Land of a Thousand Dreams (20 page)

Less than an hour later Finola began to fight her way back to consciousness. Watching her struggle, Louisa anguished for the pain the child was obviously enduring. Her own body winced with each difficult breath, every flail of the hand and tortured gasp uttered. The slightest movement seemed torment.

But the most terrible thing of all, indeed the one evidence of Finola's suffering that Louisa found most painful to witness, was the voiceless cry, the futile, tortured rasp of a whisper that the girl gave over and over again throughout her agony.

As she twisted and cringed, her face drawn in a taut rictus of horror, her hands knotted and raised as if in self-defense, Finola repeatedly opened her mouth in a futile attempt to cry out.

Shuddering with the girl's every effort, Louisa thought that silent scream must be the most heartbreaking sound she had ever heard.

The ship had put out just past dawn. By now Dublin City was only a stretch of coast, great rocks, and a number of lighthouses.

Mooney took a moment to give it a last look. The wind was numbing, the spray off the ocean laced with ice. He hunched deep inside his jacket and stood, watching.

It would be months before he saw the harbor again. Months of rough seas, hot-tempered sailors, and squalid living. Months of hard work and cold nights. Months of boredom.

He would look her up when he came back. He wouldn't forget her, that was certain. Not for long.

His lips cracked in the semblance of a smile. She'd not be forgetting him either, he would warrant. Not for a minute.

12

Doing Battle with the Enemy

A starless landscape came
'Twixt that scene and my aching sight,
And anon two spires of flame
Arose on my left and right;
And a warrior throng
Were marching along,
Timing their tramp to a battle song,
And I felt my heart from their zeal take fire,
But, ah! my dream fled as that host grew nigher!

THOMAS D'ARCY MCGEE (1825–1868)

O
nly the nun was allowed to remain in the bedroom where Finola had been taken. She had been summoned to help Lucy put Finola to bed, and, no doubt because she was a woman and a nun, the surgeon had requested that she stay.

Just as quickly, he had ordered Lucy to leave. More than likely
her
kind of woman was offensive to the nun—perhaps to the surgeon himself.

Lucy would not have expected anything else. Still, she begged to stay with Finola, insisting she might be of some help. The physician, however, remained adamant: only the nun would remain; Lucy would wait outside. With the big black man watching her and the stricken-faced Fitzgerald looking as if he might spring from his wheelchair in a raving fury at any moment, Lucy knew it would be foolish to press. It was enough that she had been allowed to come, more than she could have hoped for.

Upon arrival, as she hovered near the bedroom door, she had been surprised when the black man—they called him
Sandemon
—brought a straight chair, indicating it was for her. Bracing the chair with his hands, he said kindly, “You can wait here. No doubt you will want to stay close-by, for you may be needed soon.”

Now, nearly two hours later, Lucy sat, still cradling Finola's wee cat in her lap, her eyes filling with tears as she remembered what the black man had said to her. There had been a time when such words might have thrilled her heart. To be
needed,
to be of some value—to
someone
—she could not imagine such a thing. She might have lived long and content on the knowledge that, at least once, she had been important to someone, that her life had counted for more than a few years of emptiness.

But now…now, she could only mourn the waste her life had been. Her lack of worth, her uselessness, somehow seemed to make what had happened to Finola just that much more tragic and unthinkable.

What cruel fate had dictated that she, an aging prostitute whose very existence had been squandered on sin, should be spared the pain and degradation of violence—so often the lot of Dublin's whores—while Finola…innocent angel…endured such a vile, merciless attack?

If the God Finola had so often referred to did in fact exist, where had He been last night? Couldn't He see what had been done to this innocent one who trusted Him…loved Him? Didn't He care?

Lucy remembered a street preacher who had once appeared, night after night, on the corner near Healy's place to speak of God. She had stood with Finola at the top of the stairs and listened to the old man talk of God and His Son—called
Jesus
—who was sent to show His father's love to the world.

The preacher said that God was aware of every child in the world, called them by name, knew the hairs on their heads—indeed, had them numbered. He knew the needs of every soul, claimed the preacher: heard the pleas of all the helpless, felt the pain of those who suffered, wept with every broken heart throughout the ages.

Finola had clung to the man's words, believed them, fed on them—claimed them for her memory. And she had tried, with her hand signs and pen and paper, to explain it all to Lucy.

But Lucy had known, although she smiled and pretended to agree, that the preacher's God—
Finola's
God—wasn't accessible to the likes of Lucy Hoy.

Not wanting to disappoint Finola, she had kept her feelings to herself. Obviously, the lass set great store by this God of Love.

But nobody loved the Lucy Hoys of the world, and that was the truth. A thing had to be worth the loving, now, didn't it? Even for Finola's God—the God of Love—a woman like herself would not be worth the effort.

Of course, such a God could easily love Finola. She was goodness itself, pure and gentle—and innocent. Everyone loved Finola.

But where…where had Finola's God of Love been last night?

In his room, Sandemon was on his knees, waiting for the Light. It had been a long time—a very long time—since he had met in direct encounter so bold an evil, so deep a darkness.

In his own strength, he might have chosen to ignore the old enemy's presence. He might have cowered, all too aware of his own sin and weakness in the face of the dark one, the one who hated all innocence, all things pure and holy—who hated anything touched by the Light. But, although he felt alone, he had the promise that he was not alone, and so he braced himself to persevere.

Besides, his efforts were not on his own behalf, but for the poor girl downstairs whose life hung suspended by a fragile thread. It was for Finola that he must overcome.

The times were rare when his own dealings with the darkness would surface, dredging up from the deep those hideous memories that could, even after so long a time, still shake his peace and haunt his spirit. More often than not, the door remained firmly closed on that time in his life, before the island priests had done battle for his soul…and won.

But now, despite the wall of heavenly fire, the promised hedge of divine protection, he was once more assailed by a savage onslaught of images from the past. Memories, ugly memories, of what he had been, the dark things in which he had played a part, dived at him, attacking him like crazed vultures. He was caught up in a maelstrom of memories—memories of his own wickedness, his corruption, and the tragedy he had inflicted on the lives of others before his deliverance.

He covered his head with one arm as if a veritable host of evil predators would swoop down from the air and fall upon him. Forcing a fist against his mouth, he muffled his cries. As he struggled against what he knew to be an already vanquished foe, he cried out with such vehemence that he drew blood from his hand.

Finally…finally…he felt the darkness begin to fade, until at last, it was replaced by the Light. The blessed Light now banished the fear, gave route to the enemy, then breathed, like fresh air from heaven, the cleansing reminder of love and new life into Sandemon's spirit.

His body and soul wrung dry, drained from the exertion of this unheralded attack, he lifted his head, and then his hands. Enfolded by the Light, he sent up to the throne not a plea for protection, but a power-filled psalm of high praise.

Morgan thought he had known the full force of rage before this day, had been caught up countless times in the whirlwind of anger, to be tossed and battered by storms of blind fury.

But those times had been different, had stopped just short of madness—for then, he had not been helpless, had not been trapped in the cursed wheelchair. Then he had possessed the means to make a difference, to turn his rage outward, into action, instead of inward, on himself—on his weakness, his helplessness, his guilt.

Now, as he sat staring with dull fixation into the fire, it occurred to him that even if he could have freed himself from the wheelchair, there would still be no way to damp the fire that blazed inside him.

He felt as if he might die from the sheer agony of remembering how Finola had looked when Sandemon first carried her inside. So still, so pale and lifeless…so broken.

Until today he had not admitted that he loved her. He had called his affection for the girl by many names, rationalized his feelings by labeling them “brotherly” or “protective.”

He had used every conceivable excuse—all of them justified—for
not
admitting his true feelings: first and most obvious, his being a cripple. The vast age difference between them—clearly, more than a decade. The mystery of her past, who she was, where she had come from—he had even tried to reason that she might belong to another man, although her youth and the years spent in isolation at the inn made it highly unlikely.