by BJ Hoff
The boy’s eyes were large with excitement as he came charging into Nora’s bedroom. “Mother, wait till you hear my news! I—”
He stopped, his eyes going from Nora to Morgan. “Morgan? What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Your mother has had a fall, lad.”
Nora extended her hand to the boy, and he hurried to her side to grasp it.
“Are you all right?”
“It’s nothing,” Nora assured him. “I—I fell, that’s all, and Morgan found me. I’m perfectly fine. Now, what’s this about your having news?”
Daniel John straightened, still holding her hand. Morgan thought the boy’s enthusiasm seemed a bit strained, but there was little doubt as to his eagerness to tell Nora.
“I have a job!” he announced. “A real job.”
Nora’s hand went to her mouth. “A job, Daniel John? But how—” Smiling at her surprise, the boy nodded eagerly. “Didn’t I tell you things would be getting better for us soon?”
“That’s grand news indeed, lad,” Morgan said carefully, sensing the boy’s forced cheerfulness. “And what is this job you have found for yourself?”
Daniel John blinked, hesitating for only an instant. “I’m going to be working for the land agent,” he said, not looking at either Morgan or his mother. “I start tonight.”
12
Night Voices
Borne on the wheel of night, I lay
And dreamd as it softly sped—
Toward the shadowy hour that spans the way
Whence spirits come, ’tis said:
And my dreams were three—
The first and worst
Was of a land alive, yet cursed,
That burn’d in bonds it couldn’t burst—
And thou wert the land, Erie!
THOMAS D’ARCY MCGEE (1825-1868)
Sprawled indolently in a tattered armchair, Cotter smirked at Evan over his tumbler. “You look a mite green, Whittaker. Was our tour of Sir Roger’s holdings a bit much for your delicate sensibilities?”
Evan simply shook his head, unwilling to expose what he privately thought of as his “sentimentality” to anyone as coarse and unfeeling as Cotter. His normal reserve was so shaken he did not have the energy to dissemble, so he could only keep silent.
For hours, his head had been hammering with a fury that threatened to prostrate him—indeed it had made him violently nauseous for a time. The hour’s rest he’d taken late in the afternoon had done little to ease his misery. At the moment, he was only vaguely aware of the agent’s drunken rambling, which had been going on for the better part of the evening. His mind still reeled from the ghastly scenes he had witnessed earlier in the day, and he felt a desperate need to flee the room, knowing he needed both time and solitude to absorb the day’s events. No matter how much he might wish to avoid doing so, he had to confront his rioting emotions.
Never in his wildest imaginings could he have conceived the succession of horrors he had encountered in this suffering village. Dante’s nine levels of hell seemed little more than a glimpse of the misery of Killala. Within hours, the nightmarish experience had engulfed him, reaching deep into his spirit to pierce some dark, undiscovered depth, touching and altering something vital to his very being. Instinctively, he knew he would never be quite the same man he had been before today.
Across from him, Cotter downed another long pull of whiskey, then nodded to himself. “They’re a disgusting bunch, eh? Live like pigs and die like dogs. The esteemed Sir Roger will be well rid of the lot of them, wouldn’t you say?”
Evan didn’t miss the way the agent slurred his employer’s name as if it were an obscenity. He was appalled by this dull, slovenly creature, and could scarcely believe that Roger Gilpin continued to allow him to manage his properties. For his own part, he had all he could do to remain in the same room with the man.
A sudden thought of the comely boy with the soulful blue eyes struck Evan, and he found himself greatly relieved that the youngster had not returned to the agent’s house that evening. Watching Cotter when they’d first encountered the boy, Evan had sensed something in the agent’s rapacious stare that had both sickened and alarmed him. Only now did he identify the man’s glazed, oddly feverish expression as one of undeniable lust.
Most likely the boy’s failure to show up accounted for the agent’s foul mood. As the evening wore on, Cotter had grown increasingly surly, until now, intoxicated and hostile, he no longer made the slightest attempt to be anything less than offensive.
“To my way of thinking, we can’t turn them out fast enough,” the agent muttered, seemingly as much to himself as to Evan. “Worthless bunch of savages.”
His patience about to snap, Evan fought to keep his voice even. “I-I’m sure,” he said, “that when I r-report to Sir Roger the extreme circumstances of his tenants, he will d-do the Christian thing and d-delay all scheduled evictions.” Even as he voiced the words, Evan knew he was attempting to convince himself as much as the agent.
“At any rate,” he added more firmly, “I shall send a letter to London immediately t-to apprise him of the conditions here.”
Cotter uttered a short, ugly laugh and straightened a bit in his chair. “Oh, he knows the conditions here well enough! Why do you think he chose to turn the lot of them out when he did?”
Evan looked at him. “Wh-what, exactly, do you mean?”
Cotter stared at his near-empty glass for a moment, then lifted his eyes to Evan. His smirk plainly said he thought the younger man a fool. “You saw it for yourself, did you not? Those poor devils are in no shape to defend themselves! Why, they’re starved to the point of death. They’ll not be lifting so much as a hand for their own protection. Sure, and we won’t have to force them out of their squalid huts—we’ll simply let the death cart driver drag them out! Oh, yes,” he said, grunting out a sound that might have been amusement, “old Gilpin knows what he’s doing well enough.”
Evan could feel the sour taste of revulsion bubbling up in his throat, and he had all he could do not to choke on his own words. “Nevertheless, Sir Roger has not seen the circumstances of his tenants for himself. I shall spare no details of their plight.”
Cotter fastened a bleary-eyed, contemptuous stare on him, all the while rooting inside his ear with his little finger. “How long have you worked for Gilpin, Whittaker? Ten years or more by now, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Eleven,” Evan replied coldly.
The wide gap between the agent’s upper front teeth seemed to divide his mouth in half each time he flashed his insolent grin. “Well, then, you can’t possibly believe for a shake that the old goat has so much as a hair of charity in his soul. You needn’t defend him to me, man. Haven’t I been working for either him or his blackhearted father for nigh on twenty years by now? I know full well what a devil he is.”
Evan rose from his chair, disturbed as much by his uneasy awareness of the truth in Cotter’s remarks as by the agent’s crude disrespect. “Mr. Cotter,” he said stiffly, placing his empty teacup on the scarred table beside the chair, “I hardly think it p-proper to discuss our employer in this fashion. Besides, I find myself quite exhausted, and I still have to write to Sir Roger. If you don’t mind, I’ll retire to my room now.”
The agent’s only response was a distracted smirk and a drunken wave of the empty tumbler in his hand.
Steeling himself not to run, Evan held his breath as he crossed the dimly lighted room. So unsteady did he feel, so furiously was his stomach pitching, he feared taking a deep breath lest he disgrace himself by losing his dinner in full view of the leering agent.
The initial shock of Daniel John’s announcement about Cotter’s job offer had finally waned, although the boy’s frustration was still evident. It had taken an hour or more of argument among the three of them, no lack of pleading on Nora’s part, and, finally, a few stern words from Morgan, but eventually they’d managed to talk without shouting at one another.
The bedroom was swat
hed in deep shadows, lighted by only one squat candle. Nora sat ashen-faced on the edge of the sagging bed, watching her son, wringing her hands worriedly. Daniel John stood as fixed as a rock in the middle of the room, his fists tightly clenched, his eyes sullen.
Morgan’s own emotions were scarcely less turbulent. Upon learning of Cotter’s attempt to lure the lad into his employ, a fresh surge of hatred for the degenerate land agent had roared through him. Even now, his temper was still stretched tight as an archer’s bow.
“Whatever possessed you to go to the hill in the first place?” He hurled the question at the boy more sharply than he’d intended, immediately aware that his anxiety was making him unreasonable.
From his rigid stance in the middle of the room, Daniel John met Morgan’s eyes without flinching. “Hunger,” he said evenly. “I only went as a last resort. I had looked everywhere else I knew for food, and found none. The big house seemed the only possibility left.”
“And Cotter came upon you by surprise.”
The boy nodded.
“And offered you a job.”
“He did.”
“Which you accepted without conferring with your mother first,” Morgan said, making no attempt to soften the rebuke in his tone.
Daniel John lifted his chin. “I thought my having a job would please her.” He paused, then added defensively, “At the least, I thought it might save us.”
“Oh, Daniel John, I still can’t believe you did such a foolish thing!” Nora exclaimed, pushing herself up off the bed and making an effort to stand. “To resort to stealing? You know that’s wrong; it is sin! And to think that you might have been shot!”
“And is it less sin to watch my family starve while that pig on the hill wallows in his greed?”
The boy’s quiet retort made Nora pale. Seeing her sway, Morgan grabbed her. “Nora! Here, sit down; you’re entirely too weak to be up yet.” Carefully, he helped her onto the chair beside the bed before turning back to Daniel John.
“Your mother has told you that you must not take Cotter’s job, lad, and she is right. You have heard the stories about the agent, have you not?” When the boy made no reply, Morgan pressed. “Well?”
“I—rumors, is all,” Daniel John muttered, looking away.
“No, and they are not rumors!” Morgan closed the distance between them to snatch the boy roughly by the shoulders. “There is all too much truth to the tales, and you’d do well to mind what you have heard. Cotter is a sick, depraved man—don’t be thinking you’re a match for the likes of him!”
Daniel John surprised him by twisting free. “I can take care of myself!” he burst out. “And I still say it’s foolish to turn down such a job when we’re starving to death!”
For an instant Morgan’s own temper flared, but just as quickly he banked it. “Now, you listen to me, lad. The subject is no longer up for discussion—your mother has said you’re not to go back on the hill, and that is that. If you need any further explanation as to why Cotter was so eager to get you under his roof, the two of us will go outside and I’ll explain it to you more clearly. But for now I want your word that you will obey your mother.”
He winced at the desperation in the boy’s eyes. No longer a child, yet not quite a man, the lad looked like a young animal caught in a trap. Morgan could almost feel the conflict raging within Daniel John.
The boy stared at him another moment, then turned to Nora. “And what are we to do, then, Mother? What choice do we have?” His voice sounded thin and childlike, and Morgan yearned to pull the boy into his arms and somehow shelter him from all the ugliness hovering just outside the cottage walls.
His mind went to the letter he had written Michael. With every day that passed, his impatience grew. He had been so sure that this time when he returned to Killala, he would come with a letter in hand. The ship was to be in the bay in a matter of days; he must broach the subject of emigration to Nora before much longer, or it would be too late entirely.
He cast a look at Daniel John. Even as lean and coltish as he was, with his long arms and legs, and his shoulders crowding the seams of his shirt, there was no denying that he was growing into a winsome, grand-looking lad. God only knew what that demented animal Cotter might yet try to get the boy into his clutches. He would not be stopped by one failed attempt. Not Cotter. He had tried once, and he would try again, perhaps something more devious or even dangerous next time.
His eyes went to Nora. Dear Lord, she was so terribly weak, so frail! Just to look at her and see the way she had failed made him heartsore. No wonder the boy had been driven by desperation.
Daniel John’s question, asked for the second time, roused Morgan from his grim musings. “Mother? What choice do we have? What can we do?”
When Nora did not answer, Morgan made his decision. Clenching his fists, he looked first at the boy, then to Nora. “You can leave Ireland,” he said at last, making no attempt to gentle his words. “There is that choice, and it would seem the time has come for the both of you to give it serious consideration.”
Daniel John’s eyes grew large with surprise, and Nora gasped aloud. Deliberately avoiding their gaze for the moment, Morgan turned and walked toward the blanket-draped opening of the room. Keeping his back to them both, he stopped just short of the threshold. “Daniel John, I want you to come help me with the meal while your mother rests. We will have something to eat, and then we will talk.”
Saying no more, he turned, feeling their astonished eyes on his back.
The night’s rest for which Evan so desperately longed refused to come. He lay on his back, as rigid as a paralyzed man, his eyes frozen on the ceiling in the darkness. Only in the vaguest sense was he aware of the musty dampness of the room, the faint clinking of glass downstairs where Cotter, he assumed, still sat drinking.
After a time he felt himself falling into a gray, trancelike state between wakefulness and sleep; he seemed to dream, yet remained dimly aware of his surroundings. Against his will, he again found himself walking the streets of Killala, streets lined on either side by the frozen dead. Once more he saw himself surrounded by entire families of corpses. Parents and grandparents, young children and infants lay heaped like worthless rubbish in ditches along the road—skeletons clad only in thin rags, many entirely naked.
A silent scream froze in his throat as some unseen, determined force urged him back inside the same dark, cold cabin he had visited earlier that day. Once more he was made to breathe the fetid stench of fever and death. There, in the same corner, lay the emaciated corpse of a small child; beside it, the wild-eyed, filthy mother, totally devoid of her senses, crouched on the floor, weeping and shrieking some unintelligible plea. The gaunt, mute man who might have been either young or old was still hunched close to his wife, watching her with blank, unfeeling eyes.
Outside, sprawled on the road, were the leavings of a dog’s carcass, its near-frozen remains being consumed by a woman and three small children. Off to one side a voiceless procession of half-dead townsmen trudged by, seemingly blind, or at least indifferent, to the gruesome scene.
Against his dream-drugged will Evan continued to travel through the hideous labyrinth of the day. Staring in numb helplessness, he watched a young mother, obviously half-starved and ill with fever herself, drag the lifeless body of her little girl outside their cottage and leave it, partially covered with rocks and straw, in the open yard. Starting back to the door, she stumbled and fell, then lay unmoving only feet away from the improvised grave of her dead child.
Cotter appeared at his side—only this Cotter seemed more demon than man. With a gaping black hole where his mouth should have been and the yellow, soulless eyes of some otherworld fiend, he grinned and gestured that Evan should come along with him.
Evan’s stomach heaved, and he tried to pull free of Cotter’s clawlike hand on his arm, but the creature urged him across the road to a hovel, familiar in its wretchedness. A neglected one-room cabin with a dunghill at the door and a sloppy
mud floor inside, it looked to be abandoned. Its only furnishings consisted of a dilapidated bedstead with some straw and a tattered blanket tossed across it, an empty iron cooking pot, and two rickety wooden boxes. Five cadaverous children clad only in paper huddled near the crumbling hearth, while the father, ragged and barefooted, lay in a stupor on the bed. The dead mother had been left to herself on a soiled pallet near the cold fireplace.
Cotter pushed him outside, cackling. “What did I tell you, eh? They live like pigs and die like dogs!”
Back on the wet, ice-glazed road their horses were forced to halt and wait while a death cart passed by. It was filled with corpses tied in sacks, heaped on top of one another in random piles.
“Nowadays they mostly tie them up in sacks or sheets and dump them into the pits as is,” Cotter explained in a voice that echoed with indifference. “Else they use a false bottom casket, so’s they can dump one corpse out before going for another. We’ve long since run out of coffins, you know.”
The children terrified Evan the most. Not the weak, helpless children he had encountered throughout the day; but the nightmare children, vengeful, malicious sprites who clawed at his face and dug at his eyes until he thought he would surely die from the horror. As if performing some dark, macabre dance, they spiraled through the chambers of his mind, fleshless wraiths not quite alive and yet not dead.
He recognized them for what they were: obscene, horribly mutated effigies of those innocents he had observed earlier in the day. But those children had neither cried nor spoken; indeed, they had made no sound at all, but simply stared in vacant despair and utter helplessness, as if biding their time until the death carts would stop for them. With their partially bald scalps, cavernous eyes, and deep facial lines, they had appeared to be wearing death masks. Even more terrible was the peculiar growth of soft, downy hair sprouting from their chins and cheeks, giving them the chilling look of ancient little monkeys.
Caught in the midst of the nightmare children twisting and writhing all around him, Evan felt himself hurled from one to the other as he was swept faster and faster into the depths of their tormented frenzy. He tried to cry out, but his throat seemed paralyzed by terror. Panicked, he turned to Cotter for help. But Cotter was gone, absorbed by the churning darkness just outside the ring of children.