The Scarlet Ribbon

by Derry O'Dowd

  He heard Peg’s sharp intake of breath and nodded sagely at her before continuing, shouting this time.

  ‘I bargained with him and he didn’t listen to me. The baby sleeps upstairs and my wife sleeps in the cold dark earth. I hate God for what he did to me, so I took to St Anne’s churchyard where she is laid with a bottle in my hand and yelled to the night sky, cursing him. I drank there and then I pissed up against the door of the church – right there, Peg!’ He bent his head and the tears dripped onto the back of his hands.

  Peg sat mute in her shock. She couldn’t speak. She remembered James’s father, and Marguerite’s, trying to prise him away from the poor girl lying on her deathbed that terrible night. He had pleaded with them, cajoled them, then begged them not to take her away from him.

  Doctor Dara had tried his best, but he was unable to reach his son. He looked at Thomas Lynch; two grown men standing in the middle of that awful chamber with the tears streaming and the hurt eating their hearts at the sight of the beautiful dead woman and her husband who was wild with the unbearable sorrow of it all.

  They had to fetch his mother, and only when he saw her would he let his wife go at last. James kissed Marguerite gently for the last time. He slid off the bed stiffly and fell to the floor, hurting himself again. He cried out for his mother.

  She came to him, picked him up, and bundled him to her tightly. He knelt with his mother on the floor of the bedchamber, clumsily, his head on her shoulder, crying, taking in great gasps of air, soaking her hair with the tears that freely flowed down his face. She had rocked him and crooned to him, her kindly face furrowed in great distress. She stroked his hair and called him her baby, always her baby boy. But she couldn’t answer him when he asked how he could go on without his wife.

  Mother Quinn didn’t know the answer; she realised she couldn’t mend her son with her kisses and love this time.

  ‘Then I felt guilty, Peg,’ he continued his drunken confession, suddenly grasping her hands earnestly. ‘You see, if I had only been there she wouldn’t have died. I should have stayed, not gone to help at the Infirmary. My patient died anyway, so what use was I there? And if she had not been pregnant at all, then she would not be dead.’

  His voice lowered to a whisper before rising again, ‘It is the baby’s fault, Peg, and that is why I do not want to see him! Do not ask me to see him! For he stole his mother’s life. Stole his mother’s heart, stole his mother’s eyes, stole his mother’s smile. He took her! And she’s gone. She’s gone.’ He stopped, and with eyes closed fell forward onto Peg.

  Peg eased herself out from under him and covered him with the blanket that was there from the night before. She turned off the light, righted the chair, took the empty bottle in her hand and closed the door behind her. Her mouth set in a grim line. Something needed to be done, and quickly. Over six months on and James was much worse instead of any better.

  And the poor baby. God knows she loved Daniel, but she could not always play mother and father to him. She nodded to herself and set off to find her own paper, quill and ink.

  Dublin, 20 December 1738

  Dear Sir, Doctor Dara.

  Please forgive me, but I truly felt you must know.

  It is your son, James; he is not well. He cannot cope with his troubles. He is greatly distressed, doesn’t eat or wash. He goes to his work, but returns like a wraith, a pale, shaking, imitation of himself, unshaven and smelling of last night’s brandy. I know that you are grieving too, for we all loved Marguerite, love her still even now that she is gone. And I do not wish to add to your sorrows and burdens further, but I feel that I cannot cope alone any longer.

  You see, he is drinking brandy heavily, every single day and late, late into the next. I am worried for I don’t know what to do any more. I have tried, believe me, for I care for him. And I am more sorry for him and Marguerite than words can say. But he is not healing. I know it takes time. After the death of my own poor mother, rest her soul, it was a long time before I was right again. But his sorrow and grief are like nothing I have ever seen. It scares me and makes me helpless. I do not know what to do.

  He is angry at everyone and at himself. I try to be patient with him when he is abrupt with me, but it is getting harder.

  It would break my heart to leave my employ and Baby Daniel. And the saddest thing of all is that he will not look on his baby son. Will not touch or cuddle him, nor talk or sing to him. Indeed, he blames the baby most vehemently for Marguerite’s death. He wants to send the baby away from him and out of his house and life.

  Daniel is the sweetest thing, all innocence and smiles. Once I came to James with him, but he was in a drunken state, sprawled out. I came in with the baby and he held out his arms for his father. And his father paid him no mind and caused Daniel’s little face to twist in confusion and then distress as James shouted at me to take him away. I left with the baby crying his little heart out.

  So you see, sir, that it is with a very heavy heart indeed that I write to you. I wish to stay and see Daniel grow to the fine young man that he will be, and for your own son James to recover and return to the fine young man that he once was.

  Sorrow and his brother grief are terrible burdens to bear, we know that, but they are making an empty man of your son, gaunt and hollow eyed. He will not listen to me, but I think he will listen to you.

  Please come.

  I am sorry for all that is happening and my own inability to cope with it, but your help is sorely needed here in Dublin. I cannot comfort him, perhaps you can.

  Please take my best wishes to your wife and family.

  Yours,

  Peg Reilly.

  Doctor Dara sat in his study. He held his spectacles away from his face and wiped his eyes. He took a breath, blew it out tremulously, picked up Peg’s letter and read it again from the start, heart thumping uncomfortably.

  He would have to go and see them all in Dublin. He had no idea how much worse things had become.

  Damp bed sheets roped around his legs, James turned uneasily in his sleep.

  All he could hear was the sound of his own laboured breathing as he ran along the street.

  The cobblestones were uneven and slippery and he fell, again and again, hurting his hands and knees. He could hear a baby crying now, its thin, reedy cry filling the air. He ran faster then, smiling and eager to meet his new child.

  He ran into the house, bumping his shoulder painfully against the front door. He took the stairs two at a time, breathless, eager to see his wife and baby, smiling. The baby’s cries intensified and James’s heart beat harder at the longing to hold it and Marguerite close to him, his new family.

  He entered her bedchamber.

  His wife lay quite still on her labour bed, partially covered with crimson-soaked sheets, her expectant belly undelivered.

  ‘Where is the baby? I can hear it crying!’ he shouted, and put his hands to his dead wife’s pregnancy and stood back in amazement as he realised that there was still life within, that was where the cries were coming from.

  He fumbled in his pocket and found the Spanish pocketknife. He threw back her birthing gown. The knife was in his hand. He slashed deep and long. Blood filled the wound. Deeper and deeper he went. He was sweating badly, he fumbled and the knife fell from his hand.

  He reached for it again, the baby’s cries spurring him on to work faster and faster to release it from the darkness of the womb.

  James cut and cut again, deeper and deeper – was there no end to this? Where was Marguerite’s womb? He paused, briefly, and wiped the sweat from his brow and eyes. The blood there left him blinded and he used his sleeve to clear his vision.

  He was hacking now, desperate to get to the child within. Blood gushed, it was everywhere, he could make out nothing.

  Marguerite’s womb appeared at last. Then thick meconium appeared in the wound.

  A cold hand wrapped around his ankle, tugging at his leg, pulling. He looked down and saw his wife lying on the floor, beaut
iful and urgent in her need.

  ‘James, why are you not helping me? I will die, please help me!’

  He looked to the bed again, perplexed. ‘I am helping you, my love. See, here I am delivering you of our baby who is crying with the need to get out.’

  He paused, knife in hand. The room was still, except for the baby’s crying. He looked up past Marguerite’s pregnant belly to see her face laying on the pillows. But it was not her laid there, her face did not greet him. It was the sailor from the Infirmary.

  James awoke with a start, cold, so cold, sweating with the fear that gnawed at his insides. He threw the blanket off and lurched around in the dark, knocking things over, hands trembling until he found the bottle. He drank deeply, his need for it taking over everything else except for the empty aching deep inside. He took the brandy back to the settee with him, and sat with his knees up under his chin, arms clasped around them, rocking, sobbing and drinking until the morning came.

  Father and son walked slowly. Doctor Dara had been in Dublin for two weeks now and wanted to return home to Galway. While he had loved seeing Daniel, his time with James had exhausted him emotionally and he longed to embrace his wife. The weak sunlight filtered through the tops of the trees, creating a new, young, bright green canopy overhead as they strolled on. Daffodils peeked their heads through the ground, crocuses too, on this spring morning.

  ‘We’ll stop here, James, if we may, and go into St Audoen’s church. I want to rub the lucky stone - or lucky slab would be a better name for the great Celtic piece of granite - for my safekeeping on my journey back west. Not that I have anything of great value for the brigands to steal, I suppose,’ he smiled and looked at his son, but James was far away from him. Doctor Dara sighed and pulled on James’s sleeve. ‘Come inside, son, and we can sit awhile out of the breeze.’

  James followed his father into the church, everything in him rebelling, quailing at the thought of entering. He had not been inside a church since Marguerite was laid to rest, though he had been in a churchyard, he thought to himself with a pang of guilt.

  He walked up the aisle with his father, their footfalls echoing around the still of the ancient church. Doctor Dara motioned to a pew and they both sat quietly, breathing in the serene nature of their surroundings. James wanted to bolt, leave the place and his father, find himself alone with his misery again. But as Doctor Dara cleared his throat James sighed; he knew his father was going to try to talk sense into him again, whatever that may be.

  ‘Son, I know this has been a truly terrible time for you,’ he paused, took off his spectacles and wiped them with the handkerchief he kept in his pocket for just that purpose before putting them back on again. ‘It has been for all of us. Marguerite was such a beautiful young woman, warm, loving, giving. She stole all of our hearts. She would have made a wonderful mother had she been given the chance.’

  He paused, cleared his throat and started to speak again, while James stared resolutely ahead, pale as one of the alabaster statues in the church as he looked through the window behind the altar.

  ‘James, son, look at me now, take my hand.’

  James turned slowly to face his father.

  ‘I am so sorry, but she is gone, truly gone. Remember her; that is the best gift you could ever hope to give her. Love her, and that way you will always keep her memory alive.

  ‘And James, no amount of brandy will bring her back, nor dampen your memories or hurt. You will only hurt yourself further if you carry on as you are. And Daniel, Peg and the rest of us too. You can weep an ocean, but don’t drown in it.’

  He cleared his throat once more, let go of his son’s hand and looked ahead again. ‘James, I must now talk of Daniel. It would be best if he stayed with you. A child, especially one without a mother, needs a father. Be his father. Be a father to him, son.

  ‘I know you will love him. In time, perhaps, you will see his mother’s features in him as a blessing, her final gift to you, and love him all the more for that instead of despising him for something that was not his fault. Your mother and I will not take him and raise him, he is yours. Yours and Marguerite’s.’

  Doctor Dara paused and smiled at the memory of Daniel’s small, dimpled hand grasping his large one this morning as he took his leave, his solid, warm little body as he sat for a cuddle.

  Peg was holding him, and the baby showed his new skill of waving his grandfather off, smiling and delighted with himself, the sight of a couple of tiny white pearly nubs of teeth coming through. Peg was happier too, he thought. Now if only he could help James.

  His reverie was disturbed as a choir and musicians assembled for practice, and he glanced at his son. James still sat as unmoving as before.

  As the joyful, triumphant, heraldic strains of the beautiful tune opened, and as the violins and trumpets resounded around the church, James stood and bolted.

  His father caught him at the door and took his son’s shaking body to his in a tight embrace. He stroked James’s hair, well aware that the last time he heard the song ‘Welcome, Welcome Glorious Morn’ was at his wedding. The choir and musicians were plainly there to practice for another happy couple’s nuptials.

  ‘I couldn’t save her, Father. I was too late! I let her die, she died because of me!’

  ‘Now James, that is not true. What would you have done? What could you have done?’

  Doctor Dara, louder now, tried to shake his son out of his misery and continued, ‘There wasn’t a way, James. She was gone. There is nothing – look at me, look at me now, that’s better – nothing you could have possibly done to save her! Stop torturing yourself, James. Stop it, stop it!’

  The tenor sang on, ‘Welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome, Glorious Morn. Nature smiles at thy return …’

  James let his father hold him and the music roll over him until his tears were spent. He didn’t know how long they stood there for, but when he looked up again the choir and musicians had gone.

  Doctor Dara dried his son’s face with his handkerchief, tenderly. Softly, he spoke again, ‘James, son, I will try to help you. I know I cannot make up for her loss, but I swear I will try.’

  They walked slowly together back up the aisle again to the same pew and sat a little longer.

  Eventually James turned to his father. ‘Perhaps if I had known more of midwifery and the dangers that can happen during pregnancy I could have saved Marguerite,’ he said softly.

  Doctor Dara shook his head and sat in silence for a couple of minutes. He savoured a new idea, and then turned to share it with his son. ‘James, if that is truly how you feel … well, I know you could not have helped Marguerite, but perhaps you could save other women. In memory, if you like, of her. A dedication. And other children would not have to grow up motherless as Daniel has to.’

  James looked at his father, something like a quiet interest in his eyes for the first time since Marguerite’s death. His father’s heart opened and gladdened at the sight and he warmed to his topic excitedly.

  ‘We both know of doctors who have gone to study the art of midwifery in Paris, James. Laurence Stone mentioned it to you, and you were unsure before, I understand, but now you could embrace the change and the challenge and become a man-midwife. It would be a worthy thing to do, Ryan and other detractors be damned. And you have your French from that summer spent there helping Thomas Lynch with his trading. For Marguerite,’ he trailed off.

  He took James’s hand again – it was warm this time – and looked to his son for his assent. ‘It will give you purpose James, help you to heal.’

  As they took their leave, Doctor Dara rubbed the lucky stone vigorously and turned to his son as if the action had helped him to remember the message that he was to pass on.

  ‘Son, Marguerite, before she died, asked her mother for a Galway girl to help care for the baby. Two of the O’Flaherty sisters – you know, Liam’s girls – are to stay with Sarah Lynch. Your mother kept in contact with the family as you asked. She says that
they have grown up to be fine young ladies, and recommended them.

  ‘Their own mother is still a shadow of her former self though, and the four youngest children are being sent to their Aunt Mairin – the herb woman in Barna – as Mrs O’Flaherty cannot cope, poor woman. Mairin has already helped Carissa a great deal, I believe, and has been teaching her about plants and their use in remedies. Apparently the girl shows a great deal of interest and promise.

  ‘Once Carissa and Aileen have adjusted to their new Dublin life, one of the girls will come to your house to live and mind Daniel for you. She will arrive while you are away, if that indeed is what you decide to do, and be well settled in by the time you return from your studies.’

  James stood and watched his father disappear into the distance. He wished Marguerite would be waiting for him on his return. But she wouldn’t, now or ever again. He stood alone on the street and felt his old friend despair sink its teeth into his soul and he sighed, shoulders slumped.

  Then he made his own way home, where perhaps he would hold his baby son for the first time since he delivered him and have some food. And another drink, too, just to help him along.

  5

  To make a French ice cream

  Boil a handful of oranges then strain and beat them and put in half a dozen ounces of sugar and a pint of cream and sieve the mixture. Put it into a tin with a top and set the tin into a tub of ice broken up small. Leave for five hours and then turn out the frozen mixture.

  Quinn Household Recipes and Remedies Book

  * * *

  PARIS, 1740-1741

  The early evening sun glinted off the Seine, catching on the ripples like diamonds, tumbling crystals. James Quinn stood and looked at the water for a while, then turned and made his way down a cobbled street in search of something to eat and drink. He took in the bustle of people all around, breathing in the life that surrounded him.