Song of the Silent Harp

by BJ Hoff

  A question nagged at the fringe of his thoughts, but he wasn’t sure he should ask it. Still the boy seemed to feel easy about confiding in him. “And what about your rent, Daniel John? Do you know if you’re behind at all?”

  “We owe for the last half year,” the boy said quietly, without hesitation. He bit his lower lip for a moment, and added, “Grandfar says it will be the road for us before spring if we can’t pay what we owe to date and the next half as well.”

  The old anger and resentment flared up in Morgan as he searched the lad’s worried eyes. Impulsively, he pulled him into the circle of his arms and held him. “Didn’t I say I would help, and that you’re not to worry?”

  “Aye, Morgan.”

  He heard the uncertainty in the boy’s muffled reply. Taking him by the shoulders, he set him away from him just enough that he could see his face. “Let’s have a smile now,” he said, forcing one of his own.

  “You must not forget that your granddaddy is a great one for making big out of little.” He tousled Daniel John’s unruly black curls. “Well, am I wrong?”

  Shaking his head, the boy managed a small smile. Morgan opened his cloak, pulling Daniel John into its shelter, close beside him. “Come along, now,” he ordered, putting his arm around the boy’s shoulders and turning him back toward town. “Suppose while we walk you advise me of your progress with the harp. Yours and Tahg’s.”

  Daniel John grinned up at him. “Do you know, you always say that, in the exact same way, each time you come back home?”

  “And haven’t I the right, being the one who taught you all your music?”

  “Tahg says I’m sounding more and more like you all the time when I play.”

  Morgan grinned down at him as they walked. “Oh, does he, now? Well, we shall have to be seeing about that, I expect.” He felt a tug at his heart at the boy’s pleasure, and he found himself wishing, not for the first time, that this tenderhearted lad with the wise blue eyes were his own.

  As well he might have been, man, had you not been so intent on playing the fool. The thought stabbed Morgan before he could shield his heart against it. But best not to turn down that road, “And Tahg, then? How does he fare with the harp?”

  The boy’s face clouded. “Tahg isn’t strong enough to play these days. He can scarcely sit up in bed now.”

  The image of Nora’s oldest son fastened itself upon Morgan’s mind—all pale skin and slashes of bone; good, guileless eyes, and a heart equally pure. Tahg was the sober one, the down-to-earth, sensible planner and doer. A lovely lad, destined to be a fine, strong man. But now?

  They walked the rest of the way in silence, both ducking their heads against the sting of the snow and the wind whipping at their skin. Neither spoke again until they reached the walk to Daniel John’s cottage.

  “I’ll leave you here,” Morgan said. “Your mother will be anxious and want you with her.”

  The boy clung to his hand, and Morgan could see Daniel John’s reluctance to go inside. “Morgan…”

  “Aye, lad?” The boy’s eyes were fastened on Morgan in a look of mingled trust and confusion.

  “Do you believe—” He stopped, then went on. “You know how we’re always saying ‘God is good’?”

  Morgan frowned down at him and nodded.

  The boy hesitated. “Well…do you believe it?”

  Morgan stared at him. “Why would you ask such a question, lad?”

  Daniel John didn’t answer, but simply stood staring up at him, waiting.

  Morgan sucked in a deep breath, glancing over his shoulder toward the road for a moment as he attempted to form his reply. When he turned back, the lad was still watching him expectantly. “Aye, Daniel John, of course I believe that God is good. But that doesn’t mean,” he went on, running a hand through his hair as he measured his words, “that all His creatures are good. Though He made us in His image, there are those who have badly distorted His original notion, it seems to me.”

  He paused, sensing that the struggle going on inside the boy was the same kind of conflict between faith and doubt that took place all too often in his own spirit.

  “You see, lad, what seems to happen is that God’s goodness is often overshadowed by His creation’s meanness. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  After a moment the boy nodded. “I think so. But ever since Da was killed and Ellie died and Tahg was taken so ill—” He stopped, as if unable to capture the words he needed to explain himself.

  Morgan waited, comprehending the boy’s struggle all too well. “It’s a hard thing, I know. If God is truly good, you’re wondering why He gives evil so much quarter, isn’t that it?”

  Daniel John nodded, his gaze clearing somewhat. “Some of the villagers are even saying that God has abandoned Ireland altogether.”

  “Well, lad, I confess to having had that thought myself upon occasion,” Morgan admitted. At the boy’s expression of surprise, he tried to explain. “Being a man doesn’t necessarily mean you cease to doubt and to question, Daniel John. But I have come to believe that God’s ways were never meant to be entirely understood. Perhaps the fact that I cannot perceive the reasons for His doing what He does or does not do only serves to point out that I am human, and He divine.”

  The boy seemed to consider Morgan’s words for a moment, but his eyes were still troubled. “It seems so unfair, the bad things that are happening. Like Ellie’s dying. She suffered so before she went, and Ellie never hurt a living soul.”

  “Ah, lad, don’t make the mistake of expecting life to have the qualities of God. Learn now, while you’re young, not to compare the two, or it may well drive you mad one day. Life is life, and God is God, and it’s nothing but folly to confuse the two. Life will never be fair, Daniel John, but we must believe that God is never less than fair. That is the truth, even though it’s often a hard truth to cling to, especially in times like these.”

  Morgan was grateful to see a faint light of understanding dawn in the boy’s eyes. “I will have to think on that, Morgan.”

  “Aye, lad,” he said, putting a hand to the boy’s shoulder. “I am sure you will. But it’s inside with you for now.”

  “Morgan?” The boy still made no move toward the door. “Will you be staying for a while this time?”

  Seeing Daniel John’s hopeful gaze, Morgan felt a pang of sorrow for all the losses the lad’s young heart had suffered, the loneliness he now must be bearing. His delay in answering caused the boy to press. “Will you, Morgan?”

  “I have something I must do first,” he began. Seeing Daniel John’s eyes cloud with disappointment, Morgan hurried to reassure him. “It will not take but two or three days, I’m sure. Then I’ll come back, and when I do—yes, lad, I plan to stay for a time. These long legs of mine are growing stiff and sore from roaming about in the cold. Perhaps a nice long rest would be just the thing for me.”

  The boy beamed. “I should think so, Morgan. A very long rest at home, that’s what you need.”

  Home. The word struck a note of regret in Morgan. For more years than he could remember, home had been the road—or, at best, a bed in a friend’s house or a pallet of straw in a kind farmer’s barn. Home had never been much more than a word, never meant more than a dream or two of what might have been if he had been a different man, a good enough man, for Nora.

  Ah, well. Home tonight was a corner near the fire in his brother’s kitchen. After seeing the lad safe inside, Morgan turned and, pushing his hands into his pockets to keep them warm, went on down the road.

  3

  Nora

  But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

  I have spread my dreams under your feet;

  Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

  W. B. YEATS (1865-1939)

  Squeezing her eyes shut against the pain grinding at her temples, Nora stopped her spinning wheel and waited for the dizziness to pass. There was still enough late afternoon light in the kitchen that she could work, but she was
so weary she thought she could not possibly go on.

  She was weak to the point of collapse. There seemed to be no end to the days, and the nights dragged on forever. The daylight hours brought enough work for two women, but it was the darkness she minded most. No matter how exhausted she might be when she threw herself onto her bed, sleep refused to come. Night after night, her mind continued its torture, forcing her to relive Owen’s death, then Ellie’s, before assaulting her with a fresh seizure of fear for Tahg and the threat of imminent disaster for them all.

  Only a week had passed since Ellie’s burial, but things had gone from bad to worse throughout the village. The Hunger was upon them with a fury now, and its companion, disease, continued to seek out more and more victims, afflicting entire families at once. Mary Conlon had died just last night, and before dawn death claimed her youngest son. Last week alone, half a dozen families or more had been evicted and turned out on the road; before week’s end the bitter January gales had felled three of the homeless children.

  Though the Kavanaghs fared better than some, in their own cottage Old Dan was visibly failing. Night before last, while trying to plug a hole in the thatch on the roof, he had grown faint and come close to falling. He would not admit his weakness, of course, but it had been painfully obvious that he was spent. Nora had found Daniel in tears beside the fire shortly afterward; he was a brave lad, never crying for the pain in his own empty belly, yet unable to disguise his worry for those he loved.

  Nora’s hope was stretched thin, hard put to find even a slender thread to cling to. She had heard talk of soup kitchens and new relief centers to be added. Some said help would come any day now; others believed it would be spring before aid would arrive here, in one of the most remote sections of Mayo.

  Spring would be too late. Their pig was gone, and the hens; the cow alone was left, and she was starving. Only her milk and a few old turnips stood between the family and starvation. There was grain in the barn, but it was marked with the landlord’s cross for rent and could not be touched. Old Dan said they must begin to sneak a bit of it for food, but if they were caught it could bring eviction.

  Nora shuddered at the thought of being homeless. With the old man so weak, and Tahg growing worse every day, they would die in the ditch in no time.

  Tahg. He was suffering his life away. Every night he coughed and groaned until Nora thought she would surely go mad from the sounds of his misery. Old Dan suspected that Tahg had the fever, but she would not even consider the possibility. The boy’s lungs had been poorly ever since he’d had pneumonia as a wee wane; he’d always been frail, Tahg had. This fierce winter had simply weakened him even more, but when spring came, he would be stronger. Please, God.

  Dropping her hands to her lap, she began to rub them together. The cottage was cold; she kept the fire low, for the turf was nearly gone. Soon the only thing left to burn would be the few sticks of furniture they hadn’t already sold, not nearly enough to see them through the rest of the winter.

  A wave of despair rolled over her. It was impossible not to speculate on what might lie ahead. She had tried, at least until recently, to fix her mind on God’s promises of provision for the future; but lately she lived with such fear, such dread, that it was becoming nearly impossible not to surrender to utter despair. The very act of living, of surviving, required such a fierce effort that there was little strength left over for its added burdens.

  Who would ever have dreamed that the appearance just two summers past of some small brown spots on the potato plants would herald the nationwide disaster they now faced? Even when the dreaded blight had come again in ’46, stealing its way across the land in a great white, silent cloud, those who had felt the eerie, unnatural quiet could not have envisioned the doom about to fall on Ireland’s fields. The vile, sulphurous stench on the wind might well have been that of hell itself, so disastrous was its onslaught.

  Some said the blight was God’s judgment on the land, that Ireland’s own sin had condemned her. Old Dan had remarked testily that only the British would believe that kind of foolishness, but Nora no longer knew what to believe. It was difficult to fathom how a merciful God could allow infants and children to starve to death or die in the agony of the fever, yet the horrors now sweeping Ireland seemed to defy any hint of mercy. The all-powerful God who could have stayed the destruction at any moment had not moved to do so; indeed, the storm of pestilence and devastation raged more fiercely than ever.

  More and more often, questions came to nag Nora’s conscience and attack her faith. If, as some insisted, the Hunger was an act of God’s judgment, then how high a payment would He exact from her—from them all—before His divine justice was satisfied?

  In the curtained alcove behind her, Tahg coughed and gasped, and Nora got up to go to him. When she stepped inside the small, windowless room, she saw that he was still sleeping. As she stood, unmoving, watching him, an ugly phantom of fear rounded the corner of her mind to assail her. First Owen, then Ellie. Would Tahg be next?

  Owen had once accused her of being partial to their eldest, though of course she had vigorously denied it. Now she seemed to hear a guilty whisper in her mind, repeating her husband’s accusation.

  It’s true…you know it’s true; you’ve always favored Tahg…

  It was not true, she silently insisted—at least not entirely. It was more that she had always been able to know Tahg, to understand him. He was so much like her, so close in spirit that she seemed to know his heart as well as her own. The two of them seemed to share a special communion, an unspoken sameness.

  Daniel John, on the other hand, had been a mystery to her almost since his first word. At thirteen the boy already had the look of a long-armed, long-legged plowboy, but his head held the mind of a dreamer, a scholar, a poet. The lad was as starved for books and knowledge as most boys his age were for food and fun. Forever running to the schoolhouse when there was a master, he would soak up what he could of history and the old language and the heroes’ tales, then run home to share all he had learned. His deepest pleasure was found in reading from a tattered book of poems or strumming achingly lovely tunes on the ancient Kavanagh Harp, tunes that somehow made Nora want to weep.

  She had long ago accepted the fact that her youngest son would forever be a question, perhaps an exasperation, to her own cautious, practical nature. No matter how deeply she cared for Daniel John, she knew she would never really understand him.

  Indeed, she wondered if anyone would, except perhaps for Morgan Fitzgerald, who had once called Daniel John a “boy-bard with a soul of old sorrows and a heart born to break.” But, then, Morgan Fitzgerald was cut from the same cloth, she thought with a bitterness she refused to examine too closely. Hadn’t the man been a dreamer his life long, with his precious books and his songs and his poems—his words?

  Words. Morgan was never without them. They were living things to him, riches such as jewels would be to a king. Well, much good had they done him. He lived the life of a penniless vagabond, traipsing about the country, teaching in one schoolhouse after another, then wandering off to barter an occasional poem for food and lodging. He seemed to care not at all for hearth fire and comfort, but was more at home with the wind at his back and an untraveled road just ahead.

  Ah, but once, Nora…once you would have died for the lad…

  With a start, Nora gave the curtain a yank and returned to the kitchen, where Old Dan had come in from outside and was punching at the fire. “Work as if there is a fire under your skin,” he muttered, straightening, “and there will ever be a fire in your hearth. Ha! No truth at all in that old saying, not in these times.”

  Nora smiled at him. “You’ve got it burning well enough, though. It will ease the chill, at least.”

  The old man’s concern with the fire was a recent concession to Nora’s worsening fatigue. As the woman of the house, maintaining the hearth fire was entirely her responsibility. In the old days no housewife would have thought of letting the fire go
out, day or night; it was the heart of the home, the perpetual symbol of family unity. That an old one like her father-in-law would deign to share this traditional woman’s chore was a distinct act of love, an act that endeared him to her that much more.

  “Where’s the lad?” he asked now, clasping his hands behind his back to warm them.

  Nora sighed, knowing the truth would bring a sour retort. “I believe he went to the Fitzgeralds.”

  As she’d anticipated, the old man uttered a grunt of disgust. “With his harp, I suppose.”

  Nora felt a quick stirring of defense for her son and an even sharper stab of anger at Morgan Fitzgerald. No sooner had he left Ellie’s burial site than he’d taken to the road again, leaving behind a disappointed, but still loyal, Daniel John. Every day since, the lad had watched the road or gone to the Fitzgerald cabin to inquire, never saying a word about Morgan’s defection.

  “Well?” the old man pressed.

  “His harp? No, he left his harp at home today.”

  “Ach, so he’s given up on the rogue for now, eh?” Not answering, Nora went back to the spinning wheel and, after smoothing the lumps from a roll of thin wool, set the wheel singing with a hard spin. Old Dan crossed to the small, narrow window at the front of the kitchen and peered out.

  “It’s going to snow again,” he said with a heavy sigh. “What a winter this has been. ’Tis the worst I remember since Peg died.”

  Nora watched him as she worked, frowning with concern at his wasted appearance. Old Dan was seventy-three, but he still had a full head of curly gray hair, and his beard was as thick as cotton batting. He was toothless, but this was seldom noticed since he was a solemn man, not given to many smiles. Until a few months ago, he had been a strong man, healthy and vigorous for his age. Now he appeared to be little more than bone, with his tall, stooped frame and his long, rope-thin arms. Lately, Nora thought, his skin had turned as gray as his beard.