by M. P. Barker
“All right, love?” Liam asked Billy, reaching out to tousle her hair. She shook her head. “Nor am I,” he agreed. “But I’m none so bad as I was before, now that you’re back.” He met Daniel’s eyes. “I’m that grateful to you, sir. Who are you, and how did you come to find her?”
“Me name’s Daniel Linnehan. As for how I come to know Billy—”
“Billy?” Liam repeated.
“That’s what she’s been calling herself. ’Tis a bit of a long story.”
“I’ll make some breakfast while you talk,” the woman said.
“I’m sorry. In the excitement I never—I—well, this is Augusta.” Liam gestured toward the woman. “You remember her, don’t you?” he asked Billy. “She lived across the way from us.”
Billy dried her eyes and nodded. “Aye, but what’s she doing here?” she asked.
Liam colored slightly. “She’s me wife now. That’s a bit of a long story, too.”
It was getting dark by the time Daniel and Billy headed back to the tavern. Liam and Billy had spent the morning talking of all that had happened since Billy had left Cabotville. After dinner, Liam had taken them to the burial plot and shown them the rough board he’d cut to mark Jimmy and Mick’s grave, there being no money for a proper stone. When the day began to fade, Daniel and Billy took to their horses with promises to return on Monday after Liam’s workday was finished.
Billy rode with her cap pulled low over her eyes. Daniel saw her tremble under her baggy woolen frock. “All right, lass?” he asked, although he knew she’d not be all right for a long time.
“I still can’t believe it.” Billy sniffled and dragged her sleeve across her face.
“Aye.” Daniel’s own eyes prickled with moisture at the memory of Liam and Augusta, red-eyed, leading Billy and Daniel to the grave.
“It feels like they’re out there playing in the streets, only just not come home yet,” she continued, with a wave at the muddy road and darkening houses surrounding them, candles and lamps not yet beginning to glow behind their windows. She lifted her face to Daniel, her cheeks shiny with moisture in the fading light. “I should’a been there to take care of ’em.”
“Why? So you could’a took sick and died, too?”
“At least I could’a tried.”
“Aye, and if you tried as hard as ever you could, and you failed, you’d feel no less wretched for the trying. Liam tried.” He ran a thumb along the ridges of scar tissue that twisted around his forearm like tongues of fire. He knew well enough that trying was no comfort. At least Billy’d not have the memory of hearing her brothers cry for her and being unable to save them.
“It’s like you’re always saying,” Billy said. “I’m never thinking of naught but meself. They needed me and I was off singing and playing with horses and not thinking of them at all.”
“Mr. Stocking and Phizzy needed you, too. And Pearl and the other ponies, they’d’a missed you, had you not come along.” Daniel said. “I’d’a missed you, too.”
She smoothed Pearl’s mane. “Jimmy and Mick, they’d’a liked to’a seen the ponies dance.”
“They’d’a been proud of you. Maybe they are yet, if the priests are to be believed.”
The sun had long disappeared by the time they reached Court Square. The meetinghouse steeple and courthouse cupola stood out as gray shadows against an indigo sky, rising above the skeletal branches of the square’s elm trees. At Mr. Warriner’s tavern, a bright spark moved across the front windows and multiplied as someone began lighting candles or lamps. The tavern sign creaked on its hanger, swinging back and forth in the chilly breeze.
“Here, lass,” Daniel said as they tethered Pearl and Ivy to the hitching posts. “You go inside and fetch a lantern. Tell Mr. Warriner we’ll bed down our own horses for the night and save his ostler the work.” He patted Ivy’s neck, told her he’d be only a minute, and went into the barn to get her stall ready.
As his eyes adjusted to the barn’s dimness, he let the comforting, musty aromas of straw, hay, leather, and horses push sadness and bad memories to the back of his mind. Something rustled in the haymow overhead—a barn cat pursuing its dinner, perhaps. His eyes widened, drawing in the fragments of daylight still remaining. He made out the openings of the tool bay to his left, and to his right an open bay crammed with a jumble of poles entwined with beans and hops yanked from Mr. Warriner’s garden, waiting to be sorted out. Farther down, he picked out the sharp geometric lines marking the half-doors of the stalls, the softer shapes of horses’ heads peering curiously out at him.
He fumbled among the tools, grasped a wooden handle, then ran his hand down to find out if it was pitchfork or shovel or rake. He smiled to himself that he’d gotten a pitchfork on the first try. He carried it to the stalls at the back of the barn that Mr. Warriner had allotted to Ivy and Pearl, pausing along the way to let the other horses sniff at his knuckles, rubbing each one’s forehead and murmuring an Irish greeting as he passed.
He spent a few extra moments with Mr. Warriner’s black gelding. Not a wicked beast, but fearful and prone to kicking and snapping when startled. Daniel stood out of reach of the gelding’s teeth and spoke softly to the horse until the dark head lowered and the animal was ready to let someone touch him. “You’re not such a villain, are you, lad?” Daniel spoke in Irish as he rubbed the gelding’s forehead. “You just want a bit of a warning before someone comes at you.” He stroked the horse’s neck, feeling how tense the muscles were. The beast wasn’t calm by any means, but he’d not shivered or shied away as he had the previous evening. It was a tiny step forward. “We’ll do some work with you in the morning, shall we?” Daniel promised before turning to prepare Ivy’s and Pearl’s stalls.
He reached up into the haymow with the pitchfork, pulled down generous clumps of hay, filled their mangers, then fluffed their straw bedding. He set the fork aside and collected the two water buckets to bring them out to the trough and fill them.
Something heavy thudded onto the floor behind him, a body jumping down from the haymow. Turning, Daniel saw a man’s form standing in the barn’s center aisle, his silhouette black against the gray of the back wall and door. There was a scrape and a smell of sulfur as the man struck a lucifer against the sole of his boot and held the match up to light a pipe.
“Are you daft?” Daniel said. What sort of an idiot knew no better than to smoke a pipe in a barn? Then the light revealed a familiar dimpled chin and roguish face: Fogarty. Daniel’s words clogged in his throat, and he fell back a pace.
“Thought it was you, lad, when I heard the Gaelic,” Fogarty said. He shook the lucifer to douse it, let it fall, and stepped on the dead match. “Now where’s me girl?”
“Be off with you,” Daniel said. He was surprised at how steady his voice sounded while inside every nerve and sinew jangled. “She’s wanting naught to do with you.”
“A father has a right to his child,” Fogarty said. “ ’Tis the law—God’s and man’s.”
“Then find yourself a lawyer and sue for her, ’cause I’ll not be letting you at her,” Daniel said, more boldly than he felt. It was one thing to face down Billy’s da from the safety of Ivy’s back, with Mr. Stocking and Mr. Chamberlain and teamsters and show people behind him. It was quite another to do so alone, close enough that Daniel could smell the drink on the man, close enough that he could see that Fogarty stood strong and steady in spite of it. Close enough that Daniel saw the power in the man’s shoulders and fists and knew he’d not be able to match it. He braced himself, ready to fling the water buckets toward the man if he made a threatening motion.
“She belongs to me,” Fogarty said. He took a step forward, his stance easy, relaxed, as if sure that Daniel was no threat. “It’s unnatural, dressing her up like a lad and turning her into a circus performer.”
“What’s unnatural is a father selling his daughter to a peddler. What’s unnatural is a father leaving his sons to die.”
That rattled the man. Fogarty closed
his eyes for a long moment before responding, “I was with ’em. I was with ’em to the end.” He seemed unsure, as if he had to convince himself it was true.
“Were you, now? That’s not the story Liam was telling,” Daniel said, feeling a little bolder at Fogarty’s discomfort.
“Liam’s alive?” Fogarty’s voice cracked. The pipe tumbled, then disappeared as Fogarty’s hand closed around it, catching it. “Jesus,” he said. Daniel wasn’t sure if the name was a prayer of thanks because Liam yet lived or a curse because Fogarty had scorched his fingers. “May the Virgin and saints be praised.” Fogarty crossed himself. “ ’Tis a miracle, sure.”
“A miracle, aye,” Daniel repeated. “That he lived in spite of you.”
The hollow clop of a hoof against the barn’s floor echoed like a gunshot. The grays and blacks of the barn turned to mellow browns and umbers in the glow of a lantern. Daniel’s shadow stretched before him, like a monster consuming Fogarty in its darkness.
“Daniel?” Billy called out.
Daniel turned to see the lass carrying a tin lantern, Pearl following at her heels. “Get out!” he shouted. His warning was cut off as something hard caught him below the ribs, knocking him onto his arse with the force of a horse’s kick and driving the air from his lungs. The water buckets clattered about him as he fell, the sound echoed by the hooves of startled horses rapping the sides of their stalls.
“No!” Billy cried out. “Da, stop it!”
Something caught Daniel a blow against the side of his head and flattened him. Waves of orange, red, and black flowed across his vision. With an effort, he pushed the black aside to find himself lying on his back in the barn’s center aisle. Billy’s light gleamed along the tines of the pitchfork that Fogarty held pressed to Daniel’s chest. There was little need for the threat. His lungs felt as though they’d been squeezed empty. Something wet seeped through his frock beneath his shoulder blades, and for a moment he thought he’d been stabbed. Then he realized that the liquid was cold, and that he lay in the dregs of the spilled water buckets.
“Leave him be, Da!” Billy pleaded. She stood a few paces away, poised on the balls of her feet as if she wanted to plunge into the struggle but feared to make things worse. Behind her stood Pearl, placidly peering over Billy’s shoulder as if wondering what was delaying her supper.
“If I’d’a wanted to hurt him, I’d’a hit him with the fork, not the handle, wouldn’t I?” said Fogarty. “I’ve come to take you home, lass. When I heard you in that show, singing like a very angel, I knew it was God giving me another chance to prove meself, to do things right this time.”
“It’s a fine start you’ve made, attacking me friends,” Billy said.
Daniel tried to get his breath back. He wriggled his fingers along the floor, groping for something to use for a weapon. All he found were floorboards, straw, and dust. Even the buckets had rolled out of his reach.
“What sort of friend steals a child from her home and turns her away from her own father?” Fogarty said.
Daniel’s lungs finally opened, and the dimness at the edge of his vision receded. He let out a feeble moan to let Fogarty think he was still helpless.
“It was you turned me away, Da, not Daniel or Mr. S. or anybody else. And they didn’t steal me. You sold me, remember?”
“They’ve poisoned your mind against me so you don’t know truth from lies. Well, I’m not having it. You fetch up that other horse of yours and we’ll away so’s I can be setting you straight. Hurry, now, if you’re not wanting to see your friend bloodied.” The word friend came out of Fogarty’s mouth like a curse.
Billy’s eyes traveled from her father’s face to Daniel’s. The set of her shoulders softened in apparent surrender. “All right, Da. I’ll go with you, but I can’t take the horses. They belong to Daniel.”
“We need those horses.” The fork pressed harder against Daniel’s chest. “Don’t make me hurt him, love. It’s for your own good I’m doing this.”
As Fogarty shifted his weight, Daniel realized that his right hand was only a few inches from Fogarty’s feet. Cautiously, he slid his fingers closer to Fogarty’s brogans.
Fogarty didn’t seem to notice. “Bring me that other horse, lass,” he said. “Then we’ll go find Liam and be a family again.”
With his right hand, Daniel grabbed one of Fogarty’s ankles and yanked while he thrust his left hand between the tines of the pitchfork and shoved it away from his chest. Fogarty staggered, one arm windmilling to save his balance, the other trying to hang on to the pitchfork as he fell against a stall door. The door shuddered against Fogarty’s weight, the horse within kicking and letting out a furious scream.
Daniel rolled away, trying to shout for Billy to run, but the sound came out more wheeze than warning. He thanked God for the tumblers’ training that had him collecting himself almost by instinct. He poised on his haunches and whirled to face Fogarty. The whirling drove his stomach into a somersault and sent his brain reeling.
The horse screamed again. Daniel saw Mr. Warriner’s gelding, ears pinned flat against his head, yellow teeth almost glowing as they reached for Fogarty. The next scream was human. The horse sank its teeth into Fogarty’s shoulder, lifted him half off his feet, then let him drop. The stall door trembled behind the churning hooves. The gelding lunged again, and Fogarty lurched away from the snapping teeth just in time, staggering backward into the darkness.
Suddenly, Fogarty didn’t matter at all to Daniel, for there was something much worse to fear: the smell of burning straw and Ivy’s empty stall awash in an orange glow.
Chapter Forty-Five
Daniel couldn’t move, suddenly pulled back half a dozen years, hearing Ma’s and Michael’s cries, unable to find them in the blaze that scorched his lungs, blistered his skin.
“Sweet Jesus,” he groaned, shaking his head with a fierceness that set his stomach roiling. No. Not this. He had a moment’s indecision—to fight the fire or get the horses out? If he chose the horses, the fire would grow even as he turned his back on it, grow enough to kill the horses left behind, and perhaps to set alight the tavern as well. The fire had to come first. He staggered toward the closest stall, threw open the door, and grabbed a water bucket, flung open the next door and snatched another bucket. He discovered Billy by his side, trying to help, but he shoved her away and screamed at her to take Pearl to safety and fetch help.
Then he was conscious of nothing but the fire. He emptied his buckets onto the flames, then flung open the other stall doors, dodging frightened horses’ hooves and teeth. Two by two he seized the buckets and emptied them on the fire until there were no more buckets left. He paused with the last one in his hand. The fire was smaller now, but that last pail wouldn’t be enough to completely douse it. He tore off his woolen frock and crammed it into the bucket, then used the sodden garment to beat the flames down. Behind him, horses screamed and reared, their hooves banging against walls and floors. There were human shouts, too, but he shut them out, forced himself to see and hear only the fire, fought it as if in the killing of it he could get vengeance for that fire of long ago.
Tears and phlegm ran down his face, clogging his nose and throat. Smoke blinded him so that he could barely see the flames. He grew lightheaded, his lungs screaming for a breath of clean air. Then someone was beside him with more buckets, more water, and another someone tried to drag him away.
“Got to get ’em . . . get ’em out . . .” He sobbed and tried to wrestle free.
“It’s all right, boy. The fire’s out and the horses are safe.” Somebody shook him and pointed out the chain of men and boys passing buckets one to another. “Thank God it got no farther than the one stall,” the voice said.
Daniel stared numbly at the man’s face. Everything seemed a blur of color and darkness, the firefighters mere ghosts behind a curtain of smoke. His legs crumpled beneath him like hay falling under the scythe. Two men hauled him out between them, and he collapsed in the dirt outside the barn, w
eeping and puking his throat raw. He wanted to curl into a ball until he stopped shaking, but there was something he had to take care of. Something important, only he couldn’t think what it was. Perhaps he would remember if his head didn’t feel as though it had been laid open with an ax.
He became aware of people and livestock milling about, filling the street and barnyard. Shouting at the onlookers to give way, a group of men hauled an enormous tawny-colored vehicle into the yard with a clatter and clanging of bells. One of the crew directed some of the bucket brigade to fill two troughs in the wagon, while the rest ranged themselves along long bars on either side of the vehicle. Another pair of men hauled a fat hose from the wagon and dragged it toward the barn to soak down the embers.
“You hurt, boy?” somebody asked.
Daniel squinted up at a large man with soot-stained clothes. He wanted to shake his head, but it felt as though it might wobble off his neck if he did. “I—I—I—” was all he could manage.
“Let’s get you in the house. Your cousin’s fretting like—”
“C-Cousin?” Daniel babbled in confusion.
A yellow-haired child broke through the crowd, screaming his name. The child flung his arms around Daniel’s neck, and—No, her arms, Daniel realized, finally able to locate himself in place and time. “You’re all right?” Billy shouted, her cry half question, half exclamation.
He winced and shushed her. The shushing felt as though it opened another fissure in his skull. “I har-hardly know,” he said.
Gingerly, Daniel shook his head at the glass of rum the landlord’s wife offered. “Water,” he croaked. He couldn’t tolerate anything that would burn his throat any further.
Mrs. Warriner shrugged dubiously. “Water’s none too good here,” she said. “Ale?”
“Aye, that’ll do.” He slumped on the settle and closed his eyes. He’d barely had the strength to assure himself that Ivy and Pearl were safe before allowing himself to be led inside. All he wanted to do was shut his eyes and drift away into his safe green place. But not just yet. “Billy?” he said, opening one eye a crack.