• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

His first impulse was to run. Then worry and curiosity, coupled with fear for his father and a sense that their doom might as well be shared, won out over impulse. Patrick crouched on the cold ground and dug hastily.

He had to burrow beneath more than a foot of earth before his hand struck something smooth and hard. Cautiously, he brushed away the soil.

Within the deep hole was a sailor’s chest, bound in tarnished brass.

Patrick’s stomach tightened as his fingers ran over the lid, knowing that he was trespassing on something sacred to his father, and at the same time unable to resist. Believing the chest might hold a clue to Old Pat’s redoubtable decision to brave the famine rather than leave for a chance at life in America, he swallowed his discomfort, pried the rusty catch open, and lifted the lid.

Inside the small chest were many layers of linen, strewn with tiny clods of earth. Patrick hesitated, then brushed away the dirt and carefully lifted the linen bundle from the chest, sitting back on the grass of the forest floor as he unwound the fabric.

His heart beat heavily in his chest; the wind blew through the glade, rustling the leaves ominously.

At the center of the linen wrappings was a delicate cap fashioned of a dark-colored fabric woven with pearls. Nothing more.

Patrick sat, lost in thought, while the wind whipped all around him, pondering the significance of what he had found. Finally, unable to make sense of it, he took out his handkerchief and painstakingly wrapped the fragile cap in it, stowing it in his pocket. He then rewound the linen and returned it to the chest, which he quickly reburied, obscuring the hole once more.

BY NOON THAT DAY Patrick had still not come to peace about his quandary. The handkerchief burned a hole in his pocket, his mind itching to make sense of it, why his father considered the pearl cap to be such treasure.And why had he not sold it, when he sold everything else of value they owned but Fionnbar? The beautiful horse was awaiting his leave-taking as well; Old Pat had offered him to the constable who patrolled the three counties and who promised to come by at midsummer to pay in grain.Money had ceased to be of much use; there was no food to be bought, even when there was coin in the pocket. Old Pat was worried that the constable, when he finally came, would be as empty-handed as everyone else.

At noon Patrick checked the hen. She had been a solid layer before the blight, and was fairly young, so while her eggs were small, she still produced one most days, even now that she was foraging in the grass in the absence of feed. She had laid that morning, and so Patrick was shocked to discover a second egg in the nest, gleaming white with a hint of milky blue, the one color he could distinguish.

This all-but-magical occurrence, and thoughts of the faerie ring, set his mind to thinking about Bronagh, the witch-woman who lived alone at the northern outskirts of Glencar. His uncle Colm had once accused Bronagh of stealing his milk in the form of a hare, back when Colm still owned cows. Bronagh had delivered Patrick, and most of the children in the village. She climbed nearby Carrauntoohil, the tallest peak in Ireland, gathering herbs for medicine and ceremony, and was said to celebrate the pagan feast of Lughnasadh, but still managed to attend daily Mass at Queen of Martyrs, Glencar’s tiny church.

Father Flaherty, the pastor of Queen of Martyrs, had publicly declared, after hearing her confession, that she was harmless, a bit daft, perhaps, and without question odd, but not in league with Satan, and therefore should be pitied as the forlorn and lonely woman that she was, to whom kindness should be extended whenever possible. Bronagh, in turn, had tended the priest in his final hours as he lay dying of typhus resulting from the blight, had brought him consolation and a spiced soup that had broken his fever, eased his suffering and helped him to sink into a peaceful, painless sleep until his passing.

Bronagh