Also By Siobhan MacGowan

The Trial of Lotta Rae

To the Dubliner who raised me on songs and stories.

My beloved father.

Grá go deo

‘On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew

That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;

I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,

And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.’

– ‘On Raglan Road’, Patrick Kavanagh.

‘Raised on songs and stories, heroes of renown

The passing tales and glories that once was Dublin town

The hallowed halls and houses, the haunting children’s rhymes

That once was Dublin city in the Rare Ould Times.’

– ‘Rare Ould Times’, Pete St. John.

1

Mount St Kilian Abbey, Dublin, 1918

High in the monastery, in the stillness of his chamber, Brother Thomas placed a candle upon the arched window’s deep stone sill. He cast an eye on the late August sun setting now on the Tallaght Hills and Mount Seskin beyond. His eye moved downhill to the chapel roof, the cloisters, the sweep of grounds, before coming to rest on the saplings, the oaks, the monastery woodland. There, in the scant light, he followed the flicker of flames, a steady, solemn procession of candlelight weaving through the trees. Bound for the bell tower. They had come.

Disturbed by a knocking, he turned at the whine of the heavy wooden door.

‘Brother Thomas.’ It was Dominic, the new postulant, still being versed in the ways of the monastery. ‘There is a Father Sheridan asking to see you. Shall I show him in?’

Brother Thomas frowned in surprise. He had not seen Father Sheridan for many a year. He wondered at this unexpected visit.

‘Yes, of course. Please. Show him in.’

The boy disappeared from the door, Father Sheridan appearing soon in his place.

‘Thomas.’ Father Sheridan greeted Thomas warmly. ‘It’s good to see you after all this time.’

‘And you, Declan.’ They clasped hands, Brother Thomas studying his old acquaintance. He remembered when last he had seen him. The three years that had passed had changed Father Sheridan only slightly. He was stouter, his once-greying hair whiter. But his skin was still fresh, his expression as ever warm. They held eyes for a moment before Father Sheridan spoke.

‘It’s been too long, Thomas. We have not seen each other since . . .’

He did not finish but Brother Thomas nodded. ‘Please,’ Brother Thomas said, gesturing to two chairs by the small fire in the hearth; the night on the cusp of autumn was chill in the stony vastness of the monastery. ‘Sit.’

Father Sheridan stepped across the room, the pine floorboards creaking beneath his feet. Brother Thomas watched him take in the surroundings he had once known so well, the thick, ochre walls, the blood reds and gold gilding of the painted icons, the graceful and sorrowful face of the statuette Madonna. ‘How have you been?’ Father Sheridan asked of his host. ‘You look well. You serve as a champion for monastic life.’

Brother Thomas smiled. ‘I am well. And you?’

‘The students are keeping me busy.’ Seeming lost in thought, Father Sheridan passed the chairs at the hearth to wander to the window. He stood silently for a moment, looking out. ‘So they have come. On this, the third anniversary of her passing.’

Brother Thomas stood silent behind him. Every year on this night, as the sun set, they came. Came to pay homage to the one they called the Rose.

Father Sheridan mused. ‘Her pilgrims. Come to walk the Way of the Rose. For what she saw came to be.’ He turned slowly from the window. ‘It seemed fitting that I come tonight, as it is of her we must speak.’

Brother Thomas observed the priest. ‘You wish to speak to me of Rosaleen Moore?’

‘Yes.’ Brother Thomas said nothing, but gestured again to the chairs by the fire. Father Sheridan sat, Brother Thomas taking a seat to face him. ‘You know I saw her?’ Father Sheridan said. ‘Shortly before she died.’

Brother Thomas turned to the fire. ‘I did not.’

‘When she was dying she called for me. She was a woman haunted. And now I too am haunted. Haunted by what she told me. Of herself.’ He paused. ‘Of the Abbot.’

Brother Thomas looked up as the priest fell silent.

‘It seems the Abbot haunts us all,’ Father Sheridan said at last, casting his eyes over the chamber. ‘He, the confessor. He who for so long heard the sins of others, now condemned to a cell to pay for his own. When I think of the many hours I spent talking to him in this very room. Of the many years I knew him. And then to learn what he did. Still, I cannot conceive of it.’

Brother Thomas turned again to the fire as Father Sheridan went on, ‘I always believed him a good man.’

‘He was a good man,’ Brother Thomas said softly.

‘It is because of the Abbot I come to you now,’ Father Sheridan said. ‘Because of him that I must tell you what Rosaleen spoke of that night on her deathbed. What she told me I could hardly believe. I am not sure I believe it now. That is why I must speak to you of it.’ His eyes moved as if remembering. ‘I can still see her so pale, so frail against the pillows as she struggled to speak, yet so desperate to be heard, to make her peace.’ He lowered his eyes to gaze upon the flames. ‘I see her. I hear her still.’

Eccles Street, Dublin, August 1915

Now I am to die, Father, I find my heart returning to when I was born. I was born to a winter wind – the wild wind that howled around the Clare hills far, far from here. I hear it whispering to me now at the window. It carried me into this world, now it comes to carry me away.

I hope it lets me fly, over every place I have loved. Over the burst of broad Dublin streets so alive, every alleyway and arch, the great, rushing Liffey. But I have a deep fear. That it will sweep me away to the blue Dublin mountains. And, there, will set me down. By the monastery, in the woodland. At the bell tower.

You will come to know why I fear it, Father. Perhaps the bell tower strikes fear in your own heart for what has happened there. And it is of what happened there that I must speak. That of which I must cleanse my soul. But more, more than for my own soul, I care for the soul of another: the Abbot’s. I cannot rest knowing what he has confessed.

I learned of his confession in these weeks past. And that is why I called for you. For now, at my dying, I must tell the truth. A truth so terrible I could never speak it before. But, first, you must hear how it all came to be. What trouble brought me here to the city. The greater, much greater trouble that found me here.

Perhaps I need not fear. Perhaps the wind will be kind. Perhaps it will carry me home. Take me from these streets back to the hills of Clare. Take me back as I will take you now, Father – for I want you to understand where it all began. And what gift or curse I was born with.

The wind rattled the old cottage windows as my mother birthed me. My aunts Cot and Bridie were with her in the loft room, my uncles pacing, sucking on their pipes in the kitchen below. My father had died while my mother yet carried me, so it was to that cottage, her own birthplace, that she had returned for her labour, and it was there that I grew. By night my dressmaker aunts would sew under paraffin lamps in the parlour, by day sink their fists into cavernous bowls on the kitchen table to knead the bread dough. My mother had nimble fingers for sewing but no hand for baking and Aunt Cot would chase her away for fear her very nearness would sink the bread. But Aunt Cot would lift me on to the chair at the table and hold the knife with me to cut the cross into the round dough. ‘To break it more easily once it’s baked,’ she said. ‘To give thanks to Our Lord,’ Aunt Bridie would counter as Aunt Cot raised her eyes to the heavens.

Aunt Bridie tried to instil in me some religion but became disgusted and ashamed of my heathen ways as I grew. She admonished me for running to the fields to escape the evening rosary, for paying no attention at Mass and certainly no heed to her little sermons at home. To her mind, I did not show enough reverence for Father Byrne when he came to call. Later I would suffer the consequences of her wariness of me but when still a child I was happily unaware of the seeds I was sowing.

In our home, the kitchen was the biggest room, with its stone floor and wide hearth and a hefty hook for pots over the roaring fire. I slept with my mother, often rising early to catch Aunt Bridie on the loft stairs, arranging her red flannel petticoat, Uncle Pat like a white ghost in his long johns folding away the settle bed in the kitchen below. We women would help my uncles Mikey and Pat work the small farm; I scattered chicken feed in the yard, always insisting I could carry the too-heavy pails of frothy, warm milk. My favourite task was to help harness the horse to the trap before we went on our way to fetch water from the crossroads pump, or to Nance Darcy’s post office and grocery on the road to town. It was there the men collected their tobacco, the women their messages and gossip and always a bag of lemon sweets or toffee for me.

Once the cottage had housed my grandfather and grandmother and their seven children. With my grandparents dead, there remained only five siblings there. Aunt Ellen lived married in Dublin, but they’d had another brother – Joey. Joey was spoken of only in whispers. As if his name might cut their tongues, leave them wounded.

They said my grandmother had the sight. They would talk of the night of the face at the window, how, sitting at the kitchen hearth, Grandma had seen her cousin, Willy, appear at the window, his face aglow from the fire, lighting his smile in the darkness. She had gone to seek him in the yard, calling for him, but he was not there. There was no need for Grandma to be told he was dead. She knew it before his father brought her the news, before the priest announced it at the altar. Mammy, my aunts and uncles talked of that often. But it was only rare nights by the fire, in solemn whispers, they would talk of Joey. Of the night Grandma had awoken drenched, shouting Joey’s name. Overtaken by fear for him, she had rushed to make sure he was safe in his bed. He, a young, strong lad of seventeen had laughed at her, telling her to away from the room and let him rest.

It was two days later it happened. My uncles would help with the threshing at neighbouring farms, and it was one such summer afternoon. All the men around were bending, gathering the straw so nobody saw what happened. But my uncles looked up at an ungodly screaming. Joey must have stepped out before the thresher’s monstrous blade, become caught in it. They never spoke of what they saw then, only of how all the men came running, how my uncles had chased with Joey’s bloodied body into the farm’s kitchen, desperately trying to revive his weakening heart. But he was gone. They would talk of how my grandmother fled to the fields, wailing, when they brought her the news. How for hours they could not coax her back inside, the cows chewing dumbly as they looked upon her, numb to human pain.

My grandmother had the sight. They said she had been touched by the Graces. A gift. Yet Aunt Bridie soon said mine was not a gift but a curse. That no good could come of a girl like me.

I was born with a sense, Father.

2

It came upon me softly, the seeing. When I was young, I knew no different. Did not know that many times I could sense what others could not. It began simply. Oftentimes, our neighbours would gather in the kitchen to chat, laugh and swap gossip. Sometimes Aunt Cot would take up the accordion and we would beat out the rhythm and sing.

Long before Billy, a lad from a neighbouring farm, and I became sweethearts I would take secret glances at him, thinking the others could feel it too: the stab in his gut as he watched our friends growing ever more merry, waving their whiskeys or stout to the music. It was only later, on the long summer nights as we held hands in the sweet hay-scented fields that I looked into his deep sorrow-filled eyes and listened to his whispers of how he had watched his father die from drink.

With Nance Darcy, the postmistress, too, I would see her smile as her husband talked, but sit far from him. I could sense the resentment through her pores, and knew she believed he had done her wrong. Only years later did the women tell me she blamed him for an argument that had seen their son leave them to live far away.

The trouble was, I was young. So young, and innocent of my difference, I would say what I saw.

‘He is sorry,’ I said to Nance Darcy by the kitchen fire one evening, touching her hand. ‘Please be kind to him.’

‘What are you saying, child?’ Her voice sharp, she quickly glanced around to see if others had heard. I could sense her shame and wondered what I had said wrong.

‘Is our Rosaleen at her sorcery again?’ Uncle Mikey said, laughing. ‘Come away, you little tyke, and don’t be tormenting our friends.’

My aunts and uncles paid little mind to my early utterings, Mammy seeming to accept it with a soft knowing. But Aunt Bridie would stare, her eyes hard and black.

‘There’s devilment in that child,’ I heard her say once to Uncle Mikey. ‘Something wrong, some dark trickery in her.’

‘Don’t be raving,’ Uncle Mikey said. ‘She’s only like her grandmother and just a wean. Leave the child alone.’

It was Uncle Mikey told me my name meant Little Rose. Sometimes he would call me that as he lifted me on to his knee, I pulling at his braces, loving the smell of pipe smoke on his jacket. He told me too that one of our poets, James Clarence Mangan, had written a love song to our country, had named her ‘Dark Rosaleen’: ‘My own Rosaleen! ’Tis you shall have the golden throne. ’Tis you shall reign, and reign alone.’ The poet had given Ireland the disguise of a woman, for our country was unfree, and we had been forbidden to utter our love for her.

As he recited the poem, I would picture myself sitting high upon that golden throne, waving my hand over our streams and rivers, mountains and hills, granting to them the freedom he talked of. But I thought little of it, for to me I had freedom. Freedom to run in the fields, to lift my face, my arms to the wind I revelled in, that I felt stir my blood as it blew from the hills. But as I grew amongst those hills so grew another stirring. My sense within. The seeing.

I was fifteen when I first saw the shadow. Uncle Pat had always been such a strong man, tall and broad. Those days he was as he’d ever been, ready with a smile, a joke on his lips, pushing up the peak of his cap to give me a wink. Yet I felt it. A darkness around him. As if a sinister stranger stalked him.

I did not know then what the shadow meant. I only knew it was nothing kind. So, every morning, as he readied himself to work the farm, fearing for him what had befallen Joey, I begged him, ‘Please, please, Uncle Pat, don’t work today.’

But he would just grin and shoo me away. ‘Go on out of that,’ he’d say, giving me a pinch on my cheek. As the days passed and nothing befell Uncle Pat on the farm, I tried to persuade the others that Uncle Pat should see the doctor. That I was sure something ailed him. But they only tried to placate me.

‘Your Uncle Pat is as hardy as any bull,’ Aunt Cot said, the others murmuring their agreement.

It was months later the sickness showed itself. The falter in his walk, a shortness in his breath, a grey pall on his cheeks. Often his pipe had made him cough but now that cough was racking, his voice hoarse. It was then, at last, he visited the town doctor. Uncle Pat had a tumour in his throat – we heard later that the doctor was able to feel it with his fingers – and Dr Hogan feared the worst, that the cancer had spread to his lungs.

There was nothing could be done. Within weeks, Uncle Pat had taken to the bed in the loft room. He could not speak, he could not swallow. Dr Hogan made him up a mix of morphine, cocaine and gin for the pain, while Aunt Cot swore a poultice of dock root would soothe him. Aunt Bridie went to our local healer, Maggie Devlin, who vowed Uncle Pat could be cured by spreading a salve of dough and lard on his neck, and this Aunt Bridie took to doing daily. They kept me downstairs, away from Uncle Pat so I was spared his suffering, but I could feel the sickness seeping through the thick lime walls.

I could feel, too, Aunt Bridie’s growing suspicion and hostility towards me. It was almost as if she blamed me for Uncle Pat’s illness. As if by my knowing I had wished it upon him.

Our friends and neighbours were gathered in the parlour, saying the rosary the night he died. I knelt with them, willing him to live, but I knew from Aunt Cot’s face as she slowly descended the stairs that it was over. Those same friends and neighbours stayed close as we waked him for two days in the parlour, kept vigil over his coffin. As Nance Darcy came to clasp Aunt Bridie’s hand, I saw Aunt Bridie’s sharp look at me, heard her say, ‘We’d better all mind Rosaleen’s black eye.’

I think that Uncle Pat’s death played its part in what came to be. For it marked for me the end of carefree days, of childhood. No longer did I wear my sense lightly but as if I carried a great weight. Why could I see what others could not? Why should I be shown another’s fate if there was nothing to be done? I would sit for hours in the hay barn and wonder. More than wonder, I would fear. Fear I had been chosen to act.

From that time on, my aunts and uncle talked of me in grave tones to Mammy, when I was out of sight. Coming from the yard through the kitchen door one evening, I heard them at the fire, their voices hushed.

‘It’s not right or natural,’ Aunt Bridie was saying.

‘How can you say that when our own mother had the sight?’ Mammy said, trying to defend me.

‘It’s not the same,’ Aunt Bridie said. ‘Our mother was a God-fearing woman touched by the Graces, a God-given gift. Rosaleen has no fear of God, she has all the air of a heathen. She’s far from graced.’

‘Don’t be saying that about my daughter,’ Mammy hissed at her, while Uncle Mikey just sighed.

‘Stop with your nonsense, Bridie,’ he said. ‘My only fear is for the child. Her tongue is too free, she’s too quick to reveal what she sees. I worry it will bring trouble upon her.’

‘Trouble upon us all,’ Aunt Bridie said sternly.

On that she was right.

3

I was twenty-one when first trouble found me, in the year of 1910. Billy and I were now sweethearts and had been courting nearly three years. His father dead, he had inherited the family farm and so was in a position to ask me to be his wife. He had not yet made his formal proposal but it was understood between us. In the meantime I was content helping my aunts with their dressmaking and mending for the village and town beyond. I was happy. I believed I knew what lay before me. It seemed in that way at least, my sense had deserted me. For then came Nora.

Nora Culhane lived in the village. She was near my own age, but it had long been rumoured how Rory Kane, a much older, married man was around her and she around him. Over the post office counter, Nance Darcy whispered of it to Mammy, my aunts and any who might be there. All would shake their heads at it, but on meeting the man on the street with his wife, Deirdre, not a word of it would be spoken. It was only when we were on our way that knowing looks were exchanged. Aunt Cot would say, ‘Poor Deirdre,’ and nothing more.

Yet I felt Nora herself maligned. Although I would always make sure to smile if meeting her on the street, most would snub her – as if she and she alone were to blame, the betrayal of Deirdre all her doing. As if Rory himself had no hand in it.

‘What would any man do?’ Aunt Bridie said one evening at the kitchen fire. ‘When a girl offers herself up, makes herself a temptress. Flaunts herself as she does.’

My mother was kinder; I knew she felt for Nora. ‘She’s only young, Bridie. She hardly knows what she’s doing. He’s older, a married man, he should know better.’

But Aunt Bridie just scoffed, while Aunt Cot held her tongue to keep the peace, Uncle Mikey the same.

It was high summer, the hay brought in, when Billy and his mother hosted a gathering at their farm for all who had helped with the harvest. Billy’s mother and I had set up the tables in the yard, preparing them with bread, cheeses and hams, and bottles of beer and orange. I was standing with my neighbours, chatting in the fierce July sun when I spied Nora standing mute and alone in the shadow of the hay barn, looking lost, her thoughts far away. It was only a slight movement but I noticed her touching her stomach as if it were something strange to her. At first I thought she might feel sickly in the summer sun, but then it struck me. I needed no special sense. If they only looked, any with eyes could see.

I made my way over to her, passing some remark about the sun being a demon. I offered her a sip of my orange but she shook her head, keeping her eyes lowered, seeming reluctant to talk. But I persisted. I wanted her to know she had a friend if she wished for one.

‘Are you all right, Nora?’ I said. ‘Are you well?’

‘I’m well enough.’ Her voice was gruff. ‘Though most here would wish I wasn’t.’

She had raised what I would not dare, so I took my chance.

‘Don’t mind them. Don’t mind what people say.’

‘So you’ve heard the talk?’ She looked up, searching my face. ‘They chatter as loud as monkeys, you’d think those flapping on their tongues would hear. But look at them.’ She nodded over to where Rory and Deirdre stood laughing with others. ‘Look at her. She’s deaf and blind to it. It’s as if they are the most devoted couple in the world. When all the time he tells me if only he could he’d be rid of her. That he wants only me. But they blame me. Everyone blames me.’

Her tongue was bitter but I could hear the pain on it. I touched her arm.

‘Would you not leave him, Nora? Let him be and find another. Look at him. He is as old and gnarled as knotted oak.’

She laughed but instantly grew serious. ‘I can’t. Not now.’ Her voice was hushed, I could barely hear. She touched her stomach, unawares.

‘Why?’ I said softly. ‘Because you are carrying?’

She stared at me, panic in her eyes. ‘You know? How do you know? Who else knows? Tell me.’

‘No one.’ I spoke quickly, wanting to reassure her. ‘I’ve heard no talk of it. I only guessed, that’s all.’

She looked at me closely. ‘They say you see things. Can you see now what I must do? Have you the answer to it?’

No, I had no answer to that. ‘Does he know?’ I asked instead.

She nodded. ‘Yes. And he says there is a way.’

‘A way to do what?’

‘To rid myself of it.’ She whispered to me. ‘He has Maggie Devlin helping.’

Maggie Devlin. She who had assured Aunt Bridie that her salve would save Uncle Pat. Who had a potion for every ill.

‘She is making up a remedy for a price,’ Nora went on. ‘One that will cause me to lose the baby naturally. That will see it gone.’

I felt suddenly unsettled. Will see it gone. I glanced up at the sun, its glare upon the blade of a scythe leaning up against the hay barn. And something in the harsh, relentless light on the metal stirred within me a dread. Filled me with a sickly foreboding.

* * *

Over the following days I let Uncle Mikey travel alone on the trap, walking by myself to the post office to allow me to pass Maggie Devlin’s cottage. I’d stare at the array of coloured bottles and strange dolls gathered inside her window. Peering through the net curtains, sometimes I would see the shadow of her moving within.

The dread stayed with me, creeping through me, until I could keep silent no more. On Uncle Mikey’s next trip to the village I joined him, so I could visit Nora. Alone, I went to the house on the main street and knocked on Nora’s door. After her mother called her to the step, Nora barely had time to greet me before I spoke.

‘Nora, you say you know I see things. Sense things. Well, I am telling you now, I sense something dark around you. Something malign. I feel it from Maggie Devlin. I feel it deep in my stomach, in my very blood.’

She stared at me, looked back through the doorway to make sure her mother was gone. ‘What could be more malign than what I carry now?’ she whispered. ‘Don’t you realise what will happen to me? My mother would not be able to stand the shame. If Maggie Devlin doesn’t help me, I’ll be sent away to the nuns, kept a prisoner in one of their homes for fallen women. I couldn’t bear it. I’d rather take my chances with Maggie Devlin and her cures.’

‘And what if she offers you not a cure, but a curse?’ I urged. ‘I feel her as a vulture, Nora, see a swarm of black birds gathering around you. I’m begging you, stay away!’

But she would not listen. She did not want to hear. Those nights those fearful black birds would swoop on me with cruel cries, clawing me in my dreams, waking me. One night, woken again by their screeches, lying silently by my sleeping mother, I settled it in my mind. I had sensed the shadow that had stalked Uncle Pat. I sensed it now around Nora. I might not have been able to save Uncle Pat, but with Nora there was a chance. I would not be found wanting.

* * *

The next morning I walked the mile of hedgerows to Maggie Devlin’s cottage. I hesitated at the sight of it, shadowed by trees, its walls sunken in the ditch, but I forced myself on through the small, whining gate.

Answering my knock, she greeted me with a look of suspicion. Grey hair knotted at her neck, she wiped her hands down the long bibbed apron that covered her black dress.

‘Well?’ She blocked the door to keep me from peering in. ‘What is it you want?’

‘I want to come in, Maggie.’ I tried not to falter. ‘I want to talk to you.’

She frowned, as if she were going to chase me away. But it seemed curiosity got the better of her and she stood aside to let me enter. Inside the dark kitchen, the long table was set with colourful bottles and bowls, a hearth lined with trinkets and curios. She did not offer me a seat and I did not take one.

‘It’s about Nora. Nora Culhane.’ I spoke as firmly as my nerves would allow. ‘I know what you are doing for her.’

Shock sparked in her eyes, although she tried to disguise it. She spoke roughly.

‘You would be wise not to talk of such things. What do you know of Nora Culhane?’ Her eyes were hard. ‘And what do you know of me?’

I kept my voice firm. ‘I know you are concocting a potion for her. One you say will relieve her of her trouble. I fear it will not.’

She gave a caustic laugh, then said, ‘I don’t say I am doing anything for the girl. It is you who is saying it. If I were to provide a remedy for any girl in trouble, I would know very well what to do, I am greatly practised in it. But now you think you know better. I suppose you have had one of your visions. They say you are a strange one. It seems they are right.’

‘What is in the potion?’ My voice was urgent now. ‘Please. Tell me.’

She shook her head as if bemused by me. Then, as if to humour me, she crossed to the dresser, taking down two clay pots.

‘My ingredients are no secret.’ She carried the pots to the table. ‘If you ever find yourself in trouble, young Rosaleen, I would make a mixture of plants and herbs that have been used and trusted for years. Ones well known to every healer.’ She placed the pots on the table for me to see. In one were small lilac flowers on long stalks, in the other a green fringed plant.

‘A blend of pennyroyal from the ditch, and fringed rue – we call it herb of grace. If taken for ten days by any woman in a delicate condition she can be sure she will be cured. That would be an end to it.’ She grew impatient then. ‘Now begone and don’t bother me any more.’ She waved me from the kitchen. ‘And mind your tongue. Don’t go talking of Nora Culhane and don’t go talking of me.’