Free Song of the Silent Harp by BJ Hoff Page B

child.” He looked at her. “Because of your mother.” It was no question, merely a statement of what they both knew.
    â€œThere was that,” she said quietly. He winced at the hurt in her voice, remembering all too clearly Nora’s shame.
    â€œNobody thought the less of you for her, Nora,” he said awkwardly, meaning it.
    â€œNor the better of me either, I’m sure.” A harsh, choked sound of derision escaped her.
    â€œMany thought you were a grand girl,” Morgan said evenly after a moment. “I, for one. And Michael, another.”
    He could scarcely hear her reply, so soft were her words. “Aye, I remember.”
    He looked down at her, but her eyes were fixed straight ahead. “Have you heard from him of late?” she asked.
    â€œMichael? Not since last fall.”
    â€œAnd both of us playing the fools over you.” He said it quietly, not thinking. She didn’t seem to hear. If Nora was remembering, she was keeping her thoughts to herself.
    A ghost of a smile touched the corners of her mouth as if she, too, were remembering. “You were the lads, the two of you. You, always in trouble, with Michael guarding your back.”
    Where had it gone, that time in the sun? The years of being young and brimming with life, when every wish was a promise and every dream still within reach…when Nora had been but a slip of a lass, with him and Michael standing as tall as heroes in her eyes?
    Ah, where had it gone…and so quickly?

    Where have the years gone? Nora wondered, a terrible sense of loss pervading her spirit. Had it really been so long ago that the three of them roamed the village as childhood friends and adventurers?
    They had been great companions, those three, young and more than a little foolish at times, but faithful one to the other for all their youthful follies…so different in so many ways, and yet somehow so close in spirit that each could finish the other’s thoughts.
    Nora had been in Killala first, before either Michael or Morgan. Born in the village, the only other town she had ever stepped foot in was Ballina. She was a child of shame, the oldest of four children, all born on the wrong side of the blanket to a woman who was the scandal of the village. Their father had been a womanizing British sailor who promised Nora’s mother the starsand delivered only stones. It was thought he had left a wife in England, for when Nora was eight years old he went back to the sea and never returned.
    After that, her mother had taken in one man after another until she became such a slattern she could find no companion but the bottle. Nora and the younger children were left to fend for themselves as best they knew how, and over the years Nora provided what she could in the way of motherly care to the little ones.
    She grew up in abject shame: the shame of her mother, their mean, dilapidated hut, her own raggedy clothing and the cast-off garments she and her siblings were forced to wear—but, most of all, the shame of rejection: that of her mother for her own offspring and that of the village for the lot of them. So heavy had been the burden of that shame throughout the years that when her mother died only weeks before Nora gave birth to Tahg, her first thought—may God forgive her—was one of relief: relief that her own children would never need to know their maternal grandmother.
    Michael came to the village the year Nora turned nine, the same year a diphtheria epidemic took the lives of her two younger sisters, leaving only her and her wee brother, Rory, to defend themselves against their abusive mother. Three years her senior and already possessing the instincts of a born leader, Michael Burke had immediately taken Nora under his protection. He took his self-appointed guardianship seriously; no longer did the children of the village dare to wag about Nora and her brother, much less taunt them face-to-face. Michael was brawny and