The White Plague (68 page)

The other horseman reined around and returned behind the trees.

Caniff looked at Father Michael, who stood clutching the leather bag in both hands.

“T’ way’s secure t’ Ballymore, Father. You’ll find it marked by stones, piles of seven and a pointer t’ t’ way. Just you be careful crossing t’ N-Six and stay away from Moate. Evil men in Moate. If anyone stops you, say you’re under t’ protection of Aldin Caniff!”

“Go with God,” Father Michael said.

Caniff kicked his horse, reined it around and soon was hidden by the trees. They heard the clatter of departing hooves.

Doheny waited for the sounds of the horsemen to fade. He looked at Father Michael then. The priest nodded. They both understood. If any of Kevin O’Donnell’s people had survived the mob, John and his companions could be identified. Word could get out that a priest, a boy and two men had been seen on the road to Ballymore.

“We dare not cut across to Dundalk,” Doheny said. “They’d expect us to head for my friends.”

Father Michael looked at John, who stood staring off at the lough. The boy still held John’s hand, a penetrating look on the young face as though he were trying to peer into John for the answers to strange questions. They would have to name the boy soon, since he would not reveal his original name. A new name – the boy wanted a second baptism, admitting that he had been blessed in the Church. But that was all he would admit.

“We’ve a rare cargo to protect,” Father Michael said.

“I’m hungry, Father Michael,” John said. “Did Joseph leave us any food?”

“We’ll eat soon,” Doheny said. “We should be getting off this road. We’ve been lucky in our encounter but there’s danger depending only on the luck of the wayfarer.” He turned and led them up the road, hearing the others follow. When he glanced back, he saw the boy guiding John, still holding his hand.

Nightfall found them far along a narrow path winding through thick evergreens. Doheny knew the kind of track they followed – a woodcutters’ way, and there would be shelter of sorts along it. Plenty of firewood around, as well, to keep them through what promised to be a cold night. They had crossed several country roads and once had waited, peering out of the bushes, before running across a wider paved highway. Doheny did not know precisely where they were but he had marked the position of the sun and knew they had headed generally east. If they could avoid the Beach Boys…

John followed with the docility of fatigue. He walked alone now, the boy and the priest bringing up the rear. John seldom looked up from where he would put his next step.

Shelter was more or less where Doheny expected to find it, just over a rise into a small swale that would protect it from the west winds. It was a lean-to built of poles and caulked with mud and moss. The door was more poles held by three sets of crosspieces and hung on leather hinges with a stick latch. There were no windows, but a small hole penetrated the roof near a corner with a firepit beneath and a stack of wood stored nearby. The interior smelled of forest duff and smoke.

John flopped to the floor and sat with his back against a wall. Father Michael dropped his leather sack and stared around the gloomy interior. The boy joined John.

In the last of the daylight, Doheny started a fire and squatted in front of it warming his hands.

Father Michael closed the door and propped a stick of wood against it. The boy crept around the wall behind the fire, taking advantage of the reflected heat. John got to his feet and moved aimlessly around the confined space. Father Michael watched him carefully.

John stopped suddenly and spoke: “O’Neill doesn’t like it here.”

Father Michael glanced fearfully at Doheny crouched by the fire. Doheny stared back at the priest and motioned him closer. Father Michael edged around John and stood with his back to the fire looking down at Doheny. Steam started to rise from the damp places on the priest’s clothing.

“Will O’Neill say why he doesn’t like this place?” Father Michael asked.

Doheny waved a hand to make him stop. Did the priest not understand? O’Neill could not be brought out of this human shell. The man had seen too much of the terrible consequences brought on by his plague. Revenge he might have wanted, but this!

Father Michael stared down at Doheny with a puzzled frown.

John remained silent, his head cocked to one side as though listening.

Only an amoral monster could live with this Ireland on his conscience
, Doheny thought. Everything they had learned about O’Neill said he had been a man of conscience – at least before Herity’s bomb.

John straightened his head suddenly and spoke: “O’Neill says this world is not safe.” He looked down at Doheny. “Did Joseph leave you one of his guns?” 

“No need of guns here,” Doheny said, getting stiffly to his feet. “Is there any more of that bread and cheese, Father?”

“Enough for the night and the morrow,” Father Michael said.

The boy came around from behind the fire and joined them. His clothing smelled of steamed wool.

“O’Neill’s right,” the boy said, a pensive adult quality in his thin voice. “Guns and bombs make a crazy world and that’s not safe.”

Madmen and children speak the truth
, Doheny thought.

“Precious Trinity, will we ever see a sane world?” Father Michael asked.

“Where a man can tell his lies with impunity,” Doheny said.

“That’s a cruel thing to say, Mister Doheny!”

Doheny turned his head and listened to the wind soughing through the trees around the hut. The fire flickered in a draft that swept through the scanty poles. Shadow monsters danced upon the walls.

“Cruel, yes,” Doheny said. “But change is often cruel and that’s what’s happening: change. We haven’t been living close enough to what our world’s doing.”

“Close enough!” Father Michael was shocked. The killing! The savagery!

“I believe I am a realist,” Doheny said. “Most people lived in a four-sided world with guardians at all the gates – doctors, preachers, lawyers, elected demagogues – to keep away the surprises of change.”

“Then how is it this terrible plague surprised the guardians?” Father Michael demanded.

“Because they got caught up in that world, too, a universe bounded by the weekly pay packet, the nightly television schedule, the annual holiday and an occasional dispensation of goodies and circus.”

“I still don’t understand how it could happen,” Father Michael said, his voice barely above a whisper. He looked fearfully at John, who had walked to the door and stood peering out through a crack by the hinges.

“Because we listened only to the rich Americans!” Doheny said.

“I didn’t know you hated Americans,” Father Michael said.

“Hate them? No, I envied them. But so few of them ever lived close to what the world’s doing!”

“You keep saying that,” Father Michael protested. “What does it mean?”

“It means the very poor who know they may starve. It means sailors and farmers and woodsmen who walk close to nature’s ever-ready disasters. It means the prophets who scourge themselves until they can see past the pain.”

Father Michael looked at the boy, who stood listening to them, an avid expression on his face. The night sounds of wind and forest pressed close around them. What could John see through that crack by the door? It was only woods darkness out there.

“The guardians were false guardians,” Doheny said, his voice low and thoughtful. “They said they would let only good surprises come through –  packages from Father Christmas. Nothing would be allowed to disrupt the smooth world that the four-square inhabitants believed they possessed.”

John turned and met Father Michael’s gaze. There was an odd look of alertness and wonder in John’s eyes, the priest thought.

“Where are we?” John asked.

“It’s a woodsman’s shelter,” Doheny said, not looking up from the fire.

John focused on Doheny. “And who are you?”

Doheny shook his head, still not looking at John, half lost in his own deep thoughts. “I’ve the name Fintan Craig Doheny and I’m no better guardian than any of the others.” He turned then and saw in the flickering firelight the strangely alert expression on John’s face.

“How did we get here?” John asked.

His voice low and hesitant, Doheny said: “We walked.”

“That’s odd,” John said. “You sound Irish. Am I still in Ireland?”

Doheny nodded.

“I wonder where Mary and the twins are?” John said.

Father Michael and Doheny looked at each other. The boy asked: “What’s happening?”

Doheny shook a finger at him for silence.

“I’m John Roe O’Neill,” John said. “I know that. Have I had… amnesia? No… that can’t be it. I seem to remember… things.”

Doheny lifted himself on the balls of his feet, poised for any response to sudden violence from John.

“Who brought me here?” John asked.

“You were brought by John Garrech O’Donnell,” Father Michael said.

John shot a startled look at the priest. “John… Garrech…” His eyes went wide with shock. He stepped back until he was pressed against the wall by the door. His gaze went from Doheny to Father Michael to the boy, lingering there, and they could all but see the memories whirl behind John’s eyes.

Doheny raised a hand toward him.

John’s mouth opened, a round hole in an agonized face. “No-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-!” It was an eerie wail from that open mouth. He took a step toward Doheny, who stiffened. John whirled then and hurled himself against the door, smashing it open.

Before anyone could prevent it, John was outside, running and screaming, crashing through the trees.

Doheny put out an arm to prevent Father Michael or the boy from following. “You couldn’t catch him. And even if you did…” He shook his head.

They listened to the sounds from the darkness – the wailing screams, the thrashing of underbrush. It went on for a long time, fading away at last into the distance, at one with the wind in the trees.

“Someone must find him,” Father Michael said. “Someone must give him shelter. The Madman’s a special charge upon us all and he should…”

“Oh, shut up!” Doheny snapped. He went to the doorway and restored the door, propping it in position against the night. When he turned back to the fire, the boy was staring at him, listening to the faint sounds from the darkness. Could the youth’s young hearing still detect those screaming wails?

“It’s the banshee,” the boy whispered.

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

– William Butler Yeats

F
ATHER
M
ICHAEL
did not like living in England. He especially disliked being confined to Huddersfield, although it was an exciting place these days with important people from all over the world passing through to learn about the cure for the plague. He accepted Doheny’s reason for sending him to Huddersfield. Kate O’Gara Browder was an Irish national treasure and, more important, was sure to become a potent political implement.

“The Woman in the Tank!”

Father Michael thought her a rather silly young woman, but there was a tough core of self-determination in her, a thing Father Michael thought of as a “peasant quality.” There had been a fair amount of this quality in Father Michael’s own mother and he had recognized it immediately in Kate. She would be stubborn and even cruel where her own interests were involved. Give her a bit of power and she could become terrifying – unless her actions were leavened by a firm belief in God’s wrath.

Doheny had said: “You will go to her to be her spiritual advisor, and that’s true enough. I know you for a good priest, Father. But you also will be there to see that she does nothing foolish that could be hurtful to Ireland. I do not trust the Brits.”

“What could they possibly do?”

“That’s for you to discover.”

And here he was in the bosom of the Gall and had been for more than two months. As he walked across the campus toward his regular morning visit with Kate, Father Michael could feel the power of this place. A dangerous thing – yes. There were dangerous currents here – plots and strange devisings. He was glad he had come, even though he detested the British flavor of everything that happened here. His own motives for accepting Doheny’s assignment had begun with simple curiosity but had been hardened by the need to get The Boy out of Ireland.

Father Michael still thought of the silent boy as The Boy, although the lad now said he could be called Sian. No last name. He refused to say anything about his family. It was as though The Boy had walled them off in some secret grave where only he could mourn.

The Boy was determined to enter the priesthood. That was a consolation. Father Sian. He would be a strong priest, Father Michael thought. A compassionate priest. Perhaps even a cardinal someday… and the possibility of pope. There was that.

Father Michael waited at a motor crossing for a long convoy to pass.
It was going to be a sunny day
, he thought.
Hot, even
. The convoy, he saw by the labels on the sides of the lorries, was part of the Wildlife Rescue Force. The telly was full of this good work – men shooting hypodermic darts into whales and porpoises and seals and wolves and bears and other creatures. It was a marvelous thing.

Yes, The Boy was far better off here than in the unrest of Ireland with its Finn Sadal holdouts roaming the countryside. No doubt of the outcome now, though. The death of Kevin O’Donnell at the hands of the mob had robbed the Beach Boys of a mystical force. They had fought with brutal ferocity for a time but without any central guidance.

The devil himself,
Father Michael thought.

It was not the United Nations assistance to the army that had beaten the Finn Sadal; it was when they lost the guiding hand of Satan. Kevin had been Satan personified.