“Keep your babe close, there are those who say she was brought by a witch and must be bewitched therefrom.”

Scarlett shivered.

Grainne’s stained fingers gently undid Cat’s grasp. She brushed her soft wisp-covered head with a kiss and a murmur. “Go well, Dara.” Then she gave the baby to Scarlett. “I will call her ‘Dara’ in my memory. It means oak tree. I am grateful for the gift of seeing her, and for your thanks. But do not bring her again. It is not wise for her to have aught to do with me. Go now. Someone is coming and you should not be seen . . . No, the path the other takes is not yours. It is the one from the north used by foolish women who buy potions for love or beauty or harm to those they hate. Go. Guard the babe.”

Scarlett was glad to obey. She plodded doggedly through the cold rain that had begun to fall. Her head and back were bent to protect her baby from harm. Cat made sucking noises beneath the shelter of Scarlett’s cloak.


Mrs. Fitzpatrick eyed the wet cloak on the floor by the fire, but she made no comment. “Miss Piles seems to have a nice light hand with a batter,” she said. “I’ve brought scones with your tea.”

“Good, I’m starving.” She’d fed Cat and had a nap and the sun was shining again. Scarlett was confident now that the walk had done her a world of good. She wouldn’t take no for an answer the next time she wanted to go out.

Mrs. Fitz didn’t attempt to stop her. She recognized futility when she met it.

When Colum came home Scarlett walked down to his house for tea. And advice.

“I want to buy a small closed buggy, Colum. It’s too cold to go around in the trap, and I need to do things. Will you pick one out for me?”

He’d be willing, said Colum, but she could do her own choosing if she’d prefer. The buggy makers would bring their wares to her. As would the makers of anything else she fancied. She was the lady of the Big House.

“Now why didn’t I think of that?” said Scarlett.

 Within a week she was driving a neat black buggy with a thin yellow stripe on its side, behind a neat gray horse that lived up to the seller’s promise that it had good go in it with hardly a mention of the whip ever needed.

She also had a “parlor suite” of green-upholstered shiny oak furniture with ten extra chairs that could be pulled near the hearth, and a marble-topped round table large enough to seat six for a meal. All these sat on a Wilton carpet in the room adjoining her bedroom. No matter what outrageous tales Colum might tell about French women entertaining crowds while they lounged in their beds, she was going to have a proper place to see her visitors. And no matter what Mrs. Fitz said, she saw no reason at all to use the downstairs rooms for entertaining when there were plenty of empty rooms upstairs and handy.

She didn’t have her big desk and chair yet because the carpenter in Ballyhara was making them. What point was there in having a town of your own if you weren’t smart enough to support the businesses in it? You could be sure of getting your rent if they were earning money.

Cat’s padded basket was beside her on the buggy seat everywhere Scarlett went. She made baby noises and blew bubbles and Scarlett was sure that they were singing duets when she drove along the road. She showed Cat off at every shop and house in Ballyhara. People crossed themselves when they saw the dark-skinned baby with the green eyes and Scarlett was pleased. She thought they were blessing the baby.

As Christmas came nearer, Scarlett lost much of the elation she’d felt when she was freed from the captivity of convalescence. “I wouldn’t be in Atlanta for all the tea in China, even if I was invited to all the parties, or in Charleston, either, with their silly dance cards and receiving lines,” she told Cat, “but I’d like to be somewhere that’s not so damp all the time.”

Scarlett thought it would be nice to be living in a cottage so that she could whitewash it and paint the trim the way Kathleen and the cousins were doing. And all the other cottagers too, in Adamstown and beside the roads. When she walked over to Kennedy’s bar on December 22 and saw the shops and houses being limed and painted over the almost-new jobs done in the autumn, she pranced with delight. Her pleasure in the neat prosperity of her town took away the slight sadness that she often felt when she went to her own bar for companionship. It sometimes seemed as if the conversation turned stiff as soon as she entered.


“We’ve got to decorate the house for Christmas,” she announced to Mrs. Fitz. “What do the Irish do?”

Holly branches on mantels and over doors and windows, said the housekeeper. And a big candle, usually red, in one window to light the Christ Child’s way. We’ll have one in every window, Scarlett declared, but Mrs. Fitz was firm. One window. Scarlett could have all the candles she wanted on tables—or the floor, if it made her happy—but only one window should have a candle. And that one could only be lighted on Christmas Eve when the Angelus rang.

The housekeeper smiled. “The tradition is that the youngest child in the house lights a rush from the coals on the hearth as soon as the Angelus is heard, then lights the candle with the flame from the rush. You might have to help her a bit.”


Scarlett and Cat spent Christmas at Daniel’s house. There was nearly enough admiration for Cat to satisfy even Scarlett. And enough people coming through the open door to keep her mind off the Christmases at Tara in the old days when the family and house servants went out onto the wide porch after breakfast in response to the cry, “Christmas Gift.” When Gerald O’Hara gave a drink of whiskey and a plug of tobacco to every field hand as he handed him his new coat and new boots. When Ellen O’Hara said a brief prayer for each woman and child as she gave them lengths of calico and flannel together with oranges and stick candy. Sometimes Scarlett missed the warm slurrings of black voices and the flashing smiles on black faces almost more than she could bear.


“I need to go home, Colum,” Scarlett said.

“And aren’t you home now, on the land of your people that you made O’Hara land again?”

“Oh, Colum, don’t be Irish at me! You know what I mean. I’m homesick for Southern voices and Southern sunshine and Southern food. I want some corn bread and fried chicken and grits. Nobody in Ireland even knows what corn is. That’s just a word for any kind of grain to them.”

“I do know, Scarlett, and I’m sorry for the heartache you’re feeling. Why not go for a visit when good sailing weather comes? You can leave Cat here. Mrs. Fitzpatrick and I will take care of her.”

“Never! I’ll never leave Cat.”

There was nothing to be said. But from time to time the thought popped up in Scarlett’s head: it’s only two weeks and a day to cross the ocean, and sometimes the dolphins play alongside for hours on end.


On New Year’s Day, Scarlett got her first hint of what it really meant to be The O’Hara. Mrs. Fitz came to her room with morning tea instead of sending Peggy Quinn with the breakfast tray. “The blessings of all the saints on mother and daughter in the new year to come,” she said cheerily. “I must tell you about the duty you have to do before your breakfast.”

“Happy New Year to you, too, Mrs. Fitz, and what on earth are you talking about?”

A tradition, a ritual, a requirement, said Mrs. Fitz. Without it there’d be no luck all year. Scarlett might have a taste of tea first, but that was all. The first food eaten in the house must be the special New Year’s harm brack on the tray. Three bites had to be eaten, in the name of the Trinity.

“Before you start, though,” Mrs. Fitz said, “come into the room I’ve got ready. Because after you have the Trinity bites you have to throw the cake with all your might against a wall so that it breaks into pieces. I had the wall scrubbed yesterday, and the floor.”

“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard. Why should I ruin a perfectly good cake? And why eat cake for breakfast anyhow?”

“Because that’s the way it’s done. Come do your duty, The O’Hara, before the rest of the people in this house die of hunger. No one can eat before the harm brack is broken.”

Scarlett put on her wool wrapper and obeyed. She had a swallow of tea to moisten her mouth, then bit three times into the edge of the rich fruited cake as Mrs. Fitz directed. She had to hold it in both hands because it was so big. Then she repeated the prayer against hunger during the year that Mrs. Fitz taught her and heaved with both arms, sending the cake flying and crashing against the wall. Bits flew all over the room.

Scarlett laughed. “What an awful mess. But the throwing part was fun.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” said the housekeeper. “You’ve got five more to do. Every man, woman, and child in Ballyhara has to get a little piece for good luck. They’re waiting outside. The maids will take the pieces down on trays after you finish.”

“My grief,” said Scarlett. “I should have taken littler bites.”


After breakfast Colum accompanied her through the town for her next ritual. It was good luck for the whole year if a dark-haired person visited a house on New Year’s Day. But the tradition required that the person enter, then be escorted out, then be escorted back in again.

“And don’t you dare laugh,” Colum ordered. “Any dark-haired person is good luck. The head of a clan is ten times over good luck.”

Scarlett was staggering when it was over. “Thank goodness there are still so many empty buildings,” she gasped. “I’m awash with tea and foundering from all the cake in my stomach. Did we really have to eat and drink in every single place?”

“Scarlett darling, how can you call it a visit if there’s no hospitality offered and received? If you were a man, it would have been whiskey and not tea.”

Scarlett grinned. “Cat might have loved that.”


February 1 was considered the beginning of the farm year in Ireland. Accompanied by everyone who worked and lived in Ballyhara, Scarlett stood in the center of a big field and, after saying a prayer for the success of the crops, sank a spade into the earth, lifted and turned the first sod. Now the year could begin. After the feast of applecake—and milk, of course, because February 1 was also the feast day of Saint Brigid, Ireland’s other patron saint, who was also patron saint of the dairy.

When everyone was eating and talking after the ceremony, Scarlett knelt by the opened earth and took up a handful of the rich loam. “This is for you, Pa,” she murmured. “See, Katie Scarlett hasn’t forgotten what you told her, that the land of County Meath is the best in the world, better even than the land of Georgia, of Tara. I’ll do my best to tend it, Pa, and love it the way you taught me. It’s O’Hara soil, and it’s ours again.”


The age-old progression of plowing and harrowing, planting and praying had a simple, hard-working dignity that won Scarlett’s admiration and respect for all who lived by the land. She had felt it when she lived in Daniel’s cottage and she felt it now for the farmers at Ballyhara. For herself as well, because she was, in her own way, one of them. She hadn’t the strength to drive the plow, but she could provide it. And the horses to pull it. And the seed to plant in the furrows it made.

The Estate Office was her home even more than her rooms in the Big House. There was another cradle for Cat by her desk, identical to the one in her bedroom, and she could rock it with her foot while she worked on her record books and her accounts. The disputes that Mrs. Fitzpatrick had been so gloomy about turned out to be simple matters to settle. Especially if you were The O’Hara, and your word was law. Scarlett had always had to bully people into doing what she wanted; now she had only to speak quietly, and there was no argument. She enjoyed the first Sunday of the month very much. She even began to realize that other people occasionally had an opinion worth listening to. The farmers really did know more about farming than she did, and she could learn from them. She needed to. Three hundred acres of Ballyhara land were set aside as her own farm. The farmers worked it and paid only half the usual rent for the land they leased from her. Scarlett understood sharecropping; it was the way things were done in the South. Being an estate landlord was still new to her. She was determined to be the best landlord in all Ireland.

“The farmers learn from me, too,” she told Cat. “They’d never even heard of fertilizing with phosphates until I handed out those sacks of it. Might as well let Rhett get a few pennies of his money back if it’ll mean a better wheat crop for us.”