Liberty Hill
By Sonja Heisinger
www.LibertyHillBook.com
www.SonjaHeisinger.com
Copyright © 2013 by Sonja Heisinger
All rights reserved.
This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means-electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise-without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.
Published by Windswept Publishing Group
[email protected]
The Library of Congress has cataloged the paperback edition as follows:
Heisinger, Sonja / Liberty Hill
p. cm.
International Standard Book Number: 978-0-9893667-0-0 (pbk.)
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing, May 2013
Cover design by Aubrey Cavazos
Author photo by Jenks Photography
Table Of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
About The Author
Authors Note
For my dad.
Chapter One
New York City, 1846
Lucius Flynn’s hands were covered in blood.
The room had gone still. Shards of glass glittered along the rough wooden floorboards, while splintered chairs had been tossed aside, lopsided and broken. The sound of crunching could be heard as men awkwardly shifted from one foot to another. There must have been forty of them crammed into that small pub, their bodies radiating perspiration that filled the air with a malodorous fog. It was late, and the light inside was dim. The sweaty haze made Lucius’ eyes sting. He had been commenting on it to his father just before it happened. Just before everything went to hell.
How many minutes had gone by since then? One? Two? Had he been holding his breath that long?
It had been a perfect night. They had come here to celebrate. What, Lucius couldn’t remember, but there had been a lot of laughing and drinking involved. Then some bawdy American had antagonized Lucius, and Lucius had retaliated with a right hook to the jaw. He remembered that right hook, remembered the sensation of flesh yielding into bone.
It was impossible to throw a punch in that place without upsetting more than one man. There were too many bodies around. A man couldn’t scratch his head without elbowing someone else in the face, which was exactly what Lucius did when he wound up to hit the American.
Suddenly everyone in that damn pub seemed to be angry about something. With the shouting, cursing, and smacking of flesh against flesh, the din was so loud it could be heard two streets over. The police would be there soon, even though the pub had since grown silent. The commotion had ceased when the first man had been stabbed; the man who now lay at Lucius’ feet.
His name was Emmett Brennan.
Lucius’ cheek felt numb, and there was a dull throb growing inside it. He figured this could be attributed to someone else’s fist. He didn’t know who had hit him. Probably that bloody American. It didn’t matter now, for the American had gone, slipping away amidst the fray.
All eyes - there were seventy-nine, for one of the spectators was missing one - were now trained upon Lucius Flynn, upon the hands he held stretched before him. Never had he seen his own hands look like this. Never had he felt the warm blanket of someone else’s blood draped over his fingers, dripping down his wrists and along his arms.
The sight repulsed him. A tremor shot through his body, starting in his toes and exiting his mouth with a shrill, “oh my god.”
His thoughts raced. He felt as though every sound in the room had been amplified. Someone coughed. Someone sniffed.
“Clear out,” the bartender said, his voice so deep and resonant it hurt Lucius’ ears. It was a deceptive voice: big, strong, belonging to a little man. Bernie, was it? Lucius thought that was the little man’s name. He had poured Lucius many drinks before this night, had always been sharp, witty, inviting. Now he just looked scared. “I don’t want to see your kind in here again.”
Your kind.
They no longer had names. They were just Irishmen now. Foreign, unwelcome, and unwanted.
Lucius struggled to understand.
“This man is wounded,” he told Bernie, the room, himself. He dropped his eyes to the man on the floor, the man whose blood stained Lucius’ skin. Lucius knelt beside him, his legs too weak to stand.
A pair of watery eyes gazed up at him, a mouth worked to speak to him, but there was no sound. Instead Emmett Brennan reached out, his fingers climbing slowly along the floor towards Lucius. Lucius took them and pressed them to his heart.
Something slammed against the bar.
“I said, clear out!” the bartender cried, a club in his hands. His knuckles were white.
“He is dying!” someone else replied. Lucius looked up to see his father standing over him, a sturdy sentinel in a room of drunken fools.
Dying? Could a man like this really meet such an end? Could a life as great, as good, as respected, become something that wasn’t?
“Then he can die in the street!” Bernie declared. “I’ll have no more of you Irish swine disturbing my customers. Now get a move on before I put a bullet through the rest of you.”
Lucius’ father, Banning Flynn, took a deep breath as if to argue, but the bartender’s hand was disappearing beneath the counter.
“You looking for proof?” he asked threateningly.
Lucius looked to his father. Banning’s face was crimson as he turned to his son with a locked jaw.
“Take his arms, boyo,” he told Lucius.
“But father -”
“Take his bloody arms!”
Lucius rose, gingerly stepping around Emmett Brennan’s wounded body and reaching down to take him firmly by the wrists.
Still the others watched in silence.
Banning grabbed his ankles.
“Lift him up,” he commanded.
As the body rose off the floor, it released a dull moan. Lucius cringed.
“We’re hurting him,” he said. “Please, Da…”
“Silence,” Banning growled.
They exited the pub into the biting night air. The streetlamps burned a dull yellow, radiating empty promises of warmth. Before them, numerous ships were anchored peacefully in the harbor, their naked masts cutting up into the starry sky. There wa
s no moon tonight. The port that bustled by day had grown silent and still.
As the door slammed closed behind them, a coughing fit seized the wounded man, his entire body shaking violently.
“For God’s sake, put him down!” Lucius exclaimed. There was nowhere to lay him but on the ground, so they gently released him onto a bank of snow, where flecks of hot scarlet stained the cold whiteness.
“What do we do?” Lucius asked. “I don’t know what to do!”
Banning did not respond. Instead, father and son watched as life ebbed from Emmett Brennan’s body.
“Da…”
Banning Flynn was not a sensitive man. He had known this wounded man for years, had loved him as much as Banning Flynn was capable of loving anyone. But Banning Flynn was not so different from a beast; though unfeeling, he would bite when threatened, and the events of this night were threatening indeed. Whatever the losses, control must be quickly regained.
“We must prepare ourselves, Lucius,” Banning Flynn told his son.
Lucius shook his head.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he said, his voice breaking.
His father looked at him sternly.
“Yet here we are,” he grumbled.
“It was an accident. I didn’t know… I had no idea…”
“You are impulsive and foolish, boyo. A careless drunk. A disgrace.”
Lucius choked back a sob.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry…”
The clopping of hooves could be heard in the distance and Banning’s eyes darted in their direction.
“The police are coming,” he told Lucius. “If we leave now, they will think you murdered him. This could ruin you. It could ruin us.”
“But I didn’t!”
“You will have to tell them.”
“Who’s to say they would even believe me?”
“There were plenty of witnesses.”
“If we don’t get him to a physician straight away…”
“He will die,” Banning said. “And then we will have to tell her.”
Lucius grabbed a fistful of his own hair. Oh, blessed saints in heaven. Tell her! She would murder him.
“No!”
“She must know.”
Lucius felt panic rising.
“I can’t do it.”
“Then the police can do it for you. But they will need to know the truth of what happened tonight. They will need to know you didn’t kill him. Do you understand me, Lucius? If they believe this is your fault, our name will be destroyed. They will tell his daughter, and she will tell the world, and everything you and I have worked for, everything we have sacrificed will be for nothing. We will lose it. We will lose it all.”
“What if he survives? What if -”
Banning shook his head and sighed. The form in the snow had grown still.
“Look at him, boyo.”
Lucius stared, mouth agape. He couldn’t think, couldn’t move.
There before him was no longer a man, but a corpse.
Chapter Two
“Our apologies, Miss Brennan.”
Evelyn’s large hazel eyes searched the unfamiliar faces in front of her, her mind suddenly misting over in confusion.
The men hesitated to say more, as if waiting for permission to go on.
“What is it?” she pressed them. “What has happened?”
One of the men elbowed the other.
Go on then. You say it.
The taller of the two was still recovering from the sight of the girl. He was struck dumb the moment she opened her front door, and was not prepared to give such news to someone he might have asked to dinner. He didn’t think he would stand a chance after this.
He cleared his throat.
“He’s dead.”
She stared at him. There was a second’s pause.
Dead?
For a moment, the word was foreign. Meaningless.
The two officers shifted their weight as they waited for the girl to understand. It was a cold night and ice was forming on the steps at their feet. Steam shot from their nostrils when they exhaled, disappearing in swirling gray clouds.
Comprehension settled upon Evelyn and she shook her head, her pale fingers forming a steeple and sealing around her lips.
“No” was the only word she could manage.
Refuse the truth. Block it out. Wake up.
Anything to bring him back to life.
He had been a good man. A hard-working man. Over-indulgent maybe, but he had loved her with everything he had and everything he was. And she had loved him, too.
“There was nothing we could do,” the tall officer told her. He was young and new to this line of work. Confidence was a skill he had yet to develop. “When we arrived, the state of things was…” He drifted off, searching for the right words. There were no right words. He sighed. “It was out of our hands. The deed was done. He would not be saved.”
He wanted to say something comforting but came up blank. Men died every day. And in these particular instances, they were often Irish. Just like this girl’s father.
The older officer looked longingly over his shoulder at the deserted street. He wanted some hot coffee. He wanted to leave. The news was delivered, and the young Miss Brennan had no more need of empty condolences.
She’s no older than fifteen, he thought. The poor girl.
Her father, Emmett Brennan, had been one of a small percentage of wealthy Irish landowners, a successful tradesman out of Limerick. Her mother had run off with a sailor when Evelyn was just a baby, and had not been seen since. She was not missed, since Evelyn’s many servants and tutors met what needs her house and land could not, and her father was her dearest friend and companion. She needed nothing; she wanted nothing. Her life was steady, unchanging, and happy, and might have remained so forever.
If not for the famine.
In 1845, a potato blight swept through Ireland, destroying the country’s main source of food and leaving starvation and unrest in its wake. The people lost not only their crops, but also their means of living. Greedy English landowners had parceled out land in such small pieces that naught but potatoes could grow, and when the potatoes rotted, tenants could no longer fill their bellies, nor could they pay their rents. The English were merciless and drove them out to beg and starve, leaving them with nothing but the desire for food and revenge.
Banning Flynn was Emmett Brennan’s business partner, and his wife, Cassandra Flynn, was English, a fact that was well known throughout Limerick. Although she had nothing to do with the rampant evictions of late, she was guilty by association, and therefore worthy of retribution. She was found murdered in an alley by a band of nameless vagrants, with a note pinned to her bosom that read, “down with the English”.
The message was clear. Though her son, Lucius, was only half English, he was endangered. As he had been brought up to learn the trade and look after its interests, his father was loath to ship him off to distant relations in England. Lucius had been his father’s apprentice since he was nine years old, and Banning was not one to throw away such a wealth of knowledge and experience. On the contrary, he had plans for Lucius that surpassed his son’s position in the company, plans to acquire a fortune through the avenue of marriage. As Banning had already chosen Lucius’ bride, he was not about to let the death of his wife and the fall of his country redefine the plans he had so carefully constructed.
His son and Emmett Brennan’s daughter were to marry. With Lucius’ knowledge of the trade and Evelyn’s fortune, Brennan & Flynn would become exponentially more profitable, and it was with this in mind that Emmett willingly accepted Banning’s proposal. Their children were perfect for one another, and after such tragic events as losing kin and country, they should be happy to be unified in holy matrimony.
Upon learning of this betrothal, however, Lucius Flynn and Evelyn Brennan were not so thrilled.
They had been friends once, but something had happened when they were
children, something of which they had never spoken since the day it occurred. It drove them apart, and in the years that followed, they became estranged. Lucius found new friends among his father’s employment of rough seamen, as well as the loose women who kept them company. His reputation was sullied, and well-bred Evelyn Brennan was disgusted with this new and unimproved version of him. This did nothing to offend Lucius, for he was repelled by her royal grandiosity, and thus the two had not so much as looked at one another in years. They had but one thing in common: they were both horrendously willful, and though their lack of compatibility was apparent to both fathers when the arrangement was conceived, Emmett and Banning agreed that Lucius would soon bury his dreams of an adventurous life, while Evelyn would learn not to be so damned independent. Time, they said, would temper.
But time did no such thing.
The Brennans and Flynns embarked on a voyage across the Atlantic ocean, leaving their desolate country for one that promised safety and prosperity. They immigrated to the United States in hopes of a better future, one where their dreams could flourish and their plans would not be hindered by the hunger and violence that now thrived in Ireland.
Though hunger was left behind, violence pursued them, and it was shortly after they arrived in New York City that it found them on that bitter January night.
The officers departed just as Banning and Lucius Flynn arrived. Banning leapt from the carriage while Lucius followed slowly, lagging behind.
Standing upon the threshold of her father’s house stood a ghost who looked very much like Evelyn. The color had gone from her face, the little freckles along her nose and the top of her lip standing out in contrast with her milky white skin, complementing the auburn color of her hair.
When Banning reached her, her pallor bore evidence that she was well aware of what he had come to say.
“Dear God. So you’ve heard,” he said, hands extended to grab her gently by the arms.
She stared at him, her own hands clutching the sleeves of his waistcoat. She tried to be strong, to hold off the panic building in her chest. She reminded herself to breathe.
Liberty Hill (Western Tide Series) Page 1
