The White Plague (43 page)

“What makes you doubt?” Liam asked.

“He sleeps the sleep of the innocent, nary a quiver that I can see and I’ve watched.”

“Then why do you think he may be the Madman?”

“Little things. There’s something in his eyes when he looks at all this ruin.”

“And you brought him here anyway!”

“I must say I was curious about this place myself.” Herity shook his head. “How can you live with it every day?”

“We have our duty and the army obeys orders. We can’t have people wandering through, carrying stories about our charges.”

“Nary a word from our lips, Liam.”

“So you say and you sober. But what about you and the drink in you?”

“Careful with your tongue, Liam. The IRA was the keeper of Irish honor when not even your army would lend a helping hand.”

A faint smile touched Liam’s lips. “Ahhh, but there’s a story going around that it was you blew away O’Neill’s family.”

“There’s lies told about many of us, Liam.” Herity glanced at the automatic rifle in Liam’s hands and his voice became silky. “Old friend, when we were jumping in the hay as lads, which of us could look to this day?”

“You were always fine with words, Joseph, but all I hear from your lips is that you think the Yank is really our Madman. Why is it…
old friend?”

Herity looked toward the darkness gathering over the valley. Candles could be seen blinking in the château’s windows. A cow lowed from somewhere down in the shadows. He spoke in a musing tone:

“That first day together, us tramping along the road, I turned our conversation to the terrorism, as they call it. The Yank said the IRA abandoned Irish honor.”

“The very words of the Madman’s letters, but everyone knows those words now. I’m not satisfied, Joseph. What do I tell Dublin?”

“Tell them I’m not sure… which means he’s still the loaded bomb we cannot disrupt.”

“You let him carry a pistol,” Liam said. “Why?”

“To make him think I trust him.”

“But you don’t.”

“No more than I trust you. Shall we be going along to that little hut with your field telephone?”

“I shouldn’t let any of you leave here alive! I’ve my orders to protect McCrae’s secret.”

Herity whirled to confront him, face no more than a nose length from Liam. “The Yank is mine! You understand? Not yours to decide about life or death! He’s mine!”

“That’s what they’re saying in Dublin.” Liam spoke mildly. He turned then and led the way back up the trail to where John still stood.

John watched the two men approach and was astonished when Liam, without pausing, said: “You’re coming with us, Yank.”

Unable to hear what the men had said below him, John had filled his mind with conjecture. Herity was his guard, not his guardian, John had decided. He suspects. But what did he suspect?

He fell into step behind the men, wary and fearful. They picked up Father Michael at the guard hut, leaving the boy asleep on a pad in a corner. It was full dark by the time they entered a small wooden hut far down below the playing field beneath the château.

When they entered the hut, a match in Liam’s hand scratched and a candle flared, illuminating the interior. It was all unfinished wood, a crude shed roof overhead. Only a single chair and table furnished it, a black field telephone and speaker in a khaki case on the table. A wire trailed from the telephone out under the eaves. There was the sound of footsteps outside and Jock’s voice came to them:

“All in place, Liam.”

Liam visibly relaxed. He indicated the chair for Father Michael. “I’ve arranged for McCrae himself to answer. He’s anxious to have a theological discussion, so he says.”

Father Michael, who had been silent for the whole trip down to the hut, took the telephone and put it to his ear. “Thank you, Liam.”

“He’ll answer or put a rocket into us right here,” Herity muttered. “What could we do?”

“We could let him go hungry when he runs out of food,” Liam said. “Now, be still! You’ve caused enough trouble!”

“Harsh words, harsh words,” Herity said.

Once more, Liam ground the crank on the telephone.

“Why have we waited for night?” Father Michael asked.

“It’s the way Mister McCrae always does,” Liam said. “He likes for us to stumble around in the dark.”

“And I’ll wager he has a spotter scope with infrared,” Herity said.

Silence fell over the room, a strange stillness as though a ghost had entered and put a hush on the life there.

Liam nipped a switch on the side of the khaki case. A soft humming came from the instrument. “We’ll listen,” he said, “but only the priest will do the talking.”

Presently, there was a click from the telephone and a man’s deep, carefully modulated voice asked: “Is that the priest?”

Father Michael cleared his throat. “This is Father Michael Flannery.” He sounded nervous, John thought.

“And what is it you’re wanting, Priest?” McCrae sounded amused, a cultivated, cultured voice being civil to an underling.

Father Michael straightened, pressing the telephone hard against his ear. “I want to know how those young women became pregnant!”

“Ahhh, the ignorance of the Romish priesthood,” McCrae said. “Hasn’t anyone ever explained to you the functioning of –”

“Don’t get smart with me!” Father Michael snapped. “I demand to know if those girls are wed to the fathers of –”

“Keep a civil tongue, Priest, or I’ll blow that hut out of this world and you with it.”

Father Michael swallowed convulsively, then: “Will you answer my question, Mister McCrae?”

“Well, now, the young women are pregnant because that’s the function of priestesses. They lay under the rowan tree at the full of the moon and I impregnated them. The blessing of the sacred rowan upon us all.”

Father Michael took several deep breaths, his face pale.

John used the interval to edge his way toward the hut’s single door. He hesitated there. Was Jock still outside? What had he meant, all in place? Both Liam and Herity were grinning, their attention on Father Michael.

“The rowan,” Father Michael muttered.

“Our ancestors venerated the rowan and they were happier than the ones paying Peter’s pence,” McCrae said.

“Next you’ll be worshiping Mithra or some other heathen statue!” Father Michael accused.

“Careful, Priest,” McCrae said. “Mithra was an Iranian god brought along by the Roman legionaries. As a good Gael, I hate all things Roman, including your Roman Church!”

Herity chuckled: “Listen to them arguing like a pair of Jesuits! Oh, you were right, Liam. Rare sport.”

John put his hand on the door latch and eased it open a crack. McCrae must be somewhere directly in front of Father Michael. The telephone line trailed out that way.

“Who’s that talking there with you?” McCrae demanded.

“It’s Joseph Herity,” Father Michael said.

“Himself in the flesh? Ahhh, what a rare bag to tempt an old hunter. You’ve Liam Cullen there with you in the hut and one other. Who is that?”

“His name’s John O’Donnell.”

Herity suddenly thrust out a hand and covered Father Michael’s mouth, shaking his head. The priest looked up at him, startled.

“Were you about to say more, Priest?” McCrae asked.

Herity removed his hand from Father Michael’s mouth and waved a cautionary finger.

“We’re on our way north to find someplace that’ll accept us,” Father Michael said, his voice faint. His attention remained on Herity.

“And there’s no room at the inn!” McCrae chortled. “Which of you is pregnant?”

“Mister McCrae,” Father Michael said, “I’m trying to save your soul from eternal damnation. Can’t you –”

“That’s not in your power,” McCrae said. “We’re druids here, worshipers of the tree, innocent as the first babes in the world. You can take your guilty god, you Romish impostor, and shove him where the moon cannot shine.”

A burst of raucous laughter erupted from Herity. Liam chuckled.

John opened the door another few millimeters and slipped out into the darkness. The trail by which they had come led off to the right, he knew. He could not see Jock or anyone else but suspected there were other guardians around. Father Michael’s voice could be heard from within the hut.

“Mister McCrae, you must put aside your evil ways, admit the error before it’s too late! God will forgive –”

“I don’t need forgiveness!”

There was madness in that voice, John decided. He crept around the corner of the hut and looked up at the château, a gray blob in the darkness, only two candlelit windows visible now. Bushes brushed his knees. He edged to the left, seeking a way through where noise would not betray him. The voices in the hut had been reduced to a murmur. As his eyes adjusted, he discerned a slope of low gray bushes between him and the château, gray patches on a darker background. Was there a way through? He moved forward, stumbled and would have fallen but for a hand that gripped his arm, dragging him back. John found himself suddenly hurled to the ground. The cold muzzle of a gun pressed against his neck below his right ear.

From the darkness behind the gun, Jock’s voice asked: “And where was we goin’?”

John’s head whirled with desperate thoughts. The gun pressed painfully against his flesh. His left cheek lay against sharp stickers.

“Answer him, Mister…
O’Donnell!”

That was Herity’s voice from farther back in the darkness.

“That crazy McCrae is going to shoot a rocket in here and kill us all,” John husked. “You can stand around and wait for it but I…”

“McCrae always says that,” Jock said, “but he’ll not do it unless we try to approach him.” The gun muzzle eased its pressure.

Herity cursed under his breath.

Liam’s voice could be heard in the hut: “Party’s over, Priest. You’ll not convince the man.”

Father Michael emerged from the hut, herded along by Liam. “God save the man,” Father Michael prayed, “and those poor children with him.”

“And him speaking of birth and rebirth,” Liam taunted. “It has the look of truth under his rowan.” He pushed Father Michael completely out of the hut and called to Jock. “Close it down, Jock. I’ll douse the candles.”

Darkness engulfed them.

Hands hauled John to his feet. He felt his arm released but he sensed others close around.

“Whisht now!” It was Herity close beside John. “Our noses are being ground into the realities, eh?”

“That’s a terrible truth you speak.” It was Liam just on the other side of John, a dim figure barely seen in the starlight.

“Except for McCrae up there,” Liam said, “it’s not a one of us can say he’ll live in his children. Our descendants are cut off.”

“Ahhh, don’t say it, Liam.” That was Jock speaking from behind John. “Those sweet darlings just up there and us outside never to touch.”

“This is what we get for living only with our hatreds,” Father Michael muttered. “We must stop the hatreds, Joseph! We must save that sinner up there!”

“It’s a good man he is,” Herity said.

“Evil!”

“Liam,” Herity said, “you and Jock are such great companions. So helpful.”

“Our duty is to guard that château,” Liam said. “We obey our orders.”

John could feel his trembling confusion subside as the others spoke. O’Neill-Within remained quiescent. I tried, John thought. People were moving around him. John felt a hand grip his right arm. Herity spoke close to his ear: “Was you really just trying to get away, John?”

“That was a stupid thing to do, putting us all in that hut,” John said. “That’s a crazy man up there. He could do anything.”

“Madmen are like that,” Herity said.

Liam spoke from the darkness up ahead. “Come along now. It’s back to the cottage for all of us.”

“Your duty,” Herity jibed.

“That it is.” There was relief and laughter in Liam’s voice. “We all have our orders, Joseph.”

John turned toward Herity beside him. “Who gave you orders to protect me?”

“Aw, it was the rowan tree,” Herity said.

. . . reason abuseth me, and there’s the torment, there’s the hell.

– Ben Jonson

“B
UT WHY
do they call it the Literature of Despair?” the pope asked.

Pope Luke, who had been James Cardinal MacIntyre, sat in a rocking chair at the edge of his dining room with an angular view through the window beside him across Philadelphia’s rooftops to the Old Harbor. The city’s profile was outlined by the morning sunlight of a cold winter day.

The bathrobe he wore was a dark blue thing he had received as a gift while still a priest. It gapped over his mature bulk. Old brown house slippers encased his feet. His exposed shanks looked fleshy and faintly blue. 

The pope, several observers had noted, looked remarkably like an opossum – that sloped-back forehead accented by baldness, the eyes that managed to appear both dull and intent at the same time.
Concentrated
, that was what one commentator had called the pope’s eyes. They were the eyes of a dull animal seeking only after its dinner.

Pope Luke’s question had been addressed to Father Lawrence Dement, his secretary, who stood near the sideboard where breakfast had been laid out. The pope had eaten sparingly but Father Dement, who never seemed to gain an ounce, had piled his plate high with bacon, four eggs, toast and marmalade, fried potatoes and a small steak.

“The Literature of Despair,” Father Dement said. “That’s just the Irish way.”

He crossed to the table where he put down his plate and pulled out a chair facing the pope. “Is there any coffee?”

“We’ve run out again. There’s tea in that silver urn.”

Father Dement, who still looked like a graduate student at thirty-five, his blue eyes sharply aware, the little curl of black hair over his forehead, the wide mouth always ready to smile, Father Dement returned to the sideboard as though he had not a care in this world and poured himself a cup of steaming tea.

“Literature of Despair,” the pope muttered.

Father Dement put the teacup on the table beside his plate and sat down to eat his breakfast. The pope’s secretary, who had been one of the first to note the man’s resemblance to an opossum, wondered:
What is it that has him focused on the new Irish literature?