Cinders to Satin. Fern Michaels
and turned to face him. If he expected to see admiration in her eyes, he was mistaken. She had turned on him with a temper so fierce he felt as though an icy wind had blown him down.
“So, a voice of the people, is it? And what of the Irish here in Ireland, starvin’ and sweatin’ to earn a day’s wages to buy bread for the table? The English know we’re hungry for any kind of wage, and so it’s not even a fair pay they offer us to slave in their mills and dig for their coal. To my mind, those Irish who left their country have no need of a voice in the land of milk and honey where the streets are paved with gold!”
“Times are hard for the Irish over there too, Callie. There’s no milk and no honey and no gold for the Irishman. It isn’t what it’s cocked up to be, believe me. I’m doing what I know best and where I think I can help the most.”
“Are you now?” Callie said hotly. “Don’t be wasting your time and energy on me, Mr. Kenyon. Go back to your Irish in America and help them!”
She snatched the basket from his arms and ran off, leaving him standing there with an incredulous expression on his face. What had he said to make her take off like that? Then he realized they must have come close to where she lived, and it was the easiest and simplest way to rid herself of him. A smile broke on his face, and he laughed. “You’re a fine girl, Callie. I hope we meet again.”
Darting down an alley, taking the shortest route home, Callie hefted her basket and giggled. That was a stroke of genius, she congratulated herself. She’d gotten rid of Byrch Kenyon fast and easy. Confident now that she was safe from the hands of the law, she walked jauntily, and somehow the basket seemed lighter and lighter the closer she came to home.
Just as dawn was beginning to crack the sky, Callie turned down a pathway and could see the doorway to her home. A twinge of conscience panged her, knowing that Peggy would most certainly be lying on her bed, worrying about her. Peggy never liked the fact that Callie preferred to work in the mill from five in the afternoon to three in the morning instead of working the day shift, which ran from three in the morning to five in the afternoon. But she understood when Callie complained of slaving on the day shift and never seeing the light of day. Leaving before the sun was up and returning as it was going down made her feel like a night creature who never felt the warmth of the sun upon its face.
For the first time since seeing the unattended basket outside the market, Callie began to think of what her mother would say. Peggy James prided herself on doing the best she could for her children, raising them to have a decent sense of values. No matter how welcome the basket would be in the James’s household, Callie knew Peggy would cast a dark frown her way when she questioned her about this magnificent windfall.
Callie tried to formulate a likely story of where she’d come by her goods, but soon gave up. Mum may be trying to raise us the right way, she thought, but it won’t do her any good if the babies die from hunger before she has the chance to teach them to be fine and upstanding. Holding her head high, a twinge of shame and misery buried in her heart, Callie carried her basket into the damp chill of the two-room shack that housed her family.
“Mum, I’m home,” she called softly, hoping to awaken her mother and get the scolding over with in some degree of privacy. If she was going to get her ears boxed, she didn’t want it done under the confused eyes of the younger children or the sympathetic gaze of her grandfather.
“Mum!” she called again, tiptoeing to the meager bed beside the woodstove in the front room. Looking down with distaste at Peggy and Thomas entangled in one another’s arms, she nudged her mother’s shoulder, bringing her awake.
Peggy James wrested herself from her husband’s arm and rose from the bed with difficulty. Glancing down at Thomas to be certain she hadn’t disturbed him, she tucked the thin coverlet closer to his chin with loving hands.
“Where have you been, Callie? Do you see what time it is? The sun’s already come up.” Peggy rubbed the small of her back. Her time was coming close now, and sleeping was often difficult.
“I’ve brought you something, Mum. But you’ve got to promise me it won’t be tossed out!” It had only just occurred to her that Peggy might refuse her ill-gotten luxuries.
“Tossed out?” Peggy whispered. “Now what have you brought home this time? Puppy? Kitten? Good Lord, child, we’ve all we can do to manage as it is.”
“No, Mum, nothing like that. I haven’t brought home a stray since the blight began. It’s on the kitchen table, but you’ve got to promise me you’ll keep it!”
Peggy looked at her oldest surviving child and saw the tension and fright in her face. It was the same look that found the child in trouble at school or in the mill or just dealing with the neighbors. Some called it pugnacious, and others called it defiant, but Peggy knew it was just the way the good Lord had fashioned the child’s face. Callie got that look when she was frightened of a scolding or worse. Peggy decided to make the promise. At least Callie would be able to lie down and get a few hours sleep before the little ones were up and making a ruckus. “All right, Callie, I promise. Now what have you brought?”
Callie led the way into the kitchen and pushed the basket over to Peggy, her eyes downcast. “Why, that looks like a grocer’s basket. . . Callie James! Where did you come by this?”
“I took it, Mum. I just plain up and took it.” Before the words could sink into Peggy’s mind, Callie began emptying the basket’s contents onto the table. “Look, Mum, bread! And oranges! Jelly and sweet rolls! Here, a chicken for soup and an onion and a carrot! But wait, Mum, wait till you see this!” She pulled out the smoked ham; its sweet tang filled the room.
“Callie . . . I asked you once, now you tell me the truth. Where did you get this?” Peggy’s eyes surveyed the tabletop, already counting the number of meals she could serve. Her housewife’s inventory went to the cupboard where she hoarded the last of the flour that would make dumplings for the chicken soup. One egg, two at the most, along with the flour and they could all eat their fill. The handful of dried peas would make a good porridge when the ham bone was picked clean. Her eyes scoured each item as it was presented from the basket. Sugar, tea, bread. God blessed bread!
“I told you where I got it, Mum. It’s the truth. Now you promised not to toss it out, remember?”
“Yes . . . but, Callie! I thought I taught you better. I’ve never known you to take what wasn’t your own. And now . . . now this!” Peggy sank down onto a straight-backed chair. “It’s wrong, child. And you’ve got to take it back. This minute!”
“No, Mum, I won’t. And you can’t make me. I risked my neck for this basket, and I’ll be damned if I’ll turn it back now.”
“This is a Godly house, Callie! Shame for your language.”
“Mum, can you stop being a mother long enough to think? Think what this will mean to the little ones and to the one in your belly. It’s not like anyone else is starving because I took it. It was packaged to be delivered to Magistrate Rawlings, and you know he’s got more money than God, and he’s an Englishman besides. And the grocer will just raise his prices to those who can pay. Mum, your babies are starving under your very eyes!”
“Near to it, I’ll grant you, Callie, but we’ve managed to fill their bellies somehow.”
“You and I, Mum. We’re the ones who fill their bellies. You with your washing and ironing for the English officers’ wives and me working in the mill. Well, the axe fell tonight, Mum. My hours have been cut and so have my wages. What will we do now? We barely managed before, and now we’ll starve for certain.”
“Something will turn up.” Peggy ran her fingers through her rust-colored curls. There was a time when her hair had been her pride, thick and glossy, the color of the sun in its setting. Now it hung loose, already streaked with gray although she was barely thirty-two. “We’re God-fearing people, Callie, and the Lord looks out for His own.”
“Those aren’t your words, Mum, they’re Da’s! He’s always going around touting how the Lord will