Reeve, two years older than his brother at fourteen, lacked Jamie’s taste for petty larceny. For the sake of the woman and the priest over near the fire—they were about the business of death—he kept his voice low. “Do you want to be transported, you idiot? It’s one thing to pinch an onion or a turnip, but a dandy’s watch?”

Jamie swallowed hard and glanced toward their mother’s cot, which had been set as close as possible to the pitifully inadequate coal fire in the grate. “Herself is wantin’ medicine,” he said with lame defiance.

“She’s past that,” Reeve retorted. “There’ll be no need of medicine, and we both know it.”

The priest was giving last rites by then, and both Jamie and Reeve watched and listened in silence, hating their helplessness and their hunger. Through it all Callie McKenna lay motionless, her eyes closed.

At last Father McDougal turned weary-eyed from Callie’s cot, his face gaunt and deeply lined. He seemed to carry the troubles of all Ireland on his thin shoulders. As he approached, he reached one slightly tremulous hand into the pocket of his frayed coat.

From his perch on the edge of the table Jamie skittered to his feet. “Is she—”

Father McDougal shook his balding head. “Not yet, lad, but I don’t look for Callie to last the night, bless her soul.” He paused to cross himself, and then sighed. “She’s in God’s hands now.”

Reeve scowled and folded his arms across his chest; he’d hear no talk of God or his mother’s coming happiness in heaven. Where had God been when Callie McKenna was left to scour the scummy floors of taverns and mend the gowns of fancy ladies who didn’t think her fit to spit upon?

“Any work to be had on the docks these days, then?” the priest asked pointlessly. He already knew the dismal answer, for there was no work anywhere in Ireland, not in the cities and not on the farms.

Reeve lowered his dark head. He was a sturdy lad, broad in the shoulders and strong despite the hunger that had gnawed at his belly for as long as he could remember. “No work,” he muttered. It didn’t seem right to mention his plans for the future, not now, with his mother dying.

The elderly priest cleared his throat; Reeve glanced up and saw that Jamie still clutched the watch in one filthy hand. “Stealin’ again, are you, boyo?” he demanded more in despair than in anger. “Shameful thing, that. Wrong in the eyes of God.”

Jamie’s answer was quick and flippant, as Jamie’s answers tended to be. “God ain’t lookin’, now, is He? Not toward me and not toward me poor mum and not toward the whole of Ireland!”