1949 Read Free Page B

water across the hills of Clare.
    As the gray stallion galloped up the lane toward home, a startled blackbird exploded from a gorse bush. The horse shied violently but the girl on his back merely laughed. “Heart of a lion, you,” said Ursula Halloran.
    Reining the stallion to a halt, she stroked his neck. He pawed the ground and snorted with belated courage. “Easy, Saoirse , * stand easy now.” Until he was obedient to her will she would not allow him to move forward.
    Caught in a bubble of time, they waited.
    Â 
    When she was a toddler in the Dublin tenement district, Ursula had been known as Precious. Applied to a scrawny waif with huge blue eyes staring out of a pinched little face, the name was ironic. Irish slum children were far from precious in 1914.
    Eleven years—the last five spent on a farm near Clarecastle—had wrought a transformation in the girl. The pale hair of infancy had given way to a heavy mane the color of oak leaves in autumn. Healthy freckles were spattered across glowing cheeks; puberty had brought a hint of gray to her eyes. Her smile revealed excellent teeth, a rarity among the Irish.
    Early malnutrition had left its mark, however. She would always be too slender. The angular planes of her face did not conform to the current fashion for feminine beauty, though in old age they would be magnificent. They might have been carved from the stones of ancient Ireland.
    In her imagination Ursula never pictured herself as a mythic warrior queen. Her models were living patriots: Maud Gonne, the passionate revolutionary who had inspired W. B. Yeats and personified Caitlín Ní Houlihan, the eponymous spirit of Ireland, in his most famous play. Or Constance Markievicz, the fearless rebel countess who had turned her back on rank and privilege to fight beside the men in the Rising of 1916.
    Ursula kept a scrapbook devoted to the countess.
    The beauty of those famous women meant nothing to her. It was their inner fire she sought to emulate. When country lads followed Ursula with their eyes she thought they were seeing her as she saw herself. Heroic in her heart.
    Â 
    The blazingly yellow blossoms of the gorse smelt like coconut. Atop a hillock in the adjacent field stood a solitary thorn tree; one of the fairy trees enchanted when Ireland was young. The white lace mantle that was its springtime glory had almost gone. When a breeze set the last few petals adrift, bereft branches clawed the sky with empty fingers.
    Ursula felt an inexplicable connection to Ireland’s ancient magic, as if time were a curve without beginning or end and some remnant of druidry slumbered in her blood. But there is a new magic now , she thought. Invisible waves of power are racing through the air. Uncle Henry says they will change the world .
    His letter in her pocket was like an unexploded bomb.
    She slipped one hand into her woolly jacket and withdrew two envelopes. The flap of one had already been torn open. Taking out the letter, she strained to reread Henry Mooney’s typewritten words in the fading light.
    20 May 1925
    Dear Ursula,
    I hope this finds you well. Ella and I are in good form, considering everything, and our little Isabella is a blessing in these troubled times. For such a wee mite she certainly has a mind of her own. She reminds me of you in that respect. You must come up to Dublin to see her. Soon .
    The deliberate emphasis was disturbing. Newspapermen like Henry never underlined words.
    His letters to Ursula invariably included commentary on political events, an interest they shared. This time he wrote sourly: “The partition of Ireland is a disaster, even worse than the Act of Union that forcibly joined this country with Britain. Partition stranded thousands of supporters of the Union within the Irish Free State. But that was the price the Unionist Party was willing to pay to cut off a portion of the north from the rest of the island and turn six counties into what they call