Chapter Twenty-two

T hough the schoolroom was nearly full on Friday, Evangeline noted that not one of the Crossley children was in attendance. She worried for them even as she attempted to guide her ever-growing class through myriad different levels of learning.

Greenborough school has more students and only one teacher. You can manage this. You must manage this.

Hugo sat on the end of a bench, ignoring her most of the day. She hadn’t the time nor the energy to argue with him. Ronan, thank the heavens, had kept to his table and found means of occupying himself. Yet, she’d felt guilty leaving him to himself for so long. She usually made certain to slip over to his corner and give him new things to do or comment on his progress, but she could not find the time that day.

Perhaps she really was as incapable as her aunt reported her to be. Perhaps she truly was as unready for Lucy’s arrival as Dermot had implied she was. The possibility of dictating her own future was a new one. She simply did not know what to think or what to hope for.

On Saturday morning, she pulled on her thick outer coat and made the now-familiar journey toward the moor. Her mind would not be at ease until she knew the Crossleys were well.

Cresting the first hill at the edge of town, she could see a plume of smoke in the direction of the Crossleys’ home. She sped up her pace, concern gripping her. The night had been a wet one, and the dirt beneath her feet had turned to mud, yet she moved as quickly as she could manage. The air held a pungent smell, a rancid smokiness that only grew thicker the closer she came.

Heavens, what if their home was on fire? What if they were hurt or worse?

In the next moment, however, she spotted a large bonfire in the fields, smoke rising from it.

Her headlong rush slowed. It was not the family’s home. She let herself breathe again, hoping her heart rate would slow. She looked away from the fire and over the surrounding land. Sheep dotted the field, but not in the way she expected. The entire flock was lying on their sides, unmoving. She looked over the expanse, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.

At one end of the field, two men lifted a sheep from the grass and tossed it onto the back of a cart where several other sheep lay.

She lifted her skirts and made her way swiftly down the side of the hill, out toward the field. “Hello, there,” she called out.

Thomas Crossley looked up at her as she approached. Next to him stood Dermot, which she had not been expecting at all.

She reached the stone wall and spoke to them over it. “What’s happened?”

Thomas set his hands on his hips and looked out over the field. “Scrapie.”

Evangeline didn’t know what that meant. She looked to Dermot.

“They’d an illness, you’ll remember. It spread through the flock like a flood.”

“Are they all lost?” She dreaded the answer.

“Everything’s lost,” Thomas said. He nudged a nearby sheep with the toe of his boot. “Everything.”

Dermot moved to Thomas’s side and set a supportive arm around his shoulders. He spoke to him as they surveyed the gruesome scene. Evangeline couldn’t make out what they said, but hoped he offered the distraught young man more reassurance than he’d offered her only a few days earlier.

Voices floated on the breeze, pulling Evangeline’s gaze toward the hill behind her. Up the road a bit stood John Crossley and Ronan. She climbed upward, joining them at the top of the slope. John—cheerful, buoyant John—was in tears.

Evangeline held her arms out to him, and he stepped into her embrace. The poor boy wept against her, his shoulders shaking with emotion. He and Ronan loved the sheep, spending long hours watching them graze. How heartbreaking they must have found the sight of the flock so tragically still.

Ronan watched, not the fields, but the fires—for there was more than one—in the distance. She followed his gaze.

Mr. Crossley stood by the flames, his back to the hill. After a moment, Thomas and Dermot arrived with their cart of carcasses. The three men hefted one after another onto the fire. The putridness of the smoke, uncomfortable until that moment, turned instantly nauseating. It was not merely the smell of fire, but of death.

She stood there for long moments, keeping John close and watching Ronan for any sign of distress. After a time, they sat, not caring that the wild grass was wet and the day cold. Not a word passed among them, yet she knew the boys did not wish to return to the Crossley home nor walk over the moors away from the sight of such loss.

“Please sit close, Ronan,” she whispered. “You need the warmth.”

He didn’t object, though he did not come near enough to touch. Again and again the scene played out: the arrival of the cart, the thud of one casualty after another, the rush of flames, and a scattering of ash. Between arrivals, Mr. Crossley built a new fire while the others consumed their burdens. How many would be smoldering by sundown?

John rested his head against her shoulder. The position set his cap askew, hiding most of his face. She didn’t know if he watched the horrors below.

After a time, Ronan slid up beside her and leaned against her other side. She laid her arm over his, hoping to give a little warmth. The cold seeped up from the ground through every layer she was wearing. The boys, who had been outdoors longer than she, must have been positively frozen.

“Perhaps we should go down to the house,” she suggested. “You will be far warmer, and far drier.”

She felt John shake his head, though he didn’t speak beyond a sniffle. Ronan kept still and quiet.

“Then, let us sing a song. That will keep our spirits up on this dismal day.” She rubbed John’s arm. “Do you have any songs you like to sing? Ronan knows many, though they are unfamiliar to me. I know quite a few, but you two might not recognize them.”

Neither answered for a long, drawn-out moment. On the hill below, the burning continued, the smell of the fire and the trail of ash growing, even as the number of white dots dwindled.

“I will sing one that Ronan enjoys. The chorus is all numbers, sung backward and skipping every other one. It can grow rather silly as the brain and the tongue trip over each other.” She did not wait for either boy to voice their approval or disapproval of her song choice. This was distraction, not democracy.

By the time she sang the chorus for the third time, Ronan was mouthing the words along with her, and John had sat more upright, though he had not joined in. When she tripped over the numbers, both boys silently laughed. That small response did her heart a world of good.

After a time, Mr. Crossley came climbing up the hill toward them, his clothes covered in mud and soot, his expression as grim as she’d ever seen it. He dipped his head to her but offered not a word nor a smile.

“Come along, John. We’re bahn to home for awhile. Tha’ll be right starved out here.”

John stood obediently. Though his father’s expression remained bleak, he held out a hand in a gesture of unmistakable kindness. “I thank thee, Miss Blake, for sitting with t’ lad. This has been a difficult day.”

She nodded, struggling for something wise to say in reply. All she could manage was, “I wish there was more I could do.”

Her heart broke as she watched them return to the path below, join Thomas, and slowly drag themselves toward home. This family, who had shown her kindness and welcome, who had supported her efforts at educating the children, who had ever been optimistic and cheerful, gave every appearance of being broken.

The sheep were their livelihood. If they had lost all their flock, or even nearly all, what in heaven’s name were they to do? Was their fate to be the same as poor Mr. Palmer, whose soul was being crushed inside the confines of the mill?

From beside her, Ronan’s small voice began to sing. The words were not familiar and they were not English, yet they were oddly comforting.

“ Trasna na dtonnta, dul siar, dul siar,

Slán leis an uaigneas ’is slán leis an gcian; ”

Dermot joined in, coming up the hill toward them and pulling off his mud-encrusted work gloves.

“ Geal é mo chroí, agus geal í an ghrian,

Geal bheith ag filleadh go héirinn! ”

Evangeline fully expected Dermot to follow Mr. Crossley’s lead and simply tell Ronan they were leaving. At the very least, she thought he might sit down beside the boy. Instead, he sat on the grass beside her .

He was warm, a buffer against the brutal wind off the moor. She silently willed him to move a touch closer, yet part of her hoped he didn’t. His presence proved unexpectedly unnerving. Every inch of her felt tense and on edge, an unidentifiable wish mixed with equal parts uncertainty.

The two McCormicks continued their song, both looking out over the expanse, neither seeming the least bothered by the cold or the wet or her presence between them. Her gaze fixed on Dermot. There was worry in his eyes, yet he was calm and unshaken.

She took a deep breath only to be assaulted by the taste of rancid smoke and the reminder of all that had been lost. John’s shaking frame. Mr. Crossley’s deeply lined face and slumped shoulders. A humble home not far distant where a family was in crisis. Her own family home, so far away, so empty. Her sister, alone and miserable.

It proved too much. She had kept her chin up and her eyes dry for weeks, but she couldn’t manage it any longer. She needed a moment of the strength she sensed in Dermot.

Just as John had leaned against her, and just as Ronan rested on her arm, Evangeline set her head on Dermot’s shoulder. She closed her eyes, shutting out the sight of the flock, the blackened ash on the grass, and pushed back the tears threatening to fall.

Dermot shifted, his arm slipping behind her, supporting her as she grieved. She kept her arm around Ronan, offering him the same comfort.

Their song had ended, and they didn’t take up another.

“’Tis a horrid sight, is it not?” Dermot said.

It was, indeed. “What will the Crossleys do now?”

“I’ve not the first idea, but I’ve a few suspicions.” He moved a bit, rendering her position instantly more comfortable. “Losing their flock to scrapie is the reason the Haighs are working at the factory now.”

Pain pulsed through her. “They cannot go there. They would be so miserable.”

She felt him sigh deeply. “I don’t know that they’ve a choice, lass. The moor giveth, and the moor taketh away.”

She looked up at him. “But it is not fair.”

“Life seldom is, especially here.” He adjusted his position again, this time so he was looking at her and she at him, though it meant his arm fell away from her shoulders. “I know you were vexed with me for not supporting your idea of bringing your wee sister here to live with you, but this”—he motioned to the scene before them—“is the reason I ...” The sentence dangled unfinished, his face pulling in thought. “I’ve spent this morning burning what remains of a family’s dreams. This, Evangeline, is far too often what becomes of the fragile and delicate souls who come to this harsh and unforgiving land. Their hopes are dashed, reduced to ashes on the moor.”

Her lungs ached with her next breath and not from the smoke in the air. His words drove deep, ringing with a painful, undeniable truth. Yet what could she do? “Lucy is so unhappy where she is.”

“I’m not suggesting she isn’t,” he said. “I’m simply hoping you’ll consider that perhaps the harsh realities she’d find here are not such an improvement over the unhappiness she’s experiencing where she is.”

Evangeline did not care for either possibility. “I will not resign her to misery without attempting to alleviate her suffering.”

Dermot slipped his hands around hers. “’Twas a fine thing you did today, Evangeline, comforting the lads as you did. I thank you for that.”

Though being outside without her gloves would not only be cold but also horrifyingly improper, Evangeline found herself wishing she had left hers off. To have felt the warmth of his touch directly ...

No sooner had she indulged the thought then Dermot released her hand. His expression turned stern, almost too stern, as if he assumed the air because he felt it proper and not because he truly felt it. He stood rather abruptly.

“Come along, then, Ronan,” he said. “We’re for home.”

She watched them go, confused, relieved, exhausted, overwhelmed. He had held her hand. He’d spoken gently. On this horrible day of loss and sorrow, he’d offered her kindness and comfort and had acknowledged her efforts to help.

The irascible, unapproachable neighbor whom she’d first met upon arriving in this strange and difficult town had shown a side of himself that was, in a word, wondrous.