A Christmas Grace Read online

  When she was dressed she went downstairs, lighting the candles on the way, and banked up the fire to heat the water. If she were as ill as Susannah, she imagined she would long to be in a clean and un-crumpled bed, and perhaps not alone. Not spoken to, but just to know that if she opened her eyes, someone would be there.

  It did not take her more than half an hour to strip the bed and remake it with clean linen, but in doing so she noticed that there was only one more set of sheets. She would have to launder tomorrow, without Maggie.

  When the bed was ready, she carried up a bowl of warm water, and helped Susannah to strip off her soiled nightgown. She was horrified at how gaunt her body was, her flesh sunken until her skin seemed to hang empty on her arms and across her stomach. The mercy of clothes had hidden it before, and Susannah was not so ill as to be unaware of the change in herself.

  Emily struggled to hide her fear at the wasting of disease, the change from a beautiful woman to one who was a ghost of her old self. She washed her gently, patting her dry because she was afraid the rub of the towel would bruise her, or even tear the fragile skin.

  Afterwards she helped her into a clean nightgown, and half carried her to the bed.

  “Thank you,” Susannah said with a faint smile. “I’ll be all right now.” She lay back on the pillows, too exhausted to attempt concealing it.

  “Of course you will,” Emily agreed, and sat in the armchair near the bed. “But I have no intention of leaving you.”

  Susannah closed her eyes and seemed to drift into a light sleep.

  Emily stayed there all night. Susannah stirred several times, and at about four in the morning, when the wind was higher, for some time she felt as if she might be sick again, but eventually the nausea passed away and she lay back. Emily went down to the kitchen and made her a cup of weak tea, and brought it up, offering it to her only after it had considerably cooled.

  By daylight Emily was stiff and her eyes ached with tiredness, but there had been no more episodes, and Susannah seemed to be asleep and breathing without difficulty.

  Emily went down to the kitchen to make herself tea and toast to see if she could revive her strength enough to begin the laundry.

  She was halfway through the tasks when Daniel came in. “You look bad,” he said with sufficient sympathy to rob the words of insult. “Did the wind keep you up?”

  “No. Susannah was ill. I’m afraid you’re going to have to get your own breakfast, and maybe luncheon as well. With Maggie not coming I’ve too much to do to be cooking for you.”

  “I’ll help you,” he said quickly. “Toast will be fine. Maybe I’ll fry an egg or two. Can I do one for you as well?”

  “No, I’ll do the eggs. You fetch the peat in and stoke the fires,” Emily replied. “I’ve got sheets to wash, and in this weather it won’t be easy to get them dry.”

  He looked up. “There’s an airing rail,” he pointed out. “We’d best keep the kitchen warm and use that. Rough dry will have to do, if that’s all we have time for.”

  “Thank you,” she accepted.

  “Is she bad?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She had not the will or the strength to keep it from him.

  “Maggie shouldn’t have gone,” he shook his head. “That’s my fault.”

  “Is it? Why?” She asked not because she doubted him, but she needed the reason explained.

  He looked a little uncomfortable. “Because I upset her. I was asking questions.”

  “About what?”

  “People,” he replied. “The village. She told me about Connor Riordan, some years ago. It was a powerful memory for her.”

  “Was it?” Emily ignored the kettle, merely pushing it to the side off the hob. “Why? Did she know him well?”

  His dark eyes were puzzled. “What are you trying to do, Mrs. Radley? Find out who killed him? Why do you want to know, after all this time?”

  “Because his death is eating the heart out of the village,” she replied. “It was someone here who killed him, and everybody knows that.”

  “Did Susannah ask you to? Is that why you came? You haven’t come before, have you, in all the years she’s been here? And yet I think you care for her.”

  “I…” Emily began, intending to say that she had always cared for Susannah, but it was not true and the lie died on her tongue. Again she thought, is this how Conner Riordan was, seeing too much, saying too much? And with that thought the icelike grip in the pit of her stomach tightened. Was it all going to happen again? Would Daniel also be murdered, and the village die a little more? She realized that not only was he right in that she cared for Susannah, she cared about him also.

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized ruefully. “You’ve been up all night trying to help Susannah, watching her suffer and knowing there’s nothing you can do except be there, and wait, and I’m not helping. I’ll get the peat in and see to the fires, and I’ll start the laundry. That can’t be too hard. But first we’ll eat.”

  She smiled back at him, the warmth opening inside her like a slow blossom. She would find out what happened to Connor Riordan, and she would make absolutely certain it did not happen again, however difficult that was, and whatever it cost her.

  She and Daniel had just finished the heavy laundry when Father Tyndale arrived. They had the sheets put through the mangle until they were twisted as dry as possible, then she hung them on the airing rail in the kitchen, winched up to where the warm air from the stove would reach them. Father Tyndale looked tired in spite of the rosy color in his face from the buffeting of the wind. He seemed almost bruised by it, and his eyes watered in the warmth of the room.

  “I’ll take you up to see Susannah,” Emily said, immensely relieved to see him. His mere presence lifted the responsibility from her. As long as he was here, she was not alone. “She had a bad night, so don’t be surprised to see her looking ill. I’ll bring you both tea as soon as I make it.”

  “Thank you.” He looked at her closely, and she knew he saw her own weariness, and perhaps something of the fear in her, however he made no remark on it, simply following her up the stairs.

  “Father Tyndale?” Susannah said quickly, pulling herself up in the bed and lifting her hand to tidy her hair into some semblance of the beauty it had once had. Emily fetched the comb and did it for her. She even wondered whether to bring some of her own rouge to put a little color in Susannah’s white cheeks, but decided it would look artificial, and deceive no one. She finished the hair instead, smiling back in approval before turning to invite Father Tyndale to come in.

  She went back downstairs. This was a conversation that should have complete privacy. She returned with tea and a little thinly sliced bread and butter, hoping that with company Susannah would be able to eat.

  It was over an hour later when Father Tyndale came into the kitchen carrying the tray with him. Daniel was occupied with jobs outside, and Emily was busy with getting vegetables ready for lunch, and then dinner. Before she came here it had been years since she’d done such tasks herself.

  Father Tyndale sat in one of the hard-backed chairs, looking tired and too big for it.

  “Brendan Flaherty has left the village,” he said quietly. “No one knows where he’s gone, except maybe his mother, and she won’t say.”

  Emily was stunned. Her instant thought was that the quarrel between Brendan and his mother was much worse than she had assumed at the time. Then she wondered if it was whatever Daniel had said to him. What was Brendan running away from? The past, or the future? Or both?

  “I was there at Mrs. Flaherty’s house yesterday,” she said hesitantly. “Daniel was there, but out in the garden, talking to Brendan. Mrs. Flaherty saw them and was very angry. She went out and told Daniel to leave, pretty abruptly.”

  Father Tyndale looked troubled, searching for words he knew already that he would not find.

  She wanted to tell him about her suspicion that Brendan might have had some relationship with Connor Riordan that Mrs. Flaherty
disapproved of violently, but she did not know how to frame it without offending him. “She was very upset,” she said again. “As if she were afraid of him.” She took a deep breath. “Was it Connor she was seeing in her mind? Why else would she be so fierce with Daniel? He’s only been here a couple of days.”

  “She’s afraid of many things,” he replied. “Sometimes history repeats itself, especially if you fear that it will.”

  “Was Brendan close to Connor?” She was being evasive, saying nothing much, but always at the forefront of her mind was this man’s calling as a priest.

  “You didn’t know Connor,” he said softly. “He was a stranger here, and yet he seemed to know everything about us. It might have been something of himself he was looking for, but it was disturbing nonetheless.” He smiled at her, and changed the subject to Susannah’s illness, and all that they might do to make things easier for her.

  When he had gone Emily was annoyed with herself for having been so ineffectual. She stood in the kitchen, staring out of the window. The wind was harsher, the sky gray and bleak. She was afraid Susannah would die soon, before anything was resolved. She hugged her shawl around herself, cold inside, amazed to realize how much it mattered to her. Daniel was right, she cared about Susannah, not for the aunt of her childhood with whom her father had been so angry, but for the woman now who loved the village that had welcomed her, and who were the people of the man with whom she had shared so much happiness.

  Who could help heal the wound in them? She needed someone who was an observer, not personally involved with the loves and hates of the village. And as soon as she had framed the question to herself, she knew the answer. Padraic Yorke.

  After making sure that Susannah was well enough to leave for a short time, Emily put on a heavy cloak and walked in the wind to Padraic Yorke’s house. She knocked on the door and received no answer. She was cold and impatient. She needed his help, and yet she was unhappy away from the house for any longer than was necessary. She shivered and wrapped the cloak more closely around her. She knocked again, and again there was no answer.

  She looked at the house, very neat, traditional. There was a tidy garden with herbs. Like everywhere else, most of them were cut back or had withdrawn into the earth for winter. This would gain her nothing. She was growing colder by the moment, and Mr. Yorke was clearly not in.

  She turned and walked down by the shore. She did not want to be in the open wind off the water, but the turbulence of the sea was like a living thing, and the vitality of it drew her, as she felt it might have drawn Padraic Yorke also.

  She walked along the edge of the sand. The waves broke with a sustained roar, varying in pitch only slightly. Beyond the last dark mound of kelp she saw the lone, slender figure of Padraic Yorke.

  He did not look around until she was almost up to him, then he turned. He did not speak, as though the broken wood in the kelp and the water spoke for themselves.

  “Brendan Flaherty’s gone from the village,” Emily said after a moment or two. “Susannah is very ill. I don’t think she’s going to live a great deal longer.”

  “I’m sorry,” he replied simply.

  “Where would he go, and why now?” she asked.

  Mr. Yorke’s face was bleak. “Do you mean so close to Christmas?”

  “No, I mean with Daniel here.” She told him of the scene that she and Mrs. Flaherty had witnessed through the kitchen window.

  “The Flahertys have a long history in the village,” he said thoughtfully. “Seamus was one of the more colorful parts. Wild in his youth, didn’t marry until he was over forty, and even then near broke Colleen’s heart more than once. But she adored him, forgave him with more excuses than he could think of himself.”

  “And for Brendan too?” she asked.

  He shot a quick glance at her. “Yes. And a poor gift it was to him.”

  “Do you know where he will have gone, or why?”

  “No.” He was silent for several moments. The waves continued pounding the shore and the gulls wheeled above, their cries snatched away by the wind. “But I could guess,” he continued suddenly. “Colleen Flaherty loved her husband, and she wants her son to be like him, and yet she also wants to keep a better control of him, so he can’t hurt her the way Seamus did.”

  Emily had a sudden vision of a frightened and lonely woman deluding herself that she had a second chance to capture something she had missed in the beginning. No wonder Brendan was angry, and yet unwilling to retaliate. Why had he finally broken away?

  “Thank you for telling me,” she said with profound gratitude, and a sense of humility. “You have helped me to realize why Susannah loves the people here. It is remarkable that they accepted her so well. None of you has much cause to make the English welcome.” She felt a sense of shame as she said it, and that was an entirely new experience for her. All her life she had thought of being English as a blessing, like being clever or beautiful, a grace that should be honored, but never questioned.

  Mr. Yorke smiled, but there was embarrassment in his eyes. “Yes,” he said quietly. “They are good people; quick to fight, long to hold a grudge, but brave to a fault, never beaten by misfortune, and generous. They have a faith in life.”

  Emily thanked him again and started walking back towards the path to Susannah’s house. As she reached the road, she saw Father Tyndale in the distance walking the other way, his head bowed as he turned into the wind, struggling against it. She doubted he would agree with Mr. Yorke that the people of the village had a faith in life. The murder of Connor Riordan had set a slow poison in them, and they were dying. She must find the truth, even if it destroyed one of them, or more, because not knowing was killing them all.

  Susannah had another bad night and Emily sat up with her through nearly all of it. The hour or so of sleep she snatched was spent still propped upright in the big chair near the bed. She ached to help, but there was little she could do except sit with her, occasionally hold her in her arms, when she was drenched with sweat, wash and dry her, help her into a clean nightgown. Several times she brought her warm tea, to try to keep some fluid in her body.

  Daniel came in quietly and stoked the fire. He took the soiled and crumpled sheets and nightgown away, saying nothing, but his face was pale and racked with pity.

  A little before dawn Susannah was sleeping at last, and Daniel said he would watch with her. Emily was too grateful to argue. She crept to her bed and when at last she was warm, she slept.

  It was broad daylight when she woke and after a moment’s bewilderment she remembered how ill Susannah had been, and that she had left Daniel alone to look after her. She threw the covers back, scrambled out of bed, and dressed hastily. First she went along the corridor to Susannah’s room. She found her sleeping quietly, almost peacefully, and Daniel in the chair looking pale, hollows around his eyes, the dark shadow of stubble on his chin.

  He looked up at her and held his finger to his lips in a gesture of silence, then he smiled.

  “I’ll go and get breakfast,” she whispered. “Then we’ll do the laundry. I can’t do it without your help. I’ve no idea how to get that wretched boiler working.”

  “I’ll be there,” he promised.

  But when Emily went down the stairs she found the lamps all lit in the kitchen and a smell of baking filling the air. Maggie O’Bannion was at the sink washing dishes after her making and rolling of pastry.

  She turned at the sound of Emily’s step. “How’s Mrs. Ross?” she asked anxiously.

  Emily was too relieved to see her to show her anger. “Very ill,” she said truthfully. “That was the second really bad night. I’m very glad indeed that Mr. O’Bannion relented. We don’t know how to manage without you.”

  Maggie blinked and looked away. “I’ve made an apple pie for dinner,” she said as if Emily had asked. “And there’s a good piece of beef in the oven. I’ll save some of it to make beef tea for Mrs. Ross. Sometimes if she’s ill she can hold that down but not much else. Is
she awake, do you know?”

  “No, she’s not. She didn’t get much sleep last night.” Emily saw that Maggie felt quilty, and she was glad of it. “I’ll get to the washing,” she went on. “Daniel helped me yesterday, but there are more sheets this morning.” She glanced up at the crumpled linen on the airing rack close to the ceiling. “We aren’t as efficient as you are,” she added more gently.

  Maggie said nothing, but her hands moved more quickly in the sink, and she banged the dishes together roughly.

  Emily put the flatirons on the hob to heat, then wound the airing rack down and took two of the sheets off it. Automatically Maggie turned from the sink to help her fold them neatly. She did not meet Emily’s eyes and there was a tension in her shoulders of a deep unhappiness.

  Emily wondered if Daniel had left yesterday afternoon, perhaps when Father Tyndale was here, and gone to tell Maggie how much she was missed. And was Maggie’s tension this morning caused because she and Fergal had quarreled about it? What had Daniel said to her that she had defied her husband?

  When the sheets were folded ready to iron, Emily began on the pillowcases, then stopped briefly for a cup of tea and a slice of toast. She was wondering if she should go up to see if Susannah was awake when Daniel came into the kitchen.

  “Good morning, Mrs. O’Bannion,” he said cheerfully. “I’m more grateful to see you back than you can imagine. We weren’t managing so well without you.”

  Maggie shot him a sharp glance, and neither of them looked at Emily.

  “Susannah’s awake,” Daniel went on. “Can I take some breakfast up to her, if there’s something like bread and butter, or at least a fresh cup of tea?”

  “You have something yourself,” Emily told him. “I’ll take it up to Susannah, and you can do something with those sheets. We’ll need them again soon enough. Maggie, if you could speak softly to the boiler and get it going again, we need to do last night’s sheets for when we need them. Please?”