“We tried to take him to St. Anne’s first,” Eliza admitted. The boy had struggled free of Mrs. Darragh, not understanding why she was so desperately glad to see him; Rosamund diverted the woman from him, breaking the news of his situation as gently as she could. “I would have liked to bring him back more healed than this. But he panicked on the steps and wouldn’t go in. Will you go fetch Father Tooley here instead?”
Maggie’s senses were apparently still reeling; she didn’t ask why Eliza’s companions couldn’t go. They could enter churches, so long as they had bread to protect them, but neither Rosamund nor Feidelm was eager to explain this matter to a priest. Maggie nodded, still sitting on the floor. And she stayed there until Eliza added, “Better if ’tis sooner.” Then the girl blinked and scrambled to her feet.
Feidelm stepped over to murmur in her ear once Maggie was gone. “The mother… is she well?”
Tears burned in Eliza’s eyes at the question. Mrs. Darragh was busily telling Rosamund about Owen’s apprenticeship to a bicycle maker, while her strayed lamb of a son investigated the biscuits Maggie had left behind. “No,” she whispered back. “Her wits left when Owen did. I pray having him back will do her some good, but…” But no priestly ritual could mend what had gone wrong with her.
Whether one could help Owen remained to be seen.
The church was only a few streets away, and Maggie had gone out the door like a woman determined to drag the priest back by his collar if necessary. She returned in almost no time at all with Father Tooley at her heels—looking, Eliza was glad to see, more curious and concerned than upset at being rousted.
He stopped in the doorway as if he’d slammed into a pane of glass, staring at Owen.
Maggie nudged him in before the neighbors could grow too curious, and shut the door behind him. “A mhic ó,” Father Tooley breathed, crossing himself. “’Tis true, then.”
He listened as Eliza repeated her explanation, this time going into more detail on what Whelan and Dead Rick had said. She looked to the fae for confirmation, only to realize they’d slipped out while she was talking; how had they done that, without drawing attention? Faerie magic, perhaps. They’d done right, though. Rosamund and Feidelm had come with her because Owen needed looking after, and trusted them more than the family that were strangers to him now. The question of what to do with him, though, belonged to the mortals.
To Father Tooley most of all. He folded his big hands into a neat package while she spoke, a sure sign that he was thinking hard; when she finished, he stood silent for a long moment. Then he shook his head. “’Tisn’t that simple, Eliza. Or perhaps I should say, ’tis simpler. Once a child’s been baptized, he cannot be baptized again. There’s no need for it; God’s grace is indelible. The Devil himself could not wipe it away.”
For all her doubts about Whelan, it seemed some part of Eliza’s mind had seized upon his suggestion as the answer to their problems. Her bitter disappointment at Father Tooley’s words surprised her. “Your baptism didn’t do much to protect Owen, now did it? Could be you aren’t priest enough to do it right.”
It was unfair, and he frowned at her. “Anyone can baptize, Eliza—even a Jew, so long as his words and intent are right. But I don’t know if ’tis true that baptism protects against such things. That… is not the sort of thing they teach in seminary.”
“But look at him.” Helplessness made Eliza’s gesture violent, flinging her hand out to where Owen had curled up on the bed, with Mrs. Darragh stroking his hair. “They say the faerie tried to take his soul, Father. You’ll be telling me next that no one can do that, and maybe ’tis true, but the bastard took something. And if we don’t find some way to wash Owen clean, he can never come back to us, broken or whole. He’s eaten too much of their food. It would kill him, and that’s the truth of it.”
“If you pray—”
“You think I haven’t?”
Father Tooley conceded the point, but still he frowned. “Some other rite, perhaps—an exorcism—”
Maggie made a furious noise, like a dog defending her pup. A pup who had once been her older brother. Eliza said, “Can you tell me honestly that you think he’s a demon in him?”
The priest looked at Owen for another long moment, then shook his head. “No.”
While he grappled with that question, Eliza’s own mind had snatched up one of its own, from something Father Tooley said before. “You said anyone could baptize.”
“Don’t you think of it for one moment,” he said, alarmed. “Ministering the sacrament to an infant who won’t live long enough for the priest to come—to a Protestant converting on his deathbed—that’s a worthy thing, Eliza. But to do it when a priest has refused, when you know the boy has already been baptized, would make a mockery of the sacrament. And sure that would be a grave sin.”
“Then what should I do?” she demanded, forgetting to keep her voice low. “Let him waste away? Abandon him to the faeries? If you think—”
She wanted to keep talking when he raised his hand, but his suddenly thoughtful expression silenced her. “I could,” he began, then stopped.
“Could?” Maggie prompted him, fierce with hope.
Father Tooley grimaced. “The bishop would have my ears for even considering it, he would,” he muttered. “But better to be sure than sorry, and if there’s a chance it might do him good… when I said anyone could baptize, it was true, but not the whole truth. If a heretic administers the sacrament, who’s to say they had the form and meaning of it right?”
“So you baptize the person again,” Eliza said.
He made a cautionary gesture. “Not again. A baptism done wrong doesn’t count in the first place. But if you don’t know for sure, there’s conditional baptism.” A hint of rueful humor crept into his voice. “’Tisn’t much different from the ordinary thing. Si non es baptizatus, that’s all I add—if you aren’t already baptized. If you are, then all you get is a bit of Latin and a bit of water on your head, and no harm to anyone.”
Maggie turned swiftly, as if something could be hiding from her in the tiny room. “Water—I can go to the pump on Old Montague—”
“No,” Eliza said. “Sure it would be better in the church. During Mass—”
Father Tooley barked a laugh. “Oh, no. Think ye two are going to march him up the aisle, and me explaining to everyone what on earth we’re doing?”
Then Eliza remembered Owen’s refusal to enter St. Anne’s. She described it to Father Tooley, and he folded his hands again, tilting his head as if arguing with himself. The debate ended with a decisive nod of his head. “This is what ye’ll do. Next Friday—”
“Next Friday!”
He gave Eliza a quelling look. “’Tis the feast day of St. Symphorian, and the octave of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He’s a patron of children, and if Owen is too old to qualify for his help, we can still beseech the Virgin to intercede. Ye bring him to the church a few hours before dawn. The rite begins on the steps outside; if we can’t get him through the door, then I’ll do it all in the street. And pray God it does some good.”
Owen shivered and curled tighter. He’d gone into that posture, Eliza thought, when they began speaking of God. The faerie stain, no doubt. They couldn’t keep him out here much longer; soon he would have to go back to the Onyx Hall.
Silently, she offered up her own prayer. Blessed Virgin, Mother of God—for Mrs. Darragh’s sake, if no one else’s, help our Owen be well.