Free The Star of the Sea by Joseph O'Connor

And then Our Lady came in to the place where we were – not a chamber but a kind of shining meadow – and She touched our faces one by one and we became full of light, as water. And Our Lady said in the English language: blessed be the fruit of my womb .
    When I woke up it was black-dark and the music was after stopping. I could taste the bread I was after eating in the dream, as sweet and luscious as any I ever knew. But then the cramp came back, harder than before – Christ stand between us and all harm – like a blacksmith’s iron aflame in my guts. I thought my time had come to die but it stopped, then, and I could feel myself weeping for the pain of it.
    All the lights were put out in the house. The lower portion of my body was covered in snow, and I could scarcely feel my legs no more. Such a dreadful stillness over the icy land I never heard before. Not the cry of a beast nor the croak of a bird. Just blackness and stillness all over the fields. It was as though the whole world was quietly dying.
    Someone was after coming out and putting the horse inside in the stable and blanketing him. I went and waited beside the trap for a time.
    But he never came out.
    At length I went and knocked on the door again. One of the other servants, an old footman this time, said I would have to go on for myself. Otherwise he was after being told to set the dogs on me and it was more than his life was worth to give me admittance to the house for His Lordship the Commander was in a drunken fury. He gave me a cup of water and pleaded with me to go on for myself.
    At that a terrible raging anger swept through me like a torrent. I tried to strike the man – God pardon me the raising of my hand to an aged person – but he slammed the door shut on me.
    I prowled around the house like an animal for a time. But all inside must have gone to their beds for the windows were darkened now and shuttered. The madness came up again in me then. I let a roar out of me.
    I cursed the living name of Henry Blake, and prayed to Christ that neither he nor his will ever know rest so long as they live, all seed and breed of them that ever sees Galway. That they may never sleep a night in their lives again. That they may die in agonies and have a dishonoured grave.
    Mary, I would have murdered him if he came out of the house. Christ forgive me, but I would have got pleasure out of watching him suffer so I would.
    Wind was coming up hard and biting off the lake. Now I heard a wolf crying in the hills behind. Down the mountain to Leenaun I went, thinking I might beg a place for the night in some haggard or even a morsel of bread itself or a sup of milk for the child. But the people would not stand for it, being afraid of the fever and they whipped me out of it with shame and scorn. Some troopers went past in the rain but gave me nothing either. They said they had nothing to give.
    I came back here to find your sister looking over the child who was bestraught with the hunger. She said you were after going walking all the way over to Kingscourt to ask about help. That was shutting the stable door when the horse is after bolting,Mary, because I know there is not a soul in that place at the present. I have sent her away now, for the pitiful screams of the child were distressing her.
    They will stop soon.
    Do you remember, my gentle Mary, how we used to go out walking together when we were young? The simple happiness of the days together and the sweetness and friendship of our nights. What a life we thought we should have, a life of buttermilk and bees, you once said. Even though I knew I was not your first choice for a companion of life, there was no happier man in all of Ireland than myself at that time. Nor would I have translated my place with any king or landlord, neither with the Sultan of India himself. All the gold in Victoria’s throne would not have given me lure or temptation: nor every gem in her crown. O my own wife. My own Mary Duane. I felt that