Song of the Silent Harp

by BJ Hoff

After that, her mother had taken in one man after another until she became such a slattern she could find no companion but the bottle. Nora and the younger children were left to fend for themselves as best they knew how, and over the years Nora provided what she could in the way of motherly care to the little ones.

  She grew up in abject shame: the shame of her mother, their mean, dilapidated hut, her own raggedy clothing and the cast-off garments she and her siblings were forced to wear—but, most of all, the shame of rejection: that of her mother for her own offspring and that of the village for the lot of them. So heavy had been the burden of that shame throughout the years that when her mother died only weeks before Nora gave birth to Tahg, her first thought—may God forgive her—was one of relief: relief that her own children would never need to know their maternal grandmother.

  Michael came to the village the year Nora turned nine, the same year a diphtheria epidemic took the lives of her two younger sisters, leaving only her and her wee brother, Rory, to defend themselves against their abusive mother. Three years her senior and already possessing the instincts of a born leader, Michael Burke had immediately taken Nora under his protection. He took his self-appointed guardianship seriously; no longer did the children of the village dare to wag about Nora and her brother, much less taunt them face-to-face. Michael was brawny and rock-solid even then, and he had a look about him that clearly said he was not to be trifled with.

  To the lonely, timid Nora, the Burkes were a great wonder of a family, and she often made believe they were her own. Michael’s Roman Catholic mother had been an actress in Dublin; his Protestant father the son of a clergyman. Both had defied their families and their churches to wed, eventually settling with their two sons in Killala on a small square of land that had once belonged to Michael’s grandparents.

  Unloved and neglected, Nora was charmed and entirely in awe of the gregarious, unconventional Burkes. Their generosity of affection, their intelligence and wit, their flair for the dramatic, and, more than anything else, their enthusiastic love for one another attracted her to them like the warm sun draws a dying blossom from the snow. The statuesque, vibrant Madeline Burke appeared to Nora as grand as the legendary warrior-queen Maeve of Connacht. She was beautiful, clever, and endowed with a heart as big as the Irish Sea. The men in Madeline’s family adored her, as did the Doyle waifs, who over the years put their feet under the Burkes’ kitchen table far more than under their own.

  Then came Morgan. In Nora’s twelfth year, a long, lean man named Aidan Fitzgerald appeared out of nowhere one autumn day with his two sons in tow and a poke on his back that appeared to hold the sum of their worldly possessions.

  Aidan Fitzgerald claimed to be from the southern County Kerry—a long way, indeed, from Killala. He said he was on the road in search of a schoolmaster’s position, and when he learned there was an empty schoolhouse in the village he simply moved himself and his lads into an abandoned hillside cabin and stayed. Over the years he kept a school of surprising excellence, managing at the same time to keep the nearby taverns busy accommodating his thirst, which was considerable.

  A great deal of mystery surrounded the new schoolmaster and his sons. Aidan was obviously a highly educated, even cultured man, despite the fact that he routinely drank himself witless. He never seemed to be without funds, yet they lived a crude, Spartan life in their womanless cabin. Not a mean-spirited man, he nevertheless appeared to be indifferent to his sons. Indeed, the only time he appeared to show them any interest at all was when he was instructing them in some long-dead poet like Virgil or, more appropriately to Nora’s thinking, in the legends and history of ancient Ireland. Of course, Aidan might just as well have been whistling jigs to a milestone with poor Thomas, who cared for nothing but the land; but Morgan soaked it up like the bog in a downpour, always eager for more.

  Never a word was spoken of Morgan’s mother, and for a reason Nora did not entirely understand, she knew she was not to ask. Once, when they were older, Michael did make a cautious attempt to inquire, but Morgan’s curt “I never knew her” was the only reply.

  Rumors circulated the village, as was always the case where a mystery was involved. One particularly popular story had it that Aidan was a fugitive from the law, on the run from some terrible deed in his past. Nora found it difficult to imagine Morgan’s distant, hollow-eyed father possessing either the passion or the energy to commit a dastardly crime. Other tales hinted of scandal or tragedy somewhere in the Fitzgeralds’ background, and Nora found these far more likely. Another account, one that was never entirely put down, had to do with Aidan’s family being gentry of means, who, for reasons never quite fully defined, had disowned him and set him and his boys on the road.

  Whatever his past, Morgan was nearly as much on his own as was Nora. They were the same age, though to Nora it seemed that Morgan was years older than she—older, even, than Michael. Considering the friendship that quickly developed among the three of them, it seemed entirely natural that Morgan and his brother, Thomas, would soon pull up their chairs at the Burkes’ supper table and be assimilated into the family. Thus Nora found herself with two protectors rather than one.

  She soon recognized, however, that while Morgan might enjoy the companionship of Michael and his family, his solitary, restless nature had no real need of a permanent family unit. In contrast to the serious-minded, land-loving Thomas, Morgan had a yen for the road and could often be seen wandering in or out of town, his harp riding his shoulder, his poke slung over his back.

  Differences among the three of them might have been expected. In matters of faith, for example, Nora and Michael were closest, both being a part of the small remnant of Protestants in the village. Nora had sought out the small Wesleyan meetinghouse on her own when still a wee girl; her mother was held in such disgrace by most of the Catholics in Killala that Nora could not bear to attend the Roman chapel. As for Michael, although his younger brother Tim had opted for the Catholic faith, Michael himself was impatient with what he termed the “fuss and bother” of it all. He liked the orderly but simple style of worship he found at the meetinghouse.

  Morgan was of a different cut entirely. His da never went to church at all, although Aidan was widely known as a “lapsed Catholic.” But while Thomas faithfully attended mass whenever it was offered, Morgan went only occasionally. Nora knew that Morgan was a believer, but he claimed no particular denomination or doctrine. Sometimes he showed up at the meetinghouse; sometimes he attended mass with his brother. His odd churchgoing habits made him suspect in the village, of course. Even Nora was bothered by his lack of interest in any formal religious practice. Still, she had to admit that the freedom of Morgan’s faith somehow seemed to suit him.

  She had a fierce love for both her defenders, though a far different kind for each. She adored Michael Burke as a grand older brother, but Morgan she loved with all her heart. Morgan loved her, too, at least he claimed to as they grew older, and for a time she clung to her hopes that they would one day wed. However, near the time when she reached an age to marry, Morgan left Killala. Apparently there were enough nuggets left in Aidan’s mysterious pot of gold to pay for the furthering of his son’s education, so Morgan set off for France.

  To Nora’s dismay, the Burkes took it upon themselves shortly thereafter to announce their intention to leave Ireland as well. They were of a mind to travel to Van Diemen’s Land—Australia. Michael, however, having no interest in his parents’ plans, declared that he would be sailing for America and stunned Nora by asking her to accompany him as his wife.

  Once she recovered from her shock, Nora was sorely tempted to accept Michael’s proposal. The prospect of losing both Morgan and the entire Burke family terrified her; she could scarcely bear to face life in the village without them. But in spite of her despair, she knew she could not marry Michael Burke. She simply did not love him in the way a woman should love the man she weds. Nor could she find it in her heart to leave Ireland and start her life anew in a foreign lan
d among strangers.

  So she reluctantly let Michael go, and when Owen Kavanagh began paying her great attention at the meetinghouse and eventually came calling, she put aside her memories of both Michael Burke and Morgan Fitzgerald. Older than Nora by several years, Owen was still a handsome man. More importantly to Nora, he was a good man: sober, industrious, and sensible, with goals she could share and the respect of the entire village. Owen’s dreams were simple but worthy ones, and closely related to Nora’s own. He had it in mind to make a proper marriage, farm a piece of land, supplement his income by working for Reilly the weaver, and raise a family.

  Nora was happy as Owen’s wife. If she sometimes allowed a longing thought of Morgan Fitzgerald to cross her mind, she immediately dismissed it and asked forgiveness. Although he drifted in and out of her life now and then, making an appearance in the village whenever he’d a mind to, their paths crossed only casually. She could not help the way he looked at her with those searching, sorrowful eyes of his; but she was a woman grown, a wife and mother, and so she quickly turned away and pretended not to see.

  Seventeen years had passed since Nora had kissed Michael Burke goodbye and wished him the blessing of God as he left for America. Now she was a widow who had buried her little girl as well as her husband, lost her dearest friend to death, and given up her only brother to a life on the sea as a sailor. She had gray in her hair and winter in her bones and a brimming cup of sorrow in her heart. It was nearly impossible to believe there had once been a time when she had run through a mountain field of wild flowers on the arm of a tall copper-haired lad who played her love songs on his harp and wrote verses about her smoke-gray eyes.

  Nora Kavanagh looked up at the bronze-bearded man leading her over the snow, and unwillingly found her heart aching, not only for Owen and wee Ellie and Catherine, but for the young Nora Doyle and Morgan Fitzgerald, for their now silent laughter and long-forgotten dreams.

  The time for dreams, Nora knew, had come and gone.

  6

  And the Fool Has Condemned the Wise

  From Boyne to the Linn

  Has the mandate been given,

  That the children of Finn

  From their country be driven.

  FEARFLATHA O’GNIVE (SIXTEENTH CENTURY)

  Killala

  Early February

  George Cotter, land agent for Sir Roger Gilpin’s holdings in County Mayo, considered himself a victim. He was given to brooding about the various acts of unfairness he had been forced to suffer since childhood. This continual litany of woes had long since become much more than a means of reconciling himself to his miserable existence; indeed, it had become the very essence of that existence.

  Among his afflictions he numbered poor health, a short, round physique with a flat-featured face, and a history of unfortunate financial circumstances. The bane of his entire life, however, was his father. George could not remember a time when he had not hated his father, hated him with an almost debilitating passion.

  Richard Cotter had been a Dublin barrister with a terrible thirst for the spirits and an even greater lust for gambling. He would bet on anything, no matter how foolish the risk, and he proved to be incredibly unlucky in all his endeavors. While still a young man, he had gambled away not only his own small inheritance from his physician father, but most of his British-born wife’s humble dowry as well. It was widely held in the village and surrounding countryside that Richard Cotter was a weak, dissipated, totally immoral man whose lifelong conduct would have shamed a field of tinkers.

  Fortunately for the family, George’s maternal grandparents owned a modest estate and two small but successful farms in Connacht, which, taken together, provided the Cotters with a home and an adequate livelihood. Even so, George grew up a bitter, rebellious young man: bitter because of what he considered their humble station in life, and rebellious in response to his father’s frequently expressed contempt for his only son.

  George’s mother died before he reached his eighteenth year, and his father’s excesses finally took their toll a few months later. Richard Cotter’s only legacy to his son was more than a decade of verbal and sometimes physical abuse, and George felt nothing but relief and even a sense of satisfaction when he buried the man.

  Cotter was left with virtually nothing. His grandparents’ lands had so many liens on them by then that they immediately fell to Hamilton Gilpin, an”absentee landlord” who owned vast tracts of property throughout County Mayo—but who was never seen to step foot on any one of them. When Gilpin’s agent, a kind enough man, offered the penniless young George Cotter a job on the Gilpin estates, he saw nothing else to do but take him up on it, albeit grudgingly.

  Cotter had worked for the Gilpin family ever since, rising to his present position as land agent not through any real ambition or even competence, but because he was one of the few men in the area who could read, write, and do sums. The “big lord” was now Sir Roger Gilpin, who like his father before him, avoided any involvement with his Irish holdings, except what was required to collect the rents.

  It was a Friday night, and Cotter sat morosely in his shabby fireside chair, his gouty leg propped up on a stool, his belt unbuckled to free his protruding stomach. He scowled at the letter in his hand. His mood was as ugly as the wild, shrieking snowstorm he’d only recently escaped. Chilled and in agony with the gout that plagued him more and more bitterly these days, he lifted his tumbler of whiskey and drained it dry.

  It was easy enough for these absentee landlords like Gilpin to wave their pens over their fancy stationery and sign eviction orders, he thought. It would not be their hides if a mob of village riffraff took it upon themselves to have their revenge on those responsible for turning them out. Agents like himself suffered the consequences of the landlords’ greed. And all because they had no choice but to do as they were told.

  Retaliation by some of the locals was a distinct possibility. Cotter had heard enough, all right, to know it was happening all across Ireland, even right here in backward Mayo. Displaced tenants were striking out, venting their rage like a bunch of mindless savages on the land agents. Just last month an agent near Ballina had been knifed and clubbed to death by a group of peasants he’d evicted.

  Mass eviction. That was the cause of it. Not just tumbling a few squatters’ cabins or the huts of those worthless whiners who were continually in arrears, but the large-scale eviction of dozens of families who had lived in Killala and similar communities all their lives.

  His throat tightened. It would be easy to imagine men like O’Malley, a known faction fighter, and Rafferty, the worst kind of drunken troublemaker, rising up and taking arms against their betters.

  Head pounding, Cotter tipped the tumbler to his lips. Finding it empty, he hauled his ponderous, aching frame from the chair, grunting with the effort. He went to the window and looked out, down the hill toward the village, but there was nothing to be seen except sheets of wind-driven snow piercing the night. His anger swelled along with the pain in his head, and he limped across the room to pour another whiskey.

  The thing to do, he thought as he swilled his drink, the expedient thing, would be to torch the entire dismal village. Not only would it remove an unsightly blot from the landscape, but it would settle those miserable wretches in their hovels once and for all, before they took it upon themselves to make trouble up here on the hill.

  With a stab of apprehension, Cotter recalled the rumors blowing about the county: tales of a band of rebels and malcontents, sweeping down from the mountains just long enough to fire the houses and barns of agents throughout the county, stealing their livestock and pantry contents, then depositing their spoils in the yards of the starving peasants.

  One band in particular raised the hair on his neck—the rabble who followed the brigand called the Red Wolf. Outlaws, every last one of them, and not beyond stirring up an enraged peasantry to rebellion. Thugs was what they were: low-browed, hulking primitives, for certain, and their leader—the on
e they fancifully called the Red Wolf—was undoubtedly the worst of them all. Tales mounted weekly about that one, most of them undoubtedly blown all out of proportion. They tended to make him a creature far bigger than life and more a menace than the predator from which he took his name. George had his suspicions about their Red Wolf’s identity, and while the great brute might be entirely human, he was still a formidable enough enemy.

  A hot pain stabbed upward from his foot to his knee, and he cried out, fumbling for the desk to steady himself. At last he staggered across the room, sinking weakly down into his chair and leaning back with a moan. As the pain subsided, he tried to think what to do. One thing was certain: he would need every man of the constabulary he could get. First thing in the morning he’d call in the bailiff and have him alert the police. It was best to begin at once, before some of the riffraff in the village got wind of what was coming, as they seemed to have a way of doing.

  Cotter started to crumple his employer’s letter, then stopped, realizing it might not be smart to destroy Gilpin’s written orders. It also occurred to him that he might be wise to arrange for protection for himself when he talked with the bailiff. No point in taking chances. Considering the fate to which he would be subjecting these poor devils, it wouldn’t do to relax his guard.

  There was an unmistakable smell of trouble in the air, and he didn’t intend to be caught unawares. Those starving barbarians in the village were capable of anything, of that he had no doubt. Once the evictions began, who could tell what mischief they might wreak?

  Two weeks after Catherine’s burial, Morgan was still trying to soften Nora’s reserve toward him, with no success. He thought he understood the way she had retreated into herself after Catherine died. On the heels of the death of both her little girl and husband, losing her dearest friend had to be near devastating, both physically and emotionally.