Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [50]
Bell shrugs again, more sympathetically.
"What I used to dream of at night was even more stirring," says the Countess reflectively. "The Return of the Earls! My father and my uncle, coming back for my sake. What ships they would have mustered, what guns they would have carried, what glories would have returned to Ireland if that pair of drunkards hadn't died of Roman fever in their first year of exile."
"Instead, you grew up like a good traitor's daughter, and followed in their footsteps," Bell points out.
"It was hardly the same."
"Wasn't it an adventure, though, my lady?"
"Our days of youth, you mean?"
"Sneaking round Hampton Court behind the English King's back, hearing Mass in secret, hatching mad plots of escape—"
"Mad they may have been," says the Countess, "but what choice had I? How could my grandmother ever have thought it?"
"What, that you'd many a Protestant at her say-so?"
"That I'd drop the Holy Cross like some limp-wristed ninny, yes," says the Countess severely.
"Well, since you put it that way." Bell is amused. "Your grandmother was no match for you. Though, to give him his due, it was John who hatched the plan of putting us in breeches."
The Countess's face falls at the name. "We never should have leagued with that fellow," she says coldly.
"He was your cousin, after all. The blood of the O'Donnells."
"He was a bastard, with no right to claim the name."
"Come now, the man did get us away from Hampton Court with our heads still on. It was that or the Tower," argues Bell. "Do you remember picking our disguise names?"
"We sat up half the night at it," remembers the Countess; then her eyes flicker as if she is in pain.
"Rodolphe, and Jacques, and Richard," says Bell, like a litany. "We wanted to sound like three ordinary young bucks, setting sail for the Continent."
"No, I wanted to go back to Ireland." Mary Stuart O'Donnell's voice is mutinous.
"Ah, but the winds turned our ship from west to east, three times," Bell reminds her. "You can't argue with your fate."
"Don't tell me what I can't do," snaps the Countess. She squeezes her eyes shut.
"What is it?" asks Bell, serious. "Have the pangs begun?"
The Countess nods once. She picks up a pair of cherries, but cannot eat them; she tosses them to a passing crow. "Some days," she says slowly, "I would gladly trade every ancient marble, every purple hill, every jug of wine in Italy to be back in the County of Kildare."
"I like this place, myself," says Bell, gazing at the olive trees.
"At Poulaphouca waterfall there was a sprite, you know, that took the shape of a horse if you looked into the torrent for long enough. In the castle where I grew up, you had to keep one eye out behind you for the Wizard Earl, who was said to have dabbled in magic until he turned himself into a blackbird. On windy nights you could hear him pounding by on a white horse shod with silver. My nurse promised me that when the horses shoes wore down, the Wizard Earl would come back and free Ireland from English rule."
"Did you picture him as your father?"
"Of course." The pain girds the Countess now; she holds her breath until it lets her go.
"Do you remember, on our flight from England, when the three of us were caught in that storm in the Alps, and your moustache was washed away?" Even-voiced, Bell is trying to distract her mistress. "And that ostler that called you hermaphrodito!"
But the Countess is frowning. "To come all that way, through Flanders and France and Italy, lauded as an Amazon and a Martyr for the Faith—to be received by the Pope, like my father before me—and end up nothing but John's wife!"
"On the road," Bell reminisces, "you used to warn him, if he got me a great belly you'd put your gun to his head and make him many me!"
The Countess laughs all at once till tears stand out in her eyes. "Somehow I never imagined it would happen to me. I thought I was above the lot of womanhood." She doubles over, now. "Holy Anne be with me, this creature