Open Secrets - Chapter 1

Open Secrets Chapter 3

This baby will come safely, Ann thought, watching the shadows flicker on the flagged floor of their cottage.  It was a warm day in early May, following on from a succession of other such warm days, giving promise of a long hot summer.  The little cottage was a haven surrounded by greenery, fruit trees, a small vegetable patch and a tiny plot where Ann had planted herbs and a few cottage flowers.  At the end of the garden was a coop for the chickens. Maybe soon they would be able to afford a pig.

The cottage door was open, letting the sunlight in. A fresh breeze stirred the leaves of the lilac bush outside the door.  Ann picked up her basket of wet washing and walked out into the sunshine, letting the sun’s rays play on her face and neck.  She gave a little sigh of contentment as she pegged the washing on the new clothesline.

Two years had passed since the flight from Ireland. All in all, they had been good years.  That first summer in Wales had been long and dry, a relief in itself after the damp, mist and gloom of the past few years at home. 

John had fallen lucky, finding work with a carter, driving loads of agricultural produce from local farms to the local ports and markets and back again.  The carter had let them live in a cottage on his land, stone built and simple, but a hundred times better than what they had left behind.  There was one big room for John, Ann and the boys to live and sleep in, and a little pantry or storeroom leading off the main room to keep food cool and safe from animals.  There were wooden shutters on the inside of the windows, to keep out the winds and winter cold and to keep them all safe and snug at night.  The little cottage was surrounded by a cottage garden large enough for chickens and a vegetable patch.

In their first summer, Ann had lost the baby conceived in Ireland.  It was over quickly.  John had gone to work, the two boys were at lessons in the local church school, she had been alone in the house when suddenly a fierce pain had doubled her over.

She had already borne three children, the two boys and a little girl who had come early and died soon after birth.  That had been a blessing, although Ann knew it was wrong to think so.  At that time, there had been no work, barely any food and no hope of anything better.  After Niamh had died, John had decided they should leave Ireland.  The pain, when it came, left her in no doubt that the baby was on its way.  Within an hour, the tiny fragment of humanity was born, too small to even take a breath on its own.

Shocked, Ann acted automatically.  She wrapped the remains in a little piece of clean sheeting (a pitifully small piece was all she needed) and buried them under the apple tree by the stone wall at the end of their little patch of land.  As she scratched and scraped to make a big enough hole she almost lost consciousness several times, but in the end, she completed her task.

Tenderly, she placed the small body of her dead child in the earth.  The little thing was so tiny that it was impossible to tell the sex without looking more closely than she could bear to.  “Sleep well,” she whispered. Our Lady hadn’t taken care of them after all, she reflected.  But she felt that this was a gentler land than Ireland had been.  Not that she was exactly thinking of turning her back on Our Lady, but the old gods seemed kinder.  Maybe they could go to the chapel and make a completely new start….  Maybe this baby was never meant to live.  It had been conceived in Ireland, in poverty, sorrow and famine, maybe this was the end of their old life and the beginning of a new, better one.

When John came home late that night, she said nothing, but when he turned to her in bed, she pushed him away.

“I must have been mistaken about the new baby,” she whispered. “My courses have come at last.”

John said nothing, and they never spoke of it again, but he knew that she had been with child and that now she was not.

In the early autumn of their second year in Wales, Ann knew that she was pregnant again.  She waited until after All Hallows Eve to tell John.