by John Pipkin
When Caroline wakes and feels the weight of Finn’s arm upon her and the heat rising from beneath his shirt, it seems as though there has never been a time when they were not as they are. It is a peculiar sensation, the pull of another body with its own atmosphere of wants and needs. It is a wonder of chance and circumstance that they have come together here, as though they have been making their separate ways toward this moment, a lifetime spent in waiting until they could inhabit this one. And now that they have found each other they will make their own present anywhere they choose.
When Finn stirs, she tells him they cannot stay and he says he will follow wherever she goes, and he will build a new mirror and a telescope big enough to touch the sky, but she tells him she is finished with all of that. She tells him about her life in London, and he says he will follow and make repairs to the orrery and mend whatever else is broken, and Caroline wonders what Mrs. Humphrey will think of him. Finn stretches but does not rise from the couch where they have spent the night; he draws ambitious plans in the air above their heads, a storefront twice the size of what Caroline has imagined, a large sign lettered in gold, rows of glass cases filled with curious objects and an alcove where he will tinker over pocket clocks, and the sweep of his enthusiasm prevents her from telling him that he ought not to set so absolute a course, for she has seen how, in the end, things will happen as they will, but the more Finn talks of the future the more it seems real. He asks her to tell him about the things she saw in the night sky, and as she talks he traces constellations along her forearm with his fingertip.
And then Finn says that he has brought something for her, something he has worked on for many months, and he goes to the foyer and comes back with a satchel and he pulls from it a narrow box the length of her arm. She thinks it must be a small spyglass, some new innovation of mirror and prism, and she is already shaking her head and telling him again that she no longer has use for such devices when he opens the box and shows her the shining fretwork of metal ribs and springs. It looks like the silvered skeleton of some odd sea creature, and she cannot guess its purpose at first.
She places her hand upon it and feels a spark in the contact. When she asks what it is, he hesitates and seems to want her to figure its workings on her own, and before she asks him again a loud noise rises from the garden, the sound of fists and stones against the hollow length of the unfinished telescope, and then the syncopated slapping and stamping of men under arms. Finn closes the box and goes to the window.
“We can hide until they pass,” she says.
A window shatters and a flung stone rattles across the floor of the foyer.
“If they enter and discover us in hiding,” Finn says, “they will think—” He cannot finish the thought. He hands her the box and she cradles it in one arm and finds it heavier that she expected. Finn looks to the window and back at her.
“I will speak to them,” he says, and it sounds to her as if he were trying to convince himself of the usefulness of doing so.
“As soon as I return,” he says quietly, “we will set out together. Wherever you want.”
He heads toward the door and stops, turns. “In the chimney at the forge,” he says slowly, “there is a loose brick and a purse—”
“I will not hear of it.” She stops him from saying more. “I will not leave without you.”
Finn nods, and for a second it seems that he might change his mind and tell her that there is another way after all. But instead he says, “Then go where they will not find you, and wait for me.”
“Finn, don’t leave.”
They had found each other when it seemed impossible, and now she cannot calculate the probability that it will happen ever again.
“It’s only to send them away,” he says. “Don’t worry. I promise to come back to you.”
Chapter 32
THE FIRE IN THE AIR
The men are led by a priest in a long black cassock, close-fitting and buttoned to his ankles, and Finn’s first thought as he stands in the door is that the man cannot possibly run far or fast so restrained. The priest gives his name as Father Malcolm O’Day, and he addresses Finn by a name not his own.
“William Moore?”
Two men stand behind Father O’Day, red-faced and stout as tree trunks, and each holds a length of wood as thick as their forearms. The rest of the men, a hundred or more, have left the road to forage in the trees and pick through the underbrush, and here and there Finn spots the gaping mouth of a blunderbuss and the glint of a pike head, though most seem to carry shovels or axes or long sticks sharpened to points.
Finn tells them his name and says he is a blacksmith and that he is alone.
The priest smiles and clasps his hands behind his back. He makes no motion to enter and the men next to him stare in silence.
“So this fine house is not yours, then?”
There is a clattering deep inside the house, a sound like a wire birdcage hitting the floor, and one of the men curls and uncurls his fist. Finn shows them his hands blistered from heat and the soot ground into the skin, and he tells them again that he is a blacksmith.
The priest pinches Finn’s shirtsleeve, rubs it between his fingers as if to judge the fabric’s worth. “You would not be the first to put on a servant’s dress and think to fool us.” He glances at the green kerchief tied to the door. “And what is this? It’s easy enough to hang a bit of cloth and call yourself our friend. Is this your doing?”
Finn does not know the right answer. He sees a snare in either direction. He says that William Moore has fled, that he knows nothing more about the house or its owner and that he has had nothing to do with the kerchief on the door.
“And why then, friend, do we find you here?” Before Finn can answer, the priest steps closer. “In Arklow I met a landlord who swore his allegiance to us and the next day he had three of our brothers whipped and pitch-capped at the triangles.” He puts his hand to his mouth, and it seems a sign for the men next to him to speak.
“We burned his house,” says the one.
“And him inside it,” says the other, sucking his teeth.
Among the men lingering just beyond the door, Finn sees no one resembling those who came to him in the night, but he cannot say for certain that he would recognize them in daylight. He tells the priest that he has made many pikes for the cause and that surely there must be one among them who can speak for him. Some of the men are readying torches and gathering kindling and their intentions grow clearer by the minute. If he steps aside and tells these men to do as they wish, would they allow him to leave with Caroline at his side? Would they believe they were friends to the cause? Or would they accuse them of being loyalists and drag them away to something worse?
Father O’Day coughs into his fist. “You say you are a blacksmith. You say you have no quarrel with us and that you have nothing to do with the cloth on the door. And yet here you are.” His eyes are red and watery and they push against their lids. There is the stink of sickness about him, a damp rot rising from his lungs. He wipes his mouth with a yellowed rag. “If you stand with a man who would claim ownership of land not rightfully his, how can this not provoke a quarrel?”
“I do not stand with William Moore,” Finn says.
Father O’Day coughs again and spits thickly in the dirt. “So then, you will step aside. We are marching on Wexford. The men need arms and food, and whatever might be useful in trade.”
Finn wonders if Caroline has had ample time to hide, and then he thinks of her climbing to the roof to shelter in the observatory and he pictures the house ablaze beneath her. He has heard from Duggan Clare how the attacks on the mail coaches—meant only to halt the mail and so send a signal—had gone terribly wrong, coaches burned, horses slaughtered, passengers left bleeding in the road. How quickly might this priest lose control of the men already lighting their torches?
“There’s nothing here worth the weight of carrying,” Finn says.
The red-faced men push Finn aside a
nd the priest steps into the empty foyer, and there is no telling what they will do next. Desperate, Finn tries to think of a way to persuade them to leave, a threat or enticement, but he has only one pike ready at the forge and that one alone will not suffice to satisfy them. And then he thinks of something more.
“I might have what you’re after,” Finn says.
Father O’Day surveys the dark foyer, the bare walls. He claps his hands and listens to the echo. Then he comes back to the door and taps Finn’s breastbone with his finger.
“I knew if you thought on it, you would save us the trouble of searching every room.”
“But you’ll not find it here.”
Finn hopes that Caroline will stay hidden until he can lead these men away. When he is done with them he will come back and take her by the hand and together they will run from here, for these men will surely not be the last.
The priest calls his men from the woods and tells them to drop the kindling and snuff the torches, and Finn leads them down the hill toward the town. Some of the men are singing and there are curses and gruff laughter and the slap of bare feet on dirt. But when they turn from the road and step into the huddle of trees in front of the forge they fall silent.
The men grumble and point into the trees where bright copper wires loop through the branches and pass between the shutters at the window. Father O’Day stops and follows their outstretched arms. The priest slips two fingers beneath the buttons at his throat and removes a silver cross on a chain, kisses it, and motions for the men to follow. And when none dare set foot beneath the wire, he coughs and spits and tells them to wait, and alone he follows Finn into the dark forge.
Finn goes directly to the cold hearth. The thought comes to him that he might easily push the priest to the ground and clamber through the window at the back. But the men waiting outside would be upon him at once, and when they returned to New Park—as surely they would—what would they do then? He must see to it that they have no cause to go back. Finn gropes in the darkness for the shutters at the back and throws them open, and in the dim light he retrieves a pike from the hole in the floor and hears the priest clear his throat.
“I have only to call out, and my men will come.”
Finn hands him the pike and the priest pounds the shaft on the ground to test its soundness. Along the wall a number of unfinished wooden staffs stand waiting.
“Is this all?” the priest asks. “A single pike?”
“It is not finished.”
Finn takes back the pike and lays it on the table and with hammer and chisel he grooves a spiral down the length of the wood, top to bottom, then he sifts through the ashes in the hearth with a set of tongs and withdraws a smoldering coal. He blows on it until it glows and he sets to work again. When he turns back to the priest, a bright copper wire coils down the groove in the shaft, welded in place at top and bottom where Finn applied the hot coal.
The priest runs his thumb along the wire. “Is this meant to strengthen it?”
“What do you know of galvanic energy?” Finn rakes his fingers through the air. “Animal electricity? The animating power of our limbs?”
The priest frowns. “God alone animates us.”
“And what is the mechanism of this animation?”
“Spirit.”
Finn shakes his head. “Fire. The fire that resides in the air.”
Father O’Day objects, but Finn recognizes the expression, the mixture of disbelief and wonderment that he saw on the faces of the men and women who came to him with their ailments in Mary King’s Close, and he waves his hands just as he saw the galvanist do on the Royal Mile before the crowd overturned his table and chased him away.
“The copper attached to the pike’s head,” Finn says, “will draw the electrical fire from the air—as a leech draws blood—and it will flow through the wire like a fierce river.”
“To what purpose?”
“Should the man who holds this weapon be injured in the fight, this wire, clutched tightly, will deliver a galvanizing spark.”
The priest tilts his head, suppresses a cough that rattles his shoulders.
“A spark,” Finn explains, “that will revivify him.”
Father O’Day laughs. When he speaks, his voice gurgles in his throat.
“You would have me believe this? That I would lead an army of dead men?”
“Not dead,” Finn says. “Revitalized. And there is no other pike like this one.” Finn can hear the uncertainty in his own voice and he tries to summon a grave tone. “The one who carries it need fear nothing.”
Finn expects Father O’Day to laugh again, but the priest holds the staff to his ear, as if to listen for the hum of the wire.
“Such strange and wonderful things I have seen since this began,” the priest says. “Such fantastic promises.” He studies the copper wire in the shaft. “If this is the devil’s work, we will use it to heaven’s advantage.”
The priest hands the pike back to Finn, claps him upon the shoulder, and says, “Keep it close, and pray it brings the protection you describe.”
Finn can still feel the weight of Caroline’s head on his shoulder and the rest of herself curled against him so slight she might have been a bird perched upon his chest. Even now he feels the soft patter of her heart inches from his own, each beating against the other. And in the small corner of his brain where thought and invention are ever turned toward the days to come, Finn is already miles from Inistioge, walking alongside Caroline, bound for Waterford or Kingstown, boarding a ship to America, to Newfoundland, to the tip of Africa, anywhere that men are not fighting themselves. The soil beneath his feet matters nothing to him, and the stars overhead will be the same wherever they go. But here and now, the movement of a moment shows him that this is not to be.
Finn frowns, and though he already sees what will come, he says that he has no need of the pike. The priest suppresses a cough, and puts his hand to his chest.
“You are coming with us, friend. Unless you would have us take another look at the very fine house on the hilltop.”
Finn wraps his fingers around the copper wire and a vision of fire comes to him, New Park in flames and Caroline standing at the roof edge and the flames at her heels, and he tastes something bitter rise in his throat. The priest is already calling to his men as he heads for the door and Finn has no choice but to be pulled along. He knows that Caroline will wait for him. He found her once, and then again, and each time was such an impossibility that there surely could be nothing that would separate them forever. He will follow these men until they are far from here, and then he will slip away and return to her. As they approach the men standing in the road, Finn touches the priest on the arm, and he takes satisfaction in how the man shrinks away as if burned.
They walk for days on the road to New Ross ten miles distant, and it is no easy task to keep the men moving in a constant direction. Along the way they pause often to call others to their number, to fish streams, to rummage barns and fields untended. Sometimes they knock upon doors to demand food and drink, and sometimes they pass without stopping when it seems the knocking will not be worth the effort.
Finn loses count of the passing days, for he is tired and hungry from one to the next. They sleep beneath the trees and build fires from fallen branches, and some nights their fires so fill the darkness that they blot out the stars, and other nights they cannot sleep for their hopeful talk is almost as bright as day. Some of the men have come from the distant end of the county and they have walked twice as far as others; already they say they must return home before long. They speak of corn and wheat and barley green-sprouted and needful of tending. They speak of families desperate to eat in the winter months that will come no matter who sits in Dublin Castle. But none drop their pikes or turn for home. Some few have come from as far as Dublin, and they boast that a thousand men are gathered outside the gates of the city, waiting to throw themselves at the well-oiled guns. And they say there are more men than that massing
in Wexford, where the scattered armies of the United Irishmen will come together when the time arrives. The rest of Ireland will wake to the call soon enough. On the road they meet men who tell remarkable stories. Men on horse, on foot, some injured, some wearing the fine clothes of fatter men, all telling of yeomen put to flight and British soldiers cut to pieces and one of their own called Bagenal Harvey who is leading the fierce pikemen to victories.
They come at last to a stone bridge crossing the River Barrow at New Ross, and the priest sends ahead a barefoot boy with blackened toes to discover who holds the town. The boy slinks over the bridge like a cat and vanishes into his own shadow. The pike buzzes in Finn’s hands as exhaustion works itself from his limbs. It is surely just his imagination he thinks. He had only fashioned the galvanic pike to distract the priest from wanting more, but when he puts a finger to the wire coiled round the staff he feels it bite as if a bolt of lightning has fallen nearby, and he knows a fight awaits them across the river, and another after that. The certainty of it hangs in the air like fire. How long will Caroline wait? Already more than a week has passed. Will she be there when he returns? Across the river he sees a flutter of red on the walls of New Ross.
The boy returns, flushed and breathless.
“We will take it, to be sure,” he says, flinging his hands in excitement, hopping from foot to foot. He smiles, shows them teeth brown and too small for his mouth, and he leads them along the river.
The walls of New Ross stretch out against the opposite bank, garrisoned with soldiers in red coats and cannons gaping and silent. Finn’s throat goes dry as he pictures the guns sending grapeshot and shells into their midst. He has seen the damage done to the old soldiers who came to him in Mary King’s Close and held out their mangled stumps to be fitted with hooks and pegs. The boy’s excitement is infectious, and the men follow along and chatter and make no effort to hide themselves. They wave and shout oaths at the soldiers in pointed hats standing next to the cannon and the men alongside Finn boast that they will need no cannon of their own to take the city. They continue around the bend in the river to the far side of New Ross and then they raise their hands in wonder and gasp. Soon all are jumping and kicking their feet and shouting and pointing at the hill before them, and it moves as if alive, its slopes twitching like the fly-covered flank of an ox.