Song of Erin

by BJ Hoff

  Again, the child pumped his hand a little, then turned to the others and chirped something at them. The hulking form emerged out of the shadows and stood scowling down at Brady. Memory rushed in on him, driving through his confusion: the storm, the violent wind, the rickety little house—the heavy door crashing down on his head.

  His ears rang, and nausea surged in him, then ebbed. He touched his head and became very still. Bandages swathed his forehead and a portion of his skull. He wondered how bad his injuries were. He tried to sit up, but a hand the size of a bound book thrust him back.

  He stared up into the dark-skinned face looming over him, realizing now that the granite-visaged man was younger than he had thought upon first sight of him. Younger, but a hard man all the same, he sensed, harder even than Jack, who had his soft spots once you knew him. He doubted that this towering stranger in his garb of homespun had many soft spots.

  Brady wanted to ask what time it was, if it was night or day, then remembered that these people spoke the Irish. Though he might recognize bits and pieces of the old language from Jack, he didn’t know enough of it to communicate.

  He glanced over at the older girl and saw her watching him, but she made no move to rise from her place in the corner. The child finally released Brady’s hand but stayed seated at his side, her curious gaze following his slightest movement.

  “ ’Tis a bad blow. The door fell square on top of your head. You will need to lie still for now.”

  Startled by the deep, resonant voice and even more by the English, Brady gaped at the man. “You speak English?”

  The man merely lifted one dark brow at Brady’s surprise. “Who are you?” he bit out. Something in that drumroll of a voice seemed to carry a hint of a threat.

  Still taken aback, it took Brady a moment to recover. “Kane,” he finally replied. “Brady Kane.”

  The other’s eyes narrowed slightly. “American.”

  In one clipped word, the black-bearded giant had managed to convey a monumental contempt.

  “Irish American,” Brady shot back, his head throbbing with the effort.

  The man’s expression didn’t change, and Brady had all he could do not to squirm under the full force of that burning stare. “The girl says you helped with the wee wane,” he said, giving a small jerk of his head in the child’s direction.

  “They were more help to me than I to them,” Brady offered. “I might have been blown out to sea if they hadn’t come along and led me here.”

  “What would you be doing in the Claddagh, Yank?” Something about the way the giant flung the words at him made Brady feel as if he had committed some sort of heinous offense simply by showing up in Galway.

  Weak as he was, he refused to be intimidated by this bad-tempered Irishman. “Business,” he said, grimacing at the furry thickness of his tongue. “I’m here on business.”

  His interrogator crossed his massive arms over the broad expanse of his chest. “And what sort of business would it be that brings a rich Yank to Galway City? It’s a poor, backward people we are, after all.”

  Brady found himself wondering if that mocking brogue might not be somewhat affected. He had caught a glint behind that hostile stare of what appeared to be a keen wit, perhaps even a formidable intelligence. Was the man deliberately goading him? But if so, why?

  “Newspaper business,” Brady answered. “An assignment of sorts.” He paused, deliberating as to how much he ought to tell this stone-faced stranger.

  The man’s gaze held steady for a moment more. Finally, he lifted one large hand and gave a tug to the kerchief about his neck, twisting his mouth as if Brady merited no further interest. “Are you seeing me clearly, Yank?” he snapped with a sudden change of subject. “Any blurring of your vision at all?”

  Brady shook his head, instantly regretting the movement. Pain struck his skull like a well-sharpened ax, and he couldn’t stop a groan of protest.

  “Be easy,” said the other. “There was no real damage done, I’m thinking. You’ll be fit enough in a day or so. But for now, you’d best lie abed.” His tone left no doubt that he found the situation less than desirable.

  “Where—what is this?” Brady asked, glancing around the dark room.

  “You’ve never seen a cellar before, Yank?”

  Brady twisted his lip, again irked by the man’s seeming dismissal of him as a fool. “What time is it?” he hurried to ask before the other could turn away.

  “ ’Tis morning. Well past first light. The storm has gone, but we will stay below for a time, all the same.”

  “Your house—”

  “It still stands, except for the roof.”

  Brady glanced at the girl in the corner, who had turned back to her occupation with the bolt of cloth on her lap. “I’d like to thank her,” he told the man hovering over him. “I don’t even know her name.” He paused. “Nor yours.”

  The giant’s eyes went hard as stone. “Don’t be making more of it than it is,” he said, his tone harsh. “The girl is soft. She would bring a wolf into the house if the beast followed her home.”

  His dark look seemed to imply that perhaps this was exactly what had happened. Caught off guard by this unexpected rudeness, Brady could manage no response.

  The man started to turn, then stopped. “She can’t hear you when you speak,” he said, the words hard as driven nails. “The girl is deaf.”

  The giant walked away without another word, leaving Brady to stare at his back. After another moment, he again felt a small hand close about his own and looked to find the child watching him. She squeezed his hand, then mouthed a word he didn’t catch.

  He frowned at her, and she spoke again. “Gabriel,” she said clearly, giving a jerk of her head toward the big man who had planted himself on a stool near the older girl. “His name is Gabriel.” She pronounced it Gah-brul.

  “I’m Evie. Eveleen,” she added smartly. “And that—” she nodded toward the older girl in the corner—“is Roweena.”

  So the child also spoke English. He wouldn’t have expected as much. The books had led him to believe that most of the Claddagh’s fishermen and their families spoke only the Irish, and he had already heard much of the old tongue in the streets of Galway.

  “Roweena,” Brady repeated, studying the child. “She’s your sister, is she?”

  The little girl shook her head. “Gabriel found her. Her was lost, like me.”

  The child’s speech was remarkably clear for one so young. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What do you mean, lost?”

  She pursed her lips. “Lost, don’t you know? I was put out, but Roweena, her was in a fire when she was a babe. Most everyone died, except Roweena.”

  Brady dragged his gaze from the dark-haired girl in the shadows back to the child. “So, then—this man, Gabriel, he’s not your father?”

  Again the child shook her head. “We don’t have a da, Roweena and me. We have Gabriel.”

  The man snapped something at the child just then, his words cracking like a whiplash. The little girl pressed her rosy lips into a tight line but couldn’t seem to resist explaining. “Gabriel says I’m not to blather, that I must leave you to your rest,” she whispered hurriedly, leaning closer to Brady. “I will thank Roweena for you.”

  Brady reached out to stop her. “Wait. He said the girl’s deaf, yet she speaks.”

  The child—Evie—regarded him as if he were dim-witted. “Her’s clever, Roweena is,” she said with a trace of childish indignation. “Gabriel taught her to talk. Like this.” She framed the small column of her throat with both hands and worked her jaw up and down.

  Still confused about the relationship of the two girls and the grim-faced giant, Brady glanced across the room, where Gabriel was now holding the bolt of cloth while the girl wrapped it over and over again.

  After a moment he turned back to the child. “You live here with him, then?” he asked. “You and…Roweena?”

  She nodded. A quick grin revealed a noticeabl
e gap where both front teeth should have been. “Gabriel is our angel,” she said matter-of-factly.

  Brady stared at her. “Your angel?”

  She nodded vigorously. “Roweena says Gabriel is like God’s angel who looks after us and keeps us safe.”

  While he knew very little about angels, Brady could not imagine a less likely example of one than the dour colossus who sat scowling at him from his shadowy corner across the room.

  Near the remains of Aunt Una’s house, Terese found a shovel, its handle broken down almost to a nub. Gripping what was left of it with both hands, she went at her task with a vengeance, lifting the dirt away.

  By the time she reached the pouch that contained her secret savings, she was in a fever. Her ordeal of the night before had left her more shaken than she cared to consider. She was intent only on retrieving her money so she could be on her way while the morning was still calm—in the event that the wind should come back.

  She drew in a ragged breath. The pouch was intact, still neatly tied, just as she’d left it. She gave the shovel a toss and with shaking hands lifted her treasure from its nest in the ground.

  The moment she touched it, she knew. Her hands began to tremble so violently that she could scarcely untie the string.

  She upended the pouch, then sat staring at what was left of her years of saving. Not quite two dollars. There had been nearly twenty when last she counted it only three nights past. Twenty American dollars.

  Every hope of her heart drained slowly out of her. She felt as empty as if her lifeblood had been sucked from her body.

  Aunt Una.

  She knew immediately who had stolen from her. No doubt her aunt had watched her at some time in the middle of the night, when she had gone to check the pouch or to add the latest sum from Cavan.

  Two dollars would not take her to America.

  She didn’t know how long she sat there, hunched over the hole in the ground, rubbing her fingers over the pouch as if it were something that had once lived but was now cold and lifeless. Anything could have transpired about her, and she wouldn’t have known. She heard no sound save the beating of her own heavy heart, felt nothing but a sick disgust at her own carelessness.

  After a long time, she blinked and looked about at her desolate surroundings. Gone. Everything was gone. And she should have been gone, too, gone from Inishmore.

  She should have known her aunt would snoop. She should have taken more precautions, hidden the money farther away from the house, even taken it to Dun Aengus—

  No! This wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t the thief. She hadn’t robbed her own kin, hadn’t spied on her own blood in order to commit so vile a deed.

  Slowly, she came to her feet, propelled by a fierce surge of rage rushing up within her. What—or who—was responsible for the misery, the injustice of her life, the trouble that had plagued her ever since she was a wee wane?

  Her mother would have claimed it was the will of God, that Terese must “persevere” and “endure the Lord’s chastening.” Aunt Una, no doubt, would blame the devil, would say that old Satan himself was behind life’s mischief and torments, working to discourage and destroy “the innocent.”

  Aye, and if that be the case, then, sure, her deceitful aunt was one of the devil’s own helpmates.

  Terese didn’t know who to blame, but she desperately needed to blame someone. Someone should answer for the wretchedness of her life, shouldn’t he? And for the lives of so many others. Someone had to be responsible.

  With a sudden cry of fury, she lifted the near-empty pouch toward heaven. “You won’t stop me!” she screamed. Without knowing the real object of her rage, she went on screaming into the hushed morning. “Whoever you are…wherever you are, I’m going, do you hear? I am leaving this wretched island, and I am never coming back! I’m going, and there is nothing you can do to stop me!”

  She fell silent as quickly as she had given vent to her rage, gasping for breath and clutching the pouch close to her heart. “I’m going,” she announced again, this time in a whisper. Then she turned from the empty hole in the ground and walked away.

  6

  JACK

  Brother, son, beloved one, Your absence mocks my heart.

  ANONYMOUS

  NEW YORK CITY, MID-FEBRUARY

  The sun had yet to rise as Jack Kane sat in his study, outlining ideas for his editorial. Most of his time was spent on the business end of the newspaper, but he had refused to relinquish the editorial page. If there was one thing an Irishman enjoyed more than politics and pretty women, he was fond of saying, it was spouting his opinions. If he happened to be in a position where he could inflict those opinions on an entire city, so much the better.

  These early hours before dawn had always been Jack’s favorite time of the day. He relished the quiet, the stillness of the house before Addy set the kitchen help to stirring and started her morning forays in search of offending dust mites. Normally, Ransom would be showing up in another hour or so. Although he knew full well Jack never left for the office before seven-thirty, the crafty old stableman always came early with the sole intent of enjoying a biscuit or two and a slice of ham. No doubt he would be thoroughly put out by Jack’s instructions not to arrive before noon today.

  Jack was having a hard time concentrating this morning. His feelings about the city being “overrun with filthy, debauched immigrants”—as asserted in an anonymous letter received by the paper earlier in the week—were somewhat difficult to express, given the fact that “filthy, debauched immigrants” referred almost exclusively to the Irish.

  Even though there were twenty-five years and an ocean between Jack and old Ireland, he tried never to deceive himself: He was as Irish as any of those poor souls who made up the city’s plague of poverty. So even though he had tried for balance in his current editorial, he’d ended up scratching most of it out, recognizing that the tone was far too defensive, even petulant. No doubt he sounded a bit like an irascible drunk.

  Perhaps he should simply ignore the diatribe this anonymous writer had directed at the refugees pouring into New York Harbor. Nothing chafed a small, self-important man more than being ignored, after all.

  He got up and went to stand at the window. The street lamps were still flickering, casting only enough light to reveal shadows from the large old trees and ornamental fences that fronted Thirty-fourth Street’s gracious mansions. A trace of snow from the night frosted the street, while tree limbs swaying in the wind promised another bitterly cold day.

  The stirring of the wind took his thoughts to Brady. Ever since word had come of the devastating storm that struck Ireland in early January, Jack had tried to convince himself that his precocious brother, always resourceful, would fare perfectly well, even in a hurricane. Even so, if he didn’t hear from the young jackanapes soon, he was going to send one of the lads from the paper across to look him up.

  His brother’s infuriating recklessness, his inclination to think only of the moment—and only of himself, Jack reflected with a sour twist of his mouth—was nothing new. It never seemed to occur to Brady that people worried. Under normal circumstances, Jack wouldn’t have been alarmed if no word arrived for weeks at a time. But surely Brady realized that news of the storm would have reached the States by now. The least the irresponsible whelp could do was drop a post as to his whereabouts and his circumstances.

  He turned away from the window and crossed the room to stoke the fire. The study was one of the smallest rooms in the drafty old house and as such should have been one of the warmest. But the ceiling was high enough to clear an oak tree, and the windows were anything but tight; consequently, there was always a chill.

  Poker in hand, he straightened and turned his back to the fire. Of late, he had given an occasional thought to selling the place. He had bought the rambling old horror a few years past on a whim. At the time, he had still been young enough—and crass enough—to enjoy flaunting his success. An Irish upstart with a bank account large enough to s
take his claim on Thirty-fourth Street was a scandal and an affront, and he had thoroughly enjoyed outraging the gentry nearby with his “vulgarity.”

  But now the sprawling old mansion, by the very fact of its immensity and flamboyance, was almost an embarrassment. Certainly, it was an annoyance, and an expensive, inconvenient one, at that. Yet he was loath to give it up because it was the first home he had ever owned. Besides, he still rather fancied the idea of offending the carriage trade.

  Black Jack Kane: a pig plopped down in a palace, he thought with a grin.

  Still grinning, he glanced at his pocket watch when Addy appeared in the doorway. As usual, she had given him no more than thirty minutes alone. The woman couldn’t seem to endure a man having himself a bit of peace and quiet.

  Jack feigned a scowl at her. Unmoved, she stood, hands on angular hips, square jaw thrust forward, black eyes snapping.

  “A pity you won’t stay abed like most respectable men,” the Irish housekeeper challenged. “No doubt we’re the only household above the Bowery that serves breakfast before sunup.”

  “Don’t start on me, woman. Even if I slept until noon, you’d still come prowling about before dawn, just so you’d have something to harp on.”

  As was always the case, his contrived crossness didn’t faze her. “Didn’t you say you weren’t going to the office this morning?” she reminded him, the perfect point of her slate gray widow’s peak puckering with disapproval.

  “I did.”

  “Well, now, had you told me you’d changed your mind, I’d have seen that your breakfast was ready earlier.”

  “Did I say I had changed my mind?”

  She glared at him. “And why else would you be all slicked up at this hour of the day?”

  “As it happens, you sour old woman, I am not going to the office this morning. But I do have appointments here, beginning at ten.”

  The dark brows arched, and the hatchet jaw lifted a notch more. “Appointments, is it? Here at the house?”