They sat with their backs against the garden wall and soaked in the thin bits of warmth the walls had absorbed. Madigan’s jaw fell open in a relaxed smile; his snout was already sprouting the whiskers that would give him an old-man look.
“I’m not from where you think I’m from. I’ve only ever been to Canada once. I’m from America, near Boston. And I’m Irish, all my family is, both sides, as my grandmother says.” He took in a breath in jagged starts.
Taleen rubbed her hand along the rough flank of the dog.
“Did you pretend all this to give yourself a leg up with the colonel? More than a few Irish have done so, but most do it by turning Protestant. Jumpers, we call them. They get much better work, the wee ones go to better schools. Is that why?”
She had stiffened her neck, but only slightly.
“Yes, but my reason was more than that.” He changed positions so that he faced her. He got on his knees, then let his butt sink back to his heels. “I’m from the future, one hundred and sixty-four years from now. It sounds crazy, and if someone had ever told me this story, I would flat out say they were liars. But it’s true. And I swear that I will never lie to you ever again.”
Taleen stopped stroking the dog.
“I didn’t know that I’d fall in love,” he continued. “I’ve never been in love before, and it changes how everything matters. Oh, I’m not saying this right.” He brushed dog hair off his pants. “My aunt is here in Ireland. Anna. Somehow we came together and I don’t know why either of us traveled through time. There’s nothing special about us, we’re ordinary people. I’m a boy in school. I have a father, a grandmother. We’re the least special people you could imagine.”
Joseph stopped moving. He looked like a gull, catching a tail wind with wings outspread, seemingly still of all effort.
“When the colonel finds out his fine prize is Irish he’ll—” began Taleen.
“Don’t you see? I’m not his fine prize anymore. And there’s more. There’s the future part. Did you hear what I said about the future?”
“Aye. But I don’t know how to reckon it. How can such a thing happen? My mother knows close to everything, and she never once told me about people traveling from now to tomorrow.” Taleen tried to say more, but the words were stuck in the pocket of her throat.
“It just happened,” Joseph tried to explain. “Anna and I were at her house. She tried to help me after my father was hurt, and I was an idiot. Oh, God, I remember everything now. It was some dream about my father needing me and I got out of bed and tried to find something in a package. Then Anna woke up and she grabbed at the little package. It was just cloth; I didn’t get why she was so upset. Just cloth, like nothing, then the world broke loose. We were sucked up and the air roared and you’ll never believe this part. We were pulled underwater, so far underwater that I heard whales singing and then I came apart and lost Anna. I came back together again, I don’t know how, but then I don’t understand any of this. And then I was here.”
He reached for her hands and she rose up on her knees. She let her hands be covered by his before she spoke with a solemn expression. “There is something I must tell you as well. I’m with child. We have a bairn, Joseph, whoever you are, whenever you have come from.”
The full shock registered on his face, and Taleen was suddenly terrified.
“Taleen…” Her name sounded like a wave breaking from his soft mouth.
She wanted very much to hear him say something, to let her know that this baby would have a good father. She waited and didn’t know if what he’d say would be enough to stop her lips from trembling, to smooth the twitch in her eye. Agitated footsteps crunching along the garden path jarred her from his face. Mr. Edwards, his prim jacket open and flapping, approached with an Irishman, a one-armed man.
Mr. Edwards scanned the area. “I thought we’d find you here. Joseph, you need to leave with this gentleman. Hurry. He’ll take you to Tramore. Taleen, you must stay here. You must do as I say.”
Chapter 36
Anna and Biddy had boarded a small sailing rig from Cork to Tramore. The seas had been atrocious. They now sat hip to hip amid the coiled hemp ropes, wool shawls pulled tight around them.
“Why did he send Donal to Australia?” Anna asked, already knowing part of the answer. Her eyes were swollen from crying.
“You saved his life. Donal will live with thousands of other Irish who were sent away from their homeland against their will. At this moment, he’s breathing the last of Irish air, but he’s still breathing. There was no other way, and it’s a fair miracle that your performance worked at all.”
Anna wiped her nose on the sleeve of her jacket. She had returned the impossibly fancy dress to the priest at the church. He’d promised to get it to the rightful house without detection.
“And that is one of the many problems; you taking the heart of someone here in our time. I can see that you love him. This will be neither simple nor painless. Love never is,” said Biddy Early.
“I didn’t know what love was. I had no idea…”
“It is always shocking when we first taste it,” said Biddy, rubbing her hands together. After piecing certain facts together, she had confirmed the scent of a curse, but her demand for specifics was exhausting Anna.
“Tell me again what led up to you hurtling through time? And no matter how much I beg, please do not tell me what the future holds. Nothing grand has happened for the Irish in two hundred years, and I don’t think I could survive hearing of a future that is worse. Promise, even if I beg you in a moment of weakness, and Lord knows I have enough of those.”
“Yes, I promise,” said Anna.
Anna repeated what she had already told Biddy.
“My brother, Patrick—Joseph’s father—had been in a terrible accident and my mother sent me to find Joseph, who had gotten into trouble with the law,” said Anna.
“Oh, had he now? That makes him the same as every Irish lad I know,” said Biddy, as if she hadn’t already heard this twice before. “And he’s no Canadian. He’s an American, just like you. And from Irish stock. He’s a pitiful liar, at least to my ear. Let’s hope his deception holds with the colonel a bit longer. Now, keep going, tell me more.”
“I gathered up my nephew and we drove—I mean we traveled—to my house. It was very late when we arrived, so we planned to go to the hospital the next day to see my brother,” said Anna.
Biddy shuddered. “I cannot fathom that you took the poor fellow to a place like a hospital. Have you no midwives or physicians to tend to the sick? Don’t answer that. I’ll not peek into the future.”
Anna continued. “And here is the part where it gets muddled for me. I heard Joseph get up in the middle of the night. I got up to see if anything was wrong. When I saw him, I thought he was going through my luggage looking for something to steal. This was a crazy, middle-of-the-night thought; he’s no thief, never was, never will be. But I had just come back from a journey, and the moment I returned, I saw my brother with his head split open, and I wanted nothing more than to tend to him and be by his side with my mother. And then I learned that my nephew had to be collected from the police—and quite far away, may I add. I think I was near insane from lack of sleep, so that when I saw him flipping through my luggage in the middle of the night, holding something of mine, I yelled at him and startled him. Then I grabbed onto whatever he was holding; I remembered our fingers touched and he looked terrified. I immediately regretted screaming like a banshee at him. But that was when I heard the loudest sound, like a waterfall, and it was as if we were pulled beneath the ocean and very quickly pulled apart. And the next thing I truly remember is crawling along the beach near Kinsale.”
Biddy said nothing for a moment but sat with her eyes closed. “No, no, I don’t have it yet. There’s a piece missing, at least one piece, possibly more. What was it that he found in your luggage?” asked Biddy.
It wasn’t as if Anna hadn’t thought of this, although her efforts to remember h
ad dimmed when Donal had slept with her and her legs had wound around him like so much ivy.
“Was it your wraps, skirts and such?” asked Biddy Early.
“No, it was something small. When we held it, it was small enough that our hands touched. Oh, and he had nearly unwrapped it. The thing was wrapped in paper,” said Anna, as if a flashlight shone on the scene.
“Such extravagance the future holds,” sighed Biddy. “Tell me, dear, name the things that were wrapped in paper in your luggage.”
Anna once again tried to picture the contents of her luggage, and while she did, Biddy asked, “You’ve never mentioned where your trip was. Where had you gone on this terribly long journey before your brother’s mishap?”
Anna was such an idiot. Of course, the trip to England, Scotland, and the impulsive side trip to Ireland that Harper had insisted they take to see one more castle. “I had been in Ireland,” she said.
Biddy straightened her back and swung her head around to look at Anna. “Well, why did you never say so?”
“We were there for less than a day. We took a…well, never mind how we got there from London, but the important part is, we were only here for the smallest bit of time. It was some castle near Limerick. Believe me, Ireland was not the cause of our trip. I was with a friend who writes about places to travel, and we had been in England and Scotland for weeks.”
“Can you remember the name of the castle?”
“Ratty something. That’s all I can remember.”
Biddy shivered. “Was it Bunratty? It’s a wreck of a castle, but a castle all the same.”
From where they huddled, their faces whipped by the wind and salt, they saw the lights of Tramore, and a long white strip of beach came into view.
“I think it was Bunratty. And the woman outside the castle said she’d been waiting for me. Did I tell you that part?” asked Anna.
“You did not. Tell me about the woman outside Bunratty Castle. This is coming together. Bunratty Castle is an easy day’s walk from where I live.” The ship rose up on a swell and bumped the two women together.
“Well, I had just been inside the castle and someone had toured us through, telling us about the castle. And here’s where you might be interested, because this has the ring of something in your expertise. The guide showed us a Fairy Flag, made of silk. She said it was good for three times to save their clan—”
“Oh, rubbish! There’s no such thing as a Fairy Flag, and if anyone would know, I would,” said Biddy.
Anna was stung by the rebuke. “If you put two and two together, the old woman outside the castle, who seemed to know me, and the talk of the Fairy Flag inside the castle…,” started Anna.
“Forget the Fairy Flag, I said.” Biddy let an edge of impatience bleed through.
“Sorry,” said Anna. “I haven’t understood anything about landing in the past. I thought for a moment that I could offer you these bits and because you are so famous for healing and whatever else you do, that you could make sense of this in a way that a mere mortal like me could not.”
“Oh, there now, you’ve gone peevish on me. Don’t try to upstage me with your peevishness. I’ve lived through four husbands already and I’ve seen and heard everything. Let’s try this again. We’ll not be landing at Tramore for another hour or so.”
Anna told Biddy again about the woman who had startled her at Bunratty, how the woman had said she’d been waiting for her, that Anna had needed to take the package. The woman had said she’d known that things had gone badly in America and that this was all that had been left to help. The more Anna repeated, the more she remembered.
The ship could not have been colder, even though Biddy and Anna were huddled together. They combined the two blankets they’d been given, spreading them across their knees.
Biddy went silent for a long time, much to Anna’s relief; the intense questioning had exhausted her. She was wedged between a stiff coil of rope and Biddy Early. Her eyes gave in to the irresistible demand of sleep. She jumped at the sound of Biddy’s voice.
“And the wee package, did you open it?”
Anna was still astounded at the infinite pauses between sentences among the Irish.
“No, I told you. It was all a jumble. Then I went back to America, picked up Joseph, don’t ask me to repeat that part, and it was Joseph in the middle of the night who went through my luggage and found the package. He was opening it when I grabbed it, and then, well, that’s the last thing that happened before we were transported here.”
Silence again.
“Biddy, are you going to keep asking me questions, or should I go to sleep?”
“Ah, so the lad knew to go to it. The wee package, that is.”
Silence, another pause long enough to insert a sermon.
“If someone was waiting for you outside Bunratty Castle, I think I know who sent them,” said Biddy.
Anna turned to face her, now wide awake.
“Who?”
“It was me. Or it will be me. It’s so blasted hard to tell with time.” She put her hands on either side of Anna’s face. “You’ve done well, lassie. But what is ever more clear to me is that you’ve been sent to stop a curse.”
“And how do you stop a curse?”
Biddy shook her head. “With a blessing, of course. We are doomed if the future is filled with people who can’t tell a curse from a blessing. Come, they’ll set anchor soon and take us by rowboat to the shore.”
“And where are we going in Tramore?”
“To a bookbinder’s shop. A lovely spot,” said Biddy. “We have a friend among the English at Mitford’s estate. They don’t come better than George Edwards.”
Chapter 37
Anna woke stiff and sore after having curled in an exhausted heap on the floor of Thomas Fitzgerald’s Book Bindery. Biddy looked perfectly serene, laid out like a smiling corpse on the plank bench with a wool blanket tucked around her chin. An east window showered the floor with a direct hit of sunlight. It had to be late. Anna wrapped her cape around her and went outside to the outhouse. She had taken only two steps in the fresh, sea air when the nightmare of Cork Prison and Donal latched onto her with sharp talons. She’d sent a man to his execution and Donal to a British penal colony. She opened the door to the stinking outhouse, pulled up her skirts, squatted and peed. She had ruined everything she had touched.
Anna stepped outside and wiped her hands on the bark of a damp tree. She heard the clopping of hooves out on the street and suddenly remembered O’Connell. O’Connell! Oh God, O’Connell had been left in the stable in Cork. She ran into the shop to wake Biddy.
“When we get back to Cork we’ve got to collect O’Connell. He was Glennie’s horse, and I won’t let harm…”
Anna skidded to a halt. An exhausted-looking Donal stood next to Biddy. Joseph sat on the plank bench. Donal pulled off his cap and smiled.
“Is that all you can think of, the horse? And you just now remembered him? Remind me to never put you in charge of the livestock.” His smile dissolved her into a gasp.
Anna was stuck in place, a pivot point between Donal and her nephew, and her head turned from one to the other. In two giant steps, she had surrounded Donal’s neck with her arms. She shoved off him long enough to stroke his arm, then his face.
“How could you have possibly escaped? You’re a magician. God, I thought I’d lost you.”
“Did you forget more than the horse? I’m a cartographer and a smuggler. The combination makes me a poor candidate for exile. My lads had me out before the Governor had farted. O’Connell is getting a well-deserved rest at Colonel Mitford’s estate. He’ll be returned to Tom in good time.”
Anna was suddenly rich with all that she had desired and she scurried to understand. She whirled around to the bench where Joseph sat. He put up his hand before she could speak.
“You probably won’t believe me, but I didn’t remember part of what happened to us. I didn’t remember about Dad, about the accident. I only remembered
that I had gotten into trouble. I’m sorry.”
Anna’s eyes filled with tears. Donal cleared his throat.
“So you’ll not have to strangle him as you said you would.”
Anna sat down on the bench next to her nephew.
“Are you all right?” she asked, putting her arm around him and shaking him like a rag doll.
“After what I’ve heard from Donal, I think I’m in a hell of a lot better shape than you are. Until yesterday, that is. I can’t stay at the colonel’s estate anymore. I lost a wrestling match and he lost a ton of money. But I’ve got to tell you something. There’s a girl…”
From the corner of the room, Biddy clapped her hands together.
“Aye, there’s a girl you love; we know. It’s written all over you,” said Biddy.
“Excuse my manners. Joseph, Donal, this is Biddy Early, and she’s been helping us.”
Donal nodded. “Everyone in Ireland knows of Biddy Early. That was a masterful poultice that you sent to Anna,” he said with a nod to Biddy.
“It was just a bit of this and that. And I’m afraid everyone in Ireland does know of me. Now, I’d love to chat and visit, but I’ve left me home because of a curse, and now we have added an escaped criminal—please pardon me for saying so—and an angry English chap who’s lost money on the lad. I’m going to step outside and think for a few moments. The sea air will clear the fog from my mind. The three of you need your private words with each other.”
Biddy wound her long dark hair and pinned it up. She wrapped her cape around her. “We are in for a blue sky, sharp, and crisp. A good December day,” she said as she went out the door.
Donal dragged a chair near Anna and Joseph.
“The man in prison…” she started.
“We were all slated to be hung, Anna. The bastard governor took pleasure in your agony. All four of those blokes are hung by now. You caused nothing to happen that was not already destined.”
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