by Ralph Peters
“No one will—”
“You can’t know what it’s like. No one can know. The screaming. They never stop screaming. I’m not like them. I hurt no one, sir. Even when they let me be, I never can sleep for the screaming.”
Twas then I understood her love of those highlands. And of their silence.
“Nellie, I must ask you—”
“I know,” she said, shutting her eyes and squeezing more tears free.
“I must ask you about these matters. It is my duty, see. You say he tells you nothing. But when last we stood here . . . you insisted there’d be no insurrection, no rebellion. You seemed certain.”
“I know there’s none, sir.”
“Do the spirits tell you that?” I was struggling to sort reality from madness. “Please, girl. Try to think clearly. How do you know such a thing?”
The clouds had lowered around us. We stood alone in the world.
“From the men he keeps about the yard. The O’Haras.” I felt her body tense as if frighted. By one of her thousand ghosts. “They . . . came to me once. To my room. When he was away. They . . . only did it that once . . . they were drunk . . .”
I held her close and shut my own eyes, too. We might have been falling down over the edge of the heath, over the edge of the world.
“ . . . they laughed afterwards . . . they . . . asked me if I’d be a princess . . . when Kildare was King of the French. You see? There’s nothing like rebellion in the air. It’s all a lark. For he’ll never be king of the French. He’s mad, too.”
“You’re not mad,” I said. I knew not what she was, but would not shame her with a curse of “madness.” Was she less sound than those who made this war? Or those who excused bondage from their pulpits?
I let her weep for a bit, then broke her hold. “You must come with me now. It’s over, all this ‘Great Kildare’ business. We’ll take good—”
She tore away from me. Face repelled, eyes gone to great horizons. She shook her head with the abandon of a child, whipping her hair from side to side.
“No,” she said. “They’ll put me in the madhouse, sure. You don’t understand.”
“I won’t let them. I promise you.”
The shaking of her head slowed, and the sweep of her hair with it. “You won’t be able to stop them. I know you want to help me. The spirits told me long ago. Your spirit’s tall and strong. But you won’t be able to stop them.”
“You can’t go on like this . . . Nellie . . . please . . . let me see you safe and cared for.”
“I can’t go with you,” she said.
“Why?” Twas I who was the stubborn child now.
“Because you have your life. And I’m no part of it. Because you do not know the thing you want yourself. For men are blind, where women see.”
“Why won’t you come with me, girl? I’ll see that you’re looked after. There are good people in the world. They’re not all like Kildare.”
She laughed. “He’s far from the worst.”
“Come with me.”
“No.”
“Why, then?”
She mustered the saddest smile in the world. “Because I’m dying. Tis no secret, sir. And I won’t die inside their walls.” She looked around at the snow-clad world. “I’d rather freeze than die where they’d put me.”
“My church could organize something for you. There are so many good people. Why, I could even take you to my own—”
She laid her fingers over my lips this time, for twas her turn to do the hushing. She wore no gloves herself, and her fingers were as cold as her lips had been fiery. “You can’t ask as much of others as you do of yourself. Take your happiness. Have joy of it. Don’t bring in temptation.”
“Miss Kildare, I assure you—”
The smile turned wistful now. “We’re twined, you and I. Two castaways. I’ve become her, don’t you see? She’s so warm. And I’ve felt only cold for so long.” She wiped a reddened hand across her eyes. “Now go. And leave me what I have.”
“I can’t just go.”
She closed her eyes and breathed so deeply it lifted the bosom of her coat. “It’s so wonderful up here. The smell. The clean smell. For years, I smelled only the madhouse.” She breathed again, glutting herself on the frozen air.
“I can’t just leave you,” I said.
The deep breaths had calmed her. She laid her hand upon the sleeve of my coat.
“I’m not afraid of the dying,” she told me. “I’m only afraid of dying their way.”
“Please . . . you mustn’t give up . . .”
She laughed. Lightly. Amused. But when she spoke, the laughter lay a thousand years behind her.
“I just want to die where it’s clean.”
And then the great gulps she had taken of the sky turned against her. She began to cough, naught but a sick girl now. Coughing and coughing. I moved to help her, but she thrust out a hand to keep me back. Staggering off into the field.
“Nellie!”
She bent as if retching. Gagging and gasping. Spitting upon the snow.
I went after her, but she had passed beyond me. She used the last of her will to straighten and warn me off.
“Leave me now.”
“Come with me. For the love of God.”
She shook her head and silenced me one last time. You could not paint such sorrow in a face.
“We’ll never meet again,” she said.
Twas final. I cannot tell you why, but I obeyed her. I watched until she was but a shadow in the gray. Then she was nothing at all. Hoofbeats galloped into eternity. They had naught to do with a living girl.
I looked down, and saw her blood upon the snow.
FOURTEEN
“A MYSTERY!” THE REVEREND MR. MORRIS CRIED. “A mystery, Major Jones! I found it there, just there.” He pointed at the barren kitchen table. “A note, a note! For you!” He extended a filthy paper, folded up square.
to majur jones
“Spies and stratagems!” the good preacher continued. “Sneaking about, sneaking about! It was lying right there.”
The fellow did not seem the least bit alarmed by the intrusion into his parsonage. Instead, he was excited. But think you of a country parson’s life. He is a witness to sorrows repetitive, which he must share, but he is seldom called when joys are divvied out. And Morris had no wife. We spoke about the Bible in the evenings, and he wished to hear more about India than I could bear to tell him, and he brought me hard-wrought sermons to review. He wanted a friend, and I was all he got.
I unfolded the missive, with my greatcoat still upon me. And read:
atuk fart
Well, twas a wonder Molloy could write at all. If he could not spell “Attock Fort,” he knew how to have a note delivered cleanly, and how to see a dirty day’s work well done.
We had agreed he would contact me when he had news worth the telling. Our two-word code—wrought of our shared past—meant I would meet him in Hammondsport, at the other end of the lake, the day after I received his communication. I hoped eyes might be less watchful in another county.
“Is it a great secret?” Mr. Morris asked, with the eager face of a child. “Is it a secret?”
“Yes,” I told him. “It is a very great secret, see. Now you are party to a high government matter, and lives depend upon your silence.”
Oh, wasn’t the poor fellow delighted. “I’ll never tell,” he said. “Not a word, sir, not one word. I’ll go to the grave with the knowledge locked in my breast . . .”
I only meant to give him what he longed for, and no harm done. For who would not have a feeling of importance added to his life? Still, the fellow needed calming.
“There will be no great hurry,” I told him, “about anybody going to the grave. We’ll keep our secret quiet, you and I.”
The fellow kept his silence. I wish I had been right about the grave.
IN THE MORNING, before I left for Hammondsport, I went to see Father McCorkle. To make a last plea.
Well, he was in the church, but not at prayer. I entered as quietly as I could, with no wish to disturb his talk with the Lord, but found him sitting below the altar, humming and polishing a communion cup. He did not raise his eyes, but went on with his doings, scrubbing the shining chalice with a fury.
I cleared my throat.
He remained bent over the cup. “Tis late enough ye come,” he said. “The boards want a proper scrubbing today, not just a sweep o’ the broom.”
“Father McCorkle?”
He lifted those black brows. With a look first of surprise, then of wariness.
“Sorry to disturb, sir,” I told him.
He set the chalice down, but held onto the cloth. “Ye’ve been a disturbance to me since the day ye arrived. Will there be no end to this nonsense, Major Jones?”
I stepped down the aisle. Into the cold depths of the place.
“There will be an end. And soon enough.”
“Are ye leaving us then?”
He did not bid me sit, so I stood before him. “I will go. When my duty is done.”
“And when might that be, pray tell?”
Now a man of the cloth must be an actor in our Lord’s theater, if you will forgive such comparison, for his despair must not show, and he must impart hope where none belongs, and he must hear things decent ears would shun, and listen without meanness. McCorkle was a master of his roles. I sensed the return of the hostility he had shown me when they fished up the drowned girl. But it lay in the air, and not upon his features.
“I will go,” I said, “when Kildare has been stopped. From whatever it is he is doing. I admit I know not what he’s up to. But there is trouble. And I will stop it, see. And I will stop you, too.” I did not falter under those fierce eyes. “I know you are a party to the business.”
He put on his Irishness, and gave me the face they give the tax collector. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jones. And look at ye. All raging in here like a madman, and bursting with accusations. Have ye no sense o’ decency, man?”
But I was not raging. My voice was calm. And I was decent and not mad.
“I suspect,” I continued, “that it is some scheme to advance your Irish. And that there is great wrong in it. I do not know what has moved you to go along. Although I know you would favor the poor. But the business will end badly. And, if there is violence, it will end badly, indeed.” I leaned forward, hands closed over the ball of my cane. As if I might weigh down upon the priest. “Consider the fears you’re rousing. And all that might come of it. If the people of this county turn upon your flock. Then there will be blood. And an end to advancement. Is that what you want for your Irish?”
He looked at me like a cocky private, not a priest.
“Are ye threatening me then, Major?”
Twas the last thing I intended. “Look you, Father McCorkle. I’m doing my best to help. Lay aside these schemes, whatever they may be. They’ll do no good, see. Turn from the business and help me.”
He called up a smile. Twas meant to look jovial. But it was mean.
“Sure, and don’t your people like to say that God helps those who help themselves? And don’t they think it’s fine to free the nigger, that pious lot o’ yours? While letting the Irishman rot?” He sighed, with a sound more like a snore. “Here ye’ve gotten me talking all theoretical. And I’m patient with ye out o’ pity. For it appears that poor Morris’s silliness has gotten to ye. All his talking spirits and queer doings. Why, ye’ve been talking mad enough to want locking up.”
“It is not Abel Jones who will see the other side of the lock.”
His smile withered to a twisted thing. Still a smile. But merciless as famine.
“No,” he said, “it may not be. But tell me, major. What do ye think o’ the girl? Our Nellie?”
I did not see how she came into this.
“And what should I think of her?”
“Well . . . I’m hearing evidences that she’s naught but a madwoman herself. I even hear she was locked away in the past, and for more than a fortnight. To keep her off o’ decent folk, it was. And for her own protection. I wonder . . . if twould not be better to see her safely shut away again?”
There was wicked.
I smiled. Twas grim as any smile I ever wore. Over the nakedness of his doings. But I could not find one word to fit to this.
Of course, Kildare knew all, and would have shared the knowledge. My experiences during the seance come because the fellow had hypnotized me along with Nellie. Worried, I had asked poor Morris to recount all that had transpired that evening. The man knew nothing of a spirit from far India, though he had been sitting just across the table. The business had been all inside my head. Or twixt Nellie and me.
And now I saw the full extent of my blindness. Twas plain as day, and so obvious you have doubtless figured it before me. Kildare knew all that passed between me and the girl. And the poor child did not even know what she told him. For he had only to hypnotize her and have her recite, then order her to forget the recitation. She was his human tool. He knew my fears as well as he knew hers.
And he knew that I cared for her. Not in the way I cared for my wife, mind you. Or for my lost love of India. Nothing improper. But in a way for which we have no words. Kildare knew that I would not want her harmed. And he forewarned the priest.
I was not laboring against a world of gossamer spirits, but against the viciousness of men. Sharpened to a point.
“You’ll leave the girl alone,” I cried. But well I sensed my weakness.
No doubt, the priest did, too. Twas his vocation. He raised one eyebrow, and held up a weathered hand. “Oh, twould only be for the girl’s own good, the confinement. For we cannot have her doing herself harm. Tis against the Church and true religion. To say nothing o’ the meanness in neglecting the helpless likes o’ herself. Letting her gallivant about in the cold, when everyone knows it only does her an injury.”
Unbidden or not, I sat down. You see, I was unprepared for such cruelty, no matter all that I had seen in life.
Now you will say, “That priest was evil, and no true man of God.” But I do not think it so. He did an evil thing that day. I will not excuse it. Yet, even then, I saw what it cost him. He hoped that he might do a greater good. McCorkle was, in truth, a saintly man, and such are ever prone to cruelty.
“I . . . will not permit it,” I told him.
He raised both eyebrows now, and gave a laugh. “Oh, ye won’t? And are ye her father then? Or family elsewise? What rights will ye call upon, and what laws?” His smile worsened. “For all the commotion, wicked minds might start to think ye’d taken advantage o’ the poor child. Given such deep concerns, and ye no relation to her.”
I ignored the worst of it, for twas meant to provoke. I only said, “Kildare is not her father.”
“Oh, and is he not? Would legal papers lie? Why, ye’d have the devil’s own time proving such a thing. I’d have to pity ye the shameless attempt.”
“And his name’s not Kildare. It’s Kilraine.”
Oh, yes. I saw a flicker in his eyes at that. But, fool me, I did not pursue it. For my mind was not a clear thing at the moment.
“It matters not a bit,” the priest said, “whatever his name is.”
“You’ll kill her if you lock her up.”
He shrugged. “An’t the poor child dying already? Oh, tis a torment to see her.” He held out a hand that was not meant to help. “Would it not be better . . . to see the poor thing warm and comforted as she goes?”
“I won’t let you do it,” I said again. “And I won’t be alone. I’ll have Mr. Morris on my side. And all the others who know her. Powerful people . . .”
This time he laughed out loud, bending down and shaking his head. “Oh, ye little Welsh fool,” he said. With tears of laughter starting from his eyes. “Sure, and I can see ye’ve
never been a priest or such like, for ye know not the first bit about your fellows. Do ye really think, then, that the good citizens will rally to the girl, when they learn they’ve all been made into laughing-stocks? Taken in by a mad girl, fresh from the asylum? With her ramblings o’ spirits and the like? And them all reverent and believing and open o’ purse? How do ye really think such folk will be, when they learn they’ve been made into asses?”
I sat there in my greatcoat. Smaller than any man should be.
“What do you want?” I asked, after a long time had passed.
He became the practical man again. In outward form, at least.
“Oh, tis little enough, Major Jones. I’d only have ye cease your pestering. Let my flock go its way. And Kildare, too. For I promise ye, as I’ve done a dozen times, that there’ll be no harm to your cherished Union, nor to the good people o’ this town. Or to the bad ones, for that matter.” His deep eyes stared into me. “Just mind your business. And we’ll all leave Nellie to her foolishness.”
I stood up.
“There’s a good fellow now,” McCorkle went on. “Don’t go bothering where ye don’t belong, and we’ll none o’ us see any harm. As you’re a Christian man, will ye only agree to that?”
REG’LAR JOHN BRENT HAD KNOWN ME long enough to sense I was not in a sociable mood. He guided the horses and left me to my grump. Oh, I was in a stew. For you will think me a simpleton in the ways of the world, but I will not accept injustice. To think of what they would do to a dying girl to further their purposes covered the world in ugliness deeper than any snow.
And still I did not know the purposes they meant to further. I hoped Jimmy Molloy would have my answers, and not just blarney spent to warm the air.
