We present an extract from The Graces, the new novel by Siobhan MacGowan.
Touched by the 'Graces,' like her grandmother, Rosaleen Moore’s gift of ‘seeing,’ proves more of a curse than a blessing in Clare, as she grows up. But moving to vibrant Dublin as a young woman, Rosaleen is befriended by a bohemian group of faith healers – mesmerists. ‘The Rose’ soon finds herself revered as a spiritualist, sought after for her gifts of prophecy and healing by fashionable society and political agitators alike. But when something goes terribly wrong, tearing her inner circle apart, Rosaleen’s extraordinary final prophecy sees her famed throughout the city...
Mount St Kilian Abbey, Dublin, 1918
High in the monastery, in the stillness of his cham- ber, Brother Thomas placed a candle upon the arched window's deep stone sill. He cast an eye on the late August sun setting now on the Tallaght Hills and Mount Seskin beyond. His eye moved downhill to the chapel roof, the cloisters, the sweep of grounds, before coming to rest on the saplings, the oaks, the monastery woodland. There, in the scant light, he followed the flicker of flames, a steady, solemn procession of can- dlelight weaving through the trees. Bound for the bell tower. They had come.
Disturbed by a knocking, he turned at the whine of the heavy wooden door.
'Brother Thomas.’ It was Dominic, the new postulant, still being versed in the ways of the monastery. ‘There is a Father Sheridan asking to see you. Shall I show him in?’ Brother Thomas frowned in surprise. He had not seen Father Sheridan for many a year. He wondered at
this unexpected visit.
‘Yes, of course. Please. Show him in.’
The boy disappeared from the door, Father Sheridan appearing soon in his place.
‘Thomas.’ Father Sheridan greeted Thomas warmly. ‘It’s good to see you after all this time.’
‘And you, Declan.’ They clasped hands, Brother Thomas studying his old acquaintance. He remembered when last he had seen him. The three years that had passed had changed Father Sheridan only slightly. He was stouter, his once-greying hair whiter. But his skin was still fresh, his expression as ever warm. They held eyes for a moment before Father Sheridan spoke.
‘It’s been too long, Thomas. We have not seen each other since . . .’
He did not finish but Brother Thomas nodded. ‘Please,’ Brother Thomas said, gesturing to two chairs by the small fire in the hearth; the night on the cusp of autumn was chill in the stony vastness of the monastery. ‘Sit.’
Father Sheridan stepped across the room, the pine floorboards creaking beneath his feet. Brother Thomas watched him take in the surroundings he had once known so well, the thick, ochre walls, the blood reds and gold gilding of the painted icons, the graceful and sorrowful face of the statuette Madonna. ‘How have you been?’ Father Sheridan asked of his host. ‘You look well. You serve as a champion for monastic life.’
Brother Thomas smiled. ‘I am well. And you?’
‘The students are keeping me busy.’ Seeming lost in thought, Father Sheridan passed the chairs at the hearth to wander to the window. He stood silently for a moment, looking out. ‘So they have come. On this, the third anni- versary of her passing.’
Brother Thomas stood silent behind him. Every year on this night, as the sun set, they came. Came to pay homage to the one they called the Rose.
Father Sheridan mused. ‘Her pilgrims. Come to walk the Way of the Rose. For what she saw came to be.’ He turned slowly from the window. ‘It seemed fitting that I come tonight, as it is of her we must speak.’
Brother Thomas observed the priest. ‘You wish to speak to me of Rosaleen Moore?’
‘Yes.’ Brother Thomas said nothing, but gestured again to the chairs by the fire. Father Sheridan sat, Brother Thomas taking a seat to face him. ‘You know I saw her?’ Father Sheridan said. ‘Shortly before she died.’
Brother Thomas turned to the fire. ‘I did not.’ ‘When she was dying she called for me. She was a
woman haunted. And now I too am haunted. Haunted by what she told me. Of herself.’ He paused. ‘Of the Abbot.’ Brother Thomas looked up as the priest fell silent.
‘It seems the Abbot haunts us all,’ Father Sheridan said at last, casting his eyes over the chamber. ‘He, the confessor. He who for so long heard the sins of others, now condemned to a cell to pay for his own. When I think of the many hours I spent talking to him in this very room. Of the many years I knew him. And then to learn what he did. Still, I cannot conceive of it.’
Brother Thomas turned again to the fire as Father Sheridan went on, ‘I always believed him a good man.’
‘He was a good man,’ Brother Thomas said softly. ‘It is because of the Abbot I come to you now,’
Father Sheridan said. ‘Because of him that I must tell you what Rosaleen spoke of that night on her deathbed. What she told me I could hardly believe. I am not sure I believe it now. That is why I must speak to you of it.’ His eyes moved as if remembering. ‘I can still see her so pale, so frail against the pillows as she struggled to speak, yet so desperate to be heard, to make her peace.’ He lowered his eyes to gaze upon the flames. ‘I see her. I hear her still.’
Eccles Street, Dublin, August 1915
Now I am to die, Father, I find my heart returning to when I was born. I was born to a winter wind – the wild wind that howled around the Clare hills far, far from here. I hear it whispering to me now at the window. It carried me into this world, now it comes to carry me away.
I hope it lets me fly, over every place I have loved. Over the burst of broad Dublin streets so alive, every alleyway and arch, the great, rushing Liffey. But I have a deep fear. That it will sweep me away to the blue Dublin mountains. And, there, will set me down. By the monastery, in the woodland. At the bell tower.
You will come to know why I fear it, Father. Perhaps the bell tower strikes fear in your own heart for what has happened there. And it is of what happened there that I must speak. That of which I must cleanse my soul.
But more, more than for my own soul, I care for the soul of another: the Abbot’s. I cannot rest knowing what he has confessed.
I learned of his confession in these weeks past. And that is why I called for you. For now, at my dying, I must tell the truth. A truth so terrible I could never speak it before. But, first, you must hear how it all came to be. What trouble brought me here to the city. The greater, much greater trouble that found me here.
Perhaps I need not fear. Perhaps the wind will be kind. Perhaps it will carry me home. Take me from these streets back to the hills of Clare. Take me back as I will take you now, Father – for I want you to understand where it all began. And what gift or curse I was born with.
The wind rattled the old cottage windows as my mother birthed me. My aunts Cot and Bridie were with her in the loft room, my uncles pacing, sucking on their pipes in the kitchen below. My father had died while my mother yet carried me, so it was to that cottage, her own birthplace, that she had returned for her labour, and it was there that I grew. By night my dressmaker aunts would sew under paraffin lamps in the parlour, by day sink their fists into cavernous bowls on the kitchen table to knead the bread dough. My mother had nimble fingers for sewing but no hand for baking and Aunt Cot would chase her away for fear her very nearness would sink the bread. But Aunt Cot would lift me on to the chair at the table and hold the knife with me to cut the cross into the round dough. ‘To break it more easily once it’s baked,’ she said. ‘To give thanks to Our Lord,’ Aunt Bridie would counter as Aunt Cot raised her eyes to the heavens.
Aunt Bridie tried to instil in me some religion but became disgusted and ashamed of my heathen ways as I grew. She admonished me for running to the fields to escape the evening rosary, for paying no attention at Mass and certainly no heed to her little sermons at home. To her mind, I did not show enough reverence for Father Byrne when he came to call. Later I would suffer the consequences of her wariness of me but when still a child I was happily unaware of the seeds I was sowing.
In our home, the kitchen was the biggest room, with its stone floor and wide hearth and a hefty hook for pots over the roaring fire. I slept with my mother, often rising early to catch Aunt Bridie on the loft stairs, arranging her red flannel petticoat, Uncle Pat like a white ghost in his long johns folding away the settle bed in the kitchen below. We women would help my uncles Mikey and Pat work the small farm; I scattered chicken feed in the yard, always insisting I could carry the too-heavy pails of frothy, warm milk. My favourite task was to help harness the horse to the trap before we went on our way to fetch water from the crossroads pump, or to Nance Darcy’s post office and grocery on the road to town. It was there the men col- lected their tobacco, the women their messages and gossip and always a bag of lemon sweets or toffee for me.
Once the cottage had housed my grandfather and grandmother and their seven children. With my grand- parents dead, there remained only five siblings there.
Aunt Ellen lived married in Dublin, but they’d had another brother – Joey. Joey was spoken of only in whispers. As if his name might cut their tongues, leave them wounded.
They said my grandmother had the sight. They would talk of the night of the face at the window, how, sitting at the kitchen hearth, Grandma had seen her cousin, Willy, appear at the window, his face aglow from the fire, lighting his smile in the darkness. She had gone to seek him in the yard, calling for him, but he was not there. There was no need for Grandma to be told he was dead. She knew it before his father brought her the news, before the priest announced it at the altar. Mammy, my aunts and uncles talked of that often. But it was only rare nights by the fire, in solemn whispers, they would talk of Joey. Of the night Grandma had awoken drenched, shouting Joey’s name. Overtaken by fear for him, she had rushed to make sure he was safe in his bed. He, a young, strong lad of seventeen had laughed at her, telling her to away from the room and let him rest.
It was two days later it happened. My uncles would help with the threshing at neighbouring farms, and it was one such summer afternoon. All the men around were bending, gathering the straw so nobody saw what happened. But my uncles looked up at an ungodly screaming. Joey must have stepped out before the thresher’s monstrous blade, become caught in it. They never spoke of what they saw then, only of how all the men came running, how my uncles had chased with Joey’s bloodied body into the farm’s kitchen, desperately trying to revive his weakening heart. But he was gone. They would talk of how my grandmother fled to the fields, wailing, when they brought her the news. How for hours they could not coax her back inside, the cows chewing dumbly as they looked upon her, numb to human pain.
My grandmother had the sight. They said she had been touched by the Graces. A gift. Yet Aunt Bridie soon said mine was not a gift but a curse. That no good could come of a girl like me.
I was born with a sense, Father.
The Graces is published by Welbeck
