Our Destiny Is Blood Read online

  Published in paperback and e-book in 2017 by Clare Daly

  Copyright © Clare Daly, 2017

  First Edition

  The moral rights of Clare Daly to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  Paperback ISBN 978-1-9998362-0-7

  E-book ISBN 978-1-9998362-1-4

  Cover image by Janon Kas/Shutterstock.com

  Book design by Design For Writers

  www.claredalyauthor.com

  For my mother

  1

  Far Eastern Siberia, 1827

  Caleb Tamersk was going to die. He had long accepted that fact. He’d even got quite comfortable with the notion, living precariously close to it as he did. Throughout his life he had taunted death, sent countless men into its open arms knowing that when it came for him, he would go out strong and fighting. He never thought when the moment arrived that it would be like this. This was beyond his worst imaginings and he wondered whether he was still asleep in his cell and this was some sort of macabre dream. The shackles cut deep into his torn wrists, the pain shooting up his arms. This was no dream. He was no longer within the walls of Castle Valla prison, he was outside them and that was the worst place he could be.

  He’d been dragged out into the snow, forced to his knees as the guards chained him to a metal ring set in the ice. As the last of the daylight faded from the sky, they hurried back inside. He could just see the entrance behind him, the portcullis shrieking as it was lowered to the ground, the castle and all inside secure. He had never panicked in his life but it grew inside him – the uncertainty of what was to come. His teeth chattered against the cold and he cursed that the snow was deep enough to cover his knees but not enough to hide in, away from what was coming.

  He pulled again on his chains in desperation, trying to shift the ring itself. It was unlike any metal he had ever seen – heavy as iron, but shiny like a mirror, his own reflection a distorted swirl as he tried to free himself. But there was no escape. His only hope was to freeze to death before it came, but the guards had seen to that too – the overcoat heavy on his shoulders. The sacrifice was no good if the offering was already dead. He must be alive.

  As darkness fell, a loud crack echoed in the mountains beyond, and an avalanche descended as if to escape the one who thundered through. A blast of air flung his coat open and he braced himself as the icy air found the skin beneath his prison uniform.

  ‘Please,’ he shouted. ‘Help me.’

  He looked back to the castle. A lone figure stood on the battlements – the governor and orchestrator of his fate, a man known as Rako. He would not help him. He had signed his death warrant with Rako some time ago. Since his arrival last winter, he had aided four prisoners with suicide for no other reason than proof that he could – that he could push and prod and poke until his subject saw no other way. He even gave them the tools – a wooden spoon whittled to a sharp point hidden in their gruel or spare clothing in which to make a noose. Through thick walls and strong iron, he manipulated the weak-minded, his whispers echoing along the dark corridors and chambers at night. So delighted was he with his success, he was unaware of his growing infamy among the other prisoners, who for their own safety had reported him to Rako. Cowards. He would gladly have killed them all.

  An image of his mother came to mind. He had not thought of her in decades for she was long dead but there she was smiling at him and he remembered how her lip curled so. Everything he had learned about manipulation came from her until the pupil saw the manipulation first-hand and would have a mistress no longer. He’d wiped that smile away when he’d killed her and here she was now forcing her way into his mind as he was about to die.

  Do you wait for me, Lenka?

  She had never permitted him to call her Mama, even as a child, and perhaps that’s why it was easier for him to think of her as a stranger with a strange love he had no longer needed. She smiled again in his mind, the sweet turning sour this time.

  He’s coming for you.

  Stop it.

  You’re going to bleed.

  Stop!

  The ground began to tremble, as if her presence had signalled the gates of hell to open and they shook the earth as they did so.

  He’s coming.

  He blessed himself, trying to remember a prayer from long ago, but the words came only with practice and he did not know them well enough. If a creature such as this existed in the world then any God would have long forsaken it. The snow around him began to shift as it unleashed the smell of hidden decay, the kind that lives underground as it rots and becomes one with the soil. While acquainted with the scent of death, this was new to him, a deeper, more sinister offering. Perhaps it was the climb of the dead he had cajoled, come to claim their revenge. He looked across the ice. Something was coming, at great speed – a swirl of shadows, splitting and merging, until one long dark shadow came to rest upon him. He cowered in fear, squeezing his eyes shut. Something cold and wet touched his cheek and he jumped. Was that a tongue? But when he opened his eyes, all he could see were the folds of a giant cloak as it enveloped him, tearing his chains with ease.

  ‘Please, I beg you.’

  A husky laugh filled the fabric around him and in his mind that laugh became his mother’s, rising in pitch as the laughter grew more hysterical and he was taken into the skies.

  2

  County Kildare, Ireland, 1847

  ‘Your mother said if you got to eighteen, it had spared you.’

  He coughed, the phlegm caught in his throat, before he swallowed it back down. The room was dark save for a single candle, the flame casting light up the walls of the cottage like a demon as the draught pushed it this way and that.

  ‘You need to rest. No more talk now.’

  He lifted his head. Beads of sweat ran back into his greying hair.

  ‘It’s important,’ he said. ‘She was so worried for you. Always so afraid.’

  Evelyn wrung out the cloth in the bowl and brought it to his forehead but he flung it away. The fever was making him delirious. For the past hour, he’d been mumbling, so low at first that she doubted it, but when she lit the candle he was lying there, his eyes darting from one corner to the other. In his hand, he worked her mother’s rosary beads, prayers lost on his lips. Since her death almost ten years ago, they had never left his pocket. While he had embraced the church during his grief, Evelyn had silently chosen to challenge it. As a child, she sat diligently by her father’s side at mass but as she knelt in prayer she sought to ask God the questions she felt he must answer.

  They weighed heavy on her. Even her brother Michael took her stoic silence in church as devotion rather than rebellion. She needed answers and the one-way conversation was not satisfying her desire for them. She went to confession, not to confess her sins but to have somewhere private to talk to Father Mercer, who did his best to explain things to her. ‘God works in mysterious ways,’ he’d said, a look of concern on his face. ‘You must have faith.’ As her teenage years went by, her in
quisitive mind delved further and she deemed that in being unanswered, the biggest question she was asking had been answered after all. However, she was fond of her talks with Father Mercer and in trying to bring her back to her faith, he had enlisted her help with various tasks about the parish that she was happy to assist with. If she didn’t have her belief in God, she respected that he had his and she saw first-hand the comfort that his beliefs brought him and others who needed help. As famine tracked across the county, they needed it more than ever.

  A drop of water fell on her cheek from the ceiling. The rain was coming through. They couldn’t afford to fix it – at least not properly. Michael had patched the roof with brambles, but the rain found its way through its twisted branches. They had sold their workhorse three months ago, fetching a poor price because of its age, but a bad harvest meant difficult decisions needed to be made. As the money ran out, she knew that her father was going hungry so that they did not and when she did see him eat, he ate little, preferring to offer them most of his share. It was making him ill and he had grown weaker by the day. How long could he go on like that? She hated herself for even thinking it but he was bedridden, racked by fever, his body so thin.

  It would be dawn soon. Where was Michael? He’d left after midnight, saying only that he would bring back something to eat. She wondered as she listened to her father cough if he would even be able to eat it. She brought the cloth again to him, pleased this time that its reception was met with relief, his eyes closing.

  ‘You’re a great girl, Evelyn. Just like your mother.’

  ‘Dad, rest now. Michael will be back soon.’

  ‘It’s not the same for the boys.’

  ‘I know.’

  She didn’t. She hadn’t a clue what he was talking about but perhaps if she could get him to rest, he’d have come around a bit by the time her brother got back. If she could just keep that fever at bay, maybe he might stand a chance. He looked her in the eye.

  ‘Your mother had lots of sisters. Half of them like her. All dead, she said.’

  He never spoke of her mother’s family. The only things he’d shared were his memories of her, of their time spent together, but never her life beyond him, before they met. She didn’t even know exactly where she was from. She had a vague memory of sitting on her mother’s lap – her telling a story about her childhood in the west, how the ocean tore the rocks to shreds in a storm and how she’d almost been blown off a cliff, and her mimicking, with flailing arms and whistling lips, the ferociousness of it all. It had made her laugh – a contagious giggle that went back and forth between them. Her father had once said she grew up on a strawberry farm with the sunshine in her hair but perhaps it was his own romantic notion. Maybe he wasn’t sure either. And then she’d died. How would they ever know now? She had no family that she knew of, at least not until her father mentioned them. If he went too, then who would know their history? Not only would she lose him but also another piece of her mother, stories gone with both of them.

  ‘What do you mean, half of them like her?’

  His eyes had closed. Had he gone to sleep at last? He forced them to open again, his eyelids heavy, barely up to the task. Evelyn took his hand, listening to the rasp of his breath as he exhaled.

  ‘Your mother...she was…extraordinary.’

  He coughed again, a quick fit expelled impatiently as it disturbed his words.

  ‘She thought you would have it. But you don’t. You are eighteen soon and the worry will be gone.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I know you think I’ve always stopped you doing things, keeping you here to look after me and your brother, but I had to be sure.’

  She waited.

  ‘In case they came for you. There are things out there. Things that can see people who are different. I’m so glad you’re not different.’

  He coughed again. This time, a small line of blood coated his bottom lip.

  ‘Your mother spent her childhood running from them. And then she came here, settled in with me and who would look for her here, she thought. And she didn’t even use her gift. She said all she ever wanted was to be normal and how it would be a curse if you had it too. She didn’t want that for you.’

  Not different. What did he mean? She’d never fitted in. Every day she felt it and though it was hard to put her finger on it, she felt it inside – that if everyone had the same basic building blocks, she was missing some or they’d been built in a different order. Of course, she was different. A memory stumbled into her mind – hurtful and unannounced as the ones accompanied by grief always were. In the light August rain, she stood in the graveyard, her hand in her father’s as they buried her. She’d only seen the figure in silhouette, the sun breaking through the clouds to shine right in her eyes at the precise moment he had turned to look at her. And he was looking. She could feel it. When the sun disappeared, so did he, walking away among the tombstones. When she’d asked her father who the man was, he said he didn’t know but his grip tightened on her hand. In a way, he’d spent the last decade holding it, keeping her close.

  She’d not thought of that in a long time. It had been smothered by loss, that aching hole in her left by her mother’s passing. Had he been one of them? Had he been the one to find her?

  ‘Tell me how she really died,’ she asked, fighting the quiver in her voice.

  Her father’s expression changed. His eyes squinted as if the memory was too painful to resurrect. After a time, he spoke.

  ‘One came for her. I didn’t see it but I know it’s true. Days before, she said she could feel it close. It watched her. She knew the feeling well. It wasn’t the first time. And then one day she was gone. Her heart, the doctor said, for what else would cut a young woman down so quickly and silently? A sudden attack and I went along with it because I knew. It had made her heart stop beating. Had she more time, she might have fled but she was tired of running and she wouldn’t leave us anyway, not you and Michael.’

  ‘Does Michael know?’

  ‘I never told anyone. Like her I was afraid. I told Michael only to watch out for you. Drove it into him all those years that you would be his responsibility if anything happened to me, at least until you were a grown woman. You can tell him if you like. It doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘You can tell him yourself when he gets back.’

  Her father gave her a resigned look.

  ‘You said she was extraordinary...how?’

  He coughed again. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth and he closed his eyes. They were wet with tears.

  ‘Please,’ she said.

  He caught her hand and brought it to rest on his forearm. On the scar tissue that distorted his skin, as it stretched, pulled and twisted from his wrist to his elbow. A scar he’d always had – ever since she could remember.

  ‘She wasn’t always able to control it,’ he said.

  ***

  A mile from home, Michael’s knees hit the road hard. Sharp stones skinned the palms of his hands, and his body seemed to lock, his legs telling him that they would not be leant on again, his body agreeing not to do the leaning. He rolled over on his back, grasped his sore hands, and looked at the gathering clouds. He needed to get home but his body was spent. He checked the package – a half loaf carefully tied to his ankle beneath his trouser leg – a cargo more precious than any diamond, richer than any amount of gold.

  He knew that if he wanted his body to get him home, he was going to have to take a bite – just enough to fool his legs into working again. He cursed himself for using so much energy to get it in the first place. The queue had been orderly to begin with but when the relief cart ran out, things descended into chaos. Punches were thrown. Elbows flew into ribs. Hair was pulled by the handful. Desperate people did desperate things and like everyone around him, he had others who relied on his success. He had travelled miles t
o join the early morning queue and though he had come away with more than most, his right hand ached from the blows he had struck at those who tried to stop him. He didn’t get far running along the road before his lungs were on fire. From there, he’d hidden the bread and it had been one slow foot in front of the other, in the hope that no-one stopped him. The fact that his body had given up on him was a harsh lesson indeed.

  He crawled onto the side of the road and unwrapped the bread. The crust was hard. It was probably three or four days old but even still the smell of it made his mouth water. With eager fingers, he tore off a piece and ate it. The hunger reawakened in him like a beast and he fought the urge to just devour the whole lot and be damned. He wrapped it up, away from temptation, and rested his head back, waiting for the bread to fuel the fire inside him once again.

  A man can do anything with a fire in his belly. A warming mutton stew, a bowl of steaming hot porridge, bread so hot from the griddle it would burn your hands but you don’t care. You have to break off a corner, lash some butter on it and watch it melt as it touches your lips. Ah the warmth! And a potato – in that stew, seduced in that gorgeous gravy, its flesh scrubbed up – its pale inside deliciously breaking under the pressure of your fork. His insides ached at the memory of a good meal and he scolded himself for allowing it in. He was usually quite good at burying unhelpful notions. Like the one of leaving Ireland to make his fortune.

  Most of his friends had taken the leap, long before the famine came – off to Liverpool, Boston or New York, the younger sons off to conquer the world, leaving the older ones to take care of the crops. Jack O’Keefe – he was in the West Indies they said, sailing on ships filled with sugar cane, while his eight brothers saw to everything back home. He imagined Jack soaking up the sunshine, his arms around an island girl with cocoa skin and flowers in her hair, oblivious to the devastation at home. Unlike Jack, Michael had no brothers nor a brood of sisters to rally the cause. There was just himself and Evelyn, two years younger than him, both forever tethered to their home and their father since their mother had died. Duty bypassed dreams as their father descended into grief and ill-health and both children realised that Cularne was where they would stay, until death saw fit to take them elsewhere.