The White Plague (25 page)

Herity could only blink at the problem they had dumped on him.

“Who do we suspect out there?” Herity asked. “Would it be the Yanks or the Russians doing this thing if they could?”

Doheny shook his head. “Does the ant care whose foot squashes it?”

When all the tourists had gone for the day, we used to piss on the Blarney Stone. It gave us a strange feeling of superiority when we saw tourists kissing that place where we had seen our own piss, and it splashing off so pretty and yellow.

– Stephen Browder

I
T WAS
a picture out of prehistory, a lake absolutely untouched by wind, black and flat under a layer of morning fog that hovered about a meter off the surface. A green mountain, only its top gilded by sunlight, anchored the background of lake and fog layer.

John huddled in a copse of Scots pines near the western shore, listening. He could hear a faint splashing, rhythmic and ominous, from somewhere off in the mist. Shivering in the cold, he rubbed the arms of the rough yellow sweater. He had been six weeks without seeing another human, although he thought he could feel people watching him from every shadow, from the distances and, at night, pressing close to kill him.

What was that rhythmic splashing?

He had spent three weeks in a tiny cottage of neatly fitted stones, huddled there indecisively until the stored food in the place ran out. The cottage nestled in a hollow west of the lake, not another habitation in view from it. There had been a notice board on the door.

“These premises which once knew life and love have been abandoned. There is food in the larder, bedding on the bed, linen in the cupboard and utensils in the kitchen. I have left it clean and neat. Please do the same. Perhaps there will be love here again someday.”

No signature.

John had found the cottage at the end of a narrow, grass-clogged lane. Its thatched roof had been shielded by a thick stand of conifers. He had been startled to see it sitting there untouched after all the miles punctuated by ashes and ruins. The thatch had been recently patched and the cottage was a picture of tranquility sitting neatly in a field of ferns and weeds colored by tiny pink flowers. There had been blackberries beside the lane, fruit ripe on the vines. Hungry and thirsty, he had picked and eaten berries until his fingers and lips were stained with the juice.

Approaching the entrance of the cottage, he had stopped at the notice board, neatly burned letters in a pale plank. He had read the words over several times, alarmed in some way he could not define. A stirring from O’Neill-Within upset him and anger threatened to engulf him. A desire to rip the board off the door swept over him. He even reached for the board but his fingers stopped short of it, groping instead for the latch. It clicked beneath his hand and the door creaked open.

Inside was the smell of mildew, old ashes and tobacco mixed with old cooking. The mixed odors permeated a small sitting room with an oval hooked rug on the tiled floor between two rocking chairs that sat facing a small fireplace. Bricks of peat were stacked with a dish of matches to one side on the hearth. He noted the afghans on the chair backs: crochet work. A knitting basket sat beside one of the chairs, a green mound of knitted fabric, apparently unfinished, protruding from it and two long red knitting needles sticking up out of the work like markers on a place where someone would return to the clicking progress of the yarn.

John closed the door. Was there anyone here? Surely they would come to investigate the creaking of the door.

He skirted the rockers and went through a narrow doorway into a tiny kitchen with a water-stained drainboard around a diminutive sink. It was like a doll house: clean dishes neatly stacked beside the sink. Flies buzzed somewhere. Canned goods lay in neat rows behind one of the cupboard doors. He found the mildew in an open bin of flour.

It felt damp in the cottage. Did he dare make a fire? Would someone come to investigate the smoke?

The bedroom on the other side of the sitting room contained a bed, the covers neatly laid back, inviting someone to enter them and sleep. The sheets were clammy to his touch. He dragged the blankets off the bed and draped them over the rocking chairs in the sitting room before stooping to build a fire. He would chance it, he decided. This place was made to order for a confused wayfarer. Ireland was not at all what he had expected.

What did I expect?

He knew it was a question he would return to many times and he doubted he would be able to answer it. It was not something he had explored in detail.

When he left the cottage three weeks later, he took the last four tins of fish and closed the door, the notice board still on it, the place neat behind him.

On the lake, the rhythmic splashing had grown louder.

He stared in the direction of the sound. Something dark within the mists there.

Out of the fog layer came a boat, a long double-oared craft with only one rower leaning back into the sweeps. The vessel glided through the oddly motionless mist, oars creaking faintly, a light plashing rhythm to match the strokes. Concentric ripples formed under the bow, spreading out at a sharp angle as the boat approached the reedy shore below John’s copse of Scots pines.

John stood entranced by the timeless feeling of the scene. The boat was a black thing with a hull that rippled against the water’s fabric as though it had always been there.

He could make out three shapes in the craft – something huddled in the bow and another mound in the stern. The rower wore black clothing. Even his hat was black.

John debated whether to break from his cover and run. What danger lay in that dark boat? He studied the oarsman. The hands on the oars were pale white against all of that black. The motions of the shoulders held his attention for a moment: muscular contractions of the shoulder blades as the man swept the oars back for each new stroke.

As the boat neared John’s side of the lake, it came to him that the blue object in the stern and the lumpy green darkness in the bow were other human forms. There were gray-clad legs poking from beneath the blue, a hand clutching a jacket hood over the head for protection from the cold mist. The pale blond head of a youth appeared suddenly from beneath the blue hood. Eyes of pale fawn-gold looked directly at John in the pine copse.

Should I run?
John wondered. He did not know what held him here. The youth in the stern of that boat obviously had seen him, but the youth said nothing.

The boat slithered into the deep stretch of reeds at the shore. The green mound at the bow lifted, becoming a hatless man, long and shaggy blond hair, a narrow, almost effeminate face with pug nose and a sharp chin, a face dominated by light brown eyes. The brown eyes, when they focused on John, were like a physical impact. John stood frozen in his position within the pines. Not taking his attention from John, the man lifted a green cap into sight and pulled it over his hair. He then brought up a worn green packsack, which he slipped over his left shoulder by a single strap.

The oarsman had stood up and lifted an oar from its lock, using this as a pole to push against the bottom and thrust the boat through the reeds. The man in the bow said something over his shoulder to the oarsman, but the words were obscured by the noisy passage through the reeds. The boat rasped to a halt, on bottom almost half a length from the boggy turf that formed a strip between the pines and the reeds. At a motion from the man in the bow, the youth in the stern stood and stepped over the side, wading and pulling the boat to the turf shingle.

Now, the oarsman turned. John confronted a cadaverous face pale under a black felt hat. Wisps of black hair touched by gray poked from beneath the hat. The eyes were electric blue above a ship’s prow of a nose, a thin, almost lipless mouth and a stabbing thrust of chin with only the faintest of clefts above a reversed collar.

A priest!
John thought, and he remembered the man with the knife at the clothing hut.

The priest steadied himself against a thwart, looked at John and asked: “And who might you be?”

The priest’s tone was sane, but so had been the manner of the cowled, monkish figure at the clothing hut.

“My name’s John O’Donnell,” John said.

The man in the bow nodded as though this conveyed important information. The priest merely pursed his thin lips. He said: “You’ve the sound of a Yank.”

John let this pass.

The youth waded to the bow and gave the boat an ineffectual tug.

“Leave be, boy,” the priest said.

“Who are you people?” John asked.

The priest glanced at his companion in the boat. “This is Joseph Herity, a wanderer like myself. The boy there… I don’t know if he has a name. He’ll not speak. The ones who gave him to me said he had vowed to remain silent until he rejoined his mother.”

Once more, the priest looked at John. “As for myself, I’m Father Michael Flannery of the Maynooth Fathers.”

Herity said: “Take off your hat, Father Michael, and show him the proof.”

“Be still,” Father Flannery said. He sounded frightened.

“Do it!” Herity ordered.

Slowly, the priest removed his hat, exposing the partly healed scar of an encircled cross on his forehead.

“Some blame the Church for our troubles,” Herity said. “They brand the ministers they allow to live – cross in a circle for the Catholics and a plain cross for the Prods. To tell ’em apart, you understand?”

“These are savage times,” Father Flannery said. “But our Savior suffered worse.” He replaced his hat, lifted a bulky blue knapsack from the bottom of the boat and stepped out into the reeds. Taking the boy’s hand, he waded ashore, sloshed through the boggy ground and stopped the two of them only a few paces from John.

Without turning, the priest asked: “Will you be coming with us, Mister Herity?”

“And why shouldn’t I be along with you?” Herity asked. “Such fine company.” He stepped out of the boat, splashed through the boggy ground and strode past the priest and boy. Stopping directly in front of John within the pine shadows, Herity studied John from shoes to headtop. Focusing at last on John’s eyes, he asked:

“What would a Yank be doing here?”

“I came to help,” John said.

“You’ve a cure for the plague, then?” Herity asked.

“No, but I’m a molecular biologist. There must be somewhere in Ireland where I can use my talents to help.”

“That’ll be the Lab at Killaloe,” Herity said.

“Is that far away?” John asked.

“You’re a long ways from the Lab now,” Herity said.

Father Flannery came up beside Herity. “Have done, Mister Herity! This man has exiled himself here out of goodness. Have you no appreciation for that?”

“Appreciation, he asks!” Herity chuckled.

John thought it was not a pleasant sound. This Herity had all the look and sound of a devious, dangerous man.

The priest turned almost away from John. Pointing a black-sleeved arm northward along the lake, one bony hand with all the fingers together in the old Irish fashion, he said: “The Lab is off there quite a ways, Mister O’Donnell.”

“Why don’t we tramp a ways with him to show our good hearts and our appreciation?” Herity asked. “Sure and he needs our help or he’ll go astray.” Herity shook his head mournfully. “We should be certain he’s not under a faery spell.”

Father Flannery glanced into the pines, then up to the road bordering the lake beyond the trees, back to the lake.

“It’s higher powers than ourselves ordering things now,” Herity said, a mock seriousness in his voice. “You said it yourself, Father Michael, last night when we found the curragh.” He looked at the boat. “Perhaps it’s a faery curragh brought here to help us to the Yank.”

John heard the McCarthy grandfather’s accent in Herity, but there was an undercurrent of spitefulness in it.

“Don’t trouble yourselves,” John said. “I’ll find my own way.”

“Ahhh, but it’s dangerous, a man alone out there,” Herity said. “Four together is safer. What say, Father Michael? Shouldn’t we be Christian gentlemen and see this fine Yank safely to the Lab?”

“He should know it’ll be no easy journey,” Father Michael said. “Months likely. All of it on foot, or I miss my guess.”

“But sure, Father, and the man who made time made plenty of it. We can be Sweeneys together, tramping over the land, seeing the sorry sights of our poor Ireland. Ohh, and the Yank needs friendly native guides now.”

John sensed an argument between the two men, an undercurrent of vindictive humor in Herity. The boy stood head down through it all, apparently not caring.

When Father Michael did not respond, Herity said: “Well, then, I’ll guide the Yank myself, the good priest not being up to his Christian duty.” Herity turned slightly left toward the trace of trail that led out of the trees and up to the narrow road along the lake. “Let’s be going along, Yank.”

“The name is O’Donnell, John Garrech O’Donnell,” John said.

With elaborate courtesy, Herity said: “Ahhh, now, I meant no offense, Mister O’Donnell. Sure and O’Donnell is a grand name. I’ve known many an O’Donnell, and some as would never slit me throat in the dark of a night. Yank, now, that’s just a way of speaking.”

“Will y’ have done, Mister Herity?” Father Michael asked.

“But I’m just explaining to Mister O’Donnell,” Herity said. “We’d not want to offend him, now would we?” He turned back to John. “We’ve some other Yanks, so I’m told; some Frenchies and Canucks, a Brit or two, and even a Mexican contingent, they being caught when the warships came. But none, I think, so foolish as to come here afterwards. How did y’ get through the warships, Mister O’Donnell?”

“What else could they do, except kill me?” John asked.

“There’s that now,” Herity said. “It was a great risk you took.”

“There’re some in America want to help,” John said. And he wondered at this Herity. What was the man doing? There was too much being left unspoken here.

“To help,” Herity said. “To bring all the fair damsels back to life. Ahhh, now.”