A Christmas Grace Read online

  Hugo Ross had been alive when Connor Riordan had been here. What had he known? Was Susannah afraid that he had been involved somehow, shielding someone from the law because they were his own people? Or was she afraid that they would blame Hugo, once she was gone and could no longer protect his memory?

  Emily wanted to help, with a fierceness that consumed and amazed her, but she had no idea how.

  Father Tyndale saw it in her face. He shook his head. “You can’t, my dear. I told you that. Don’t blame yourself. I have known these people all of their lives, and I don’t know. You’ve come here just days ago from a foreign land—how could you?”

  But that was no comfort to Emily as she unpacked the shopping on the kitchen table for Maggie to put away.

  She went into the drawing room, to find Daniel up and dressed in clothes that were far too big for him, but at least were of the right length. They must have been Hugo Ross’s, and one look at Susannah’s face confirmed it to her.

  “Thank you for your care, Mrs. Radley,” Daniel said with a smile that gave him a sudden warmth and that kind of acute but gentle intelligence that comes with humor. “I feel fine, except for a good many aches and some bruises a prizefighter would be proud of.” He shrugged. “But I still can’t remember much, except choking and freezing, and thinking I was going to die.”

  “What did the other men call you?” Emily asked curiously.

  He hesitated, racking his memory. “Daniel, I suppose. That’s all I can remember.”

  “And them?” she pressed.

  “There was a…a Joe, I think.” He frowned. “There was a big man with a lot of tattoos. I think his name was Wat, or something like that. Are they all gone? Are you sure?”

  “We don’t know,” Susannah answered him. “We waited all night, but no one else was washed up here. I’m sorry.” Her voice was gentle but her eyes searched his face. What was she looking for, traces of a lie? A memory of something else? Or did she see in him the ghost of Connor Riordan and the tragedy he awakened?

  “What day is it?” Daniel asked suddenly, looking from Susannah to Emily, and back again.

  “Saturday,” Emily replied.

  “There must be a church here. I saw a priest. I’d like to go to Mass tomorrow. I need to thank God for my own deliverance and, more than that, I must pray for the souls of my friends. Perhaps God will grant me my memory back. No man should die so alone that his name is not said by those who survived.”

  “Yes, of course,” Susannah said immediately. “I’ll take you. It isn’t far.”

  Emily clenched inside. “Are you sure you are well enough?” She wanted to find any way, any excuse for her not to. It was natural that Daniel should wish to go and say Mass for his comrades—what decent man would not? He had almost certainly never heard of Connor Riordan, whose death had nothing to do with this storm, or this loss. But the village could see ghosts in his face, and one person at least would feel guilt.

  “Yes, of course,” Susannah said a trifle sharply. “We’ll all feel better tomorrow.”

  But in the morning Susannah was so weak that when she came into the kitchen she had to clutch at the back of a chair to keep from losing her balance and falling.

  Emily leaped to her feet and caught her, steadying her with both arms and easing her to sit.

  “I’m all right!” Susannah said weakly. “I just need a little breakfast. Have you seen Daniel this morning?”

  “Not yet, but I heard him up. Susannah, please go back to bed. You aren’t well enough to walk to church. The wind is still strong.”

  “I told you,” Susannah said sharply, “I’ll feel far better when I’ve had a cup of tea and something to eat—”

  “Susannah,” Emily cut across her, commanding her attention, “you can’t go to church like this. It will embarrass everyone, mostly you. We should be there to thank God for Daniel’s life, and to pay our respects to those who were lost, whoever they were.”

  “Daniel can’t go alone…” Susannah started.

  “I’ll go with him. The church can’t be difficult to find.”

  “You’re not Catholic,” Susannah pointed out. There was a very slight smile in her eyes. “I know you don’t even approve, never mind believe.”

  “Do you?” Emily asked. “Or was it for Hugo?”

  Susannah smiled ruefully. “To begin with it was for Hugo. But afterwards, it was for myself.” Her voice dropped. “Especially after Hugo died. I believed it because he had. It reminded me of all that he was.”

  Emily felt an overwhelming sorrow for her. And she realized with a stab of ugly surprise that she knew Jack’s politics in detail. She had helped him in all kinds of projects and battles and she was proud of what he had achieved. But she had no idea what his religious beliefs were. They both went to church on most Sundays, but so did everyone else. They had never discussed why.

  “This would be a good time for me to look,” she said aloud. “Ignorance is not a reason for disbelieving anything.”

  “But you don’t know—”

  “Why you want to go?” Emily finished for her. “Yes I do. Father Tyndale told me.”

  Susannah looked confused. “Told you what? About the church?”

  “No, about Connor Riordan—seven years ago.”

  “Oh! He told you…”

  “Isn’t that why you wanted me here?” Emily persisted. “To help you look for the truth?”

  “I didn’t know there was going to be a storm this bad,” Susannah said quietly, her face ashen. “And no one could have known Daniel would come.”

  “Of course not. But you still needed to know who killed Connor and be sure in your own heart that Hugo was not protecting someone he cared for out of loyalty, or pity.”

  Susannah was so pale it seemed as if there could be no blood under her skin. Emily felt pierced by guilt, but to retreat now would leave the matter torn open, yet still unresolved, worse than if she had not touched it.

  “I’ll take Daniel to church,” she repeated. “I’ll watch, and tell you what happens. Don’t worry about luncheon. There’s cold meat, and a few vegetables will take no time at all.”

  She walked along the road beside Daniel, who was dressed in one of Hugo’s better suits. It was too large for him, but he made no comment on it except to smile at himself, and touch the texture of the cloth with appreciation.

  They spoke little. Daniel was still weak and bruised, and it took him both effort and self-discipline to move with the appearance of ease, and to keep up a reasonable pace against the wind.

  Emily thought of her family at home, and wondered with a touch of self-mockery what Jack would think if he could see her walking briskly along a rough road in a village she did not know, accompanying a young man washed up by the sea. And to crown it all, she was taking him to a Catholic church. It could hardly be what he had intended when he had coerced her into leaving her children at Christmas!

  Then as the wind buffeted her and blew her skirts, almost knocking her off balance, she thought of Susannah and her marriage to Hugo Ross, and wondered if her father had ever met Hugo, or if he had shut Susannah out without knowing what she had chosen instead of a conventional marriage he would have approved of, and she would have hated. She had done that once, obediently, in her youth. The death of her first husband had freed her. She had married Hugo for love. Losing him took the heart from her life. She walked on alone towards that horizon beyond which they would be together again.

  Emily and Daniel reached the low stone church and went inside. It was only half full, as if it had been built for a far larger congregtion. She saw a startled look on Father Tyndale’s face, and that was possibly what caused several other people to turn and stare as she and Daniel found seats towards the back. She recognized the women from the shop, sitting with men and children who must be their families. She also saw Fergal and Maggie O’Bannion, and Mrs. Flaherty with Brendan beside her, head bent. She knew him only from his thick, curling hair. She thought the straggling g
ray head belonged to Padraic Yorke.

  Beside her Daniel said nothing but kneeled slowly in silent prayer. She wondered if any memory at all had come back to him of the shipmates he had lost, and she ached for his confusion and what must be a consuming loneliness.

  She found the service alien, and seemed always to be a step behind everyone else, and yet reluctantly she had to admit there was a beauty in it, and a strange half familiarity, as if once she might have known it. Watching Father Tyndale solemnly, almost mystically, blessing the bread and the wine, she saw him in a different light, far more than a decent man doing what he could for his neighbors. For that short space he was the shepherd of his people, and she saw the pain in his face with a dreadful clarity.

  But she was here to observe for Susannah. While the service was continuing she could watch only from behind. Fergal and Maggie O’Bannion sat very close to each other, he constantly adjusting his weight so that his arm touched hers, she leaning away from him whenever she could, as though she felt crowded. Did they feel as apart as that suggested?

  Mrs. Flaherty had a hand quite openly on Brendan’s arm, and once Emily saw him deliberately shake it off, only for his mother to replace it a few moments later. Emily glanced sideways at Daniel, and saw that he had noticed also. Was that chance? Looking at his solemn face, with its huge, hollow eyes and sensitive mouth, all humor gone from it now, he seemed to be studying the people as much as she was.

  After the service it was the same. She saw Fergal and Maggie standing side by side talking to Father Tyndale, looking as if they were physically so close only by accident. Both of them seemed uncomfortable. Something here disturbed them rather than offered them the sweetness of God’s redemption of man. She looked at Daniel, and the thought came to her that exactly the same perceptions were in his mind.

  Brendan Flaherty was talking to a young woman, and his mother was hovering nearby, making movements as if she would interrupt. A middle-aged woman intruded. Mrs. Flaherty flashed back at her with something that was clearly sharp, from the expressions of all of them. The girl blushed. The woman who spoke took a step backwards, and Brendan himself was hurt and turned away, leaving his mother standing defensively, but with no one to shield.

  Fergal O’Bannion said something to him, mockery in his face, and put his hand over Maggie’s. She froze, distress clear in her eyes. She said something to Fergal and closed her other hand over his. Watching them, Emily was certain it was restraint, not affection.

  Brendan said something lightly, his voice too soft for Emily to hear anything of it. Maggie smiled and lowered her eyes. Fergal altered the way he was standing so that somehow in the moving of weight he had become vaguely belligerent.

  Brendan looked at Maggie, and Emily thought she saw a tenderness in his expression that brought a shiver of awareness to her of a hunger far deeper than friendship. Then she looked again, and there was nothing more than a pleasant courtesy, and she was not sure she had seen anything at all.

  She turned to Daniel to see if he had noticed it, but he was watching Padraic Yorke.

  “It seems to have caught them hard,” Daniel said to her quietly.

  She did not understand.

  “The ship,” he explained. “Do you suppose they knew some of the men? Or their families, maybe?”

  “I don’t think we know who they were,” she answered. “Not that it matters. Anyone’s death is a loss just the same. You don’t have to have known them to feel it.”

  “There’s a weight in the air,” he said slowly. “As if a spark of lightning would set it afire. It’s good people, they are.” His voice was so soft she barely heard it. “To grieve so much for those they never knew. I guess that there’s a common humanity in the best of us, and there’s nothing like death to draw the living together.” He bit his lip. “But I still wish I could mourn my fellows by name.”

  Emily said nothing. It was not the loss of the others from the ship that haunted the village; it was the murder of Connor Riordan, and the certainty that it was one of them who was responsible.

  “Of course,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. The dead from the ship were his only connection with who he was, all that he had been and had loved. Without them he might never know again that part of himself. All they had endured together, the laughter, the triumph, and the pain, could be lost. “I’m sorry,” she added with profound feeling.

  He smiled suddenly, and it changed every aspect of his face. Suddenly she could see in him the boy he had been a few years ago.

  “But I’m alive, and it’s poor thanks to the Good Lord who saved me if I’m not grateful for that, don’t you think?” Then without waiting for her answer he walked towards the nearest small huddle of people and introduced himself, telling how much he appreciated their hospitality, and the courage of the men who had spent all night in the gale to bring him in alive.

  She watched as he went to every person or group, saying the same thing, searching their faces, listening to their words. It occurred to Emily that it was almost as if he were trying desperately to find some echo of familiarity among them, someone who knew seamen, knew disaster, and understood him.

  As they were drifting away and only half a dozen were left, she stood on the rough pathway between the gravestones and was only yards from where Father Tyndale was saying good-bye to an old gentleman with white hair, like down on the weed heads. Father Tyndale’s eyes seemed to look beyond the man’s face to where Daniel was talking to Brendan Flaherty, and she saw in him horror, as if this were what had happened before, in the days leading up to Connor Riordan’s death.

  Emily and Daniel walked home slowly along the road. Daniel seemed tired, and she knew from the way he kept adjusting Hugo’s coat on his shoulders that his body still ached from the bruises. Perhaps he was lucky that the wreckage hurled about by the sea had not injured him more. He seemed lost in thought, as if the underlying pain of the village had added to his own.

  It could not go on like this. Someone must find the truth of Connor Riordan’s death. Whatever it was, it had to be better than the corroding doubt. Daniel’s presence had made the fear sharper than before, as if he had unknowingly woken it from sleeping.

  He spoke suddenly, startling her. “You’re not Catholic, are you.” It was a statement.

  “No,” she said with surprise. “Sorry. Was I so out of place?”

  He grinned. He had beautiful teeth, very white and a little uneven. “Not at all. It’s good to see it through the eyes of a stranger once in a while. We take it all for granted too easily. Was your aunt a Catholic before she came here and married?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what I thought. It’s a big thing she did. She must have loved him very much. I’d lay money—if I had any—that Connemara is not like where she came from.”

  “You’d win,” she conceded, smiling back at him.

  “More than double, I expect,” he said ruefully. “And your family wouldn’t be pleased.”

  “No. My father—he’s dead now—he was very upset.”

  He looked at her, and she had the uncomfortable feeling that he knew she was evading the truth, making her part in it look kinder than it had been.

  “You’re Church of the English,” he concluded.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a big thing, so I’ve heard, this difference between us. I don’t know enough about the Church of the English to understand that. Is it so very different, then?”

  “It’s a matter of loyalty,” she replied, repeating what her father had said. “The first is to our country.”

  “I see.” He looked puzzled.

  “No you don’t!” She was not managing to say what she meant. “It’s your loyalty to Rome that’s the problem.”

  “Rome, is it? I thought it was to God…or Ireland?”

  He was laughing at her, but she found it impossible to resent. Put like that, it was absurd. The whole estrangement was foolish, not about loyalties at all. Obedience and conformity were cl
oser to the truth of it.

  “You’ve not visited her here before?” he observed.

  It would be pointless to deny it. She was obviously a stranger.

  “She’s ill now.” That was obvious too. She had made it sound as if that was the only reason she had come, and would not have were Susannah well. But then that also was true. In fact she would not even have now if Jack had not coerced her. It was his opinion of her that had made the difference. She cared what he thought of her more than she had realized. But that was none of Daniel’s business either.

  “And you’ve come to look after her?” he said.

  “No. I’ve come to be with her over Christmas.”

  “It’s a good time to forgive,” he said with a slight nod.

  “I’m not forgiving her,” Emily snapped.

  He winced.

  “I’m not forgiving her because there’s nothing to forgive,” she said angrily. “She’s a right to marry anyone she chooses.”

  “But your father had someone else in mind for her? Someone from the Church of the English? Perhaps with money?” He looked at Emily’s fine woolen cape with its neat fur collar, then at her polished leather boots, suffering a little on the rough road.

  “No, he didn’t. Our family is comfortable, not more than that. My first husband had money, and a title. He died.”

  “I’m sorry.” His compassion was instant.

  “Thank you. But I love my second husband very much.” She sounded defensive and she heard it in her own voice.

  “Has he money and a title as well?” Daniel asked.

  “No he hasn’t!” She said it as if it had been faintly insulting to ask. “He has neither, nor any prospects. I married him because I love him. He is a Member of Parliament and he does some very fine work.”

  “And is your father very happy, then? Oh…I forgot. You said he was dead too. Did he mind you marrying a man with no title or prospects?” He was keeping exact step with her on the rough road. “Did you dare his anger, like your aunt Susannah? I see now why you are here with her. You have a natural sympathy. Not exactly a black sheep of the family, but at least one of a different color?”