“Cat? How could I fall asleep like that? Oh, my angel, I’m so sorry. What happened? How do you feel, baby?”

“I had my nap. My hand is well. May I go up in the tower?”

Scarlett looked at her little girl’s unblemished palm. “Oh, Kitty Cat, your Momma really needs a hug and a kiss, please.” She held Cat to her for a moment, then let her go. It was her gift to Cat. Cat pressed her lips to Scarlett’s cheek.

“I think I’d rather have tea and cakes than go in the tower right now,” she said. It was her gift to her mother. “Let’s go home.”


“The O’Hara was under a spell and the witch and her changeling were talking in a tongue known to no man.” Nell Garrity had seen it with her own eyes, she said, and that frightened she was she turned on her heel into the Boyne, forgetting altogether she needed to go back to the ford. She would have drowned for certain sure had the river been its usual deep self.

“Casting spells on the clouds to make them pass us by they were.”

“And didn’t Annie McGinty’s cow go dry that very day and her one of the best milkers in all Trim?”

“Dan Houlihan in Navan has the affliction of warts on his feet so bad he can’t put them to the floor.”

“The changeling rides a wolf disguised as a pony by day.”

“Her shadow fell on my churn and the butter never came.”

“Those who know say she sees in the dark, her eyes glowing like fire for her prowling.”

“And did you never hear the tale of her birthing, Mr. Reilly? It was on All hallows’ Eve, and the sky fairly torn to shreddings with comets . . .”

The stories were carried from hearth to hearth throughout the district.

It was Mrs. Fitzpatrick who found Cat’s tabby on the doorstep of the Big House. Ocras had been strangled, then disembowelled. She rolled the remains into a cloth and hid it in her room until she could go unobserved to the river to dispose of it.


Rosaleen Fitzpatrick burst into Colum’s house without knocking. He looked up at her, but he remained seated in his chair.

“Just what I thought I’d be finding!” she exclaimed. “You can’t do your drinking in the bar like an honest man, you’ve got to hide your weakness here with that sorry excuse for a man.” Her voice was rich with contempt, as was her gesture when she prodded Stephen O’Hara’s limp legs with her booted foot. He was snoring unevenly through his slack open mouth. The smell of whiskey clung to his clothes, saturated his breath.

“Leave me be, Rosaleen,” Colum said wearily. “My cousin and myself are mourning the death of Ireland’s hopes.”

Mrs. Fitzpatrick put her hands on her hips. “And what about the hopes of your other cousin, then, Colum O’Hara? Will you drown yourself in another bottle when Scarlett is mourning the death of her darling babe? Will you sorrow with her when your godchild is dead? Because I tell you, Colum, the child is in mortal danger.”

Rosaleen fell on her knees before his chair. She shook his arm. “For the love of Christ and His Blessed Mother, Colum, you’ve got to do something! I’ve tried every way I know how, but the people won’t listen to me. Mayhap it’s even too late for them to listen to you, but you’ve got to make the try. You cannot hide away from the world like this. The people feel your desertion, and so does your cousin Scarlett.”

“Katie Colum O’Hara,” mumbled Colum.

“Her blood will be on your hands,” said Rosaleen with cold clarity.


Colum made a leisurely round of visits to every house, cottage, and bar in Ballyhara and Adamstown the following day and night. The first visit was to Scarlett’s office, where he found her studying the estate ledgers. Her frown smoothed out when she saw him at the door, reappeared when he suggested she give a party to welcome her cousin Stephen back to Ireland.

She capitulated at last, as he’d known she would, and then Colum was able to use the invitation to the party as his reason for all the other visits. He listened keenly for indications that Rosaleen’s warning had a basis, but he heard nothing, to his great relief.


After Sunday Mass, all the villagers and O’Haras from all County Meath came to Ballyhara to welcome Stephen home and to hear about America. There were long trestle tables on the lawn with steaming platters of boiled salt beef and cabbage, baskets piled with hot boiled potatoes, and foamy pitchers of porter. The French doors were open to the drawing room with its ceiling of Irish heroes, as invitation into the Big House for any who cared to enter.

It was almost a good party.

Scarlett consoled herself afterwards with the thought that she’d done her best, and she’d had a long time with Kathleen. “I’ve missed you so, Kathleen,” she’d told her cousin. “Nothing’s the same since you left. The ford might be under ten feet of water for all the good it does me, I can’t stand to go to Pegeen’s house.”

“And if things always stayed the same, Scarlett, what would be the reason for bothering to draw breath?” Kathleen replied. She was mother to a healthy boy and expecting a brother for him, she hoped, in six months.

She hasn’t missed me at all, Scarlett realized sadly.

Stephen talked no more in Ireland than he had in America, but the family didn’t seem to mind. “He’s a silent man, and that’s the all of it.” Scarlett avoided him. He was still Spooky Stephen to her. He had brought back one delicious piece of news. Grandfather Robillard had died and left his estate to Pauline and Eulalie. They were in the pink house together, took their constitutionals every day, and were reputed to be even richer than the Telfair sisters.


They heard thunder in the distance at the O’Hara party. Everyone stopped talking, stopped eating, stopped laughing to look up in hope at the mocking bright blue sky. Father Flynn added a special Mass every day and people lit candles with private prayers for rain.

On Midsummer Day the clouds borne on the west wind began to pile together instead of scudding past. By late afternoon they filled the horizon, half-black and heavy. The men and women who were building the bonfire for the night’s celebration lifted their heads into the staccato gusts of wind, smelling rain. It would be a celebration indeed if the rains returned and the crops were saved.

The storm broke at first dark, in a cannonade of deafening cracks of lightning that lit up the sky brighter than day, and a deluge of rain. People fell to the ground and covered their heads. Hail peppered them with stones of ice as big as walnuts. Cries of pain and fear filled the moments of silence between lightning cracks.

Scarlett was leaving the Big House for the music and dancing at the bonfire. She ducked back inside, soaked to the skin in only seconds, and ran upstairs to find Cat. She was looking out the window, her green eyes wide, her ears covered by her hands. Harriet Kelly huddled in a corner holding Billy close for protection. Scarlett kneeled beside Cat to watch the rampage of nature.

It lasted a half hour, then the sky was clear, star-studded, with a gleaming three-quarter moon. The bonfire was sodden and scattered; it would not be lighted this night. And the fields of grass and wheat were flattened by the hail that covered them in gray-white misshapen balls. A keening rose from the throats of the Irish of Ballyhara. Its piercing sound cut through the stone walls and glass panes into Cat’s room. Scarlett shuddered and drew her dark child close. Cat whimpered softly. Her hands were not enough to hold back the sound.


“We’ve lost our harvest,” Scarlett said. She was standing on a table in the middle of Ballyhara’s wide street, facing the people of the town. “But there’s plenty to be saved. The grass will still dry to hay, and we’ll have straw from the wheat stalks even though there’ll be no kernels to grind for flour. I’m going now to Trim and Navan and Drogheda to buy supplies for the winter. There’ll be no hunger in Ballyhara. That I promise you, my word as The O’Hara.”

They cheered her then.

But at night by their hearths they talked about the witch and the changeling and the tower where the changeling had stirred the ghost of the hanged lord to vengeance.

81

The clear skies and relentless heat returned, and lasted. The front page of the Times was made up entirely of reports and speculations on the weather. Pages two and three had more and more items about outrages against landlords’ property and agents.

Scarlett glanced at the newspaper every day, then threw it aside. Atbleast she didn’t have to worry about her tenants, thank God for that. They knew she’d take care of them.

But it wasn’t easy. Too often, when she arrived in a town or city that was supposed to have stockpiles of flour and meal, she discovered that the supplies were only rumors, or were all gone. In the beginning she haggled with vigor about the inflated prices, but as supplies became more scarce, she was so happy to find anything at all that she paid whatever was asked, often for inferior goods.

It’s as bad as it was in Georgia after the War, she thought. No, it’s worse. Because then we were fighting the Yankees, who stole or burned everything. Now I’m fighting for the lives of more people than I ever had depending on me at Tara. And I don’t even know who the enemy is. I can’t believe God’s put a curse on Ireland.

But she bought a hundred dollars’ worth of candles for the pepole of Ballyhara to light in supplication when they prayed in the chapel. And she rode her horse or drove her wagon carefully around the piles of stones that had begun to appear beside roads or in fields. She didn’t know what older deities were being appeased, but if they’d bring rain she was willing to give them every stone in County Meath. She’d carry them with her own hands if she had to.