The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [12]
“Mind yourself, Emer. Don’t get too hot or your head will start to hurt again.”
“It’s fine, Mammy. I can’t feel it at all anymore.”
They continued down the small dirt lane and over the Carabine Bridge, a land bridge that acted as a trap for intruders. Emer took off down the nearby riverbank and touched the flowing water to her hand. She splashed some onto her face and washed off the paste that had dried there.
“Don’t get wet now. We have a ways to go,” Mairead yelled. “And don’t wash that paste off.”
“But it feels so nice.”
“Emer, just do as I say.”
She returned to her mother’s side, smiling, and Mairead reached down to hold her hand.
That evening, after the cobbler had been visited and the dinner had been eaten, after her brother and father went to visit a friend, Emer sat down with her mother and pulled her needlework from a small sack. Ever since she could remember, her mother had taught her to embroider and sew. Even when they had so little money that they unraveled old bits of twill for thread, they sat and sewed for at least one hour every night. At her young age, Emer was very handy with a needle and could make simple designs on bits of scrap wool. Since she’d turned five, her favorite design was a Celtic cross, rounded at the top and wide at the bottom. She had begged every evening, the whole summer, for permission to embroider a big one on her own cape, but Mairead wouldn’t allow it. That night was no different.
“Don’t you want to improve your stitching before you try something so important?”
“No. I want to put one on my cape. It would be brilliant, wouldn’t it? The other girls would be so envious.”
Mairead imagined the gossip. “We just don’t have the money for that much thread. You’ll have to wait.”
“But you gave Miss Mary a handful of coins today! Why couldn’t you save some for me?” She began to cry, and her voice reached a high-pitched screech on the “me.”
“You shouldn’t be spying, Emer. I’ve told you that a thousand times.”
“You’re giving all our money to Miss Mary and you don’t care about me!”
“That’s not so. That money wasn’t all ours, and Mary is a very important lady, making us these things. You should be less selfish, girl, and listen to me more often. Stop spying and sneaking around things you don’t understand.”
“But I want to make a pretty cape!” Emer screamed, losing all control. “Why don’t you love me anymore?”
Mairead gathered all the sewing things and returned them to the sack. Emer tried twice to stop her, but had her hand slapped smartly. She rose with a yelp and raced out the door, up her stone stairway to the lookout. Upon her arrival, she found that none of her dirt drawings had been disturbed, and realized that her brother hadn’t been there that day like he’d said he would be. She screamed again, and cried as hard as she could. People in the dusk-lit valley below shook their heads and pursed their lips with disappointment. Her father and brother heard her, too, a half mile away, and pretended they didn’t as they continued to talk important business with their neighbors.
Before too long, Emer stopped sobbing. She just sat, peering into her starlit lap, and vowed two things: that she would never trust her brother again to take on her chore of watchman, and that she would one day stitch the finest embroidered cape the world would ever see.
News traveled quickly to the valley. The Morriseys and their neighbors gathered in the cold to hear stories of Oliver Cromwell and his massive army from a worried young man on a horse. By Christmas just past, the man reported, Cromwell had not only taken Drogheda, Wexford, and Ross, but he’d landed a brutal siege on Waterford before retreating to rest his troops to the south. Emer and Padraig stayed out of sight, in their secret hiding place near an old well, and listened to the young man as he spoke of the massacres of people gathered in their churches for safety.
“He threw fire through the windows and stationed two men at each door to kill anyone who ran! No woman or child was spared, I tell