Mending Horses (41 page)

Daniel shrugged. “I lived. Liam lived. Go to bed. I'll be up in a bit.” He grimaced at his hands. “I need to get something for these.” Billy looked toward the kitchen doorway. Daniel nudged her with his elbow. “There's naught you can do. They'll call you if they're wanting you.”

Billy had barely left the room when the outer door swung open, and the taproom rapidly filled with men and boys. Mr. Warriner's girls set to work bringing food and drink to the crowd.

Daniel drew the landlord aside. “Sir, I know you've your hands full with this lot, but I need some help from one of your ostlers.” He put a hand in his pocket to indicate his willingness to pay, then sucked in a swift, painful breath when brushing against the cloth felt like someone had taken a drawknife to his fingers. “I'm needing me horses readied, and”—He held out the wounded hand—“I don't fancy I can manage it meself.”

Mr. Warriner's face softened. “You should go to bed, boy. One of the girls will make a salve for those burns.”

“I'd like nothing better, indeed. But Billy's brother—”

“You found them, then?”

“Only one. I'm thinking I should fetch him here.”

Mr. Warriner grunted. “I doubt anyone would come out for the sake of a father like that, if he's anything like what Jonny's letter said.”

Daniel glanced toward the staircase where Billy had disappeared. “It's not for his da's sake that I'm fetching him.”

“Billy? Are you awake?” Daniel nudged the lump under the blankets.

Billy rolled over and sat up. “How would I be sleeping? All I can think is how he'll be going to hell, and all on me own account. And he'll be waiting for me there.”

Daniel sat on the edge of the bed. “It's naught you done that'd send him to hell, lass. He done it to himself.”

She twisted a corner of the sheet. “When I fetched Mr. Warriner and his lads to get the horses out, I never told 'em Da was in there. I never told 'em to look for him.”

“Were you even thinking about him being there?” said Daniel.

“There was so much happening all of a sudden,” said Billy. “I maybe thought about him once. When things settled, and you and the horses were safe, I wondered where he was. I thought about how he started all this trouble, and how he'd run off just like he always does, and—”

Daniel held up a hand to stop her. “Well, if you thought that he'd run off, whyever would you think to be finding him in the barn?”

“But I—I—oh.”

“You are a puzzle, lass. You never felt a drop of guilt over all the thieving and lies you done, and here you are fretting about going to hell over something you didn't do, that you couldn't do naught about.”

“What about thinking? Can you go to hell for thinking?”

“Thinking what?”

“Thinking I'm not sure I'd be sorry if he was to die.”

Daniel bit his lip. He'd had the self-same thought. “Never you mind that now. Come downstairs. Liam and Augusta are here to see you.”

As he led Billy downstairs, Daniel heard Liam and Augusta talking with Mr. Warriner. The taproom was empty of firefighters and gawkers, and only the landlord and two of his hired girls remained to tidy up.

“So that's it, then?” Liam asked the landlord.

“I reckon so,” said Mr. Warriner. “He seemed to rally for a little while, but it didn't last. Dr. Swan doesn't have much hope. Set his arm, gave him something for the pain, and said he'd come back in the morning, if there's anything to come back for.”

“He's not shamming, then,” Billy said.

Liam turned at the sound of his sister's voice. He rushed toward the stairs and drew Billy into his arms. After a long moment, he stepped back and looked down into her face with worried eyes. “Thank God, you're safe. To have come so close to losing you again, and you only just come back.” He shook his head and shuddered. “Fetch your things and we'll take you home with us.”

“Home?” Daniel repeated, momentarily dumbstruck. He'd not thought about Liam taking Billy away. He'd thought—well, he wasn't sure exactly what he'd thought, other than that Billy would need her brother's comfort. “You're not wanting to see your da?”

“Why?” Liam said.

Daniel opened his mouth, but couldn't think of the words to fill it. Why, indeed? It was what people did, wasn't it? Sitting up with their dying kin, keeping them from facing the next world alone. But really, why? No matter how tightly you held a dying man's hand, how close you watched, he'd still be alone when he crossed that threshold. And what of a man like Fogarty, who deserved to die alone, if anybody in the world did?

Mr. Warriner looked taken aback by Liam's sharpness, but he quickly recovered his hospitable landlord's façade. “No need to go back out into the night. Why don't you folks sit down for a while?” he suggested, indicating a table. “Shall I bring you anything?”

Liam and Augusta shook their heads.

“We've given you a long and wearisome night, sir,” Daniel said. “Why don't you go to bed?”

“Won't get much sleep. Not while Lydia is up with that one.” He gestured with his thumb toward the door behind the bar. “Anyway, I'd better go check on the barn. Make sure those boys haven't fallen asleep in there. We've been taking turns watching to be sure there's no embers left that might catch again.” He took his coat and hat from a hook beside the door and headed out.

Daniel, Liam, and Billy shifted uneasily from one foot to another, avoiding each other's eyes, an uncertain silence hanging in the air. Augusta looked at the floor, one hand entwined in Liam's. Daniel finally cleared his throat and spoke. “Mr. Warriner told me there's no priest in town?”

Liam shook his head. “Father Brady comes up from Hartford but once a month. Anyway, whyever would I bother calling a priest in for him?”

“Should a man be going to his grave with all that on his soul?” Daniel asked.

“Would you be wanting to let him wipe everything clean with a deathbed confession? It'd serve him right and proper to die unshriven.”

“Maybe. I don't know. I just think—” Daniel shook his head. Fogarty was a drunk, a liar, a coward. He'd beaten his children beyond the boundaries of discipline. He'd sold his daughter, abandoned his sons. Yet all Daniel could see was Fogarty on his knees, on the brink of weeping, telling Billy she was all he had left.

How would he feel were it Lyman instead of Fogarty in that back bedchamber? Daniel would have every right to relish the man's dying. But even with six years of bitter memories to choose from, what came into his head was his last sight of his former master, defeated and broken.

Aye, maybe you'd pity him, but would you sit by the man were he dying? Answer yourself that, lad
, he thought. No answer came.

He turned to Billy. “What about you, lass? Will you be wanting to see him?”

Her face hardened. “It'll do him no good to say he's sorry now for all he's done.”

“Maybe,” Daniel agreed. “But maybe it'd do you and Liam good to hear it.”

“Why shouldn't I leave? It's what he'd do,” she said, but she cast an uncertain glance toward the door that led to the kitchen and the bedchamber beyond.

“Aye,” Daniel said. “I was only thinking . . . well, if there was anything you wanted to do . . . to say . . . well, if you don't say it now, you might regret—”

Billy cut him off sharply. “I've naught to say to him.” She stepped closer to Liam, who put a protective arm around her shoulder.

“Then say naught,” Daniel replied. He took up the candlestick that sat on the bar and headed toward the dark kitchen, unsure what he'd do if Billy and Liam didn't follow him. He heard Augusta murmur something to Liam, then the soft catlike padding of Billy's bare feet across the floor, Liam's hesitant footsteps coming behind her, and the rustle of Augusta's skirts last of all.

The little bedroom stood just off the kitchen, the door slightly ajar. One of Mr. Warriner's nieces sat in a ladder-backed chair next to the bed.

He'd been a handsome man, this Fogarty, with a dimpled chin, full lips, and straight nose. A spill of wavy light brown hair drooped over the bandage around his head. He slept fitfully, his hands twitching on the bedcovers, his incoherent mumblings breaking the silence. Daniel stepped away from the door so that Liam and Billy could come in. He handed Liam his candle and got a stiff nod for thanks.

The landlord's niece glanced up. Before they could stop her, she gently shook Fogarty's shoulder. His blue eyes opened wide, then folded in with pain. “Your sons are here,” the girl told him. She gestured for Liam and Billy to come nearer.

Fogarty slowly raised his head to look at his son. The candle cast ghoulish shadows across Liam's face. Fogarty squinted hard,
his lips moving as he studied the young man at the foot of the bed. Then his eyebrows rose, and he flopped back onto the pillow with a groan. “Liam,” he said, reaching out one hand. “Is it a ghost you are? Have you come to take me, lad?”

Liam's mouth remained clenched in a solid line, the candle trembling in one hand, his other hand balled into a fist at his side.

“I'll leave you, shall I?” the girl asked, then slipped from the room.

Fogarty licked his lips before he spoke again. “Liam? They send—send you to drag me down to Hell?” He blinked blearily, started to shake his head, then moaned and sank deeper into the pillow. “But they'd not'a put you there, surely?”

“No,” Liam said finally. “It was you put me in Hell.” He stepped close enough to touch.

Fogarty's nose twitched. “I smell . . . horses? So they'll haunt me to the grave, too, then?”

Liam set his candle down on the bedside table and let out a disgusted sigh. “You smell horses because I rode one to get here. I'm not a ghost, you bloody fool.”

“Not?” Fogarty raised his head. “Aye, I remember now. Someone said you lived . . . lived.” His brow furrowed as he tried to recall. “Nuala was there. Where—where's she now?”

“Here, Da,” she said, stepping forward.

Fogarty looked from daughter to son several times. “Ah, you're the very . . . very spit of your mam, both of you.” He closed his eyes and took several long breaths, gathering energy before he spoke again. “Come, love, give your old da a kiss.” He gestured feebly toward both Billy and Liam. When his hand brushed Liam's trousers, the young man stepped back as if he feared contamination.

Billy moved not an inch.

Fogarty's arm dropped back on the coverlet, and he let out a faltering sigh. “'Tis a sorry . . . sorry excuse for a da I been, haven't I?” he said.

“Aye, that you have,” Billy agreed.

Daniel held his breath, waited for the words of remorse, the plea for forgiveness that surely would come next.

Fogarty nodded carefully, licked his lips, and continued. “I did me best. Everything I've done, all the time . . . thinking of you.”

“Aye,” said Liam. “Thinking of how to use us to your advantage.”

“That's cold, Liam.” He shivered and turned his face away, drawing the blanket to his chin. “So cold.” He stared at the wall for a long time, then sniffled noisily and wiped his nose and eyes on the sheet before facing Liam again. “It'll be different now.”

“Oh, aye, it'll be different,” Liam said.

“Aye, it will,” Fogarty said with a tip of his chin, apparently not reading the bitter sarcasm in his son's voice. “Good lad, Liam . . . knew you'd come 'round.” He closed his eyes.

Fogarty would never say it, Daniel realized. He'd never apologize for neglecting and tormenting and abandoning his children. Even as the man lay dying, he tried to put himself in the right. Daniel's compassion ebbed, and he suddenly wanted to shake him, slap him into contrition.

Fogarty's breathing grew ragged, and twice it seemed to cease altogether before beginning again with an exhalation that was part sigh, part groan.

While her father slept, or seemed to sleep, Billy approached the head of the bed. She studied her father's face for a long time. She broke her gaze away and began to fidget, looking from Liam to Daniel as if seeking counsel on what to do. Liam started to turn away from the bed when Fogarty's eyes flew open. He half sat up, his mouth shaping soundless words. Before Billy could move aside, he clutched her sleeve and pulled her to her knees.

“Muh-muh-muh,” he said, his panicky eyes fixed on Billy's face. He took a shuddering breath, then finally managed a word—
Margaret
—before dropping back to the pillow. “Su-su-such dreams I've had . . . ter-terrible dreams.” Billy flinched as Fogarty's right hand tightened on her sleeve, his left hand closing and opening in spasms around the sheet. “Margaret, could—could you sing me to sleep, love?”