The Wonder Read online

  The three walked up the path—right past a dung heap, Lib noticed with a quiver of disapproval. The thick walls of the cabin sloped outwards to the ground. A broken pane in the nearest window was stopped up with a rag. There was a half-door, gaping at the top like a horse’s stall. Mr. Thaddeus pushed the bottom open with a dull scrape and gestured for Lib to go first.

  She stepped into darkness. A woman cried out in a language Lib didn’t know.

  Her eyes started to adjust. A floor of beaten earth under her boots. Two females in the frilled caps that Irishwomen always seemed to wear were clearing away a drying rack that stood before the fire. After piling the clothes into the younger, slighter woman’s arms, the elder ran forward to shake hands with the priest.

  He answered her in the same tongue—Gaelic, it had to be—then moved into English. “Rosaleen O’Donnell, I know you met Sister Michael yesterday.”

  “Sister, good morning to you.” The woman squeezed the nun’s hands.

  “And this is Mrs. Wright, one of the famous nurses from the Crimea.”

  “My!” Mrs. O’Donnell had broad, bony shoulders, stone-grey eyes, and a smile holed with dark. “Heaven bless you for coming such a distance, ma’am.”

  Could she really be ignorant enough to think that war still raged in that peninsula and that Lib had just arrived, bloody from the battlefront?

  “’Tis in the good room I’d have ye this minute”—Rosaleen O’Donnell nodded towards a door to the right of the fire—“if it wasn’t for the visitors.”

  Now Lib was listening, she could make out the faint sound of singing.

  “We’re grand here,” Mr. Thaddeus assured her.

  “Let ye sit down till we have a cup of tea, at least,” Mrs. O’Donnell insisted. “The chairs are all within, so I’ve nothing but creepies for you. Mister’s off digging turf for Séamus O’Lalor.”

  Creepies had to mean the log stools the woman was shoving practically into the flames for her guests. Lib chose one and tried to inch it farther away from the hearth. But the mother looked offended; clearly, right by the fire was the position of honour. So Lib sat, putting down her bag on the cooler side so her ointments wouldn’t melt into puddles.

  Rosaleen O’Donnell crossed herself as she sat down and so did the priest and the nun. Lib thought of following suit. But no, it would be ridiculous to start aping the locals.

  The singing from the so-called good room seemed to swell. The fireplace opened into both parts of the cabin, Lib realized, so sounds leaked through.

  While the maid winched the hissing kettle off the fire, Mrs. O’Donnell and the priest chatted about yesterday’s drop of rain and how unusually warm the summer was proving on the whole. The nun listened and occasionally murmured assent. Not a word about the daughter.

  Lib’s uniform was sticking to her sides. For an observant nurse, she reminded herself, time need never be wasted. She noted a plain table, pushed against the windowless back wall. A painted dresser, the lower section barred, like a cage. Some tiny doors set into the walls; recessed cupboards? A curtain of old flour sacks nailed up. All rather primitive, but neat, at least; not quite squalid. The blackened chimney hood was woven of wattle. There was a square hollow on either side of the fire, and what Lib guessed was a salt box nailed high up. A shelf over the fire held a pair of brass candlesticks, a crucifix, and what looked like a small daguerreotype behind glass in a black lacquer case.

  “And how’s Anna today?” Mr. Thaddeus finally asked when they were all sipping the strong tea, the maid included.

  “Well enough in herself, thanks be to God.” Mrs. O’Donnell cast another anxious glance towards the good room.

  Was the girl in there singing hymns with these visitors?

  “Perhaps you could tell the nurses her history,” suggested Mr. Thaddeus.

  The woman looked blank. “Sure what history has a child?”

  Lib met Sister Michael’s eyes and took the lead. “Until this year, Mrs. O’Donnell, how would you have described your daughter’s health?”

  A blink. “Well, she’s always been a delicate flower, but not a sniveller or tetchy. If ever she had a scrape or a stye, she’d make it a little offering to heaven.”

  “What about her appetite?” asked Lib.

  “Ah, she’s never been greedy or clamoured for treats. Good as gold.”

  “And her spirits?” asked the nun.

  “No cause for complaint,” said Mrs. O’Donnell.

  These ambiguous answers didn’t satisfy Lib. “Does Anna go to school?”

  “Oh, Mr. O’Flaherty only doted on her.”

  “Didn’t she win the medal, sure?” The maid pointed at the mantel so suddenly that the tea sloshed in her cup.

  “That’s right, Kitty,” said the mother, nodding like a pecking hen.

  Lib looked for a medal and found it, a small bronzed disc in a presentation case beside the photograph.

  “But after she caught the whooping cough when it came through the school last year,” Mrs. O’Donnell went on, “we thought to keep our little colleen home, considering the dirt up there and the windows that do be always getting broken and letting draughts in.”

  Colleen; that was what the Irish seemed to call every young female.

  “Doesn’t she study just as hard at home anyway, with all her books around her? The nest is enough for the wren, as they say.”

  Lib didn’t know that maxim. She pushed on, because it had occurred to her that Anna’s preposterous lie might be rooted in truth. “Since her illness, has she suffered from disturbances of the stomach?” She wondered if violent coughing might have ruptured the child internally.

  But Mrs. O’Donnell shook her head with a fixed smile.

  “Vomiting, blockages, loose stools?”

  “No more than once in a while in the ordinary course of growing.”

  “So until she turned eleven,” Lib asked, “you’d have described your daughter as delicate, nothing more?”

  The woman’s flaking lips pressed together. “The seventh of April, four months ago yesterday. Overnight, Anna wouldn’t take bite nor sup, nothing but God’s own water.”

  Lib felt a surge of dislike. If this were actually true, what kind of mother would report it with such excitement?

  But of course it wasn’t true, she reminded herself. Either Rosaleen O’Donnell had had a hand in the hoax or the daughter had managed to pull the wool over the mother’s eyes, but in any case, cynical or gullible, the woman had no reason to feel afraid for her child.

  “Before her birthday, had she choked on a morsel? Eaten anything rancid?”

  Mrs. O’Donnell bristled. “There does be nothing rancid in this kitchen.”

  “Did you plead with her to eat?” asked Lib.

  “I might as well have saved my breath.”

  “And Anna gave no reason for her refusal?”

  The woman leaned a little closer, as if imparting a secret. “No need.”

  “She didn’t need to give a reason?” asked Lib.

  “She doesn’t need it,” said Rosaleen O’Donnell, her smile revealing her missing teeth.

  “Food, you mean?” asked the nun, barely audible.

  “Not a crumb. She’s a living marvel.”

  This had to be a well-rehearsed performance. Except that the gleam in the woman’s eyes looked remarkably like conviction to Lib. “And you claim that during the last four months, your daughter’s continued in good health?”

  Rosaleen O’Donnell straightened her frame, and her sparse eyelashes fluttered. “No false claims, no impostures, will be found in this house, Mrs. Wright. ’Tis a humble home, but so was the stable.”

  Lib was puzzled, thinking of horses, until she realized what the woman meant: Bethlehem.

  “We’re simple people, himself and myself,” said Rosaleen O’Donnell. “We can’t explain it, but our little girl is thriving by special providence of the Almighty. Sure aren’t all things possible to him?” She appealed to the nun.

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bsp; Sister Michael nodded. Faintly: “He moves in mysterious ways.”

  This was why the O’Donnells had asked for a nun, Lib was almost sure of it. And why the doctor had gone along with their request. They were all assuming that a spinster consecrated to Christ would be more likely than most people to believe in miracles. More blinkered by superstition, Lib would call it.

  Mr. Thaddeus’s eyes were watchful. “But you and Malachy are willing to let these good nurses sit with Anna for the full fortnight, aren’t you, Rosaleen, so they can testify before the committee?”

  Mrs. O’Donnell flung her skinny arms so wide, her plaid shawl almost fell. “Willing and more than willing, so we’ll have our characters vindicated that are as good as any from Cork to Belfast.”

  Lib almost laughed. To be as concerned for reputation in this meagre cabin as in any mansion…

  “What have we to hide?” the woman went on. “Haven’t we already thrown our doors open to well-wishers from the four corners of the earth?”

  Her grandiloquence put Lib’s back up.

  “Speaking of which,” said the priest, “I believe your guests may be leaving.”

  The singing had ended without Lib noticing. The inner door hung open a crack, shifting in the draught. She walked over and looked through the gap.

  The good room was distinguished from the kitchen mostly by its bareness. Apart from a cupboard with a few plates and jugs behind glass and a cluster of rope chairs, there was nothing in it. Half a dozen people were turned towards the corner of the room that Lib couldn’t see, their eyes wide, lit as if they were watching some dazzling display. She strained to catch their murmurs.

  “Thank you, miss.”

  “A couple of holy cards for your collection.”

  “Let me leave you this vial of oil our cousin had blessed by His Holiness in Rome.”

  “A few flowers is all, cut in my garden this morning.”

  “A thousand thank-yous, and would you ever kiss the baby before we go?” That last woman hurried towards the corner with her bundle.

  Lib found it tantalizing not to be able to glimpse the extraordinary wonder—wasn’t that the phrase the farmers had used at the spirit grocery last night? Yes, this must have been what they were raving about: not some two-headed calf but Anna O’Donnell, the living marvel. Evidently hordes were let in every day to grovel at the child’s feet; the vulgarity of it!

  There was that one farmer who’d said something malign about the other crowd, how they were waiting on her hand and foot. He must have meant the visitors who were so eager to caress the child. What did they think they were doing, setting a little girl up for a saint because they imagined her to have risen above ordinary human needs? It reminded Lib of parades on the Continent, statues in fancy dress promenaded through the reeking alleys.

  Though in fact the visitors’ voices all sounded Irish to Lib; Mrs. O’Donnell had to be exaggerating about the four corners of the earth. The door swung wide now, so Lib stepped back.

  The visitors shuffled out. “Missus, for your trouble.” A man in a round hat was offering a coin to Rosaleen O’Donnell.

  Aha. The root of all evil. Like those well-heeled tourists who paid a peasant to pose with a half-strung fiddle by the door of his mud cabin. The O’Donnells had to be party to this fraud, Lib decided, and for the most predictable of motives: cash.

  But the mother flung her hands behind her back. “Sure hospitality’s no trouble.”

  “For the sweet girleen,” said the visitor.

  Rosaleen O’Donnell kept shaking her head.

  “I insist,” he said.

  “Put it in the box for the poor, sir, if you must leave it.” She nodded at an iron safe set on a stool by the door.

  Lib rebuked herself for not having spotted that earlier.

  The visitors all slipped their tips into its slot on their way out. Some of those coins sounded heavy to Lib. Clearly the minx was as much of a paying attraction as any carved cross or standing stone. Lib very much doubted that the O’Donnells would pass a penny on to those even less fortunate than themselves.

  Waiting for the crowd to clear, Lib found herself close enough to the mantelpiece to study the daguerreotype. Murky-toned and taken before the son had emigrated. Rosaleen O’Donnell, like some imposing totem. The skinny adolescent boy rather incongruously leaning back in her lap. A small girl sitting upright on the father’s. Lib squinted through the glare of the glass. Anna O’Donnell had hair about as dark as Lib’s own, down to the shoulders. Nothing to distinguish her from any other child.

  “Go on into her room now till I fetch her,” Rosaleen O’Donnell was telling Sister Michael.

  Lib stiffened. How was the woman planning to prepare her daughter for their scrutiny?

  All at once she couldn’t bear the smoulder of turf. She muttered something about needing a breath of air and stepped out into the farmyard.

  Putting her shoulders back, Lib breathed in and smelled dung. If she did stay, it would be to accept the challenge: to expose this pitiful swindle. The cabin couldn’t have more than four rooms; she doubted it would take her more than one night here to catch the girl sneaking food, whether Anna was doing it alone or with help. (Mrs. O’Donnell? Her husband? The slavey, who seemed to be their only servant? Or all of them, of course.) That meant the whole trip would earn Lib just one day’s wage. Of course, a less honest nurse wouldn’t speak up till the fortnight was gone, to be sure of being paid for all fourteen. Whereas Lib’s reward would be seeing it through, making sure sense prevailed over nonsense.

  “I’d better be looking in on some others of my flock,” said the pink-cheeked priest behind her. “Sister Michael’s offered to take the first watch, as you must be feeling the effects of your journey.”

  “No,” said Lib, “I’m quite ready to begin.” Itching to meet the girl, in fact.

  “As you prefer, Mrs. Wright,” said the nun in her whispery voice behind him.

  “You’ll come back in eight hours, then, Sister?” asked Mr. Thaddeus.

  “Twelve,” Lib corrected him.

  “I believe McBrearty proposed shifts of eight hours, as less tiring,” he said.

  “Then Sister and I would both be up and down at irregular hours,” Lib pointed out. “In my experience of ward nursing, two shifts are more conducive to sleep than three.”

  “But to fulfil the terms of the watch, you’ll be obliged to stay by Anna’s side every single minute of the time,” said Mr. Thaddeus. “Eight hours sounds long enough.”

  Just then Lib realized something else: if they worked twelve-hour shifts and she took the first, it would always be Sister Michael on duty during the night, when the girl would have more opportunity to steal food. How could Lib rely on a nun who’d spent most of her life in some provincial convent to be quite as attentive as herself? “Very well, eight hours, then.” Calculating in her head. “We might change over at, say, nine in the evening, five in the morning, one in the afternoon, Sister? Those times would seem rather less disruptive to the household.”

  “Until one o’clock, then?” asked the nun.

  “Oh, as we’re only beginning now, midmorning, I’m happy to stay with the girl until nine tonight,” Lib told her. A long first day would allow her to set up the room and establish the procedures of the watch to her liking.

  Sister Michael nodded and glided away down the path back towards the village. How did nuns learn that distinctive walk? Lib wondered. Perhaps it was just an illusion created by the black robes brushing the grass.

  “Good luck, Mrs. Wright,” said Mr. Thaddeus, tipping his hat.

  Luck? As if she were off to the races.

  Lib gathered her forces and stepped back inside the house, where Mrs. O’Donnell and the maid were lifting what looked like a massive grey gnome onto a hook. Lib’s eyes puzzled it out: an iron crock.

  The mother swivelled the pot over the fire and jerked her head towards a half-open door to Lib’s left. “I’ve told Anna all about you.”
r />   Told her what, that Mrs. Wright was a spy from across the sea? Coached the brat in the best means of hoodwinking the Englishwoman as she had so many other grown-ups?

  The bedroom was an unadorned square. A tiny girl in grey sat on a straight-backed chair between the window and the bed as if listening to some private music. The hair a dark red that hadn’t shown in the photograph. At the creak of the door, she looked up, and a smile split her face.

  A humbug, Lib reminded herself.

  The girl stood and held out her hand.

  Lib shook it. Plump fingers cool to the touch. “How are you feeling today, Anna?”

  “Very well, missus,” said the girl in a small, clear voice.

  “Nurse,” Lib corrected her, “or Mrs. Wright, or ma’am, if you prefer.” She found she couldn’t think of anything else to say. She reached into her bag for her miniature memorandum book and measuring tape. She began making notes, to impose something of the systematic on this incongruous situation.

  Monday, August 8, 1859, 10:07 a.m.

  Length of body: 46 inches.

  Arm span: 47 inches.

  Girth of skull measured above brows: 22 inches.

  Head from crown to chin: 8 inches.

  Anna O’Donnell was perfectly obliging. Standing very straight in her plain dress and curiously large boots, she held each position for Lib to measure her, as if learning the steps of a foreign dance. Her face could almost have been described as chubby, which put paid to the fasting story right away. Large hazel eyes bulging a little under puffy eyelids. The whites were porcelain, the pupils dilated, although that could be explained by the faintness of the light coming in. (At least the small pane was open to the summer air. At the hospital, no matter what Lib said, Matron clung to the antiquated notion that windows had to be kept closed against noxious effluvia.)

  The girl was very pale, but then Irish skin was generally so, especially on redheads, until the weather coarsened it. Now there was an oddity: a very fine, colourless down on the cheeks. And after all, the girl’s lie about not eating didn’t preclude her from having some real disorder. Lib wrote it all down.

  Miss N. thought some nurses relied on note-taking too much, laming their powers of recall. However, she never went so far as to forbid an aide-mémoire. Lib didn’t mistrust her own memory, but on this occasion, she’d been hired more as a witness, which called for impeccable case notes.