“Good evening, Mother Agnes,” Slade said with a smile and bow.
“Why, if it isn’t John Slade as I live!” Glad surprise brightened her stern visage. “What in heaven brings ye here?”
“I’ve a guest for you.” Slade introduced me. “Could you put her up for the night?”
“With pleasure.” The nun opened the door, smiled at me, and beckoned.
Slade was installing me in a Roman Catholic convent!
“I’ll see you in the morning,” he said.
32
Mother Agnes put me in a vacant cell where a figure of Jesus on the cross hung over an iron cot. I felt as if I had entered forbidden territory; yet I slept well. In the morning I breakfasted with the nuns. They were kind and asked no questions. The soda bread, black pudding, and stewed coffee restored my energy. When Slade came to fetch me, I felt strong enough to face the day.
“Good morning, Miss Bronte.” He was clean-shaven, and his color had turned healthier. “Are you ready to tell me where we’re going?”
He didn’t say where he’d been, and I didn’t ask. “To Clare House, in County Wicklow. It belongs to Sir William Kavanagh, Niall’s father, head of the family’s whiskey brewery.”
“Ah. Let us hope our man has gone to ground there.”
We boarded yet another hired carriage. As it took us out of the city, Slade cleared his throat. “There are matters we need to discuss.”
Apprehension clenched my hands in my lap. “I suppose so.”
“We can’t just gad about like this together.”
Embarrassment warmed my cheeks. I knew how improper it was for a single woman to travel with a single man not related to her. That I’d done so before with Slade didn’t excuse my behavior. Then he had posed as my cousin. Then I’d been certain that nothing regrettable would happen, but now things were dangerously different. Furthermore, I had to protect Currer Bell’s reputation as well as Charlotte Bronte’s.
But I said, “I can’t afford to care what people will think. To save Britain from Niall Kavanagh, Wilhelm Stieber, and Russia, I must risk my respectability.”
Although Slade nodded in resignation, he frowned. “Someone is bound to wonder what our relationship is. The Kavanagh family, for example. How will we introduce ourselves?”
That was a good question. I knew the only answer. “We must say that I am your wife.”
“My wife.” Slade sounded sobered and chastened. I could tell what he was thinking: if things had been different, I would be his wife now. The same knowledge saddened me. He didn’t like the idea of the pretense, which made a mockery of our past; nor did I. “Well, I suppose there’s no alternative.”
I took from my pocket the cheap, imitation-gold band I’d bought in London, and I put it on my ring finger. “There. That makes it official.”
We looked at the ring on my hand, then away from each other. Instead of speaking, we looked out the window as the carriage rattled through Dublin. The city was filled with coaches and omnibuses. I studied the people on the streets. Rich and poor, some were red-haired and freckled; others blond and Norse; others dark-haired with pale skin and eyes. Some chatted and laughed as they went about their business; others brooded darkly. Yet they all seemed to share a stalwart endurance of misfortune and suffering.
We drove along a rural highway south into County Wicklow. The air was fresh, mild, and spring-like, the sky a bright blue filled with billowy white clouds over a landscape colored every shade of green-emerald, chartreuse, jade, moss, and viridian. Ancient stone towers and pillars studded fields divided by walls, hedgerows, and patches of woodland. Sheep and cattle grazed. Thatched cottages sported flowers in window boxes. We passed farmers in long-tailed jackets and tall hats, smoking pipes and driving carts pulled by shaggy-maned ponies. The Wicklow Mountains faded into azure in the distance. But even this natural beauty was scarred by the Great Famine. Villages lay in ruins, abandoned by peasants who’d left Ireland in search of food and work. Many fields were rocky and barren, the churches surrounded by gravestones. We passed wagons overloaded with grim, shabbily dressed families headed to ships bound for the New World. I felt a terrible pity for these people forced to leave their homes, and a burning anger toward those who had not helped them or had worsened their plight.
My first glimpse of Clare House predisposed me to hate the Kavanagh family.
Their estate had a vast park with lawns and woods, terraces and gardens. We drove along a formal avenue lined with beeches, to a huge eighteenth-century Palladian mansion built of silvery gray granite. Its hundreds of windows surely kept an army of maids occupied.
“That one family should live in such luxury in a country so poor! It’s outrageous!” I exclaimed. “Have the Kavanaghs no shame?”
“Probably none,” Slade said, “but take care not to show what you think of them. We need their cooperation.”
We got out of the carriage on the driveway that circled a fountain, near the bottom of the wide front steps where twin stone lions displayed the family crests. The main door opened. Three men met us. The one in the middle was white-haired, dignified, dressed in black. His comrades wore country tweeds, and each carried a rifle. He looked down his haughty nose at us. “Good morning. May I be of service?”
I took him for the Kavanagh’s butler and his companions the groundskeepers, protecting the house from the outlaws that the famine had created. Slade introduced himself, then said, “I’m a commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London.” He produced a badge that identified him as such. “My wife and I are here to see Sir William Kavanagh.”
The butler studied Slade. I could see his distrust battling his fear of angering a representative of English officialdom. “I’m afraid Sir William is busy.”
“Tell him it’s about his son Niall,” Slade said.
“Ah. Just a moment.” The butler marched into the mansion, while the groundskeepers stood guard over us. In a moment he returned. “Sir William is in the ballroom. Come with me, please.”
The lord of the manor was merrymaking while the commoners suffered! Slade and I followed the butler into an enormous room whose high, white ceiling was encrusted with plaster rosettes and ivy borders; gold-framed mirrors reflected enormous crystal chandeliers. French doors overlooked a terrace, a fountain in which stone dolphins spouted, and a sweep of lawn and gardens. But except for these features, the scene in the ballroom was not what I’d expected.
Rows of cots contained pale, haggard, emaciated people. A physician ministered to them. Three women in white aprons distributed food. The two young ones pushed a trolley laden with a tureen and served bowls of soup to the patients. The older woman was small and delicate, the dark hair under her cap streaked with gray. She sat down by the bed of a child and spooned soup into his mouth. A man was unloading stacks of clean linens from a cart. When he saw Slade and me, he stopped his work and approached us.
“My apologies for the informal reception, Commissioner.” He extended his hand to Slade. “William Kavanagh, at your service.”
He was in his sixties, broad across the shoulders, with thick, bowed legs and unruly red hair turning white. His genial face was rosy and sweating from exertion. With his shirtsleeves rolled up, he hardly matched the elegance of his manor, but he had confidence grounded in wealth and status. He indicated the older woman. “This is my wife Kathleen.”
She came to his side and curtseyed, shyly polite. Her immense, clear blue eyes were fringed by black lashes. She must have been a beauty in her youth, and she was lovely still.
“Since the famine started, the county’s been rife with consumption, cholera, and typhoid,” Sir William said. “We’ve set up a sick ward here.”
“I see,” Slade said. I could tell from his tone of voice that he, too, had changed his prejudiced ill opinion of the Kavanaghs.