Flight of the Earls (3 page)

Caitlin joined them, her wavy blonde hair draping over the front of her faded yellow dress. The dress was the one Uncle Tomas gave Clare as her sixteenth birthday present, and when it no longer fit, Caitlin adopted it as if it were brand new.

When her uncle was still alive, he always was kind to them, bringing gifts and sharing fanciful stories of fairies, ghosts, and faraway lands. For years, Clare didn't know why this would make her father angry, but as she grew older, she recognized it as envy.

In speaking about Clare's father and uncle, Grandma Ella had shared how the two fought since they were boys. “Jacob and Esau had nothing on these ones, I tell you.” Her grandmother always saw life through a veil of Scripture.

Standing a few inches above Ronan and Davin, Caitlin reached out her arms in expectation and soon they all were clasping hands in a circle.

Clare glanced over her shoulder at her mother, who was in a chair knitting the same scarf she had been working on for nearly two years. “Ma. Are you going to join us?”

“Hmm?” Ida looked up with a weary, troubled face. “What? How's that?” Her expression darkened. “No. I have no desire for praying.”

“As you wish.” Clare bristled but tried not to show it. She heard the same sentiment almost every day since her youngest brother drowned as a toddler.

“All right, Davin. Since you're in need of much penance, we'll have you pray.”

Looking up to Clare as if to protest, he let out a deep breath and bowed his head. There was something in his spirit that was so appealing to her, but she feared the day would come soon when the trials of life and her father's cruel disposition would dampen his flame.

Davin squeezed his eyes shut and spoke with sincerity. “Lord. We thank You for the taters.” Then whispered, “Which we eat every night.”

This was met with a sharp tug of his hand by Ronan, who stumbled before catching his balance.

Undeterred, Davin continued. “I pray for my ma. That she'll learn how to smile better. For my da.” He glanced at the door behind him. “For my da. That he'll talk to me kindly. For Cait. That she'll get a new bonnet. The blue one with the ribbons that she likes.”

Caitlin opened her eyes and grinned. “Thank you, Davin. That would be lovely.”

“And I pray for . . . I pray for my big sister that someone will finally marry her. Amen.”

“Oh, Davin.” Caitlin looked up at Clare to see if she was offended.

Clare smiled, but the innocent barb resonated. At her age, a woman was close to being out of time, a bruise her father often poked. Perhaps love and adventure only did exist between the worn covers of her books.

“Sorry. I forgot Ro.” Davin, with a sense of devotion, clasped his hands. “For Ronan. I pray I'll grow bigger than he. So I can give him the whipping he deserves.”

Ronan grabbed a handful of his little brother's hair and tugged it, which drew an immediate yelp.

“That will do,” Clare broke in with an intensity that captured their attention. She decided to complete the prayer on their behalf. Since her Grandma Ella passed, Clare struggled to believe there was anyone listening to her petitions. But prayer still had a role in the proper upbringing of children. The fear of God was a helpful tool of discipline, and one she wasn't willing to discard.

“Lord, please continue to hold my family in Your gentle arms.” The words seemed inauthentic and Clare hoped it wasn't obvious. “We thank You for the daily food You provide, this beautiful home we share. We are so grateful for Your favor. Amen.”

“A-men,” they chorused. The boys headed toward the ladder to the loft to compete for their favored position in the straw bed they all shared, but Clare grabbed Davin by the arm. “Brush.” She motioned to Caitlin.

With her brother wriggling in her grasp, Clare watched Ronan labor up the ladder as Caitlin retrieved the hairbrush from the drawer. Although the interior of the tiny home was confining, it was meticulously groomed, with food bins, dinnerware, and knickknacks all organized against the wall on evenly distributed wooden shelves.

Caitlin handed the brush to Clare, and after a few jabs through the hair on his impatient head, Davin climbed up to bed. But Caitlin just stood there.

“Well? Have you something on your mind?”

“You look tired,” she said to Clare with some hesitation.

“Because you all are tiring. Now off to sleep, you.”

But Caitlin didn't budge. She stood as if she had something else to say.

“What?”

“Well. Will I look tired as well soon?”

Clare let the words of the question sink in before she answered. She carried the challenges of the family on her shoulders, and although she resolved herself to an uneventful life, she yearned for Caitlin and the boys to have more.

“The face of a princess will never wrinkle.” She put her lips to Cait's forehead.

Caitlin hugged her sister in return and then went up the ladder to join her brothers in the loft. Her legs vanished over the last rung, and Clare turned her attention to her mother, who had nodded off in her chair.

Kneeling beside Ma, Clare removed the knitting tools from the woman's brittle grip and picked the scarf up from the floor. It was tangled and knotted. It saddened Clare to recall how beautifully her mother's hands once clothed the entire family.

With a gentle touch, Clare tucked the stringy, gray hair behind her mother's ears. Oh, how grief had aged the woman. Even in the calming arms of slumber, Ma looked troubled.

Kevan's death was still hovering in her mother's fragile mind. Last Saturday would have been the boy's fifth birthday had he not fallen into the creek that fateful day. Although Ma could barely function in ordinary day-to-day duties, she had a remarkable awareness of that date.

The anniversary of his death was difficult for Clare as well. It brought back the haunting vision of her mother sitting in that chair, eyes vacant, while holding the limp toddler in her lap, his moist skin a pale blue.

In many ways, the tragedy extinguished the last flicker of Clare's youth. Following her mother's ensuing breakdown, she was next in line to assume the duties and responsibilities of the matriarch.

“Up we go, Ma. Let's get you to bed.”

Clare helped the fragile woman to her feet and escorted her to the far corner of the room. There she pulled back an opening through the hand-embroidered canopy Grandma Ella made as a wedding gift. It didn't provide much privacy for the bed, but in Clare's mind it represented the last symbol of her mother and father's threadbare marriage. She obsessed to maintain the fabric to its original beauty, but the years of turf smoke in the room left the linen with a yellow tinge and a sooty smell.

She helped her mother curl into the bed and laid a worn wool blanket over her. Clare seated herself on the edge of the bed and watched the frail woman fall asleep.

“Nightie, Mam.”

Clare rose and became aware of the aching in her back and the throbbing in her temple. It was only when she was no longer tending to others that the pains in her own life surfaced.

She stood still, allowing a silence to confirm her two brothers and sister had settled to rest above in the loft. The room was eerily still, save the crackling of the fire, as the red glow of its burning peat cast shifting shadows upon the walls.

Margaret's chair was angled at the table, and out of habit Clare straightened it. She ran her fingers over the time-smoothed oak chair and tried to imagine her older sister sitting there, her laughter winning the room. Clare didn't blame her father for favoring Maggie, because her sister had a natural radiance about her few could match.

What kind of life would Clare have had if Maggie never left for America with her Uncle Tomas four years ago? Certainly she wouldn't be carrying this burden alone.

She immediately felt shame for her self-pity and punished herself with guilt. Such a horrible tragedy her sister endured, and here Clare was feeling sorry about taking on some additional chores.

She went to the bookshelf above the mantel and ran her slender hands over the cracked leather bindings, as if there were something magical in the touch of her fingertips that would discern a proper choice. Clare had read these few books many times over; the adventuresome places and intrepid characters so well known to her they seemed as real as her life here on the farm.

Something compelled her to pull down the Holy Bible her grandmother had given her before she died. It was the very one Nanna read to her often when she was a wee girl. Clare's face burned at the dustiness of the cover. Her grandma would have been mortified and rightly so.

With the Bible in one hand, she lifted Maggie's chair and grabbed a heavy blue knit shawl from one of the hooks on the wall. After shifting a few things in her clutches, she placed her hand around the cold iron handle of the smoke-stained oak door, opened it, and winced when the hinges let out a moan.

Clare stepped into the coolness of the fog-enshrouded night and paused to allow her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then she sank into the oak chair and experienced closeness to Maggie in some strange manner. Clare wrapped the shawl around her shoulders and absorbed the gentle chorus of the evening's sounds.

She had hoped the moon would provide enough light for her to read, but the murky clouds prevailed and the book lay unopened on her lap.

Somewhere in the uneven chants of the night winds, she sought out a healing voice above the din of her life. Her imagination drifted to sweeter places and she fought back the weariness, grasping on to what remained of the day.

Nevertheless, Clare faded as the aroma of death closed in around her.

Chapter 2

The Roots of Change

Clare woke with a startle.

It frightened her to realize she was still outside and sitting in Maggie's chair with the Bible in her lap. Clare always tried to be in bed before her father got home from the pub each night. He was a difficult drunk, and Clare found it prudent to be at least feigning sleep in her bed when he would stumble back.

She stood and grabbed the book in one hand, the chair in the other. But before she turned, Clare glanced along the road leading away from home. Something was amiss.

She strained her eyes and sought out moving shadows through the fog. Nothing. But her nerves were on edge.

In a short moment, she discerned a figure approaching off in the distance, and even in the mist-obscured moonlight she could tell it was moving toward her at a hurried pace.

Is it an animal?

Instinct flooded and Clare scrambled to find a stick or a shovel, something she could use to fend off a predator. But then she could tell it was the shape of a person, and soon the pounding of feet could be heard. Clare's heart pressed against her chest until she realized it was her father, Liam, and the tension released from her body as quickly as it had arrived.

But why is he running?

His breathless voice shouted, “Clare. Clare. Get the lantern.”

The urgency in his words sprung her to action. She flung open the door loud enough to wake them all, but there wasn't a stir in response. Clare tiptoed to the mantel and grabbed the oil lantern. She bent down, dipped a thin stick into the peat fire, lit the lantern's wick, and the glass chamber filled with light.

Clare hustled outside where she discovered her father crouched over, struggling to catch his wind. The lantern's glow highlighted the weathered lines of his face.

“Bring that to the field.”

“What's wrong, Da?”

She didn't expect him to answer, and he didn't. He skittered in bent fashion toward the potatoes they planted in spring. Clare hesitated, not knowing if she should step ahead to light his path or if she should just stay out of his way.

When they arrived at the first row of planted roots, her da fell to his knees.

“Give me light, girl. This is why you're here.”

Clare leaned down to hang the flickering lamp close to the ground before him. As she did, Clare could smell the foul odor of the night. She weighed her growing concern and curiosity against her wariness of her father's mood and chose to remain silent.

He dug trembling fingers into the cold, moist Irish soil of the farm where his family drew sustenance for generations. His hands emerged from the earth, and even with faint illumination it was clear to see the blackened root of a dying potato crop in his palms. Emptying the contents of his grasp slowly, Da's shoulders slumped and his browned fingers retreated to his face.

Clare could tell he was trying to hide his grief, and as her nose filled with the smell of rot, she listened helplessly to the dull sobbing of her proud father. Her life would never be the same.