‘I am honoured but perhaps there is a young lady in East Tennessee who more greatly deserves the honour,’ she said … and he struck up another waltz as if in answer.
All of a foam after her own decidedly non-carnal waltz with Herr Heidelberg, Ellen went to the open doorway for some cooling air. She stood there watching the sky, listening to the music, thinking of those whom she most dearly missed. The sky, the everlasting sky. Lavelle out there under it. Dead or alive. Maybe watching that same sky, thinking of her. An old poem-prayer – pagan or Christian, she didn’t know – formed on her lips. She had learned it at her father’s knee. All those nights of wonder long ago, under the sheltering stars. High on the Maamtrasna hill, above the Mask and Lough Nafooey. Above Finny’s singing river. Above the world.
‘I am the sky above Maamtrasna,
I am the deep pool of Lough Nafooey;
I am the song of the Finny river,
I am the silent Mask.
I am the low sound of cattle
And the bleating snipe;
I am the deer’s cry
And the cricket’s dance.
In the lover’s eye, am I;
In the beating heart;
I am the unlatched door;
I am the comforting breath.
Now and before, after and evermore,
I am the waiting shore.’
‘The waiting shore,’ she repeated, the great sky listening. ‘I am the waiting shore.’
Music, dancing, always seemed to start her thinking. Too much of it was bad. Thinking led to feelings. High, lonesome feelings like the fiddle-sound behind her. Still, these days she didn’t much give into herself. Just kept working with a kind of blind faith. That one day she’d find them, or they’d find her. Looking back on life was as bad as looking back on Ireland. She was done with all that, was now facing the new day – whatever that might bring … to wherever it might lead her. Like here … a pale ‘St Patrick’s night’ in Virginia – … Maryland … Carolina. She’d never thought of States as feminine. Then again, men were always naming a thing for their women, as if to protect – or to own – it. Louisiana … Georgia … the Southern States seemed to have the best of the gender divide. Louisiana – Louisa’s Land. Ellen thought of her adopted daughter.
Louise, in many respects, was more like herself than Mary was. If not in looks, then certainly in temperament. Ellen smiled. Louise had some inherent waywardness. Needed always to be holding herself in check; dampening down her natural high spirits. Her passion for this life sometimes out-balancing her preparation for the next.
Ellen looked back through the door, to catch a glimpse of Louisa. There she was, gaily dancing with that young Southern boy Jared Prudhomme. Ellen had noticed them talking together. She would speak to Louisa about it.
The one thing, Ellen knew, which held the Sisters high in the respect and affections of the men, was that they, unlike the lay nurses, divided their care equally among all the men. To move from this understanding would undermine the position of the Sisterhood – and re-instate all the barriers and prejudices they had worked so hard to remove. Louisa’s vocation, Ellen knew, was more difficult than Mary’s. Louisa would always be torn between the things of the world and her higher calling. More passionate, more reckless than Mary, Louisa went headlong at life. Not always a good thing. In moments left Louisa unguarded against herself. Much as Ellen herself had been.
Ellen looked again. Mary too was caught up with the celebrations. But it was different. This Earth, with all its hollow baubles, was merely a waiting place for Mary. Until she was borne away by an angel band to eternal glory. Even in that, Mary had an unsullied purity of thought. She did not seek everlasting life, as a thing in itself. With her, it was ever the higher ideal – to see His face, to continue her worship of Him in Heaven as she had on Earth. Mary was fallible humanity at its most beautiful. Mary was a saint.
The sound of a galloping horse startled Ellen. Some news of a battle? Surrender? Peace?
Her heart leaped at the thought.
The horse, pale against the rising moon had no rider. It galloped by her, so close she could smell the thick odour of its lathering skin. On it ran until she could hear its distant drumming but see it no more.
‘“Behold a pale horse, And his name that sat on him was Death; And Hell followed with him;” Revelations, Chapter Six, Verse eight,’ she said, after it.
She remembered the Hades horse in the woods – the memories it had evoked. Black horse, pale horse. It reminded her of something. Out there too champing for battle was the red horse of slaughter, the white horse of conquest. Four horses in all, ever present at the revelation of evil – the Apocalypse. She felt a tremor run over her body.
She walked out a piece into the night, following the sound of the retreating hooves, the horse bringing back her old dream. Lavelle, constant, loving Lavelle, true as the guiding moon. Out there somewhere beneath it. And Stephen, he, who had excited such a temporary madness in her, awaking every reckless passion. She lingered on thoughts of him, their times together, her skin alive with the remembering. Under what moon, what banner, was Stephen Joyce? She dared not think. She and Stephen Joyce could never meet again. She dismissed him from her mind, irritated by her lapse, thinking she long ago had.
When Ellen turned to come back, she saw two figures flit away from the din of the hospital into the glinting night and towards the woods. She hoped they would not arouse the interest of jittery-fingered pickets who lay at every pillar and post between them and the enemy. Especially, as he was a Southern boy.
She would need to speak to Louisa. Urgently.
Jared Prudhomme raised his hand to the winged headdress which Louisa wore.
‘I am afraid to remove it.’
‘As am I,’ she said simply.
Reverentially, the boy raised the starched white edifice above Louisa’s forehead. If he had been expecting her hair to fall, covering her face – it did not. She was cropped more closely than a boy. He touched her cheek. Her eyes never left his for a moment, as if nothing had been revealed. In the far distance, the odd shot loosed by an edgy picket punctured the night. In the near distance she heard a horse.
Tomorrow, she knew, he would return to it. Be out there in some bare, unsheltering plain, or in some fiery copse. Or moving through some ripening wheat field, his golden head … She shivered at the thought. Already he had some fixed premonition regarding tomorrow. She had seen it before in men. Invariably they were right, the death prophecy fulfilling itself. But its foretelling allowed them to prepare. Write the last letter; leave some memento; make final amends with their Maker. The grizzled older campaigners took it all in their stride. They had all ‘seen the elephant’ before. Death, to them was as inevitable as the sun rising. But he was just a boy – a golden boy – and a boy in love.
‘You are more beautiful …’ he began.
‘Sshh!’ she said. ‘Nothing is required.’
When she left him, returned past the silent, growing mounds of limbs, she crossed herself for the limbless and un-whole who, inside the rickety hospital, awaited her.
She considered her solemn vow of chastity not to have been broken.
Inside,