Biddy helped her brush her hair out, then arranged it in a tight design of twists and braids that Anna could never replicate. A hat, the thing that irritated Anna more than the corset, was the final touch, pinned through her hair, a conglomeration of satin, velvet, blue wool, and feathers. The shoes were too tight and the two women fretted over this.
“You have god-awful large feet,” said Biddy.
“So I’ve been told,” said Anna.
When she was dressed and cinched, her feet stuffed into soft leather shoes far too small for her, and with no underclothes on at all (an oversight, but they all agreed that if she stayed upright, no one would be the wiser), she was ready to call on the governor of the New Cork Prison. She had one hour to prepare. Biddy had already arranged for a meeting with the governor through one of her grateful former patients, a British lord.
“You’re sure he’s not going to connect me with the death at Passage West?” asked Anna.
“His dinner was dusted with herbs that will soften his memory. But his true nature will not be altered. He is still ruthless and small of heart. Like all men of his profession, he has convinced himself that his prisoners are less than human. Are you prepared to offer him something that will be worth one Irish man? There is no room for error; it must be something that he cannot refuse.”
“I am prepared to offer him anything,” said Anna, “as soon as I think of it.”
New Cork Prison overlooked the city, with a majestic view of the River Lee leading to the bay. Biddy and Anna stood at the gate. Streetlamps offered yellow pools of light.
“He’s just had his dinner and is expecting you. He’s been told that you are a wealthy woman from America, nothing else. Are you sure you can do this?” asked Biddy.
Anna rapped firmly on the massive door bookended by stone pillars.
“I’ve never been more certain of anything,” she lied.
Two British guards opened the gates and escorted her, one on either side. The walkway was long, passing through gardens, newly planted the past season. If Anna hadn’t known this was a prison, it might have looked like a castle from storybooks, all stone and small windows. A wooden platform stood to the right. Of course, the gallows. Prisoners were hung for their crimes, especially traitors.
The governor’s room was immediately to the right. The cold quickly seeped from the stone floor to her feet.
“Your guest, sir,” said one guard.
The remains of dinner had been pushed to one side of his massive desk. There was one chair in front of the desk. He pushed back in his chair and rose halfway before sinking back down, looking slightly buzzed. Oh, thank you, Biddy, thought Anna.
He was younger than she expected, close to her age, narrow-lipped, with a small, dark beard, tightly trimmed.
“What a pleasure,” he said unconvincingly. “Please sit down, Mrs. Flemming. That is correct, Flemming?”
Flemming had been as good a name as any, as long as it hadn’t been Irish.
“Thank you, Governor. May I come rudely to the point of my visit? I am departing Ireland tomorrow and I have so little time.”
Anna was already sweating. Biddy had said that the effects of the herbs lasted less than an hour, and it took so blasted long for conversations here.
He leaned back in his immense chair. He twirled his hand like a conductor.
“Please. I have not had a rude question from a beautiful woman all day.”
She had known from the beginning what it was she had to offer him. She had information about the future, but she had quickly decided against that as a bargaining chip. Anna was sure that he wouldn’t believe her. She was prepared, fully prepared to fuck like a monkey with this guy to get Donal released. It just couldn’t be that bad. She’d get over it and so would Donal.
“I need to ask for the release of a prisoner, Donal Mahoney. He’s been falsely accused of murder and treason. I’m willing to offer—”
Tilting his head to one side, he held up his hand to stop her.
“Please say no more. I can grant this,” said the governor of New Cork Prison. “I ask only that you relieve me of an odious task this evening. I am suddenly feeling the need for diversion from my responsibilities.”
Anna was, for once, speechless.
“He will be known as a traitor, and the great masses will believe that he has been executed. At dawn tomorrow, another man will be executed. We have no shortage of traitors, madam. I can select randomly from a large group of men and women who are dangerous to the empire. But it would please me if you would relieve me of this burden. You shall select who is executed in place of your Donal. Come, there is no time like the present,” he said, offering Anna his public smile composed of gun barrels and darkish oil. He pushed back his chair.
“No. I cannot…”
He sat down.
“Then I cannot help you. Then Donal shall be executed in the morning. Is this too complicated for you?”
She had not bargained on this. Anna had been ready to endure anything to get Donal released. But not this. Not naming a man, pointing out the next to be executed.
The governor walked to the front of his desk, took her hand, and pulled her elegantly to her feet.
“They’re going to die no matter what you say. Your selection is only about timing,” he hissed into her ear.
The bile rose shockingly unbidden in her throat. She turned her head from him and wretched, the vomit splashing on the stone floor.
“Such dramatics, my dear lady.”
Anna wiped her mouth on her sleeve.
“What will happen to Donal when he is released? Will he be allowed to leave with me?” she croaked, her throat stung with acid.
The governor clasped his hands together as if in prayer.
“You will not get everything that you want; so few of us do. We have a tunnel that runs below the prison that emerges downhill in a private home. It is the tasteful exit for British spies who have infiltrated the traitors. He shall be escorted the moment after you select his replacement. He will be held one day until he can be taken aboard a ship for Australia, a repository for our most undesirable commoners, and it is there that he shall serve out his days. He will never see Ireland again. Shall we?”
He took her arm, and they walked out of his office, through the entryway, and directly into a vast prison warehouse of cells, two stories tall, brimming with fear, sickness, and human excretions. The governor patted her hand, which was resting on his forearm.
“Dreadful smell. I should have warned you.”
They walked half the length of a football field and came to a stop in front of one of the many wooden cell doors.
“Guard, please open this door,” said the governor.
As the door opened, Anna put her hand to her mouth in a failed effort to squelch the sound that came out. Five men were packed into a room no larger than eight by eight. Donal was in the midst of them. He looked at her and quickly looked away.
“Here we are. Gentlemen, this is Mrs. Flemming. She has agreed to select which of you will be hung tomorrow morning. Truly an honor, don’t you agree?”
The governor pressed her forward to the doorway and she stumbled slightly, catching her hand on the doorframe. Five sets of hollowed eyes looked back at her. Behind their legs, she saw canvas stretched over hay for beds. A wood bucket capped with a plank served as a toilet. She was suddenly aware of the silence in the prison. She looked at their feet and saw that all of them wore felt shoes. The only noise was the metallic sound of the guards, their boots and sabers.
“Don’t do this,” whispered Donal. “Don’t become part of it.”
“There is silence in the prison. There is no speaking, only contemplation. Remember that,” warned the governor.
Time was not on her side. She shuddered to think what the governor was like when he was not softened by Biddy’s concoction. She scanned the cramped cell. Two of the prisoners were boys, not more than teenagers. Anna skipped them. She skipped Donal. Another man ha
d been beaten about the head; his face was so swollen on one side that only one eye looked back at her. She chose the oldest man in the group, offering time back to the rest of them. Anna pointed her gloved hand to the man who stood in the back.
“Him,” she said.
The appointed man closed his eyes and nodded.
“Very good, delightful,” said the governor. “Guard, bring along our Mr. Donal Mahoney. He’ll be leaving us this evening. Come with me, my dear.”
He took her arm again and they walked back the way they had come. She looked back to see two guards on either side of Donal, who walked soundlessly between them with his felt shoes. They came to the entryway.
“Gentlemen, escort him through the tunnel,” the governor instructed the guards. Then he turned to Donal.
“You’ll be leaving on a ship for Australia. If you ever return to Ireland, you’ll be hung within the day. And you, Mrs. Flemming. You have offered an unexpected diversion to my banal life here among criminals. It has been my pleasure.”
Something worse than panic set in. Was this the last that she would ever see of Donal? The two guards guided Donal to a doorway tucked under the staircase. Was she just expected to walk out the door and go away?
“Governor! May I accompany the prisoner through the tunnel?” she asked.
Keep it simple, don’t embellish, just make the request.
Without turning around, he fluttered his hand, signaling her to go along with them.
“Yes, yes. Send the boy to clean my floor and tend my fire. I shall be resting in my office,” he said and closed his door.
The tunnel was lit by infrequent torches. Anna walked first with one guard, while Donal and the other guard followed. The tunnel followed the same decline as the streets outside. After a few minutes of the parade, Anna stopped and said, “May I walk with him? I’ve a message of farewell from his mum.”
Most people responded to messages from mothers, and these guards were no different. They shrugged, and Donal stepped forward to walk next to Anna. She already saw a stronger light that marked the end of the tunnel. She tilted her head to his and whispered.
“I have never loved anyone as much as I love you. I am from the future. Please forgive me for what I’ve just done.”
They were twenty feet from the thick door that marked the end of the tunnel.
“Anna—”
“That’s the end of it now. Come this way, miss, the guard will show you to the street. And you, traitor, will spend your last night in Ireland on a dry bed that you don’t deserve. Your ship sails for Australia with a hold filled with vermin just like you. Begone to rubbish,” said a guard.
As the door opened, Anna was pulled through to the street, and Donal was hauled into an innocuous-looking stone house. Perfect camouflage. Anna was alone on the street. She fell to her knees, covered with the filth of prison degradation, and sobbed. That is where Biddy found her, after pounding on the prison gates, demanding to know where she was.
Biddy squatted beside her. “Come now, tell me everything, tell me all of it.”
Chapter 34
Joseph drank in the colonel’s adulation, feeling satisfied for brief periods before needing more of the thin drink. The dogs and the horses had not had benefit of the colonel in weeks, other than the treks to the wrestling competitions. Then, one day, the colonel canceled a trip to England to attend a family celebration.
Joseph and the colonel were dining in the echo chamber of a dining room. Huge portraits of solemn relatives hung on two walls.
“Sir, did you cancel a trip?” Joseph asked.
A lock of blond hair had fallen over one eye, and the colonel brushed it back.
“Yes, I most certainly did.”
“Was it a party?”
“Yes, an engagement party, in fact.”
“Was it the engagement of a close friend?”
“It was my engagement party.”
Joseph stopped in mid chew and considered this. He had no experience with engagement parties, but still, to cancel one’s own engagement party seemed wrong.
“You canceled your own engagement party? Does that mean that the engagement is off? Isn’t that the sort of thing that makes ladies upset?”
“Engagements can last so very long, years and years, and my family can arrange a party at any time. But far more important is your latest challenge. You have been given the challenge by a champion from Tipperary, and I happen to know the ruling gentleman from the area quite well. He bested me in a hunt once and I haven’t forgotten it. I’ve sent word that you shall accept the challenge,” the colonel replied.
The two of them continued to eat their supper in the large room, overlooking the portico and the vast acreage, dotted with horses, cattle, and sheep. Joseph finished masticating a particularly tough piece of pork, then washed it down with two mugs of hard cider, more in an effort to soften it than for the extreme love of the drink. But he was swollen with alcohol, his winning streak, the drumbeat of romance, and the first reach at camaraderie with the colonel. He pushed the empty mug away from his plate, placed one forearm on the table, and cocked his head to one side.
“Sir, I don’t think I’d be ready for another match so soon after Cork. We’ve had a steady run of matches, and as my coach would say—”
The colonel’s knife hit his plate with a loud crack. Joseph felt the temperature change in the vast room.
“Did I ask you if the timing was to your liking? Because I don’t need to know. My honor is riding on this match, as well as a fair wager. I’ve cancelled my own engagement party in England. You cannot imagine that I care about what a wrestling fellow in the Canadian Provinces has to say.”
Joseph shrank back, sniffed the change in the air. He saw the line being drawn, heard the declaration that Joseph had dared to step over the line and that further trespasses would not be allowed.
“I’m sorry, sir. Yes, you know I’ll do my best.”
“No, lad, you’ll do better than your best. You’ll win the match and I’ll win my wager.”
Joseph had an impulse to run from the room, from the Big House. Things had taken a sour turn. He wanted to escape from the dread that bore down on his shoulders, the feeling that his wretched destiny had searched him out and found him in the past. He caught a movement in his peripheral vision, near the door, and he was sure that Mr. Edwards had been listening.
The colonel smiled again. “I understand that you had a leg cramp. Nothing painful, I hope?”
“No, sir.”
His appetite vanished; he pushed his food around his plate until the colonel finished his dinner and said goodnight.
Joseph rose early the next day, planning to walk to Tramore to sit by the ocean, but an aroma abruptly stopped him. He smelled the fish cooking in the pan before he saw it. He rounded the corner of the stable, running his hand along the cornerstone, felt the places where chisels had left decorative thumbprints in the stone. And there was Con with his father, the master stonemason with broad hands and thick fingers. Both of them squatted near the small pit of fire, the father holding the fry pan by the handle, shaking it so that the fish, covered with something like oatmeal, sizzled in the pan. In the second before the two turned their heads to see Joseph, he saw a touch pass between them, the natural skin on skin never formalized by hug or handshake. Joseph took it all in, the way the father placed one hand on Con’s shoulder to press himself up to standing, the way Con steadied himself to push into his father’s calloused palm, as if the question of being any other than father and son had never occurred to them.
Joseph had seen this affection before with other fathers and sons, the thing that had never passed between his father and him. Joseph knew it was his fault, some inherent failing as a boy, that had made him unqualified, unlovable, a disaster of a son. He tried not to hope anymore, like he used to when he was a kid. Now, at sixteen, he knew better than to think that his father could love him. Not like when he was eight years old, not like the fishing trip wit
h his father.
When Joseph had been rolled under his red plaid comforter in his bed, protected by the dark of night, he had overheard his father on the phone. His father’s rich voice had caught him by surprise.
“We’re not working this Saturday. No. I’m taking my son fishing. That’s right. I want to spend the day with my boy tomorrow. I can’t wait to show him my favorite fishing spot. No, I’m not telling you where it is. Get your own.”
Joseph had been giddy with a steady warm tune; his father wanted to spend time with him, show him something secret, important. Joseph had fallen asleep with the feeling of being wanted, and he’d prayed that he wouldn’t spoil it by being bad again.
His father had woken him early. Joseph had smelled the coffee on his father’s breath, mixed with the outdoor air that had hovered around his father’s shoulders like a cape. His father had put a hand on his leg and shaken him.
“Get up, Joey. We’re going fishing.”
Joseph had slid out of bed, gotten into the jeans laying on his floor, pulled a long-sleeved shirt over his head, then socks, and tied the laces on his shoes. Would the good father still be in the kitchen when he opened his bedroom door, or would the other Dad be there?
The door had creaked as he’d pushed it open. He’d walked down the hallway, through the small living room, into the kitchen, where his father had put hooks and lines into a mustardy yellow plastic box filled with little compartments.
“Come on Bud, eat some cereal or slap some peanut butter on this bread. We can’t be fishermen on an empty stomach.”
It had still been the good Dad. The vigilant part of Joseph’s brain had yawned and gone back to sleep, nonetheless keeping one eye open, like a cat. He’d been glad that he’d done everything he’d had to do the day before. The dishes had been put into the dishwasher. He’d taken a shower and plucked all the hairs out of the chrome filter in the bottom, because that was one of the things that could make his father turn into the bad Dad. If he could just remember all the right things to do and say, the good Dad would be with him always, and he loved the good Dad.
Now & Then Page 28
