The leaf, unfolded, contained a powder. The woman sprinkled it over Scarlett’s belly. Then she took a paste from the snuff box and rubbed it over the powder and into Scarlett’s skin.

“I’m going to tie her down lest she injure herself,” the woman said, and she lashed ropes from around her waist below Scarlett’s knees, across her shoulders, around the sturdy table legs.

Her small old eyes looked first at Mrs. Fitzpatrick, then at Colum. “She will scream, but she will not feel pain. You will not move. The light is vital.”

Before they could reply she took a thin knife, wiped it with something from one of her pouches, and stroked it the length of Scarlett’s belly. Scarlett’s scream was like the cry of a lost soul.

Before the sound was gone the cailleach was holding a bloodcovered baby in her two hands. She spit something she was holding in her mouth onto the floor, then blew into the baby’s mouth, once, twice, thrice. The baby’s arms jerked, then its legs.

Colum whispered the Hail Mary.

A whisk of the knife cut the cord, the baby was laid on the folded sheets and the woman was back beside Scarlett. “Hold the lamps closer,” she said.

Her hands and fingers moved quickly, sometimes with a flash of the knife, and bloody bits of membrane fell to the floor beside her feet. She poured more dark fluid between Scarlett’s lips, then a colorless one into the horrible wound in her belly. Her cracked humming accompanied the small precise movements as she sewed the wound together.

“Wrap her in linen then in wool while I wash the babe,” she said. Her knife slashed through the ropes binding Scarlett.

When Colum and Mrs. Fitzpatrick were finished, the woman returned with Scarlett’s baby swaddled in a soft white blanket. “The midwife forgot this,” the cailleach said. Her chuckle brought an answering throaty sound from the baby, and the infant girl opened her eyes. The blue irises looked like pale tinted rings around the black, unfocused pupils. She had long black lashes and two tiny lines for eyebrows. She was not red and misshapen like most newborns because she had not passed through the birth canal. Her tiny nose and ears and mouth and soft pulsing skull were perfect. Her olive skin was very dark against the white blanket.

63

Scarlett struggled towards the voices and the light her sedated mind vaguely perceived. There was something . . . something important . . . a question . . . Firm hands held her head, gentle fingers parted her lips, a cooling sweet liquid bathed her tongue, trickled down her throat, and she slept again.

The next time she fought for consciousness she remembered what the question was, the vital, the all-important question. The baby. Was it dead? Her hands fumbled to her abdomen, and burning pain leapt at her touch. Her teeth bruised her lips, her hands pressed harder, fell away. There was no kicking, no firm rounded lumpiness that was a questing foot. The baby had died. Scarlett uttered a weak cry of misery, no louder than a mew, and the releasing sweet draught poured into her mouth. Throughout her drugged sleep slow weak tears seeped from her closed eyes.

Semiconscious for the third time, she tried to hold on to the darkness, to stay asleep, to push the world away. But the pain grew, tore at her, made her move to flee it, and the moving gave it such strength that she whimpered helplessly. The cool glass vial tipped, and she was freed. Later, when she floated again to the edges of consciousness, she opened her mouth in readiness, eager for the dreamless darkness. Instead there was a cold wet cloth wiping her lips, and a voice she knew but couldn’t remember. “Scarlett darling . . . Katie Scarlett O’Hara . . . open your eyes . . .”

Her mind searched, faded, strengthened—Colum. It was Colum. Her cousin. Her friend . . . Why didn’t he let her sleep if he was her friend? Why didn’t he give her the medicine before the pain came back?

“Katie Scarlett . . .”

She opened her eyes halfway. Light hurt them, and she closed the lids.

 “That’s a good girl, Scarlett darling. Open your eyes, I’ve something for you.” His coaxing tone was insistent. Scarlett’s eyes opened. Someone had moved the lamp, and the dimness was easy.

There’s my friend Colum. She tried to smile, but memory flooded her mind, and her lips crumpled into childlike bubbling sobs. “The baby’s dead, Colum. Put me to sleep again. Help me forget. Please. Please, Colum.”

The wet cloth stroked her cheeks, wiped her mouth. “No, no, no, Scarlett, no, no, the baby’s here, the baby’s not dead.”

Slowly the meaning became clear. Not dead, said her mind. “Not dead?” said Scarlett.

She could see Colum’s face, Colum’s smile. “Not dead, mavourneen, not dead. Here. Look.”

Scarlett turned her head on the pillow. Why was it so hard, just to turn her head? A pale bundle in someone’s hands was there. “Your daughter, Katie Scarlett,” said Colum. He parted the folds of the blanket, and she saw the tiny sleeping face.

“Oh,” Scarlett breathed. So small and so perfect and so helpless. Look at the skin, like rose petals, like cream—no, she’s browner than cream, the rose is only a hint of rose. She looks sun-browned, like . . . like a baby pirate. She looks exactly like Rhett!

Rhett! Why aren’t you here to see your baby? Your beautiful dark baby.

My beautiful dark baby. Let me look at you.

Scarlett felt a strange and frightening weakness, a warmth that washed through her body like a strong, low, enveloping wave of painless burning.

The baby opened her eyes. They stared directly into Scarlett’s. And Scarlett felt love. Without conditions, without demands, without reasons, without questions, without bounds, without reserve, without self.

“Hey, little baby,” she said.

“Now drink your medicine,” said Colum. The tiny dark face was gone.

“No! No, I want my baby. Where is she?”

“You’ll have her next time you wake up. Open your mouth, Scarlett darling.”

“I won’t,” she tried to say, but the drops were on her tongue, and in a moment the darkness closed over her. She slept, smiling, a glow of life under her deathly paleness.

Perhaps it was because the baby looked like Rhett; perhaps it was because Scarlett always valued most what she fought hardest for; or perhaps it was because she’d had so many months with the Irish, who adored children. More likely it was one of the wonders that life gives for no cause at all. Whatever the origin, pure consuming love had come to Scarlett O’Hara after a lifetime of emptiness, not knowing what she lacked.


Scarlett refused to take any more pain-killer. The long red scar on her body was like a streak of white-hot steel, but it was forgotten in the overwhelming joy she felt whenever she touched her baby or even looked at her.

“Send her away!” Scarlett said when the healthy young wet nurse was brought in. “Time after time I had to bind my breasts and suffer agonies while the milk dried up, all to be a lady and keep my figure. I’m going to nurse this baby, have her close to me. I’ll feed her and make her strong and see her grow.”

When the baby found her nipple the first time and nursed greedily with a tiny wrinkle of concentration on her brow, Scarlett smiled down at her with triumph. “You’re a Momma’s girl, all right, hungry as a wolf and fixed on getting what you want.”

The baby was baptized in Scarlett’s bedroom, because Scarlett was too weak to walk. Father Flynn stood near the Viceregal bed where she was propped up against lace-trimmed pillows holding the baby in her arms until she had to give her over to Colum, who was godfather; Kathleen and Mrs. Fitzpatrick were godmothers. The baby wore an embroidered linen gown, thin from washings, that had been worn by hundreds of O’Hara babies for generation after generation. She was named Katie Colum O’Hara. She waved her arms and kicked her legs when the water touched her, but she didn’t cry.

Kathleen wore her best blue frock with a lace collar, although she should have been in mourning. Old Katie Scarlett was dead. However, everyone agreed that Scarlett should not be told until she was stronger.

Rosaleen Fitzpatrick watched Father Flynn from hawk-like eyes, poised to snatch the baby if he faltered for a second. She’d been speechless for a long minute after Scarlett asked her to serve as godmother. “How did you guess how I feel about this baby?” she asked when her voice returned.

“I didn’t,” said Scarlett, “but I know I wouldn’t have a baby if you hadn’t stopped that monster woman from killing her. I remember a good bit about that night.”

Colum took Katie from Father Flynn when the ceremony was over and put her in Scarlett’s outstretched hands. Then he poured a tot of whiskey for the priest and the godparents and made a toast: “To the health and happiness of mother and child, The O’Hara and the newest of the O’Haras.” After that, he escorted the doddering saintly old man to Kennedy’s bar where he bought a few rounds for all there in honor of the occasion. He hoped against hope that it would stop the rumors that were already flying all over County Meath.

Joe O’Neill, the blacksmith, had cowered in a corner of Ballyhara’s kitchen until daylight, then scuttled to his smithy to drink himself brave. “Though Saint Patrick himself would have needed more than all the prayers at his beckoning on that night,” he told anyone who would listen, and there were many.

“Ready was I to save the life of The O’Hara when the witch come through the stone wall and throws me with terrible force onto the floor. Then kicks me—and I could feel in my flesh that the foot was no human foot but a cloven hoof. She cast a spell on The O’Hara then and ripped the babe from the womb. All bloody was the babe, and blood on the floors and the walls and in the air. A lesser man would have sheltered his eyes from such a fearful sight. But Joseph O’Neill saw the babe’s fine strong form beneath the blood, and I’m telling you it was a manchild, with manhood plain between its limbs.