The White Plague (46 page)

John glanced at Herity. The man was like that Japanese toy, the little dumpling doll with weights glued into its rolling bottom: six times down, seven times up. He would always return to the upright position. John felt amused by the idea of Herity returning to a standing position though dead. Something bitterly tenacious in him. Dangerous, He might be confused, but he would not stop hunting.

“Let’s be going!” Herity said. He waved them ahead and aimed a kick at the boy, which the boy dodged.

In that instant, John recognized the source of Herity’s irritation with the boy. Here was a young lad’s flesh, the shape and form that Herity could identify, but without animation except for that slumbering rage. The flesh was clumsy, like a mechanical toy left to run down and with its spring now almost unwound.

“Do something definite!”
Herity was saying.

That was why Herity’s anger had been subdued by the boy’s attack at the wash house. Something definite.

Within a mile, they came to a Y-branch in the road, no signpost here. Herity took the right-hand way, but Father Michael stopped, the boy with him.

“Now just a minute, Joseph. That’s the long way by a good many miles.”

Herity didn’t even pause. “We’ve been ordered to deviate via Dublin.”

Father Michael hurried to catch up, but the boy lagged behind with John.

“Why?” Father Michael demanded. “Who said?”

“Jock said. Orders from Dublin.”

Father Michael glanced back at John, then at Herity. “But…”

“Be still, you crazy priest!” There was frustration in Herity’s voice. He quickened his pace, forcing Father Michael almost to trot. Their footsteps sounded muffled on the paving, enclosed by the border of thick trees and rock walls. John sensed a new tension in Herity’s manner – quick glances left and right, the machine gun held ready in his hands.

Father Michael hitched his pack higher and fell back slightly. Herity eased his long strides, peering up and around.

John looked up through the trees: a peculiar light in the morning sky, as though everything came through a gray filter. Distances were muzzy in diffusion, everything caught up in a sea-driven mist from the east. The sky directly overhead spread out a dark silver shaded into lighter steel eastward.

Breakfast lay heavy in John’s stomach – fresh beef and boiled nettles with potatoes. The château’s guardians had set aside for their mess a small stone cottage of what had obviously been a substantial farmstead on a ledge cut off from McCrae’s establishment by a long, slanting ridge. The cottage’s interior walls had been crudely knocked out, opening space for a long table and rude benches. The food, cooked on a turf fire, had been served just after dawn, only John’s group and the escort at table.

Herity had arrived last with Jock beside him, the younger Cullen uneasy and trying to avoid conversation. But Herity had been full of questions.

John had eaten quietly, listening. There were things to be learned here. Liam had been called away by his command duties. The other guardians already were posted for their day duty around the château.

The other soldiers at the table, sensing something different in Jock’s manner, kept a quiet watch. Slowly, tensions began to mount in the stone-walled cottage.

Father Michael broke the silence: “God is putting us through a sore test.” The words sounded forced, leaving an even more intense silence behind them.

“Sure, Father, and which plague did you have in mind?” Herity asked. “Was it the plague of the papacy now?” He spoke with unswerving arrogance.

“What’s the use of blame?” Father Michael asked.

“Him asking such a question!” Herity laughed.

“We’ve much to answer for,” Father Michael said. “The British planted a bad seed amongst us, but I ask you now, where was that seed nurtured? Was it not ourselves seeing the fruit and plucking it from the branches?”

“Eve’s apple it is!” Herity said.

“Only we called it the Proves of the IRA,” Jock said. “A beautiful red apple with a bomb in it.”

Herity’s jaw clamped tight. A flush spread over his face. He put both hands on the table. Violence wavered in the air.

“Have done!” Father Michael said. “Are we not all paying the piper now?”

“Let us pay him then and have our little dance,” Jock said. “Will y’ dance wi’ me, Joseph?”

“Enough!” Father Michael thundered. “I’ll curse the first one of you taking to violence!”

Jock swallowed convulsively, then in a low voice: “Mayhap you’re right, Father. Best it were over and the world going on without such mischief.”

Herity glowered at the priest. “I don’t fear your curses, Michael Flannery. But I’ll honor the truth in young Jock. He sees the way of things.”

Father Michael sighed. “Joseph, you were a God-fearing man once. Will you never come back to the Church?”

Herity stared into his cold stew, oddly subdued by the sudden quenching of Jock’s fire. “I’ve lost me faith and that’s what huddles me, true enough.”

“Then, why…”

“Shut your fool mouth, priest! I’ve no more respect for clerics, not after Maynooth. I’d sooner melt their bells for drinking mugs than spend another minute in one of your churches!” He pointed a death’s-head grin at Father Michael. “And if y’ call that blasphemy, I’ll tip y’ into the first well we find.”

Jock had led them down through the fields away from the château, dew drenching their pants. They could see the paved road ahead, a farm lane entering it. There was one last glimpse of the château as the party rounded the barrier ridge. It was a gray castle wall nestled in the trees. Faintly, they heard the sound of children shouting.

Jock looked over his shoulder at the distant sound, pausing by a stile while the others climbed over onto the farm lane. As John passed, Jock looked at him. “It was mostly the girls learned the Irish dances,” he said. “They do their dances of a morning up there.” He pointed toward the château with his chin. “If we lose those girls, we’ve lost it all – all of those beautiful dances. I think I can forgive McCrae anything if we don’t lose that.”

After Jock left them, John’s thoughts kept returning to those words – the half-hopeful sadness in them.

Herity continued to march along at the point, an advance scout with his machine gun at the ready. Father Michael trailed behind him. John and the boy kept pace at the rear.

The road made a sharp left turn up ahead out of the flanking trees. Straight ahead beyond the turn, grass tufted around a jutting mound of pale granite. Herity stopped, motioning the others to stop behind him. John looked past Herity, wondering what had spooked him. All he could see was two sheep on a grassy shelf below the rocks. The sheep stared up at them full of alarm.

“It’s only some sheep,” Father Michael said.

Herity waved a hand for silence. He studied their surroundings, the mounded hillocks below the outcropping, the empty valley beyond – a narrow place with a boggy stream down its middle.

“It’s a wonder it is that you’re not dead long ago, Michael Flannery,” Herity said. “Whatever it is bothers those sheep should bother us.”

“And what might be bothering them?” the priest asked,

“I wonder where Liam went this morning?” Herity asked. “Let us be goin’ back a ways, and silent as the tomb about it.”

Herity backed up the road, keeping his attention on the rock and the sheep. John turned and walked beside him, glancing backward occasionally. Father Michael and the boy went on ahead, not looking back at Herity.

“What is it?” John asked. He felt for the pistol in his hip pocket, but thought better of it and removed his hand empty.

“It’s only men that’s hunting the sheep for their meat nowadays,” Herity said. “Something frightened those creatures before we came along.”

“Probably just some of Liam’s soldiers out foraging,” John said.

“Foraging for what?” Herity asked.

Father Michael stopped ahead of them and turned. “Something passed between you and Liam Cullen,” he said. “What was it?”

“Dublin gave him his orders to let us go safely on our way,” Herity said, glancing once sidelong at John. “It wouldn’t be like Liam to disobey such orders where there’s others to see and inform.”

“You’re not serious!” Father Michael protested.

“Liam and me was wains together,” Herity said. “I knew the child and I know the man. Who’s to question if he does a bit of foraging here in this valley? Answer me that, Priest!”

They had stopped at a place where rocks had been tumbled from the top of the road’s bordering wall on the valley side. Herity crossed to this place and peered over the wall into the trees. “A trail of sorts,” he said. “I think we’ll be going down this way.”

Father Michael joined him. “You call that a trail?”

“It has a great advantage for us,” Herity said. “You can see by the marks on it that no one’s passed that way today.”

The priest shook his head. “I can’t believe that Liam Cullen would shoot all…”

“Leave off, will you now! Liam’s a soldier. Why is it, y’ think, t’ valley back yonder has no folk in it? Run off or killed by Liam and his boys. And in this valley, too. I know the inside of Liam’s head. There’s no stories to be carried if there’s no one to carry ’em.”

“But we knew about…”

“Knew? Rumors and little bird droppings from them as hears the Council’s deliberations. We knew nothing!”

Herity lifted a foot over the wall and hopped across. Father Michael joined him. John and the boy followed. The trail was a dark hole down through mixed evergreens, the ground pocked by sheep hooves, but no sign of a human footprint. Tufts of wool clung to the low branches like the markers of a paper chase. The way was steep with exposed roots.

With Herity leading, they slid and clambered down, grasping limbs to slow their descent, clinging to roots in the steeper parts. The trail emerged from the trees onto a grassy ledge with man-made steps of rock down to a sloping meadow. A stone cottage with only half a roof sat in tall grass about fifty meters into the meadow. Beyond it, a series of rock-shelved terraces curved away to the right through closely bordering trees. A sunken, weed-filled wagon track ran along the terraces at the bottom. It led at an angle, left to right, through two gates that had been left standing open.

John brushed needles and dirt off him while he looked at the scene. It was like a still life, title: Dreams Abandoned.

“There’s something you never saw in the Irish countryside,” Father Michael said, his voice low. “Gates left open.”

“Hush now!” Herity whispered. He moved down through the meadow to the house, drifting through the tall grass like a deer stalker.

John followed and heard the priest and the boy swishing through the grass behind him.

Herity headed for the first open gate into the wagon track. They passed the ashes of what probably had been a small byre with a pile of manure beside it. Grass grew thick on the manure and bushy weeds already were sprouting in the burned area. The wagon track sloped up to the right along the rock walls of the terraces, which stepped down from twice a man’s height to only waist height about two hundred meters ahead. As they passed the second terraced step, the view was opened across stone-walled meadows and the road they had abandoned, then up the far side of the road to a castle ruin on the opposite ridge less than a mile away.

Herity stopped. “Ahhhhh,” he said.

John stopped beside him. There was no sound of the priest and boy behind them. All were looking at the castle. It stood in a haze of trees and bushes with only the crenellated battlements fully exposed. Behind the screening growth, splotches of color could be glimpsed on the walls. Ruined turrets and buttresses stood out against the morning sky like illustrations in a tourist brochure. John found himself thinking how sure it was that castles, even ruined ones, transformed a skyline into something cruel – as though fangs had been exposed.

“I’ll have the binoculars,” Herity said, his voice hushed. He reached back toward Father Michael while keeping his attention on the castle.

Father Michael pressed the binoculars into Herity’s outstretched hand. “What is it?”

Herity did not answer. He focused on the castle, sweeping his attention across it, then stopping. “Well, now,” he whispered. “Slowly, all of you, back up into the shelter of the wall.”

“What is it?” Father Michael insisted.

“Do as I say!”

Keeping his attention on the castle, Herity pressed them back up the wagon track until the terrace wall concealed them. He lowered the glasses then and smiled at Father Michael.

“It’s Liam yonder with the mate to my little beauty.” He patted the machine gun on its sling against his chest. “Now, I ask you, why would Liam Cullen be looking along that road with such a weapon in his hands? Ahhh, that sneaky man.”

“What do you intend?” Father Michael asked.

“Well now, as to that – since he hasn’t seen us, him being too intent on the road where he expects us to appear, I think I’ll be coming up behind Liam to ask what he’s doing there away from his post at Mister McCrae’s fine house.” Herity cleared his throat and spat on the ground. “Discouraging, it is. I expected a better quality of soldiering from Liam.”

“I’ll go with you,” Father Michael said.

“You’ll wait here,” Herity said. “You’ll wait as a corpse or as a living man able to guide Mister John O’Donnell into Dublin should anything harmful happen to me.”

Father Michael started to protest but stopped when Herity produced a long knife from his right boot. “And should I be forced to silence you, Michael Flannery, I’ll have to treat the boy the same, him being without a protector then.”

Father Michael stared wide-eyed at Herity. “I believe you’d do it!”

“Ahhh, it’s wisdom you’re getting at last. Now, you’ll wait here where you cannot be seen.” He looked at John. “Attend to it, if you please, John.”

Herity crouched, turned and scuttled along the low notch of the terrace, straightening only when the wagon track dipped far enough to conceal him from the castle.

“A terrible man,” Father Michael whispered. “Sometimes I think he’s the devil incarnate.” He looked at John. “Would he really have…” The priest broke off and shook his head. “I think he would.”