Captains and the Kings

by Taylor Caldwell

  (Horse teeth, Bernadette would say.) Rory was in England for another matter, concerning the Committee on Foreign Studies, and was his father's emissary. "Gentlemen's affairs!" Claudia would carol in her infant's voice, when Rory went to London each week. They rented an estate in Devon each summer, for Rory, for a reason he would not explain to Claudia, refused to buy a house in England, though he remained in his father-in-law's house in London when he was in town. Unknown even to his father he would manage to visit Ireland for a few days also, and went to Carney where Joseph had been born. The poverty and misery of the Irish drove clefts about his mouth. His children remained in the "Settlement" for the summer, ostensibly under the devoted care of Bernadette, their grandmother, who loved to parade them briefly before her friends, but only briefly. "I am not here very often," Joseph would say to her, "so is it necessary for them to be screeching in my house when I come? Send them home. I bought them a fine house, and let them stay there." The children feared him; they would look sideways with sly eyes at him, and hate him, but they obeyed him always and never muttered as they did with Bernadette. He could not endure the constant grins of the little girls, which showed the great white teeth they had inherited from their mother, and Daniel's whining and spoiled demands infuriated him. "I am afraid the girls are idiots," Joseph would say to his wife, "and Daniel is effeminate and Joe is a boor. Keep them far from me." But still, they were his grandchildren. He came to Green Hills to be with his daughter, and with Elizabeth, when she was home. She did not visit him very often now in New York or Philadelphia or Boston. "I am almost sixty, my dear," she would say to Joseph, "and I tire easily now and travel is wearing. I don't know how you manage the travel so much, either." She had retained the figure of her girlhood, graceful and lissome, and Joseph thought she still looked like a young woman though the fine silky pale hair was more silver than blond now, and her complexion had faded. But her green eyes were pure and steadfast and calm. "You are much younger than I am," Joseph would say to her, holding her tightly in his arms. "You should not be so tired all the time." Neither of them spoke of Courtney, the monk in a cloister in Amalfi, who seldom wrote to his mother and then only to thank her for a gift she had made to his monastery. But Joseph knew Elizabeth's grief that the estrangement between mother and son had never been healed. She would say to Joseph, "I have no one but you, my dearest, no one in the world, no sister nor brother nor cousin nor nephew nor niece. I have only you." Her exhaustion seemed more pronounced each time Joseph saw her and he was becoming alarmed. Elizabeth smiled. "I am in perfect health, Joseph, but after all I am not young any longer." It seemed to him this June that there was a transparency about Elizabeth which he had not noticed a month ago, a translucence in her face which made her appear ethereal. She had visited her doctor recently, she assured him, and her health was not impaired. Passion was not spent between them, but it had reached a stage of tranquility, of profound acceptance, of absolute trust. They would sit, or lie, for hours, without speaking, their hands clasped together, and it was the only peace Joseph had ever known or would know. He thought of Elizabeth as his wife, and she thought of him as her husband. He was, as she often said, all she had in the world. Her one terror was that he would die and leave her. He had to reassure her over and over that he would not permit this, and he would smile. He came of a hardy, long-lived race, in spite of the early deaths of his parents. "You can't kill the Irish," he would say, "except with a bullet or far old age. We are made of steel and rope. We've had to learn how to survive." Elizabeth thought of Bernadette, fifty-five, coarsely vital if enormously fat and lumbering, with her heavy red complexion and loud voice and hair just slightly gray. Elizabeth had seen women like her in the markets of Europe, as strong as men and as vigorous. Elizabeth would sigh. Bernadette would live to be a very hearty old woman, into her nineties, eating and sleeping with zest and animal passion. Elizabeth had never known of Bernadette's great love for her husband which had never weakened at all through the years. "You spend more time with That Woman than you do with your own family," Bernadette would complain to Joseph. "Managing her affairs," she would add hastily. "Doesn't she have lawyers, for God's sake? Yes, I know my father made you one of the executors, with his bank, but still- She lives like a nun in Green Hills. Her old friends hardly see her. She must be getting very, very old, and a recluse." This June Bernadette said to her husband, making her voice regretful, "I have heard that Elizabeth is not very well. Some say she looks like a skeleton. She doesn't go-to town-much any more. Really. Well, at her age- Yes, I know she is younger than you, my dear, but then she isn't Irish. The English fade early. No stamina any longer. They're really decadent, you know. All the strength seems to have drained out of them. They're as bad, now, as the French." Joseph thought of a recent meeting he had had with his colleagues in Paris. His face tightened. He said, "I think, in a war, that the English, whom I detest, would do very well. Very well, indeed. They are not so decadent as we'd like to believe they are. The Anglo-Saxon can be a tough old party. And the French, in spite of their everlasting wars, can be as bull-doggy as the English, if not more so." "Well, there won't be any more wars," said Bernadette. It was nearly twelve years since Kevin had been killed, but she remembered. He had been the one child she had come close to loving, though she was proud of Rory and gloried in him. There were times when she was actually fond of him, for everyone spoke of his splendor and his glowing personality and his affable disposition and intelligence. "He is just like my father," she would say with pride. "He was the handsomest senator in Washington, and, when he was governor no one could resist him. Rory is the very image of him. We expect wonderful things of Rory." Bernadette could endure even Claudia when Rory was home, but now Rory was in London and Claudia was in Devon. That silly affected conceited creature! Bernadette thought. She gets worse every year. And that dark coarse complexion of hers, and her gloves! Common blood. Now she chatters all the time in French, to her children, and even her servants, and her accent is really abominable. Schoolgirlish. She may impress low and ignorant people, but not me, my girl, not me. And everyone knows how, tight-fisted you are, except when it comes to your own clothes and jewels, and how you pare the cheese when you are here. Shameful. Self-indulgent creature, with no more brains in your head than a peacock. At least a peacock's pretty, which you aren't. Poor Rory. Bernadette knew that Claudia snubbed her. It made her at once hilarious and infuriated. Ann Marie's doctors tried to soothe Joseph. It is true, they said, that she was degenerating physically, but she might still live for years. It is true, they said, that she had to be helped into chairs and bed now and could hardly walk. But her health was superb, considering everything. Her appetite was good, though her food was bland, like a young child's. But she thrived on it. Her mind, they would say, had not shown more degeneration, which was a hopeful sign. "Hopeful for what?" Joseph had asked J them with bitterness, and they had not answered. The elevator had been installed, and Ann Marie was helped into it by panting nurses assisted by the butler and the handyman, and she was taken into the gardens almost every day, to sit hugely in a chair, smiling j in the sunlight and asking for flowers-which she promptly tore to shreds in fat rosy fingers, squealing all the time like an infant. She cried as easily t and as loudly as an infant also, something which the doctors did not tell Joseph, and it was a mindless crying. It was only when she slept that she would suddenly awaken, wailing like a woman, and calling, calling in thick confused accents. Lately it had taken hours of cajoling-and sedatives- to soothe her back to sleep, and when she slept after the outbreak her face I was the face of a heart-broken woman. Joseph spent hours with her every day this June, reading books or newspapers in the shade of thick dark trees, sometimes listening to his daughter's babble, sometimes taking her hand, sometimes talking simply to her. She basked in his presence, and smiled, and if he had to leave her for a minute or two she cried, big tears running down her face. It would demand much of his strength to pacify her, while she clung to his hand on his return. Was he imag
ining it or was she showing a new fear this time, a new awareness of her desolation? He could not tell. When he came to Green Hills he would invariably bring his daughter a new doll, a new toy, which she would receive with delight and crows of pleasure. He had brought her a Teddy Bear this time, which had been created in honor of Theodore Roosevelt. She hugged it to her flabby breast and murmured to it, and Joseph, with his book in his hand, watched her with a despair that never lessened. He knew, this June, that the long hope he had had was finally gone. His daughter had left long ago, on that ghastly day in the woods at the top of the hill. But, where had she gone? This piteous creature was not Ann Marie. It was only an animal which had long lost even a semblance of the slim shy girl of earlier years, except for the eyes. There, in those eyes, Joseph would often fancy, there was a distant tiny figure, the figure of Ann Marie, on a far plane, longing to leave, and as despairing as himself, lonely, isolated, existing in Limbo. But still he could not bear the thought of this body dying, for the body held Ann Marie in thrall so she could not leave her father. She lingered, at an immeasurable distance it was true, but she lingered. At least, this was what Joseph believed and wanted to believe. When he looked into his daughter's eyes he would hail the infinitesimal figure of her in the clear pupil, and often he thought that she hailed him back, young, sweet, full of love and that delicate tenderness for him which he had known for years too brief and painful to remember. There had never been a June day so perfect in temperature and shining quiet and fragrance, and the glistening green lawns spread all about the estate and the gardens shouted with roses and there was a singing fountain nearby, rainbowed in the sun. Leaf shadows fluttered over Ann Marie's face as she alternately murmured to her new Teddy Bear or crossly slapped it or hugged it. Her dry drab hair had been braided and then tied with pink ribbons, and the plaits lay on her gross bosom incongruously. She was fatter even than her mother, but her muscles were soft and weak and flaccid. Her legs, covered by a light blue rug, did not move. She wore diapers, like a baby. The big mansion gleamed like alabaster in the sunlight, and shadows tossed themselves radiantly over white wall and red roof and polished pillars. There was a breeze, and it made the far distant trees run greenly and nimbly up the hills.

  Not even a gardener was in view, and the sunlight lay blindingly on the windows of the mansion and all was brilliant silence and peace. Joseph tried to read, sitting near his daughter on the lawn. Her babbling, softer now, was the only sound in that radiance. Then Ann Marie was quiet. Joseph read. It was a confidential letter from Rory, in London, and though ambiguously worded it was important. His writing was small but black and concentrated, and if dispassionate to the casual eye Joseph could read between the lines. He almost forgot Ann Marie as he read.' Then he heard her say, softly and clearly, "Papa?": "Yes, dear," he answered, not taking his eyes from the letter. Then suddenly it came to him, piercingly, that there had been a strange new note in Ann Marie's voice, aware, quickened, understanding. The pages of the letter fell from his hands to the grass as he looked up. Ann Marie was gazing at him, not with the rosy foolish fondness of all these years, the childish fondness, but with mature and sorrowful love. She was transformed. The fat cheeks had flattened, the features sharpening instant by instant. The eyes grew large, widened, and Ann Marie* was there, imminent, within touching distance. She had returned, was inhabiting her body again. A middle-aged woman looked at him, completely conscious, completely in the world, completely adult. The soul had come forward from vast spaces into the present. The loose mouth had dried, and all its contours were womanly and intelligent, and it was trembling. But she was very pale. There was no color in her face now except for her eyes, those glistening and shimmering eyes which held Ann Marie. O God, Joseph thought. O my God. His body began to shake; sweat' broke out on his forehead. He leaned to his daughter to make sure, daring to hope, daring to accept this miracle. And she gazed back at him, faintly smiling, her eyes brightening moment by moment. "Papa?" she said again. , The Teddy Bear slipped from her arms, her thighs, and tumbled to the I grass, and she did not know it. Joseph pushed himself to his feet, shaking like a palsied old man. He wanted to shout, to cry for help, to run for assistance. But he could only stand, clutching the side of his chair. It was a light garden chair and could '. not bear his weight, standing, and it fell away from him with a clatter, and he staggered. He took a step to Ann Marie, his head roaring, his ears clanging as if with bells, and he did not look away from her for fear that she would vanish again. He fell on his knees beside her. She held up her hands to him and he took them and stared into her face. "Ann Marie," he said. "Ann Marie?" "Yes, Papa," she answered, and smiled at him. The sorrow was deep in her eyes. "Poor Papa," she said. She took one hand from him and smoothed his white hair, and she sighed. Her pallor was increasing. There was a fine shine of moisture all over her face, and she had begun to pant a little, rapidly, with a shallow indrawing of breath. A deep pulse was thrumming in that massive throat. "You've come back, my darling," said Joseph. His voice was dry and thick and choked. "I never went away. I just hid," said Ann Marie. Her face was like white wet stone in the blowing shadows of the leaves. "I just slept," she said, and her hand gently smoothed her father's hair. "But I always heard you, Papa." "You won't go away again?" said Joseph, and his heart was pounding so furiously that he felt faint. "You will stay this time, Ann Marie?" She was shaking her head slowly and ponderously, but she still held his hand, and hers was cold and slippery in his. "Courtney is here; he is calling me. I am going away with him, Papa. He's come for me. You mustn't grieve. I am so glad to go. I stayed just now because I wanted to say goodbye to you, and tell you how much I love you and how sorry I am that I've caused you so much pain. Forgive me, Papa. I couldn't help it, but forgive me." Then her face was brilliant with joy and love and ecstasy, and she looked beyond him and cried out, "Courtney! Courtney, I am coming!" Her eyes were like the sun, itself. She pulled her hand from her father's and held out her arms to something only she could see, and there was a murmurous sound of rapture in her throat. "Ann Marie!" Joseph cried, feeling madness about him, and terror and coldness. "Oh, Christ!" he almost screamed, and took his transfigured daughter in his arms and pulled her against his chest. There was a quaking in him, heightened terror, a furious denial, and the bright day grew shadowy about him. Ann Marie resisted feebly, then she was still, and she collapsed against him and her head fell to his shoulder. He could no longer hear her breathe. Then she sighed, and quivered all over her body, a long deep rippling of all her flesh, a final convulsion. She uttered one last sound, a fragile cry like a bird. Joseph knelt and held his daughter to him, heavy against him, heavy in his arms. He said, over and over, "Ann Marie, Ann Marie." But only the wind answered in the trees. He began to stroke the fallen head on his shoulder. Ann Marie Armagh was buried beside her brother under the pointed shadow of the tall marble obelisk, and the priest intoned, "I am the Resurrection and the Life-" The black grave yawned and the dully gleaming bronze casket was slowly lowered into it, sprinkled with holy water, and with earth. Bernadette sobbed beside her husband. Friends stood about them, mutely. They watched Joseph, so gray and still and stiff, but so indomitable and grim and they thought-and later said to each other-that he had shown no grief at all and had not tried to comfort his wife. Unfeeling, they said. Yet it had been rumored that he had "adored" his daughter. Ah, well, it was merciful that she had died at last. Just a burden on her poor mother, who had been a slave to her all these years. The girl had never been very intelligent, and the accident had taken away her last glimmer of intellect. The roses, white and red and pink, covered the raw' earth. Tombstones glowed palely all about them in the hot June sun. Leaf shadows ran over the grass. That night Bernadette sobbed to her husband, "Yes, there is a curse on this family! I've known it for years! Now we have no child left but Rory. My last child!" There was more fear in her than sorrow, superstitious fear. She said, "What will become of us if we lose Rory? I have such a feeling-" "Damn you, and your feelings," said Joseph,
and left her. She forgave him, as usual, for only she knew how distraught he was,* and how he prowled the house and the gardens at night, and how often he went to the cemetery. A few days after Ann Marie had been buried Bernadette came to him in his rooms, carrying a newspaper in her hands, and her face, though swollen with weeping, was portentous and even a little excited. "It is in the newspapers!" she exclaimed. "Courtney Hennessey, my brother, died of a stroke on the very day Ann Marie-passed away! Here, Joseph, read it for yourself! His mother was notified by cable. He's been buried in the monastery burial grounds. It's all here." He took the paper in a hand that felt paralyzed and numb. He read, the lines blurring before his eyes. He said to himself, So, it was true. He came for her.,