Cursed! Blood of the Donnellys

by Keith Ross Leckie

  Johannah was silent. It was true.

  “The whole parish talks behind our backs,” Jenny continued in full flight. “The Roman Catholic Church is a nasty arrogant business that goes against everything natural and human and if I have to turn my back on it to find the man I love, then I will! And to hell with them.”

  Patrick set up and punched the bloody-faced Currie one more half-hearted time and Jenny suddenly turned on him.

  “I said stop it, Patrick! Stop hitting him!”

  The anger and passion in her voice made Patrick back away from Currie and wait. The brothers were all looking at the ground. Only Currie was staring at Jenny through his sweat and blood, unsteady on his feet, still held up by Tom and Michael. He was impressed, even a little awed, by Jenny’s declarations to her family.

  Jenny turned away from Patrick back to her mother, her conviction thickening the air between them, her voice quieter but no less forceful.

  “Now listen to me. I’m going to Goderich to marry Jim and have lots of children and live a peaceful life. A peaceful life. Without fighting all the time.”

  Patrick glanced at his raw fist, then Currie’s bleeding face, and took another step away from him. Will was silent, taken aback, for he’d never heard Jenny be so strong with her mother.

  “I don’t care about Protestants or Catholics or Whiteboys or Blacklegs. I don’t want to look over my shoulder every moment. I don’t want to hate anybody. I don’t want to worry about my brothers being killed or us being burned up in our beds! I don’t want to be…I don’t want to end up like…like you.”

  Jenny fell silent. Her last words had hurt Johannah deeply and she knew it, and she had meant for them to.

  After a moment of digesting Jenny’s words, Johannah nodded slightly a few times, then turned to Tom and Michael. “All right. Let him go.”

  Tom and Michael did so. Unsupported, Currie swayed a little but managed to stay on his feet. Michael and Patrick straightened out the punch-drunk Currie’s clothes and gave him his hat back, Patrick rubbed the blood off Currie’s face with his handkerchief and gently slapped his cheek and rubbed his shoulders to make sure he was all right.

  Johannah came up close to Jenny, their faces only inches apart. “I have given you life and a way to live it. I don’t expect you to be like me. Do you think I wanted to live like this?” Then Johannah let the sting of Jenny’s words direct her own, words that she would regret almost immediately. “But if you go, don’t come back.”

  Johannah took her mother’s locket from around her neck, grabbed Jenny’s hand and put it in her palm.

  “Here. Your grandmother’s. This is all I owe you.”

  Jenny studied the locket in her hand, then her mother, in defiant silence. Johannah turned and climbed back up on her horse. She looked at her boys.

  “Let’s go. Now.”

  As Michael, Patrick and Tom retrieved the reins to their horses and mounted, their mother rode away. Will went to Jenny and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

  “We’ll come visit.”

  He turned to Currie and shook his hand.

  “Sorry, Currie. Sorry. Really. Good luck to you.”

  Currie nodded and put a comforting arm around Will’s now-tearful sister. Will mounted his horse beside his brothers and waved a sad farewell to Jenny. Then they rode after their mother, now a determined, receding form on the horizon.

  Blessings of the Church

  Johannah found him out behind the rectory in a small glade where he kept five wooden hives of honeybees. The priest had on heavy gloves and a canvas hood with netting, so he didn’t hear her as he collected the honey from one of the hives. She had never seen this done and studied him for a moment or two and mused on the nature of the tiny creatures, who could give both sweet nourishment and pain. And also on the nature of a man who could be so caring to tiny creatures and so cruel to her family.

  She cleared her throat. “Father?”

  The priest turned to see her, moved away from the bees and took off his hood. She realized her presence shocked him. No surprise, really.

  “Mrs. Donnelly?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I wanted to see you. I hoped to talk to you. About the difficulties between us. Between you and the family.”

  “Difficulties!”

  The quiet buzzing of the bees was almost comforting.

  “I want to make amends. I want to come back to my Church. I want my sons to come and offer you apologies for any troubles they have created. Will is thinking of marriage and I would love him to be married in the church.”

  “You and yours have insulted the holy Church with your violence. You have shown your wicked pride at every turn.”

  “I know there must be penance and I’m willing. My boys will be willing. Silence, prayer…substantial tithes. What would satisfy you?”

  “It is not me you must satisfy. It is Almighty God!”

  “God, then.”

  “I think it may be too late.”

  “Maybe for you, but surely not for God.”

  “You see, there is already arrogance in your tone.”

  “I am sorry. There must be a way to forgiveness. Please, Father.”

  “No. Your son will never be married in my church. Perhaps if I had seen substantial change, Johannah. But now you have let your daughter go off with a Protestant. A Protestant!”

  “She has her own will. Will’s fiancée is Catholic.”

  “Still you prevaricate and try to bargain with me. It is too late. I suggest your son Will should go to London city hall for his needs. Now leave me in peace.”

  Johannah watched as the priest put his hood back on and turned away from her to his tiny wards. She regarded him for a moment longer. She recalled the image of the judge in Jim’s murder trial putting on the black cap just before he sentenced him to death. Then she turned her back on Father Connolly and walked away from St. Patrick’s for the last time.

  * * *

  Nora and Will took the advice the priest had given Johannah and got married in London at the city hall in September. At first Johannah saw it as her failure, but Nora and Will liked the modern idea. No one from Nora’s family was going to come anyway, as the Kennedy opposition to having a Donnelly in-law had not diminished. Will had himself gone to Nora’s father, mother and brothers but they could not be turned. They opposed the marriage and that was the end of it. So Will and Nora had a party of eighteen family and friends for the ceremony, his family and the regular crew of Keefes and Whalens, and a fine dinner afterwards at Stroud’s Dining Emporium near the London train station. The raw estrangement of Johannah and Jenny had not healed, so despite Will and Nora’s special invitation, Jenny and her husband did not come down from Goderich.

  After the wedding, Will and Nora were blessedly on their own as they rode in their buggy back to their new house at Whalen’s Corners. Nora had started to show with their first child.

  “Oh look, there’s a nice house. I wonder who lives there?” Nora said with a laugh. It was the little two-storey place she had told him about the night they decided to marry, with a picket fence around the neat front yard and small but decent stables behind that could be added to, and it was located just a few miles from the Donnelly homestead. They had bought it the week before. Nora was elegantly dressed from the wedding in an off-white lace gown with a short train and was still holding the bouquet of roses Johannah had given her. Will could not hide the pride he felt in his new wife. He was in a good, fitted pinstriped suit with a waistcoat and they had looked a fine pair.

  “I think we should just move in. No one will mind, will they?” Will helped her down and they walked with arms around each other toward the front door.

  “You know, this is all still a bit of a shock to me, Mrs. Donnelly. A new house, a new loving wife…”r />
  “Oh …” she said in mock surprise. “Do I have to love you?”

  “Sure there was something about that in the vows.”

  “I guess I could manage. In the fullness of time.”

  At the doorway, they stopped and shared a long, slow kiss. Nora took off Will’s jacket and waistcoat, then undid his tie and shirt. He began to fumble with the hooks at the back of her wedding gown. They laughed, still kissing. Nora managed to get his shirt off, then drew him half-naked into the dark house to “reaffirm the blessing,” as Nora explained, “that God bestowed on men when he created women.”

  * * *

  Miss Johannah, she had asked me to come up to the Donnelly homestead most every day through the summer to check to see that things was in good shape and chores done. I liked that she trusted me and sometimes liked someone to gab with. Old Jim would sit on the porch of the Donnelly farmhouse with some whiskey in his hand and stare a hole in the side of the new barn like it were about to jump. With all them things he’d seen and done in his life I wished his demons would take it easy on him.

  There were one day in mid-September, Mr. Jim was out on the porch and I had just finished feeding all the cattle beasts in the corral who was destined for market. We all heared the sound of the Donnelly stage coming up the Roman Line and looked up to see Michael at the reins, calling to the horses as he did. He pulled up outside the farmhouse porch near Mr. Jim.

  “We got a surprise for you, Da!”

  Mr. Jim stood up slowly and came down the steps toward the stagecoach. At the sound of the horses, Johannah comes out of the house to see the doings, along with Will and Nora, who was visiting. A pretty woman of maybe thirty years steps down, her clothes was plain but clean, smiling sadly like she were a little embarrassed.

  Michael did the introductions. “This is Bridget, Da. Your sister’s daughter. All the way from Tipperary.”

  Mr. Jim studied her face. “Little Bridget? Theresa’s daughter? Are you really?”

  “We found her at Porte’s asking about Donnellys,” Michael told us, proud of himself.

  “Hello, Uncle Jimmy.”

  “God help us, you sound like Theresa.”

  Bridget approached Mr. Jim and gave him a warm hug. They was both delighted to see one another.

  “I still have the two letters you sent to Ma. I knew if I could just get to the town of Lucan, Ontario, that I’d find you somehow.”

  “And so you did. But how’s Theresa…?

  Tears come then to Bridget’s bright eyes. “She’s with the angels, Uncle. Got the fever late last winter. There was no time to write. I got no one left. Been a hard life, Uncle. With the last of our money I took the ship and came to Canada. You were kind to me when I was little.”

  Johannah had been looking at all this and there were no doubt it sat well with her, having another female on the place after Jenny was gone. The big hug she gave Bridget came natural to her.

  “You’re a brave girl travelling so far. Come inside for some tea and get to know your family.”

  “This is your new home now,” Mr. Jim told her, taking her arm and escorting her into the house as Michael brought in her two worn canvas bags. “And you’ll want for nothing.”

  I smiled at how the old boy could be charming and generous when he put his mind to it. I knew he’d been missing Jenny and his niece being around would go a ways to easing that pain.

  “Thank you,” she said and gave him a little kiss on his furry cheek. So this was how cousin Bridget came to live with the Donnellys. She fit in well and, though she were some older, she were as pleasant and peppery as Jenny and there’s no doubt she and Johannah, feeling a little like a mother and daughter, helped take away some of the pain of each losing people so close to them.

  Sarah Keefe’s Wedding

  It was a frosty, star-studded winter night when Will’s whole family headed to Sarah Keefe’s wedding reception on the third day of February. The ceremony had been private for family only at St. Patrick’s, or so Will had been told, but they were invited to the party afterwards. Johannah, Bridget and Nora, her pregnancy now quite apparent, Will noted proudly, rode in the buckboard on pillows with blankets over their legs to keep warm, driven by John. The snow had been beaten down on the Roman Line so a wagon was still more practical than a sled. Will escorted the wagon on horseback, along with his father and brothers.

  They missed Robert, who remained in prison, though he still didn’t quite understand why, given his brilliant defence. And they missed Jenny, though she had sent word she was happily married to Jim Currie in Goderich. Along the way, their talk was of the outstanding charges of “using insulting language” levelled against Jim and Johannah by Jim Carroll during the episode with Mrs. Thompson’s “stolen” cow. They laughed at the charges, which would certainly be dismissed, but they were due in court the following day to answer them. It was all right. Johannah needed to do a little shopping in town.

  “You should c-c-c-c-counter-charge Carroll for being so ugly in a p-p-p-public place!” John suggested.

  The Donnellys did have a weakness for fashion. Will’s brothers and even their father were all in suits and waistcoats, all sporting a fashionable variety of facial hair groomed by the Lucan barber. The ladies were all in long lace-trimmed dresses and jewellery. Will noticed Johannah had on her old necklace of pearls from Ireland. The few missing did not detract. At Will’s urging she told them the story again of how she had once sold a third of them for food to eat on the ship, but she was proud of the ones she had left and they showed very well.

  “All I can say is it’s a miracle Sarah Keefe found herself a man. She’s the homeliest mutt…”

  “Shhhhhh, stop that right now, Patrick,” Johannah told him. “You’ll be eating their food and drink and we shall celebrate among them with true hearts.”

  “Yes, we will,” Will agreed.

  Michael picked up on Pat’s direction. “Even if he’s as round as she is.”

  “Yes, even so,” Will confirmed.

  The brothers laughed.

  “I think we should find Patrick a wife,” Michael suggested. “Might calm him down.”

  “Oh, no. Not me. I can burn my own dinner, thank you.”

  “Anyway, the marriage of two young people is a sign of hope for peace and prosperity,” said Johannah grandly. “Bridget, you’ll see the good side of life in Canada here tonight.”

  “I’m blessed by it all,” her niece replied.

  As they approached the farmhouse, they could make out numerous wagons and horses outside and hear the music from within. Guests were smoking and drinking out in the cold winter air. Will and his family were all in good spirits as they parked the wagon and dismounted a distance from the farmhouse. The men helped the ladies out of the rig and the Donnellys headed for the house. Will noticed his father walking slowly behind him together with James and speaking quietly about something. James was nodding that he understood. Will was pleased they had grown closer. James had been drinking more than ever. He needed his father’s attention. Then Will saw his father hand James a mickey of whiskey, before turning and calling out to Bridget, who had gone ahead with Johannah.

  “You must save a dance for me, Bridget. For old times.”

  “Sure and I will, Uncle Jim.”

  * * *

  A rosy-faced James Keefe gave a toast to the fifty or sixty people who had gathered in the great pine-log room, a fire roaring in the hearth, with his arms around the short, round bride and groom, almost spilling his drink. “Ladies and gentlemen, in the spirit of this new marriage, let us raise a glass to peace…and reconciliation between neighbours.”

  There was an awkward hesitation. Will and his family were surrounded by Kennedys and Flanagans and Purtells, staring them down. Keefe raised his glass emphatically. So did Will. And so did the blacksmith Martin Hogan, an old ally, neighbour Pat Whalen and seve
ral others. Will noted the Donnellys had faithful friends.

  “To peace!”

  With only a brief pause, everyone drank the toast. The small band at the other end of the great room began to play again. Girls balanced serving trays of beer for the men and cordials for the women. Father Connolly and several members of the Peace Society, including Martin McLaughlin and Jim Carroll, were standing in the hallway just outside the room. Cold looks passed between them and Will.

  Jim took Bridget out onto the floor for his dance. Will was impressed; his father swung her around like a man twenty years younger. It inspired Will to go and find Nora and have her join him on the dance floor. She was more than halfway along with their child but he liked the feel of her growing belly as he held her close.

  “Will?” She spoke quietly. “Why do you have a pistol in your pocket?”

  “You sure it’s a pistol?”

  “It’s a pistol. I’m serious. Why do you have that?”

  “Nothing. Honestly.” He smiled into her green eyes. “Just a precaution.”

  Will looked around the dance floor to keep track of his brothers. He saw John and Winnifred Ryder go outside together. One of the Ryders had an eye on them.

  Near Will, Michael was being charming and chatting with two other pretty girls, ignoring Fanny Carroll. It was clear Fanny was unhappy and becoming more so. She confronted him.

  “Michael. I’m thirsty,” she said.

  “One of the girls’ll bring you something.”

  “I’m thirsty now. A gentleman would get me a lemonade.”

  “That’s certainly true. I’ll keep my eyes open for a gentleman,” he said and went back to flirting with the two beauties. They were joined by a third girl, an attractive young redhead with a seductive smile.

  “Hello,” Michael said to her. “Excuse me, did it hurt?” The redhead gave him a quizzical look. Michael continued. “I mean, when you fell from heaven?”