Song of Erin

by BJ Hoff

  GALWAY, WESTERN IRELAND

  Outside, the evening was bitterly cold, but inside Brady Kane’s rooms, a fire had just been lit.

  He couldn’t believe he had missed something so obvious. Why, it had been right under his nose all the time! Big Brother Jack would have ragged him for not seeing the solution long before now. And he would have been right.

  “You’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar, boyo,” Jack would say.

  He slugged down another shot of whiskey, a slow smile forming as he studied the roughly drawn portrait in front of him. Yes, it was really quite simple. Why had it taken him so long?

  Since it seemed that the only way to Roweena was through Gabriel, it stood to reason that somehow the big fisherman must be made to serve as a door instead of a wall.

  With an energy he hadn’t felt for weeks, he began to tinker with the sketch of Roweena. One of many others by now, this one was exceptional, if he did say so himself, especially considering that he was working from memory, without a live model.

  But then Roweena’s image was so clearly engraved upon his mind—upon his heart—that he carried her with him, wherever he went. She haunted him, surrounded him…at times even seemed to obsess him. So excruciatingly clear was his vision of her that he thought he could have captured that exquisite face on canvas blindfolded.

  He had drawn her as he’d last seen her, standing in the marketplace, the morning wind whipping her dark hair into a cloud about her face and wrapping her skirt around her bare legs. He reached out and with one finger gently traced her profile, smudging the line of her mouth and delicate jaw a little as he did so.

  He took another drink, glancing down at the glass in his hand for a moment. It occurred to him that he was drinking too much of late. He supposed he ought to ease off a little.

  Until lately, he had never had a particular fondness for the drink. On the other hand, he’d never shared Jack’s disgust for it. To his way of thinking, the stuff was neither poison nor elixir but merely something to enjoy or not, as one chose.

  Jack, however, called it the “poison of our people” and would have nothing to do with it. But then Jack tended to dismiss—or condemn—anything that didn’t quite square with his own set of tightly held paradigms.

  Brady was aware that he drank even more when he was alone; of late, that was often the case. Some claimed it was the solitary drinker who ended up in trouble, enslaved by his habit. Perhaps he’d best be a bit more careful. Just in case. He had never had much use for those ne’er-do-well weaklings who tossed their self-respect down along with the whiskey. He had no intention of becoming one of them.

  Besides, he was going to need all his wits about him. There was a plan to be made, and he would have to be clearheaded entirely to devise it. Gabriel was no fool, not by anyone’s measuring rod; it would take some doing to win him over.

  He took a last, reluctant look at his now empty glass, then deliberately set it and the bottle—not quite empty—well away from his reach.

  Gabriel looked up with a faint smile at the sound of the child’s laughter. Across the room, Roweena was soaping Eveleen’s hair while the wee wane pulled foolish faces at her.

  Roweena, too, was laughing now and mimicking her smaller charge. Once she bent her dark head over the child and hugged her in a spontaneous gesture of affection. Her embrace was returned by an immediate, hard clasp about the neck that splattered soap and water over them both.

  Gabriel watched them for another moment from his chair beside the fire. They were like blood, those two; no sisters could be closer. Roweena cared for the child and hovered over her with a fierce protectiveness. As for the little one, she delighted in the attention. She also, for one so young, displayed an uncanny sensitivity toward Roweena’s fragile emotions.

  As he studied them, Gabriel thought he would be a fool to crave more from life than the contentment of times like this: a quiet night, a cozy cabin and cheerful fire, the reassuring sounds of the girls’ laughter and play. He valued a peaceful hearth as much as any man and had no need for idle luxuries about him. Instead he had long sought, like the apostle Paul, to be content in any circumstance.

  ’Twas a treacherous thing, the tendency to wish for more than one had, and well he knew it. Yet of late, to his dismay, he would find his imagination wandering down forbidden paths, dreaming like a callow youth of things that could never be—pretending, if only for a few shadowed moments, that Roweena was his wife and the child their own.

  It was at this place he now found his traitorous thoughts, and only by an act of deliberate will did he manage not to pursue his folly. He got up suddenly, so suddenly the chair scraped the floor with a loud screech, causing the child to whirl around in surprise. Roweena, too, upon seeing Evie’s wide-eyed stare, turned to look.

  An unexpected dart of annoyance stabbed at Gabriel. He gave a wave of his hand and started for the door. “It would seem,” he said gruffly, “that if a man is to have some peace he must seek it outdoors. I will take some air until the two of you have tired of your foolery.”

  He slammed the door behind him with uncommon force, wincing at his own churlishness. Outside, the chill night wind slapped at him. He trudged off down the path, feeling the great fool, for, sure, wasn’t his vexation in truth directed at himself and not at the two girls? He could only hope that Roweena would consign his odd behavior to nothing more than a fit of sour stomach or ill temper and not the surliness of a middle-aged man caught up in the futility of a secret, unrequited love.

  The thought only served to darken his already black mood, and he went lumbering down the street like an injured bear.

  The Claddagh was deep in darkness at this time of night. Most residents had retired at an early hour, and few dwellings showed any signs of light from within. But Gabriel, wide awake with his turbulent thoughts, trudged on through the cobbled streets, scarcely aware of the black night and the bitter cold.

  From his own house at the eastern edge of the village, he had walked into the heart of the settlement, where a number of mud-walled, thatched-roof cottages converged. Gabriel stopped, his gaze scanning the small, primitive colony that had been his home for nearly two decades. There was little that could be seen. Here and there a dim stream of lamplight from one of the houses relieved the dark. But for the most part, he was surrounded by shadows and a deep, familiar stillness.

  To some, no doubt, the remoteness and solitude of the Claddagh, especially at night, might be unnerving. To Gabriel, however, it had always been a place of peace. For Roweena, especially, it had offered a haven from a less kind world, where those who were different were often viewed with suspicion and even distaste. Here in the Claddagh, however, a deaf girl was not perceived as savage or mad—or accursed—but simply as “special.” Here, among these simple folk, she had been accepted and made a part of the normal, daily life of the village, which was what Gabriel had sought for her when he first brought her here as a frightened child.

  Roweena’s mother had been little more than a child herself when a British soldier, drunk and ablaze with lust, had brutally taken her innocence. A few years later, Roweena, by then an achingly lovely but lonely child, was rescued from the same convent fire that killed her mother, who had sheltered among the nuns since her attack. Gabriel’s deeply devout but elderly parents took the child in, but when they too passed away within months of each other, Gabriel assumed guardianship of the little deaf girl.

  He had brought Roweena to the Claddagh to find peace from the ignorant fear and malice that might otherwise have destroyed her. And peace is what they had found—for Roweena, at least. During recent years, however, Gabriel had found his own peace more difficult to come by. His fierce sense of protectiveness for Roweena, his resolve to do what was best for her, seemed more and more often in conflict with his growing love for her, until of late he sometimes felt as if his very heart were being torn asunder.

  More than once the desperation of his love had driven him to the very edge of d
eclaring himself. But always he stopped, either out of fear that such a confession would repulse her, even drive her away from him, or, worse, that she might actually feign affection for him out of some misplaced sense of obligation. He simply could not bring himself to face either possibility. But recently he seemed to live with an encroaching sense of dread, a sick awareness that he was nearing a time when he would no longer be able to hide his true feelings. He felt trapped, much like a fox cornered on a great precipice, with a pack of slavering hounds at his back and the prospect of a bottomless fall if he jumped.

  If Roweena were to learn the true nature of his love for her and be repelled by it—as she almost certainly would be—what would he do? Walk out of her life? And what would she do then? How would she manage in her silent, sheltered world, inexperienced and untrained as she was in any sort of skill required to sustain herself, not to mention her sometimes irrational fears, her excessive shyness and lack of knowledge of the world’s hard ways?

  If, on the other hand, he did nothing—if he should somehow manage to keep his secret—he might not die of it, but he would almost certainly grow more and more restless and contentious under the strain.

  Either way she would surely come to resent him and finally despise him.

  With a heavy sigh, Gabriel looked up. The night sky, thick and unyielding, without stars or moonlight to relieve it, seemed to mirror his spirit. He raked a hand through his hair, then dropped it to his side.

  “What am I to do, Lord? What is your will in this? I can no longer see your way in any of it.”

  His whispered, anguished plea was met by silence, and he wondered if he had offended his God with his self-pitying reflections. Or did his love and desire for Roweena contain elements of an unholy lust he refused to confront?

  “I am only a man, Lord, not a saint. I know my thoughts, my needs, are sometimes impure. But is my love for her such a bad thing? How can that be, when I cherish her so completely and wish nothing for her but good? I want to do the right thing for Roweena, but I live in dread of doing anything lest I make the wrong choice. I cannot imagine a life without her—and yet I would rather lose her entirely than bring harm to her. What shall I do, Lord? What am I to do?”

  Wait…

  Gabriel expelled a shaky breath. “But do I wait in silence, Lord? Or do I unburden my heart to her and take what comes? Ah, Lord, you know the state I’m in! I am like a blind man who does not dare to move this way or that, for fear of falling to my doom!”

  Dismayed, Gabriel pressed both hands to his temples. Was that what this was about? His weak, demanding flesh? Did it all come down to an older man’s foolish desire for a younger woman? Had he been lying to himself all along, deceiving himself into believing that his love for Roweena was pure, that it transcended mere lust or the body’s demands for fulfillment?

  Was he really such a hypocrite?

  Gabriel hugged his arms to himself, for one of the few times in his life feeling small and weak and utterly inadequate. The black sky seemed to descend and crowd in on him, engulfing him in a cloying, oppressive darkness.

  He squeezed his eyes shut against the stifling sensation. Slowly, then, it began to dawn on him—a truth that he thought he had learned long ago. It seemed he had forgotten the need to surrender. Everything. In his own hands, his dreams, his needs, his wants, his highest hopes were but poor things of the flesh and easily tarnished or misused. In God’s hands, they became holy.

  He opened his eyes, the words echoing through him like a carillon. Surrender. Surrender everything.

  His eyes filled with quick tears. “Aye, Lord…it seems I needed reminding, even now. Forty years I am, and yet I still forget. ’Tis your will, not mine, that I’m to seek. Always your will, Lord. No matter the cost.”

  For a considerable time, he stood there in silence, the bleakness lifting from his spirit, the night bathing him now in serenity rather than dread. Finally, he stirred and turned back toward the way he had come, leaving behind him, at least for now, his earlier feelings of loneliness and confusion as he started for home.

  16

  A PLAN CONCEIVED IN DARKNESS

  What lies within the dark of the heart,

  What whispers the words of deceit?

  ANONYMOUS

  Brady had been awake all night, plotting. Even now, with the hour bordering on midday, he felt no need for sleep. He had spent the hours into late morning at the small table in his sitting room, sometimes getting up and pacing the floor, his mind and body pulsating almost feverishly with excitement and expectation.

  It would work. He was sure of it. Once before he had ingratiated himself with Gabriel by coming to the aid of Roweena and Evie. Of course, that event had been totally fortuitous; he had simply encountered the two girls the night of the devastating windstorm back in January and helped them to reach safety. Even though Gabriel’s acceptance of him had always seemed somewhat grudging, he had, for the most part, made Brady feel welcome in his home.

  Until the situation with Terese.

  Now he saw an opportunity to win Gabriel over again. If he played things right, the big fisherman would not only grant him his earlier acceptance, but perhaps even his approval—thereby removing the barrier to Roweena.

  During the night, he had formulated a plan to achieve his goal. He had tried to anticipate everything. There must be no carelessness, no idle mistake—nothing left to chance.

  Finding just the right help to see it through, however, might take some doing. It would take two men, just to be safe. He didn’t know all that many fellows around Galway, especially the sort he’d need. But he knew the kind of place where he was likely to find them, and tonight he would go looking.

  He went to the window and looked out on the street below, where a beggar in shabby clothes squatted, staring up at a priest who had stopped to converse. Two men in broad Connemara hats passed by without a glance at the priest or the beggar. Several women, probably on their way to market, hurried by, talking among themselves.

  For a moment a faint stirring of uneasiness nudged Brady. Admittedly, the plan wasn’t without risk. If anything should go wrong, there would be the devil to pay. But nothing would go wrong. He’d make absolutely certain the fellows he hired understood that they had to carry out the plan exactly as he instructed. It was simple, really. All they had to do was visit the house on a Thursday evening, when the girls were alone, with Gabriel gone to the meeting hall for whatever it was he did there on Thursday nights.

  There would be enough time, probably more than enough. Brady had watched the house for nearly a month running, hoping—in vain—for an opportunity to be alone with Roweena. Gabriel was always gone for exactly an hour and fifteen minutes—seldom more, never less.

  On two consecutive Thursdays, Brady had gone to the door and tried to coax Roweena into talking with him. Both times she had appeared badly flustered, almost frightened, so much so that she’d practically slammed the door in his face.

  Even so, he continued to watch. He knew that Evie would come outside a few minutes before six to empty the basin, that she would dawdle in the yard for a bit—not long—mostly staring up at the evening sky or simply standing, unmoving, as if listening for the call of a night bird.

  Brady felt certain that once he managed to carry out the first part of his plan, the second part could proceed without a hitch. To that end, he must make every attempt to convince Gabriel that he was properly penitent for his behavior with Terese, that he deeply regretted his actions and was making a genuine effort to redeem himself.

  He hadn’t deceived himself into thinking this would be easy. No matter; he would scrape and grovel if that’s what it took. It wouldn’t do to go ahead with the rest of the plan until he’d won Gabriel over. He had to soften him up before going any farther. His instincts told him it would be a vast mistake not to lay the necessary groundwork first.

  This decided, it was all he could do not to rub his hands together in glee as he anticipated the all-important fir
st step, which he intended to take this very afternoon.

  Clearly, he was the last person Gabriel had expected to find when he opened the door. The big fisherman’s eyes went as cold as ice chips as he took one look at Brady. Without blinking, he moved to close the door.

  Brady caught only a glimpse of Roweena and Evie behind him, both wide eyed as they watched from beside the hearth.

  He pretended not to notice and instead turned his full attention on Gabriel.

  “Gabriel. I—would you just step outside for a moment? This won’t take long.”

  Gabriel’s craggy features remained rigid. Without speaking, he continued to chill Brady with that same relentless stare.

  “Please, Gabriel? It’s important.”

  Brady was careful to keep his eyes off Roweena, his expression properly solemn. Gabriel studied him for another long moment through narrowed eyes, as if to gauge his intent. Finally, with a quick, backward glance, he stepped outside, closing the door firmly behind him.

  Brady gave a deep sigh. “Thank you. I was hoping you’d see me.”

  No response.

  Brady met the frigid blue eyes with a steady gaze of his own. As he faced the towering, black-bearded fisherman, it occurred to him—not for the first time—that Gabriel almost seemed to step out of another time. All the giant needed was a kilt and a pike and he would have resembled for all the world one of the ancient warrior chieftains from whom every man in Ireland seemed to claim descent.

  But it wouldn’t do to let that ice-pick stare intimidate him or, even worse, provoke so much as a hint of defiance.

  Brady reminded himself to adopt the proper note of remorse as he commenced his speech. “I have something that needs saying,” he began. “I don’t quite know how to go about this, but it’s important to me that you understand.”

  The jaw lifted a fraction, but the cold stare never wavered.

  “I’ve come to apologize,” Brady said quietly, casting his own gaze downward. “For everything.”