Song of the Silent Harp

by BJ Hoff

  What he heard made his heart thud to a stop, then begin to race. Drawing back, he stood, unmoving, listening.

  “That’s what I said!” Cotter snarled. “Kavanagh. Daniel Kavanagh. You’re to nab the young scoundrel and bring him here, just as soon as you can lay your hands on him! He bargained with me,” the agent went on in an outraged whine, “and agreed to take a job days ago. Why, I paid the deceitful gorsoon a day’s wage already! He will work it off or go to gaol! He’ll find he can’t steal from this landlord without paying a dear price for it!”

  Evan nearly choked at the blatant lie. He had witnessed the entire encounter between Cotter and young Kavanagh, and there had been no exchange of money. Of that much he was certain.

  Holding his breath, he took a step backward, concealing himself in the shadows. The replies of the other men were muffled, but Cotter’s loud voice boomed all the way up the stairs.

  “You just be sure and have him here by this evening! Tell the mother that her son is a thief, and if she doesn’t want him in gaol by dusk, she’ll send him along with you. If they refuse to cooperate, turn them out on the spot.” He let go a high-pitched laugh. “They’ll be out by nightfall anyway, but that’s for our ears only, until later. You just bring me the boy!”

  Rage hit Evan like a massive blow. He had all he could do not to go flying down the steps and attack the besotted land agent. But Cotter was still giving orders, so Evan steeled himself to stand and listen, intent on learning all he could. He could almost see the odious man’s slick, fat face and self-satisfied smile as he went on with his instructions.

  “You collect the bailiff and the police right away—take care of the evictions in the Acres first, before you go to the Kavanagh shanty. And mind your orders, now: no extensions, and no exceptions!”

  There were some brief, muffled words from the other men, then, “I don’t want to hear about widows and orphans, you fool! My orders are to turn out anyone more than three months in arrears, and to turn them out at once! Burn them out if you must, what do I care? At any rate, their filthy huts are to be torched before evening! The fever is rampant out there!”

  Evan stood, scarcely breathing, his mind scrambling to take in what he had just overheard. Dear heaven, the man was a lying blackguard! He was going to have that boy picked up like a common criminal and then throw his family out in this ghastly weather, not to mention all the other poor souls who would suffer the same fate.

  Stunned and weak, Evan swallowed hard, then began to back up toward the bedroom. Once inside, he quietly closed the door and leaned against it, trying to think.

  He must do something, of course. But what? Cotter had his ruffians and a number of armed police at his command. And, to make matters worse, he had legal authorization from Sir Roger for what he was about to do.

  Evan turned his fury inward for a moment. Like a fool, he had handed over Sir Roger’s signed instructions to the agent when he first arrived. All Cotter had to do was wave the orders under the nose of the bailiff and the police, and they would comply with whatever the agent demanded. As for those thugs who had been ordered to lure that poor unsuspecting boy up here, they were probably paid well enough that they would go to any lengths to satisfy Cotter’s whims. It would be the Kavanagh boy’s word against the land agent’s, a foregone judgment against the youth.

  Tossing his gloves and legal case onto the desk, Evan crossed the room and sank down onto the bed. For a long moment he could do nothing but stare at the floor in frustration. Finally, he turned to the bedside table, picked up his Bible, and opened it. What can I do, Lord?

  He was only a frail, stammering Englishman who knew nothing about bravery except for what he read in adventure novels. He did not understand these people, none of them—Cotter, his toughs, the suffering villagers. Nor did he understand or even care about this wretched island. He had never in his life felt so isolated, so alone. What was one man against an entire army of wickedness?

  His eyes fell on the open page, and the words leaped out at him: A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength…the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death, and keep them alive in famine.

  Evan squirmed, clutching the open Bible more tightly. “I’m hardly cut out for the…business of deliverance, Lord, and even if I were, I wouldn’t know where to begin. B-besides, I’m really not a bit stout—my lungs, You remember—and while I’m not altogether fearful, I suppose it’s fair to say that I am somewhat t-timid about certain things. Oh—and of course You know that I st-stammer in the most disconcerting way, especially when I’m…tense or nervous…”

  He fidgeted, flipping through the pages aimlessly. At last his fingers stopped, and he looked down again.

  Then the Lord said to Moses: “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him dumb, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”

  “Lord, p-perhaps this isn’t important…but wasn’t it Aaron who actually ended up d-doing most of the talking for M-Moses? Besides, I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what it is, exactly, You want me to do. I wouldn’t even kn-know where to start.”

  Evan drew a deep breath and shut the Bible. The words rang in his mind—not audibly spoken, but very clear: Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.

  “Lord…the th-thing is,” Evan objected, “ah, well…this is Ireland, You see, and I’m…an Englishman, and, well…You know how they feel about us. I’m not at all sure I have any credibility whatsoever with these people.”

  Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another?

  “But, Lord, wouldn’t I be betraying my employer? As much as I d-dislike the man, I’ve worked for Roger Gilpin for years, and he does…trust me to carry out his instructions.”

  Should you serve the wicked and love those who hate the Lord? Choose this day whom you will serve, Evan…choose now.

  “Lord! Lord, I…I chose You years ago! Nothing can change that, not ever.” Evan moistened his lips. “But I still don’t see how, Lord.”

  Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit.

  Evan squeezed his eyes shut and waited in self-imposed darkness. He didn’t want to do this—he wasn’t even certain he could do it, and yet something pushed him on. Something had always been missing in his life; he loved God, but his faith had never been tried in action. Now, as he sat in silence, a calmness began to wash over him. He felt as if he were in the center of a dark tunnel: from both sides light advanced toward him, at last converging where he waited.

  The light flooded into him, illuminating not his surroundings, but some hidden inner reservoir of his own soul. From the deep recesses of his memory, Evan’s mind recalled the words, “Who knows if you have come to the king’s court for such a time as this?”

  He drew a deep breath, and in his own exhaled sigh, he heard his father’s familiar voice: “Trust God, and be brave.”

  At last Evan opened his eyes. Replacing the Bible on the table, he got up from the bed and went to the desk, once more collecting his legal case and gloves. He was amazed at the peace that filled him, relieved that he seemed to know what he must do. Not how he was going to do it, at least not yet. But for now, it was enough to know that he must act, and that God would be with him when he did.

  The nasty business at the Fitzgerald cabin would have to wait, he decided, opening the bedroom door. First, he must find a way to thwart the capture of Daniel Kavanagh.

  18

  Dan Kavanagh’s Lament

  In all my wanderings round this world of care,

  In all my griefs—and God has given me my share—

  I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown,

  Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down.

&nbs
p; OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-1774)

  Death had become so much a part of every day in the village of Killala that the passing of yet another soul went more or less unnoticed. Still, there were those who claimed that a number of dark portents had warned of Dan Kavanagh’s approaching demise.

  Old Mary Larkin, for example, claimed to have seen a badhb—the crow symbolizing death—hovering near the Kavanagh cottage late in the afternoon. And Judy Hennessey, who grew more and more demented by the day, insisted that she had heard the banshee—the female angel of death—wail her eerie song just past midnight. When her mother-in-law pointed out that only family members or others in close relationship to the dying could hear the white-robed phantom of the night, Judy snapped back that as one of the Kavanaghs’ nearest neighbors she guessed she knew what she’d heard well enough.

  In truth, however, the only event that might have drawn attention to yet another death was the fact that the deceased was being buried in a proper coffin after a traditional procession; someone had even thought to toll the church bell in advance of the mourners.

  When the word finally circulated the village that it was Old Dan Kavanagh on the way to the graveyard, a few heads nodded wisely, as if to imply that you could expect it of the Kavanaghs to observe convention, even during a time of widespread disaster. Didn’t they always do things according to the old ways? To some, the family’s strict adherence to tradition might hint of excess pride, but most of the townspeople would have disagreed. The Kavanaghs were an old established Christian family, early settlers in Connacht and a well-respected name in the village for generations. If it was their way to observe the proprieties, who, then, should be denouncing them for it?

  The cold rain that had begun that morning and continued steadily throughout the day was considered by all to be a good omen for a burial. A few villagers still strong enough to walk the distance to the graveyard joined the funeral procession—some in remembrance of kindnesses done by Dan Kavanagh, others out of affection for Nora and her family. It was a grim, blood-chilling sight, this mourners’ march. Gaunt and hollow-eyed, some scarcely clothed or at best wrapped only in thin rags against the rain and driving wind, they tramped in silence along the traditional route to Killala’s graveyard. Ill and doomed and defeated, they looked like a macabre parade of the walking dead on their way to a mass burial service of their own.

  In this poor, sad village, as in hundreds of others all across Ireland, the graveyard was filled to overflowing. Only those farsighted persons who had in better days secured their plots were still laid to rest in the traditional burial site. Improvised graves marred the entire town—indeed the whole countryside. Roadside ditches, backyards, hillside slopes, even the shore by the bay hosted makeshift coffins, or corpses wrapped in sacks or papers. Open pits into which corpse after corpse had been tossed and heaped, one upon the other, were simply covered over with a thin layer of dirt. Cabins where fever and disease raged were most often knocked down, then torched, turning them into funeral pyres.

  Priests could no longer keep up in their efforts to administer last rites; indeed, many were dying in large numbers themselves, a consequence of exhaustion and giving up their own food to feed their parishioners. The Protestant clergy, though the numbers of their fold were fewer, also felt the sting of frustration in their attempts to comfort the sick and perform a seemingly endless number of funeral services. Roman and Protestant clerics served side by side in the beleaguered fever hospitals, where suffering and death provided a natural focus for unity.

  There were never enough gravediggers. Frail, emaciated survivors excavated the graves for their loved ones; in their weakness, they dug scarcely deeper than they might have for potato plants. Tombstones were no longer given a thought. A pile of stones or a piece of cloth on a stick were the only monuments erected to mark the countless unknown graves.

  Once recognized as a land of vigilant, painstaking respect for the dead, Ireland’s growing apathy seemed a terrible and piercing commentary on the country’s present wretchedness. But on this day of further loss in Killala, there was grief. Even the mist-shrouded, ancient round tower appeared to mourn and weep over the suffering village, much as Christ must have sorrowed over Jerusalem.

  Daniel stood at the graveside in the rain, watching them bury his grandfather. The rough-hewn, simple coffin Morgan and Thomas had hastily constructed was lowered into the grave the same two men had dug. A few shawled women drew nearer to commence the ancient keen.

  The traditionally silent funeral procession had followed the coffin to Killala’s graveyard, laying Grandfar to rest with simple prayers, some reading of Scripture and, finally, a wonderful Irish lament that Morgan had written. But Daniel offered the final tribute to his grandfather’s memory. Strumming the Kavanagh harp in the way of the ancient harpers, which Morgan had taught him, he began to play and sing the lament that had been passed down through generations of Kavanagh men. Originally written for his grandfather by Eoin Caomhanach, the piece had been preserved from the seventeenth century; for almost two hundred years it had concluded the burial services of male members of the Kavanagh clan.

  Daniel had always felt a strong sense of kinship with the ancestor who had composed the lament. After losing his entire family to Cromwell’s bloodthirsty soldiers when he was only fourteen years old, Eoin Caomhanach had been forced to flee his lifelong home in Drogheda for the unknown, untamed western coast of Ireland. Today, that special affinity seemed even stronger. Both had lost precious family members; both had been placed in the position of lamenting a beloved grandfather. And, like Eoin, Daniel knew that soon he, too, might be forced to leave his home for the uncertainty of an unknown land.

  Pain stabbed his heart, and it took all the will he could muster to keep his voice from breaking as he fixed his eyes upon his grandfather’s grave and began to sing.

  “My harp will sing across the land,

  across the past and years to be.

  No loss or grief nor death itself

  will still its faithful melody.”

  Daniel faltered only once, but at the touch of Morgan’s hand upon his shoulder, he caught a long breath and went on:

  “To sing the presence of a God

  who conquers even exile’s pain—

  Who heals the wandering pilgrim’s wound

  and leads him home in joy again.”

  At the end of the ceremony, Thomas shoveled an ample amount of thick, wet clay over the coffin, finally placing the spade and shovel on top of the grave in the form of a cross. Daniel led his mother away, with Thomas at her other side and Morgan following closely behind. Along with the rest of the mourners, they turned and set their faces against the cold, rain-swept wind and started for home.

  Daniel wondered as they walked if Grandfar could see them from heaven. Was he aware of how much they already missed him? Somehow he hoped that the old man had heard Morgan’s moving lament at the graveside and had been pleased with it. In heaven, of course, Grandfar’s bad feelings toward Morgan would have been wiped away by now, but Daniel still wanted him to know the respect Morgan had paid him.

  On the wordless march toward home, Daniel prayed—for his grandfather’s peace, for the “blessed rest of heaven” for which the old man had so often yearned.

  I pray that Grandfar is with You already, Lord…that he’s resting his head on a giant pillow of a cloud, as he used to speak of doing, and that he’s feasting on the beauty and grandeur of heaven.

  He could almost hear his grandfather’s deep, gruff voice as he spoke of the place prepared for him:

  “Sure, and don’t I hope that the mansion the Lord has built for me is a snug, warm place where these old bones can be thawing out at last? It won’t matter at all whether it’s grand in any way, just so long as it’s warm. Not that I’d mind a table heaped with some meat and potatoes as well…”

  Daniel was struck by a fresh wave of loneliness for the old man who had been as much friend and companion as grandfather to him throughout h
is years of childhood. With Grandfar gone and Tahg naught but a shadow of himself, it was officially up to him to assume the role of head of the house.

  In truth, at this moment he felt shamefully young and filled with fear. It struck him again that everything he had ever trusted in or counted on was being ripped away from him, one piece at a time. His da, now Grandfar—even Tahg, ill as he was—all were lost to him.

  And his home: Was that to be his next loss? His home, his village, his country?

  The questions that frequently assailed him these days once again came hurtling through his thoughts, questions he could not seem to avoid, no matter how much they distressed him. When this nightmare of death and destruction finally ended—if indeed it ever did—would there be anyone…or anything…left that he cared about? Or was this, as some in the village seemed to believe, the end of all that they loved, perhaps even the end of the world?

  Again rose the awful possibility that God had abandoned the island entirely. That being the case, there was indeed no hope, no hope at all, left to any of them.

  And if there were no hope, even the few who might manage to survive would be just as well off dead. Grandfar himself had said that life without hope was no life at all.

  Daniel was only now beginning to understand what his grandfather had meant.

  On his way into the village, Evan was so engrossed in his anxious thoughts that he was almost upon the odd, straggling procession before he actually became aware of them.

  He reined in his horse and sat watching their dispirited approach. Huddled and shivering in their wet, ragged clothing, they appeared to be coming away from the graveyard, even though Cotter had made it sound as if formal burial services were a thing of the past.

  Leaning forward on his mount, Evan’s attention was quickly caught by a tall, thin youth at the front of the procession. The boy had an ancient-looking wire-strung harp slung over one shoulder, and appeared to be supporting the small, black-clad woman at his side, as if she were too frail to stand alone. Both were thoroughly drenched from the soaking rain.