by Ralph Peters
I let it go. For Underwood and I had other matters before us. And I think he meant it well.
“There is folly,” I told him. “That I would fail to see the need of the thing. With even the least suspicion of Kildare, I should have tracked his journeyings. I should have got the authorities to report his meetings and the like. I let the man run wild.”
Underwood nodded. “Funny, ain’t it? How a thing seems so clear once you’re behind it?”
I tapped the floor with my cane, a bad habit I was developing. “If he is involved in organizing the Irish for some scheme, then these Mesmerism tours give him the excuse to meet the local leaders.” I gave the floorboards a sudden punch with my stick. “It’s worse than a fool, I am. For even a fool would have seen it.”
“What I don’t get, though, is this Englishman.” Underwood smoothed his mustache. “Rich fella like that. Now what’s he up to? I thought the English didn’t like the Irish?”
“They like them on their knees, well enough.”
He sat back and crossed his arms. “Well . . . what do you make of it, Abel? What do you figure? About this duke fella, or whatever he is?”
The connection between Kildare and the Earl of Thretford made as little sense to me as to Underwood.
“What if he’s just another of these spiritualist loonies?” the sheriff continued. “All crazy after seances and funny business like that?”
Now, sanity is not the first virtue of the English aristocracy, but I did not think the earl had come to Rochester in winter to embrace the occult. I shook my head, dismissing the notion.
The sheriff knocked his empty mug on the table. Between me going on with my cane, and him tapping like that, we made a fine racket. We might have been mistaken for seance rappers ourselves.
Underwood had the look of a puzzled child. On his great, red face. “Think he might be after the girl? Cougher or not, the look of her sticks to a fellow.”
Given where Kildare—or Kilraine—had met the Earl of Thretford, I did not think the nobleman’s interest lay in Nellie.
“It makes no sense to me,” I said. “Yet, twas not their first meeting. No, John, they knew each other well, those two. Master and man, they were. Kildare is on some business for the Englishman, that’s sure. And I look for it to be a dark business. But what it is I cannot say.”
He placed his paws on the swell of his thighs. “Oh, for crying in a bucket. Why did this Kildare have to pick Yates County? I ask you now. As if we don’t have trouble enough with the war.” He looked at me with a face that trusted, and I hoped I would not let him down. “Just this morning . . . old Howie Bates was running after me, hollering bloody murder. Wanted me to arrest his oldest boy so’s he couldn’t join up with the volunteers.” Underwood glanced out through a window that wanted a cleaning. “This darned snow gets around to melting, the planting’s going to go shy of hands. Houck boys just went off, too. And folks think I should stop ’em somehow.”
“That would be wrong,” I said. “And unpatriotic.”
Underwood grunted. “Well, you try to tell folks that. Then stand for re-election.” He looked at me. “War’s a terrible thing, Abel. Don’t I know it?”
The good man did not know it. For he had never served beneath the colors. Yet, he was right. For there is nothing good to say of war.
The sheriff looked out through the window again, chewing unspoken words.
“Blizzard weather,” he said finally. “Look how close that sky is. Every day it holds off, worse it’s going to be. Meanest winter I ever saw.”
I rose to go. For I had a visit to make. Twas two days since the Rochester performance. I had come back a day late, by coach, so that Kildare would not encounter me on the train and no one might associate my journey with his affairs. The roads had been difficult, and the inns in decline where the railroad did not stop. The coaches were shabby. You felt loss, and change. From Canandaigua south, only sleighs could manage the roads. Where the rails crossed your course, you waited in the cold and watched a locomotive charge the future.
As I was doing up my greatcoat, I said, “Do not worry, John. We will get to the bottom of this.” Poor Underwood looked as though the weight of the hills lay upon him. “For good men will put things right in the end.” I looked about for my gauntlets, but could not find them. I fear I was distracted.
“Almost forgot to tell you,” the sheriff said of a sudden. “Make of this what you can. Know who went running up after Kildare soon as he got back?”
“The priest,” I said. “McCorkle.”
Underwood stared at me, bewildered.
“The Great Kildare,” I explained, “has great need of salvation.”
Twas more than that, yet I withheld my suspicions from good John Underwood. For I would not accuse any man unjustly, and least of all a man of the cloth. Nor did I want the priest arrested too soon.
“AND MR. DOUGLASS SENDS HIS REGARDS,” I said, standing well back.
Reg’lar John Brent nodded, readying a hideous beast for the harness. “Poor old Fred.”
Yes. Poor old Fred.
“Well, then, Mr. Brent . . . what news in Penn Yan?” I was struggling to maintain my composure in that stable, for I found the place more loathsome than a snake pit. “Any fusses in my absence?”
He soothed the horse and buckled down the leathers. “I believe the citizens have had excitement enough, sir. The rumors are worrisome, though.” He straightened his back for a moment and looked at me. “Major Jones, people are afraid. I’m glad I’m a Negro, and not Irish.” He turned to the animal again, testing straps as a good sergeant will check a private’s haversack before the march. “The talk of violence and insurrection is getting worse. It’s supposed to transpire as soon as the weather breaks. The well-to-do are to be slaughtered in their beds.”
“There will be no insurrection, Mr. Brent.”
“Yes, sir. We agree on that. The Irish aren’t as senseless as all that. But I’m beginning to wonder if there won’t be a massacre.”
I put my hand on the fellow’s shoulder.
“A massacre?”
“Of the Irish,” he said, looking at me now. “Fear leads to madness. And madness rides the stallion of violence.” He patted the horse, which answered with a little neigh. “Some of the hotheads may get a mind to do unto the Irish before the Irish can do unto them.”
I had not thought of things in that light. And felt the fool again.
Douglass had been right. John Brent was a clever man, and well-spoken, when we two were alone. He read relentlessly. That appetite for learning had cost him lashes before he ran north, and had cost him many a penny candle since.
“There will be no massacre of the Irish,” I assured him. As if to reassure myself. “Sheriff Underwood will see to that. But . . . you agree with me, then? There’s no Irish rebellion in the wind? It’s all nonsense?”
You see, I had begun to doubt myself.
He lifted a second harness from the hooks on the wall, lugging it toward a great black snorter.
“Major Jones, have you ever visited our Southern states?”
I had seen the camps of northern Virginia, and served in one ill-starred battle on Dixie’s soil. But that was not what the good fellow meant.
“No, sir, I have not.”
He stroked and soothed the horse, then deftly slipped the straps and bridling over it. “Well, the citizens of our Southland live in constant fear of slave rebellions. It’s a madness with them. A curse upon them, I would say.” He bent to cinch the belly strap. “It doesn’t matter that slave rebellions have been few, and small, and every one a failure. Or that the cost to the black man has ever been immeasurably greater than to his white master.” I caught the corner of a smile on his turned-away face. Twas a bitter thing, although he was no bitter man. “Even old Nat Turner killed less of those folks than they kill of themselves every year, with their dueling and drinking and horse racing. And now this war. Yet, they live in constant fear of the man they hold in bondage.”
He turned his head and I could not see his face at all. He spoke to an invisible audience. “Whenever the fear becomes too great, these paragons of manhood take a stiff drink of whisky and hang a black man, or two—or ten—from a tree. Nor is hanging enough. Their victims are abused, sir. With abuses worse than those credited to our Irish.” He managed a faint laugh. “They say it is done to teach my kind a lesson. But we know it is evidence of their fears. They live in terror of the world they’ve wrought.”
I longed to leave that stew of horsestink and grunting and the banging of stalls behind me. But I wanted the wisdom of John Brent even more than I wanted to escape. Once upon the road, there were limits to the depths of a conversation. I stepped next to him, hungry to know more.
“But . . . you don’t believe there will be a slave rising, Mr. Brent? Even now? With our forces marching to the succor of the black man?”
He looked at me. For an instant, derision commanded his features. It soon dissolved into sorrow.
“Major Jones,” he said, “I believe you’re an honest man and a good Christian. So I’ll honor you with a frank answer. No. There will be no slave rebellion. Firstly, because the armies of our Union aren’t marching much of anywhere, at the moment. Unless that squabbling out west amounts to something. Secondly, when they do march, they will march for their own advantage, not to free the black man. Our freedom, should it come, will be incidental. Until we, too, are allowed to serve in uniform, many will see such freedoms as may be granted us as unearned and undeserved.”
His head fell as he turned to finish with the second horse. “The condition of the Negro resembles that of the Irishman, Major Jones. Although the latter is not held in chains. Neither will rebel, for each is too downtrodden. Consider our American Revolution. Was it made by the wretched? No, sir. It was made by gentlemen. Even Mr. Paine, whom I admire, did not write for the slave. He aimed his volleys upward, sir.” He paused in his labors and looked at me. “Even the subsequent events in France, the Reign of Terror, must be blamed on the educated—sometimes I fear my own books. But then I turn again unto the Gospels.” He shook his head in sorrow. “It’s the well-fed who rise up. In hopes of being better-fed still.”
He led the black, tugging on its bridle. I gave the creature plenty of space. “It’s never the poor who make the revolutions,” he said. “They swell the crowd, but do not rise until aroused by men who otherwise despise them, men who use them for their own ends. No, sir. The poor do not spend their time thinking about high ideals, but about bread and the avoidance of the lash . . . about gaining a bit of shelter for their families, if such they are allowed to have . . . and about living through each day. Easy, boy, easy now. That’s just our friend, the major. No, the Irish will not rise. Not without a leader from another class. Even then, they’ll need convincing. They know they have it better than they might. Why, I’d even wager that—”
Other footsteps trod upon the planks, and a sharp voice called for service. Twas a gentleman of the town, whom I had passed a time or two.
“Yassuh,” John Brent answered, crimping down his shoulders and shuffling as he guided the horse toward the light. “Yassuh, Mistuh Farnum. Reg’lar John’s a-coming. Ooooh, I be coming like I’se bee-stung. Yassuh.”
I ASKED JOHN BRENT to take me to the highlands, to the heath that Nellie loved.
I knew she would be there.
The clouds hung plump and low, with a dirty look. As though the coming snow would fall unclean. The horizon closed, and the snow-clad earth showed lighter than the sky. I knew John Brent did not want to go up there, but go the good man did.
I had no fear of Nellie. But she was not alone in that half-forgotten world of moors and glens. I carried my Colt, belted beneath my greatcoat.
Twas cold. But now it was only discomfort and not misery that I felt, for I had my health again. At least, my health of body. My soul remained a vexed and troubled thing.
No singing now, not from John Brent nor me. No hymns or sprightly tunes to pass the miles. Those black-bellied clouds would not have it. And the road had thawed and frozen again. Reg’lar John had to pay attention, to keep the horses from breaking their legs. The sleigh skittered from side to side, threatening to plunge into a ditch.
We passed the taverns, Bull Run and Manassas, shut against the cold but plumed with smoke. The quiet was not of slumber, but of a world holding its breath.
No living creature showed itself. Even the birds were in hiding.
He knew his way, John Brent. He followed trails I had forgotten, where no sleigh or wagon had passed for weeks. Often, there was no track at all. He found his way by judging lines of trees and marking the shanties in the hollows.
Then we saw the hoofmarks. Plunging down the lane beyond our team.
Twas her. I knew it. Out riding. As if she could outrace death.
The heavens sat so low she seemed enfolded: A black wraith at the border of the world. There were no grand perspectives now, no endless ridges or burning twilights. Only the gunpowder gray of the sky, and the old-bandage color of the snow. As if a battle had been fought and lost. With only the girl left standing.
I got down from the sleigh. Recalling the wind from the time before, and my own desperation. Now the world held still. No flags of hair, no blowing capes. Only the smallness of her form across the heath.
“Careful, sir,” John Brent said in a hushed voice. “Step clear of the places where the snow’s sunken down. The ponds don’t freeze properly up here.”
I left him blanketing his horses.
She had been waiting for me. The Lord only knew how long she had been waiting. In that cold.
For me.
I trudged toward her, with the snow crusted hard. In the troughs between the drifts, my boots squeaked. I did not sink this time. I walked above the earth.
Like her.
Only I went like an old man, hands buried in my pockets. For I never had found my gauntlets.
She turned before I reached her. Perhaps at the sound of my boots. Or at the bidding of her spirits.
The snow had iced over where the earth fell away. I wondered how she kept her balance. So fearsomely close to the edge.
A new fur cap warmed her. Twas a dark, rich thing. Her hair fell from it.
“I thought you’d come to me in Rochester,” she said. “After the performance.”
“Miss Kildare—”
“Then I realized you had to follow my father. I understood.”
“You saw me, then?”
“I knew you were there. I always know when you’re there.”
“But you didn’t tell Kildare. Did you?”
She shook her head. “We cannot change the—”
“You didn’t tell him,” I said, “because you want me to kill him.”
She gasped. Struck in the heart by a bullet of words.
“I . . . never . . . my father . . . I . . .”
“Stop it. He’s not your father. He’s no more your father than I am.”
She bent over. I thought a fit had seized her, and feared she would tumble backward into the abyss. But twas only sorrow.
“I never wanted . . . I . . .”
I moved toward her. Carefully. And took her by the arm. Drawing her away from the ledge.
“I never wanted . . .”
“I know, girl, I know. I sp
oke too hard. We do not always see the thing we want.” I smelled her sickness and her sweetness. The ends of her hair brushed the hand I had fixed upon her. Beneath the heavy sleeves I felt a wasting.
She wept.
“Does he . . . abuse you?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “It was worse in the madhouse. Please, don’t let them take me back there.”
Now you will say, “He must have been amazed at such an utterance.” But I was not. For I had been thinking long on the matter. Look you. We label “madness” all that asks too much. For we want peace, and not cruel revelation. We have less patience with the seer than the sinner, and shun the least discomfort of the mind. When the parlor games are done, we’ll have no spirits.
“Don’t let them take me back there,” she repeated. “Promise me.”
“I promise,” I said. And I meant it, Lord help me. “I will not let them take you to such a place again. For you don’t belong there.”
I was holding her like a child by then, though I know not how we come to it. She wept against the rough nap of my coat. Head upon my shoulder.
“I only want them to leave me alone,” she whispered. “But they never will.”
“It’s all right,” I said, though it was not.
“I can’t explain it. Sure, and I’d tell it all to you, if I could.”
“I know.”
“She came to me again. By day. She told me all. She had a message for you.”
I laid a finger across her lips. Her flesh was fever hot, her temples wet.
“I’ll have no message, girl,” I said gently. “For we must let the dead go. Twas me you heard, not her. I was the one who kept her from her rest.”
I did not know if such a thing was true. I do not know if any of it was true, or if it was only Mesmerism and dreams. Let philosophers and men of science argue about such like. I only know the dying girl believed. And for that moment, I believed with her. Thereafter, I was free of it. But let that bide.
“It’s all that I can give you,” she said. “My visions.”
“You have given me what I need, see. And there’s an end to it.”
“I’ve tried to find out for you. About his doings. With the Irish. But he tells me nothing. He locks me in my room. The way they did in the madhouse. Only now . . . he’s the only one who comes to me. Who comes to me that way. It’s better so. He’s the only one. And he isn’t cruel. He’s not a cruel man. He doesn’t hurt me. But he doesn’t tell me the things you want to know. He says he’ll put me back in the madhouse, if I don’t do what he wants. I’d rather die than go back . . .”