Forever (12 page)
T
he world was windless and thick with fog. Thunder bent into the
task of taking Cormac to Galway, head lowered, great muscles straining on the rising slopes, then relaxing as they descended into depressions in the land. The horse seemed to know that an irreversible choice had been made. For Cormac. For him. A decision based on blood. And though Cormac whispered to him in Irish and English, he seemed to know that he had no say in the matter. They kept moving west and south to Galway City.
Sometimes they heard men talking in the fog, the sound amplified by the stillness. The words were never distinct. Each time, Thunder paused, alert and silent, until the loud blurred voices faded. The fog thickened. Cormac felt them climbing, then descending, but saw nothing through the fog. Away off: the sound of rushing water. A stream coursing over rocks. But Thunder stopped and wouldn’t move. Cormac nudged him, ordered him to go ahead now, we have little time, horse. He did so carefully, his ears alert, not so much showing fear as an immense reluctance. Finally they pushed through tattered fog and saw the stream and Cormac knew why Thunder wanted to avoid this crossing.
The stream was thick with corpses. Almost two dozen of them. Jammed against boulders to form a human weir. The glistening current had ripped flesh from exposed hands and arms and faces and washed bones to an ivory white. A dozen fleshless skulls grinned up at them, the scoured heads jutting from shredded clothes. The arms of one corpse were wrapped around the remains of a child whose body still carried strips of blue flesh. Like the family in the farmhouse. Cormac thought: When was that? Two weeks ago? A month? Five years?
A dozen yards downstream, the smashed timbers of a raft were jammed against rocks. He thought: They must have been fleeing to the sea, to a town, to houses, to fish, to a place, another place, someplace better than the place they’d left. He thought: They were full of prayers and fear. And then came the heart-stopping moment, the careening raft turning the bend and ramming against those boulders. Destroying heads and bodies and drowning the rest. He thought: Here they are before us: nameless and lifeless, from no place anymore, arrived at a final place whose name they never learned. The weather is surely warmer now than on the day they died. Smell them. Smell the sweet, corrupt stench that can’t be cleaned by the rushing stream. Not now. Not for a hundred years.
Thunder abruptly became his own navigator, jerking to his left, moving upstream a few hundred yards from the bodies and their rotting odor. He crossed at a broad, shallow place where boulders had been ground by the years into pebbles. On the far side, Cormac dismounted and they drank from the icy water. Cormac paused at first, afraid, wondering if there were other corpses upstream, poisoning the rushing waters. But Thunder took deep drafts, and he trusted the horse’s judgment and his knowledge and followed his example. Slaked, exhausted, he opened a coarse canvas bag and fed Thunder some oats.
Then he untied the thongs of the leathery sack his father had hidden for him. He fingered his mother’s spiral earrings, remembering her voice and her smile. He hefted
The Drapier’s Letters,
thinking it would be fitting, a kind of prayer, to read some lines of Swift as a way of remembering his father. He pushed open the clasp. And stopped. Folded in the pages were sixteen one-pound notes, ornate with the printing of the Bank of England, and a folded letter. The letter was addressed to Cormac and was written in his father’s careful hand.
My Son,
If you should read this Letter, then I shall be gone to the Otherworld. I have left here for you these Objects that I hope will be of assistance in your own Journey. I can give you Money and Gold but cannot give you what you will need most. That is, a belief in Justice and Work. I think you have a Love for both and will not let that Love die. I think you know that the Tyranny of those who stole Ireland will eventually be defeated no matter how many of the Irish they kill. As long as one Irishman remains alive, singing in Irish, they have lost. In your life, I hope you will never oppress the Weak, that you will oppose Human Bondage in all its guises, that you will bend your Knee to no man. Be kind. Find a good Woman and love her. And thank you, my Son. You have made my life a great Happiness.
Your Father
Struggling for control, Cormac pressed his father’s words to his trembling heart. Read them again. Saw his face, his sinewy arms; heard his voice; pictured him sitting alone at night to write these words (as if knowing he might never get to speak them); saw him hammering iron; saw him gently taking Rebecca’s elbow as they left a church that was not their own. Cormac wanted to speak one final time to him.
Then he and Thunder were on the move again, the letter and the banknotes folded into Cormac’s shirt, the heavy coins in his pocket, the Dean and the earrings back in their satchel, the forest dark, a road below them to the left (the wheels of a coach making a far-off screeching sound), and he kept whispering to Thunder.
“On to Galway, great heart. On to the town of white houses and Spanish women. On to the sea, Thunder. To the ships.”
On horseback, he drowsed into a jagged sleep. Hours passed. Mary Morrigan took his hand and led him to the blank wall. His mother stood on the road to Belfast, dressed in a coat of many colors. His father laughed and shaped red iron.
He snapped awake to the barking of a dog. Once, twice. Far off. Perhaps miles away in the smothering fog. The barking stopped as quickly as it started. They were on a true road now, not a forest trail, in a thick yellow fog, all signs of the wider world erased. He could see the ground, with its gashed ruts and a few white-painted stones on the sides, and it was going to the west.
A hint of a breeze. The road rose. The fog lightened. Farmhouses emerged silently in the distance, and he could hear the lowing of unseen cows. Then again, suddenly, from somewhere behind them, much closer this time, the barking. Thunder stopped, turned his head. Cormac followed his glance.
And then, racing from the fog, came Bran.
He barked and yipped and ran in a mad circle around them until Cormac leaped down beside him and hugged him and growled to him, saying his name again and again,
Bran, Bran, Bran,
and rolled with him on the lumpy earth of the frozen road. Finally the dog was exhausted and flopped on his back while Cormac scraped the caked mud off his filthy belly with his finger-nails. Bran was thin. He was scratched from thorns and bramble. But he was delirious with joy. He ate greedily from the oats in Cormac’s palm while Thunder nuzzled them, breathing warm air upon them, until Cormac gave the horse some oats too.
Then, in the distance, coming fast but still unseen, they heard galloping hooves and squealing wheels. Cormac stood, leaped onto Thunder’s back, and unsheathed the sword. Thinking: It’s too late to turn and run. He angled Thunder so that his sword hand couldn’t be seen. He hoped, for a moment, that the hoof-beats and wheels belonged to the Earl of Warren. In his black coach. With his diamond tooth and emblazoned W. Thinking: Then I’ll have no need to reach Galway and sail to America. I’ll kill him here. On this Irish road. In this Irish fog.
But it was not the Earl of Warren. Visible, as if plowing through the fog, was a royal mail coach pulled by two bony horses. A teamster sat high on the seat. A bearded fat man was beside him, cradling a musket. They seemed startled to see Cormac, Thunder, and Bran (who was barking fiercely), but they were not afraid (for there were two of them and one had that musket). They slowed and stopped. The man with the musket raised it in an agitated way and then lowered it again. Cormac thought: He must recognize that if I were a highwayman, I would have to be a very strange one indeed. Even the great Dick Turpin, hero of schoolyard songs, did not bring a dog with him to rob mail coaches. Still, the two men peered anxiously about them, as if looking for possible accomplices.
“Is this the road to Galway City, sir?” Cormac said, trying his best to sound as innocent and needy as a lost boy.
“ ’Tis.”
“How far would it be now?”
“Dunno, in this fog. Maybe six hours?”
“Are the ships sailing? For America, I mean.”
“There’s one at dawn. If you hurry, you might make it, lad.” The driver abruptly whipped his team and they rolled on, taking no chances on Cormac’s apparent innocence. Cormac sheathed the sword and nudged Thunder toward Galway, with Bran moving beside them on the gullied road, the horse careful not to move quicker than the dog could run. They rode for miles, the fog relentless, but the world growing warmer. They came to a bridge over a small running stream and Bran darted down the bank and plunged in, twisting and shaking as he cleaned the dirt from his coat. They all took long drinks and then returned to the road, going up a steep incline. At the top of a ridge, they could smell the sea.
T
hey couldn’t actually see the ocean, but its immense, full presence
was somewhere before them. Cormac worried about the hour (for it remained dark), and the day, and whether the ship had already hauled its anchor and unfurled its sails.
Hurry, Thunder. Hurry.
The sky slowly brightened beyond the fog. Cormac took dried beef from the pouch and ripped a piece off with his teeth and tossed some bits to Bran, who leaped and took them before they hit the ground. Through the fog, he heard a breeze combing unseen trees, and they were climbing again on the empty road, and the breeze was louder, smelling now of salt and the dark Atlantic. The road twisted and climbed and then peaked, and suddenly the fog was gone and below them they could see the great wide bay and the city of Galway.
They paused and gazed down upon it, at red tile rooftops and a few steeples and the battlements of a castle and all the houses white as salt. Limestone houses. Mortar houses. Smoke rose from chimneys, and here the morning breeze was a wind, the smoke streaming horizontally, the fog blown south. Away off, Cormac could see the masts of ships.
“We’d best hurry,” he said, and Thunder set off, moving downhill on dirt roads and then into streets covered with mashed straw mixed with mud and then onto cobblestones. Bran was anxious now: in a strange place with strange odors and (Cormac was sure) detecting the odor of farewell. They found a main street whose name kept changing—from Williamsgate to Williams Street to High Middle Street—and he saw buildings bearing coats of arms, and morning shops beginning to open, and gargoyles grinning from the sides of one gloomy church. Three wagons moved slowly toward them, the first drover yawning. The wagons were empty, their dawn business already done.
“The ship for America?” Cormac shouted. “Has it sailed?”
“Not yet. It’s the
Fury
you want. But if you’re needin’ her, you’d best hurry.”
He urged Thunder on with his knees, but the street traffic was thicker now: horses with riders, carts and wagons and a few coaches, and people hurrying from narrow lanes toward the shops.
More traffic blocked their way, carts, horses, wagons, and Thunder picked up Cormac’s anxiety
(the
Fury,
we need the
Fury,
get to the
Fury
)
and tried to go around and was shouted at
(fecking horse, big bloody horse, get back, fecker),
and then a burly redhaired teamster tried to grab his reins and Thunder shook him off and another wagon came from a side lane and up that lane Cormac saw a flash of scarlet. Jesus. Brit soldiers. A toothless old man placed himself in front of Thunder.
“Ye feckin’ eejit, ye can’t go this way!”
“I’m going anyway,” Cormac shouted.
One wagon moved and there was a narrow space and Thunder plunged toward it and passed through and then began to gallop. Free of the jam, free to run. And he ran. It was two long blocks to the quays, and he ran the run of his life, hooves clattering on stone, Bran barking, women jumping to the side, and Thunder dodging carts and carriages and panicky horses, running for the water, for the ship, for America: and then they were out on the pier.
At the far end a three-masted ship was easing away from the pier. An English flag. Sails unfurling. Ropes cast off. The
Fury
.
“Run
,” Cormac screamed.
“Run, Thunder, run, run, run.”
And Thunder kept running, his hooves hammering the timbers of the pier, running full out, head low, running for the
Fury
.
Men looked up at them with alarmed faces.
And Cormac’s heart began to wither.
The
Fury
was now about fifteen feet away from the pier head. Thunder didn’t care.
At the end of the pier, at the end of his frantic gallop, at the end of Ireland, Thunder leaped.
Rose.
Soared.
They were suspended high above water.
Flying.
There was a human roar.
And then Thunder came down hard and splay-legged on the planked deck, skidding in a sliding, scattering rush, then pivoting somehow to avoid going off on the far side. Cormac spilled out of the saddle to the deck. The passengers shouted like an audience at a circus. Cormac got to his feet, grabbing the sword case from the saddle. Thunder snorted and shuddered, at once defiant and afraid, his ankles intact, his eyes blazing, backing up, prepared to fight.
“What in the name of Sweet Jesus is
this?
”
Cormac turned to the face of an enraged man, his skin and red beard merging into a kind of hairy fire. He had pushed through the astonished passengers.
Cormac said, “You’re going to New York and—”
“We board at the bloody
quay!
Not after we’ve hauled anchor and not on bloody
horseback!
Who in the hell
are
you, anyway?”
“Martin O’Donovan’s my name,” Cormac said, making up the name on the spot, not knowing if his own name was on some list for immediate arrest.
“Well, I’m Tom Clark and I’m the first mate, and I never bloody well heard of you.”
He glanced at Thunder, then back at Cormac.
“My father’s dying in New York,” Cormac said, compounding his lies. “I need to get there, please, Mr. Clark. I’ve got the fare.”
“Not with this bloody horse on board you’re not—as fine a bloody horse as he is. We’ve got enough trouble carryin’ our fourteen niggers without adding a
horse
.”
He ran rough, covetous fingers along the side of Thunder’s head, but the horse jerked away as if touched with hot pokers. Clark came closer. Thunder backed up, pawed the deck, snorted at the first mate, then dashed for the railing and leaped into the sea.
Another roar, shouts from crew members, and Clark was astonished.
“Jesus bloody Christ!” he said, peering down at Thunder, who was moving in the sea. “Are yiz part of some circus?”
“No, sir,” Cormac said. “I just have to get to America and I’m told the fare is three pounds.”
“I should let you keep your money and drop you in the bloody bay,” Clark said.
Then his attention shifted as the ship itself seemed to pause, water sloshing at its hull, reluctant to depart. Tom Clark barked orders to men in the rigging and marched aft. Cormac thought: I’ve made it. I’m on the
Fury
. I’m about to sail the ocean sea.
Down at the aft end of the ship, passengers were shouting across the harbor water at the shore. Cormac pushed in among them as the ship suddenly began moving with purpose. People were waving from the receding shore. Men, women, and children in long, dark clothes formed small, shrinking, wedgelike silhouettes against the gray morning sky. Beside Cormac, men were weeping and calling names.
Good-bye, Ma. Good-bye, Eileen. So long, son.
Then he saw Thunder’s head bobbing in the water, slick and black as a seal, swimming relentlessly for the shore. And off to the right of those who were waving their farewells, he saw Bran. He was on a spit of sand, among scattered rocks, barking and pacing and darting into the water. Thunder was aimed at him like a black spear, until he seemed to stop, his legs finding land below the water, and he hauled himself up in a bent, exhausted way. Bran danced around the horse, and then, as the ship moved out of the bay, they turned together to face the strange, cold, receding sea creature with its billowing sails, and to face Cormac. They were still as statues and watched him go until he could see them no longer.
Good-bye, Thunder. Good-bye, Bran. And good-bye, Ireland.