Bold Sons of Erin

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  I saw her face, white and astonished, wrapped in a bonnet of fire.

  Then she screamed. Tearing at herself. Running into the wall. As if she might break through to a pool of water. Stumbling into the table, spilling its litter of bones and bowls and slops. Striking the dangling carcass with her face.

  Kehoe tore the Colt from my belt and shot her.

  Howling in some devil’s tongue, the old woman rushed toward me. I rammed my stick into her bosom, pushing her off. But she did not go down or retreat. A dog with rabies comes at a man that way. Her face was that of a breathing corpse, something dead but risen. Yet, her good eye was as vital as a living eye could be.

  One-handed and awkward, I barely had time to fling off the sheath of my sword-cane before she attacked me again. She ran straight into the blade. As if she did not see it. Or did not care.

  Perhaps the old woman loved Mary Boland, too? As helplessly as Danny Boland did?

  She charged halfway up the sword before it slowed her. Struggling against the steel to get her claws on me.

  The room was ablaze behind her. Mary Boland had fallen against the wall and made it her pyre.

  I smelled the old woman’s breath and felt the spray from her lips. She wrenched her feet forward, helping the blade glide through her, approaching the hilt. Desperate to reach me.

  “Deine Seele gehört mir!” she croaked. Blood oozed from her mouth. Only, it was not blood as you know it. It was black.

  I released my grip on the blade and stumbled rearward.

  The old woman nearly fell forward when I let go, but she righted herself with a growl. The tip of the sword stuck out of her back, with the hilt approaching her stomach. But she did not grasp the handle, as dying men do. All her remaining vigor was meant for me. Her fingernails, long and brown, desired my flesh.

  My back slammed up against a wall. With her claws inches from my face.

  Kehoe shot her. The first bullet did not put her down, but only spun her about. The second shot conjured a look of wonder to her face. Only the third round, fired from three feet away, dropped her to the floor.

  Black Jack Kehoe fired again, splashing blood from her throat. After that, he kept on pulling the trigger, even though all of the chambers had been emptied. Pointing the revolver at her, he clicked away with the urgency of madness.

  The roof had begun to burn above our heads. With the fire sneaking behind us, toward the door. But Kehoe stood in a trance. Staring at the creature who was still undead, writhing on the floor and spewing blackness.

  Her eyes no longer saw us. God knows what they saw. She gargled heathen words and chuckled blood.

  A finger of fire reached the wraps on her ankles. Snarling and open-eyed, the old woman did not react to the flames as they overtook her. The fire climbed her legs, then raced up her back. But her face showed no mark of pain. Only of hatred and wonder.

  Perhaps her soul was already immersed in far more terrible fires.

  I took back my Colt and pulled Kehoe from the shanty. No sooner were we outside than he was sick. I dragged him along, despite his retching and reluctance to come away until he was finished. We both reached safety just as the roof fell in.

  Flames rushed after us, roaring and angry, as if they wished revenge for the old woman’s death. But we had gotten free and the fire sulked back. Then something especial burst in the heart of the ruins. A pillar of fire shot into the moonless sky.

  Instead of faltering, the flames redoubled their power, as if they had reached a hidden reserve of fuel. They lit the hilltop barrens above the glen. That must have been a bonfire seen for miles. If any eyes were watching.

  That is how I lost the cane given to me by the Earl of Thretford himself. That is how the murderess of General Carl Stone and Kathleen Boland perished. And that is how Black Jack Kehoe learned to hate me. He always blamed me for Mary Boland’s death, for causing him to let down Danny Boland. For putting him in the position where shooting the woman was the kindest thing he could do. It did not matter what horrors he had seen in that shanty, or what he had learned of the woman he meant to protect. It only mattered that he had failed, and he never could bear failure.

  Kehoe hated me from that night on.

  I never hated him, see. I even tried to save his life years later, as Gowen schemed to hang him. My efforts were in vain, of course, with our courts reduced to tools of wealth, dealing vigilante justice to men so desperate they defied the Reading Company’s private army. No, Kehoe was not the evil man the annals would have you believe. He did foolish things, and some bad ones. But everything he did he did for the sons and daughters of Erin. He had his rigorous honor, in the Irish grain. He grew hard and bitter as time progressed and every promise made to the miners was broken. His judgement was sometimes poor and he trusted the wrong men, not least that unscrupulous Pinkerton man, MacParlan. But he was never the cold-blooded killer of popular legend. Indeed, his fault was that he failed to kill MacParlan when he should have.

  But let that bide.

  We went down the hill together that night, unwilling to speak a word.

  NINETEEN

  JIMMY AND I WENT INTO QUARANTINE IN A WATCHMAN’S shack below the Thomaston works. It was an ordeal for both of us at first.

  I was rambunctious with wanting to make my report, which was set to comfort everyone. The Russians bore no blame that I could see, for their agent had come too late. Nor had the Irish miners been at fault, for all the commotion had come of the deeds of a madwoman, and the Irish had only tried to protect their own. There was no threat to diplomacy or politics, and I wanted my masters to know it to ease their minds. But I was stuck in a shanty with no recourse but to wait from day to day for signs of cholera.

  Jimmy always found confinement a burden, for he is a lively man, enamored of motion. He cannot even sit for very long.

  Yet, men adapt to the needs of their situations. Soon enough we calmed into a sort of soldierly housekeeping, sitting about the coal stove as the season withered and telling stories of comrades lost in time. Jimmy made me laugh, which is a gift.

  November’s early days of gold dissolved into weeks of drizzle. We talked again of our marching years, when the monsoon rains did not so much fall as attack. Interludes sneaked into our afternoons when we did not speak at all, but only mused to ourselves. We might have been an old married couple, given the way we kept company.

  My own dear wife drove up a number of times, when the weather permitted, for now she had a carriage of her own. Oh, she looked a very queen, my Mary did. She could not come closer than fifty feet, but I read the heartsick worry on her face. That, too, is the stuff of marriage. When you are properly blessed with a loving partner, you become so closely bound together, so joined to one another, that no threat upon this earth is so great as the prospect of losing your husband or your wife. I worried over her health and she over mine, if for sharply different reasons. She gave me our John’s love and, after a pause, told me that Fanny had moped herself near to a sickness with concern for me. Something there was in my Mary’s tone that said she had begun to accept the lass. Glad of it I was. It may have been as simple a thing as coming into funds. Hereafter, there would be enough for all. Or, perhaps, my Mary had leapt that greatest hurdle placed before our hearts and saw she could do no better than trust my love.

  My darling wrote to Mrs. Molloy for Jimmy, and a letter arrived in little more than a week. Annie Molloy could not leave the family businesses—all her employees were Irish, after all—but she sent a letter so full of love that it left poor Jimmy morose. Business was blooming, her heart was full, and she had just discovered herself to be with child.

  “You’ll be a splendid father,” I assured Jimmy. But I fear I saw horizons in his eyes.

  My Mary also telegraphed my carefully chosen words to Mr. Nicolay:

  JN. NO FOREIGN INVOLVEMENT. NO IRISH BLAME. SIMPLE CRIME. MURDERER DEAD. WILL REPORT IN PERSON AFTER QUARANTINE. AJ.

  I expected that might be enough to assuage the fear
s of all the parties concerned, at least temporarily. I worried that Mr. Seward might nurse a grudge against me for not reporting first to him, as he had asked. But he proved a wiser, greater man than that. The results of my work contented him, as he himself told me later. He only wished to keep those Russians out of things. And I am unashamed to admit that my doings gained me praise from Mr. Lincoln, who was pleased to be able to tell those German fellows that a madwoman killed their general and he had proof of it. My only fear was of Mrs. Schutzengel’s likely disappointment, for she wanted to blame the Russians with all her heart. But even she only sulked a bit, when I told her what I could. Then she made me a German pie from poppyseeds and molasses.

  Mr. Downs had the duty of bringing us foodstuffs—although my Mary delivered treats, as well—and, given the teamster’s habits, I was not convinced that all sanitary measures were suitably enforced. But we survived.

  That hand of mine was a bother, but I found a bit more strength in it every day. I seem to be a collection of damaged parts.

  My Mary brought me a Bible, too, for in my haste I had failed to replace my pocket Testament, and Scripture is a comfort that a man should enjoy each day. At first, I kept my studies to myself, but Jimmy asked if I would read aloud, to pass the time. Of course, I was glad to do it, for when those words ring out the world improves. Queer it was, though. Jimmy had been brought up in his church, more or less—I thought of that poor Pip, who was brought up “by hand” in Mr. Dickens’s book—but he did not know the stories in the Bible, at least not those that are given to us between the days of Moses and those of Christ. He sat there by the stove, smoking a pipe and listening to each verse in fascination.

  Some of the stories left him scowling and skeptical. Of Daniel in his den, Jimmy said, “Sure, Abel, ye know enough about lions and tigers to know the beast would have et him as soon as the mood come on.” And he insisted that Jonah would have drowned in the belly of that whale, or come to a nasty grief in the whale’s digestion. “Don’t ye remember,” he asked me, “when we cut the baby out o’ the snake that time in Cooteewallah and there weren’t much left but bones?” He was, however, much impressed with Judith, describing her as a “right handful, that one,” for the manner in which she had despatched Holofernes. And fonder he was of the tale of Susannah at her bath than I thought proper. He liked the battles, too. Told of Joseph and his brothers, Jimmy said he had heard of a similar case in Wexford, back in his mother’s day. A family sold off one of their own to a press-gang. Of Solomon’s immortal song, Jimmy remarked, “That’s handsome jabber, that is. I’ll have to remember those words when Annie goes sulking.”

  His final judgement on those tales was that nothing much had changed, that people were people. He did not seem to be edified in the least.

  Mr. Donnelly come strolling by, when the weather broke for a brace of cold, blue days. He called a halloo from the roadway, standing there with an impish grin on his mug.

  “Ah, an’t it lovely to see ye primed in your health,” he said, “and no trace of the black cholera anywhere near ye.”

  “Not so far,” I allowed, though reluctantly. Cholera was the single thing I would not hear discussed. Nor would I think on it.

  “Sure, and that’s a blessing,” he went on. “And there an’t been another case of it come amongst us, either, so I’m thinking we’re free of our troubles, the saints be praised.” His grin faded until his expression matched the chill of the afternoon. “Would ye say we’re free of our troubles, Major Jones?”

  “I would say . . .” I called across the field of wintering weeds, “. . . that you are free of the troubles that concerned me. And of those which concerned the government in this matter. I wish you might keep yourselves free of future troubles, as well.”

  He smiled again, but differently. “Wishes are tender things, are they not? And wounded by the world, in all its cruelty . . .” He waved away our discussion with his walking stick. “It’s a lucky man ye are, Major Jones. And not such a bad one, perhaps, though others mought argue it. Well, I was only having meself a stroll. I’ll be off, then.”

  “Mr. Donnelly?”

  He paused.

  “Did you do as I asked? Did you bury them together? The priest and the girl?”

  He shook his head, invoking a smile still colder than before. “That would have been against the laws of the Holy Mother Church.” His eyes turned stony hard. “And it an’t for the likes of us to interfere. Good health to ye, Major. If ever ye pass our way again, look in on us.”

  He ambled off, whistling to fool the world, as the Irish do.

  In our last week of confinement, nature showed her temper once again. Rain dripped through the cracks in the roof and the coal stove threw more smoke than it offered heat. We wrapped ourselves in blankets and waited for dawn, as we had done in the passes above Peshawar, when our regiment went hunting Afghan bandits. Oh, lucky we are that America is far away from that lot, for the Afghanee is a genius of discord.

  On the holiday of Thanksgiving, the morning broke as clear as a young girl’s eyes. That pleased me. For I am fond of our holiday of thanks. I understand it began in the wilds of New England and has wandered southward over the years, although it still is muchly a Northern affair.

  I thought to myself that Mr. Lincoln should make Thanksgiving a holiday for all our nation, and I resolved to suggest it to him, if ever I had the chance. For lovely it would be to set aside one day of the year for our families, to give the Good Lord thanks for our endless blessings. Look you. If it were made a holiday by decree, instead of merely by custom, as it is now, we might introduce a law demanding universal Temperance once a year. And that might be a noble beginning, leading one day to the banning of liquor outright.

  Too many men grasp a holiday—even Christmas itself—to drink themselves to the Devil. The year before, I had witnessed our army’s antics, with immodesty in the Washington hotels. They made of Thanksgiving no more than a drunken frolic. The newspapers, which you have read yourself, attempted to exploit the day for their commerce, advertising champagne and oysters and such. No, Thanksgiving deserved a formal elevation and a return to its antique purpose, without the corruption imposed by modern fancies.

  But let that bide.

  My Mary brought us a basket filled abundantly. Although she could not join us in our shanty, her spirit was present as Jimmy and I shared our feast. There was turkey and ham and boiled beef and sausages. With a battalion of garnishes, washed down by innocent cider.

  After our dinner, as we sat with the buttons loosened on our trousers, a matter crept up to nag me. Without thinking, I launched into a complaint.

  “Jimmy, I have told you,” I said, “up and down and twice over, about the murders. But there is one small matter that devils me still, for I cannot see the bones of it.”

  “What are ye going on about now? It seems to me that you’re well shut o’ the lot of them. And good riddance, says Jimmy Molloy.”

  I nodded, agreeing. “Yes, but look you. I still do not see who it was that told Mary Boland that General Stone was set to take off her husband. What was the sense of it? The man had given up on recruiting in Heckschersville. He was going away when she murdered him. Why whisper that lie in her ear and incite a murder? I cannot see which party had the benefit. The Irish had no cause to wish him dead. Why bring trouble down upon themselves?”

  Jimmy made a series of faces that explored the entire Irish repertoire of amazement. He pulled his jaw, and rolled his eyes, and swept back his hair, and shook his head, and muttered and sputtered and clicked his tongue, then smiled to show me the remnants of his dinner.

  “Jaysus, Mary and Joseph!” he cried. “Are ye telling me that ye can’t see something so simple?” He shook his head with all the drama that lurks between Dingle and Derry. And he sighed enormously. “Abel, me darling man, ye were ever a terrible fool for a man so crafty. Is that the way they make the Welsh, or are ye just short of your pint? Why, it’s clear as an empty glass who wanted him
dead. Clear as an empty glass, and just as sorry!”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  He pulled another face, then leaned toward me, settling his elbows just above his knees. Twas a posture I remembered from our barracks days.

  “Now, if ye’d only think, ye’d reach your conclusion. What was General Stone after doing, I ask ye?”

  “Attempting to recruit troops for the Union. But he failed and—”

  “He failed in Heckschersville,” Jimmy said, exasperated. “But that don’t mean he might not have succeeded where next he got up to persuading and preaching and promising.”

  “I don’t see what you—”

  “Don’t ye, man?” He waved his head and shoulders at my folly, smacking his knee with the palm of his hand and smacking his lips thereafter. “Now, if General Stone, God rest his soul—even though the bugger was a general—if he had succeeded in his recruitment efforts around your great and grandiose Schuylkill County, what with his letter from Meagher himself and all his radical speechifying, what would have been the results of that, I ask you? Will ye only tell me that?”

  “Well . . . more Irish might have joined the army.” That seemed obvious enough. But I still did not see his point.

  “And if more Irish joined the army, Abel, what is it ye’d have less of here at home?”

  “Jimmy, if you mean to have a laugh at my ex—”

  “Just answer me now, if ye want to solve your riddle. For the answer’s dancing in front of your very eyes, man. If more of the Irish joined the army, what would ye have less of here in this plague-ridden county of yours?”

  “Well . . . I suppose . . . we’d have less drunkenness.”

  Jimmy shook his head at my lack of sense. “You’re cramming the matter all full o’ complications, bloody-minded Welshman that ye are. Now listen to the question, would ye only do that, if it please your royal majesty? If the Irish were to take themselves off to the army, what would ye have less of here at home?”