Song of the Silent Harp

by BJ Hoff

  “If you…if you amputate, will he live?” Daniel John’s voice sounded thin, tremulous. Nora saw the dismay in her heart mirrored in her son’s eyes.

  The surgeon’s lower lip rolled down even farther. “I can’t promise that. He might live if I take the arm. But he’ll die for certain if I don’t!”

  Doesn’t he care? Whittaker might be a stranger to him, but he is a doctor, after all.

  Nora stepped closer to Whittaker, looking down on him. His face was tracked with perspiration and grime, etched with pain. She felt ill. Ill and sad. And guilty.

  He did it for us. It’s because of us this is happening to him.

  “I’ll have to go and get my instruments,” Dr. Leary said. “We’d best get to it right away. He’s in bad shape.”

  “Just be sure that’s all you get. You’ll be sober when you operate on him.”

  Nora’s head shot up at Daniel John’s sharp words. The surgeon whipped around to face him, eyes flashing.

  “I saw the shape you were in when you treated his wound.” The lad’s voice was as hard as any man’s. “You were drunk! I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t your fault the wound went bad.”

  “Why, you!”

  “You know I’m right!” Daniel John stood, stepping out from Whittaker’s bunk to face the surgeon. “I’m only asking for your word that you’ll come back sober. He’s important to us.”

  “He’s English,” the surgeon sneered.

  “He’s our friend,” countered the boy. “He saved our lives. Now you will save his.”

  Nora stared in wonder as the surgeon’s angry glare slowly wilted, then dropped away entirely.

  His shoulders sagged, his face went slack, and then he gave a short nod. “See to him until I get back,” he muttered gruffly. “I won’t be long.”

  As soon as the doctor walked away, Nora let go the tears she’d been choking back. Daniel John came to her, pulling her gently into his arms.

  She could feel her son’s trembling as she wept against his shoulder, but his arms were strong and his voice still steady. “At least this way, he has a better chance to live, Mother. That’s the important thing—that he live.”

  Wetting his shoulder with her tears, Nora desperately hoped that Evan Whittaker would feel the same when he awakened.

  34

  The Keen Comes Wailing on the Wind

  I hear all night as through a storm

  Hoarse voices calling, calling

  My name upon the wind.

  JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN (1803–1849)

  Morgan Fitzgerald stood in the middle of his cell, wondering why the gaol was so uncommonly quiet tonight.

  For more than an hour he had heard none of Cummins the gaoler’s vigorous cursing, no prisoner complaints, no rattling of chains or slamming of doors.

  It was as dark as it was quiet. Even the candle that usually lighted the corridor seemed to have been forgotten.

  Outside, the wind set up a mournful wail, and Morgan shivered. A breath of dread whispered at the back of his neck—from the keening of the wind or the cold of the cell, he couldn’t say.

  Not for the first time since being locked up, he thought of the flask he had once carried. He’d given up the drink years before, while still a young man, once he saw himself headed down the same road as his father. Tonight, though, he thought he would not mind a taste or two.

  He smiled grimly in the darkness. Had he known back then that his choices ran to dying with a noose around his neck or a tumbler in his hand, he might not have been so quick to smash the flask.

  He was exceedingly bored. The candle he’d managed to badger from Cummins had burned itself up last evening, so he couldn’t see to read or write. This would have been bad enough in itself, but it was more vexing than it might have been, thanks to that sly priest, Joseph Mahon.

  The man had slipped a worn copy of the Scriptures inside his belongings. On the cover was fastened a note.

  Now Joseph knew him well enough to know he could never resist a good tale. His vague message had been meant to pique Morgan’s curiosity, and so it had.

  Morgan, the note had read, there’s a tale inside about a foolish fellow who thought he could escape God by running in the opposite direction. More than a little like you, I should imagine. I thought perhaps you might want to see for yourself the lengths to which our Lord will go to get our attention and change our course. His name was Jonah, by the way, if you care to look him up…

  Morgan knew the story of Jonah, of course, but, partly to appease Joseph and partly out of idle interest, he had read it again.

  And again.

  Even now he found himself wanting to read it once more, at length. Something about Jonah and his great fish captured Morgan’s attention in an odd sort of way.

  At times, like now, he even found himself musing that this cell was not unlike the fish’s belly—cold and wet and dark.

  At any rate, he was eager for Cummins to bring his evening meal so he could nag him for another candle.

  In the meantime, he wondered where the irascible rat who had become his nighttime companion was hiding himself.

  Oliver, Morgan had named him, in memory of Cromwell, of course. And wasn’t the dull-witted rodent nearly as predictable as old Oliver himself had reportedly been?

  Each evening just after Cummins left Morgan’s plate, the rat would slink out of its hole and actually try to beat him to his supper.

  For the first two or three days, Morgan had let the creature have the offensive mess in its entirety, for he could not stomach it. At that rate, however, he would have ended up too weak to attend his own hanging, and so he determined to teach the greedy Oliver some manners, making him wait until he himself arrived at the last few bites and set the plate to the floor.

  Either the rat had tired of his paltry leavings, or else the gruel had finally killed him off. Morgan suspected the gruel.

  The cursed tooth had begun to ache again this afternoon. Morgan wished he had the stomach to yank it out, but the thing was a piece of himself, and these days he was not eager to part with even a rotting tooth. If nothing else, the pain was a reminder that he was still alive.

  He heard the jingle of keys and turned. The door opened to frame both Cummins, the gaoler, and Joseph Mahon, the priest, in the flickering glow from the candle Cummins held.

  In the dim, weaving light the men’s faces took on an eerie pall, giving them an almost spectral appearance. The gaoler’s heavy-jowled face was set in a fierce, relentless expression, while the priest stared at Morgan with a peculiar, speculative look in his eye.

  Morgan met his stare with a questioning look of his own, then turned to Cummins.

  His shoulders tightened instinctively as the cold finger of doom began a slow descent down his backbone.

  The question no longer seemed to be whether Whittaker would survive the amputation of his arm, but whether he would live long enough for the amputation to take place.

  Daniel watched the Englishman with anxious eyes, his own face flushed with dread of what was to come. Whittaker had not spoken for over an hour, other than to moan or mumble something entirely incoherent.

  Much to Daniel’s relief, the doctor had returned in a short time, sober. With him he brought a number of ominous-looking medical instruments, the sight of which had made Daniel’s mother quickly turn her head away.

  Whittaker lay on a rough wooden table at the end of the steerage compartment. The surgeon, an apron bound around him, had just returned from scrubbing his hands in a bowl of hot water, water he had taken time to heat before returning. He snapped at a number of inquisitive onlookers, chasing them off to their own quarters with a string of curses and threats.

  Now he stood, studying Whittaker. After a moment he raised his eyes to look first at Daniel, then at his mother.

  “One of you will have to stay and help,” he said shortly.

  Daniel’s heart slammed hard against his ribcage. He looked at his mother’s ashen face, swallowed,
and said, “I’ll stay.”

  He didn’t miss the pool of relief that instantly welled up in his mother’s eyes. But, pressing her lips into a tight line, she shook her head. “No, Daniel John, I will stay. You—”

  “Mother,” he interrupted, “I’m going to be a surgeon, remember? This is something I will have to do myself one day. I will stay with Whittaker.”

  Their eyes held briefly; then she gave a slight nod and backed away, retreating to a nearby place against the hull.

  “If he starts to wake up, give him as many drops of this as he can manage.”

  Dr. Leary’s graveled voice jerked Daniel’s attention back to the table and Whittaker. Taking the small bottle the surgeon handed him, he asked, “What is it?”

  “Laudanum. Opium. It’ll ease the pain some.”

  “Some? Don’t you have anything stronger?”

  The surgeon glanced up from assembling his instruments on a tray beside the table. “Even if I did, I wouldn’t chance giving it to him, the shape he’s in. His heart is battling for every beat. Pain never killed a man,” he finished curtly. “Too much opiate has killed more than one.”

  Daniel swallowed down his growing panic. “I’d like to pray, please.”

  The surgeon turned. “As you like.”

  “I’d…I’d feel better about things if you would pray as well.”

  “I’m not a praying man,” replied the doctor, turning away.

  “And what kind of man are you, then, Doctor?”

  Daniel’s quiet question seemed to fluster the surgeon. Pretending to search the inside of his medical case, he delayed his answer. “A man who has seen far too much to believe in a God who hears prayer,” he finally muttered, turning back to Whittaker.

  Daniel scrutinized the stooped, weathered-looking surgeon. Something in this man belied the gruffness he seemed so determined to project, and he found himself wondering if the doctor’s hard exterior was as impenetrable as he had first believed.

  Daniel hesitated another instant, then bowed his head and closed his eyes. In a soft, not altogether steady voice, he prayed for the skill of Dr. Leary, for the success of the operation, and for angels to stand guard and minister to the unsuspecting Evan Whittaker.

  “And I pray that when he awakens, Lord, he will forgive us for the tragedy we have brought upon him.”

  Daniel opened his eyes, blinking at the sight of the knife the surgeon now held in his hand.

  “Come around to this side,” the doctor ordered. “You scrubbed your hands as I said?”

  Daniel nodded and crossed to the other side of the table, where the doctor had laid out the instruments.

  He tried to swallow, but found his throat swollen shut.

  “This is the saw I will need when I’m finished with the knife,” the surgeon said, pointing out each instrument as he reeled off their names.

  “This other is the Hey’s saw,” he went on. “Silk for sutures, here. Now, then, you stay close, hand me each as I ask for it.” He glanced at Daniel. “You all right, boy?”

  Daniel moistened his lips, nodded.

  The surgeon studied him. “You must not get sick on me, mind. You’re sure you are up to this?”

  Daniel dragged his eyes away from the instruments, looked at the doctor, and nodded stiffly.

  The physician bent over Whittaker and set to work. “So you’ve a mind to be a surgeon yourself, then?”

  “Aye,” Daniel replied in a shaky voice, his eyes widening as the doctor ripped off what remained of Whittaker’s torn shirt, then flushed away the blood from the wound with a bucket of cold water.

  “Tonight may just change your mind.”

  Daniel’s eyes went to the knife in the surgeon’s hand, followed the movement of the blade as it targeted Whittaker’s upper arm.

  The room swayed. The table rocked back and forth.

  Daniel panicked, sure he was about to be ill—or, even worse, that he might faint.

  Then he saw the knife suspended in the air and the surgeon lift his head, frowning as he let go an oath. “It’s the storm,” he growled, holding the scalpel poised until the rocking ebbed. “This ship is damned, that’s certain! I told Schell, I told him he would pay…”

  Daniel could make no sense of the man’s wild muttering. But he knew well enough the importance of a steady hand on the knife.

  Grinding his teeth, he hugged both arms to his body, holding his breath as the surgeon began to cut.

  Whittaker’s eyes were still shut, but he screamed—a terrible, piercing scream.

  Tightening his own arms around himself, Daniel screamed, too, a silent, suffocating scream that tore at the walls of his heart and made his chest swell until he thought it would explode.

  Dimly he became aware of the doctor’s rough demand. “The saw, boy! Hand me the saw!”

  Whittaker screamed once more when the saw met bone. Then his head lolled to the side as if he were dead.

  The ship rocked, creaking and groaning, swaying like a drunken whale. The table danced on the floor.

  The surgeon stopped, waited, then returned to his task. His face was flushed, slick with sweat, his eyes boring through the bone along with the saw.

  The ship rolled, and Daniel pitched forward. He reached to steady himself and the table, to hold fast.

  His stomach recoiled at the motion of the ship, the sight of the surgeon’s blood-soaked apron, the sound of the saw severing Whittaker’s arm.

  Oh, dear Lord, I am sick…so sick…I mustn’t retch…I mustn’t faint…

  Seawater streamed through the overhead vents, spraying the table, Whittaker, the surgeon.

  Passengers shrieked. Prayers and curses were lifted, fighting to be heard against the squeal and crack of the ship’s timbers, the crash of the waves.

  The wind itself seemed to be screaming with pain as the surgeon finally separated Whittaker’s arm from his body.

  Daniel squeezed his eyes shut against Evan Whittaker’s tragedy and cupped both hands to his ears to shut out the hellish sound of torment shaking the very hull of the ship.

  The demented face of a woman rode the storm aboard the Green Flag. Sheathed in a gossamer gown, hair flowing, her twisted features were set straight ahead. One arm was raised, the hand balled to a fist. The fist gripped a piece of green silk, flapping madly in the wind.

  The wild eyes of the Green Flag’s masthead seemed to follow the frenzied movement of the crewmen as they fought the gale-driven waves splashing over the deck.

  The force of the waves knocked sailors off their feet, hurtling them forward, sweeping some the entire length of the deck. Timbers cracked, blocks fell, spars broke loose and went down in a tangle of rigging.

  On into the howling night the woman leaped across the waves, pointing the way with the flag in her upraised arm, daring the gale to slow her speed.

  Engulfed by the blackness of the sea and the night, the woman appeared to be fleeing a different Darkness.

  35

  To Set the Captive Free

  And thus we rust

  Life’s iron chain

  Degraded and alone:

  And some men curse, and some men weep,

  And some men make no moan:

  But God’s eternal Laws are kind

  And break the heart of stone.

  OSCAR WILDE (1854–1900)

  It was taking Cummins and the priest a powerful long time to get around to telling him he was about to swing.

  After fifteen minutes or more of idle blather, Morgan had enough. They might just as well get to it, since all three knew exactly why they had come.

  Joseph Mahon obviously still hoped to shrive him, and Cummins no doubt wanted to be the lad to lead him to the noose.

  Joseph had already sat down twice, only to haul himself up again and go pacing around the cell as if he were the one confined. Morgan thought it a bit peculiar that a priest like Mahon, who by now had to be an old hand at hearing the confessions of the condemned, should have such a difficult time o
f things with yet another sinner.

  Cummins, too, seemed in an odd mood. Rather than the glee Morgan would have expected from him, the man’s face was so sour it could have curdled a pail of new milk.

  “So, then, Joseph, where have you been hiding yourself these days? You haven’t been ill, I hope?”

  Even as Morgan said the words, it struck him that indeed the priest did look ill, so lean you could blow him off your hand. Joseph Mahon was killing himself over his parish. Morgan would have wagered that both he and Oliver the rat had been eating better than the priest.

  Mahon stopped his pacing and came to stand directly in front of Morgan, in the middle of the cell. In his right hand he held an envelope and a paper rolled into a tube—the legal go-ahead for his hanging, Morgan assumed. The hand holding the papers trembled so fiercely Morgan’s instinct was to reach out and steady it with his own.

  Instead, he shot the priest a grim smile in an attempt to make things easier for him. Splaying his hands on his hips, he stood, legs wide, studying Mahon with a rueful expression.

  “It’s all right, Joseph. Haven’t we both known it was coming, and soon at that?”

  The priest contemplated Morgan for what seemed a very long time, looking away only once to glance at Cummins.

  “Morgan,” Joseph Mahon finally said, his quivering hand tightening on the papers, “it is not what you think, lad.”

  Morgan frowned, waiting.

  “Morgan,” Joseph Mahon said again, lifting the paper in his hand and holding it up like a signpost, “you have been granted a pardon. A conditional pardon, mind you. But you are saved, Morgan. You are saved from the rope.”

  Morgan stared at him. He dropped his hands down to his sides, looked about him. The room seemed to swim. Even the ceiling tilted a bit, and the floor on which he was standing rose as if to hurl him backward.

  “What are you saying to me, Joseph?” he grated out.

  The priest reached out to put a hand to Morgan’s forearm. “It’s true, lad. You will not hang.”