by Pete Hamill
My Son,
If you should read this Letter, then I shall be gone to the Otherworld. I have left here for you these Objects that I hope will be of assistance in your own Journey. I can give you Money and Gold but cannot give you what you will need most. That is, a belief in Justice and Work. I think you have a Love for both and will not let that Love die. I think you know that the Tyranny of those who stole Ireland will eventually be defeated no matter how many of the Irish they kill. As long as one Irishman remains alive, singing in Irish, they have lost. In your life, I hope you will never oppress the Weak, that you will oppose Human Bondage in all its guises, that you will bend your Knee to no man. Be kind. Find a good Woman and love her. And thank you, my Son. You have made my life a great Happiness.
Your Father
Struggling for control, Cormac pressed his father’s words to his trembling heart. Read them again. Saw his face, his sinewy arms; heard his voice; pictured him sitting alone at night to write these words (as if knowing he might never get to speak them); saw him hammering iron; saw him gently taking Rebecca’s elbow as they left a church that was not their own. Cormac wanted to speak one final time to him.
Then he and Thunder were on the move again, the letter and the banknotes folded into Cormac’s shirt, the heavy coins in his pocket, the Dean and the earrings back in their satchel, the forest dark, a road below them to the left (the wheels of a coach making a far-off screeching sound), and he kept whispering to Thunder. “On to Galway, great heart. On to the town of white houses and Spanish women. On to the sea, Thunder. To the ships.” On horseback, he drowsed into a jagged sleep. Hours passed. Mary Morrigan took his hand and led him to the blank wall. His mother stood on the road to Belfast, dressed in a coat of many colors. His father laughed and shaped red iron.
He snapped awake to the barking of a dog. Once, twice. Far off. Perhaps miles away in the smothering fog. The barking stopped as quickly as it started. They were on a true road now, not a forest trail, in a thick yellow fog, all signs of the wider world erased. He could see the ground, with its gashed ruts and a few white-painted stones on the sides, and it was going to the west.
A hint of a breeze. The road rose. The fog lightened. Farmhouses emerged silently in the distance, and he could hear the lowing of unseen cows. Then again, suddenly, from somewhere behind them, much closer this time, the barking. Thunder stopped, turned his head. Cormac followed his glance.
And then, racing from the fog, came Bran.
He barked and yipped and ran in a mad circle around them until Cormac leaped down beside him and hugged him and growled to him, saying his name again and again, Bran, Bran, Bran, and rolled with him on the lumpy earth of the frozen road. Finally the dog was exhausted and flopped on his back while Cormac scraped the caked mud off his filthy belly with his finger-nails. Bran was thin. He was scratched from thorns and bramble. But he was delirious with joy. He ate greedily from the oats in Cormac’s palm while Thunder nuzzled them, breathing warm air upon them, until Cormac gave the horse some oats too.
Then, in the distance, coming fast but still unseen, they heard galloping hooves and squealing wheels. Cormac stood, leaped onto Thunder’s back, and unsheathed the sword. Thinking: It’s too late to turn and run. He angled Thunder so that his sword hand couldn’t be seen. He hoped, for a moment, that the hoof-beats and wheels belonged to the Earl of Warren. In his black coach. With his diamond tooth and emblazoned W. Thinking: Then I’ll have no need to reach Galway and sail to America. I’ll kill him here. On this Irish road. In this Irish fog.
But it was not the Earl of Warren. Visible, as if plowing through the fog, was a royal mail coach pulled by two bony horses. A teamster sat high on the seat. A bearded fat man was beside him, cradling a musket. They seemed startled to see Cormac, Thunder, and Bran (who was barking fiercely), but they were not afraid (for there were two of them and one had that musket). They slowed and stopped. The man with the musket raised it in an agitated way and then lowered it again. Cormac thought: He must recognize that if I were a highwayman, I would have to be a very strange one indeed. Even the great Dick Turpin, hero of schoolyard songs, did not bring a dog with him to rob mail coaches. Still, the two men peered anxiously about them, as if looking for possible accomplices.
“Is this the road to Galway City, sir?” Cormac said, trying his best to sound as innocent and needy as a lost boy.
“ ’Tis.”
“How far would it be now?”
“Dunno, in this fog. Maybe six hours?”
“Are the ships sailing? For America, I mean.”
“There’s one at dawn. If you hurry, you might make it, lad.” The driver abruptly whipped his team and they rolled on, taking no chances on Cormac’s apparent innocence. Cormac sheathed the sword and nudged Thunder toward Galway, with Bran moving beside them on the gullied road, the horse careful not to move quicker than the dog could run. They rode for miles, the fog relentless, but the world growing warmer. They came to a bridge over a small running stream and Bran darted down the bank and plunged in, twisting and shaking as he cleaned the dirt from his coat. They all took long drinks and then returned to the road, going up a steep incline. At the top of a ridge, they could smell the sea.
29.
They couldn’t actually see the ocean, but its immense, full presence was somewhere before them. Cormac worried about the hour (for it remained dark), and the day, and whether the ship had already hauled its anchor and unfurled its sails. Hurry, Thunder. Hurry. The sky slowly brightened beyond the fog. Cormac took dried beef from the pouch and ripped a piece off with his teeth and tossed some bits to Bran, who leaped and took them before they hit the ground. Through the fog, he heard a breeze combing unseen trees, and they were climbing again on the empty road, and the breeze was louder, smelling now of salt and the dark Atlantic. The road twisted and climbed and then peaked, and suddenly the fog was gone and below them they could see the great wide bay and the city of Galway.
They paused and gazed down upon it, at red tile rooftops and a few steeples and the battlements of a castle and all the houses white as salt. Limestone houses. Mortar houses. Smoke rose from chimneys, and here the morning breeze was a wind, the smoke streaming horizontally, the fog blown south. Away off, Cormac could see the masts of ships.
“We’d best hurry,” he said, and Thunder set off, moving downhill on dirt roads and then into streets covered with mashed straw mixed with mud and then onto cobblestones. Bran was anxious now: in a strange place with strange odors and (Cormac was sure) detecting the odor of farewell. They found a main street whose name kept changing—from Williamsgate to Williams Street to High Middle Street—and he saw buildings bearing coats of arms, and morning shops beginning to open, and gargoyles grinning from the sides of one gloomy church. Three wagons moved slowly toward them, the first drover yawning. The wagons were empty, their dawn business already done.
“The ship for America?” Cormac shouted. “Has it sailed?”
“Not yet. It’s the Fury you want. But if you’re needin’ her, you’d best hurry.”
He urged Thunder on with his knees, but the street traffic was thicker now: horses with riders, carts and wagons and a few coaches, and people hurrying from narrow lanes toward the shops.
More traffic blocked their way, carts, horses, wagons, and Thunder picked up Cormac’s anxiety (the Fury, we need the Fury, get to the Fury) and tried to go around and was shouted at (fecking horse, big bloody horse, get back, fecker), and then a burly redhaired teamster tried to grab his reins and Thunder shook him off and another wagon came from a side lane and up that lane Cormac saw a flash of scarlet. Jesus. Brit soldiers. A toothless old man placed himself in front of Thunder.
“Ye feckin’ eejit, ye can’t go this way!”
“I’m going anyway,” Cormac shouted.
One wagon moved and there was a narrow space and Thunder plunged toward it and passed through and then began to gallop. Free of the jam, free to run. And he ran. It was two long blocks to the quays,
and he ran the run of his life, hooves clattering on stone, Bran barking, women jumping to the side, and Thunder dodging carts and carriages and panicky horses, running for the water, for the ship, for America: and then they were out on the pier.
At the far end a three-masted ship was easing away from the pier. An English flag. Sails unfurling. Ropes cast off. The Fury.
“Run,” Cormac screamed. “Run, Thunder, run, run, run.”
And Thunder kept running, his hooves hammering the timbers of the pier, running full out, head low, running for the Fury.
Men looked up at them with alarmed faces.
And Cormac’s heart began to wither.
The Fury was now about fifteen feet away from the pier head. Thunder didn’t care.
At the end of the pier, at the end of his frantic gallop, at the end of Ireland, Thunder leaped.
Rose.
Soared.
They were suspended high above water.
Flying.
There was a human roar.
And then Thunder came down hard and splay-legged on the planked deck, skidding in a sliding, scattering rush, then pivoting somehow to avoid going off on the far side. Cormac spilled out of the saddle to the deck. The passengers shouted like an audience at a circus. Cormac got to his feet, grabbing the sword case from the saddle. Thunder snorted and shuddered, at once defiant and afraid, his ankles intact, his eyes blazing, backing up, prepared to fight.
“What in the name of Sweet Jesus is this?”
Cormac turned to the face of an enraged man, his skin and red beard merging into a kind of hairy fire. He had pushed through the astonished passengers.
Cormac said, “You’re going to New York and—”
“We board at the bloody quay! Not after we’ve hauled anchor and not on bloody horseback! Who in the hell are you, anyway?”
“Martin O’Donovan’s my name,” Cormac said, making up the name on the spot, not knowing if his own name was on some list for immediate arrest.
“Well, I’m Tom Clark and I’m the first mate, and I never bloody well heard of you.”
He glanced at Thunder, then back at Cormac.
“My father’s dying in New York,” Cormac said, compounding his lies. “I need to get there, please, Mr. Clark. I’ve got the fare.”
“Not with this bloody horse on board you’re not—as fine a bloody horse as he is. We’ve got enough trouble carryin’ our fourteen niggers without adding a horse.”
He ran rough, covetous fingers along the side of Thunder’s head, but the horse jerked away as if touched with hot pokers. Clark came closer. Thunder backed up, pawed the deck, snorted at the first mate, then dashed for the railing and leaped into the sea.
Another roar, shouts from crew members, and Clark was astonished.
“Jesus bloody Christ!” he said, peering down at Thunder, who was moving in the sea. “Are yiz part of some circus?”
“No, sir,” Cormac said. “I just have to get to America and I’m told the fare is three pounds.”
“I should let you keep your money and drop you in the bloody bay,” Clark said.
Then his attention shifted as the ship itself seemed to pause, water sloshing at its hull, reluctant to depart. Tom Clark barked orders to men in the rigging and marched aft. Cormac thought: I’ve made it. I’m on the Fury. I’m about to sail the ocean sea.
Down at the aft end of the ship, passengers were shouting across the harbor water at the shore. Cormac pushed in among them as the ship suddenly began moving with purpose. People were waving from the receding shore. Men, women, and children in long, dark clothes formed small, shrinking, wedgelike silhouettes against the gray morning sky. Beside Cormac, men were weeping and calling names. Good-bye, Ma. Good-bye, Eileen. So long, son. Then he saw Thunder’s head bobbing in the water, slick and black as a seal, swimming relentlessly for the shore. And off to the right of those who were waving their farewells, he saw Bran. He was on a spit of sand, among scattered rocks, barking and pacing and darting into the water. Thunder was aimed at him like a black spear, until he seemed to stop, his legs finding land below the water, and he hauled himself up in a bent, exhausted way. Bran danced around the horse, and then, as the ship moved out of the bay, they turned together to face the strange, cold, receding sea creature with its billowing sails, and to face Cormac. They were still as statues and watched him go until he could see them no longer.
Good-bye, Thunder. Good-bye, Bran. And good-bye, Ireland.
30.
Cormac searched for order in the shouting and tumult of the open deck. Clark directed him in an annoyed way to a man called Blifil. He was the purser. A pale, dusty man with dandruff on the shoulders of his crumpled serge jacket. He explained in a mournful, dubious voice that for a late arrival, there were, hum, only two choices: a cabin berth, which was of course too expensive for the likes of an Irish lad in his teens, and, hum, a plank belowdecks with the indentured Irish. He was shocked when Cormac (or Martin O’Donovan) presented him with three one-pound notes for the cabin berth. “I’ve saved for three years, sir,” Cormac said shyly. “I might as well splurge.” Blifil shrugged, pocketed the money, made a check mark and a scribble in a book, and led Martin O’Donovan to his cabin. It was on the main deck, to the right of a passageway leading to the captain’s quarters, and Blifil said he must share it, hum, with a Mister, hum, Partridge, yes, Partridge, about whom he told Cormac nothing. Blifil opened the door with a key, told him to, hum, guard it with his, hum, life, since there were thieves everywhere, see, and then hurried away in a bent shuffle.
When Cormac entered the gloom of the cabin, a heavy middle-aged man was sleeping deeply on his cot (to the left), fully dressed, one booted leg trailing on the floor. This must be Mr. Partridge. A second cot was to the right. Cormac stared at the sleeping man. His round belly rose and fell slowly, as if tied to the slow roll and fall of the Fury. His breath was phlegmy. His hair was thinning. His double chin needed a scrape with a razor. The leg on the floor seemed to be guarding a worn leather bag that was jammed under the cot.
The sight of Partridge (exhausted, collapsed, a huge breathing softness) made Cormac drowsy. He fell upon the empty cot, turned his back to the bulkhead, hugged his few possessions, and, while the ship rocked as gently as an immense cradle, fell into a deep sleep.
He awoke in the dark. Mr. Partridge was gone. In the dim light from a porthole Cormac found an oil lantern on a small table, but he had nothing to light it with. Beside the lantern there was a bowl of water. He sniffed, to be sure it wasn’t urine, then splashed his face. He hid the sword case and his small bag under the cot and went out, locking the door behind him, shoving the key deep into a trouser pocket. He still felt the presence of Ireland, although he could no longer see its shores. From all sides of the open deck there was a hum of conversation, lamps moving and bobbing, men laughing. In the center of the deck stood a kind of caged barnyard holding chickens and pigs, and past it dozens of sailors were smoking from clay pipes, while a few passengers lolled against bulkheads. None were distinguishable; they were simply figures in the darkness. The sea made a swishing sound as the Fury cut its path west.
Suddenly they entered a bank of fog. And through the fog Cormac could see the sheer cliffs of a small mountain rising at least three hundred feet out of the sea. It was covered with a golden mesh.
A voice beside him said, “Jesus Christ, what’s that?”
It was his cabinmate, Mr. Partridge, his jaw slack as he stared in awe. Plummy English accent. Intense stance as he gazed at the sea. First Mate Clark appeared at his side, and all three stared at a gold-meshed mountain rising from the sea.
“It’s on no map,” Clark said in a hushed voice. “They live inside it.” His voice softened. “You know, the Other People. Sometimes it’s here, and sometimes it’s not….”
The Englishman looked at him, then laughed out loud.
“What other people?”
Cormac stepped away from them because he knew what Clark meant. He peere
d at the gold mesh, the small black sea mountain. High on the summit there was a woman. Completely alone. Waving farewell. When the ship came closer on a hard angle in order to pass to the vast ocean, he could see the woman more clearly.
Mary Morrigan.
THREE
The Ocean Sea
Without a sigh he left, to cross the brine,
And traverse Paynim shores, and pass earth’s central line.
—LORD BYRON, ��CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE,” 1812
31.
Ireland had vanished. Cormac and Mr. Partridge were lodged in one of two cramped cabins built under the raised platform of the poop deck, on the starboard side of the Fury. A gloomy passageway separated the cabins and led down six steps to the captain’s own cabin. When his door was open, Cormac could glimpse a polished table and windows opening to the foamy wash behind the Fury. A clergyman and his wife occupied the port cabin. Cormac saw them the first day out to sea: he tall and grim, she small and pale. They were dressed in mourning black. The clergyman’s wife soon disappeared into the cabin. The clergyman, whose name was Andrew Clifford, carried meals to her on a small board. Cormac couldn’t tell if she was seasick, or being guarded from the heathen roughness of the crew. Sometimes, late at night, he could hear her weeping.
Mr. Partridge told Cormac (or, as he knew him, Martin O’Donovan) that he was himself a Londoner and that this was his third voyage to New York. With any luck, I’ll make my fortune this time, he said. And if I do, I’ll have to decide. Do I stay and get even richer? Or do I go home to London? The source of his potential fortune, he explained, was crated and wrapped and buried in the hold: a printing press. They have something unique in the colony, he said. Freedom to print what they want, thanks to this legal case—have you read about it?—this case of John Peter Zenger. He told Cormac how Zenger, a printer, had been charged by the authorities with using a press to subversive ends, and how he fought the charges in court in 1735, and won. The problem is they have much to say but too few presses upon which to say those things. I intend to help them speak. At the moment, he said, there were only two printing presses for eleven thousand people! Incredible! He laughed a deep belly-growling laugh. So it’s missionary work, lad. Bringing the modern world to the barbarians!