Song of the Silent Harp (31 page)

Thomas had began to run the instant Daniel John broke loose. He had ever been slow, but now he prayed wings for his heels as he went roaring up the deck, shouting like a madman in hopes of diverting the armed men from Nora and Morgan, slowing only enough to fling Daniel John out of the way.

His mind registered the sight of Morgan grabbing Nora, pushing her away, toward the railing. For an instant Thomas thought he did fly as he flung himself toward Cotter.

Then a hot, jagged pain pierced his chest, stopping him in mid-flight. Amazed, saddened, he felt himself drop from the sky.

As he fell, he cried—first, his brother's name, and then his Savior's.

Mad with rage and horror, Morgan saw Thomas fall, then Whittaker. With a thunderous roar, he yanked Cotter away from his brother's body, downing him with one vicious blow to the head, then another before finally putting a bullet through his chest. The agent's gun went spinning crazily across the deck and into the bay.

Morgan turned. Whittaker lay huddled on the deck, his face a grimace of pain, blood gushing from between his fingers as he clutched his upper left arm.

For a fleeting instant Morgan glanced from Whittaker to his brother's still form, sprawled on the deck, blood pouring from the gaping hole in his chest. An ancient blood-beast reared up inside him. His lungs exploded with a
murderous scream, and he hurled the full force of his powerful frame at Harry Macken.

The bailiff was already backing away, stumbling and waving his gun in midair as he went. Morgan closed the distance between them in two great leaps. He sprang, throwing himself on the bailiff's back, knocking Macken's pistol from his hand with a fierce blow.

The bailiff was down, spread-eagled on his back and jabbering wildly. Morgan pinned him in place with one huge hand splayed in the middle of his chest, raised the gun in his other hand and leveled it at the bailiff's head.

He stared at the wailing man beneath him, saw the spittle running out of the side of his mouth, the tears of terror pouring down his cheeks. Cursing him, he tossed his own gun onto the deck and began to batter Macken with his bare hands.

It wasn't enough. Yanking him up from the deck, he started to slam the nearly unconscious man up and down on the deck, hard enough to shatter his spine.

All the while the monster inside him raged, urging him on, whipping him into madness.

It took three sailors to pull Fitzgerald off the bailiff, barely in time to save Macken's life.

Evan looked on in sick horror as Fitzgerald, torn free of the man he would have killed, stretched to his full height, raving. More awful still was the slow look of devastation that settled over his face when he turned his wild-eyed gaze upon his slain brother, still sprawled grotesquely at his feet.

Weak as he was from the gunshot wound in his upper arm, Evan could only make a feeble attempt to comfort the grieving Irishman before dropping to the deck in a near-faint. Nora Kavanagh and the boy, Daniel, did their best to get through to Fitzgerald, but there was no reaching him. Throwing them off, he flung himself across his brother's body, then lifted the dead man into his arms and clutched him against his chest. There he remained, rocking his slain brother, his stunned, vacant stare fixed on nothing.

Those close by could just make out the soft muttering that fell from his lips like tears that had found a voice.

“Why, Thomas…
why? Yours
was the life worth saving, not
mine…
not mine…why did you do it, brother? Why?”

Almost an hour later, some of the crew returned with a magistrate and two constables. It took every man of them, plus a number of sailors, to pry the stricken, dazed Fitzgerald from his brother's body and clamp his legs in irons.

When it was over, both Thomas Fitzgerald and Cotter lay dead, Macken injured almost past reviving.

The authorities arrested Morgan Fitzgerald, as well as Ward and Blake, who were captured while waiting for their leader outside Cotter's house. The other three Young Irelanders got away.

Evan wept with Nora Kavanagh and young Daniel as the police led Fitzgerald off in irons. The Gael spoke not a word as he stumbled into the night, his shoulders sagging, his great head bowed. Evan had all he could do to keep the devastated young widow and her son from bolting from the ship and running after him. He eventually managed to restrain them only with the reminder that the three orphaned children would desperately need their help.

Long past midnight, Tahg Kavanagh died, before the ship ever set sail for America.

 

P
ART
T
HREE

 

My harp is tuned to mourning,
and my flute to the sound of wailing.

J
OB 30:31 (NIV)

27

The minstrel fell—but the foeman's chain
Could not bring his proud soul under;
The harp he loved ne'er spoke again,
For he tore its chords asunder;
And said, “No chains shall sully thee,
Thou soul of love and bravery!
Thy songs were made for the pure and free,
They shall never sound in slavery!”

T
HOMAS
M
OORE
(1779-1852)

A
day had come and gone, and soon it would be dawn again. They were now twenty-four hours away from Killala. A full day separated from home. A lifetime removed from all that was safely familiar.

They had set sail just before daybreak, stealing as silently and smoothly out of the bay as the mind drifts from the edge of wakefulness to a dream. Indeed, to Daniel the
Green Flag
did seem more dream than fact. As soon as he realized they were weighing anchor, he felt himself suspended in a web between reality and illusion. He knew where he was and where he was going, and yet he felt as if at any moment he might awaken in his own bed at home.

He had done his utmost to commit to memory one last view of Mayo's wild, forlorn coast—the sheltering mountains, the immense, heavy sky, the dark waters of the bay, the round tower. But at the last moment there had been such confusion, so much panic and commotion, he could only turn his back on the harbor and stumble to his quarters with the others.

Afterward, he had felt the most terrible dread that he was leaving behind something infinitely precious, something essential to his very being. It was more than the anxiety of being uprooted, more than grief for all he was losing. Throughout the sleepless night, the dark shadows of foreboding deepened, engulfing him, overwhelming him. He felt as if a piece of his heart had been torn from his body and hurled overboard into the sea.

Now he sat on the hard edge of his bunk, staring into the darkness of the steerage quarters, absorbing the sounds and smells of the ship—all unpleasant. It was still dark outside the four small portholes, and almost as dark inside, amid the rancid, filthy bunks. Only two lanterns swayed from the wooden ceiling to shed a dim light on their crowded quarters.

Above the constant creaks and groans of the aging hull droned a steady wailing from passengers who had boarded at other ports before Killala. Much louder were the breathless, agonized moans of those suffering from seasickness. From at least half a dozen bunks came the unmistakable sound
of retching. The very walls seemed to ooze dank, foul odors, saturating the air itself with despair.

Daniel's stomach pitched suddenly, then settled. He glanced in his mother's direction, two aisles across, but the coarse jute curtain separating the women's quarters from the men's had been pulled almost all the way closed. He could catch only a glimpse of her berth. He hoped she was sleeping, hoped even more she would not dream.

His gaze now came to rest on Whittaker, in the bunk beside him. The Englishman lay unmoving, eyes closed, his breathing shallow. His arm had been tended by the ship's surgeon, a Dr. Leary, a tall, gruff man who seemed kind enough, though he fairly reeked of the pungent odor of whiskey and tobacco.

The berths were unbelievably small and crowded—pine shelves with iron bedsteads connected to the beams. They were less than the width of the back of a man's coat, yet each bunk housed at least four people. Daniel, Whittaker, and Little Tom had been assigned a berth already occupied by a widowed farmer from Galway, while Daniel's mother shared hers with the two Fitzgerald girls and a surly young woman named Alice.

Daniel gripped his knees with his hands, staring down at the floor. He still felt somewhat dazed, oddly detached from his present surroundings. Like a sleepwalker wandering through a house crammed with unfamiliar occupants, he was aware of his fellow passengers only as they hindered his freedom of movement, not with any real awareness of their individual needs or misery.

There had been no true goodbyes for them—no final farewells, no pipes to play them off, no women to keen for their going. Tragedy had set the wind at their backs. Death had been their valedictory, grief their song of farewell.

Even now, hearing the groaning of the ship's timbers, the mournful bleat of a fog horn, the echoing cries of misery from other voyagers who lay suffering in the depths of steerage, Daniel felt a strangely painful need, an aching urgency to say goodbye, to
separate
himself from all that had gone before this moment. He was seized by an inexplicable longing to make a final farewell to the small whitewashed cottage in which he had been born and spent his childhood, to the ancient round tower upon which he had focused so many of his questions and dreams—and, of course, to Morgan, who had sacrificed the one thing he prized most—his freedom—in order to guarantee theirs.

His eyes traveled down to the foot of his bunk, where he had placed the Kavanagh harp. Despite the fact that his brother had seldom played the ancient instrument, by rights it had belonged to Tahg, as the eldest son. Now
it fell to Daniel to preserve it and the long history of tradition that went with it. The sight of the well-loved instrument should have been comforting, he supposed, if for nothing else but its familiarity and ties to the past. But at this moment he could find no comfort in the harp, or in anything else.

Instead, he found himself wondering what had become of
Morgan's
harp, and the thought made the fist of grief in his throat swell even more. Morgan's harp, his hefty box of writings, his few worn books—all had been tucked inside the saddlebags across Pilgrim's back.

A new thought struck him now, bringing a flood of hot tears to his eyes: What would become of
Pilgrim?
Nobody else could ride that great beast, nobody other than Morgan, who, though he ranted and raved at the animal, was fiercely attached to him.

He did not know which pain pierced most deeply—the loss of Tahg and Thomas to death, or the loss of Morgan to Ireland. Each stab of sorrow seemed to rip at a different part of his heart.

God, help me…help me to get past my own pain so I can help my mother, be a source of strength to her, and to Katie and Johanna and wee Tom. God, help me to be a man…

Nora had known loneliness as a child—the pain of rejection, the shame of being the daughter of the village strumpet, hungry and ragged and unloved. But never had she known the loneliness, the emptiness of spirit that seized her now.

Over the past months she had forced herself to move through one tide of grief after another, staggering, stumbling through her own agony without ever completely surrendering to it. Tahg's illness, his dependence on her, had been enough to keep her going.

Now Tahg was gone, and she suddenly found herself not only paralyzed by the enormity of all she had lost but, for the first time in years, unneeded. There was no longer a loving husband depending on her, no wide-eyed little girl, no ailing father-in-law, no bedridden son. She still had Daniel John, of course, but he didn't need her, not really. He was healthy, would soon be a man grown, and already was showing the first stirrings of independence.

So much change, so much loss. Family, home, even country—gone. Friends, too. Catherine…Thomas…Morgan—

She would not think about Morgan…

But she could not stop the thought of Thomas—dear, good, kindhearted Thomas, who had ever put his family and friends before himself, even to the point of sacrificing his own life for his brother. They had buried him at sea,
along with Tahg, only hours after the ship left the bay. Somehow Whittaker, weak as he was, had convinced the ship's captain to allow it, thereby sparing them all the agony of leaving their loved ones behind to lie in unmarked graves.

That alone was a great deal more concession, Nora was certain, than would ultimately be afforded Morgan Fitzgerald.

Again she tried to shake off the thought of him. Odd, how the sound of his name still pierced her heart, even now. Should it not have made a difference, she wondered dully, finally hearing from his own lips that his love for her had been as real, as impossible to deny as hers for him? Shouldn't it have helped somehow, made things easier?

No, no, of course it made no difference. He was lost to her, as good as dead. They would hang him, that much was sure. They would lock him inside an airless cell, and that in itself would all but kill him. Then they would hang him and toss him into a common pit on the bog.

And hadn't the man done everything but lead himself there by his own rope?

Oh, Morgan, Morgan, you fool! Was it really worth it all, now that it is over? Was it worth the death of your brother, the death of your honor…and our love? Was it worth your life, Morgan?

Gone—everything was gone, torn away from her one piece at a time, like old fabric heedlessly rent and discarded. Daniel John was all she had left, and even for him she could not stir herself to feel, to care again.

She heard him come up beside her bunk, sensed his troubled gaze on her back. But she lay still, eyes closed, unwilling—unable—to encounter the sorrow she knew she would see in that haunted blue gaze. Her own pain would not allow her to face his, and so she pretended to be asleep. She was his mother, and undoubtedly he needed her comfort; but she had no comfort to give him, not now.

Nora felt his light, uncertain touch on her shoulder, but she didn't move. After a moment, he released her, his boots kicking the sawdust on the floor as he walked away.

She opened her eyes and watched the two sleeping girls across from her. Katie's face was flushed and pinched in sleep. She lay huddled close to Johanna, whose dark red hair fell in wild tangles about her face. Only now did it strike her that the girls were orphans. God in heaven, what would become of them and Little Tom? What would become of them all?

She should be weeping. How could she not weep, mourning her son, her friends? How could she feel—
nothing?
Her heart seemed a dark, frozen pit, empty of all human feelings, even pain.

At the very least she should feel guilt. God had withdrawn His blessing from
them, that was clear. Aye, He had removed everything—His blessing, His Spirit, His love—everything but His wrath. It was just as she had long suspected: He was punishing them for their sin. Punishing
her.

Oh, she
had
sinned, and in such vile ways! She had been conceived in sin, raised in sin, then gone on to compound it all by withholding a part of her heart from her husband, wantonly allowing her thoughts at times to drift from that good man to Morgan and their foolish, childish love for each other.

And Tahg. Perhaps Owen had been right all along, accusing her of favoring their eldest son over and above the other children. She had not seen it, but Owen had. God had seen. God could not be fooled; He knew her heart.

Now only Daniel John was left to her, and yet her heart was too empty, too dead to take him in.

Her hand went absently to cover her heart as if to see if it were still beating. Through her dress she touched the envelope Morgan had given her, surprised for an instant to discover it there. She had forgotten the letter entirely.

Michael's letter. Morgan had insisted she read it as soon as possible. She thought about it for a moment, then let her hand fall away. What did a letter matter now? What did
anything
matter now?

Later. She would read it later.