Leaving Ireland

by Ann Moore

  The butcher led them up and down stairways, through narrow passages, and in and out of heavy wooden doors until at last they came to a kind of underground courtyard with cells lining the walls.

  “Here they be,” he told the guards at the entrance, who nodded.

  “Three in here tonight,” one of them ordered.

  When the first three women stepped away from the group, Grace had a moment of panic. Was Lord Evans here? Had she missed her chance? A look from Big Red, standing next to her, said no.

  The party traveled on, making two more stops to deliver girls, before Big Red squeezed her hand quickly, then dropped it.

  “One here,” barked the butcher.

  Grace stepped forward, her heart pounding wildly.

  “Wake up, Evans. You got company.” The guard licked his lower lip and slowly slid his hand along her backside before pushing her toward the cell at the end of the room. A man slowly pulled himself up by the bars.

  “Stand back there,” the guard commanded.

  He found a key on his ring, opened the cell door, grabbed Grace by the arm, and thrust her in roughly. The door clanged shut, and the lock was turned.

  “Make it quick.” He laughed meanly. “If you can make it at all.”

  The guard walked away, leaving them alone except for the echo of his surly voice from down the hall, where he passed a bottle with the other guards.

  The only light now came from a torch outside the cell, though Grace could see a candle in its holder on a small, rough table that also held pen and paper. She could not make out the face of the man who stood quietly in the middle of the cell.

  “Good evening.” His voice was low and hoarse, but instantly recognizable. “Kind of you to come, but I’m afraid I won’t be such good company tonight.”

  “Ah, now, Lord Evans, haven’t you always been good company?”

  He paused and leaned forward slightly, his head cocked to one side. “Do I know you?”

  She came forward and touched his arm. “You wouldn’t know to look at me now,” she whispered. “But you stood up at my wedding one early morning before dawn.”

  He leaned closer and squinted into her face, stunned. “Good Lord, Grace!” He hugged her fiercely, then looked again, laughed, and shook his head. “I can hardly believe it! Am I dreaming? Have I died?”

  “If you have, then so have I, and I must tell you”—she glanced around the dark cell—“Heaven’s a bit of a letdown, isn’t it?”

  He nodded in amazement and touched her face, concern coming into his eyes as he felt the greasy paint, smelled the cheap perfume, realized the implication of how she was dressed.

  “What’s happened, Grace?”

  “’Twas the only way to get in, you see.”

  “I don’t see. But I’m glad you’re here.” He took her hand and led her to a stool. “Please sit.” He saw her settled, then lowered himself gingerly onto the mound of straw that was his bed. “I’m sorry I can’t entertain you properly. I remember how well you looked the first night we met, so beautiful in the candlelight, surrounded by food and drink and elegance, passionately defending the good name of McDonagh over Donnelly’s scowls. I like to think of that now and then.”

  “We’ve a bit of candlelight now. Food and drink, as well.” She reached under her skirt to untie the flat package hidden there. “Bread, cheese, sausages, and a little Irish whiskey from Missus O’Brien herself.”

  “It must be truly hopeless if Molly is sending me food and drink without a bill attached. Not to mention you.” He reached for the flask, unscrewed the top, and offered it to her. “Ladies first.”

  She shook her head. “I’m nervous enough in this place,” she admitted. “Can’t go addling my wits now, can I?”

  “Drink with me, Grace,” he implored, the ache of loneliness in his voice.

  She didn’t hesitate then, but took the flask and raised it. “To you, Lord Evans,” she saluted, tipping it into her mouth.

  “I prefer ‘Captain,’” he said when she handed it back. “That’s the only title I’ve ever earned. Here’s to you, my dear.” He took one long swallow, and then another.

  The whiskey warmed them both, and they regarded one another, eyes now more accustomed to the dim light.

  “You haven’t come to break me out of here, have you?” he asked, trying to make it a joke.

  “Give me a way to do it, Captain, and I will,” she answered soberly.

  “I’m out of time, is the thing.” He coughed and put a cloth to his lips; it came away with a dark stain.

  “As long as you’ve got a breath of life in you, there’s time. Anything could happen, Captain. A miracle, even.”

  “It would take a miracle,” he said. “And I believe I’ve used up more than my share of those.”

  “Is it blood you’re coughing up, then?”

  He nodded, crumpling the cloth in his hand. “The miracle for me, Grace, would be to go quickly.”

  “Ah, no, Captain, no.”

  He leaned forward and took her hand. “I’m not afraid to die, you know. My Lord waits for me, and so does the only woman I ever loved. Living has often frightened me more than the thought of dying.” He smiled ironically. “My only regret is that I won’t live to see you and Morgan ruling the Emerald Isle with a brood of children tumbling from your cabin door.”

  Grace’s eyes filled with tears, which she hoped he could not see in the dark.

  “How is he, the old renegade?” Evans took another swig from the flask. “And what on earth possessed him to send you into the lion’s den like this?”

  Grace bit her lip.

  The captain’s arm dropped into his lap and he was quiet for what seemed like an eternity. “He’s dead, then—is that it?”

  “Aye.” Grace choked out the word.

  Evans flung the flask against the cold stone wall, where it clattered, leaving a trail of whiskey tears against the gray.

  “Goddamn them to Hell,” he spat. “Damn their eyes and all their children. And for what? For what?” He tried to stand, but began coughing and collapsed.

  Grace helped him sit, handed him the bloody cloth, wiped the sweat from his forehead with her shawl.

  “’Twas fever took him, so you can damn that too while you’re at it.” She paused. “He was in prison, in Dublin, charged with treason. He knew he was dying and got a letter out to me. By the time I read it, he was already gone.”

  “Oh, Grace.” He put his hand over hers.

  “I bore our son that day.”

  “A son.” He shook his head, trying to take it all in. “Are you quite sure he’s dead?” he asked suddenly. “The rumors—so many rumors …”

  She placed her fingers across his lips to stop the words, then reached down the front of her gown, pulling out a muslin sack that had been tucked low between her breasts. She opened it and poured into her lap Morgan’s earrings and his wedding band; the latter she held out to Evans. “I’m sure,” she said.

  He took it and saw that it was his, then made a fist around it and held it against his chest. “McDonagh was the finest man I ever met,” he said quietly. “I loved him like a brother.”

  “Aye, Captain, and he thought the world of you. I wanted you to know that, to hear from me what happened.”

  “Thank you.” He paused, then handed back the ring. “I want you to keep it, Grace. Give it to your son when he grows up. Tell him the story of your secret wedding, the story of his father. He can be proud of the name McDonagh.”

  “He’ll know your name, as well, Captain. My children and their children and the children after—they’ll all know your name.” She put her hand around his and he kissed it gently, then laid his cheek against it for just a moment.

  “What will happen to you now?” he asked.

  “They say I must go to my brother, to Sean, in America.” She tried to keep the anxiety out of her voice.

  “Who is ‘they?’”

  “Smith O’Brien, Meagher, your Mitchel—the voices o
f Young Ireland. ’Tis Julia Martin brought me to Liverpool … but the boat was delayed, you see. And I found out where you were and how could I leave England without seeing you one last time, without saying farewell?”

  “It’s ludicrous.” He shook his head. “Absolutely ludicrous. How in God’s name did you come upon this plan?”

  “Ah, now,” she teased. “I’ve a number of friends in low places, as well you know.”

  “Yes, but … prostitutes?”

  “’Tis a long story.”

  “And we’ve no time for long stories.” He sighed. “Tell me then, when do you sail?”

  “Two days, maybe three. I’ll start back to Liverpool tonight.”

  “What about the boy and—you have a daughter, as well?”

  “Mary Kate is with me, but I’ve left the baby and Da behind with Barbara at the convent—they’ll come when they’re strong enough.”

  “That was hard.”

  She nodded, struggling against her emotion.

  “Don’t be afraid to make hard choices, Grace. If that’s what it takes to stay alive, you and your children. It’s what Morgan would do.” He paused. “It’s what I would do, if I had any choice left.”

  She raised her eyes to his. “True enough, and I’m ashamed to sit before you pitying myself.”

  “I hope not.” He squeezed her hands. “It has meant the world to me to see you here tonight. It is one last miracle.”

  “Is there anything I can do for you, Captain? Anything a’tall?”

  “You could call me by my Christian name.” He smiled wearily. “It’s been a very long time since anyone did.”

  She nodded, and was about to speak when the first faint sound of clanging keys and heavy footsteps came down the hall.

  “Time to go.” He stood and pulled her to her feet, then touched a piece of her hair, tucking it up into place. “We must say good-bye now. Not in front of … the others.”

  She put her arms around him, lifting her lips to his ear. “Ireland will not forget you, David,” she whispered. “Nor will I. Go with God.”

  He closed his eyes and let his head rest against hers until the footsteps stopped outside the hall, and the guard approached with his keys.

  “Finished up, have you?” He laughed and unlocked the door. “Out, you.”

  “Good-bye.” She held on tightly, unable to let go.

  “That’s enough now,” the guard complained. “Out, I said.”

  “Don’t be afraid,” Evans whispered, kissing her cheek.

  “Nor you,” she answered and found the strength to step away from him, though it broke her heart all over again.

  The guard locked up and herded Grace toward the hall, but she stopped, pushed him aside, and looked back to where Evans stood just inside the bars.

  “Look down on me,” she called to him, “when you get there.”

  He hesitated just a moment, then raised his hand to show he understood. “We will,” he vowed, and that was all.

  Five

  SOME say a man is closer to God when he’s at sea, but Captain Reinders had never found Him there; certainly not aboard the Eliza J, nor in the quarters where now he sat; a god capable of ordering an entire universe would never have left it to the mercy of something as random and chaotic as Nature. To well-meaning friends with the gleam of redemption in their eyes, Reinders professed a general belief in some world other than this one, but in his heart he knew there was only one life and one world in which to live it. His religion was the discipline of keeping chaos at bay, the difference between those subject to a mysterious universe and those who unravel its mysteries. If Captain Reinders had a god, its name was Logic, and the blessing it bestowed was the ability to reason without emotion.

  It was reason that led him to consider a life at sea—he looked with satisfaction upon the orderly cabin, felt the familiar sway of the ship beneath his feet, and realized how differently he could have ended up as the youngest son of a bitter, unlucky farmer held hostage to the whims of nature through the guise of God’s will. It had been fifteen years since Peter Reinders left upstate New York, though he dutifully wrote to his mother once a year at Christmas and received a letter from her in return, in German, the handwriting painstakingly familiar. It always came a week before Christmas and so would be waiting for him at the fine house of his partner, Lars Darmstadt, where Reinders had an apartment of his own; Lars’ lovely wife, Detra, would have placed it on the chest of drawers in his bedchamber, where he would be sure to see it first thing.

  Reinders rubbed his temples, thinking of that. The letter would remind him that his father was dead now, and his sisters all married away. His two oldest brothers still worked the farm, but Hans had suffered a fall years ago and was often bedridden, and Josef, though hardworking, could get no more out of the fields and the pigs than their father had. He, his wife, and five children had their own small cabin on the same land and toiled endlessly to provide for everyone. Peter’s mother never asked him to come home, but he read it there between the lines; he knew they struggled, and he struggled against that, but would not allow himself to be swayed by emotion. Returning home was not the logical choice. He was no farmer; he was a seaman, partner in one of the most magnificent ships he had ever sailed, a respected captain who made enough to see to his own needs and send a bank draft home once a year. The money bought medicine, tools, supplies, paid for the endless repairs, supported if the market was bad—it was his money that made sense, not his back. He sighed and shook his head.

  “Dearest boy,” his mother called him in her letters, but he was a man of thirty now, tall and rangy, with a seaman’s weathered face and eyes permanently narrowed from squinting into the sun, wind, and rain. The brown hair of his youth had turned the color of straw, thick and matted with sea spray; he tamed it on land with liberal use of hair oil, kept himself clean-shaven, too, but at sea, he preferred a beard and mustache—it was warm in foul weather and lent an edge of fierceness to his command. He ran a hand over his jaw, felt the bristle and scruff; he’d made a point of not shaving while in Liverpool. He stood and stretched, glad he’d not become broken and bent as the plowman, but that he stood tall and straight, steady and surefooted as any seasoned captain—his mother would not have recognized the boy who’d stormed off to sea so long ago.

  In the middle of one of his father’s frequent rages, she had quietly packed Peter’s knapsack, and when he and his father came to blows, it was she who separated them and led the old man back into the house, pausing just once to look back at the boy, who stood angry and confused in the middle of the road. She had managed a quick smile for him and an encouraging nod—permission to go. The letter she’d tucked into his pack had said she knew his father was a hard man, harder on him because he was different from the others and didn’t care about the pigs, didn’t want the land, or the way of life. She loved her husband, though, and always would, she’d written; she loved her son, too, and told him to remember his duty before God. Reinders frowned, unwilling to dwell on the memory of a father who had rammed duty down his throat—God had been a weapon in his father’s fists.

  He was free of all that now, Reinders reminded himself, free to chart his own course. When he’d learned that the ship of legendary Norwegian Captain Erik Boe was in port, he’d begged his way on board and had shown, under the captain’s demanding tutelage, a natural affinity for the sea—rising from boy to ordinary seaman, to able seaman and then to second mate, from second mate to first, and finally to captain, from which position he had entered into the venture with Lars Darmstadt, leading to partnership in the grand packet Eliza J. Every penny—and he’d saved a lot, refusing to buy a house on the East River or fine clothes despite the great percentages from ship profits—had gone into the Eliza J and he knew every inch from stern to prow, every mark on the masts, every gouge in the decks better than he knew his own body; she was the very soul of him, and when she soared, he soared as well. But she had taken a terrible beating in this last storm, and fo
r the thousandth time, he yearned to have her safely back in their home port.

  “Balls,” he muttered, raking his fingers through his hair. It was three thousand miles back across the Atlantic Ocean to America. Three thousand miles taken one short day and one long night at a time in icy banshee winds, blinding snow, and mountainous seas … if they were lucky; in the bone-chilling fog of becalmed seas, if they were not. They might cross in as few as twenty-eight days, or they might limp along, running out of food and water, for as many as sixty. It happened more often than seamen cared to think about; ships got lost in dense fog, where celestial navigation was impossible, the sextant and chronometer little help; ships got turned around in terrible storms, could be blown hundreds of miles off course, could lose a mast and the power of a mainsail, could hit icebergs in the night and sink within minutes, the icy black water keeping their fate a secret forever. There were always risks in any ocean voyage, more when the voyage was undertaken in winter.

  Reinders got up and paced the length of his small cabin. He did not like risks at sea. He did not like winter voyages or the burgeoning immigrant-timber trade route he witnessed in the Liverpool port. Nor did he like the thought of wintering in this former slavers’ port with all the misery and desperation around its prosperous edges. He hungered for home, for the cocky optimism of Bostonians and Gothamites, the excitement of their shabby docks, the freedom. He thought of Lily, back home selling fish on the docks, waiting to hear from him—she must wonder what had happened to him, where he was, why he had not come home with enough money to make good on his promise to her, worrying that it was too late now, simply too late. He felt acutely the loss of each minute of every day they were stuck in this port, but it must be agony to her.