Bold Sons of Erin (35 page)

Cawber stood up. And I stood up to join him. We met before the stove and clasped our hands.

Young John smiled. Slapping his tiny palms together. “Ebbelzo!” he declared. Which was his way of saying, “Applesauce.”

“Good,” Cawber said. You half expected the fellow to breathe fire. “We’re partners, then. I’ll have my lawyers draw up the papers. Not that two-tongued fool who worked for your uncle. Oh, we’ll keep that crowd on, just to keep an eye on them. But I’ll have my Philadelphia boys take care of anything that matters.”

He released my hand. But his eyes still pierced mine own. “We’re going to give those bastards in the Reading a run for their money.” He turned, almost with a bow, to my Mary and to Fanny. “Beg your pardon, ladies. Business talk. Didn’t mean to be rude.” And he turned again to me. “Cawber Iron takes a good percentage of the coal the Reading hauls, and plenty of other fellows will listen to me when I tell them where to buy their anthracite. And I control the shipping docks they all need, at least until they smarten up and build their own. They try to break us, and we’ll throw in with the Lehigh, to spite ’em.” At the prospect of a fight, Mr. Cawber grinned. You could almost hear the bones crack in his cheeks. “We’re battlers, you and me. Sounds like Dolly Walker’s a scrapper, too. We’re going to give those”—he glanced at Mary—“those fellows a hammering they won’t forget. And we’re going to have us a high time doing it.” He swung his attentions back to Mary. “We aren’t going to bother a lady’s capital, either.”

He picked up his hat and stick. It did not appear that he had worn an overcoat, despite the cold.

“Oh, but Mr. Cawber,” my Mary said, stepping forward in rather a rush, “won’t you stay for your supper, then?” To my astonishment, I saw she was somewhat taken with the fellow. And Fanny’s young face gleamed in admiration. Now, I respect Mr. Cawber for his honesty. But honesty has rarely appealed to ladies. I could not fathom what they all found appealing in him. To put it as gently as possible, he was gruff.

“Thanks, ma’am. Wouldn’t intrude on your grief. Next time I call, I’ll eat everything you put in front of me and ask for more. Right now, I’ve got a call to pay on Mrs. Walker.” He slapped his hat onto his head without waiting to go out of doors, tipping it to my wife and to Fanny, which was hardly how things are done in a family parlor.

“Mr. Cawber—”

“It’s ‘Matt’ from here on. And you’re ‘Abel.’ None of that Society Hill twaddle. Understand?”

“Well, Matt, it is only that I wished to tell you that there is a quiet rear entrance to Mrs. Walker’s establishment and—”

“I don’t go in back doors,” he said.

TWAS NEAR ENOUGH TO MIDNIGHT AS I CLIMBED THE hill to the priest’s house. We had come the long way round, through Coal Castle, since that road was more certain in the darkness. I had asked Mr. Downs to let me dismount a mile shy of Heckschersville. For I wanted no attention paid to my visit.

I tapped along the streets of the patch with a hard frost setting in. The moon was bright and the earth wore a veil of silver. The wind was down. I heard men snore behind ramshackle walls. The heaviness of their days told on the Irish, wearying them to a slumber just short of death. No one saw me go, although a cat snarled at me from under a porch. Peculiar creatures, cats. I have read that they were worshipped by Egyptians.

Up I went, with the earth aglow, past the ragged walls of the boneyard. My memories of the place were hard companions. I kept a watch as I went, although they had no reason to expect me. My soldiering years have left me alert to the darkness. And midnight wore a strangeness on that hill. The priest’s house was dark, but moonlight swept the cross above their church.

I touched at the trace of my Colt beneath my greatcoat. It is a thing I do when I grow wary.

I would tell you that I did not hear a sound, to give you a sense of the stillness, but that would be untrue. Down in the valley the pumps were at their labors, drawing up the water from the mines. Throbbing, they sounded like engines under the earth. Like drums down deep.

Just before I come to the sorry splinters of steps that led to the priest’s door, I stopped. It struck me that I might have a look around. To see if there were tubs of bloody washing, or anything else that might confirm his guilt.

I know how to walk in the darkness. The leaves were crisp and unswept, as if strewn there to warn him. But I took my time and put my heels down carefully. I could have crawled with greater speed, but haste killed many a soldier.

A muted light, hardly more than a hint, outlined a window toward the rear of the shanty. Twas the sort of glow that might filter through a shroud.

I eased toward it. And began to hear rhythmic, slapping sounds. And moans.

I met a stench that passed right through the walls.

The window’s frame sat high, brushing the top of my chest. At first I thought I would not see a thing, for the drapery was opaque. Anxious I was, for a body was in a torment. That slapping sound told of someone being whipped. I knew the song of the lash from the punishment barracks, where the native troops were subject to its hymn. Little cries, of a gender indeterminate, spoke of a suffering deeper than the bone.

I pressed my face up close. And found a crack between the cloth and the wood.

The priest was on his knees, naked, before a candlelit crucifix. His back was to me, and his body was scourged to a horror. He put me in mind of the sepoys and sowars we flayed alive in the Mutiny. As I watched, he lashed himself over one shoulder, then the other, repeating the pattern and groaning. His face rose toward the Cross, toward Heaven, only to drop down again. There was as much blood in that room as there is in a surgery.

I understood those linens in the washtub.

But that was not the worst of it. That room was the fellow’s bedroom, and I could see one corner of the bed. Upon that bed, I saw a woman’s foot. It was mouldered and black, a part of a corpse long dead.

I staggered backward, making a dreadful ruckus. The sound of the lashes stopped and I heard movement. I slipped back into a shadow of trees and bushes, then kept me still. It is motion that gives us away in the hours of darkness, signs of life that betray us. Night forgives us the imitation of death.

The priest tore the drapery to one side, staring wildly into the darkness. The moonlight polished his features and his nakedness. His face mirrored Cain before the Throne of God.

Twas then I stepped into the light, where his eyes could find me.

THE PRIEST LAUGHED. That is what he did as he sat before me, in the stink and rot of his rooms. With a blanket wrapped around him, as if he were a beggar from the Bible. He laughed. But he did not laugh as you or I might do.

He wept, as well. He sat before me, laughing and weeping, gargling fragments of words that made no sense. It was wretched in that place. I am no delicate flower, but a soldier who has seen cruel things aplenty. Still, I kept gagging, over and over, until I feared I would not be able to master myself.

He sat in his parlor full of books. The painting of his sister hung askew, almost as if a child had been annoying it, clinging to the frame. I stood before him. I wished to touch nothing, nor to sit down. If he had lashed his body with a whip, I lashed him with words. I cannot quite explain the rage I felt. But I struck him, relentlessly, with language as sharp as any I ever have used. I dare not tell you all the things I said.

He laughed, and did not hear me, and looked through me as if I were not there. He had seen me well enough outside his window. But not now.

I slapped him, hard, upon the cheek, then struck him again. That was a foolish thing to do, illogical. My blows could not compete with the pain the fellow had inflicted on himself. Perhaps the violence was for my sake, not for his.

“You killed her, you filthy pig. You ruined a child and made a slut of her. And you killed her . . .”

His lip was bleeding. All of the man was bleeding. Blood traced down his naked calves, fleeing the folds of his blanket.

Without the least warning, he looked up at me, almost as clear and pleased with himself as he had been the last time we shared that room.

“You don’t understand anything. Do you?” he said.

I tell you I wanted to strike the man again. But I did not. “I understand . . . that you are no more than a monster.”

He laughed. As if he were afflicted with hysterics, like those creatures I had seen in the asylum.

“I didn’t kill her,” he told me. “Good Lord, how could you think that?” His mood had changed again, and his voice was no more than a whisper. He gazed into the shadows, not at me. “I couldn’t . . . I would have slain God Himself, before I harmed her.”

It was a terrible thing for a priest to say.

He cradled his head in his hands, furrowing that white hair of his with his fingers. “Can’t you see anything?” Abruptly, he looked up and met my eyes. “Nothing at all?”

“I see a filthy man. Who keeps a corpse in his bed. A blasphemer.” My voice had all the disgust a man can muster.

“And how would
you
go before your God? If you wouldn’t even repent the thing you’d done? If you couldn’t bear to repent it? If every drop of blood in your body and every breath you took cried out to have your sin back? If you loved your sin more than Heaven and earth joined together?”

I recalled the fragment that runs, “ . . . something dreadful is in this place . . .” but did not speak it.

He waved his arms madly, sweeping his head from side to side. Struggling with demons, with pain. “Don’t you see it? Don’t you? All of this is about
love,
not about hatred. Everything happened because of love.
Real
love, flesh and blood love. Not some frightened obeisance to a statue. Or reverence for a spook we’ve made up to scare ourselves, to keep us in misery. Your murders were done out of love, because of love. It’s God’s joke on us, you see. That’s what love is. God’s joke.” He lowered his head again. “I despise Him.”

“Before you get to the judgement of God, you will face the judgement of men.”

“Do you think that will be so terrible to me? Now? Don’t you understand that I loved her more than I prized my immortal soul?
If
the soul is immortal . . .”

“It was not your place to love her.”

He twisted his face into a parody of all that is human and good. “That’s His joke, don’t you see?”

“You speak of God, when you should speak of the Devil.”

He denied me. “How do you tell the difference? I can’t anymore.” Perhaps Hell reeks like those closed-up rooms, where the priest hid his beloved.

“That is another blasphemy,” I said.

He shook his head. Somberly this time. “I cannot . . . I will not believe that love is ever a blasphemy.”

“Your own books say—”

He waved his arms again, as if to strike me. “What good are books? How long did it take me to learn that? Words. Nothing but words upon a page. And every word a lie. I wasted every day of my life until I met her. I’d burn every book on earth to have her beside me again. Alive.” He found my eyes. “Really, don’t you see the joke? To make me love her so, then to take her life over an idiocy, over a misunderstanding? To steal her away from me? After I chose her above salvation?”

His face contorted, as if he would wail his grief. But he only collapsed against the back of the sofa. The blanket must have scourged his wounds anew.

“She
was
my salvation . . .” he told me.

“You drove the child to a bawdy house.”

Tears pulsed from his eyes. “You don’t understand that, either. She did that to save me. To save my soul. She ran away from me, from us. She didn’t think there was any good in her. She blamed herself. For the shame. That’s what her faith did for her. That’s what her Holy Church did. Filled her with guilt and blame. For the wanting . . . the desire that God put in her. Everything she had learned from her faith taught her that she
had to destroy her joy, that joy was impermissible. And she tried. She didn’t become a whore the way you mean. That was only her body. She did it to crucify herself, her heart. Her soul. That’s what we taught her God wanted. It wasn’t prostitution. It was penance.”