“There’s a stink in the house,” he slurred.
“Mind your temper,” Seamus pleaded.
“It’s been minded long enough.” Pierce stumbled into the bedroom.
Clare stood to face them as they entered the candle-lit room, her instinct of protection rising. “Keep him out of here, Seamus.”
Seamus playfully put his arm around the redhead, but it was swatted away.
“Hands off me, Seamus. I need a word with the great fighter. Mr. John Barden.”
“Pierce, I’m warning you.”
“Just a few words, I’ll have, love.” Pierce pushed his way past her.
“Seamus!”
Pierce turned and waved his arms downward. “Don’t worry. I’ll speak kindly to him.” He glared at Clare. “I know what he means to you.”
Clare looked to Seamus with concern, but he nodded to calm her.
“What a fine display it was tonight.” Pierce leaned over John.
“Please, Pierce,” Clare pleaded. “Leave him be. He’s nearly dead.”
“Yes, but not nearly dead enough. Ha! The great John Barden. The defender of Irish pride. Champion of the Five Points. Look at you now.”
“That’s enough there,” Seamus said. “Come with me.”
“Come with you.” Pierce spat on the floor. “We lost it all. Everything we earned since we got here. We leave with nothing.”
It was an awkward thought to come to Clare, but she felt relief that Seamus had given her his money the other day. She had it posted with a letter today at the Irish Society.
Clare noticed John was starting to stir. “Step back from him.” She could almost see the life filling back in his eyes, which were buried deep inside his swollen face.
“John, can you hear me?”
“Can you hear me?” Pierce said, trying to hold his ground. “Thought you would die from shame.” He pulled a knife out from his pocket and with a snap it glistened before John’s face. “See here. Maybe I should just finish the job for you.”
Anger crept into John’s bloated expression, and he started to prop himself up in the bed.
“Pierce! Put that down.” Clare couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “Do something, Seamus.”
John painfully started to lift his torso up with his arms. But just as he did, Pierce shoved him back down.
Seamus grabbed Pierce’s arms from behind, pinned them, and pulled him away from John. As he did, John rose from the bed and swung his legs to the floor. With a sudden lurch he was upon Pierce, his hand digging into the redhead’s neck and shoving him against the wall, and the knife fell to the ground.
Clare was stunned by John’s manic assault, and after a moment of indecision, she tugged on his muscled forearm. When this found no reprieve, she started to lash at him with her fists.
“Stop! Please, John.”
Seamus had reversed his role and was now trying to pry away John’s death grip on Pierce, whose face burst into redness. The boy’s eyeballs protruded grotesquely and he flopped helplessly.
Despite the violence committed on him by Pierce’s would-be rescuers, the intensity of John’s dark pursuit was unyielding and seemed to be urged on further as his victim gasped toward final submission.
“You’re going to kill him, John,” Clare shrieked. “Enough!”
She could do no more as the lanterns of Pierce’s life dimmed, and his body wearied of the battle.
“No!” she shouted.
Then Seamus somehow got leverage on the big man and yanked him back from Pierce. But he tripped in the process and then John was upon him, punching him, and then his arms gripped Seamus’s neck in a fit.
“John, no!” Clare was appalled by the hunger for vengeance in the fighter. How could she even have fallen for such a violent man? “Stop!”
Just as the word escaped her mouth, Clare heard a hideous animal cry from John Barden. He staggered up to his feet and put his hand to his abdomen, looking down in disbelief. He raised his palm toward the glow of candlelight, and the moist crimson glistened. With murderous intent, he glared at Pierce, but only for a moment.
John succumbed to his debilitating wound and collapsed to the floor, crawling in serpentine agony. A dull, steady groan emanated from his quivering lips.
Numb, Clare looked to Pierce, where she saw the slender, wet knife slip from his grip, plunging to the floor where it echoed in a metallic dance.
“What . . . have you done?” Clare began to sob and felt her knees buckling.
With a rasp in his throat, Pierce began to slowly unfurl his crumpled body along the wall, and Clare dropped to her knees beside him, grateful he was yet living.
“Go get Patrick,” she said to a dazed Seamus.
Her brother nodded mutely and then stepped over John’s body and exited the bedroom.
Before long, Tressa filled the room with her matronly presence with Seamus trailing her in silence.
“Oh, my poor dear boy.” She bent down to John’s blood-splattered body writhing on the ground. “Help me lift him to the bed.”
With Seamus bearing the weight, they lumbered John’s body onto the bed and somewhere between the floor and the bed, the fighter lost consciousness.
There was a pounding on the front door and they exchanged disquieted expressions.
“Patrick wouldn’t have knocked,” Tressa said. “Leave it be. It might be the girls hearing the commotion from downstairs, or it could be someone meddling. Cops maybe.”
“They know we’re in here. I’m going to find out for myself,” Seamus said.
When her brother left the room, Clare held her breath and she listened for trouble. The door clicked open, there was an exchange of voices, and Seamus returned with a gray-haired man, whose blue suspenders barely held up a large pair of trousers. The man waddled toward the bed with a black leather case in tote.
“More light,” he said as he rolled up his sleeves. “Boil me some water.”
They backed up in submission to his authority and sense of urgency.
“I’ll gather some lanterns from my house,” Tressa said. “But Doc. You haven’t been tipping it heavy tonight, have you?”
“Nothing more than usual,” he said nonchalantly and began working on his patient.
After they brought all that was requested, the portly physician didn’t want them loitering about, and they cleared the room. Once in the living area, Seamus brought the fireplace to full frame.
Not much later, they heard the front door handle rattle, and following a curse and before they could answer it, a key sounded in the lock and it sprung open. Patrick Feagles stood before them wearing a snow-speckled coat and wool cap.
“Is it true? John Barden got pricked?”
“I’m afraid it ’tis.” Tressa nodded to the bedroom door.
Patrick’s face reddened and he entered the bedroom, with the others hovering near the door, hoping to catch an update on John’s condition.
“In the name of Mary!” Patrick exclaimed. “Is he going to die, Doc?”
“It’s likely.” The physician continued to work the wound.
“Do whatever you must. His death will be mine as well.”
They scattered before he reemerged and when Patrick did, his eyes were lit with fury.
“Who did this to him?” Patrick closed the bedroom door behind him. “I want to know now and you can save the lies.”
“It was an accident,” Pierce said.
“An accident? Did he just happen to fall on a blade?”
“He went mad on us on account of losing the fight. He tried to choke me.” Pierce pointed to the striations on his neck.
“You should have let him, you imbecile,” Patrick spat out. “Have you forgotten who this man belongs to? He’ll kill me, h
e will. All of us.”
“Don’t speak that way,” Tressa said.
Patrick took his hat off and ran his fingers through his thinning hair, looking like a cornered and wounded animal. “Could there ever be a more terrible night?”
“How did John lose?” Seamus asked, with a tinge of revulsion. “I thought Billy . . . I thought it was all arranged and by you.”
Patrick drifted over to the studded leather chair and slid down into it. “I did. It was.”
“Well . . . apparently,” Seamus said, “no one remembered to tell Billy.”
“You? What had you to lose? A week’s earnings or two? What would you know about loss? No. This was well hatched by a skilled adversary, one I’ve been losing to for years. The fix was on us, boys. But worse than that, he’ll think we took our vengeance out on his man John Barden. We’re good as dead.”
“You two need to get out of here,” said Tressa.
“She’s right.” Patrick nodded.
“We’re not leaving without Clare,” Pierce said.
“You will if you care for her.” Patrick glared at him. “If she’s seen with you now, she’ll share your fate.”
Clare stepped forward. “We’re not separating. We’ll go together or not at all.”
“That’s foolish talk, sister,” Seamus said. “He’s right. We need to go our ways until this settles down. But what about Clare?”
Patrick rolled his hat in his hands. “Tressa knows where she’ll be safe. Don’t you, dear?”
The woman looked to Patrick with questioning in her eyes. “Over there?”
“Yes,” he said with resolve. “It’s time. It’s the only way now.”
“Where are you taking her?” Pierce asked.
“It’s preferable you don’t know in case you get caught,” Patrick said. “She’ll be well taken care of. Much better than she is now.”
Clare’s uncle stood. “Now get going, lads. Find yourself a dark cave and don’t show your heads for quite a while.”
Outside, police whistles could be heard.
“Somebody must have heard the screaming,” Tressa said.
Patrick walked over to the window and peeked out, being careful not to be seen. “There’s a door behind the bar. You know about it. Just don’t leave by the front door. I think they are coming in. Godspeed to you boys.”
Tressa gave each of them a hug and Clare did as well, though her head was spinning with indecision.
“Be good to yourself, Clare.” Seamus kissed her on the cheek.
“Wait for us,” Pierce said. “We’ll be back soon enough.”
With this they opened the door and they were gone, their footsteps echoing down the hallway. Clare shuddered as a thought came upon her that she might never see them again. Should I run after them? Is it a mistake to let them leave me behind?
“Go, Tressa.”
“Are you sure about this, Paddy?” The woman’s face was etched with sadness.
He took off his wool coat and put it on Clare. “’Tis no way, I fear. Perhaps he’ll consider this settled and finally put an end to it all.”
Tressa started to cry. “I’m sorry, dear,” she said to Clare. “We must go.”
The whistles sounded outside again and shouts were heard. Patrick craned his neck toward the window. “They must of caught wind of the boys and are in chase. I don’t know why they aren’t up here yet. Go, woman. Be gone.”
Clare felt the urge to say good-bye to John, but she couldn’t deny the urgency. And when Tressa grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the door, Clare didn’t resist.
Into the shield of the darkness they fled.
Chapter 31
Into His Arms
“Are you all right, dear?”
Clare, who was rocking in a chair by the window in a corner of this musty room, covered her eyes and sobbed softly to herself. She was anything but all right. Was John Barden dead by now? Was her brother safe?
After a few moments, she gathered herself and wiped her tears with a handkerchief embroidered with initials she didn’t recognize. “I’m sorry . . . a . . . Miss Winters. Yes. I’m fine. I just need some rest, that’s all.”
Sitting across from her with a cup of tea in her hands was a slender woman in her late thirties who wore a bright blue, tightly trimmed dress, with brown hair swirled and steeped precariously high upon her head. “I know, love. You must be exhausted. Completely. But you have your visitor coming. We can’t keep him waiting. It’s all been arranged by Patrick.”
Clare glanced outside the window again, drawn toward the candles glowing in the night.
“They’ve been there for hours,” Miss Winters said.
“Who are they?”
The woman drew the cup to her lips and sipped slowly and audibly before clanking it back to its china saucer. “Oh, we see them about once a week. They are mostly harmless, saying they are here for the ladies. But in the end they hurt the girls because they can’t earn if their patrons are fearful to show. Our customers don’t care to be noticed by the people they share a church pew with on Sundays. Might even be one of their wives.
“Jurists, bankers, merchants, men of high reputation, pillars of the community—they all come to us here in the Five Points to escape the boredom. It’s quite simple. We take care of their most basic needs, so they come back.”
“You make it sound so civil,” Clare said.
“Is it not so? Look at them out there, waving their Good Books and dripping with self-righteousness while they deny themselves their innermost thoughts and passions. It’s a dishonest way to live, I think. From my eyes, that is.”
The reverberation of voices beginning to blend in harmonies emanated from the candle bearers. It was a hymn Clare didn’t recognize, but she found it comforting nonetheless. It seemed her chaotic life had drifted so far away from the songs they sang, and she found herself longing to join in those sweet, soothing melodies.
“Why am I here?” Clare asked.
“Did not Tressa tell you? I thought she had explained it all.”
“She seemed as if she had more to say, but merely told me I would be meeting with someone who could help us. In our situation.”
“Then she did tell you all you need to know.” Miss Winters reached over to a teapot and poured more of the pekoe fluid into her cup. “Can I?” She motioned to the empty cup closest to Clare.
Clare shook her head and looked back out the window. “How can this man be of assistance?” It was hard to see much beyond the flicker of the candles in the moonless dark outside, and she had yet to see the face she was seeking. Even when Tressa had walked her by the evangelists to enter this building, he was not to be seen.
“I’m not free to share more than you were told,” Miss Winters said. “I just encourage you to relax and allow what is to be to be. Some would consider it an honor.”
Was that Andrew? There was a tall and slender figure walking among the elderly women outside. But did she want to see him? After all, he was just interested in her to get to Patrick.
There was a tap on the door that startled Miss Winters. “There. That’s him.” She stood, straightened her dress, and patted her hair.
“You look lovely, dear,” she said to Clare. “Quite lovely.”
As the woman opened the door, Clare felt her pulse rising and wanted desperately to flee, but there was nowhere to go. She couldn’t bear to watch who was coming through the door.
“Clare. This is Mr. O’Riley.”
Clare stood and turned to face the stranger. Small in stature, dressed sharply in a well-tailored jacket, he peered at her with darting hazel eyes, overgrown gray brows, and an aquiline nose.
“Yes. She is precious indeed. And reminds me so of someone I once knew well.” He held out a hand to her, and wh
en Clare reluctantly held hers out, he grasped it tightly with both hands. “That will be all, Miss Winters,” he said without taking his eyes from Clare.
Clare pleaded without words for the woman not to leave her alone, but Miss Winters merely gave her a nod of encouragement. “Yes, Mr. O’Riley. Can I get you anything else?”
He shrugged with irritation and then Miss Winters slipped out of the room. The sound of the door snapping shut sealed Clare’s abandonment. Only minutes earlier she was at the outreaches of fatigue, but now terror awakened her senses.
“Please, child. Have a seat there. We have much to discuss. I’ve been anticipating our acquaintance for some time, you should know. I know you better than you might think.”
Clare froze and glanced at the doorway.
“Oh, dear,” he said, a half smile curling on his lips. “There is nothing to be afraid of. Please.” He pointed her in the direction of two chairs in front of the fireplace.
She tucked back her dress and sat down, her body completely stiff with fright.
Mr. O’Riley went over to the door with a noticeable limp and pulled across the slide latch. He pulled his arms out of his jacket, as if it pained him to do so, and placed it on a hook on the back of the door. Rubbing his hands together he shimmied to the fireplace and pulled some long matches out from a box.
Eyeing the door again, Clare wondered what it was that was holding her back. Fear? Morbid curiosity? Concern for her brother?
He blew onto the small flame and the dry coal lit easily and spread. “There it is. That should do it.” On the mantel he pulled down a glass carafe and two glasses and he began to fill both. “Imported from Dublin. Have you been?”
“I have not yet been.”
“Roscommon, right?” He handed her a glass, and she took it with no intention of drinking. “Branlow?”
“How did you . . . ?” She felt her senses crawling with displeasure.
“Oh, Clare. I told you.” He set the whiskey bottle on the table between them. Then he pulled his chair close to hers and sank down, groaning as his joints bent. “Don’t ever age. It’s my greatest regret.”
Flight of the Earls Page 23