The Seeing

Chapter Sixteen

A clean, hard wind was blowing down Skyhead and through the trees at Ballytone the morning of Andrew Dalworth’s funeral. There had been a formal memorial service the previous evening at Easter Hill. The names of mourners from Ireland and the United States and other countries were now listed in the registry book which Flynn had set out on a rosewood table in the great hall.

The final ceremony at the cemetery with its weathered headstones beside Father Malachy’s church was reserved for members of the household staff and close personal friends.

In a bottle-green coat with a black velvet collar, Jessica stood close to Charity Bostwick. Fluter lay at the girl’s feet, his head resting on white forepaws, his liquid eyes fixed on the casket with its coverlet of lilies and white carnations. The wind stirred Jessica’s long black hair and brought a pinkness to her cheeks. She stood with her head held high, determined not to cry, because she believed that holding back the tears she wanted to shed was a way of saying (childishly and helplessly) that Andrew wasn’t really gone from her yet, not yet...

Holding a long silver aspergillum, Father Malachy sprinkled holy water on the casket and began to recite the funeral prayers.

“Into Thy hands, Oh, Lord, we commend the spirit of Thy humble servant—”

The old priest wore the vestments of a Requiem High Mass — black chasuble figured with silver threads, and a stole in a matching pattern. On his white head rested a dark, four-cornered biretta with a silver tassle.

“As a stranger, he entered our land; as a friend, he entered our hearts...”

Standing in the crisp winds, fragrant with flowers, Jessica did not feel lonely. How could she with her friends gathered at his grave... Miss Charity, Capability Brown, Kevin O’Dell, and Rose and Lily, who wore simple white dresses in the Irish tradition, which held that such pristine apparel symbolized the joyous welcome of the dear departed’s soul into the Kingdom of Heaven. No, Jessica didn’t feel alone at this hour, but she had never felt so shattered and forlorn in all her life — not even after the death of her parents — because she couldn’t conceive that anyone, anywhere could ever replace Andrew Dalworth.

“There was never a time I asked this good man—” Father Malachy stopped and shook his head vigorously. “No, I’m telling a lie, for I never had to ask this good man for help of any kind. He always offered it before I could ask.”

Mrs. Kiernan wept openly into a lace handkerchief. In the open fields surrounding the burial site were groups of people from Ballytone; Tige Wicks, publican of the Hannibal Arms; classmates of Jessica’s and their parents — the men with heads bared, and the women with rosary beads; lips moving in prayer.

Angus Ryan, Dalworth’s solicitor from Dublin, stood directly behind Jessica and Charity Bostwick, the breezes stirring his white hair. They had talked of the inevitable future, seated at the fire in the library, while Rose and Lily went quietly about their work, eyes red from weeping, fetching and caring for the doctors and nurses who tended to Andrew Dalworth in the last unconscious days of his life, his lined face liked old ivory against the pillow in his darkened bedroom.

“We aren’t giving up hope, little lady. Not for one minute,” he had said to Jessica. “God willing, Andrew will be sitting hale and hearty at the head of his own table in a fortnight. But in the meantime, I’m sure he’d like you and me to have a practical chat.”

That afternoon, with the first signs of spring heartbreakingly evident in the trees and shrubs outside the library’s great leaded windows, Angus Ryan had explained the nature and function of Andrew Dalworth’s principal trusts and foundations. The first represented his business interests, and the second, his experimental farms and breeding ranches. Both were administered by a board of directors in New York with monthly resumes sent directly to Easter Hill by Dalworth’s personal aide, Stanley Holcomb. The third trust, administered by Angus Ryan from his Dublin offices, provided for the maintenance of Easter Hill and all such personal expenses as might be incurred by Jessica Mallory, including education and allowance until she reached the age of twenty-one, at which time she would, as Andrew Dalworth’s sole heir, become the legatee of his entire fortune.

“When he enters into the Kingdom of Almighty God, the blessed immortal soul of our friend, Andrew—” The old priest’s voice trembled on the cold air, fragrant with the faint sweetness of floral wreaths.

To distract her during these past sorrowful days, Capability Brown had allowed Jessica to help him with the gardens, and they made a good pair — the wiry old man in tweeds and a bog hat, the slim youngster beside him. Together they had lined the borders of the flagstone paths with primula and marguerite daisies, circling the bird fountain with alyssum seedlings. In the sally garden, Mr. Brown had showed her how to disc the ground and to grind the bone-meal and manure from the stables into the fertile, black earth.

And during those dreadful final days, Dr. Julian had called frequently from California. The connections were excellent, and his voice had sounded so warm and clear and close that it brought tears to her eyes. She hadn’t told him that she was frightened, but he had sensed it.

“What is it, Jessica? I know how you feel about Andrew, we all do. But something else is bothering you.”

“I’m not sure, Julian. I can’t quite see it...”

A BBC helicopter flew a circling pattern above Skyhead, photographing the funeral services for the evening news and the staccato beat of its rotaries mingled with the distant boom of the surf in coves up and down the shores.

Whatever her fears were, she must face them, those ephemeral, elusive shapes with glittering colors spun out in her consciousness. With a sense of strength and purpose, Jessica stood by Andrew Dalworth’s grave and thought of the old man she had visited with Miss Charity on that stormy night in Donegal, and how she had felt when Liam Mallory had led her up a path to the brink of the precipice from where they could hear the waves crashing below them and see masses of scudding dark clouds tumbled by gusting winds across the moon.

In an almost frightening fashion, the very essence of her soul had been drawn to something older and infinitely wiser than herself then, and that something was the very earth and wind of Ireland, and all the people who had lived there and now lay under headstones in all the sodded graves across the land.

Old Liam Mallory had put an arm around her shoulders and held her close to him, and when he spoke, voice as strong as the waves pounding the cliffs, she was no longer afraid.

“Jessica, I know you have gifts. Trust in them and trust your bright colors. Never doubt and God will make you wise, but against evil sometimes wisdom and trust are not enough. If their forces gather against you, remember me and I will give you strength... What we are is what we must be, child, and it is beyond us.”

On a narrow road that curved through an open field toward the cemetery, a green Ford sedan came into view, stirring up dust as it turned and stopped in the parking area near the rectory. Villagers turned to glance at the man and woman who stepped from the car and walked toward the group of mourners clustered about the open grave.

“And as man was born of dust, he shall return to it... to be given everlasting life through the Grace of Almighty God.”

It was over.

Jessica knelt for a long moment in silence, her thoughts turning on the last words she had composed in Andrew’s memory.

She broke off a single white carnation from the coverlet that draped the casket and pressed it carefully in her prayer book. Then she whispered, “I hope you know, and always knew, how much I loved you, Andrew. When we have a son, we shall name him after you. We’ll call him Andrew and pray that he will be as good a man as I knew you to be...”

A shadow fell across her kneeling figure, and Fluter growled softly. Jessica looked up and saw a man she had never seen before, a man with thin blonde hair who smiled down at her and said, “Dear, we came as soon as we possibly could.”

He helped Jessica to rise and then introduced her to the woman who stood beside him, a tall lady with a wisp of black veiling shadowing her bright, polished eyes. “This is your Aunt Maud, my dear.”

Still smiling, he placed a large, strong hand on her shoulder. “And I, Jessica, I am your Uncle Eric.”