Cinders to Satin

by Fern Michaels

  “Well, at least I know you’re not lying to me. No one in this world would admit to family and friends in Ireland during these hard times if it weren’t so.” And then she smiled, and Byrch Kenyon thought the fair sun of summer had lit the dark streets.

  “If you won’t tell me your name, at least tell me something about yourself,” he said, hefting the basket onto his hip as though it were ho heavier than a lady’s handkerchief.

  “Callie.”

  “Callie what?”

  “That’s all you’ll get from me, Mr. Kenyon. Why don’t you tell me about yourself instead? Then I can tell my mother all about you.”

  “So, you have a mother. Back there in the alley I thought you were responsible for your brothers and sisters all alone:”

  “I didn’t mean to make you think that, but you never asked about my mother. Hey! Watch where you walk! You’ve spattered mud on my dress!”

  They were under a gaslight near the corner, and Byrch turned to look down at her. “You’re a lovely child, Callie. Do you know that?”

  She shrugged. “So I’ve been told. But listen here, you try any funny stuff; and you’ll feel the toe of my boot crack your shins!”

  Byrch smiled and made a courtly, mocking bow. She was a tough little scrapper, but he was beginning to suspect it was all a show. Probably she really was afraid he’d try something with her. As though his tastes ran to children! As though this little mite would stand a chance against him!

  “Are you going to tell me what you do in America? We’ve only a little ways to go now.” Callie deliberately softened her tone. Perhaps she shouldn’t have said anything about him trying something. She was sensitive enough to know she’d hurt his feelings and upbraided his gallantry.

  “I run a newspaper in New York City,” Byrch told her, “and I’m trying to make my mark in politics there. So many Irish have come to America, and most of them have settled around New York. I intend to help them, to be their voice in government.”

  Callie stopped dead in her tracks and turned to face him. If he expected to see admiration in her eyes, he was mistaken. She had turned on him with a temper so fierce he felt as though an icy wind had blown him down.

  “So, a voice of the people, is it? And what of the Irish here in Ireland, starvin’ and sweatin’ to earn a day’s wages to buy bread for the table? The English know we’re hungry for any kind of wage, and so it’s not even a fair pay they offer us to slave in their mills and dig for their coal. To my mind, those Irish who left their country have no need of a voice in the land of milk and honey where the streets are paved with gold!”

  “Times are hard for the Irish over there too, Callie. There’s no milk and no honey and no gold for the Irishman. It isn’t what it’s cocked up to be, believe me. I’m doing what I know best and where I think I can help the most.”

  “Are you now?” Callie said hotly. “Don’t be wasting your time and energy on me, Mr. Kenyon. Go back to your Irish in America and help them!”

  She snatched the basket from his arms and ran off, leaving him standing there with an incredulous expression on his face. What had he said to make her take off like that? Then he realized they must have come close to where she lived, and it was the easiest and simplest way to rid herself of him. A smile broke on his face, and he laughed. “You’re a fine girl, Callie. I hope we meet again.”

  Darting down an alley, taking the shortest route home, Callie hefted her basket and giggled. That was a stroke of genius, she congratulated herself. She’d gotten rid of Byrch Kenyon fast and easy. Confident now that she was safe from the hands of the law, she walked jauntily, and somehow the basket seemed lighter and lighter the closer she came to home.

  Just as dawn was beginning to crack the sky, Callie turned down a pathway and could see the doorway to her home. A twinge of conscience panged her, knowing that Peggy would most certainly be lying on her bed, worrying about her. Peggy never liked the fact that Callie preferred to work in the mill from five in the afternoon to three in the morning instead of working the day shift, which ran from three in the morning to five in the afternoon. But she understood when Callie complained of slaving on the day shift and never seeing the light of day. Leaving before the sun was up and returning as it was going down made her feel like a night creature who never felt the warmth of the sun upon its face.

  For the first time since seeing the unattended basket outside the market, Callie began to think of what her mother would say. Peggy James prided herself on doing the best she could for her children, raising them to have a decent sense of values. No matter how welcome the basket would be in the James’s household, Callie knew Peggy would cast a dark frown her way when she questioned her about this magnificent windfall.

  Callie tried to formulate a likely story of where she’d come by her goods, but soon gave up. Mum may be trying to raise us the right way, she thought, but it won’t do her any good if the babies die from hunger before she has the chance to teach them to be fine and upstanding. Holding her head high, a twinge of shame and misery buried in her heart, Callie carried her basket into the damp chill of the two-room shack that housed her family.

  “Mum, I’m home,” she called softly, hoping to awaken her mother and get the scolding over with in some degree of privacy. If she was going to get her ears boxed, she didn’t want it done under the confused eyes of the younger children or the sympathetic gaze of her grandfather.

  “Mum!” she called again, tiptoeing to the meager bed beside the woodstove in the front room. Looking down with distaste at Peggy and Thomas entangled in one another’s arms, she nudged her mother’s shoulder, bringing her awake.

  Peggy James wrested herself from her husband’s arm and rose from the bed with difficulty. Glancing down at Thomas to be certain she hadn’t disturbed him, she tucked the thin coverlet closer to his chin with loving hands.

  “Where have you been, Callie? Do you see what time it is? The sun’s already come up.” Peggy rubbed the small of her back. Her time was coming close now, and sleeping was often difficult.

  “I’ve brought you something, Mum. But you’ve got to promise me it won’t be tossed out!” It had only just occurred to her that Peggy might refuse her ill-gotten luxuries.

  “Tossed out?” Peggy whispered. “Now what have you brought home this time? Puppy? Kitten? Good Lord, child, we’ve all we can do to manage as it is.”

  “No, Mum, nothing like that. I haven’t brought home a stray since the blight began. It’s on the kitchen table, but you’ve got to promise me you’ll keep it!”

  Peggy looked at her oldest surviving child and saw the tension and fright in her face. It was the same look that found the child in trouble at school or in the mill or just dealing with the neighbors. Some called it pugnacious, and others called it defiant, but Peggy knew it was just the way the good Lord had fashioned the child’s face. Callie got that look when she was frightened of a scolding or worse. Peggy decided to make the promise. At least Callie would be able to lie down and get a few hours sleep before the little ones were up and making a ruckus. “All right, Callie, I promise. Now what have you brought?”

  Callie led the way into the kitchen and pushed the basket over to Peggy, her eyes downcast. “Why, that looks like a grocer’s basket. . . Callie James! Where did you come by this?”

  “I took it, Mum. I just plain up and took it.” Before the words could sink into Peggy’s mind, Callie began emptying the basket’s contents onto the table. “Look, Mum, bread! And oranges! Jelly and sweet rolls! Here, a chicken for soup and an onion and a carrot! But wait, Mum, wait till you see this!” She pulled out the smoked ham; its sweet tang filled the room.

  “Callie . . . I asked you once, now you tell me the truth. Where did you get this?” Peggy’s eyes surveyed the tabletop, already counting the number of meals she could serve. Her housewife’s inventory went to the cupboard where she hoarded the last of the flour that would make dumplings for the chicken soup. One egg, two at the most, along with the flour and th
ey could all eat their fill. The handful of dried peas would make a good porridge when the ham bone was picked clean. Her eyes scoured each item as it was presented from the basket. Sugar, tea, bread. God blessed bread!

  “I told you where I got it, Mum. It’s the truth. Now you promised not to toss it out, remember?”

  “Yes . . . but, Callie! I thought I taught you better. I’ve never known you to take what wasn’t your own. And now . . . now this!” Peggy sank down onto a straight-backed chair. “It’s wrong, child. And you’ve got to take it back. This minute!”

  “No, Mum, I won’t. And you can’t make me. I risked my neck for this basket, and I’ll be damned if I’ll turn it back now.”

  “This is a Godly house, Callie! Shame for your language.”

  “Mum, can you stop being a mother long enough to think? Think what this will mean to the little ones and to the one in your belly. It’s not like anyone else is starving because I took it. It was packaged to be delivered to Magistrate Rawlings, and you know he’s got more money than God, and he’s an Englishman besides. And the grocer will just raise his prices to those who can pay. Mum, your babies are starving under your very eyes!”

  “Near to it, I’ll grant you, Callie, but we’ve managed to fill their bellies somehow.”

  “You and I, Mum. We’re the ones who fill their bellies. You with your washing and ironing for the English officers’ wives and me working in the mill. Well, the axe fell tonight, Mum. My hours have been cut and so have my wages. What will we do now? We barely managed before, and now we’ll starve for certain.”

  “Something will turn up.” Peggy ran her fingers through her rust-colored curls. There was a time when her hair had been her pride, thick and glossy, the color of the sun in its setting. Now it hung loose, already streaked with gray although she was barely thirty-two. “We’re God-fearing people, Callie, and the Lord looks out for His own.”

  “Those aren’t your words, Mum, they’re Da’s! He’s always going around touting how the Lord will provide. It just ain’t so and you know it! And where does Da do his touting? Down at the corner pub after laying abed half the day and eating more than his share.”

  “Callie, Callie.” Peggy hung her head, her hand massaging her swollen belly. “I won’t have you talking about your Da that way! Stop it this minute, please, for my sake.”

  Once having begun her tirade, Callie was beyond stopping. Even pity for her mother could not still her tongue. “The one who is provided for is Da. And who does the providing? Not the good Lord, I’ll venture. It’s me down at the mill and you leanin’ over the washboard. At least Granda tries to do what he can with that little garden of his.”

  “It’s your Da’s back, Callie. Some mornings he can barely walk and you know it!” Peggy tried truthfully. “He’s a man, and a man’s got his pride. He doesn’t want his children to think of him as a cripple. It’s his own torment that he’s unable to work and feed his family.” Peggy wrung her hands in distress. She couldn’t bear it when Callie took on about Thom’s not supporting his family. Times were hard, and jobs impossible to come by. Was there no pity in the girl’s soul? Didn’t she see her father dandle the babes on his knee and sing the songs of old Ireland in the sweetest voice the angels ever heard? Couldn’t she feel the love the man held for his family?

  “How can you keep making excuses for him, Mum? Much less sleep with him. You no sooner give up nursing one babe and he puts another in your belly? Why, Mum? Why? How can you still love him?” Callie hated herself for treating Peggy this way—the one person she loved more than any other.

  Peggy pushed her hair off her strong-boned face. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She realized Callie’s anger toward Thom was born out of the fear of losing her mother while birthing another child.

  In the dimness of the early morning light that filtered through the tiny kitchen window, Peggy walked over to her daughter and touched her face. In a soft voice, the voice she always used when speaking about Thomas, Peggy said, “When your time comes, Callie girl, you’ll understand. There’s something that brings a man and a woman together, and not heaven, hell, nor even a baby’s hunger can change it. Makes no matter what he does, nor even if he betrays you. You’ll love him, and he’ll be your man till the day you die.”

  Callie’s eyes strayed about the damp, chill room and fell on the two little ones sleeping just past the doorway in the next room, their noses always snotting, their deep-set eyes cavernlike in their thin faces. “Well, I’ll not be like you, Mum. You can be sure of that. My head will never be turned by a handsome face and a strong back, even if he does sing with the voice of an angel! It’s my head that’ll rule my life, not my heart!”

  Peggy watched her best-loved daughter’s pretty face flush with the heat of her words. With a deep sigh, Peggy reached out to touch the girl and gazed somberly into her Irish blue eyes. “Well spoken, darlin’, and well meant. But sometimes one must listen to the heart, for not to would be to miss the best life has to offer. Oh, it may be mingled with tears, but I’ll vouch you, it’s still the best.”

  Callie looked up into her mother’s face and then buried her head against the round belly. Throughout her life Callie would think of this moment and bitterly yearn for that headstrong, willful young girl, and wish she had heeded her own words.

  Chapter Two

  The sound of voices awakened seven-year-old Hallie. The little girl came out to the kitchen, sleep-heavy eyes immediately brightening when she saw Callie. “Hullo, Callie. Are you going to take us for a walk later? Are you, Callie? You promised.”

  “Come here, sweet.” Callie smiled fondly at the child whose rumpled nightdress was growing so small that her thin legs were bare from the knee down. “Give us a kiss.” The child hurried over to her older sister, smiling shyly with delight.

  “Are you, Callie? Can the twins and Georgie come, too?”

  Picking Hallie up onto her lap, Callie nuzzled the softness under the child’s chin. Tousling Hallie’s bright golden curls, she hugged and kissed her soundly. Poor little thing, Callie thought, half-starved all the time and still with a disposition sweet as sugar. “Sure, love, I’ll take you for a walk. But you’ll have to wait till later. Hurry up now and go wake up the twins and Georgie; I’ve brought you a special surprise. Go on, now.” She put Hallie back on the floor. “And wake Granda and Da. This surprise is for them, too.”

  Avoiding Peggy’s angry stare, Callie directed her attention to Hallie as the child asked, “A surprise, Callie? What kind of surprise? Did you buy me a candy? I love candy. Did you bring one for Georgie, too?” Hallie’s little girl’s voice tugged at Callie’s heart. Candy! When it was all they could do to buy the making for thin gruel and now and then a piece of fatback.

  “No candy this morning, darlin’. But you’ll like this much more. Hush now, no more questions. Go and get everyone up.”

  Hallie rushed into the next room, and Callie lifted her eyes to Peggy. She went and put her arms around the woman’s thin shoulders. “What’s done is done, Mum. No use thinking about it now. Come now, they’ll all be in here in a minute. Best get the kettle on the hob and help me slice this ham. If I’m not mistaken, there are eggs at the bottom of the basket. I only hope there’s enough for the little ones.”

  “Callie, don’t be thinkin’ me ungrateful. I’m not. I know how you try for the family. I only worry for you.”

  “I know, Mum. And I promise to resist temptation in the future. I doubt we’ll have a windfall the likes of this again. So let’s enjoy it, right?”

  Peggy broke out into a grin. “Well, I guess there’s no help for it, is there?” She went to the hearth and stoked the fire in the grate, hanging a kettle of water onto the hob. “I declare your Da’s eyes will bug right out of his head when he sees this fare. Callie, do you think there’s an extra egg for him?”

  Opening the tissue paper that protected the eggs, Callie found there were half a dozen. For herself, she didn’t care if she had an egg or not, but she sighe
d and resigned herself to the fact that although Peggy needed the nourishment more than anyone, the twins included, she would without a doubt forego the egg and give it to Thom. Well, the ham was plenty big enough, and hadn’t the grocer said there wasn’t another like it in all Dublin?

  “What’ll we tell Da and Granda where I came by this?” Callie asked as she unpacked the oranges and bread.

  “It’s your deed, Callie girl, so I guess it must be your lie. Tell as close to the truth as you can.” Peggy’s face pinched with worry. Hungry as she was and as much as she realized her children needed the food, she wondered if she would be able to swallow it. Callie had risked her life, literally, to help her family. The girl’s heart had been in the right place. Still, punishment for stealing was met at the end of a rope.

  Callie whispered, “Don’t worry, Mum. It’ll be all right, I promise you. Later I’ll tell you about this man who helped me.”

  “A man?” Peggy’s eyebrows shot up with worry.

  “He’ll keep the secret, Mum. It’s Aunt Sara I’m worried about. Don’t whisper a word of this to her,” Callie warned. “Not that she’ll do without anything, not the way Uncle Jack consorts with the English. I wouldn’t want her turnin’ me in just to put herself in good stead with her fancy English friends.”

  “Callie,” Peggy said, “where’s the love I’ve taught you for your family? Aunt Sara won’t know a thing about this. When she brings her ironing this afternoon, you’ll have taken the children for their walk. I wouldn’t want her to know my own girl took to thievery to put food on the table. I’m that ashamed.” Not for anything would Peggy admit that Callie’s suspicions concerning her own sister had their foundations in truth.

  Granda shuffled into the kitchen, his rheumy gray eyes falling immediately to the rough table where Callie, his favorite grandchild, was unloading the basket. “And what’s this? Have you found the Little People’s pot o’ gold, child? Never have I seen such wondrous goods. Not even the time when me own Da came home from selling the cow to market and brought us a feast meant for kings!” Granda moved about the table, smelling the oranges and lifting his gaze heavenward to express his delight. He continued with his story of his own father and his brothers and sisters, his words falling on deaf ears. Granda was getting on in his years, and his mind sometimes wandered. They’d all heard the story before.