Mary Boland had an animal’s wiles. She sensed me. Something dreadful about me. About all of us. About Adam. She dropped her shawl from her shoulders and I heard cloth tear. In a moment, the woman had freed her breasts. The glow of the heavens showed her to me.
“Do ye want this?” she hissed. “Is that what you’re after wanting? That’s what ye all want, an’t it?” She eased toward me, pressing up against the tip of my blade, and began to hike her skirt. “Come hither to me then. Come and take what ye want . . .” She lifted her skirt until she had exposed her long, white nakedness. And her darkness.
The old crone edged toward me all the while. While the younger woman sought to bewitch my eyes.
I did not press my blade into Mary Boland. Instead, I slowly drew it back. Unable to harm her. The two of them closed their distance, ever so slowly. I smelled their stink the way I smelled that corpse. Two distinct scents they had. As different as life and death.
I stepped rearward. Crushing frozen leaves. Terrified that I would trip and fall. With the blood running off my fingers, soaking my greatcoat and dripping down onto the earth.
“Keep you back,” I said. “Or I will kill you.”
“Ye don’t want to kill me,” Mary Boland said. Advancing an inch at a time. “That’s not what ye want of me. Come now. Let me kiss the blood from where I’ve hurt you.”
She held her skirt at her waist with one hand and stretched out the other toward me. Reaching for me. Beckoning.
“Keep away . . .”
So queer it was. I have killed many a man, God forgive me. Yet, at that moment, I could not put my blade through a creature who had just stabbed me. Or even through the old woman.
The crone began a nonsense incantation. It thickened the night. And seemed to shade the moon.
“Come on, my sweet,” Mary Boland said. “Come take what ye want now . . .”
The hilt of the sword-cane was pressed into my own stomach. The long blade shivered. I felt that, in a moment, the woman would take it from me.
“Come to me,” she whispered.
The women must have seen him in the moment before he struck. Or they heard a sound I did not. They both cringed back, as if I had thrust my blade at them after all. An instant later, he fell upon them, swinging a stick.
“Get off with you,” he barked. “Get off, you filthy devils.”
He slashed at them with his stick and I heard it crack over their shoulders, across their backs.
“Get away, now,” he commanded.
The two women screeched and cursed at him. But they did not put up the least bodily resistance. They scuttled off, Mary Boland struggling to free the skirt she had dropped and caught on a nest of nettles. She got a fierce clubbing for her efforts and finally ran off to the sound of ripping cloth and leaves crisp underfoot.
And so they left me.
“For the love o’ sweet Jesus,” the man said. “Put up your bloody, damned knife. They’re only a pair of crazy women.”
“Witches,” I gasped.
He laughed. Twas an iron sound. “They’d love ye for thinking it, wouldn’t they? The hag . . . and that other one?”
It was John Kehoe. The fellow they called “Black Jack.” But his beard shone blue in the moonlight, as anthracite will go blue in the flicker of a lamp.
Twas then he saw my hand.
As he watched me, I propped my blade against a tree and pulled the knife out of my palm. Now, I am not a weak man. And I have dug a bullet from my own leg, when the surgeon died of the bloody trots himself and the column was fighting for its life in the Pushtoon hills. But I nearly dropped as I felt the blade slide out of me. My bowels quaked.
As soon as I had the knife free, the pain collapsed to an ache. But blood there was in plenty. And I still could not move my fingers enough to speak of it.
“You’ll have to take yourself off and have that seen to,” Kehoe told me. “Or you’ll bleed to death and we’ll have the blame for another one.”
THERE WAS NO DOCTOR IN THE VALLEY, of course. For miners and laborers did not merit such attention. Kehoe wanted to be shut of me, but I remembered Mick Tyrone’s insistence that wounds must be washed clean at the earliest chance. We never fussed with that sort of thing in India, but Mick was no fool and I made Kehoe lead me down to a pump.
He worked the handle, a long, creaking affair, and the icy water poured over my wound. I tried to let it into the crack where the blade went through, but there is a limit to what a man can do to himself. A woman popped her head out of a window to ask what the doings were, but Kehoe told her to take herself back to her slumbers. I cut a great, long strip from my shirt—which troubled me, for the garment was recently purchased—and Kehoe helped me bind it about my paw.
“You’ll need it seen to,” he repeated.
We stared at each other. The moon was falling and the silver light made the side of his face look hard and bright as plate.
“How did you know?” I asked him. “Were you following me?”
“If I was, I’d say ye were the luckier for it.”
“Were you watching me? Or watching the priest? Or the women?”
“I was sleeping,” Kehoe said. As if that would suffice for an explanation.
“And you heard something?”
He sighed. As men will when they see that they must answer. “No, boyo. I was sleeping and I had a dream, if ye have to know. A quare enough dream it was, and lucky ye are that I had it.”
“This isn’t a dream,” I said.
“Oh, I can tell the difference, laddybuck. No, I dreamed a gypsy woman was shaking me by the arm. A brown-skinned bit she was, in some sort of heathen get up. Shaking me and telling me I must get up that instant. And get up I did. To nothing at all. Nothing but the cold beyond the blankets. But I stepped out of bed to have a visit with the night pot, and then I heard something that wasn’t a dream at all. I heard footsteps where no footsteps should have been. And when I had me a look out Donnelly’s window, there ye were. Walking up the street like a one-man parade. So I thought ye might want following. For I was half a pint sure ye were going up to the priest’s house. And I didn’t see that any good would come of it. Now . . . does that satisfy your great, Welsh curiosity?”
“No,” I said. “Tell me. You must have waited while I was in with Father Wilde. You must have . . . God, man, don’t you people know what’s going on up there? You must know. It’s unpardonable.”
“We’ll settle our own affairs.”
“Will you? Before Mary Boland kills someone else? The way she killed Kathleen Boland? Oh, I see it now. That I do. And I do not doubt that she killed the general, too, though I cannot yet see the why of it. But I will get to that in time.” I wrinkled up my mouth. “You and your Mr. Donnelly, with his ‘No man among us killed your general.’ Playing me for a fool. Because it wasn’t a man who did the killing, but a woman.”
“Ye want to have that hand looked after,” Kehoe said. He turned his back and began to walk away.
“I know Danny Boland didn’t kill anyone,” I called after him. “I understand, see. I can help him. If you help me.”
Kehoe did not turn to me again.
“I know about his father,” I tried. “I know why you all protected Danny Boland.”
But Black Jack Kehoe was never a man to be swayed by another’s words. He got to things in his own time, not before. A hard man, he was, and a capable hater, never shy of doing what he thought necessary. But he did not deserve the fate that Franklin Benjamin Gowen would prepare for him in a dozen years time.
“I’ll be back,” I nearly shouted. “With a warrant for Mary Boland’s arrest.”
By that time, he was little more than a shadow.
SIXTEEN
“YEP, THERE’S A DOC IN MINERSVILLE, ALL RIGHT,” MR. Downs informed me as the wagon creaked along. “Doc Hooper. Say he’s more inclined to cut things off than sew ’em back together, but I guess it saves him some trouble that way.” His fingers wrestled within his nas
al cavities. “Major, you are one man who just seems born to get himself hurt, if you ask me. Last feller I knew like you, he fell out of a tree he shouldn’t of been in to start with. Broke his neck dead. I tried to tell him, ‘Homer, you don’t need to climb no tree to drink no whisky, it tastes just fine here on the ground.’ But he wouldn’t listen, now would he? Had to climb that tree. Poor, old Homer. Damned fool wasn’t even Irish, though his widow was. Get on, mules, get on.”
It was a long journey.
The ache in my hand was a trivial thing, though the bleeding did concern me. I felt a seep that wanted proper tending and my rag of a bandage was soaking. Mr. Downs speculated that he might soon witness the amputation of my hand, if not of my arm entire, and I half thought he might propose my beheading as well. I do not think the teamster had a mean character, but many’s the man who delights in another’s misfortune. The fallen angel makes our heaven sweeter.
Had I delighted in the priest’s misfortune? That may sound queer, yet I could not help but wonder. I had been so merciless with him, furious unto a rage. Now his words returned to haunt my ears. All his prattling on about love. And God. I had wanted so badly to wound him, to prove that he was wrong, to make him see it. To make him admit that things were best my way.
Perhaps the priest was mad. Perhaps Father Wilde had a streak of evil. Perhaps I was right to chastise him. But my slapping and barking did not sit well with me afterward.
You see, I harbor deep doubts of mine own, though it shames me to speak of them. So many of God’s projects leave me mystified. Not least regarding matters of the heart. Had Mrs. Walker loved Mr. Evans honestly? Had she been able to love him, truly and yearningly, despite her spendthrift attitude to virtue? Is love less a hothouse flower than a doughty weed triumphant? Are we in error to think that love needs virtue? Have we been given a will to love that cannot be extinguished? Does all our Christian diligence only blind us, leading us to mistake a gift as poison? Might love renew virtue?
What of Mary Magdalene’s redemption? Are we so pleased by her moral reformation that we fail to remember her love for Jesus Christ? Was her changed behavior more important than her change of heart? Why was she stalwart below the cross, when all His disciples fled? Why did she go to the tomb? And why did Jesus show himself to her? I do not suggest impropriety, only that love is more than good deportment.
Is all love equal in weight on the scales of Heaven? How could that be, when so much love seems soiled? Or is the filth in our eyes, not in the loving? I cannot answer such questions, and wish they would leave me in peace.
The difficulty is that I had come to believe that Mrs. Walker did love Mr. Evans. As it appeared he had loved her. Yet, he had loved his sister, to an agony of the soul. Danny Boland loved his wife so hopelessly that he accepted his own sister’s murder at the hands of his beloved, then took the blame for a general’s death, willing to go to the gallows to spare a madwoman. All because he loved her. And the madwoman had attacked me because she believed that I was keeping her from her love, though God alone knew why she thought such a thing. She had killed her husband’s sister, when Kathleen Boland tried to break their marriage. Perhaps the general had been killed because she feared he might recruit Danny Boland for Thomas Francis Meagher and his Irish Brigade. I still felt parts of the story come short where the general was concerned, yet the priest might have spoken truly when he said it was all about love, all the murders, all the sorrow and suffering.
The priest loved enough to sleep beside a corpse.
I wondered how much love there was in me.
I was ashamed, see. My hand gave less discomfort to me than my memories of selfishness and greed. About the will, I mean. I had been far from any love, except self-love, the day it was read aloud. I sat there lusting for riches on which I had no more claim than a beggar. Less claim than a beggar’s, for the wretched have a right to Christian charity. I had sworn to myself that the inheritance was due to my Mary, to our John, to the child unborn. Yet, I sat there slavering like a dog held from his dish. When the bequest to Mrs. Walker was read, my heart curdled within me. As if the money had been robbed from my purse. So mean I was I could not bear that a man had left his property to his beloved.
I had not known that I could be that way. I never have sought riches, except the riches of the heart and soul. I was content enough with our material state before Mr. Evans’s death, and had enjoyed only temperate hopes for the future. To me, there had been more joy in a loving smile than in a fistful of silver or piles of banknotes. Travesty though it seem to you, even battle pleased me more than money.
I could offer you a dozen and more excuses. I might blame the unsettling Mr. Evans had dealt me with his confession. And true it was that I worried now, most bitterly, about my Mary’s health and our children’s future. But the fact is simply that I had been greedy.
I deserved far less than the Lord and life had granted me.
I thought about a welter of things, in those haunted morning hours of cold, still dark. Twas as if that journey tore a veil from my eyes. I thought of the painful curve to my wife’s spine—though it is not so evident as that—and suddenly understood her dislike of Fanny. The child was straight and strong and almost a woman. The Lord forbid, my darling feared the child would become a rival for my affections. For I will tell you a secret now: My dear wife does not believe herself a beauty. She thinks that she is ugly and ill formed. Not all my love has ever quite persuaded her of the loveliness of her person. Poor Fanny’s heart is grateful as a hound’s. But that quality of heart only worsened matters.
No matter how relentlessly we love, I fear we never reach the beloved’s heart. Not to its fullest depth. We never know for certain what resides there. We are blessed by the coincidence of our affections, but coincidence is fragile. The unexpected word destroys our world. Mr. Shakespeare saw the frailty of love, as surely as he understood love’s awesome power. Again and again, he reapplies the theme. That terrible Moor would rather believe a liar than his darling, the lord of fair Sicilia condemns his flawless queen. Yet, Macbeth loves his wife to the bloody end, despite her many deficiencies of character. Even Cleopatra, fickle and tawny, loved more deeply than she knew herself.
I know there are betrayals in this world, see. But I wonder if we are not better served by ignoring faithless acts by those we love, instead of living trustless and on guard.
I lack the mind and education to make sense of such matters. I console myself with prayer and the hope of forgiveness. I know I am a flawed and sorry man. I wear my morality like a suit of armor, instead of keeping mercy in my heart. Perhaps it is my long years as a soldier, but I yearn for rules, for order, and for clarity. I condemn others unfairly. I do it out of fear that chaos lurks. Sometimes, it seems to me I live in terror.
Often, I have passed for brave. Yet, I have a coward’s heart. Bravery of the flesh is a minor matter. A drunkard or a fool can be a hero. But courage of the heart is rare and estimable. I wish I might trade one sort for the other.
Well, we must have faith and go through. There is no end of reasons to doubt the Lord’s wisdom. We must pray past our errors. It is a terrible vanity to argue with God. We must pray and have faith, and go through.
We creaked into Minersville before dawn and woke the doctor. He grumped, but sewed me up. My hand had an alarming look with the journey’s blood washed away. Twas black and blue, and stiff, with a raw-meat gash in the palm and flaps of flesh on the back where the blade had emerged. The doctor offered me a swig of brandy for the discomfort he meant to cause me. I declined, of course.
To the disappointment of Mr. Downs, Dr. Hooper saw no cause for amputation. He told me that, if I escaped infection, I might recover most of the use of the hand. The blade had passed between the bones as if perfectly aimed, but made a mess of the ligaments and such. He cautioned me not to disturb the pus when it formed.
Mr. Downs and I took coffee at the German hotel and gobbled down a breakfast. The food was abundant and fortifying,
the joy of it marred only by my driver’s boundless affection for his nose. We forget, see. I had spent my midnight in a house with a rotting corpse, then was attacked by a leprous crone for my troubles. Now I was repulsed by my tablemate’s manners, as if I had been raised in a country manor.
Perhaps that is our secret, the gift the Good Lord grants us to help us through: We forget.
MR. GOWEN HAD NOT FORGOTTEN ME. But he did forget himself.
“Good Christ, Jones, you can’t burst into a respectable law office looking like that,” he instructed me. “You’re unshaven. And you stink.”
I had not bothered to seek him at the courthouse, but had gone straight to his chambers down along Centre Street, where I found him behind a china cup of coffee and stacks of papers tied with red or blue ribbons. When he stood up, he looked like a well-fed walrus in one of those picture books.
“I want you to write out a warrant for the arrest of Mary Boland, wife of Daniel Patrick Boland, of Heckschersville, on a charge of murder.”
“What sort of nonsense are you up to now? I’ve warned you to leave the Irish in peace. Does Washington really want to stir up trouble?”
“Sit down and write the warrant, Mr. Gowen. Or I will see you arrested by the provost. And then you may write the warrant from a cell.”
“Ah, yes. That infamous letter that you bear. What if I don’t go along?”
“Then you will go to jail.”
“And if my constituents choose to defend me? I might not be able to control them, you understand.”
“That is an idle threat. Sit down and write. Do it now, Mr. Gowen.”
He sat down. But he did not take up pen and paper at first. He glowered at me. “You’re a fool,” he said. “In more ways than one. And I’m warning you. There are no deputies or magistrates available to assist you this time. They’re all occupied with other charges. You’ll be entirely on your own, if you insist on having it out with the Irish.” He flicked his fingers toward my bandaged paw. “Literally single-handed, it appears.”
Bold Sons of Erin Page 27
