Mrs. McDonnaugh was too cheery to refuse, and Father Archdall wasn’t someone Jessica wanted to spend more time with, so they headed out to the street. Raphoe was decidedly busier than it was during her first visit. Even with the wind and rain, a steady flow of traffic moved along the streets and most parking spaces were full. Michael’s sleek coupe stood out against the row of compact cars and Lorries.
Enjoying the fact that she was not under the watchful eye of Nan, Jessica started to shove her baseball cap into her pocket but thought better of it when she saw Michael’s disapproving look. Not allowing her mood to be marred, she tucked her hair up under her cap and pulled the hood of her anorak up, hugging Michael’s arm as they walked up the street. Convincing him to take her to town was fun enough, and she smiled at what payment he would expect in order to go to Sligo.
She tried to break the silence. “Sligo sounds amazing. Have you been there?”
“Once. It’s a gritty port town that has seen its better days. Not my first choice if you want to see the quaint side of Ireland.”
“Still, it gets me out to see more of the country.”
He smiled and directed her up the street to a cafe. “Fair enough. Hungry? Let’s grab some lunch before we go.”
She moved toward him and was shocked when a strong shove to her back pushed her to the ground. An unseen hand pulled the hood of her anorak down.
“What the—?” she yelled.
A red-faced and disheveled woman stood over her, slightly swaying and peering into her face. “Faith and b’glory! It’s true! Agnes! Agnes!” she called.
Michael flipped up Jessica’s hood and put himself between the woman and Jessica. “Are you okay?” he asked, pulling her to her feet.
She was about to respond when she noticed another woman emerge from the pub and stop dead in her tracks, mouth agape from a combination of amazement and ale.
“Damn it,” Michael muttered.
“Jaysus, Agnes! It’s her! I told you I saw her in church last week!” The first woman, about thirty years old with a head of curly auburn hair, fished in her purse and produced a dog-eared tabloid. She jabbed her finger at the image on the cover. “You’re the ‘Heiress,’ aren’t you? The one from the States?”
Jessica kept her expression as neutral as she could. “Excuse me?” she said, feigning confusion. “You’re mistaken.” She looked at Michael with a combination of concern and amusement.
Agnes chimed in. “Mother-to-be, Helen, You’re right! Miss Wyeth! Will you give us an autograph?” She fumbled in her purse and finally extended an envelope and a pen.
Helen had stuck her head back into the pub and called for reinforcements. “Tyler! Chris! It’s her! I wasn’t foolin’!” Within moments, the patrons of the pub spilled out into the street.
Michael looked back down the street and gave his head a quick nod. Within seconds, Tim appeared leading his two wolfhounds. The dogs’ eyes glinted with excitement.
“Well, now! Well, now,” Tim exclaimed as his two dogs skipped and jumped around the women. Tim’s waving hand movements and commands of “Down boys! Down!” seemed to rile them up even more. His steady stream of “I’m so sorry! They’re just puppies,” only added to the commotion of women, leashes, purses, and dogs.
In spite of herself, Jessica gave him a look of thanks and kept her head down. Michael’s arm around her waist pulled her to her feet. “Get me out of here,” her words breathless with shock. This is what Nan had feared and what Jessica hated. It was also what Michael had taken such pains to protect against.
Michael guided her out of the growing crowd, both women shrieking with surprise and laughter. Tyler and Chris, equally sodden, were no help in untangling the mess.
“She’s with me.” Michael kept walking. He made eye contact with one of the more sober looking men. “I know. All beautiful blonde Americans look alike.” He laughed slightly and gave his most disarming smile.
It almost worked until Mrs. McDonnaugh came trotting down the street. “Miss Wyeth! Jessica! You forgot your notes!”
Michael intercepted her before she progressed too far down the street. He grabbed the papers and escorted Jessica to his car with its tinted windows. By the time he pulled away, she could see the group of flustered people and jumping dogs close in around Tim—maybe even a camera or two.
When they were well away from town, her jaw unclenched and she relaxed.
“Tim will handle things there,” Michael said. “Nan will tell us when it’s safe to go back to the cottage.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. I am. I should have known better. Nan has done a great job keeping the lid on your whereabouts and making sure Tim was close by in case we needed him.” He glanced in the rearview mirror and gave a nod of satisfaction. “We did. I shouldn’t have listened to you, but you can be very persuasive.”
Color rose to her cheeks, and she looked back toward the town. “Thank you for... for,” she faltered, “You’re behind all of this and I, well, I’ve been looking over my shoulder for a long time. It feels really good when I can relax. It’s nice to have someone on my side.”
“I do it for my own selfish reasons.” He accelerated onto the main road, ensuring distance between them and any ambitious followers. The corners of his mouth turned up slightly. “You’re a devilishly difficult person to find once you decide to run, and I’ve decided I like being with you.”
Jessica relaxed, enjoying his lighter mood. “So, now?”
“This is the only time people will be certain they recognized you. Tim will have them chasing in circles and will make sure that other woman—”
“Mrs. McDonnaugh.”
“Right. He’ll make sure she stays quiet.” He checked his mirrors again. “Sligo?”
Jessica raised one eyebrow and gave a half smile as a response knowing he could not say no. She settled back into her seat and watched the countryside zip by.
The weather cleared as they traveled southwest toward the coast, taking the N15 through Ballybofey and Bundoran. The highway was hardly more than a well-kept two-lane road, but the lack of potholes and loose gravel allowed for speed. The route wound through towns with stucco houses and over miles of roads marked by narrow bends with signs that warned Ná Scoitear or No Passing. Rocky land void of trees rolled over hills. Lush grasses, clinging to thin soil, were grazed to the nub by herds of sheep and cows. They passed bogs swept clean by ceaseless wind and loughs with shores of black rock.
After an hour, Michael detoured west off the main highway toward the coast. He enjoyed the opportunity of driving his BMW 840CI on the winding roads. Jessica was impressed that he adapted his driving style so easily to roads with confusing signs and foreign customs. The vistas sparked a feeling of adventure, and Sligo promised to be another quaint Irish city. Jessica found herself looking forward to an afternoon of exploring. She was surprised to be disappointed when instead of finding cobbled streets and brightly painted buildings, she found a broken down city dominated by creaking and decaying piers. Sligo was a city still pulled down by its past.
The brief walk down Stephen Street to the library archives took them past a monument of bone-thin figures huddled together. A plaque explained that the city was the main departure port in the 1850s, when scores of Irish tried to flee the Great Famine. Ships quickly earned a reputation as coffin ships for the barely survivable conditions on board. Jessica stopped walking and looked at the statue.
“I can’t believe a whole country was starving.”
Michael looked at the figures and nodded. “Not just Ireland. Europe was suffering, too. Many people claimed ample food was available but accused the British of withholding it.”
Jessica gasped. “Genocide?”
“That’s what many claimed then, and some historians agree with now. What’s not disputed is the fact that British policies about land ownership and taxation placed a disproportionate strain on the Irish. The gulf between the two countries widened.”
Jessica tu
rned her attention back to the memorial. Lured by promises of “spacious berths and comforts for the travel at sea,” trusting and unsuspecting men, women, and children scraped together passage fares and paid them to unscrupulous ship owners. The hellish ships were overburdened and under-supplied, maximizing money in and expenditures out. By some estimates, over one third of passengers died on the crossing and never saw the golden streets of America themselves.
Jessica shuddered at their experience but knew that Margaret had traveled years after such strife. Still, she wondered she’d find any common threads. As they entered the library, a cheery man greeted her. Half-moon spectacles barely clung to the tip of his nose. He gripped and pumped her extended hand with energy.
“Greetings to you! Father Archdall called ahead. I’ve gone ahead and pulled some records for you. Only ships that sailed from Sligo to Boston? Most of our voyages terminated in Nova Scotia or Canada, as it shortened the trip. A passage to Boston would have been more expensive, so there were fewer of them. That should make your research easier.”
Jessica followed the stooped man down a worn flight of slate stairs into a large room filled with rows of tall bookcases. Over long wooden tables hung humming florescent lights, yellowed with age and dotted with dead flies. Along one wall was a group of college-aged students, each huddled over a machine that looked like a large photocopier. “We’re only now getting to puttin’ our records in electronic storage. If the images on the old microfiche aren’t sharp enough, these interns will help you locate the original.” Beside a microfiche reader sat a pile of oversized, leather-bound books.
“Once you identify which ship and voyage you want to look at from the fiche, you can review the passenger lists and other ship information in these volumes here,” he said, motioning to the books.
Jessica got to work searching the records while Michael wandered off to review models of old ships that dotted the walls. A young girl with large round glasses and a bouncing walk approached her and offered assistance.
Within an hour, the girl had helped to locate some information.
“Here you go, Miss. This is the list of passengers on the day of sail and what leg of the trip they were on, like whether they were leaving Ireland or simply returning to the States. That would alter the documentation expected from them. You’re right. Miss Margaret Heinchon sailed from Sligo to Boston in April 1958.”
Jessica’s heart skipped a beat. “Does it say anything more?”
“It wouldn’t have been typical for a girl of that age to travel by herself and arrive in a strange city without some kind of escort or having a contact at the other end.”
“You mean she wouldn’t have gone alone? That she had some kind of connection in the States?”
“See here?” the girl pointed to the paper. “She checked the box that said she was emigrating.”
“She was intending to leave Ireland for good?”
“Yes. Emigrating to the States also means she would’ve needed to have a sponsor. Most sponsors were employers of some sort. It was easy to get a visa if you had a job waiting at the other end of your trip.”
“Okay, that means I could be looking for both a sponsor and an escort?”
“More than likely. Sometimes sponsors hired an escort for insurance to make sure their new employee got to them, but that was for highly skilled and valuable workers of some sort. For laborers or domestic help, the escort was usually a friend of the family, or they traveled alone. I’ve seen records of boys as young as eight making this passage alone.”
The girl hoisted another thick book from the stack. After a few minutes, she pointed to another form.
“These books are the paperwork filled out by the passengers themselves.” She ran her fingers down the page. “Here’s something. It says here that she was to be employed on Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts as a governess. Her future employer and sponsor was P.A. Wyeth. Is that a relative?”
“’P.A.’? That must have been Paul Andrew Wyeth. My, er, grandfather,” she said in surprise.
Michael walked over when he saw the shocked look on Jessica’s face. “What’s up?”
Jessica told him her discovery. “Paul’s wife had died many years before and left him to raise three children. Jim was the oldest and would have been about seventeen years old when Margaret arrived. Jim and Margaret eventually married.” She leaned forward in her chair, stirred by this new information. “I knew they met in Boston, but I never knew she was a governess to Jim’s younger brother and sister. Did she travel alone?”
The girl ran her fingers down the columns of names in the registry. “Nothing here... but there’s one more place I can look.” A half hour later, she hauled out another book and placed it on the long wooden table. She scanned more columns of names and figures, running her index finger down each page. She paused at one entry. “These books are the bursar’s records. Looks like a Gilchrist Adams paid cash on the balances for two passages the morning of departure. It seems she was escorted by Mr. Adams,” she said looking over her eyeglasses. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“Gilchrist?” Jessica asked, incredulous. “Could that be Gus?”
“Yes. ‘Gus’ is the common nickname for ‘Gilchrist.’”
“She traveled with Gus Adams?”
“Well, it certainly seems so,” was the reply.
Michael gave a low whistle. “Wow. I didn’t expect that.”
“I didn’t either.”
Jessica was silent for a long time. “Bridget. Margaret. Jim,” she said, her voice a monotone. “That I barely understand. But Gus? They all knew. They knew the truth and never told me. I don’t get it.”
“Maybe they never found the right time.” He tried to soften the edges of a jagged wound.
“Bridget lived with me for ten years after the accident. Ten years! Gus was at the farm for as long as I can remember, and you’re trying to say they never found the time?” She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and breathed deeply. “They knew,” she repeated, fury fading into sorrow. “They knew.”
“Excuse me? Knew what?” the girl asked, interested in the mystery.
“Nothing,” Jessica snapped, more discourteously than she intended.
The girl shrank back. “Are you done with these, then?”
Jessica took a quick look at the register and nodded.
Michael could see her confusion and hurt and didn’t want to push beyond her limits. “I took a look at the ship’s specifications in the archive. The RMS Presidential was predominately a goods and livestock cargo ship that had limited passenger accommodations.”
“Livestock?”
“Yes. From what I learned, it looks like it was one of the best transports for horses. It made frequent trips back and forth from Boston to Sligo. It was decommissioned in the late ‘70s when its parent company was sold. Their shipping license is still active.”
“Oh? Fine.”
Their trip back sunk into silence. Jessica looked out the window and barely acknowledged Michael’s presence. Occasionally she would sniffle. Michael was at a loss of what to do.
The silence broke when a phone began ringing. Jessica was startled to see Michael reach into the console and pull out a handset.
“So then it’s clear?” he said, irritation in his words. He hung up.
“That was Nan. The curiosity seekers have been mollified. We’re safe back at the cottage.”
“What? Oh. Okay. Good.” Jessica’s voice sounded thick.
“You okay?”
She looked at him with red-rimmed eyes. “Bridget raised the money for Margaret’s passage and gave it to Gus.” She pinched the bridge of her nose as she fought to control the catch in her voice. “They all knew each other. Here. In Ireland. They were all connected somehow. When Bridget needed help, she relied on Gus.” A gasp, almost a sob, escaped. “But it was Gus who connected them to the Charity!” The words, nearly screamed, released full cries of anguish and confusion.
Mich
ael pulled the car over on a remote stretch of road. He gathered Jessica in his arms and waited for the sobs to subside.
Jessica’s words came out in chokes and sputters. “Gus.... Why?”
Michael tried to soothe her. “Gus wanted to protect you.”
“He was killed for it!” Jessica pushed Michael away and looked at him. “By your father!”
“I know.” He was helpless for more words. “I know.”
“I thought Gus got into the Wyeth’s b-business to find a way to f-funnel money to the Charity. Th-that he was ordered to by your father.”
“You’ve told me enough about Gus for me not to doubt that he loved you.”
“I don’t want to imagine what that could mean. I never d-dreamed a relationship between the Wyeth’s and Gus formed before he went to work for Jim, but now,” she rubbed her face with her hands, “The fact that there was a connection between Gus and Bridget before they met at the farm is... is...” Her voice trailed off as words failed her. As suddenly as the sobs had started, they stopped. Jessica and Michael sat in the quiet of the car, unsure of what to do next.
They didn’t talk the rest of the drive back to the cottage. Michael tried, but Jessica kept to herself. Pain and confusion shadowed her face and after a while, he left her to her thoughts. His cell phone rang a couple of times, and he made his apologies to Jessica for needing to speak privately. She merely shrugged her acquiescence, but the truth was she barely noticed. The only thing Jessica wanted to do was to get back to the crawlspace and retrieve more of Bridget’s diaries. What she had already learned about her mother’s young life in Northern Ireland was compelling enough, but the connection to Gus was astonishing. Learning of this earlier connection unsettled her even more.
Jessica waited until Michael was asleep. Careful not to make any additional sound, she sifted through the contents with greater care, noticing some items for the first time. More journals begged to be read, but an old tin proudly proclaiming it once held John McCann’s Steel Cut Oatmeal since 1876, got her attention. A faint whiff of vinegar mixed with bath powder filled the air when she pried off the rusting lid. She shook out the tattered black and white photographs, their once shiny surfaces cracked with age.
The Troubles (The Jessica Trilogy Book 2) Page 12