Old Glory

by Christopher Nicole

  Annie’s screams grew louder, while her brother turned to face this new threat, his sword still coming up. The point entered the dog’s breast and Boru’s growl became a low whine; still catapulting forward the dog knocked the young man from his feet, but then collapsed beside him, blood pouring from its mouth.

  ‘Oh, Christ in Heaven,’ Harry muttered.

  Sean rolled away from the dying animal, pulling his blood-wet sword free, regaining his feet, breath coming in great pants. ‘Set your beast on me, would you?’ he snarled.

  Harry stared at him, and then moved away from the side of the trap. He was aware of a feeling he had never known before. It seemed as if his heart, lungs, stomach and mind were suddenly all jumbled together in a raging inferno of uncontrollable anger. He had never truly had cause to be angry before. Life was a game, there to be enjoyed, especially by the best player of them all. Even the revenue men were part of the game, to be outwitted. One lived, and laughed, and loved, and when one was old, one died, with one’s family gathered round, with a certainty that eternity would be no less happy.

  Boru had not been old. Boru had been but four, in the very fullness of his years, the finest companion a man had ever known, could ever know.

  Slowly he moved towards the naval lieutenant.

  ‘Harry,’ Anne gasped. ‘It was an accident, Harry!’

  ‘You keep away from me,’ Sean O’Rourke gasped. ‘Keep away, or I’ll run you through.’

  ‘Harry moved closer, his already huge body seeming to swell as the sense of outraged fury began to grip every muscle.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Elizabeth Bartlett muttered. ‘Oh, my God!’

  ‘Keep away,’ Sean O’Rourke shouted again. ‘Keep away … then have at you.’

  He planted his right leg and thrust at the huge chest bearing down on him, and then gave a gasp of mingled surprise and terror, as Harry sidestepped, closed his left hand on the blade, and jerked it from his fingers. Blood ran down Harry’s arm where his fingers had been cut almost to the bone, but he brought his right hand round also to grasp the steel, and, disdaining to use his knee, bent the sword until there was a crisp crack, and the blade broke in two.

  ‘Holy Jesus,’ Annie O’Rourke cried.

  Elizabeth Bartlett now said nothing, just stared at Harry with her mouth open.

  As did Sean O’Rourke, backing away. ‘You’re not a man,’ he panted. ‘You’re a monster. Aye, a monster. Keep away from me. I’ll see you hanged. I’ll … aaagh!’

  His shouts became a scream as Harry reached for him, wrapping his fingers in his vest and shirtfront to pluck him from the ground.

  ‘He’ll kill him,’ Annie shrilled.

  ‘Mr McGann …’ Elizabeth tumbled from the trap, landed on her hands and knees, regained her feet, and then fell again, face down in the mud. ‘Mr McGann!’

  ‘Help!’ Sean O’Rourke was screaming. ‘Help!’

  Harry had noticed the girl. He shook Sean left and right, and then threw him away; Sean seemed to arc into the bushes, descending through them with a crackling to accompany his screams of anguish.

  Harry ignored him, and went to the girl, lifting her from the ground again to set her back in the trap.

  ‘You’ve killed him,’ Annie whispered. ‘You’ve killed my brother.’

  ‘I haven’t, more’s the pity,’ Harry said. ‘Dead men don’t swear that loud.’ He retrieved his satchel from the bush into which he had thrown it, checked to make sure the bottles were unbroken, handed it to Elizabeth Bartlett. ‘Give that to the squire, and tell him I hope it chokes him.’

  ‘Mr McGann,’ she said. ‘I am so sorry about the dog.’

  Harry stooped beside the dead hound, raised it into his arms. Blood stained his shirt front, ran down his legs. While Elizabeth stared at him in horror as he turned away to commence the walk back to Tramore; mingling with the blood were tears, streaming down Harry McGann’s face.

  *

  Seamus McGann threw the last spadeful of earth into the grave, wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, looked at his eldest son. ‘Now you’d best get your mother to bind up that hand properly,’ he recommended. ‘You’d not want to lose the use of it.’

  Harry nodded, but he remained staring at the fresh-turned earth.

  ‘You’ll have another dog, Harry,’ Bridget ventured. No one else would have dared. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Maybe.’

  Sally McGann waited with fresh bandages and salves. ‘Deep,’ she muttered, as she bathed the dried blood away and inspected the wound. ‘’Tis lucky you are he had a blunt blade. Now, what’s to be done about it?’

  ‘It’ll heal,’ Harry said.

  ‘I meant, the quarrel.’

  Harry raised his head. ‘His quarrel, Ma.’

  ‘It takes two to fight, Harry McGann.’

  ‘You’d have had me a shake his hand after he’d run Boru through?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Still there has been a quarrel. Now you must determine the end of it. Hear me out,’ she said, as both Harry and his father would have spoken. ‘Quarrels are either ended, in which case they are best ended most quickly, or they are continued until one party or the other cries enough.’Tis not likely Sean O’Rourke will ever have that much sense.’

  ‘I’ll not apologise,’ Harry declared.

  ‘Not even if you broke his bones? You could well have done.’

  ‘Then he deserved it,’ Bridget O’More said fiercely.

  ‘No doubt, Biddy. Yet Tramore is too small for the squire’s son, who will one day be squire, and our son, who will one day be Tramore’s leading citizen, as is his father now, to hate each other. We may not need the squire’s goodwill to live, but we need his goodwill to continue living as we do.’

  ‘You’d have us crawl to that scum,’ said Charlie McGann, Harry’s brother.

  ‘I’d have us show no ill will,’ Sally McGann said firmly. ‘So this evening I will put on my best gown, and you’ll put on your best jacket, Seamus McGann, and we’ll up to the manor to inquire after the health of the young man.’ She gazed at her husband.

  Who hesitated, and then shrugged. ‘Aye. It would be best.’

  ‘Then it must be done by me,’ Harry said. ‘I’ll not have you apologising for a deed of mine.’

  ‘Not you, today,’ Sally insisted. ‘Tempers may still be running hot, up there. And with you. You, tomorrow.’

  Harry glared at her in impotent anger. Yet he knew she was probably right. He had still not had the time to analyse his true feelings. His mind remained a tumult of grief over Boru, and astonishment that the even tenor of his own life should have been so rudely, and unexpectedly, disturbed, and all through a misapprehension.

  ‘We’ve a visitor,’ observed Jenny McGann, Harry’s sister, gazing out of the side window at the street.

  ‘By God, if it’s O’Rourke come to make trouble,’ Seamus McGann growled, getting up.

  ‘You’ll be as polite as a priest,’ his wife reminded him.

  ‘It’s not the squire,’ Jenny said. ‘I’ve not seen this man before. But he looks a gentleman.’

  She merely meant, of course, that he was well dressed, Harry knew. He joined her at the window, gazed at the man who was at this moment dismounting in front of the inn. ‘You’d best take his horse, Charlie,’ he said. ‘And find out his business.’

  The stranger was certainly very well dressed, in plum green with a gold trim, highly polished brown boots, and a wide brimmed tricorne hat, also in green and gold. There were gold rings on his fingers, and his fob chain was also gold. But more than his mere clothes, or the well-bred horse he was riding, there was an air of prosperity about him. Now he exchanged a few words with Charlie, then nodded and came up the front steps of the inn. While Harry’s heart commenced to beat faster, as he realised there was something familiar about the stranger’s face — and then immediately knew who he had to be.

  ‘Could be more trouble yet,’ he said. ‘I reckon it’s Mr Bartlett.’

  The McGann w
omen exchanged glances, and Harry had to remind himself that they had heard only his version of the business, and that none of them, and especially Bridget, had ever set eyes on Elizabeth Bartlett — for which he was heartily thankful. Yet presumably he could, especially in the eyes of a father, be considered to have been too familiar with her.

  Seamus McGann himself opened the door, and Josiah Bartlett removed his hat with a flourish. ‘Mr McGann. Josiah Bartlett, at your service.’

  Seamus was taken aback by the warmth of the greeting, where he had been braced for hostility. ‘You’ll come in, sir,’ he said.

  ‘My thanks.’ Bartlett stepped into the room, glanced over the assembled people. ‘Mistress McGann,’ he said. ‘Ladies.’ Then he looked at Harry. ‘You’ll be the young man,’ he said. ‘Great God in Heaven, begging your pardon, Mistress McGann; I was told he was a giant, but had no idea how much so.’Tis sensible you are to have high ceilings, indeed it is.’

  ‘I did what I had to do, Mr Bartlett,’ Harry said.

  ‘And thank God you did, at least as regards my daughter,’ Bartlett agreed. ‘And is that the hand plucked the blade from young O’Rourke’s grasp? By God, sir, had I not seen that bandaged I would not have believed it. This was no Spanish rapier, you understand, ladies, but a true English blade. Snapped in two like a twig. I’d take it as a privilege to shake your hand, young man. Your good hand, to be sure.’

  ‘My hand?’ Harry was bemused, but he held it out anyway, and Bartlett pumped it vigorously.

  ‘My Elizabeth is my only child,’ he explained. ‘More, since her dear mother passed away she is all I have. And to think of her pitched into the river, and all but drowned … 1 tell you, Mr McGann, I am forever in your debt.’

  ‘Why, then, you’ll take a glass of Irish whiskey,’ Seamus McGann said, pouring from behind the bar counter. ‘I’ll tell you straight, Mr Bartlett, we’d supposed you might be on a different mission.’

  ‘Well, in a manner of speaking, I am,’ Bartlett conceded. ‘Oh …’ he observed the changes of expression about him. ‘I came here principally to drink the health of your son, and to shake his hand. Oh, yes. But also to offer a word of warning. Young Sean O’Rourke is in a powerful rage. And his father as well.’

  Sally McGann frowned. ‘Is the boy badly hurt?’

  ‘By no means, in the body, if you excuse a few scratches. But pride, madam, pride. Hurt a man’s pride and you wound him more severely than ever a dagger can.’

  ‘He killed my dog,’ Harry said. ‘And then sought to murder me. He’s a lucky man that your daughter intervened on his behalf, Mr Bartlett.’

  ‘Oh, spoken like a man,’ Bartlett said, and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Elizabeth has told me of the incident, in full, and I totally support you, sir. O’Rourke, now, totally supports his son, which is not so unnatural, I suppose. But he means to have the law on you, Mr McGann.’

  ‘My son did nothing but defend himself, Mr Bartlett,’ Seamus McGann said. ‘Against an unprovoked attack by an armed man. If your daughter will testify on our behalf, there’s naught O’Rourke can do about it.’

  ‘Agreed, sir. And sir, I will tell you that my daughter has already indicated her determination to testify on your son’s behalf. More, she has insisted upon it, sir. There’s the end of a long and fruitful friendship. Why else do you think I am in this little village, while my ship wastes its time in Waterford. Merely to spend some time with an old friend, sir. But there it is. I’ll not see injustice done.’

  ‘Then where’s the danger in O’Rourke’s anger?’ Seamus inquired.

  ‘There is always danger in an angry man’s heart, Mr McGann. And when that man is the squire … you’ll not deny you do not only serve this home grown whiskey in this establishment.’

  ‘I do deny it,’ Seamus said, gazing into the Englishman’s eyes. ‘Not a drop else.’ Nor was he actually lying, Harry knew; they did not serve the French wine in the inn.

  Bartlett smiled. ‘Of course, sir. And I am no revenue spy to pry into your private affairs. But I will say this, sir. Should you ever decide to expand your trade, it is only possible with the Squire’s goodwill. Should that goodwill be withdrawn, will he not know where first to look for the contraband?’

  ‘The devil,’ Seamus snapped. ‘That claret. But O’Rourke likes his wine too much to make that an issue.’

  ‘Think you so, sir? When a man is angry because his son has been exposed as a coward and a bully, there’s no telling what he will do. Suppose I say there is a satchel in my saddle bag out there, containing three bottles of Armagnac and a sachet of perfume? Because there is. O’Rourke will not touch it.’

  ‘Holy Mother,’ Sally McGann muttered. ‘He’s not behaved like that before. What’s to be done?’

  ‘Drain your claret,’ Bartlett suggested. ‘Or better yet, sell it to me. However, I doubt it is this cargo that will be your downfall. What of the next?’

  ‘Damnation.’ Seamus drained his glass, poured himself another. ‘But what’s done is done.’

  ‘Of course. Yet the subject is worth examining in a logical fashion. Sean O’Rourke and his father now bear a grudge, against Harry McGann.’

  ‘Against all McGanns, it’ll be,’ Sally McGann growled.

  ‘A passing fancy,’ Bartlett assured her. ‘As your husband says, O’Rourke will soon enough remember that to live comfortably and cheaply he needs you here as much as you need a friendly squire there. His anger, reflected from that of his son, is principally directed against Harry here. Give that time to cool, give Sean time to regain his ship, and all will be well.’

  ‘So Harry will keep out of his way for a while,’ Seamus agreed.

  ‘I think he’ll need to do more than that, Mr McGann. His very presence here will be like a red rag to a bull. And what of chance encounters? Tramore is a small place, sir. A small place.’

  The McGanns gazed at him.

  ‘My ship, The Spirit of the West, lies, as I have said, in Waterford Harbour, scarce ten miles away,’ Bartlett went on. ‘She sails tomorrow morning, for New York. I can promise you there’s a berth on her for any young fellow like Harry McGann, and when I hear that he already knows something of the sea, why …’

  ‘New York?’ Sally McGann whispered. ‘New York?’ Bridget O’More cried.

  ‘’Tis where I have my home and my main business,’ Bartlett told them. ‘A small, but growing community. Oh, we’ll rival Boston yet, given time. You’ve my word on that.’

  ‘New York,’ Harry said again. America! Where Raleigh had been, and seen. New York! Only that morning he had been telling himself that his place was here, in Tramore, now and forever more. But to catch just a glimpse of that world out there …

  ‘What makes you so sure the master of this ship, Spirit of the West, will give my son a berth?’ Seamus asked.

  ‘Because I own the vessel, sir.’

  Seamus opened his mouth and then closed it again.

  ‘My ships trade between New York and London,’ Bartlett explained. ‘I do not always sail with them, of course, or even usually. It is pure chance, purest happy chance, that I returned to the old country to see my mother, who is hardly likely to last much longer, and who had not seen Lizzie since she was a babe. But now we must return home. Business summons me. Profit, sir. Without profit a man is lost.’

  Lizzie, he had said. What a terrible diminutive for so much beauty, Harry thought. But he would be at sea, with Elizabeth Bartlett, and then New York … he found himself gazing at Bridget, his cheeks flaming in embarrassment at his mental infidelity.

  As Bridget was staring at him. But not thinking of a girl she had never seen. ‘You can’t go,’ she said. ‘You can’t. We’re to be wed, in September.’

  ‘And wed you certainly shall be, in September,’ Bartlett said reassuringly. ‘If Master McGann ships with me, I’ll see that he ships back again, on the next one of my vessels coining east. He’ll be away not more than four months at the outside. Why, he’ll be back before the end of Augu
st. And then he’ll be a real sailorman. And there’ll be money in his pockets, too. Profit, young lady. No man sails with me and does not make a profit. And for a lad about to be wed, why, a little bit of capital is essential, I’d say.’

  ‘Four months,’ Seamus mused. ‘It might be for the best, lad. Four months gives time for tempers to cool. And we’ll be as sweet as sugar to the squire throughout that time. We promise you that.’

  ‘Four months,’ Harry said. Four months at sea. How he had always dreamed of making a voyage of that duration, of seeing the ocean in all its moods, and then of seeing America at the end of it … and in the company of Elizabeth Bartlett. But that was an unworthy thought. It was the sea, the experience, the knowledge, that counted.

  ‘Four months,’ Bridget whispered. ‘Oh, Harry … and what of storms, and pirates, and sea monsters …’

  ‘I’ve not seen a sea monster these sixty years,’ Bartlett said, jovially. ‘Nor met a man who did. As for pirates, you won’t find them on the North Atlantic run. They like the Caribbean, they do, such of them as are still about. Ha, ha. As for storms, mine are well-found ships, young lady. I’ve not lost one yet. Crewed by professionals, they are. Men of experience. Your Harry will be a sight safer on board the Spirit of the West than tangling with the revenue men every voyage. It’s not as if we were at war, now. But since we whipped the Froggies back in ’63, why, there’s naught but peace for as far as the eye can see. Save for a few curmudgeonly Indians.’

  ‘Indians?’ Bridget cried.

  ‘Not in New York City,’ Bartlett said. ‘No, sir. I’ll wager your Harry will never set eyes on a single redskin.’

  Bridget gazed at Harry, and saw the decision being taken. More importantly, it was also being taken by his parents. They would stand at his shoulder come what may … but they also understood that it would be better to sidestep trouble than to meet it head on. ‘Oh, Harry,’ she said again. ‘I shall miss you so.’

  ‘Maybe I need the time to think, Biddy,’ he said. ‘Not about us. I’ll be back to marry you in September. But about O’Rourke, and Boru … The fact is, I doubt I could encounter either the squire or his son any time soon and not break their heads.’