Miserere

by Caren J. Werlinger

  Miserere

  By Caren J. Werlinger

  Copyright © 2012 by Caren J. Werlinger. All rights reserved.

  Published by Corgyn Publishing, LLC at Smashwords.

  Scripture readings are taken from the Jerusalem Bible, copyright 1966 by Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd., & Doubleday and Company Inc. Used by permission.

  Cover photo by Erica Helm

  Cover design by Patty G. Henderson

  ISBN: 978-0-9886501-0-7

  E-mail: cjwerlingerbooks@yahoo.com

  * * *

  This work is copyrighted and is licensed only for use by the original purchaser and can be copied to the original purchaser’s electronic device and its memory card for your personal use. Modifying or making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, without limit, including by email, CD, DVD, memory cards, file transfer, paper printout or any other method, constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  For Beth

  Acknowledgments

  This story was born from a distant memory of a house that our family looked at when I was about nine and we were having to move. It was much as described in the opening chapter of this book and I, of course, thought it would be a wonderful place to live and at last have a horse. My parents felt otherwise. But, my fascination with that old farmhouse has stayed with me all these years – what kind of stories could it have told? – and it only took a little imagination for the rest of this tale to come together. To Roxanne Jones and Annabelle Lamarre of L-Book, for believing in this story prior to Roxanne’s tragic and untimely death and the unfortunate closing of L-Book. Their support gave me the impetus to publish this story myself. The process of publishing this book on my own would not have been possible without the generous and unselfish assistance of fellow authors

  Patty G. Henderson, Catherine M. Wilson, Q. Kelly, Lynn Galli and Beth Mitchum. Other people’s assistance was immeasurable as well: Karen Follett for her technical assistance and Erica Helm for her generous permission to use her photo for the cover. My sincere thanks also to Marge and Marty for their reading of the early draft, and providing their proofreading and feedback.

  And to Beth, for reading, for believing I could do this – and for putting up with endless hours of Celtic music as this story came together.

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  EPILOGUE

  Prologue

  10th May 1855

  “Caitríona! Where are you?”

  Orla Ní Faolain cast about, looking for her younger sister. The sudden wind whipped her long, black hair sideways and brought rare color to her normally pale cheeks as she held tightly to the halter of the stout Connemara pony pulling her cart.

  “Shhh, Connor,” she said soothingly as he tossed his head, his eyes wide.

  “Where are you?” she moaned again, glancing worriedly at the black clouds roiling in from the sea.

  Without warning, Caitríona ran out from behind a small hillock near the dirt lane. There were brambles tangled in her wild red hair, and she had dirt smeared across her freckled cheek. In her hands, she cradled a small mound of red fur.

  “Look, Orla!” she exclaimed excitedly as she scrambled over the stacked rock wall rambling along the lane.

  Orla, with a reserve born of experience, cautiously looked to see what her sister held. A tiny fox kit blinked up at her.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” Caitríona murmured, entranced.

  Orla sighed in exasperation. “Aye, she’s beautiful, but Mam will have our hides if we don’t get the cart home before the storm.”

  She wasn’t sure Caitríona was listening as she bent over the fox kit, stroking its soft head and murmuring to it.

  “Put it back where you found it,” Orla said gently, casting another glance at the ominous clouds. Her sister was always finding stray and injured animals. Or they found her. Even the wild ones came to her trustingly, seeming to know that she would do them no harm.

  Reluctantly, Caitríona carried her small burden back to the gorse behind the hillock. She ran back to the cart and took the pony’s halter on the other side as together they urged him into a trot.

  They arrived home as the first fat raindrops began to fall. Connor trotted right into the three-sided run-in that served as a barn, its rock walls chinked with clumps of sod so that the stones looked hairy. Because the storms here on this peninsula were so fierce, the thatched roof was reinforced with strong cords anchored by more rocks, swinging wildly now in the wind.

  The girls unhitched the pony, and Caitríona put him in his stall next to the milk cow. Hastily, she put a few handfuls of sweet hay in his feed bin and gave him a pat before putting up the boards that closed his stall.

  “You’d better be hoping Da doesn’t see that hay,” Orla warned. “You know he says it’s only for the cow.”

  Caitríona looked around to make sure her father wasn’t near. “You won’t tell, will you?” she pleaded. “Connor works harder than that old cow.”

  “That old cow gives us milk and butter,” Orla reminded her sister. “Come. Let’s get this lot in the house.”

  Gathering up the paper-wrapped parcels of fish and salt, along with the tins of tea and flour, the girls ran through the rain to the house. The small cottage was also built of stone whose whitewash had long ago faded, beaten away by the relentless pounding of the storms blown in by the westerly winds. Rounding the corner, they skidded to a halt. A carriage was there, pulled by two fine bay hackney ponies covered with blankets against the weather. The coachman sat like a statue on the high seat, his heavily embroidered uniform getting wetter by the minute. The footman, dressed in a similar livery, stood miserably at the heads of the horses.

  Ducking under the rocks anchoring the cottage’s thatched roof, the girls peered through the low door to see a strange gentleman sitting in their father’s chair by the fire. Niall O’Faolain jumped up from the bench at the table when he saw them.

  “Come in, girls, come in,” he said anxiously, gesturing them inside when they still hesitated. “Lord Playfair has been waitin’ to see you.”

  The girls kicked off their muddy shoes as they entered and stood silently, still clutching their parcels. Lord Playfair’s cold, indifferent gaze swept over them, passing quickly over Caitríona, but pausing on Orla for several seconds before he turned to Niall. Caitríona glanced quickly at her mother who sat with the baby and five other children on the bench along the far wall
. The sight of her mother’s ashen face frightened her.

  “They both know how to read and write?” Lord Playfair asked.

  “Yes, your Lordship,” Niall answered, his head bowed, staring at Lord Playfair’s shiny black boots. “English and Latin, and a little Irish.”

  Lord Playfair’s eyebrows rose slightly in haughty acknowledgement of his surprise.

  “Very well, then. We have an agreement,” he said as he stood. “Five extra acres. Have them ready in two weeks. I’ll send a wagon. They sail from Cobh.” He pulled his oilskin cloak around his shoulders and, ducking through the cottage door, climbed into the waiting carriage and departed.

  Niall collapsed into the vacated chair and stared into the low flames slowly consuming the blocks of peat. Orla dropped her packages on the wooden table and knelt beside her father as he rubbed the red stubble on his chin.

  “Da?” She laid a white hand on his arm. “Da, what did he mean?”

  Refusing to meet her gaze, Niall said, “Lord Playfair is sending his son to oversee his plantation in America. They need servants. You and your sister are to go.”

  Orla’s hand flew to her mouth in disbelief, but Caitríona cried defiantly, “I won’t! He can’t force us!”

  Niall shoved himself abruptly to his feet. “You’ll do as you’re told for a change!” he roared. He swept his arm toward the door. “All I’ve got is ten acres to feed this family. Look at them,” he gestured with his other hand toward the other children watching wide-eyed. “Skin and bones. Orla’s fifteen. She should be married, and you, not two years behind, should be following. But since the famine… all the young men have gone.” His voice faltered. “There’s not enough land to feed us all.” His jaw worked from side to side. “It’s time you were gone,” he said.

  His wife, Eilish, looked out the window at the three small crosses silhouetted on the hill behind the cottage, and said, “You would do well to remember, Niall O’Faolain, that we’d have lost more than three children to the famine if it weren’t for the girls helping me make lace to sell in town.”

  She handed the baby to the boy next to her and stood, clearly pregnant again. Her smooth white skin and long black hair marked her as Orla’s mother. She was still beautiful, despite the ravages of years of hunger and the hardships of bearing and burying too many children, the same beauty that now made men stop and look longingly at Orla.

  “You’re telling me I’m not man enough to work this land and feed my family?” Niall growled, his cheeks turning a blotchy red that matched his hair.

  “I’m saying it’s taken more than farming to feed this family these past seven years, and you’ve no cause to make the girls believe they’ve been a burden,” Eilish insisted, refusing to back down despite his menacing tone.

  His eyes flickered briefly in the direction of his two eldest daughters. “With five extra acres, I could get back on me feet.”

  “So you sold us like a pair of cattle!” accused Caitríona.

  So fast she didn’t have time to duck, Niall lashed out, backhanding her and knocking her to the floor. She stayed down, her unruly red curls falling over her face as Niall stomped out into the rain.

  Eilish rushed over and brushed Caitríona’s hair back to reveal a bloody lip. Angry tears spilled from her daughter’s eyes.

  “Will you never learn to hold your tongue?” she asked, shaking her head. “Come.” She led Caitríona to the table. There, she dabbed at the blood with the corner of her apron. “Only, if you go, Lord Playfair will let your father keep five extra acres of crops, but if you don’t, he’ll take five away. We can’t live on five acres and he knows it,” Eilish explained gently.

  “But he farms over fifty acres for that English bastard now!” Caitríona sputtered through her swollen lips. “We’re not his property,” she insisted bitterly.

  “To himself, that’s all we are.” Eilish sighed in resignation. “I blame myself. If I hadn’t taught you to read and write and make lace…” She looked over at Orla, still kneeling by her father’s chair. “If I could, I’d send you to the nuns who raised me. You’d be safe there.”

  Orla turned to her mother. “Mam? For how long must we go? Will we ever come home again to Ireland?”

  Eilish looked at her sadly. “I don’t know, child.”

  CHAPTER 1

  Green.

  Later, when Conn tried to recall her first memories of the farm, green was what she remembered. So many different greens. The dark blue-green of West Virginia mountain ridges covered in pines; the soft, dappled green of sunlight filtering through the leaves of the trees that lined the rural highways and roads they traveled; the rich, cool green of the grass around the farmhouse, grass that tickled her bare feet – the first time she could remember being allowed to go barefoot outside. But it was all mixed up with the greens in the dreams – the soft green fields dotted with stone cairns and criss-crossed with low rock walls; the deepening purple-green of the undersides of the grasses and heathers when a storm blew in from the sea. Except Conn had never been to the sea.

  The station wagon’s tires crunched on the gravel of the dirt drive that wound uphill to the house. It took a couple of minutes for the dust cloud raised by the car to drift away and give them their first glimpse of the house.

  “Oh no,” groaned Elizabeth.

  The house looked haunted. The grass was knee-high. Several windows were broken, and the white paint was peeling, exposing the weathered gray clapboards underneath. Extending from one side of the house was a portion made of log with a squat stone chimney. At the other end of the house, a larger stone chimney was almost completely covered by ivy so thick it looked solid in the deep shade of the enormous trees growing around the house – elms and maples and oaks and hemlocks with sad, droopy branches.

  Ten-year-old Conn looked worriedly at her mother and said, “It’s not so bad. We can fix it up, Mom. And look at the beautiful trees. We didn’t have trees like this in New Mexico.”

  The brown desert landscape around Sandia Base in Albuquerque seemed a world away from this place. So did the day the Marines came to the door….

  “Are we here?” Conn’s brother, Will, who was seven, stirred in the back seat, unsticking his face from the vinyl where he’d been sleeping, scrunched between a stack of boxes and the side of the car.

  They all climbed stiffly from their 1958 Chevy Nomad, “the same age as me,” Conn reminded Will frequently. “Daddy bought it the day I was born. He didn’t buy anything the day you were born,” she also added frequently.

  “Well, let’s take a closer look,” Elizabeth sighed, tossing her thick auburn hair over her shoulder and letting her car door close.

  They climbed the wooden steps to the deep front porch where a lonely-looking porch swing hung at one end. Elizabeth dug the house key from her purse and tried to work it into the lock. It finally slid in, but wouldn’t turn. She sighed in frustration as she tried to wiggle the key in the lock. Giving up, she said, “Let’s go around back.”

  Conn led the way around to the screened porch on the back of the house. The screen door hung by one hinge, and inside the porch, the kitchen door was ajar.

  “Hello?” Elizabeth called out, pushing the door open cautiously. All three humans jumped when two squirrels came racing through their legs.

  Peering into the kitchen, it looked as if it had been ransacked. Cupboard doors stood open and drawers lay upside down on the floor. A huge wood-burning cookstove occupied one wall of the kitchen, while on an adjacent wall stood a cast-iron sink with an old-fashioned hand pump standing over it. A small electric icebox stood unplugged with its doors open. Cans of food were scattered everywhere. A bag of flour on the slate countertop had been chewed open and spilled onto the gray linoleum floor, the perpetrators leaving white telltale footprints all over the kitchen. “This is raccoon,” Conn pointed. She had recently studied animal tracks in Girl Scouts. “And this one is rabbit, I think.”

  “Raccoon?” Will asked, moving closer to his m
other and looking around uncertainly.

  “It’s okay,” Conn said. “They only have rabies sometimes.”

  “Connemara,” Elizabeth said warningly.

  Grinning, Conn peered into the log room and saw a wide stone fireplace with a swiveling iron hook.

  “Let’s check out the rest of the house,” Elizabeth said, pushing open the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the dining room.

  All the furniture in the dining room and sitting room beyond had been covered by white sheets. A broad oak staircase brought them to the second floor where there were three bedrooms with similar sheets covering the beds and dressers.

  “I guess nobody’s been here since Nana died,” Elizabeth sighed.

  Will couldn’t remember Nana at all, but Conn could, even though it had been five years. They had stopped to visit her on their way from Norfolk to New Mexico. Conn could recall sitting next to Nana on the front porch swing, holding her hand. Nana’s skin was soft and dry and wrinkly, but what Conn remembered most was that Nana chewed her nails, something Conn did also. Since then, whenever Elizabeth scolded Conn for biting her nails so short, Conn stubbornly declared it couldn’t be so bad if Nana did it.

  “This used to be my room,” Elizabeth smiled as she pushed open the door of the room at the end of the hall.

  Conn looked around. Outside one window was a large branch from one of the elm trees, so close she could have reached out and plucked some of its leaves. “Can this be my room now?” she asked.

  “Sure,” Elizabeth answered, tousling her daughter’s short red hair. “Let’s take all the sheets off and clean everything before we unload the car.”

  “Hey!” said Will a few minutes later from behind the large pile of sheets in his arms. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  Elizabeth laughed. “I’ll show you.” She led the way back downstairs, gathering more sheets as she went through the sitting room. Outside, they all dropped their sheets on the grass. “There it is,” she said, pointing to an outhouse a short distance from the house.

  “For real?” Conn asked, her eyes wide.