by BJ Hoff
With the help of Denny Price, Michael mustered a platoon of men. As he and Price rushed the door, the officers poured out behind them, driving back the front ranks of the mob.
His blackthorn club raised, Price drove through the crowd like a stampeding bull. Michael had abandoned his club and drawn his gun before charging out the door. He took off after Price, shouldering his way through the red-faced attackers, leveling the pistol on one angry face after another as he went. They had been instructed against firing into the crowd, but there had been nothing said about firing a warning shot or two into the air.
Once they’d pushed the mob back and managed to secure the door, Michael left Price in charge and hurried off to the main entrance at Astor Place. For a moment he could only stand and stare at the scene in front of him. The mob here was denser, and clearly more violent. The young participants, mere boys, had gotten the best of the police. From all appearances, they were about to break through the main doors.
Even as he watched, a policeman trying to force them back fell, crumpling under a volley of stones. Rage rose up in Michael, and he took off running after the officer’s assailant. Shooting once in the air, he caught up with the youth, grabbing him hard from behind and shoving him down onto the street. He had no orders to make arrests, but arrest the little thug he did, sending him stumbling into the theater under the strong arm of a young patrolman.
The officer who had fallen was unconscious. Pocketing his gun, Michael hooked his hands under the man’s arms and hurriedly dragged him inside. When a fiery-eyed youth and his companion tried to block the policemen from the entrance, Michael flung out his leg, booting one a hard blow to the kneecaps, the other a kick in the groin.
Once inside, he shouted at nobody in particular, “We need a doctor for the injured!” then took off toward the house doors to see if he could muster some additional men to hold the main entrance.
Behind him, someone called his name. Michael whipped around to see Benjamin Fairchild, captain of the Eighth Ward Precinct, rushing toward him.
Fairchild’s face was a thundercloud. “We’re to order our men inside right away!”
“Inside?” Michael stared at him in amazement.
The other precinct captain nodded shortly. “We’re to rally every man inside in order to hold the building. The military is on the way.”
Michael’s anger quickly gave way to mere frustration. He knew it was the only sensible call.
“We can’t hold them off any longer, Mike,” Fairchild reasoned. “We’re but a few against their thousands. And they’re altogether out of control. The chief says it would be meaningless slaughter to leave the men out there any longer. The best we can do is secure the building—if we can—until the guardsmen arrive.”
Michael gave a curt shrug. “Aye, well, let us hope, then, they don’t arrive too late for us all. I’m thinking the slaughter will be worse if that rabble storms the building.”
Fairchild left him, and Michael turned to glance inside, toward the stage. Incredibly, the play was still going on. Furious noise battered the building, the chandelier hung in ruins, shards of broken window glass lay everywhere, and the crowd was screaming. But the English actor, Macready, still raced through his part, looking entirely foolish in his attempt to make himself heard.
It was dark by the time Daniel and the others hurried off the ferry at Brooklyn and made for home. When he saw Mr. Farmington waiting at the docks beside his carriage, Daniel’s stomach wrenched with fear. Whatever had happened must be bad. Bad, indeed.
Mr. Farmington’s face was grave, his eyes tired. He shook hands briefly with each of them, then took Daniel by the arm. “Daniel…a moment, son.”
A heavy weight of dread settled over Daniel’s chest. He saw Mr. Farmington dart a look to Pastor Dalton, then Dr. Grafton. “A sad thing has happened,” he said quietly, returning his gaze to Daniel. “A tragic thing, I’m afraid.”
He hesitated, and something in Daniel suddenly flung up a protest. He did not want to hear another word. He didn’t want to know about this latest tragedy, whatever it was. He had thought they were finished with tragedy. At least for a time. There had been enough of it in their lives. More than enough.
Daniel looked at Mr. Farmington. Slowly he shook his head, denying what was to come before he even heard the words.
3
A More Recent sorrow
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
W.B. YEATS (1865-1939)
By nine o’clock the militia had arrived at Astor Place, but as yet the soldiers had refrained from firing.
The mayor had also made his presence known, along with a number of news-hungry reporters. When the curtain finally came down on Macbeth, Michael and some of his men ushered the audience out through the door on the Astor Place side. They passed without incident through a detachment of infantry who stood with fixed bayonets.
After another forty-five minutes, both the police and the militia were pleading for orders to fire on the mob, but the mayor—a politician to the end—resisted and subsequently disappeared. Michael was standing nearby when a young officer, blood streaming down his face, virtually begged for permission for the police to defend themselves. Finally, in the mayor’s absence, Sheriff Westervelt gave the militia orders to fire.
By this time, the actor, Macready, had retreated to his dressing room. Rumor had it that he’d been given protection by a number of leading citizens, including one Robert Emmett, under whose roof he would shortly be secured.
Michael knew who Emmett was: a nephew and namesake of one of the great Irish patriots from the failed rising at Dublin Castle in the early 1800s—Emmett of the Unmarked Grave. “Let no man write my epitaph,” the hero had declared before his execution. “When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then and not till then, let my epitaph be written.”
It occurred to Michael that the great patriot would turn over in his unmarked grave were he to learn of his nephew’s alliance with an English stage actor. For another moment, he watched the furtive flight of Macready and his protectors from the Eighth Street entrance, then started back inside.
His hopes that the trouble might ebb before the bullets started to fly were rudely dashed by the explosion of musket fire. Whirling around, he bolted through the door and hit the street at a run, crouching low as he went, to avoid making himself a target.
As if in a dream, Daniel entered the house, stopping just over the threshold. There was a hush throughout, except in one of the back rooms, where someone was quietly weeping. The sound tore at his heart.
His mother…once again, his mother was weeping.…
Abruptly, he thought of Johanna and looked about the parlor, but there was no sign of her. He felt Pastor Dalton put an arm around his shoulders, and he allowed himself to be led to the rear of the house, to his mother’s bedroom.
His knees felt stiff and wooden as he entered. He stopped just inside, caught by a sudden sense of his surroundings going dark. Everything seemed submerged in shadows except for the scene in front of him. For a moment, it was as if the rest of the world had faded away and left him only this one small corner of reality.
In the carriage on the way home, Mr. Farmington had related the little he knew about the accident, repeating the witness’s explanation of what he had seen before pulling Little Tom out of the pond. But in spite of the painful pictures that assailed his mind, Daniel somehow could not comprehend it all. On the way up the walk to the house, he had shaken his head to clear it, to prove to himself he was awake and not dreaming.
Now he stood staring across the bedroom, still numb even as he beheld his mother. She was sitting up in bed, clinging to a white-faced Evan as she sobbed against his shoulder. At the foot of the bed, Dr. Grafton was already opening his medical bag and searching its contents.
Daniel caught a deep breath as Evan, then his mother, turned toward him. Her face in the candle glow was ashen and tear-streaked, her eyes enormous a
nd frighteningly bleak. At the sight of Daniel, she gave a choked sob and opened her arms.
In her trembling embrace, Daniel’s own sense of loss nearly overwhelmed him. A terrible grief…grief for them all wracked his entire body as he felt her weight collapse against him. He was aware of Evan’s hand on his back, as if he sought both to comfort and be comforted.
For a time the three of them had no words. They could only vent their sorrow, while feebly attempting to console one another.
At last Daniel managed to speak. “Where is Johanna?”
His mother’s weeping began anew as she gestured toward the hall, in the direction of Johanna’s bedroom. Gently Daniel released himself from her embrace, making way for Dr. Grafton to examine her.
Daniel would have thought that the ache in his heart could not possibly deepen, but as he crossed the hall and stood peering into Johanna’s shadowed room, a stab of fresh pain took his breath away.
She sat in the darkness, her small, thin figure illuminated only by the weak glow of moonlight from outside. Her head hung down, her arms dangled loosely at her sides. She looked for all the world like a small, discarded rag doll.
He hesitated only a moment before crossing the room to stand in front of her. For a long time, she gave no sign of recognition. Finally, she lifted her face, tear-stained and smudged with dirt. Daniel swallowed hard against his swollen throat as he met the torment in her gaze.
At last he held out his arms to her. Her eyes traveled from his face to his hands, but still she hesitated. Then, her face crumpling to an expression of raw grief he knew he would never forget, she began to jab one finger into her chest, over and over again, as hard as she could. As she poked at herself, she sobbed, a terrible silent, choking sound that Daniel thought the saddest cry he had ever heard. The jabbing went on, until finally he could bear it no longer and moved to stay her hand with his own.
“No!” he fairly shouted, wincing at the sound of his own voice in the quiet of the room. He gripped her hand tightly. “No,” he said again, “it wasn’t your fault! It wasn’t, Johanna!” Only then did he realize she wasn’t looking at him and so had no idea at all what he was saying.
Suddenly, she exploded from her crouch on the window seat like a wild animal sprung from a trap. Leaping to her feet, she yanked her hand away. As if to isolate herself from him, she hugged both arms to her chest, clawing at her shoulders as she rasped her grief-stricken, voiceless cry.
Something warned Daniel not to touch her again, that she might fly apart entirely. All he could do was stand there, helplessly watching her flail herself while he tried to persuade her that she had no fault in Little Tom’s death.
Daniel was one of the few persons Johanna had allowed into her silent world. He had made an effort to learn the abbreviated hand language Morgan had devised for the family. With this and the natural understanding that seemed to flow between them, he had managed to make himself her friend.
But now he could almost hear the door to her heart slamming shut in his face, could almost see her backing off, retreating to that strange, silent place inside herself where no one else could go.
And he could do nothing, nothing except to stand, tears tracking his own face, as he bit down on a vicious, bitter anger, an anger he had not felt for a long, long time. Not since Johanna’s sister, Katie, had died.
God help them all, Johanna’s entire family was gone! Katie. Their mother, Catherine. Thomas, their father. And now…now, Little Tom. Only Johanna was left. Johanna, who could neither hear nor speak, whose wee brother had been the delight of her silent life.
Suddenly, Daniel identified the object of his anger, and it only heated his rage. “Oh, God!” he choked out, cringing as his words echoed in the darkness of the room. “Did you have to take Little Tom, too? Couldn’t you have left her something? Can’t you ever leave us anything at all?”
The hellish scene in front of the theater defied belief. It looked for all the world like a battlefield. Horses snorting, bullets whistling, thousands of blood-crazed men running back and forth, hurling stones at the soldiers, even trying to wrest their weapons away from them.
The streets were hot and bitter with the smell of gunpowder. “The soldiers—they’re only firing blanks!” someone in the crowd shouted with bravado. Then, before the echo of the words had faded, one of their own, a green youth, was shot in both feet, crumpling over into the street.
One filthy-looking thug with a large stone braced between his knees suddenly ripped open his jacket, exposing a red flannel shirt. “Fire into this!” he cried. “Take the life of a free-born American for a bloody British actor! Do it, aye, you daren’t!”
But the soldiers did dare, firing at him where he stood.
Michael watched in horror as a tall, fine-looking gentleman made himself an open target by standing in the middle of Astor Place. “You, man!” Michael shouted. “Get away before you get yourself killed!” The man ignored him. A second later, a bullet drilled his skull, and his head exploded.
Sick to his stomach, Michael took up with a band of his men who had come to the aid of the beleaguered militia. By now the mob was out of control entirely. Boys no more than sixteen seemed to make up most of the front ranks—at least three or four hundred of them. They were still hurling their stones at the building as well as at the militia.
The look on most of the soldiers’ faces was pitifully revealing. These same men who only moments before had been begging for permission to fire into the crowd now clearly recoiled at the idea of shooting their own countrymen. Yet shoot they did, as much as possible aiming low, hoping to frighten or, at the least, wound the worst of the rioters instead of killing them.
“Chief Matsell’s been hit!” a policeman called out. “In the chest—by a huge stone!” Michael whipped around and started back toward Eighth Street, thinking they would take the chief inside. But before he ever reached the door, Denny Price intercepted him, waving a piece of paper.
“Mike! Mike—here! From your wife!”
Distracted and disoriented by all the noise and word of the chief’s injury, Michael stopped, staring at Price blankly. “My wife?”
Price handed him the note. Michael frowned at the scrawled words, so uncharacteristic of Sara’s usual neat hand: “Little Tom drowned in an accident at the park this afternoon. I’ve gone to Brooklyn. Come when you can.”
Denial, then dismay slammed through Michael. The poor wee tyke! Drowned?
He looked up from the note. For a moment he could do nothing but stare into the nightmare of killing and insane rage going on about him. Murder and madness. Slaughter in the name of patriotism. People shooting their neighbors in the street and killing the very men sworn to protect them.
On the fringes of his consciousness lurked a thought he knew to be irrational, yet sometimes it came to him in the midst of some horror he encountered in his role as a policeman. When he viewed some evil inflicted by one human being, or an entire group, upon another, he couldn’t help wondering if perhaps in this life it was the nightmare that was the reality and peace only an elusive pretender. Was it madness to aspire to peace when human nature seemed so bent on turning on itself—destroying itself?
Again he glanced down at the note in his hand. Slowly, he shook his head. One thing was certain: There would be no peace this night. Not here, in the streets of the city, and not in the little frame house in Brooklyn.
God help them all, would there ever be peace again?
4
The Gypsy and the Rebel
I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.
OSCAR WILDE (1854-1900)
Dublin, Ireland
Mid-June
Tierney Burke passed his seventeenth birthday in the cold, dark cell of a Dublin jail.
Had he been
at home for the event, no doubt his da would have treated him to a corned beef dinner at the Wells Cafe and perhaps a boxing match afterward. As it was, he celebrated with bitter water and stale bread. The bread was always stale in this place, as was the air, thick with mildew and the smell of unwashed bodies.
It had been quiet for the most part tonight. The only sound was an occasional shout from one of the guards or a muffled moan from a prisoner. Once in a while a cell door clanked open, followed by scuffling noises that signaled a new arrival.
He had been here two weeks now. Two weeks and three days, he reminded himself, marking off another day on the wall with a small stone. He made the mark with an awkward jab of his left hand. His right arm had been broken and was suspended in a dirty sling.
Sinking down onto the hard slab that served as a bed, Tierney leaned his head back against the wall and shut his eyes. He thought it might be nine o’clock or thereabouts, although he couldn’t be sure. His watch was gone, as were all his other personal effects—confiscated for “purposes of security” by the prison officials.
Any question about the time, or anything else for that matter, brought only taunts from the guards. Especially the one called “Boiler Bill”—so named by the prisoners for the angry-looking boils in evidence on the back and sides of his thick neck.
“What’s time to a prison rat?” he would say, his furry broken teeth bared in an ugly laugh. “Hah, I know! I bet you’re impatient for your next fine meal, is that it?” Invariably, he and the other guards would goad the prisoners about the food, which was so foul even the rats turned up their noses at it.
The guards defied all belief. They were like caricatures created by some drunken madman in his dreams. They seemed happiest when hammering a prisoner against the wall or putting out their smokes on the poor man’s hands. A few of them stopped short of being altogether vicious, taking only a mild satisfaction in degrading the prisoners in the cells. But most of them, like Boiler Bill, struck Tierney as altogether deranged.