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.
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?