The Hungry Heart Fulfilled (The Hunger of the Heart Series Book 3) Read online

  Enlarged winds that curl the flood,

  Know no such liberty

  Stone walls do not a prison make

  Nor iron bars a cage,

  Minds innocent and quiet take

  That for an hermitage

  If I have freedom in my love

  And in my soul am Free,

  Angels alone that soar above,

  Enjoy such liberty.

  Dalton was also grief stricken over the state of his affairs with his father and the loss of his mother. To think that he had trusted, and centred his whole life around a man who had turned out to be so evil and self-serving.

  Dalton been completely taken in by Frederick, and could never even begin to calculate the damage that his misplaced trust had caused. If his mother was anything like the warm and loving Emer, his father had consigned her to a living hell.

  And yet, as terrible as her fate, and that of Emer and William and him were, it could have been far worse. Dozens of men and women had died because of Frederick Randall’s rigidity of thought and inability to show compassion. Dalton felt terribly guilty that he was almost glad Frederick was dead.

  His only cheering thought was that he had a mother whom he had never met. Perhaps she would turn out to be the anti-thesis of his father, and might love him the way Frederick never had.

  Regarding Madeleine Lyndon’s treachery, Dalton felt a great deal of responsibility. He couldn’t believe he had been so blind, and wondered how much his father had known. To think how close he had come to wedding an unchaste, devious, selfish woman like her.

  Only through him seeing Emer in the cathedral that fateful day, had he avoided making the biggest mistake of his life. He thanked God daily for the miracle that had brought them together just in time, though the consequences of that meeting had certainly been shocking enough.

  At first Dalton had not been able to fathom that Madeleine was as bad as Adrian had told her, but once she had gone to trial, all of the men in Quebec, seeing how the mighty Madeleine Lyndon had fallen, hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to kick her while she was down.

  Dozens of the men had admitted to having had an affair with her, and though Dalton had been extremely embarrassed by all the attention he had received from well-wishers, it was through all of his difficulties during the trials, and the details that emerged about Emer’s illegal trial and sentencing at the hands of his father, that showed Dalton just how many real friends he had.

  Even Mr. and Mr. Lyndon had taken Dalton’s side in the end, and asked him if he would be willing to run their steamer company for them for a few months so that Mr. Lyndon could take early retirement, the shock of his daughter’s conduct and execution having proven too much for him.

  When Dalton had refused Mr. Lyndon’s offer on the grounds that he had to go to Ireland straight away to find Emer, the old man had then offered to sell the company to Dalton for a ridiculously low price, and Dalton had had the good sense and business acumen to accept.

  Though he was really no longer interested in the shipping business, he had left Reeves in charge of the sale while he was away, and agreed that he would pick up the reins at least temporarily until he decided what to do with the huge fleet of ships he was now responsible for.

  At least he would be able to do some good to alleviate the plight of the Irish emigrants, and improve the lot of the sailors who had worked with both companies one day when his own personal affairs were better settled.

  Dalton left Patrick Bradley to help Reeves at the Randall and Lyndon offices, and Marion Lacy was left at the head of the orphanage, with the Bishop handling all the funds.

  Happily for the children who had formerly been resident there before the fire, many of them had indeed been adopted by the kind souls who had taken them in, but there were always many more Irish orphans coming in from Grosse Ile every day.

  Likewise the dreaded fevers continued unabated, raging in the warm weather and insanitary conditions of dozens of ships’ holds like wild fire.

  Dalton had left Adrian in charge of the new fever hospital and his new house on the south shore of the river, and had hired many new young doctors trained in the latest theories regarding fever to try to research the diseases and hopefully find more effective treatments, if not an outright cure.

  But all of these achievements paled into insignificance compared to the loss Dalton had endured. He yearned to hold his son in his arms again, and see those incredible golden eyes, mirrors of his own, look up at him with such love and trust.

  He needed to see Emer again so desperately, his longing was like a physical ache. She wasn’t dead. She just couldn’t be.

  Dalton hoped that Emer would be at Cork when he arrived, and then he could bring her home. If she had already gone to Australia, then he would simply have to follow on there with her acquittal papers.

  But, since their lives had never been simple, Dalton’s certainty that he would get her back was to be unexpectedly thwarted by a combination of circumstances which in the end only served to drive them further apart, and threatened still more any hope of them having a happy future together.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Emer’s weeks at sea in the tiny cabin on the Britannia had started relatively uneventfully, for apart from building up her arm muscles, practising walking, and attempting to eat, she had been trapped in the confined space with little to do and only the gruff old sailor for company.

  After several days, the sailor had eventually thawed enough towards the seeming convict to introduce himself as Ben. He and Emer had developed a system of communication of their own, for the old man couldn’t read, and Emer couldn’t speak.

  Long tedious days at sea eventually prompted him to try to converse with the odd girl with hair like fine wine. After a few halting tries at conversation, he had hit on simply asking her yes and no type questions.

  As her life and character became clearer to him, Ben wondered why she had been treated so harshly, and was to be transported.

  Eventually after going through a list of crimes, he gave up.

  “I don’t understand, Miss. What did you do?”

  Emer thought for a moment, and then pointed to her wedding ring, and then rocked her arms as though she were nursing a child.

  “You were married? And had a baby? Where is the baby now?”

  Emer’s tearful shrug and shake of the head told him she had no idea. Then she pointed at the ring again.

  “The baby’s father did this to you?” Ben gaped.

  Emer shook and then nodded her head, and pointed to the ring again.

  “His family, his father did this to you?” Ben guessed.

  Emer nodded, and made a mime of writing, and banging a gavel. Then she pointed to the captain’s cabin upstairs.

  “I think I see. Your husband’s father took the baby away, had you arrested, and got you convicted, and sentenced to be deported for something you didn’t do?” Ben interpreted after a time. “They were rich, didn’t approve of you, or summat?”

  Emer nodded, relieved.

  Ben sighed. “Many wouldn’t believe you, miss, but I can see from the look of you, you’ve had a very hard time of it. Here, I’ll start bringing you some of my lime juice, and I can see now that you can’t really chew that old ship’s biscuit with your jaw being broken and all. If there’s any soup going, I’ll bring you some bowls of that and some porridge from now on, and see if I can find something in the medicine chest for your face. If I bind up your jaw, then p’rhaps it will start getting better.”

  Emer shook his hand gratefully, and began to grow stronger once she was able to eat more food.

  As the days passed, Emer continued pushing up and own on her arms to strengthen them, and then tried to get her legs onto the floor. She would attempt to put her full weight on them, and eventually managed a few halting steps leaning on the bunk and wall for support.

  Ben, seeing her improving so rapidly, also helped her pass the time by givting her some work to do. One day
she mimed sewing, and soon he was bringing every garment on board to her for repairs, for which she was paid a small sum.

  Thus the first three weeks Emer spent at sea passed by relatively calmly, with a few squally showers but no great storms.

  “I must say, you’re a great sailor. But then, you must have been on a ship to get Canada, seeing as you’re Irish.”

  Emer nodded and mimed climbing up into the rigging.

  Ben gaped. “You worked on a ship?”

  Emer nodded, and gestured that she had done cooking and cleaning, and sewing the sails.

  “Perhaps I can speak to the captain about finding some work for you, then. It's roasting down here, and you could come up on deck and help mend the sails, and get a bit of fresh air.”

  Emer nodded excitedly.

  One bright day at the end of June, she was carried up on deck by Ben and sat down by the mast. She was tied to it by her waist just in case the ship began to roll, and Emer sat contentedly in the sun, repairing the sails and staring at the ocean waves through the rail.

  The crew grew used to the strange silent crippled girl after a few days, and ceased to pay much attention to her.

  Emer noticed their lack of vigilance, and grew more and more optimistic that she would somehow be able to escape.

  She saw her chance in the first week of July, when the lookout in the crow’s nest shouted, “Land Ho!”

  Emer’s knowledge of Irish geography was fairly good. Though she had never been to Cork, she knew there was a huge harbour. If she jumped ship as they entered it, they would have to search for her on both sides of the harbour, and with any luck the captain might even assume that she had drowned.

  Emer knew she had made a great deal of progress so far, for she was now able to move her toes and feet again, but even so, she knew she was unable to walk.

  As for swimming, she could only hope a favourable current would wash up up to shore, rather than drag her under or out to sea.

  Though she knew the risk of drowning was high, anything was better than being transported down to Australia in a hulk, a difficult journey of nearly a half a year at least crammed in a disease-ridden hold, chained up with all the other prisoners, many of them desperate and even violent.

  In the privacy of her room, Emer sewed the coins she had earned into the hem of her shirt, and stripped off her undergarments, leaving on only her blouse and very light-weight summer skirt so the water soaking the fabric wouldn’t drag her below the surface.

  Then Ben came to fetch her up on deck, and she managed to convince him not to tie her, since the weather was so fine the ship wouldn’t roll.

  Emer wondered if Ben knew what she was up to, for he looked at her for several moments, and then came back with a small scrap of paper and a pen and ink.

  “I can’t read nor write myself, but if you write your name, and your husband’s address, I’ll see that I find someone who can, and let him know what’s happened to you.”

  Emer seized the pen and paper gratefully, and printed the information on the scrap of paper as it fluttered in the wind. Then Emer handed it to Ben, and shook his hand.

  Ben smiled, and walked away, leaving Emer relatively alone on the deck.

  She waited until she was certain no one was looking, and crawled over the rail. Hanging onto the end of the sail she had been mending, she slipped over the side into the freezing water with only the smallest of splashes.

  Emer gasped at the chill water and bobbed up and down for a few moments, and then began to swim for the western shore of the harbour, kicking her legs as best she could, and floating on her back when she needed to catch her breath.

  By the time the crew noticed Emer was gone several minutes later, they did not trouble too much to look for her, since most assumed that she had gone done below.

  It was only when they got into port and saw she was not in her cabin that they concluded that she had been been washed overboard by a freak wave.

  The captain sadly wrote a report on the incident to present to the authorities when the Britannia arrived in town. If they suspected she had escaped, they certainly kept it to themselves. Ben had vouched for her, and it was none of their business in any case. What was one prisoner more or less in the whole scheme of things. A crippled woman with a broken jaw was hardly a dire threat.

  The old sailor prayed she had made it to shore. As soon as he got leave in port, he went to find a person he could trust who could read and write.

  Emer was terrified of drowning as she tried to kick her heavy legs to stay afloat, but she also knew she needed to conserve her strength and not panic.

  Turning herself over, she began to float on her back, willing herself to relax and be patient. As the watery sun warmed her stomach, she felt a slight current tugging at her limbs.

  When she finally tuned over to swim again a few moments later, she saw that she was heading slowly but surely to the shore.

  By the time Emer made it onto the beach, a threatening storm roared overhead, and it was pitch dark outside.

  Emer lay exhausted, her lips parched, her stomach growling with hunger. Dazedly she took in her surroundings, and looked for any sign of shelter.

  She could see a small light in the distance, and after resting for a time, she began to drag herself by her hands and elbows towards it.

  Emer noticed that she could just about bend her knees, and so she turned herself over and used her bare feet and arms to push off against the ground as the rain lashed down around her, scuttling like a crab.

  At last, after about two hours of crawling, pushing, and resting, she rapped at the door with the light in the window, and looked up to see a tall young priest standing over her in the entry way.

  “If it’s food you’re after, I have only some soup,” he said automatically.

  Then he looked down. Stooping to take a closer look at the visitor seated on the door-step, he exclaimed, “Good God! What on earth has happened to you, my child?”

  Emer felt herself being lifted, and once she was seated inside the humble cottage by the blazing fire, she made a frantic gesture of writing.

  The priest brought her a pen, ink, and paper, and with trembling fingers Emer wrote down a brief account of how she had come to be there, and why she couldn’t speak.

  “My poor dear girl, I’ve never heard such a tale of woe,” the priest, who had introduced himself as Father Darcy, shook his head.

  Emer asked him for shelter, and also asked if she could get a letter to her friends in Canada to tell them where she was, and ask if her son and Dalton were all right.

  “You write the letter, Emer, and the next time I’m in Cork, I shall post it, ” Father Darcy promised. “But now I think you should take off those wet things and rest, and I’m sure you must be hungry and thirsty.”

  Emer nodded, and Father Darcy turned his back while she stripped off her sodden skirt and blouse, and wrapped another dry blanket around her shivering body.

  He helped Emer eat the soup, and then carried her up to the hay loft, where he made her a comfortable bed in the straw.

  Emer slept soundly for the first time since she had boarded the Britannia , as she felt a growing certainty that Dalton would find her, and she would one day return to her family and friends in Quebec.

  The next day Father Darcy boiled up some water for Emer in his tin tub, and allowed her to have a good long soak. Then he gave her a spare pair of his trousers, and a shirt, and apologised, “I’m sorry, they’re all I have.”

  Emer indicated that he should let her have some scissors, and needle and thread. After she took up the trouser legs about six inches so they fit her, she proceeded to cut her hair with the small pair of shears.

  “You look just like a young boy now, if you keep your shoulders slumped. It’s probably far safer you looking like that. There have been a great deal of rumours about unrest due to the English still continuing to export food out of the country, while people the people here are starving before their very eyes."
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br />   She stared at him, stunned.

  "Aye. The Irish Confederation, who used to be part of the Young Ireland group, are now agitating for armed rebellion, and the authorities are getting very nervous. They're all so hot-headed about all the revolutions in Europe this year, that they think these poor famished urchins you can see wandering the roads looking for a crust will all quite happily follow them to certain disaster,” Father Darcy explained.

  “Who knows, perhaps it’s better to die quickly, cleanly, with a bullet through the heart, than this slow, lingering death, with the agony of hunger burning in your belly, or the torment of a raging fever driving you mad.” The young priest shook his head.