a chair.

  He heard someone knock at the kitchen door, and the woman grumbling. “Go away,” she called.

  The sound of his breath was loud in his ears. He leaned forward, his forehead against the back of the chair, gasping. But when no one came his breath slowed.

  Windows lined one of the walls, and a path from the misty moon fell across the floor. He stood up and ran his fingers over the chair. It was covered in cloth that was soft against his rough fingers. On the other walls rows of books stretched to the ceiling. Hundreds of them.

  Sean had never known anyone who owned a book. What was in those books? Francey had told him there were stories written down that could make you happy or sad just to know them. He said there were other things as well, things that would make you as smart as the English, and maybe as rich.

  The thought came to him. Suppose he could read? It was such a strange thought that for a moment he forgot to be afraid. He pulled out a book and held it in his hand, feeling the leather cover that was as soft as the chair.

  And then the cook stood there, framed in the doorway. “That was the gatekeeper,” she said. “I’ve saved you once, but that is the end of it. You’ll have to leave.”

  He placed the book in the space that was waiting for it and slid past her, the surge of fear back in his chest. He would have to pass the gatehouse to get to the road.

  The moon had disappeared into the clouds and it had begun to rain, with large drops pelting the walkway. He pulled off his shirt to cover the bread and lard and started for the gates.

  Lights flickered in the horse stalls, voices called, and there was the sound of a horse, its hooves grating on the gravel. Sean stepped back against one of the trees as the horse and rider thundered past. The gates swung open just long enough for them to go through before the guard closed them again.

  He watched as the man went back to the gatehouse. He was shivering now; sheets of rain fell from the tree branches, soaking him. He waited, though. It was something else Francey had taught him: Be patient, slow when you need to be.

  Soon the Englishman from the road would ride back through the gates. He’d remember Sean and let him out, waving his thanks. Sean huddled there thinking. It might not be like that. Suppose the man said, “I never told him he could have food”? The groomsman would be there, and the gatekeeper.

  Thief, they’d say.

  Francey had told him of people who had been sent on transports to a place called Australia for less than what he had taken, a place filled with convicts, a place so far away it was the opposite side of the earth. His mouth went dry, but he quieted himself with the thought that if he could get away from the Englishman’s house, he and Mam and Patch would eat enough to sleep through the night without hunger pains.

  He left the shelter of the trees and skirted around the gatehouse to walk along the wall. Old vines clung to the slabs of stone, and he wondered if the thick branches would hold his weight. He made a bag of his shirt, knotting the sleeves together over the food, and walked a little farther.

  He heard the horse returning but didn’t stop to watch the guard c
ome out of his house to open the gates. He reached for one of the branches and began to climb. Rolling himself over the top, he landed on his feet.

  As he ran he heard voices and the sound of hooves. He veered off the path and saw the wee house where he had rested, a thin line of smoke coming from a hole in the roof. It was surprising to think they had fire, surprising too that they opened the door without even asking who was there. A man, bent and gray, stood there staring at him. In back of him a younger woman stood at the hearth.

  Sean darted inside. “The Englishman,” he said. “May I stay here for a few minutes?” He pointed to the bag he had made of his shirt. “I have bread. I’ll give you a piece, both of you.”

  The man and woman looked at each other, and the man pointed to a loft so small it must have been used to hold the winter apples or oats in a better year.

  He waited up there, careful not to crush the eggs, so cramped he couldn’t stretch his legs. He worried about the time going, worried about the cart. No one came, not then nor later, and at last, in spite of himself, he slept.

  He awoke with a start to peer over the edge of the loft, to see the man and woman asleep on the floor nearby.

  He broke off a large chunk of the bread to leave for them, slid down the rope ladder, still careful of the eggs, and was out the door. It had not stopped raining, but it was a finer rain now, with fog all around him.

  It was almost morning. He went back down the road, walking lightly on the balls of his feet. He felt rested, wide awake. He couldn’t wait to show Mam and Patch the food he had for them.

  It was a long distance, and after a while he wasn’t sure if he had gone too far. Suppose they had dragged the cart off the road and were sleeping somewhere?

  He decided to walk another bit, just for as long as it would take him to say the Our Father three times. But he was so worried he couldn’t remember all of the prayer. “Give us this day our daily bread,” he kept whispering to himself.

  How could he have forgotten it, a prayer he had said all his life? And even after starting it over four or five times, he didn’t see the cart, or Mam and Patch. At last he turned again to search the side of the road.