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John had decided where
they would bury his father. She watched him as he jumped off his
pony and walked to the grave.

“Oy, John,” Papin said
softly. “It’s so sad and lonely way out here for
himself.”

John knelt by his father’s grave and touched
the white cross. “He liked it out here,” he said, his voice so
quiet, Sarah nearly didn’t hear him. She slid to the ground and
looped Dan’s reins over his neck to lead him in closer.

The marker read,
David Woodson, Born 1969 Died 2013, Beloved
Husband and Father.
Tears sprang to
Sarah’s eyes when she read the words again. They were John’s words,
in the middle of the worst time of his life having lost one parent
and fearing the likely loss of another.

My darling David, I would
give everything in this world if you were coming home with
us
, Sarah thought, her throat burning with
the urge to weep.

“I wish I coulda met him,” Papin said.

“He was a great guy,” John
said. “The greatest.” He looked up at his mother. “Can we pray,
Mom?” He stood next to Sarah and they both folded their
hands.

“Lord, we know you look over our beloved
husband and father,” Sarah said. “And we pray he’s with you in
heaven waiting for us. Please let him know he’s always in our
hearts and that we’ll remember him with love all the rest of our
days until we can see him again.”

“Amen,” John said solemnly.

“Amen,” Papin and Sarah said together.

Brian watched the big gypsy
pick up Donovan’s sister and swing her in his arms before planting
a lewd, wet kiss on her face. The sight nearly made him want to
puke but he forced his face into the same lines of generous
acceptance the rest of the community’s members seemed determined to
adopt. At least publicly. In private, he had plenty assure him the
community members were as repulsed by the mixed marriage as
he.
Did the woman have no pride? Had she
been just desperate to marry?

It was one more reason why
the community had lost respect for Donovan. He should have
intervened. He should have ensured the gypsy bastard never put his
filthy hands on his sister. It was just one more reason why Brian
was sure the community would vote Donovan out.

He turned to stack the
last basket of beets on the little pony trap. The rest of the
harvest, the all-important wheat for the bread that every family
would depend on in the winter, would be gathered and winnowed in
two weeks time. The tall sheaths of bound wheat studded the
harvested fields all the way to the horizon.

The view was misleading,
Brian knew, as the field was actually only about ten acres of
wheat. Still, it had been a decent harvest. Next year, under his
management, it would be much better, but still, they should survive
the winter, if not comfortably, at least survive. He nodded at the
driver of the cart, who tapped the pony’s rump with a long whip and
took off down the lane toward the community.

“Well, that’s that, then,”
he said to Iain Jamison, who stood next to him wiping the sweat
from his brow although, from what Brian could tell, he’d done very
little that morning. “The harvesting done and the only thing left
to do now but the celebrating.”

“Without grog,” Iain said
and spit into the dirt.

“True. Maybe next year.”
He watched Cooper and his wife walk back to the community behind
the pony cart. His stomach lurched when he saw the gypsy reach down
and squeeze her buttocks. She squealed and trotted away, prompting
Cooper to run after her. He could hear their laughter on the air
and perversely felt a moment’s longing to have his own darling
Katie by his side, although he would never have dreamed to touch
her in such a manner. Especially in public.

“Yeah?” Iain looked at him with interest.
“You gonna bring back whiskey?”

Brian shook the wanton
images out of his mind and began picking up the tools and raglan
bags that had been used to haul the kale in from the fields. “That
is one of my campaign promises.”

“Yeah, well, most of us
just hear the word
promises
,” Iain said.

“I well understand after
the man who’s led you this last year. But
my
promises will be kept. We will
celebrate next
Lughnasa
with beer and whiskey.”

“Well, ya got my vote then.”

“Actually, Jamison,” Brian
said, choosing his words carefully, “I was hoping to have something
more from you.” He waved to a very pregnant young woman who
appeared out of the field, holding the hands of two small children.
“Afternoon to you, Moira. Any day, is it?” She blushed and nodded
before hurrying on.

“More how?” Iain
said.

“I’ll be needing a second in command,
like.”

“I thought that was Declan Cooper. The two
of you’re thick as thieves, yeah?”

“Cooper has been very
helpful, that’s true. But there are two reasons why I am not able
to utilize him, I’m afraid, in a position of that kind of
responsibility.”

“I’ll bet one of ‘em has to do with the fact
that he’s a bloody wog,” Iain said, throwing a pebble across the
field.

“Although I would have
phrased it differently,” Brian said, “I admit, I don’t think the
people in camp could respect a man of his ethnicity.”

“And the second reason?”

“Are you familiar with
Shakespeare, Jamison? I’m specifically referencing
Othello
.”

“That the one with the
black guy?”

“Yes. There’s a quote in it
where Iago counsels Othello not to trust his beloved Desdemona, who
lied to her father in order to be with Othello. Iago says:
“
Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to
see. She has deceived her father and may thee
.”

“Okay.”

“It means by lying to her
father she revealed herself to be a liar.”

Iain looked confused.

“Cooper has no difficulty
in betraying Donovan.”

“Oh, I get it. You don’t trust him.”

“Exactly.”

“So what would the job
be?”

“My thinking is that it would entail camp
security, as Cooper is presently doing, only of course with the
implementation of my new plans. And also camp discipline.”

Iain shrugged. “Okay.”

“I’ll have to ease you
into the role, so don’t worry if it doesn’t happen immediately upon
my taking control of the camp. I have a timeline for
everything.”

“What did you say you did before the lights
went out?”

“I worked in an office in Dublin.”

“What kind of office?”

“That’s not important,”
Brian said. “So, what do you think? Are you interested?”

“Free whiskey and a
license to kick arse? Hell yeah, I’m interested. Sounds like it was
fecking made for me.”

“That’s just what I
thought.” Brian said, clapped him on the back as they began the
long walk back to camp.

Two days later the camp evolved from a
largely muddy refugee tent camp to a bustling county fair, complete
with livestock judging and pie baking contests.

Because Sarah hadn’t lived there last year
and had only heard about it from John, she was astonished to see
the trouble and effort the community went to for the harvest
celebration. Over the camp’s main center fire pit a metal spit had
been erected, on which hung the large hog that Mike and Iain had
slaughtered the day before. Two men from Declan’s clan flanked the
slowly rotating pork, painstakingly basting and seasoning it as
they would for several hours more until it was golden brown and
falling off the spit in tender, juicy slabs.

Tables were set up in concentric arcs from
the where the hog cooked in the center of camp, groaning with more
food than Sarah had ever remembered seeing. Just to see so much
filled her with a feeling of accomplishment at her part in it, and
sadness that she was leaving it all behind. One table was lined
with no fewer than ten berry pies—most still warm, having been
pulled from ovens and cook pits that morning. Each pie would be
judged before the day was out, the proud baker to strut about the
festivities with a red ribbon of honor for her efforts.

Another of the gypsies—Declan’s cousin—had
found a beehive, and so all bakers had sweet honey for their pies
and cakes, cookies and bannocks, puddings and grilling sauces.
Another table was full of platters of roasted potatoes and crocks
of fresh creamery butter and chives, squares of honeyed cornbread,
and plate after plate of roasted carrots, parsnips, broccoli and
cauliflower.

Beyond the food tables, Mike and some of the
other men had set up competition sites for horse shoes, scarecrow
making, pumpkin carving, sack races, tug-of-war, seed spitting
contest, egg tosses, and an archery competition. On the other side
of where the hog roasted, a long wooden stage was constructed.

As Sarah wandered through the festival, her
mouth open with wonder and delight, six camp children clogged with
force and gusto to the tunes played by a gypsy band of musicians,
their shoes pummeling the wooden boards in time to the beat and
creating their own musical tempo.

Papin and John had instantly melted into the
crowd of laughing, happy people and Sarah let them go. This was a
day for celebrating what they had done and to come together in
fellowship for what they had all worked so hard for.

She, herself, had supplied
three dozen cookies, sweetened with the gypsy honey, and even
without baking soda or chocolate chips, they melted in your mouth
and she was proud to offer them as her contribution. She put a
plate together of stuffed eggs, pickled relish and still-warm
bannocks dripping with butter and turned to find a seat for the
horse race that would be the official beginning of the
Lughnasa
.

She waved to Fiona, who was sitting on a
blanket with nearly forty other people on the outskirts of the
camp. She knew Declan was one of the jockeys. Fiona was dressed in
a toned-down version of her wedding dress. Her cheeks were flushed
pink and her eyes sparkled as she strained to catch a glimpse of
her husband on one of the horses.

Sarah settled down next to her. “Oh my gosh,
this is so much fun,” she said, offering her plate to Fiona, who
waved it away.

“If you’d’ve told me at
last year’s
Lughnasa
,” Fiona said, “that I’d be watching my
husband
race in the next festival, I
would have thought you were completely crackers.” She turned to
look at Declan as he patted his horse’s neck and prepared for the
race. “And yet, here I am.”

“Yes, you are,” Sarah said. “Is Mike
racing?” she asked innocently.

Fi wrinkled her nose. “Mike’s too old for
this sort of thing. He’d like to kill himself. They all cheat
desperately, you know. And half of them try to flog each other or
knock the other out of the saddle. It’s mad fun.”

“Yeah, sounds it.”

Sarah hadn’t exchanged a word with Mike
since the night he turned down the pleasure of her company in his
bed. Four days ago. She was sick at the thought that they had
wasted the bulk of her remaining time in camp with a
misunderstanding and now she was leaving tomorrow and all that was
left to say was a stilted, rushed and very public goodbye.

It’s true she’d been angry with him and it
had taken her some time to unhook from that anger. But she missed
him desperately. And the lack of communication after having had it
for so long felt like the loss of a limb.

“Oh! There he is!” Fi said, gushing like a
young bride. “Isn’t he handsome?”

Sarah noticed Fi was totally absorbed in
memorizing every inch of her husband as he rode to the starting
line and that her hand went to her stomach without thought.

Oh, my
, Sarah thought.
She’s pregnant.
Dearest, darling Fi is going to have a baby. And I’m going to miss
it.

“They’re off!” Fi said, clapping her hands
with delight. “Bloody hell, Dec’s in the lead! I told him to pace
himself. Now they’ll all be targeting him. Go! Go! Go!”

Sarah got to her feet to see better and saw
the cloud of dust and dirt that heralded the start of the
horserace. As Fi jumped up and down in excitement, Sarah scanned
the crowd of onlookers for Mike. When she spotted him, her stomach
gave a delightful lurch as it always did when she saw him. So tall
and oblivious to how truly gorgeous he was. She watched him push
his long hair from his eyes and respond to someone who had spoken
to him. He laughed, and when he did his whole face opened up. She
remembered him doing that because of something she had said to
him.

She remembered a very special night too…

“Sarah? Can you see them? They’re coming
around the corner. Can you see who’s in the lead? Oh, I can’t
look!”

The riders were just visible coming from the
north pasture. They must have hooked back at the fork of the
largest oak in the pasture to swing back to the finish line. Declan
was indeed in the lead. Sarah could see his long legs wrapped
around the middle of his big bay—it looked like he was riding
Mike’s gelding, Petey—and hunched down low to the horse’s neck to
allow the long galloping strides as little interference as
possible.

“He’s winning,” Sarah said, grabbing Fi’s
arm. “He’s in the lead!”

“Oh, please God he doesn’t break his neck,”
Fi murmured, but her eyes were open as she watched him come
thundering past them, just yards from the finish line.