Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land

by John Crowley

  ‘Thank us not, young sir,’ said the one; and the other said, ‘We have been compensated, well compensated; ’tis you ought to be thanked, for making ours a profitable detour, and therefore—’ Here the other chimed in as at a cue—‘Thankee, Sir, thankee!’

  They were a tall and a short man, a long-faced and a round-faced, and to Ali’s eyes they closely resembled the two Officers of the Peace who had taken him before the Law. But these fine fellows were of the Irish race—and as such it may be that they spoke, and comported themselves, as Irishmen do in the pages of Miss Edge-worth’s admirable tales—or perhaps they did not—but I hope I may be forgiven if I do not attempt to reproduce that speech, and those manners, for I have not the apostrophes at hand properly to do the one, nor the heart to do the other.

  ‘You are welcome, I suppose,’ said Ali. ‘But compensated by whom?’

  ‘Why, by one who had the desire that you be accommodated,’ said one of the Hibernians—‘And,’ said the other, ‘who had the means to effect it.’

  ‘Will you tell me nothing more?’ Ali asked.

  ‘That personage of whom you inquire,’ said one, ‘has very definitely requested that we do not.’

  Ali turned to look out over the sea—and saw the small bark of his black rescuer, drawing fast away toward a far cove, even as the ship Ali stood upon made out to sea, doubling their distance apart. ‘And was he—’

  ‘In the same personage’s employ? Indeed so, and so described to us.’

  ‘We were instructed specially—I should say we were warned—that he not be taken on board. For the which I am not sorry.’

  Now to Ali there seemed to be no succeeding question he might ask, unless it be the ship’s name, or her masters’—for so his interlocutors appeared to be—or their Destination, which would now be his; but these seeming, in his circumstance, irrelevant to a high degree, he found he could ask nothing—and was only rescued from his predicament by the two Irishmen, who importuned him in chorus to come below, and refresh himself with a Potation—which he could hardly refuse to do.

  THE SIGHT OF THAT blackamore who conveyed you to this ship has put me in mind of another such, yet of a character entirely different.’ Thus spoke the Master of the Hibernia, his name being Patrick—and his brother Michael, the First Mate, nodded in agreement. ‘The faithful Tony,’ quoth Michael. ‘A paragon,’ said Master Patrick. ‘The mildest and best of men, as all who knew him would attest.’

  Ali—who had been given a glass of golden Irish whisky tinct with honey, at which he sipt with care, as it were his own alarming freedom—had now an inquiry or two to put to these mariners, but held his tongue.

  ‘Tony,’ said Master Michael, ‘had, as I think, no other name. He was for years in the employ—yet more companion and mate—of the late and blessed Lord Edward Fitzgerald.’ At the speaking of this name, both brothers swept the hats from their heads, bent to their drink, and then replaced their hats. ‘Lord Edward—yet perhaps you know well his tale?’—here Ali shook his head—‘Lord Edward, I say, was but a youth, a junior officer in his Britannic Majesty’s army, his Regiment being then engaged with the American partisans of Carolina, in that late war. Eager to win his meed of honour, and blood his virgin sword, he champed (as ’twere) at the bit to be in the van of every engagement. In an encounter with the forces of General Harry Lee, among the ablest of the American leaders, young Lord Edward was so severely wounded that he fainted, and was left for dead upon the battlefield. But a Negro—by name, Tony—came upon him, and found him to be something short of dead—carried him to his own cabin—nursed him with great diligence and skill. When the young man was sufficiently recovered to rejoin his fellows, he had no reward he could offer his saviour but a place in his service, for as long as the valiant fellow desired—which the faithful Tony, as he would be known, accepted—and ever thereafter, the Lord and the black were inseparable.’

  Here Ali—perhaps it was the whisky, little of it though he had imbibed—made bold to inquire, ‘Whither they were sailing, and what was their destination?’ He received smiles of gentle condescension from the brothers.

  ‘I meant not to step upon your tale,’ Ali said remorsefully, ‘if it be one.’

  ‘We are merchants,’ said Patrick. ‘We go about buying and selling, in our poor Vessel, and live by our profits, when we have any—after we have paid our Crew—and repaired our leaks and hurts—and mended our sail. We are harmless men, and mean naught but good to you.’

  ‘And why have you done these things? Be assured there is nothing I can do for you—would it were not so—I have nothing—I leave behind only the presupposition that I am guilty of a parricide, made a certainty by my flight.’

  ‘Ah no, young Sir,’ replied the younger brother, ‘we remove you from the Law’s purview, that you may, as the saying is, live to fight another day.’

  ‘Not,’ said his elder, ‘that we suggest you are one who fights and runs away. Ah no.’

  Ali knew that they would answer no question about who it was that had employed them on his redemption. Who had that been? Who? No one had known of his incarceration—none save the townspeople, who were powerless to conceive, far less to effect, his escape, even if any of them had desired it. The thousand enemies of Lord Sane, one or several of whom might be supposed to have suborned his murderers, whoever they were, were not matched by a thousand friends to himself—indeed he knew of no guardians at all, since the death of Lady Sane.

  Thus in all puzzlement he lifted his glass to the bland and cheerful faces of the Irish merchants, if merchants they were, and bade them continue their tale, if they liked.

  ‘It may be wondered,’ said Master Michael, closing his fingers over his stomach and taking up the thread that had been dropped, ‘how one who would prove himself such a friend to Liberty, and that for all men, not only his own Nation, could have served in the army committed to the suppression of the Americans’ just desires to determine for themselves. Well! He was a British soldier, and ’twas his nature—the soldier’s nature—to serve, and to fight, not considering his own opinions of the rightness of his Army’s cause—or, rather, keeping those opinions lock’d up in his breast, lest, by conflicting with his Duty, they may weaken his resolve, or soften his blow, and thereby endanger himself, or those under his command. A hard task at times, though a common one.

  ‘There is no doubt his head, and his heart, turned toward the Americans—though not his Arm. He liked the people, and he thought them in the right. He despised the unending concern of the British with the minutest marks of rank and subordination—liked the Americans for having none such, and accounting no man greater or lesser merely by name, or birth—liked a land where any man, or man and woman, possessed of an axe, a gun, a pair of oxen and a willing spirit, might make a home for themselves, and furnish forth their children, to do the same—to live as they liked—frank and free—beholden to none, except as they agreed. Indeed, as soon as he could after that war ended in the victory of Washington, Lord Edward contrived to return to the Continent—to Canada, there to serve with the British Army occupying that land, but also to travel, to explore, to see for himself.

  ‘I invite you, young Sir,’ he cried, rising from his seat in urgent suasion, ‘to picture the land of Canada, as ’twas then, and no doubt still is—the great rivers and mountains, never yet named or seen but by savages—the falls of Niagara—the flotillas of Canoes by which the savage Nations travel—the snows—’

  ‘Our experience of snow is as nothing,’ interjected his brother. ‘It is as the powdered sugar on a cake. There, the snows fall in November, and heap up higher than a man’s head, never melting till summer—and yet there they go, the savage hunters, walking upon the shining surface in their snow-shoes, and drawing behind them their tabargans loaded with the pelts of Beaver and Moose they have slain—and get on more easily than in the summer forest!

  ‘Lord Edward travelled thus for many a month—slept out under those stars—made his bed of spruce—or a
hole in the snow—and eat his pemican, of the dry’d flesh of the moose—often in the company of a famous Chieftain of the savages, named Joseph Brant by the English, and no other companion, save the faithful Tony.’

  Now his brother had also risen, as though the sights they spoke of lay before his inspired vision. ‘What man of Africa,’ cried he, ‘what slave of Carolina, ever beheld, or acted in, scenes as diverse and wondrous as did the faithful Tony? Chased a moose for days, till it dropt from exhaustion—stood in the thunders and sprays of Niagara—shared with his Friend and Master every hardship—and with him every triumph? No American slave-driver could have compelled his loyalty—much less his love—but an Irish lover of Liberty could do!’

  ‘At the headwaters of the great river of the Mississippi,’ said Master Michael, ‘Lord Edward was inducted by Chief Joseph into his own sept of the tribe of the Mohawks, that of the Bear. Then he parted from that proud savage, whom he had learned to admire as much as to love—while well knowing how many white men’s throats he had cut, and settlements burnt—and made his way down the river to New Orleans, whence he expected to return home. It was there that he learned, from letters long in pursuit of him, that a certain lady of Ireland, upon whom his heart had long been fixed—

  ‘And whom he had reason to believe returned his feelings—despite the unyielding opposition of her father—a cruel man, or at least obtuse and obstructive—which had, as he believed, prevented him from contracting with her—

  ‘The Lady, it now appeared, had, in the long time of his absence, married another—showing, it may be thought, that Lord Edward was mistaken in the causes of her reluctance toward accepting himself.

  ‘There, then, he stood—upon the Continent’s lip—with his last connexion to his native land severed by these news—and found that he had little desire to return to the Old and distant World. Rather than returning to his oppressed land, or to the Army of the oppressor, he thought to go on—for there seemed a forever into which he might go—to the mountains of Mexico, to South America, to the Orinoco, or the Amazon—to the bottom of the world, where the ice and snow appear again—to return never!

  ‘And yet—a letter from his mother was also awaiting him—a lady to whom he was utterly devoted—who was indeed worthy of that devotion. Her desire once again to set eyes upon her beloved Son, melted his heart, and weakened his resolve—and with heavy heart, and few expectations, he began his preparations to return.

  ‘Now see what may come, when Time and Chance wrestle with a man’s will, like Jacob with that sporting Angel, to see who may be the shaper of his fate! Within a month of his returning from America, he had gone on from his mother’s house, to Paris, where the Directorate had then been formed—the year, it must be noted, was seventeen ninety-two—and where the embattled Revolution faced its several enemies among the Monarchs of Europe—which did not yet include, tho’ soon it would, his own nominal & befuddled King. On a certain night, at White’s hotel, British subjects present in Paris foregathered who were sympathetic to the Revolution, and who wished it success; and amid the wild hopes felt that night and the oaths taken, the songs sung and the toasts made, Lord Edward, of the oldest and grandest House his native isle could boast, renounced his title, and in its place took that only of citoyen, frère, camarade!’

  ‘That night,’ his brother continued, ‘at the least, I believe it to have been that very night, the erstwhile noble Lord attended a ball, and there he glimpsed a beautiful young woman, and his heart—that he had thought dead—made known it was alive after all within his bosom. The lady was the illegitimate daughter, by a man formerly a great Duke of France, of a Lady Writer of renown—’

  ‘Chieftainess of that tribe of scribbling women, none other than Madame de Genlis!’

  ‘He woo’d, was accepted, and within weeks was married to the lady. During those weeks he was dismissed from the British Army for the oaths he had taken at White’s hotel. So there he stood—not a broken Heart—not a Bachelor—nor an English soldier—nor an Irish lord (tho’ all would ever call him so still), and before him lay all things. No sooner hardly than he had brought home his Wife, he attended Parliament in Dublin, and struck out upon that path—as unknown and full of hazards as any in wild America!—that would lead to his martyrdom in the cause of his People and of Liberty, and his place eternal in the hearts of all who love them both!’

  ‘So you may see,’ said Master Michael—the storm of feeling inspired in him by this tale now somewhat blown by—‘we do not know what awaits, nor what we may be called upon to chuse, when once our way divides from what it was, and we know not what it shall be.’

  ‘Step upon a Ship’s deck,’ said Patrick, ‘it may convey you merely from place to place—but know that it may carry you from Life to Life.’

  ‘And now,’ his brother said, ‘our duties call us, and we are shorthanded—so I may ask you, to give us what Assistance you can—no knowledge of the mariner’s art required—but a strong Arm—and a Will likewise.’

  Ali averred that he would do all he could to help the kindly pair, and was soon at work doing tasks he had never done before, involving tarry ropes, and great yards of canvas, and dizzy heights, and a language never heard on land, which he must learn—and sometimes when aloft above the Irish Sea, he would bethink him, how he had been himself but recently a Lord, or the son of one; and before that a shepherd, and now was neither, nor hardly yet a mariner—and truly he knew not, what he might yet be, nor cared. He chose not to tell his own tale to the brothers, who did not seek it of themselves, however much they studied him in smiling curiosity. They were as silent upon the subject of their own business, and Ali learned nothing of their purposes, save that they seemed solely to take on goods as they rounded their native Isle, and to deliver none—that they seemed to have many dealings at night—and that they avoided the greater ports and more commodious harbours, where the Royal customs-houses are maintained. Yet it was not until, with running lights extinguished, they turned the Hibernia out to sea, meaning (as it appeared) to round the great toe of England, and make for the Bay of Biscay, and the Western coast of France, that Ali knew certainly their name & trade.

  It was still the days when Buonaparte ‘bestrode the narrow world like a Colossus’, and among other actions shocking to the world—as, the knocking off of Crowns, the tearing up of ancient charters of Privilege, the freeing of the imprisoned, the granting of suffrage to the despised—he had locked up the whole of Europe in his ‘Continental System’, which forbade any of those lands he ruled as his demesne to trade with those outside it. In response, the English government—to whom a blow against trade must have been felt more keenly than even one struck against honour, or religion—proceeded to ban all other Nations whatsoever from trading with the French, thus beggaring themselves, provoking the Americans to a futile war, and achieving very little. For trade nonetheless flourished—tho’ no duties were levelled against it—and it had largely to be done inconveniently, at night—and investors were oft-times discouraged, when a cutter of one side or the other sent their argosies to the bottom, or to impoundment—it mattered not, for like water, Trade is neither compressible, nor destructible, and will flow underground if stopt above. It was withal an occupation for brave men, and cold of blood: and however mild the brothers Hannigan (or it may have been Flannigan, my notes are illegible upon this point) seemed to Ali, there was little they would stop—or had stopt—at, to conclude their business with a profit to themselves.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Master Michael, ‘there is a wisdom in choosing the right cargo to carry. We are fortunate in that, and what we bring will not be stopt, for it goes from our ships to the highest offices in the land.’

  Dark was upon the face of the ocean, and a sweet breeze carried the odours of the shores of France, which lay beyond a far line of whitening breakers that could not yet be heard. Ali begged to know what this precious cargo was.

  ‘Razors of Smithfield,’ replied Michael, and clasped his hands in sati
sfaction behind his back. ‘His Highness the Emperor may despise the English, and their soldiers and sailors, and their King and Princes, and the “nation of Shopkeepers” they rule. But he will not have his cheeks shaved with any but razors of Smithfield, the world’s best, a good number of which we carry below. And corn and tar and tallow and good white ’taters too.’

  Ali’s eye was now drawn to the horizon, where a dark shape had blotted out a square of pale horizon. He asked, ‘If that was not a ship, and making a beeline for us?’ At which the First Mate went to the taffrail—approaching thus a few feet closer to the approaching vessel, the better to inspect it—and bent out over it to sea.

  ‘By certain signs displayed,’ said the Master, ‘we are assured passage to port, so long as we are modest, and make no show. I tell you thrice,’ he added, and held up before him crossed fingers, ‘we have an Arrangement.’ But now a signal-lamp was flashed from the approaching Frenchman, which made clear its intent to interfere with the Hibernia.

  ‘What means this?’ asked Pat.

  ‘The devil I know,’ replied his brother, ‘but I shall not stop to learn. Hard about!’

  ‘I think it may be,’ said Pat, ‘that the arrangement you boasted of just now, Brother, may be in abeyance.’

  ‘Well, well, Pat,’ said Mike, and crossed himself with great delicacy, ‘perhaps you may have a part of the truth. And now that I think upon it, it may be the better part of valor to be discreet, and heave to.’

  For they at that moment saw, as the cutter approached, a red flash of fire—and an instant later heard the sound, and a moment after that felt the passage across their bows, all too near their heads, of a ball—and the simple Truth pronounced by the Irishmen, that ‘when we step upon a ship’s deck, we may be carried not only from shore to shore, but from Life to Life’, was to be illustrated, once again, in the story of Ali.