Fortunate Son

by David Marlett

  “Mornin’ Seámus,” sprung a voice from the dark.

  “Ach!” James jumped. Turning quickly, he saw Fynn sitting on a stack of cut wood by the duck pond. “Mr. Kennedy! What are ye doing out here?”

  “Same as ye, so it appears.”

  “She sent ye for eggs as well, did she?” James grinned.

  Fynn returned the smile. “Lookin’ at the stars, I was.”

  “Didn’t know ye watched ‘em.” James moved to the logs and sat. “I’ve always liked lookin’ up at ‘em.”

  Fynn nodded. “Ye’ve got it in ye. ‘Tis an Irish curse, I reckon.”

  They both stared at the sky. “Do ye often rise so early?” asked James.

  “Always have.” Fynn’s aged voice fell. “‘Tis the best time o’ day.”

  “Aye, ‘tis. Reminds me of being at sea—the calm nights mind ye.”

  The kitchen door creaked open with the cook’s head sticking out. “Mr. Annesley?” she called, peering into the darkness.

  “Ah, aye!” James cried, popping to his feet. “I’ll bring ‘em right away.”

  He moved quickly through the lower coop, gathering eggs and causing a vociferous turmoil among the ruffles. Fynn helped, though much slower. Once the full basket was delivered to the kitchen, they returned to the wood stack. The sky was showing the first hint of its lighter self. They sat quietly, James watching the dimming stars, thinking about this man who had cared for him as far back as he could remember. When he had fallen as a little boy, it was this man who had picked him up, brushed him off. It was this man who had taught him so much, even risked death on his account. And only this man called him “Seámus,” for the Irish he said was within him. He was reminded of his father’s funeral: Fynn had stayed with him that horrible day. What bravery. An Irish Catholic in a Protestant, English church, head high, escorting the child of the dead English nobleman—murdered by a Catholic, according to the peerage mob. He now understood it had been an act of defiance, of conviction. An act of love. He wanted to thank him, but how? He sat motionless, silent, enjoying how right it felt to be there, beside him, watching the Scottish sun rise on a promise-filled day. He would do anything for him. It was his turn. He looked over at the aging man and silently thanked God Fynn was alive. After so many years apart. He added a vow to his prayer: he would to take care of Fynn for the remainder of Fynn’s days.

  “Do ye remember up in that tree?” asked Fynn. “Across the moat from Dublin castle?”

  “I do. Ye came to find me.”

  “I can still see ye up there, smiling down as I tried to bear-climb the damn thing.”

  James slowly shook his head. “Rough days, those were.”

  “Aye,” Fynn agreed, his voice lagging. “The day Joan died.”

  “Aye,” whispered James.

  “Seámus, when ye disappeared . . . . Well I thought I would go mad, I did.”

  James exhaled hard, hating to hear the sadness in Fynn’s voice. He wanted to change the subject. “Today’s tinchal, Seán and I—”

  “I can scarcely speak the hell I went through, roamin’ the streets like a mad man, searching for ye in the alleys, along the quays. That cloak of yers made us believe ye’d been shot, that ye were damaged, or even worse.” He stopped. In the pallid light, James could see Fynn’s lip quivering.

  “But by God’s grace, I didn’t die,” James tried. “To tell the truth, Mr. Kennedy, ‘twas knowin’ ye probably thought I was dead that kept me going. I had to get back here to show ye. To see ye.” Now he too was succumbing to emotions. He sighed through clenched teeth, then continued. “I held on to the belief that we’d be together again. Someday. And sure enough, God has seen fit.”

  “So He has,” Fynn sniffed, crossing his arms and leaning forward.

  James put an arm around the man’s shoulders. For the first time in the week since Fynn’s arrival, he realized just how frail the man was. Fynn was probably not much older than Mackercher, but he seemed to have lived longer and harder than his years. He appeared worn, tough yet weak. Not the scrappy, vibrant man James remembered. It’s all right, he told himself. It’s not too late. We’re here together now. That’s all that matters. Though finding Seán had been a most amazing event, nothing compared to this moment. He knew he would never forget sitting on this woodpile, his arm around this gentle Irishman, both covered by a vast blanket of fading stars.

  Suddenly, Fynn straightened his back, collecting himself. “This afternoon, Seámus, after the tinchal, I want us to ride into these hills. Just you and me.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “There’s an important matter to be discussed. Something I need t’ tell ye.”

  “What is it?” James asked, surprised by Fynn’s tone.

  Fynn pat James’s knee, then pressed off of it to stand. “Time enough this evenin’.”

  “Then we will,” James replied. He got to his feet slowly, reluctant to end the moment yet compelled to follow Fynn’s lead.

  *

  By early afternoon Fynn, Seán and James were two miles from Aberfoyle. They were on foot, muskets in hand. They had not seen a deer, though in truth, they weren’t trying very hard. Seán had shot the hare now slung across his back, but that was all they had fired on so far. Now they were laughing, their voices carrying over the sublime, ancient rolling hills, across the lea, that Highland meadow stretching before them in canty shades of emerald and lavender, dusted with saffron flowers, sweeping down to meet Loch Drunkie, its surface reflecting the Menteith Hills beyond. Drifting clouds hung low in massive puffy clumps, playing, shaping and forging the sunlight into Olympian columns, golden shafts exploding off water, hills, meadows and trees.

  “Seán,” Fynn called to his son a few paces ahead. “Weren’t ye to wear a kilt this day?”

  “We wouldn’t want to see those wasp legs,” shouted James. “Pray ye keep ‘em covered.”

  Fynn chuckled. “We can thank the Lord that Higgins took his kilts to Glasgow.”

  Seán laughed but didn’t look back. While walking, he reached down, picked up a pebble and tossed it high back over his head. James and Fynn laughed as they dodged it.

  “Best mind yer manners, Seán,” said James. “We’ve a good aim at ye back here.”

  “Lads, remember hidin’ in my wagon in Dublin?” Fynn asked softly.

  “Aye.” Seán answered, turning to let Fynn and James catch up. “James and I were in College Green, thinkin’ of pullin’ down King Billy.”

  “Is that thing still standing?” asked James.

  “Aye. Maybe the Earl of Anglesea will help me tear it down when—”

  “Ye lads keep jabberin’ and a fleein’ arse is all we’ll see today.”

  James hooted. “It’d be more arse than Seán’s seen in…forever, I’d say.”

  Fynn suddenly raised a hand and froze, signaling James and Seán to hush. He leaned forward to a crouch and eased up an embankment. James and Seán stifled their laughter and joined him, peering over the rise. There in the clearing of the adjacent forest were a number of grazing deer. One of the larger ones lifted its head nervously, then eased it down again, returning to its feeding.

  “All does and fawns,” whispered Fynn. “The buck is sure t’ be near.”

  “There,” James whispered, nodding at a nearby grove. The buck was standing alert, about fifty yards away, carrying its mossy rack high, cautiously smelling the air. Fynn slowly brought his musket up and reached for the lock, snapping it back carefully. Though it made only a light clicking noise, it was too much. The vigilant buck snorted, stomped, then vanished. By the time James looked back at the does and fawns, they too had run off.

  “Oh well, at least we saw one,” said Fynn, sighing as he stood straight. “There’ll be others around the lake.”

  “Did ye get a good look at his fleein’ arse, Seán?” James chuckled.

  “Shut yer trap.”

  “Lads,” Fynn said, once they had rejoin
ed the path, “Do ye remember my riddle? Lil’ Jenny Whiteface? Used to tell it to ye both, when ye were but wee mites.”

  “Aye, Mr. Kennedy, I remember,” said James. “And I know the answer.”

  “Ye do?” Seán gave James a playful shove, then looked away. “Tell me how it went again, so I’ll remember.”

  “Right. Here ‘tis,” began Fynn. “Lil’ Jenny Whiteface has a red nose. The longer she lives the shorter she grows.”

  James let Seán squirm for a minute, then answered, “‘Tis a white candle, Mr. Kennedy.”

  “Aye, Seámus,” said Fynn. “Well done. ‘Tis a candle that burns bright, gettin’ shorter and shorter as it does—”

  “I knew it!” proclaimed Seán.

  Fynn went on, “It gets shorter and shorter till one day ‘tis gone. Vanished altogether.”

  “Admit it, Seán,” James popped back. “Ye didn’t know the answer. Indeed, the last time ye guessed at it, ye thought it was a bird.”

  Seán looked astonished. “How the devil do ye remember such things?”

  “Bugger off,” said James, pushing him. They all laughed.

  *

  Late that day, the clouds had thickened and were pooling in ever-graying masses, promising at best a good collaborative rain, at worst a maelstrom. The three men sat below them, on the shore of Loch Drunkie, the rich smell of Fynn’s pipe wafting up and away. A cool breeze had just come up, harkening the coming storm.

  “Is tobacco yer lure?” asked Seán. “They’ll smell yer pipe and come runnin’ for sure.”

  Fynn blew out a billow of aromatic smoke. “I reckon all the bucks within five miles have seen us by now. Rather, I’m sure they’ve heard the two of ye carryin’ on.” He smiled. “We may as well unload our muskets.”

  “Aye,” James agreed, standing, picking up his firearm. He stopped. The sun was casting a perfect shaft straight down. He watched it, the solitary pillar of light drifting across the choppy grey surface, moving toward them.

  Seán stood also, looking at the mounting clouds. “We’re about to get wet.” Seán lifted his musket, pulled back the flash pan cover and blew the gunpowder off. Then he pulled the ramrod from the barrel, attached a small flange-hook, and fished out his ball and wad. After he did the same with Fynn’s musket, he tied the dead hare to the barrel ends and slung the muskets over his shoulder.

  “Ye ready?” James asked Fynn, reaching down to help him up.

  As he took James’s hand, Fynn said, “Aye, ‘tis time. I love our Ireland lads, but by God, I’ve never seen anything so pleasin’ as this. I swear I could stay here forever.”

  “Aye,” whispered Seán, “I do agree.” He set off, tramping back down the cattle drovers’ path with Fynn close behind. Low gurgling thunder rumbled over the hills to the west.

  James, reluctant to leave, looked at the lake, absorbing the image. As the first raindrops hit, he turned. The Kennedys were getting further away. He started quickly after them. About a hundred paces down the path, where the trail bent gently away from the shoreline, James felt a pebble in his shoe, grinding the ball of his foot. Ahead, Fynn was crossing a low stone fence, Seán assisting from the other side. James decided he would sit on that wall to remove the rock. He shifted the musket from his shoulder. “Damn,” he muttered, wincing, limping along, trying to hurry. He was almost there. The pain was intensifying, a knife in his sole. He wiped the rain from his face. Fynn was twenty paces ahead, just behind Seán. One step from the fence, James reached to lean the musket. Suddenly his right foot slipped into a hidden fox hole, forcing his full weight onto the offending rock. Fire surged up through his calf and he toppled forward, his face toward the wall. “Damn ye!” he cursed again, his hands flying out ahead to break his fall. His musket, slamming against the top of the stones, suddenly discharged. The lead ball fired straight, chest high, over the wall. A flash of gunpowder blasted into James’s face, a black cloud of smoke engulfing him. He stumbled backward, ears ringing, momentarily blinded, falling behind the wall.

  “Da! Da!” Seán’s voice was shrill, almost adolescent. “Oh no, Da!”

  James clambered to his feet, the pain forgotten. To his horror, he saw Fynn lying face down in the grass. Seán was kneeling beside him. James scrambled over the wall and bolted to them, screaming, “M’God! Mr. Kennedy!”

  He came to a stop at Fynn’s feet. Seán had turned his father on his back and was cradling his head. Fynn’s eyes were open, staring through James, straight into the falling rain. “Ye shot him!” raged Seán, now sobbing. “Ye shot him!”

  James was stunned, his body shaking, his mind filling with the terrible sight. He fell hard onto his hands and knees. “God, no! No!” Blood was streaming from a gaping hole in Fynn’s chest. James clutched Fynn’s twisted legs, crying for him to live.

  Fynn’s mouth moved slightly, a wheeze escaping his lips, a last, soft exhale through clenched teeth: “Seán. Seámus.”

  Seán wailed, “Don’t die, Da! Don’t ye die now!”

  Fynn’s face rocked sideways, thick red streaming from his mouth and nose. The pouring rain splattered the blood across Seán’s arms, carrying rivulets into the earth. Seán suddenly glared, growling furiously, “Ye killed him! Damn ye! Ye killed him!” Then he collapsed forward, sobbing.

  “M’God, Seán. It was an accident!” James shouted, tears streaming, mixing in the rain. He began to shake, lifting his muddy hands, staring at Fynn. “This cannot be!”

  Chapter 27

  O! that I were as great

  As is my grief, or lesser than my name,

  Or that I could forget what I have been

  Or not remember what I must be now.

  — from, King Richard II, William Shakespeare, 1595

  Newgate Prison was a lively grave where the living smelled worse than the dead. James was squatting against the filthy wall in a dim room referred to by the others as “the l’ord”—the inmates’ term for the lower ward of the prison. He had been there less than a day and already knew the l’ord was the nastiest ward in the prison, though not the worst. The worst was the pressroom, one floor below, from which he could hear the low groans and high screams of prisoners being pressed to death by cumbrous weights while guards stood about waiting for a confession, or the revelation of conspirators’ names, or just to watch the ribs crack on account of unnamed transgressions. Of course, the l’ord killed its prisoners too, though the weight it used was disease.

  James knew if he was going to stay alive for long he needed to be transferred to the middle ward. But to get there, according to the small, fretful, craggy shadow of a woman sitting about five feet away, he would have to pay the turnkeys a shilling and four pence. But he had no more money. The turnkeys who had dragged him through the entrance gate had each claimed six pence as their earned privilege, then turned him over to the convicts, who had hovered about him like crows on carrion, demanding a desultory garnish, which James quickly learned was six shillings and eight pence for them all. As he only had four shillings left after the turnkeys, the convicts took his remaining money, then stripped him of his coat, waistcoat, and shoes to pay the balance of what they deemed was owed. He found that two well placed slugs allowed him to keep the brass key and locket.

  So he huddled in the dark iniquity of the l’ord with some thirty criminals—men, women, and children, most of them waiting for trial on hanging offenses. The room echoed their odious chatter, old sick voices and young brazen ones uttering profanities of heaven and earth, volleys of oaths discharged from a mixed collection of detestable throats that loosed both their abusive language and their diseases into the fat gray air. Most were drunk with prison-brewed ale and many were smoking, further blackening what was left to breathe. And from one dark corner came the desperate, relentless sound of at least one couple engaged in some form of a sex act.

  He decided to ease his way to the room’s one small window, a low, iron-barred hole in the wall. There he would press his face
against the grate and suck in some fresh air as he had seen others doing. Standing slowly, he struggled a little against his ankle chains and shuffled across the floor. He could feel and hear the lice crackling under his bare feet, as if the path to the window were strewn with tiny seashells. He paused when a man stumbled from the darkness ahead of him and lurched to the window, then urinated onto the street three stories below. In the brownish light, James could see the urine splattering off the grate and back to the cell floor. The man farted loudly, took a few drunken paces, then veered back into the black hell. James turned around and began to ease his way back to his place along the wall.

  “Mum. Mum,” a cherubic voice cried. James peered to his right. There in the half-light sat a small boy in the middle of the floor.

  James turned to the child just as the sad moan came again. He moved closer. “What’d ye say, lad?”

  The boy mumbled something unintelligible, then screamed, “Mum!”

  James knelt beside him. “Ah, ‘tis all right, lad—”