Land of a Thousand Dreams (7 page)

Yet Morgan could not shake the suspicion that the order was altogether too willing to ship her off.

He leaned back in the chair, pushing himself slightly away from the desk. “I can scarcely think why you'd be agreeable to a position here. Your credentials are impressive. You are accustomed to fine educational facilities and established methods. This Academy is experimental, as you no doubt know.”

By now he had come to anticipate not even a hint as to what the nun might be thinking. Those unblinking dark eyes seemed closed doors on her soul.

In reply, Sister Louisa merely lifted her eyebrows.

Trying another approach, Morgan said, “Even more surprising is the idea that the order would consider letting you go. I should think your experience would be invaluable, both in the classroom and in your work with Dublin's poor.”

The nun leveled a look on Morgan that clearly said she recognized his dissembling.

“You may be direct with me, sir. If you are wondering what undisclosed stain on my record has brought me to this place, you have only to ask.”

Morgan flinched at the nun's perception, but made no protest. Instead, he occupied himself by straightening the pages of her file on the desk in front of him.

“You are no doubt wondering if I am under discipline, and, in a manner of speaking, I am. You have every right to know that I am considered entirely too radical in matters of religious education. I have been severely reprimanded for my teaching methods in that regard.”

Morgan shot her a startled look.
A radical nun?
Unthinkable!

As if reading his thoughts, Sister Louisa nodded.

“I am accused of departing from certain teachings of the church as pertain to the reading of Holy Scripture and the Mass.”

Morgan managed, with difficulty, not to gape.

In the same controlled, direct voice, the nun went on. “According to Mother Superior, I have failed in my duty to give proper instruction concerning the Mass. I stress a personal relationship with Christ, you see, and I feel that certain parts of the Mass provide a perfect means for illuminating the various stages of this relationship.” She paused, but only for a moment. “There is some thought that my approach tended to undermine the importance of the confessional.”

Morgan's jaw dropped. “You took issue with a
sacrament
?”

The nun narrowed those dark, unreadable eyes. “According to the interpretation of some.”

Morgan leaned forward, altogether fascinated. “And your own interpretation?”

A glint of something—was it amusement?—suddenly flickered across her features.

“I suggested to the young women—they were not children, by the way—that as we mature in the faith, we come to recognize our Lord's desire for us to have close fellowship with Him, to come directly to Him with our needs.” The stubborn chin lifted a fraction. “Not only for confession, but for communion and worship as well. You might just as well know that I advocate a personal study of the Holy Scriptures. Some of my superiors believe me to be in rebellion.”

She sat unmoving, perched forward on the straight-backed chair, her small hands folded neatly in her lap. For one deranged moment, Morgan was struck with a vision of the decorous, self-contained sister waving a
banner of rebellion above her head and marching off to battle amid the rattle of drums and the thunder of smoking cannon.

Immediately he gave himself a mental shake in rebuke for such sacrilege.

“I have often observed,” he said carefully, “that it is the rebels among us who ultimately make the difference, who get things done.”

The nun's face brightened, and she seemed about to speak, but Morgan went on. “One might even refer to our Lord as a Rebel—of a kind. Unfortunately,” he went on with a grim smile, “rebels are more often than not crucified or persecuted or imprisoned. I have a friend who even now reaps the consequences of his rebellious ways.”

“Smith O'Brien,” said the nun.

Morgan looked at her. “Aye. You know of him?”

The sister nodded. “And who in Ireland does not? The fallen hero of the Widow McCormack's cabbage patch.”

Bitterness welled up in Morgan's throat. Smith O'Brien now languished in gaol, judged guilty of high treason and sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Morgan and a number of the patriot's followers were even now exhausting all measures to have his life spared.

In the meantime, the English press had orchestrated a deliberate, ruthless campaign to make a mockery of O'Brien and the failed rising of 1848 by attempting to reduce the man and the final battle to a farce. Unable to raise a lasting army from Ireland's starving, defeated people, O'Brien had nevertheless played the revolt to its weak, whimpering end. In a last pathetic skirmish in late July, O'Brien and a half-armed mob of disorganized peasants had attacked a body of panicked police who broke ranks, barricading themselves in a widow's house on Boulah Common, near Ballingarry.

After a scuffle in the garden, the entire clash had ended in the humiliation of O'Brien and his insurgent “army.” Within days the leader was arrested and jailed. The insurrection proved a total, debasing defeat, and the English newspapers had been having the time of it ever since, demeaning O'Brien as some sort of half-cracked clown and his “soldiers” as deranged peasants with pikes.

Turning his attention back to Sister Louisa, Morgan could not resist defending his old friend. “Perhaps he
was
mistaken in listening to his
advisors, but it is a cruel end to an otherwise splendid career devoted entirely to Ireland.”

To his surprise, the sister quickly agreed. “O'Brien is a good and noble man, but a man misled by his own sincere convictions and impetuous advisors. Pray God his life will be spared.”

Morgan silently amended his earlier assessment of Sister Louisa: she was not only a radical, rebellious nun, but a
political
nun as well. No man but a fool would knowingly employ such a powder keg.

Later that morning, Sandemon was called to the library, where he found the young master behind his massive desk. With a number of lulls in the conversation, during which the
Seanchai
uttered a grim chuckle of something akin to admiration, he told Sandemon of the incredible interview with Sister Louisa.

When he had finished, Sandemon shook his head with a sigh. “Too bad, I think. We could have used someone of her presence and credentials with the young scholars.”

The
Seanchai
raised his great head and smiled. “That was my feeling. She will serve us well, I expect.”

Sandemon stared at him. “You hired her, then,
Seanchai?
In spite of her—questionable beliefs and rebellious tendencies?”

The smile widened as the young master leaned back in his wheelchair. “Certainly not,” he said matter-of-factly. “I hired her
because
of them.”

4

Fergus

Beast of the field, newly tamed, nobly named,
Freed from the wild by the love of a child.

ANONYMOUS

O
n Saturday morning, two weeks after Sister Louisa's arrival, Annie Delaney made her way to the stables of Nelson Hall carrying an apple in one hand and a lump of sugar in the other.

Usually Annie looked forward to her daily visit with the
Seanchai
's great stallion, Pilgrim. After all, Pilgrim was her personal responsibility. Nobody except Annie or Sandemon was supposed to groom him or walk him without special permission.

Taking care of the fine horse was one of the few duties—if not the only one—at which Annie had managed to prove herself adequate. At most other tasks, she came up alarmingly awkward and amazingly incompetent. But she and Pilgrim had hit it off right from the beginning, affording her a measure of respect on the part of the other groomsmen, who found the stallion cantankerous and even a bit frightening.

Today, however, Annie's delight in visiting Pilgrim was somewhat diminished by her concern over a pressing problem—what to do about that TROUBLESOME NUN the
Seanchai
had hired as a teacher for the Academy.

After two weeks of Sister Louisa's relentless discipline and endless rules, Annie was growing desperate to find some way—
any
way—to rid Nelson Hall of her unwelcome presence.

At first she had thought the terrible O'Higgins twins might just do the trick. Surely Beastly and Barbaric, as she secretly called them, could make short work of a small, frail-looking holy woman. But to Annie's dismay, Sister already had the twins behaving themselves—if not exactly like gentlemen, at least more or less like human beings.

There had to be another way. A prayer formed in Annie's mind—a reckless request to the Almighty to take action on her behalf. But as quickly as she thought it, she took it back again. It was highly doubtful that the good Lord would go helping the likes of her to purge the
Seanchai
's Academy of one of His own saints.

“Well, then,” she muttered to herself as she laid her hand on the latch of the stable door, “I'll just have to be finding my own way, I suppose.”

The instant she stepped into the stable, Annie sensed something amiss. The horses were stirring restlessly, some snorting and pawing the ground.
In his stall, Pilgrim was shaking his mane and digging with his front hooves as if in a temper.

Suddenly, from around the end of the stable, a great gray thundercloud came charging toward her. The next thing Annie knew she was smack on her backside, looking up into the scruffy face of the largest wolfhound she had ever seen! He gulped down Pilgrim's apple in a shake, then eyed the sugar lump that Annie still held in her hand.

Her momentary panic gave way to indignation. Scrambling up from the stable floor, Annie dusted off her backside, then turned to scold the canine thief. “You horrible beast! That was Pilgrim's apple, it was! And just what might you be doing in our stables, I'd like to know? We don't allow strays at Nelson Hall!”

The wolfhound swallowed the last of the apple—core and all—and wagged his huge tail, banging it loudly against the side of the stall. Clearly, he was not in the least intimidated by her fierce scolding.

Then, as if invited, he reared up on his hind legs, firmly planting both immense paws on Annie's shoulders. Her mouth dropped open, but when she would have shrieked at the animal's impertinence, he grinned broadly and began washing her face with his enormous tongue.

“
Ughh!
Get off me, you filthy beast!” Annie shoved the dog down, fixing him with a withering glare as she wiped her face with one sleeve.

The creature simply went on grinning, his idiot face rapt with delight.

Annie stared him down, taking a moment to study his condition. His wiry coat was rough and tangled, matted with burrs, and altogether filthy. She thought his color was brindled, but with all the dirt it was difficult to tell. His leering face was scratched, with a dried cut over one eye. His nose appeared to have been scraped by a quarrelsome tomcat.

In spite of his slovenly manners, however, she felt a sharp pang of sympathy for the beast. Where would anything so ugly or rude ever find a home? No doubt he was lost, thrown out on his keeping—just as
she
had been.

Obviously, he was hungry—he'd made short work of that apple, hadn't he? And, just as obviously, he was eager for company and a bit of affection.