Song of the Silent Harp

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

My warmest thanks and appreciation to Harvest House Publishers for publishing this new edition of
Song of the Silent Harp,
the first book of The Emerald Ballad series, and for their ongoing support and encouragement of my work.

Much gratitude is due the late Dr. Eoin McKiernan for the information and
assistance he so kindly and patiently provided throughout the development of this series.

Thanks also to the following: Ivor Hamrock of the Mayo County Council, Castlebar, County Mayo, Ireland; John R. Podracky of the New York City Police Museum; and the late Thomas Gallagher of New York City.

A special note of appreciation to the librarians at the Fairfield County District Library, Lancaster, Ohio, for their continuing and always cheerful assistance.

A
BOUT
BJ H
OFF

BJ Hoff's
bestselling historical novels continue to cross the boundaries of religion, language, and culture to capture a worldwide reading audience. In addition to The Emerald Ballad series, her books include such popular titles as
Song of Erin
and
American Anthem
and bestselling series such as The Riverhaven Years and The Mountain Song Legacy. Her stories, although set in the past, are always relevant to the present. Whether her characters move about in Ireland or America, in small country towns or metropolitan areas, reside in Amish settlements or in coal company houses, she creates
communities
where people can form relationships, raise families, pursue their faith, and experience the mountains and valleys of life. BJ and her husband make their home in Ohio.

For a complete listing of BJ's books published by
Harvest House Publishers, turn to page 429.

P
ROLOGUE

These are the clouds about the fallen sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning eye:
The weak lay hand on what the strong has done,
Till that be tumbled that was lifted high.

W. B. Y
EATS
(1865-1939)

Drogheda, Ireland
1649

E
oin Caomhanach, your harp will sing no more until the evil of Black Cromwell has been forgotten in the land and the survivors of his butchery return from exile.”

Eoin's harp rode his shoulder in silent obedience as his grandfather's command echoed throughout the dim upstairs room. For a moment the old man looked as if he would say more; instead, he turned and went to stand at
the narrow window, where a pale blade of late evening light struggled to pierce the gloom. Like a shadowed statue, Conal stood gazing down upon the ruins below.

Drogheda had finally fallen. After a seemingly endless siege and a three-day orgy of savagery and slaughter, the town's destruction was complete. The massacre of its defenders had been swift and thorough, the slaying of its innocent people brutal and merciless. The streets, now virtually deserted, were haunted by the eerie hush that follows disaster. The only sounds to break the silence were the cries of the wounded, an occasional angry shout between soldiers, and the screaming of the gulls over the River Boyne.

Yesterday, Eoin had crouched on one of the breastworks with his bow, watching as the wall around the town was breached by the hordes of Cromwell's New Model Army. He had stared in stunned disbelief as the first wave of shouting, blood-crazed troopers came pouring through the break. Today his heart raced and pounded in his ears as he remembered the surging tide of round black helmets and rust-red doublets exploding on the town in demented fury, chanting psalms and screaming curses in the same breath. On foot and on horseback, with muskets cracking and swords clanging, they hacked and shot and stabbed until the breach was soaked with blood and littered with fallen soldiers.

Losing his bow, Eoin was quickly swept up in the wave of retreating men, then stalled in the chaos and press of the massacre. From there he gazed in sick horror as Sir Arthur Aston, the defending commander of the city, was upended by a mob of jeering troopers, then bludgeoned to death on the bridge with his own wooden leg. As if in a daze, the lad watched the brightly colored feather from Aston's hat wave bravely in the warm harvest breeze before sailing to the ground in final defeat.

Eoin could no longer remember his route of escape. He vaguely recalled hearing the voices of the people at St. Peter's singing the
Gloria
just before the wooden steeple roared to a blaze; within seconds the church's shelter became a funeral pyre. He dimly remembered trying to avoid stepping on the dead bodies as he raced toward home. His ears still rang with the ominous drum of marching boots on cobblestones, and his nostrils still burned with the stench of smoke and gunpowder and death.

Somehow he made his way through the alleys and back streets to his house, only to find his mild-natured father slain just outside the open door, his young mother and two sisters savaged and mutilated within.

Blood…his home had been a river of blood.

Half-crazed with shock and grief, he had stumbled blindly down St. John's Street, deep into the Irish quarter to the home of his grandfather. Now the two of them waited, as did the other survivors of Drogheda, to learn their fate. Already lands had been seized, the garrison destroyed, their clergy and scholars humiliated, then slain alongside the town's defenders.

They would be driven from their home, his grandfather said, then either killed or taken prisoner. Rumors ran wild, but most believed that survivors would be sent to Barbados as slaves or relocated to barren Connacht in western Ireland. Eoin thought he would prefer death to being a slave or a prisoner—not that he would have a choice.

“Did you hear me, lad?”

Eoin blinked, forced back to his surroundings by his grandfather's voice. Conal had left the window and stood watching him. “I did, Grandfather. But—”

“I am charging you with the custody of the Harp of Caomhanach. You have been taught the covenant.”

“Aye, sir,” Eoin said softly. The harp was the symbol of a generations-old covenant between the Caomhanach family and their God. A clan chief in the time of the kings had decreed that the harp was to remain silent in time of exile, that it should sing only for a free people.

“So it has ever been with our ancestors,” Conal now intoned, “and so it is to be with you, Eoin, the eldest and only surviving son of Dermot.”

A fierce conflict of emotions flooded Eoin. He was still raw with pain at the loss of his parents and sisters, still bewildered by the enormity of what had happened to him and his neighbors, and while he loved Conal deeply, he resented the old man's stern directive, especially at this moment.

Lifting his eyes to the ruins of his grandfather's craggy face, Eoin realized that the old man would be woefully unprepared for the rebellion of his only surviving grandson. No less than the fullest measure of respect would be anticipated, for no less had ever been given.

In his prime, the old warrior, like past generations of male Caomhanachs, had been a giant of a man. Year after year of battle and bloodshed, however, had finally defeated him, leaving him shrunken and wasted, a scarecrow whose flesh draped his once mighty frame like the useless folds of a tattered cloak. Now his hair and beard were purest white, his eyes faded, his hand unsteady. His tunic and breeches hung loosely on his bones.

Eoin answered Conal carefully, denying the pity that rose deep within him. Such an emotion in the face of a chieftain would be an unforgivable insult. “I'm sorry, Grandfather, but I cannot abide by the old ways. The Harp of
Caomhanach will no longer be a silent harp of exile. I intend to let her have her voice.”

“No!” Conal pounded a fist on the wooden table in front of him, causing Eoin to jump back into a large Venetian vase. It tipped, crashing to the floor. Mindless of the broken vase, the old man went on shouting. “It is forbidden! The harp is to sing only in its own land, to its own people! You would not
dare
break the covenant.”

Anticipating his grandfather's opposition to what he was about to say, Eoin nevertheless longed for the old man's understanding. “Grandfather, please, hear me. I can no longer be faithful to the old order, don't you see? To remain silent is to ignore all that has gone before. If we allow our past to be forgotten, we lose not only our land, but our hope as well. Surely you would not have it so.
God
would not have it so.”

Ashen-faced, Conal stared at Eoin in breathless silence. “And so, do you now speak for God, Eoin?” he questioned softly. “Would you truly break a vow with our Lord?”

“But don't you see, Grandfather, I wouldn't be breaking the covenant! The vow between our family and God was that the harp would sing for our people as long as the Lord is among us and freedom is ours. If—”

Shaking his head like an angry lion and pointing a thin, accusing finger, Conal leaned toward Eoin. “You forget the rest of the vow! We are about to be an exiled people—perhaps even a people
enslaved!
Whether we flee to the west or go to the islands in chains, we will be slaves. The devil Cromwell and his demons will have our freedom and our faith at their feet.”

“No, Grandfather, they will not,” Eoin said quietly. “Wherever they send us, we will take our memories. And our faith. And as long as we have our past and our faith, do we not also possess at least a remnant of dignity and freedom—and a future? The Lord promised us ‘a future and a hope,' did He not?”

Conal's disdainful glare made Eoin rush to defend his own words. “We will not be leaving God behind, after all, will we? Nor will God desert us. Has He not promised that He would never forsake us?” Forcing a strength into his voice he did not feel, Eoin pressed on. “As long as our God is with us, Grandfather, I say we are free. Free, and at liberty to allow the harp to declare our freedom, to call to mind our heritage and our hope of what God in His mercy will do for us in a new day.”

“You rave like a roaming minstrel! An unseasoned child of fourteen years, and you dare to break the pledge of centuries between a people and their God?”

With a stab first of uneasiness, then anger at his grandfather's words, Eoin
hesitated, struggling to control his feelings. “I am no child,” he answered harshly. “I have seen my family butchered, my townsmen massacred, my land stolen. I have seen evil of a kind that men three times my years have not witnessed.”

He moved a step closer to Conal, intent now on making his grandfather understand. “I saw him. Cromwell. I saw that pious hypocrite on his knees. He was praying, Grandfather. Only moments before he himself stood in the blood-soaked breach of the wall and urged his soldiers to break through and slaughter our people—
he…was…praying.
I saw his rage—he was wild with it, in a white-hot passion for our blood! ‘No quarter,' he said. ‘Kill them all!' Our soldiers said he intends to bring all Ireland to its knees. They said he believes himself to be the divine instrument of God's judgment upon the Irish!”

Even now the memory of the Puritan general's gaunt, sour face, the sound of his vile name, made Eoin's head roar. “Would you have the ugly truth about that monster go untold? Would you have his name remain free of the guilt it ought to bear?”

At last Eoin stopped. His heartbeat slowed, and the ringing in his ears subsided. He was drained, his anger cooled, his passion depleted.

After a long, tense silence, Conal nodded sadly. “What you say is true. The Puritan and his army purport to carry out the will of our merciful Lord, while in truth they have no mercy at all—none at all. But, then, Drogheda is not the first, nor will it likely be the last field of battle where the Hatchet of Hell proclaims itself the Sword of Heaven.”

Their eyes met, and Eoin drew a deep breath. “Grandfather, two nights past, before the massacre, I had a dream. In the dream, God”—he faltered—”God spoke to me.”

Conal's chin lifted, his eyes flashing first with incredulity, then something akin to dread as he listened.

“Our Lord has given me a clear vision of—of His will for my life.” Eoin spoke haltingly, yet he felt his conviction grow as he went on. “That's how I know I am to take the harp into exile, wherever we go. And not as a silent harp, but as a voice. A voice for our people. The Harp of Caomhanach will be our emblem of freedom, an unchanging reminder of God's presence with us and His promise for us: a promise that one day we will be truly free. A free
Ireland,
Grandfather.”

Silence hung between them. When Conal finally spoke, his voice trembled as violently as his hands, causing Eoin's heart to wrench at the pain he knew he had inflicted. Gone was the challenge in the old man's eyes;
instead, there was only sorrow.

“Do what you must do, then, Eoin. I will only caution you this one last time, for soon I will no longer be with you to dampen that fiery spirit you possess.”

Eoin stared at him. “What do you mean, Grandfather? Of course, you will be with me.”

Conal shook his head. “No, lad. I'm old, and I'm ill, and I'll lay my head down for the last time on my own sod. As Drogheda has been my home, so will it be my tomb.”

Stunned, Eoin moved toward him, but Conal stopped him with an upraised hand. “I do not fear those stone-faced zealots, lad. With what can they threaten me? Death?” He made a small sound of laughter. “They cannot threaten a sick old man with heaven, now can they?

No,” he said, again shaking his head slowly, “I do not fear death, so long as I can die in Drogheda.”

When Eoin opened his mouth to protest, Conal ignored him. “But as for you, if indeed God has spoken to you, then of course you must obey.”

Tears scalded Eoin's eyes, and he quickly lowered his head to hide them.

“Come here, lad,” Conal beckoned him kindly. “Come here to me now.”

Eoin went to him. Standing with one hand behind his back, the other steadying the harp on his shoulder, he suddenly felt very much the child Conal had accused him of being.

“If indeed you are leaving, Eoin, you must leave now. Go by the river. Use the opening in the cellar, behind the stone. Go up the river, not down, where the ships are. Swim until you find a boat. Go tonight,” he said, his voice urgent, “before the moon rises.”

“But I can't—”

“You must!” The old man clutched at Eoin's arm. “There's a sack of coins beneath the cellar floor—take it with you. Hide it somehow; you may need the gold later, to buy your safety.”

Conal paused, then tugged at Eoin's arm to draw him still closer. “If you believe with all your heart the words you have spoken to me, Eoin, that the harp is free to sing, then let it sing for me this one last time. Sing a lament for Conal Caomhanach, whose spirit has already departed the land and waits for his flesh to follow.”