Bold Sons of Erin (13 page)

“You’re either a madman,” Kehoe said of a sudden, in a voice that did not lack some education, “or the greatest fool ever to crawl his way out of Wales.”

At that he got up, but not to start a fight. He was a hard man to sense, yet I could tell that much. He left me there and strode across the room. I sat and pondered the ghosts in his voice, the plaint of the Irish tongue and worlds abandoned.

The other faces in the room turned from him to me, then back again. I wondered if they were disappointed that he had not yet seen fit to turn me out. Ready enough for a fuss, the lot of them were.

Kehoe marched up to a fellow who might have stepped from a
Punch
cartoon of an Irishman. Not of the lowly bogtrotter sort, but the old man of the cottage, white-haired, pink-faced, and nimble with his wits. The old man was one of the smilers in that room, as if the world amused him in countless ways. The pipe he smoked was long as a grenadier’s forearm.

Kehoe bent down over him, with undisguised respect, and I saw I had been wrong on the matter of authority. “Black Jack” Kehoe might have been the leader up in the boneyard, where all was tactics and doings fit for the young. But the man to whom he spoke was the man without whom nothing could be done in Heckschersville.

The old fellow looked at me with a glint in his eyes that passed for Irish charm. He nodded to Kehoe, lips shaping quiet words. He met my stare and smiled, friendly as a neighbor on good terms. Then Kehoe straightened his shoulders—broad they were—and come back toward me.

The old man’s companions got up, but for one, leaving their cards laid out upon the table.

“Do you play a fair hand, man?” Kehoe asked me. His voice sought to be jovial, but it did not come easily to him. “Mr. Donnelly’s asking the joy of your company.”

I ignored the bit about playing cards, an endeavor we Methodists shun, but got me up to follow my new go-between. With my trousers dripping and clinging like Pandy’s puttees.

The men in the room had wanted a fight and their disappointment was thick as the smell of dinner. But surly as they were, they minded their business. They lifted their beers again and re-lit their tobacco.

Mr. Donnelly, the fine pink fellow, stood up. Tall he was not, though of a higher stature than myself. He stuck out his hand as if we were ancient friends. I leaned my cane on the back of a chair, then shut my palm against his own. At once, I sensed I had taken a very deep plunge.

His grip was not that of an old man. We made a proper contest of our strength. With neither gaining the advantage, I give him that.

“Ah, Major Jones,” he began, with our hands clasped over the table, “here I am wishing and hoping to make your acquaintance, for all that I’ve heard tell of your great curiosities, and what happens, by the Grace of Our Lady? In you come, prompt as the landlord after his rents!” He made a face of theatrical consternation. “But you’re drowned and dreary, man, and in want of a friendly bit of hospitality!”

He let go of my hand at last, and I resumed my grip on my cane, which hides a blade within. For I was not yet certain what to expect.

Mr. Donnelly raised his voice, calling to the barkeep. Again, he seemed an actor on a stage. I believe the word for such a voice is “stentorian. “ And I will tell you: All his audience heard him.

“Michael, me boy, I don’t believe the cousin’s coming, after all. Sure, and a rain like this would keep the devil away. So I’ll give you back the room you’ve been holding this while, and you can bestow a berth upon the dear major. Who’s been serving our fine, new country in his lovely blue coat. And see if that old woman of yours can’t borrow up a bit of the warm for his dinner. No man nor beast should go hungry on such a night.”

He did not pause to hear a reply, but cast his authority wider. “What’s the matter with the great lot of you, then?” he asked the sullen assembly. “You’d think it was the first hour of a wake, with
all the gloom come upon you.” He turned his smiling face toward the piano, which was as battered as the fellow who played it. “Casey, give us some noise, lad. I can’t hear meself think for the quiet.”

The piano started up, though out-of-tune. It struggled against the drumbeat of the rain.

“Sit down, Major Jones, sit down. If you don’t object to gracing the humble likes of us with your company. But I haven’t yet introduced meself all proper. Thomas Donnelly, yard boss of the colliery, they give me that distinction. And master of the scales, under Mr. Oliver. Lucky I am to have such pleasant work.”

I saw at once who made the decisions for the Heckschersville shaft and colliery. It was not Mr. Oliver.

“You’ve already made the acquaintance of Mr. Kehoe,” he went on. “This gentleman here is Mr. Swankie Cooley. Mr. Cooley’s been good enough to come up to us from Primrose, to discuss our efforts for the poor relief. But could it be you aren’t familiar with our association, Major Jones? The Ancient Order of Hibernians? We’re pledged to make good Americans of the Irish. And a terrible labor it is.” He grinned. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Cooley?”

Now, Mr. Cooley was another small man, with a look as unkind as Mr. Donnelly’s was merry. His face was pitted, like dust struck by the first raindrops. He was of middle years, with a workman’s hands, but a paymaster’s eyes. While Mr. Donnelly was shaven, but for his whiskers, Cooley wore a narrow beard the color of barley broth.

Cooley was a blade of a man, set up for cutting others.

“That’s right you are, Mr. Donnelly,” was all the fellow said. He sounded as Irish as tinkers in the wood. He did not offer his hand.

“Now, Major Jones, I’d be pleased to stand you a drink to start off our friendship,” Mr. Donnelly said. “But it’s whispered to me that you’re strong against that temptation.” He shook his head. “Ah, isn’t the jar the very bane of the Irish! A curse and a comfort at once, the old poteen! Yet, here I am honored to sit with a
famous hero of the war, the pride of all the county, and I find myself at a loss for a proper welcome.” His smile diminished. “But what could it be brings you back to us, on such a night as this? After such a bothersome day? And you as wet as a silkie!”

Now, I am Welsh, not Irish, and not one to be fooled by all their blarney.

“I am looking for Daniel Boland,” I told him, “who confessed to the murder of Brigadier General Carl Stone.”

Kehoe and Cooley took on aspects even stonier than before, but old Donnelly made a great show of his surprise.

“But Danny Boland’s dead of the cholera this long week! Didn’t you hear the black news, Major?”

“Boland is no more dead than you or I am. He is in hiding. And I will find out where.”

Mr. Donnelly threw up his hands to the Heavens. “Sure, and I’m glad to hear it! For Danny was ever a lovely boy, though headstrong.” He put on a quizzical mask. “But Father Wilde claims he died of the cholera. And I’ve never known a priest to tell a lie.” He smiled again. “Why, haven’t you met Father Wilde yourself, this very afternoon?” The slightest twist come up at the side of his mouth. “Then you know what a splendid gentleman he is, in addition to the blessed vocation he’s called to. Ah, he’s out to give the lot of us our letters, you know, in the cause of our advancement! It’s a fine, fine fellow he is, our Father Wilde.” Donnelly leaned toward me. “But where is it you’ve run into our Danny? Surely you’ve seen him, to be so certain the poor lad’s still among us?”

“You know I have not seen him, Mr. Donnelly. For he is hidden away. After succumbing to guilt at his deed and confessing to Mr. Oliver. He either ran out of fear . . . or was persuaded to run.”

Mr. Donnelly chewed that over and found the flavor wanting. “Now, wouldn’t that have been a foolish thing? To confess to a murder? And to our Mr. Oliver, of all people, who was bound to report the matter to the magistrate? I’ve never heard the likes in all me life.”

He held up a finger. “Now, I will tell you a thing, if you will listen, Major Jones. For I find I’ve taken a most unusual liking to you.” His eyes glowed like fires of peat set into his skull. “Danny Boland no more killed your general than Napper Tandy was tsar of all the Rooshians.” He held me with his eyes, as strong men will. “And mark what I say, if there’s any bit of sense in you: No man among us killed your General Stone. And if we’d had a mind for killing generals, twould not have been that one we would have chosen for the doing of it, that I can tell you.” He tamped down the fire of his stare—hotter than the red-bellied stove it had been—and sat back. “Now, is there anything else you’re after knowing, to satisfy your official curiosity?”

“I would like to speak to Mrs. Boland.”

His eyes narrowed. “And why would you want to do a thing like that?”

“Because she knows her husband isn’t dead, see. Because she’s looking for him as hard as I am.”

Oh, that got a reaction from the lot of them. Each man stiffened, in his different way. Kehoe grew yet stiller, while Cooley tensed like a terrier sniffing a rat. Mr. Donnelly drew into himself and his skin stretched tighter over the bones of his face.

“And how would you know what Mrs. Boland’s doing?” the old man asked me. “Have you been after seeing our Mary, then?”

“Yes. I have seen her.”

“And where might that have been, pray tell?”

“It does not signify.”

“Oh, doesn’t it now?” he asked. “When no man in this town has seen her this week? Not since her Danny was taken by the cholera?”

The publican approached with a plate of food for me, but Donnelly waved it away. “Keep it warm, now, Michael. We still have a bit of business to conduct.” And as the barkeep faded away, he said to me, “Perhaps you had something to do with her disappearance yourself, Major Jones?”

I ignored that last remark, for it meant to provoke. “I saw her on the hillside. Two nights ago.” I almost added: “Below the
priest’s house.” But a sudden light blazed upon my thoughts. I wonder they did not mark the change upon my face.

Clear enough it was that the priest warned no one I had claimed to see Mrs. Boland. But something far more interesting come to me: She had been lurking in the trees between the boneyard and the priest’s house. Given mine own preoccupation that night, I had assumed her interest lay in our doings with the coffin. But what if she had been keeping watch on the priest, more interested in the living than the dead? That would explain why she did not scream when we first disturbed the grave. She did not want to be found any more than we did. And if her interest had been in the priest and not the coffin, that also explained the alarm he betrayed when I told him I had seen her near his dwelling.

Did Mary Boland mean the priest some harm?

I saw at once that Father Wilde’s role in the affair was even greater than I had suspected. Although I could not yet begin to say how or why. I could not even say if he had been blackmailed into certifying the false cholera death, or if that had come about of his own volition. Curious I was about the trace of mockery in the tone Donnelly had used when speaking of the priest. Was there a contest of wills in the village? A conflict over murder, confessions and fugitives?

My thoughts were all a rush and a muddle, but I will tell you this: When there is trouble between the Irish and their priest, there is trouble, indeed.

Donnelly canted his head, slow of reply. Even he had needed time to regain his composure after the revelation of my encounter with Mary Boland. And I had not even told them we had conversed. To say nothing of the grim thing she had done.

“Ah, and would that be the terrible night when the grave-robbers took Danny’s body?” Mr. Donnelly said at last. “And left a cat in his place?”

“No one left a cat. They left a young woman.”

“Not Mrs. Boland? Surely? And I do believe I heard tell of a cat found in the poor boy’s grave this afternoon. A terrible
scene it was, or so they tell me. We’ll have all the grandmothers talking of curses and spells.”

“Who was the young woman in the grave?”

“Is it Mrs. Boland you’re referring to, Major? Was
she
down in the grave? I’d be sorry to hear it.” He leaned in close again, skin tight as a drum. And with all the smile quit of his round, pink face. “Do you know what the womenfolk say about Mary Boland and where she’s gone off to? They say she’s been taken by fairies, that she’s gone over to the Good People, once and for all.” He shook his head. “She always was the queer one, Mary Boland.” He smiled again, a hard, small, wicked smile. “Of course, no man among us believes in fairies. Or in banshees and little people under the hill. Not here in America.”

I thought of that old woman on the high road.

“No, Major Jones,” he continued, “on that I would agree with Father Wilde. The old ways and the odd ways only shame us. They mark us as backward and foolish to all the world. Such carryings-on are a gift to Ireland’s enemies. Whoever they may be.” The cottage-master’s twinkle returned to his eye. “But how can you get that into a woman’s head, I ask you? Ah, the things a woman will get herself on to believing! They’re a different race, Major, a different race from the likes of you and me.”

“Well, I saw one of a different race this evening,” I told him. “Coming down the hill on the Thomaston Turnpike. As old as the hills she looked. And Bedlam mad.” Twas my turn to shake my head. “She put me in mind of lepers I saw in India.”

All the noise of the room caved in to a silence. At times, my voice is louder than I wish. It comes of the report of many a musket and the blast of guns rolled too close to my ear.

Mr. Donnelly struggled to call up a smile. But even his lifetime of practice was insufficient.

“I take it she wasn’t a fairy queen, then, Major? Beauteous to dazzle and lead good men astray? Why, now that I think of it, I’ll wager you met the madwoman talked of by the Dutchmen over the mountain. They say she lives in the crags on Gammon Hill, but wanders about.” He forced that mechanical smile wider still.
“The digging Dutchmen—the farmers—claim she’s a witch. Oh, they’re worse than the whole pack of us, those poor, superstitious Germans. Grown men talking of witches and hexes and spells.” He reached across the table to tap me, three sharp times, upon the wrist. “We don’t have witches in Ireland, not a one, did you know?” He laughed. “Oh, fairies and leprechauns. Spirits and ghosts galore. But not witches, Major. Not a one. Maybe Saint Patrick drove them out with the serpents?”