Castle Walk
Page 8
“And you really think I look that much like Rosalyn?” She peered up at him.
He laughed. “Lacey, you look exactly like her. I mean, put you two side by side and you’d see some small differences, but overall, yeah. You’re a dead ringer.”
“Dead ringer,” Lacey repeated.
A chill patterned up her spine.
~~~
FOURTEEN
They walked a couple miles down the beach, then realized they had to walk back to get lunch. By the time they got to the dining room, Lacey’s feet were killing her. Once they’d ordered, she discreetly took off her shoes and dumped a little pile of sand from each one.
“Should have worn my hiking boots,” she observed dryly.
They were just finishing up when Harley found them. “I’ve got a car out front, any time you’re ready.”
“We’re ready,” Lacey said. She was anxious to dig into her own family’s past without worrying about stepping on toes.
Harley piloted the Land Rover back toward Dublin. None of the three of them revisited the last conversation with Peter.
“Did you enjoy your time in Dublin yesterday?” he asked instead.
“Oh, yeah,” Lacey said. “That was fabulous. There’s so much more to see there. I’m sorry we won’t have more time.”
“You’ll just have to come back again,” he said with a quick laugh.
He kept to the highway, blowing past the city center, and moving south back into the less settled countryside. Bustling city streets gave way to country lanes. Finally he exited on one of those lanes and drove through low hills only sparsely treed. They rounded one of the hills and the abbey came into view.
“Wow,” Lacey said.
The abbey was a huge gray stone edifice, not unlike the castle but without the corner towers, although there was a separate tower some short distance away. The three-story abbey rose up imperiously from austere grounds gone to seed. The many tall windows caught the afternoon sun and flashed it at the newcomers. Even in somewhat less than pristine conditions, the structure was imposing.
Words were etched into the stone above the doorway.
Saint Michael’s
Brothers and Sisters of Charity
“Rather daunting, is it not?’ Harley asked as he parked in the front drive.
“Not exactly welcoming,” Lacey noted.
“It is a product of the time it was built,” Harley confessed. He led the way to the front door. “But it has survived much in the last several hundred years.”
“What’s that tower over there?” she asked, pointing to the separate structure. The round gray spire had a door halfway up the wall, but otherwise looked impregnable. She realized then that she’d seen similar towers infrequently across the landscape of Ireland.
“That’s a Norman tower,” Harley said. “It was used for defense. If invaders came, the people used a ladder to climb up in through that door, and then the ladder was pulled in behind them.”
Lacey shivered slightly from a chill. She couldn’t imagine the reality of a life where such a defense was necessary.
Harley pushed in through the heavy wooden doors and motioned for them to wait. “Let me find Brother Jonas,” he said.
As he left the entry down a long hall, Lacey and Sam turned to gaze at the chapel to their right. Wooden pews lined both sides of a central aisle, leading to a pulpit. Above the pulpit, a wooden statue of Christ on the cross dominated the front wall. Multiple devotional candles burned on a long shelf that ran the length of the front wall, their flickering light playing across the nailed feet of the Christ.
“Cheery,” Lacey whispered.
“Not exactly like the open-air cathedral of the Navajo reservation is it?”
Lacey smiled. “No church can compare to that.”
The sound of footsteps on flagstone alerted them to Harley’s return, accompanied by a friar. In contrast to Harley’s brown tweed, the friar wore a black suit with a black shirt underneath, the white insert of his collar the only break from the dark clothing. He was taller than Harley, and slender, with a ready smile.
“Brother Jonas,” Harley said, “this is Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud.” To Lacey and Sam, “Brother Jonas has agreed to share some history with us.”
“Hello,” Lacey said, shaking hands. “Thanks so much for meeting with us.”
“How do you do?” Jonas said, greeting them. “So pleased to meet you both.” He beamed at Lacey. “How are you enjoying the land of your ancestors?”
“I love it,” Lacey said truthfully. “It’s beautiful, and the sheer mass of history here is amazing.”
“History is one thing we have in abundance.” He folded his hands in front of him and made a small bow. “So would you like to delve into it?”
“Yes, please,” Lacey said.
He held out a hand and motioned down the hallway. “This way.”
The clack of their shoes on the flagstone echoed off the walls as they followed Brother Jonas into the deeper regions of the abbey. The inner walls were painted a light tan, and held a procession of portraits of serene nuns and friars in their traditional vestments.
“This is our library,” Jonas said. He opened an unlocked door and pushed it open, allowing his guests to precede him.
Lacey entered the windowless room and glanced around. The library was about the same size as the Ellsworth’s, but not nearly as nicely appointed. The chairs and tables in the reading center were heavy, dark wood, nicked and battered from years of use. The bookshelves that lined the walls were much the same. The furthest half of the room was taken up by tall freestanding shelves, leaving only narrow aisles between. The smell of dust and age permeated the still air.
“Please, have a seat,” Jonas said. He pulled a chair for Lacey and let the men seat themselves. “I’ll just be a moment.” Smiling broadly, he headed through the bookshelves toward a far corner. Lacey heard the click of a distant door opening, then small rustling sounds. In a moment, Brother Jonas was on his way back to the table, a large book in his hands.
“Luckily,” he said, laying the heavy book down near Lacey, “most abbeys were very dutiful about keeping detailed records, and ours was no different. It was necessary to keep a strict account of the residents here, both for our own management and for the church as a whole.” He opened the book and leafed over a handful of pages, checking dates at the upper right corners. “We found Colleen Elizabeth Fitzpatrick in October of 1928. Ah, here we are.”
He found the page he wanted and turned the book so Lacey could easily read the page. He slid his finger down to an entry near the bottom of the page.
“October 24, 1928,” Lacey read. “Colleen Elizabeth Fitzpatrick. Novitiate. C15.” She glanced up at Jonas. “What does that mean?”
“That’s the bed she was assigned in the dormitory,” the friar said. “At that time, the women’s dormitory was on the north side of the third floor. A novitiate, as you can imagine, would have little in the way of personal possessions. She’d be assigned a bed, a small table, a footlocker.”
Lacey nodded and returned to the page. She slid her finger over to the right hand columns. “Terrance Charles Fitzpatrick. Phillipa Marian Fitzpatrick.” She looked up at Jonas. “Are those...?”
Jonas smiled. “Her parents. Yes.”
“Really?” Lacey’s look of wonder broadened into a grin. She dug in her pack for her notebook and quickly jotted the names down. “Now I can trace the family back the rest of the way,” she said with quiet excitement.
She took a picture of the page with her phone, then flipped back to an earlier page in her notebook. “Colleen was born in 1892, I think. Yes, that’s right. So she was thirty-six years old.” She looked up at Jonas. “Does that seem a little old to join the nunnery?”
The friar steepled his hands beneath his chin. “Women came at various ages. It’s true that most come young, but you might be surprised at how many make the commitment in their later years. This was not uncommon.”
She tapped the entry in the abbey’s big book. “So she arrived here just months after her son left. It sounds like one chapter of her life ended and she began another one. On her own.”
“Yes, it seems that way,” Brother Jonas agreed gently.
Lacey stared at the entry in the big book and sighed. “Such tiny bits of information to cover an entire life. And we still don’t know who Connor’s father was.” She lifted her gaze to the friar. “Do you know how long Colleen was here? Did she stay for the rest of her life?”
He smiled. “That’s something I can tell you,” he said. “Would you like to see her grave?”
“Her—? Yes! Is it here?”
“We have our own small cemetery; it’s just a short walk. Come along.”
Energized now, Lacey jumped to her feet and slung her pack over her shoulder. She flashed Sam a grin, and took his hand for the walk down the hall to a back door. They stepped outside and followed Jonas up a faint trail that crested a low hill.
Down below was the cemetery. It was badly in need of care. The short rock wall around it had some places where the rocks had been broken out. Most of the rectangular headstones were intact, but a couple listed sideways. Weeds poked up here and there between the graves.
“I apologize,” Brother Jonas said. “I’m afraid this doesn’t get the care it needs. You know: out of sight…”
“Out of mind. Yes. I can imagine this stays low on the list of priorities.” Lacey approached the front opening in the wall with a strange mix of excitement and trepidation. Her great-great-grandmother. She never thought to “meet” her.
“Do you know where…?”
“Yes. This way.” Jonas took the lead and turned right inside the wall, then picked his way back several rows. Finally he turned right again and headed unerringly for a grave with a fresh bouquet of spring flowers in a vase.
Lacey gaped at the flowers.
“I got those this morning,” he said. “Just… you know.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. Tears pricked behind her eyes and she swallowed down a sudden thickness in her throat. Stepping past Jonas, she stood at the foot of the grave and read the headstone.
Sister Colleen Elizabeth Fitzpatrick
December 15, 1892 – February 6, 1954
Rest in Christ
“Barely sixty-one years old,” Lacey said. She walked up beside the grave and touched the rough, gray headstone. The elements were eroding the worked stone, creating small pits in the granite. Lacey looked at some of the other stones further back in the cemetery. Moss grew on many, and the names were difficult to make out. She was glad Colleen’s name was still legible.
She stepped back to the foot of the grave and took several pictures of it and the cemetery. Her father would appreciate those.
When Lacey stowed her phone and looked up, she realized all three men were watching her. She smiled gamely.
“Thank you, Brother Jonas. This is a very pleasant surprise. I never expected anything like this.”
The friar nodded, pleased. “I wonder if you would like to see the nunnery where your ancestor lived? It might offer a bit more insight.”
“Oh. That would be wonderful, yes.”
“All right. Let’s head back.”
Jonas and Harley led the way, Lacey and Sam walking behind, holding hands. While the two in front talked in low tones, Sam and Lacey were silent. For once, she was the one needing silence to process all she’d learned.
At the abbey, Jonas led them up two flights of stairs to the third floor. The upper landing was a large room, empty except for a utilitarian fabric-covered couch, a small table, and a desk to one side. He walked to a door behind the desk and opened it, peering in.
“Sister Catriona?” he called.
Steps on the flagstone. A woman in a black habit joined them, the white band of her wimple and the scapular around her neck and over her shoulders in startling contrast.
Jonas made the introductions. “Sister Catriona will show you around,” he said. “I’d like Harley to come help me with something downstairs. You two take your time.”
“Thank you,” Lacey murmured. She liked the look of Sister Catriona. The woman was older—maybe sixty—and slightly plump. Her hazel eyes were lively and she had crow’s feet at the corners, which deepened when she smiled.
“Welcome to Saint Michael’s,” she said. “I understand you had a relative here.” The sister held the door for them, then preceded them down a short hall.
“Yes, my two times great-grandmother.”
“This probably won’t look exactly as it did when she was here, but you will get an idea of what it was like.”
They stepped out into a cavernous room. Two walls were the gray stone of the abbey’s exterior, while the inner walls were the same light tan color as in the lower floor. There were six cots set on one end of the room, each with a bedside table and a lamp, metal cabinets attached to the wall between the cots.
“This was the dormitory,” Sister Catriona said. “We no longer use it; this is merely to show what it was like. Back in the 1700s and 1800s, this would have been completely populated. There are very few of us now, so we use some of the smaller rooms on the south side of the abbey.”
Lacey strolled quietly past the cots, noting the industrial metal frames, the unadorned brown blankets. Anyone joining the abbey would expect a Spartan existence; her generation would be appalled. But what, really, did a person need? Food, sleep, a sense of meaning. They would have that here, without the distractions so prevalent in the outside world.
“How many did you have in 1928?” she asked. “Roughly.”
Catriona thought. “I’m not sure. Maybe twenty or so. The abbey began to shrink after the turn of the century. The world was changing quickly then.”
Lacey nodded. The Industrial Revolution changed things for many. The world was marching into the era of mechanical and technical advancement, and nothing, not even staunch religious or spiritual devotion, would stop it.
“What would they do?” Lacey asked. “What was a typical day like?”
“Not terribly interesting, I’m afraid.” Sister Catriona smiled. “They would rise early and go to Morning Prayers, then have a small breakfast. They would attend to whatever work might be assigned to them. There is always housework: cooking and cleaning, washing, gardening. There were times in years past when we had an orphanage here, and a school, so there were child care and teaching duties. Midday Prayers were at noon, followed by lunch. The sisters would have a bit of quiet time then for reading or contemplation. We encourage ‘lectio divina,’ or prayerful reading. Then in mid-afternoon, it was back to work until Vespers, followed by supper, our largest meal of the day, and Night Prayers. Very unexciting, I’m afraid.”
Lacey didn’t imagine any novitiate came to the abbey looking for excitement. “Peaceful, though,” she said. “And meaningful.”
“Aye, this is true enough. We keep the outer activities simple so we may devote our energy to the knottier inner quests. Many here ask the same questions as those on the outside: why am I here? What is my purpose? It is for that reason that we encourage contemplation and mindfulness.”
Lacey nodded. “I can see that. So Sister Colleen, my ancestor, may have thought much about her life, her fatherless son and what it all meant.”
Sister Catriona gazed serenely at Lacey. “She would not have been the first, nor the last, to take refuge from a tumultuous life. We can only hope that she found peace and contentment in her time here.”
Lacey put out her hand to the sister. “Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us. I appreciate your insight. Being here, seeing this place, has been very helpful.”
“I’m glad,” Catrio
na said, shaking their hands. “I will take you back down to the library. I understand Brother Jonas was hoping to find more information for you.”
Jonas and Harley were hunched over another large book, deep in conversation. When Sam and Lacey came in, they made room for them at the table.
“What have you got?” Lacey asked.
Jonas grinned at her. “This book is a compilation of donations. People who came to mass here would, of course, make offerings, and obviously there is no record of those, but other, shall we say, more affluent folk would often make sizeable donations, which were recorded.”
“Those that preferred to give money instead of time?” Lacey guessed.
“Possibly.” Jonas dipped his head in agreement. “Or those who had need to do penance of some sort.” The sparkle in Jonas’ eyes alerted Lacey that this meant something to her quest.
“Now, what was the date of Colleen’s admittance to the abbey?”
Lacey dug out her notebook. The earlier tome that Jonas had shared with them had apparently been returned to safekeeping.
“October twenty-fourth,” she read.
Jonas tapped the big book in front of them. “Here is a record of a goodly donation made by Francis McCandless. He was a man of some note. Owned a sawmill and actually was Lord Mayor of Dublin for a handful of years.”
Lacey studied the entry. Try as she might, she could see nothing that had anything to do with Colleen. Finally she lifted her eyes to Jonas.
“I don’t get it.”
He tapped the date. “The donation was made on October twenty-seventh. Three days after Colleen’s arrival.”
Lacey hunched forward and read the entry again. “Okay, but other donations were made around then, too. Here’s one for October twenty-sixth, one for October twenty-eighth.”
“True enough,” Jonas said, “but in checking past records, McCandless generally made sizeable donations on Easter and Christmas, or perhaps on saint days here or there. This,” and he tapped the record again, “was the first of monthly donations. Every month. For years.”