Legacy of Secrets (15 page)

Paddy had worked in the stables at Ardnavarna all his life. His wife had been employed at the Big House as a laundress and her younger children often accompanied her to work, playing in the kitchen yard or helping around the stables, knowing, even as tots, to hide out of the way if the lordship came by.

Their childhood was scarred by poverty and deprivation. The area had lost almost half its population forty years earlier in the Great Famine and the resulting exodus to America on the fearsome coffin ships. Then, when Daniel was twelve and Finn ten, their mother died, along with six of their brothers and sisters in one of the influenza epidemics that regularly swept through the countryside, decimating the poor population overnight. It left Finn and Daniel to be brought up by their father, Paddy, who cared more for drink than he ever had for his wife.

Their thatched whitewashed stone cottage consisted of a single room with an earthen floor. It had a sleeping loft over one end and a “cupboard” next to the enormous hearth where the eight children all slept, crowded in together like a litter of noisy pups. A peat fire smoldered constantly in the grate, and a black iron cauldron of watery soup bubbled over its sullen glow. A line of fish, caught by Daniel in the bay, was strung across the hearth to smoke, adding an indescribable odor to that of the peat and of the chickens scratching about in the straw in one corner of the room.

The smell clung to the boys’ hair. It permeated their clothing and even their skin; it was so much a part of them that they were no longer even aware of it. That is, until the day twelve-year-old Finn was helping out at the Big House, hauling great buckets of coal up the steep back stairs and along the miles of richly carpeted corridors, and later fueling up the big stoves in the kitchen.

“God save us, boy,” the housekeeper cried in front of
the giggling maidservants, throwing her apron over her head and hurrying past him. “Y’ve the smell of a wild animal about ye. Git out o’ here and take yer odor with ye. And don’t come back till y’ve had a bath.”

Bitterly ashamed, Finn dropped his empty buckets and ran to the stables where Daniel was helping his father muck out the stalls. Flies buzzed around them as they raked out the dung-matted straw and Finn stopped and stared, taking in for the first time their position in the world of the Big House. He and his father and brother were the lowest on the scale, the shifters of muck and haulers of coal and ashes.

“What’s wrong with ye?” Daniel asked, leaning on his rake, looking at his brother. Finn’s eyes were wild and angry and his cheeks burned with color.

“Are ye sick, boy?” Dan demanded, striding over to him. Memories of his mother and six brothers and sisters on fire with the fever that had carried them off crowded his mind as he clapped a large hand to the boy’s forehead, inspecting him anxiously. It was cool and he breathed a sigh of relief. With his mother dead and his father drunk more often than not, Daniel had taken over the role as head of the ramshackle household and he took his responsibilities toward his younger brother seriously.

“It’s an old head on young shoulders ye’ll be after get-tin’,” the neighbors said of him. “And you only fourteen years old.” But they thought proudly that he looked nearer eighteen with that height and those broad shoulders. Everyone knew Daniel O’Keeffe would grow into a fine strong man and make a good husband for one of the village girls, but young Finn was a different matter. With those looks and that blarney you could expect woman-trouble, they told each other darkly over heady draughts of poteen, thinking they must remember to lock up their daughters when Finn O’Keeffe came into his manhood.

But right now Finn didn’t feel much like a potential threat to any woman. All he felt was a deep burning shame and a rage with himself for not even knowing that he stank.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded, kicking viciously at the pile of dung. “Why
didn’t
you say I stank as bad as the horse shit? Worse. Like a wild animal, she said. And everybody laughed.” His gray eyes were black with anger and Paddy stared, astonished, at his son.

“Jayzus boy, ye only stink like all the rest of us. What’s wrong with ye?”

Daniel felt the blush of shame sting his own cheeks as he stared at his brother. It was all his fault. He was the one in charge. He should have known to keep the house clean, to make sure they washed themselves thoroughly each day and that their clothes were laundered.

“We niver stank when our mammie was alive,” he shouted angrily. Throwing down his rake he grabbed Finn’s arm and marched him over to the pump. “Strip off yer clothes, lad,” he bellowed.

Finn hesitated. There was an edge to the wind and he knew the water would be icy.

“Now,”
Daniel commanded, his voice echoing around the cobbled yard so loudly that the grooms and stablelads turned to look. They grinned as Finn quickly shed his clothes and crouched like a martyr next to the pump, his hands over his private parts, shriveled to the size of a peanut in the cold.

Daniel filled the galvanized tin bucket and threw the icy water over him. Finn howled and the stable yard rang with mocking laughter as Daniel filled his bucket again and again with stinging cold water and threw it over his shivering naked brother.

“Y’ll find clean sacking in the tackroom,” he said finally. “Wrap yerself up in it and be away home with ye. Tonight we’ll wash yer clothes, and then tomorrer no maidservant will be able to complain that me brother stinks.”

Finn ran through the woods to the lane that led to their cottage. He shivered in the wind, lurking by the hedgerow afraid someone might see him half-naked and blue with cold, wrapped in nothing but a bit of scratchy old sacking. His heart sank as he heard the clip-clop of hooves along
the rutted lane and he peered around the corner, afraid of who it might be.

His eyes widened with horror and he groaned out loud, hurling himself into the ditch beneath the hedgerow. The horses’ hooves clipped-clopped toward him and he pressed his head deeper into the mess of brambles and stinging nettles, praying they wouldn’t notice him. Then he heard them slowing.

“Why, Ciel, what do you suppose we have here?” a silvery, imperious voice said loudly.

Finn shrank even deeper into the ditch until his nose was almost in the rank green water at the bottom. He heard five-year-old Ciel giggle.

“I do believe it’s a wild animal,” she said. “Maybe it’s a bear, Lily. Do we have bears in Ireland?” she added doubtfully.

“Of course we do.
Dancing
bears,” Lily retorted. Then, inspired: “I know what, Ciel, shall we make this one dance?”

“Oh,
Lily.”
Ciel, as mischievous as her sister, squealed excitedly.

Finn heard the clatter of hooves as the horse was nudged around. He felt the gentle jab of her riding crop as Lily leaned from her horse and poked him in the ribs. “Come out, come out, whoever you are,” she sang. He heard the laughter in her voice and smelled the clean soap smell of her hands as he turned his head slowly up to look at her.

“Come on, little bear,” Ciel trilled, bouncing impatiently up and down in her saddle. “You’re going to dance for me. Isn’t he, Lily?”

Finn climbed slowly from the ditch, seeing Lily’s blue eyes widen with surprise and then amusement as she stared at him. He hung his head in shame, clutching the sacking closer, praying to disappear. Of all the people in the world he had not wanted to see right now, she was the one.

“Why,” Lily said triumphantly, “it’s Finn O’Keeffe. And
I do believe, Ciel, that under that sacking, he’s as naked as the day he was born.”

“Naked.
Oooh.
” Ciel’s voice was shocked. Baby though she was, even she knew you did not walk around Ardnavarna unclothed.

Finn’s chin sank lower into his chest. “I … my clothes got dirty,” he mumbled. “My brother put me under the stable yard pump … I was walkin’ home when ye caught me.”

Twelve-year-old Lily stared at him interestedly. She had known Finn O’Keeffe all her life. They were born in the same month in the same year, and he and his brother had always been around, working in the stables or the gardens, hauling and lifting and fetching and carrying. She had accompanied Lady Nora to his cottage when his mother and all his brothers and sisters had died, carrying the great basket of food for the three-day wake that was to follow. She knew his ugly father, Paddy O’Keeffe: “a drunken lout” her father always called him, “but a fine man with a horse.” Paddy O’Keeffe couldn’t tell when his own boy stank, but he knew what to do when a horse went lame or off its feed. And there was the big brother, Daniel, a true bear of a lad. Not skinny like this one. Even though he had a handsome face. She had heard he was full of blarney, too, and as much of a tease as she was herself.

She glanced sideways at her sister and said, “Do you really want him to dance, Ciel?”

“Oh, yes, yes. Yes,
please.”
Ciel pushed her red curls from her eyes excitedly. “Can he do it now, Lily?”

Lily sat tall and straight-backed in her saddle. She lifted her chin to an imperious angle. Tickling his ribs again with her riding crop, she said, “Dance, Finn O’Keeffe. Dance like the wild bear you are for my little sister.”

Anger flared in his eyes. “I’ll not be dancing like a bear for Miss Ciel nor nobody,” he shouted.

“Oh, yes, you will,” Lily leaned teasingly forward. “I
command
you to dance.”

“Dance, dance, dance,” Ciel chanted, beside herself with excitement. “Dance, my little bear.”

Finn stared at her, relenting. She was just a baby. Aye, and she was the lordship’s daughter, what harm could it do to please her? Clutching his sackcloth safely over his loins he turned slowly around and around in the middle of the lane.

Ciel clapped her hands and Lily laughed. “Faster,” she cried. “Faster, dancing bear.”

“I’ll not be dancing anymore,” he said, hating her for laughing at him. “I only did it to please the wee girl.” They stared at each other, her so immaculate in her London riding habit, her white silk stockings and the little bowler hat over her black curls. Her so fresh and clean, so pink and white with her mocking blue eyes. And him, barefoot in a piece of stable yard sackcloth having just had the stink washed out of him.

He turned angrily away to avoid her mocking eyes and started to walk down the lane toward home.

“I did not dismiss you, Finn O’Keeffe,” Lily called after him.

“I told you I’ll be doin’ no more dancing,” he shouted angrily back over his shoulder.

He heard the sound of galloping hooves and he glanced up just as she drew level with him. Leaning sideways in the saddle, one arm extended, she grabbed the sacking and dragged it away, leaving him stark naked in the middle of the lane.

“Jayzus,” he screamed, clasping his hands over his private parts again while Lily twirled the piece of cloth triumphantly over her head. “Jayzus, me lady,” he screamed again, bending double and running as fast as he could away from her, down the lane.

“Oh, Lily, look at the dancing bear’s bottom,” he heard Ciel shout. And then Lily’s peals of mocking laughter, each one like a nail of humiliation in his heart as he ran to the safety of his home.

“D
ON’T EVER TELL
what happened,” Lily warned her little sister as they trotted back into the stable yard.

“Why not?” Ciel demanded innocently.

“Because Pa wouldn’t like it,” Lily explained, slightly shamefaced.

A groom in the Molyneux uniform of green-and-white striped shirt, green vest, and beige britches ran to help her dismount, but Lily ignored him. She swung herself easily from the saddle and strode across the yard with Ciel running behind her. She frowned as she passed the mountain of dung.

“What a stink,” she said angrily. She glared at Daniel, dirty and unkempt, leaning on his rake staring at her. “See that it’s moved at once,” she ordered, “or when my father returns I shall tell him that the stables are a disgrace.” She walked away and Ciel stared doubtfully at them and at the muck pile, and then she hurried after her sister.

“That’s the second time today somebody’s complained of a stink around us,” Paddy said with a toothless grin.

“Aye, and it’ll be the last,” Dan vowed, staring angrily after them, thinking what a high and mighty little princess she was, and that if he were her pa he’d give her a kick up the arse.

Ciel turned to wave at him as they went through the stone archway dividing the stables from the rest of the property and he waved back, grinning shamefacedly. “Aye, and the little one’s only a baby with a load o’ charm about her. And Lady Lily’s only a wee slip of a girl,” he said forgivingly, forgetting for the moment that she was only two years younger than himself, who was already expected to behave like a man, and the same age as his brother Finn who also worked a man’s hours, and with no mother to look after him. Hefting a shovel he began to shift the muck into the wheelbarrow to be carted away.

Lily strode through the stone-flagged hallway with Ciel at her heels, the way she always was—as though she were attached by some invisible link. Up the great curving staircase to the second floor and then left down the long gallery,
lined with pairs of mahogany doors so tall that they reached almost to the lofty ceiling. Marble plinths with carved busts of Roman emperors and Greek warriors were placed between each set of doors and enormous oil paintings covered the dark-green watered-silk walls. A long red carpet stretched the length of the highly polished oak floorboards, all the way to the pair of double doors at the far end that led to the children’s wing.