I.

T SEEMS MY PEN IS MY ONLY FRIEND NOW. So I must write. The carriage rattles, a draft creeping through its joints. The seats are stained red velvet and the windows are dirty. Outside is the long expanse of snow-laden trees and grey skies. Draped in thick black clothes, lifted into the wagon, and off, out of sight and mind I go. Sent with the same pomp and circumstance as the pianoforte went to be refurbished last week.

My conscience smites me. She could have turned me out on the streets. I should be on my knees thanking Our Lord that I am not disowned entirely, but sent to the old family castle. I have heard countless conversations about the state of disrepair it is in and the lack of funds to renovate. It remains a euphemistic estate which mother lightly mentions in conversation to create an impression of immense wealth. Now I am sent to this crumbling castle on the Northern moors, not even a maid to keep with me.

I was supposed to marry well and wealthy, some heir with an acumen for trading to complement our royal blood. 

But I married my beloved.

How I miss him! My eyes well with tears as I write these words.

He sails into battle. 

Will I ever see him again? Will he come to rescue me? Will this little baby inside my womb ever see its father?

We plighted our troth secretly. A little church in the country, an hour’s ride from London, with stone flags and timber roof and a marble Virgin gracing the altar. The priest heard. The witnesses heard. 

We are married.

They do not understand. As if all that matters to make it binding is the Bans being published for all of London to see. But I was confirmed in his faith, placed under his protection.

God saw. 

I looked into my beloved’s kind dark eyes, underneath his wild curly hair.

“I will love and obey thee.” 

He was handsome and upright in his scarlet coat with gold fringe and brass buttons. I wore my silk frock that mother had ordered for the new season, the colour of buttercream. I imagine she never thought it would be used for such a purpose!

His warm strong hand took mine and he said, “with this ring I thee wed.”

What bliss afterward! I can hardly write for blushing. And again I want to weep. For how tragic and bittersweet, to love one another so deeply, know one another so fully, and then to be sent away.

No one knew anything for a long while. I was able to attend parties, though I often felt tired and sick. Eventually my chemise grew tight around my middle.

I confess to a nagging guilt at the secretiveness. Surely the right thing would be to marry surrounded by one’s kin, celebrating openly. But I cannot comply with my family's greed. And they hate our faith—as if to be Catholic is to be against Britain.

The carriage stopped and I pulled up the blind to look outside the window. The inn has a pretty display of holly and evergreen on the door and window sills. But it is a bleak country. A thick frost covers the grasses, sweeping long into the horizon. I hear the wind rattling the eaves of the carriage, the spirit inside of it howling wildly with loneliness. There is nothing, no one, as far as my eyes can see.

How am I to live alone?

 

II.

UT I AM NOT ALONE. Bridget and Alfred are the couple that watch over Hallowmere Priory. They live a cosy life in the kitchen with the great roaring fireplace. What a lovely Christmas we had together. We brought in the holiday with hot eggnog and cake after Christmas Eve mass at the village church. Alfred led us in Christmas carols with a very well-wrought voice and Bridget and I danced a jig by the fire.

Mother and all the family sent me a box of goods for Christmas and some carollers from the village came by. That was the sweetest part. Bridget and Alfred and I brought them into the kitchen and shared sweets with them.

Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings
Risen with healing in His wings
Mild He lays His glory by
Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth
Hark! The herald angels sing
Glory to the new-born king!

My heart wells with exultation at these words. I sang them as gustily as I could and thought of Mary welcoming her baby just as I am about to welcome mine.

 

III.

HAT BEAUTY A BABY BRINGS. I hold him in my left arm as I write, my strong handsome son. He has a shock of black hair just like his papa, and his face and eyebrows furrow like an old schoolmaster’s.

The castle is cold, all sombre stone and windy windows. Most of it is not fit to live in. Bridget says ghosts haunt the dark corridors here and she goes through with holy water every so often and sprinkles them out. Our nearest neighbour is a Carmelite convent a half mile east of us. In the mornings I can see the sun glittering on the steeple and sometimes, on very still days, I can hear their bells ringing during the prayer hours.

I have ordered a lively fire to be kept roaring in my room and I have not stirred much from the armchair and my books during my lying-in, partially because the weather has been so drizzly but also because I was so great with the child I could barely move. 

Nothing from Patrick. Not even a note. Bridget and I put together a box of food and wine and warm things to send to him.

I was not prepared for the birth. 

It was a bitter January day. The trees and holly dried and brittle and the world outside the blackened castle windows grey.

One day I felt so tired that I lay down to nap, fell asleep, and when I awoke a gush of water spilled off the bed and puddled the floor.

The labour was slow and arduous. I did not feel anything at first. The local doctor was in surgery so the village midwife came and made me walk outside in the cold and then do callisthenics by the fire, trying to make the baby drop down. Then when that did not work and I was tired out, she gave me a mess of bitter herbs and castor oil. How I longed to vomit. My body rejected it like poison. But I swallowed it down. 

Soon after I began to feel the pains, burning and tingling in my low back, then feeling like my spine would break, coming two at a time, one long and one short. 

How I missed Patrick. His being there would have been a balm to me. I tried to think of his presence in our child that I was working to receive into this world.

The pains grew so intense that I could not think of anything. I hung on to Bridget and wailed to the midwife who pressed upon my back with each rush.

Finally, after many hours, I vomited into a bowl held by poor Bridget. I felt the baby’s head move past my hips. Immediately the pain eased and I felt fire as the baby crowned, pushed with all my might, and out slithered this white and red human being my husband and I have made in our love, this image of God, wailing a gusty cry into the world.

The midwife rubbed him roughly with a towel and laid him upon my chest.

I forgot the agony of the last hours as my baby’s eyes peer up into mine, frowning darkly at the sight of his mother’s sweaty face. Never have I felt such euphoria.

To know that I had brought a boy into this world!

In the midst of the euphoria I remember seeing Bridget bring out her rosary beads. Freda the midwife had an agitated look on her face. 

Then I woke up in a large ballroom full of people, bustling and talking and walking back and forth, and across the crowd on the other side of the room a man with brown hair and a long white coat held a door open for me. I remember thinking about my son and whispering “No!”

Then I saw Bridget and Freda on either side of me. Cold water was dripping off my face from the cup Bridget was holding and Freda was waving a towel at my face, whispering Hail Marys violently.

When they saw my eyes had opened a great relief washed over their faces.

“Ah!” Bridget said, “we thought we had lost ye! Thy poor bairn left all alone!”

They had placed the little baby boy in his cradle when I fainted. He was grunting a little, trying to find his breath. They did not want to let me hold him lest I faint again. There was a mess of blood and rags in the bucket, a great bloodstain on the sheets.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror above the washing stand and was astonished at the whiteness of my face and the greyness of my lips.

Then the village priest was in the room. He baptised my boy as Michael Patrick, after his father. He prayed the anointing of the sick and last rites over me.

The baby had difficulty nursing and Freda wanted to find a wet-nurse for him since I am so weak, but I cried and begged her to help me try to nurse him first. And now, a week later, my milk has come in and the baby has learned, though I have to curl my toes in pain every time he latches. Bridget has brought me a bowl of warm sheep fat to rub on and that has helped, praise God.

In order to heal completely I must lie here for six weeks. Bridget brings me beet salad, blood pudding, and liver-and-onions every day and watches intently while I eat. But she has been kind and brought me a great deal of sweets too, so I should be grateful.

 

IV.

WROTE TO PATRICK telling him about his boy, and to mother letting her know we are both well. How afraid I was to come here! Crushed at being separated from Patrick, knowing nothing about having a baby or being a mother, and possessing no money except what my parents choose to send me.

The first night here, as I drifted off to sleep, I saw a living woman in the sky made of grey stone, hovering over the stone building of the convent. An old woman, with long, thick, wavy hair over her left shoulder, and her bare foot crossed over her left knee with many folds of skirt falling around her legs. She was strong. She put her finger to her lips as if to quiet me.

She was not an old woman, I realised, but young. She was old and young at the same time.

It feels so good to lie in bed, and my baby enthrals me. I stare out the window a great deal and think about the tall grass and the slope of the hill.

The first time Patrick and I met was the military concert. 

I was wearing my blue silk gown, the same colour as my eyes. He was on stage singing, accompanied by the pianist. I felt pretty, with pearls in my hair, and he saw me. From his perch on the stage he would not stop looking at me.

The next day I was with my friend Claire, and Patrick saw me from across the street and came over and paid his regards. He and my father had been introduced the night before. The next moment we were all walking together. We passed Claire’s home and she left us, and then he escorted me home. I didn’t know how to say no, so I smiled and he took it as a yes.

He said something, I don’t remember what, but my awkwardness melted away. I, who have always been a bundle of nerves around men! When we passed by a French bakery I expressed interest and we stopped in and sat for two hours. We could not stop talking. When the cafe closed he wanted to show me a Chinese tea room, so we stopped there and stayed as long as we could. How enraptured I was at that place! A culture I had never seen before, the women so stately and beautiful, the teas so exotic, the cups so little yet heavy!

The sun was setting and he said he must get me home. He said he wanted to take a shortcut—which was not a shortcut at all—and took me through a garden with flowering trees and we sat on a little bench together. By and by I knew I must go home lest my family arrive back from their dinner party and send the guard for me.

Head and shoulders above me, a jolly laugh and a bright smile, sparkling eyes—I did not want to leave him. We understood each other so well. Everything rippled along like a brook. I felt I could bare my deepest soul to him, my most passionate emotions, and he would have experienced and known the same.

On Sunday he was standing outside the church when our family left service. My heart skipped, for I knew he was a Roman Catholic and had no reason to be there except to see me. He approached my uncle and how my heart ached when I saw the way my uncle treated him, how coldly he cut off the conversation and turned away, ashamed to be accosted in public by a poor soldier.

I tried to catch Patrick’s eye. I thought he would not try to see me again. But when we arrived home he was dawdling on the corner of the street. I grabbed my bonnet and purse, snuck past the footmen, and strolled serenely past him. He followed. How brazen he was! I was quite swept away. I laugh to think of it. Then, halfway through the park, a thunderstorm broke out and we had to run for it, and as we ran his hand grabbed mine.

He received word he would be sent to Belgium. He wanted to marry me and I could not bear to refuse him. One sleepless night I spent, worrying, and about what my family would say (“Irish, penniless, and Catholic!”) and whether it was a sin to go against them or if I was old enough to marry whom I would.

I must stop for now. Little Michael is crying and opening his mouth like a greedy little chick for his mother’s milk.

 

V.

CONFESS TO BEING the most negligent wielder of pen and ink that ever breathed. My poor journal. How much you have missed! But who can write when one has a precious boy who wants your every moment? I never knew such love could exist. My very body aches with love for him. My soul is wound up with his soul. His pain is my pain, his joy is my joy.

When he first smiled, how only one cheek moved and then when he learned how to move both at once and his eyes lit up and he laughed. When he clapped his hands, discovered his toes, how he would giggle as we sat in the bath and the soapy rubber ball would slip out of his hands and make a splash in the water.

I helped him learn to crawl forward when all he could do was scoot back. One day he took his first step, two steps, and then across the room. Those were the last days of a beautiful sunburnt autumn when outside he kept falling on every little dip, so I held his hand and helped him.

He has sandy gold-brown hair and big green eyes that spark with joy. His laugh is infectious. He is strong and can run far and jump high!

So independent, yet he doesn’t want me to leave his sight. He sleeps nestled close to my breast, I can’t even get away during nap times because he wakes up the moment I move away.

There is nothing greater in life. To be needed, to be loved, to have a future and a hope.

Almost two years old, he cannot be contained in my little room. What a terrific shock a toddler is after one was used to a baby! Every day he bangs at the door until I am dressed and can let him out, and then I must follow wherever he leads. I have explored more haunted corridors than I ever thought possible and become much braver for it! Sometimes he waves to the corners of the rooms and says “Hello!” which is terrifying. Michael cares not! He climbs everything in sight, rummages up pencils and draws on the walls and spilled ink wells and eats the dog food. The kitchen is his favourite because Bridget has little cookies and he is allowed to bang on the pots and pans.

Patrick has missed all this. I do not remember clearly what his face looks like or what his voice sounds like. His letters are very short and intermittent. Conditions are horrible and he is very sad. He wrote to me that one of his friends died and he saw it happen. He couldn't move fast enough to save him. I write to him often with little descriptions of Michael to cheer him up and send him food and drink and clothes when I am sure of his address.

I think back on our little wedding and how in love I was. I hope and I pray that I will see him again. I pray we will love each other that same way. Until then I have been trying to offer up my grief—that this suffering might make reparation for the sins of the world.

Mother has visited a few times. It has been sweet to see her enjoy her grandson.

I have not broached going back to London.

We have a beautiful rhythm here, Michael, Bridget, Alfred, and myself. Through the week I care for Michael and also have learned bits of sewing and cooking from Bridget, bits of gardening and tending to the farm animals from Alfred. Mass on Sundays and sometimes on pleasant days we will walk to church for matins or nones. During the summer, when it is light outside, we attend vespers and walk back during the fiery sunset streaming over the waving grasses. Bridget and Alfred have a very strong faith.

Michael is a little terror through the liturgies. When he’s not banging his head on the pews and howling, he’s deliriously happy and giggling as he plays peek-a-boo, then singing at the top of his lungs, then dashing down the aisle.

Sometimes he will be sleepy and I can sit quietly. I long to sit there forever, to be lost in the holy presence. I listen and hear that still, small voice whisper, I love you, My child.

On Corpus Christi Sunday, I was leaving the chapel and felt tingles up and down my spine. I looked—the tabernacle glowed and shimmered like it would explode in glory.

What wonders we do not see. Oh! to be loved by the all-powerful!

It is the end of Advent-tide. A warmer day today, so I put on his sweet hat and gloves and coat that mother sent and we journeyed out to enjoy the sunshine.

Michael throws rocks in the brook as I write, and every splash he laughs and yells “big rock!” I feel that I have learned to love God, for He created this bliss—created the mother and the child.

The bells from the convent are ringing Nones. The priest last Sunday spoke of the nuns being invisible warriors against the tides of evil in the world, the tyrant Napoleon that Patrick is fighting now in Belgium, the sin in every human heart. They offer their penances and sufferings and prayers, join them to Christ’s, and all the good in the world comes from secret prayers and charitable works like these. Father spoke of their prayers as the incense that burns before the throne of God in heaven. And God as an all-consuming fire who lights Heaven as the Sun lights the Earth. If this is what Heaven is like, I should long to go there.

 

VI.

HRISTMAS TOGETHER. Michael loves his toys. I sewed a stuffed rabbit for him and painted building blocks. Alfred carved him a horse and Bridget knitted him a bright orange sweater that set off his green eyes and gold hair like sunshine over the moorland.

He was enthralled on Christmas Eve when they brought Baby Jesus in and laid Him in the manger. After mass he ran up and kissed the baby and pointed to him and said, “God!”

Then one day I woke up to a wet bed. Michael was vomiting and burning with fever.

I called Bridget.

“The lad’ll be all right, don’t ye worry,”  she said.

So I didn’t worry for a while.

I held him close to me all night long. I changed him every hour because he soiled himself continuously.

Sunlight crept through the window. I saw his face was pale, and under his eyes there was a deep black. I shivered all over and was so perplexed that I whispered Hail Marys over and over, under my breath.

I could find no other words.

I go to send for the doctor and Michael tries to follow but is so lethargic he crumples to the floor. I try to spoon water down his throat, but how can teaspoons make a difference?

Alone in the dark room, looking down into the fireplace for a moment, I saw a skeleton in the flames there. It was then I realised Michael could die.

I cry out to God. “Please don’t take him. I will give myself to you, I will make you the centre of my life!”

I hear her voice, clearly, as a woman speaking in the room.

“Wear the veil.”

Alfred came with the doctor but none of the medicines could replace the waters that had been lost. Michael lost consciousness in my arms and is in Heaven, in the lap of Mary.

 

VII.

AM BACK IN LONDON NOW. It seems the life I had was a dream. Mother has ordered me a whole new wardrobe and carts me to dinner parties every evening. I smile and speak, but inside I am in a bubble. I am with my boy. I am with God. I imagine my little one seeing His face, Mary singing to him, and Saint Anne teaching him his prayers in a great throne room.

Mother spoke to me about her own losses.

After I was born she went through many stillbirths, some so early the baby could fit in the palm of her hand. Others when the baby might have survived. All boys. This was why during early childhood I was sent to live with my wet nurse.

Their hardness—mother and father’s—I see in the deep spaces behind their eyes. Their need to have everything just so. I grieve the sadness I caused for them. But, in a way, it brought mother around, gave her another chance to see how love, even when crucified, overpowers mammon. I forgave them. I spoke it in my heart and I felt the weight lift off my soul, like a devil flying off into the moonlight.

Mother says she cannot understand how God could let us suffer this deeply. She is a good person and does not deserve to lose all her children and then her husband.

Jesus suffered ultimately. His mother lost her child, her husband. She cries out in agony as she gives birth to souls. If they suffer, why shouldn’t we? And perhaps, if we pray for grace, we can find joy in our suffering because we are one with them.

I cannot find such joy, though I pray for it. It rends my soul in two that my little boy is not by my side, though truly, God has loved him most of all.

If only He would let me follow him.

 

VIII.

EWS CAME. Patrick’s horse was shot from underneath him, and he was trampled. They say there is hope. Once he is well enough, he can go home. I have told mother I will take him back to the castle and we will make that our home.

So I have come to nurse my husband. My heart thrills with excitement to be with him. Yet I confess to a fear—we have both lost so much, and experienced none of it together. Who was that young couple that rendezvoused in secret all those years ago? Loved so passionately, and yet had lived so little?

He will not be what I remember.

On the boat I felt happy, lighthearted. There was a little concert of Christmas music. I was sitting at a table on the edge of the boat, looking at the dark waves lapping under the moonlight, tapping my toe to the music, drinking coffee.

Suddenly I saw her face in my mind’s eye so that I could see nothing else.

Great light eyes. Thin arched brows. A long pointed nose. A rosebud mouth. She was weeping powerfully.

A sword pierced my heart, and I was weeping too, sobbing at a table in the midst of all the people. The weight of the world dropped on my shoulders and I felt her grief—the grief of the mother who watches her children grow to abandon her.

The weeping face does not leave me but stays in my mind’s eye.

 

IX.

ATRICK AND I ARE REUNITED. He is very thin and tanned, except for his wan face. I show him the two photographs of our boy and he kisses them soberly. He had received a few of my letters, but not all.

Holding his hand at first overwhelms me. But then I climb under the blanket next to him, nose to nose, and soak in his very presence.

He is different. Weak. Quiet, too, which he never was before. He will not speak to me of anything from the war.

I knew it would not be the same as our young romance. I speak to him sometimes about Michael, though it pains me. I feel he should know as much as possible about his son. One morning he told me, in a rather perfunctory tone, to stop. Senseless of me, to speak of a son who has died when he has lived amidst death for three years.

I am determined to fulfil my duty. I am up at dawn to nurse him, administer his medicines, change his bandages, clean him and dress him.

I am sitting by his bed as I write. The smell of the camp hospital is all blood and medicine and cotton and urine and lamp oil. Men missing eyes and limbs, gangrene and pus, burns and protruding bones. I help others sometimes, if I can. As I work and observe I think of my time with Michael.

How perfect that brief moment was!

I wonder how God, who created such perfect bliss, can observe such suffering, and choose to experience such suffering.

I often feel overwhelmed by the darkness, especially as I hear of those being killed, of those in hiding, of those who have fled to safety in England. What evil in the world, that these wounds are inflicted by other men. It occurs to me that though the dark seems so great to us, on the other side of the curtain the good and the beautiful and the true are much more powerful, more potent. We cannot always see it, but that light shines brighter than all darkness.

I try to be good, though I feel great sadness.

Such anger is inside my husband. In his furtive eye. In the agitation of his hands and legs as I pray the rosary by his bedside.

I remember him as he once was. A deep laugh, quick to sing.

 

X.

HE DOCTOR ASKED to speak to me away from the bedside. Patrick will not live long. His organs are even now failing, the internal wounds are deep and will not heal. The doctor described to me how he will die, slowly, painfully. His lungs will fill with water. His kidneys will stop working. I should take him home so he can live his last days in peace, surrounded by his family.

When the doctor left the room I felt a weight settling upon my shoulders so heavy I fell to the floor, begging God for the grace to carry it. It is the cross I must accept.

 

XI.

E ARE AT HALLOWMERE after an unspeakably arduous journey. I wrote to my mother and she travelled to meet us there. I hung around her neck and burst into tears. She held me and cooed at me like I was a child again.

Alfred helped me carry Patrick up the stairs to my old room. I could not stop my tears flowing, even as I changed Patrick and settled him in bed.

Bridget brought me a cold wet cloth for my face. A balm to my soul she is.

I write by the fire while he sleeps. I have a cot set up by his bed so I can wake and help him. He awoke a little while ago, groaning, hot with perpetual fever. I wrestled him to get the opium into his mouth—he pushed me away with a violent strength. Opium makes him say vicious things. His eyes flicker to and fro around the room, and he cries out at phantoms in the corners. He calls me a witch and says he hates me.

 

XII.

OTHER INSISTED we bring help to nurse Patrick. Two women from the village came and I spoke with them. Tears started in their eyes when they saw me with him. I said they should not cry for me. They should think of their own crosses, and their children’s.

I pray I pass this test—that it is not my downfall.

The days are easier now. If Patrick is asleep I go outside. Every small pleasure seems grand to me. The beauty of the red leaves flurrying down from the trees, scurrying across the green grass. The shimmer of the sun on the pond and the birdsong.

I breathe in the fresh air and soak in the sunlight.

God created these things. God created me. God created Patrick. God created Michael. He knew us from the foundation of the world.

Little Michael is praying for us.

 

XIII.

N A FEVERED opium fury, Patrick came out of bed with demonic strength and pushed me. I fell, my head hitting the hearthstone, and Patrick stumbled onto me, ripping at my dress and hair, baring his teeth.

Alfred came running in and helped me get him back in bed, and sat with me until he was asleep again.

I sit, my head throbbing with pain, trying to understand the torment in Patrick’s heart. I am his nurse, his wife, and also the symbol of all he has lost. The joys we could have had, the weakness he now suffers, the humiliation of having to be helped with every basic function.

The outbursts are not truly him—the opium makes him act as he would not act in his right mind. Yet his feelings cause his opiated actions, and they are true feelings.

Strangely, within the tears that continually spill from my eyes, I feel a glimmer of joy.

Patrick will be on the other side soon. His pain will be over.

He will die, please God, with all the graces of the sacraments, and I will spend the rest of my life praying for his soul to be received into heaven.

After I fell I sat on the floor by the fire, trying to calm my breath, and I felt Jesus’s presence by my side, like a pillar of fire yet a man. I felt his hand rest upon my shoulder. I was infused with an expansive grace.

I spoke it into the air. “I forgive you, Patrick.”

And then I vomited.

 

XIV.

OD IS A CONSUMING FIRE. God is love. *** The last outburst broke him. The torment left his face and he lay there exhausted, yet at peace. I sat by his bedside and he reached out and held my hand. He looked me in the eyes and though he could not find the breath to speak I knew that he loved me.

Alfred brought the priest and Patrick received last rites and his sins were absolved. A small piece of the Host was placed on his tongue though he could barely swallow.

I have followed Mary on the way of the cross. I have lost my son and husband as she did. I have held their dead bodies in my arms. I feel the ache of Jesus’s wounds in the centres of my hands and feet. The seven sorrows that pierced Mary’s heart rend my chest open.

As I shut Patrick’s eyes and straightened the bedclothes, I see the blue haze of her dress ahead of me, helping me in my work. I am overwhelmed with a desire to kneel down before her. I feel her tender love flood my soul, like a mother’s love for her newborn.

The priest comforts me, saying Patrick has been blessed with a holy death and that one day I will be reunited with him.

He doesn’t understand. I am overwhelmed with joy. In the depths of my body it bubbles through me like it will overflow. My sufferings ripple out like waves of golden fire across the world, making reparation for sins, converting souls, flying up through the sky to Jesus’s heart in heaven.

The glory and honour of having suffered as she suffered, suffered as he suffered. I will now offer that suffering for the rest of the world.

I will be so close to heaven. I will be praying with my son. Soon the door of the convent will close on me and I will be veiled in my Mother’s mantle forever.

Ah! As I write I can hear the bells upon the wind!