Bold Sons of Erin

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  I smiled grimly. “Yes, Sergeant Dietrich. We were looking for a man’s body. Now we shall have to look for a living man.”

  “Aber das Maedchen . . . the girl? Even the Irisher Katholiken do not bury a girl in the grave of the other man. In the holy ground. Herrgott erbarme.”

  Now, I know little enough of the cult of Rome, but the sergeant called up what knowledge I possessed. We were, in fact, in their consecrated ground, within the low wall of piled stones that fenced the Irish cemetery. And that assured me the girl in the grave was Catholic. For even the lowest drunkard priest would not bury one of another faith within the sacred boundaries. No matter that the priest had lied about the cholera, the girl in the coffin was Catholic. And likely Irish herself, with that cinnamon hair.

  But what priest would put a girl in a grave and rob her of her name? Even to help a murderer escape?

  Nor had the priest done all of this alone.

  I TOOK A CLOSER LOOK at the rotting girl, drawing the lantern along her ruination. Small creatures fled the light. Searching for a sign of her identity I was, perhaps a Psalm book placed into her hands, which might include the maiden’s name inside it. For that is how we Methodists do our burying. But I found nothing. Good it was that I took that look, though, holding my nose like a child. For I saw two things that kept me from shutting the lid.

  The girl was barefoot, see. Now, even the poor are not sent off without shoes. More striking to me still, her skirt was in shreds. And badly stained. Not only by the mildew and putrefaction.

  “Who has a knife?” I called, just loud enough to be heard against the wind. “Ein Messer?”

  “Jawohl, Herr Major!” A private handed a clasp knife to the sergeant, who passed it on to me. What little I saw of their faces was not happy, although they responded avidly to commands. Germans, see. Clear orders spoken sharply always please them.

  I gave the lantern back to the sergeant and bid him hold it steady as I worked. For I had a most unpleasant task before me.

  No man should enter a woman’s chamber unbidden. And what room could be more intimate than a grave? Still, I did not see another choice. I had to shame her. Perhaps, to do her good.

  I tell you, I did not relish the task at hand.

  Now, I am an old bayonet and a veteran of John Company’s fusses. Nor was I born with violets stuffed up my nose. But I had to steel myself to touch that girl. And to steady my hands as living things deserted her flesh for mine. The meat of her was dry in spots, but putrid and wet in others. I tried not to touch her skin with the knife, but in many a place the cloth of the dress clung to her, glued by death, and I could not be gentle. I prayed for her and begged her pardon as I worked, although I fear my thoughts were an awful muddle.

  Now, you will say: “What right did Jones have to disturb the unfortunate creature?” But I will tell you: I was the only law in a lawless place. I sensed at once that this was no natural death. Twas murder, upon a murder yet unexplained.

  She had not been wealthy. Or if she had been well-to-do, she was not buried so. Her undergarments were scanty as they were foul, if you will forgive my indelicacy. And though the light was bad and her skin browned off, I found what I was looking for easily enough. Whoever had killed her had not been content with a single, well-placed blow. Nor with a dozen. She had been stabbed until her belly was pulped.

  And yet I found no mark upon her face.

  I tried to turn her over. The flesh broke away in my fingers. Twas then I decided that I had seen enough.

  Now, I am a clean and fastidious fellow. It comes from my sergeanting days in a scarlet coat, as well as from the sobriety of my nature and our Welsh disposition to tidiness. The mess left on my hands would have sickened Lucifer. I wished me down the hill and back through the patch, to where I could rinse my hands in the cold water of the creek. Dirtied though it was by the colliery waste. I wanted to be clean of death, at least. And to breathe good air.

  I feared to take me home in such a state, to my darling, my Mary Myfanwy, to our son John, and to Miss Fanny Raeburn, who had become a delight to me since I brought her back from Glasgow to our hearth. I did not wish to enter my door with the stench of the grave upon me. For the scent of death clings. My uniform would want more than one washing, and with lye soap, too.

  I picked the blown leaves off the girl and covered her up with her rags as best I could. Then I set the lid back on the box again, though lacking hammer and nails to make it fast. Anyway, I could not have risked the noise of hammering. I climbed out and told the fellows to shovel the dirt back in. And I set to rubbing my hands clean with leaves and weeds, for the little good it did.

  I had come home to look for a general’s murderer, only to find the corpse of a murdered girl. But I found no sign of the fellow whose name had been scratched on the wooden cross set on that grave: Daniel Patrick Boland, the man who had rushed to brag of General Stone’s murder up on the high road.

  Had Boland killed twice? Or was it all a ruse within a ruse, to mask the killer’s true name from the law? Look you. The Irish may confess to their priests, but they will not confess to the law of their own volition. Yet, that was exactly what Daniel Boland had tried to do. He had rushed in upon one Mr. Oliver—not a fellow Irishman, but the superintendent of the Heckschersville mine and colliery—raving about the murder he had done and his wish to bind himself over to the authorities. And in less than a day, the local priest marked Boland dead of the cholera. I did not trust any of it. And time would prove me right, then prove me wrong.

  Oh, I have much to tell you, and I will, but twas then I heard the sound that did not fit.

  A TWIG SNAPPED. Just up the hill to the left, back in the trees. A friend to none, the wind had lulled. Betraying the spy. And India’s wars had trained me to survive. I know the sound of a misplaced foot, in the rocky Khyber or by a homely graveyard.

  “Put the lantern down,” I whispered fiercely. “Down in the grave, man. Do as I say!”

  The lantern sank below the earth. The world grew dark as Mr. Milton’s Hell.

  “Keep you low,” I added. “And wait for me here. Hier warten. Und schweige!”

  I have learned to pay attention to small things, for details keep us alive. I knew just where I had set down my cane. I grasped and found it, then took myself off for the treeline, scuttling along. A shadow among shadows, I wove between the crosses and crude headstones, then slipped across the wall and into the trees. I am good in the darkness, as an old foot soldier must be, and I did not think our watcher had seen much of me, once the lantern was suppressed. I was downhill, in the dark, not silhouetted where the occasional wash of moonlight might give me away.

  My soldiers kept their silence, doubtless fearful. But my own dread was gone. Fear leaves me when there is action. Only to return when the battle is done.

  The wind sprang up, attacking me with leaves blown on great gusts. Gales of them stormed between the blackened trees. Smelling of rot, leaves scraped my face and hands, hurling themselves at my body as if the devil himself had raised them to stop me. I used the noise to gain ground on the spy.

  Now when a fellow is watching you—unless he knows his business like a scout—he will be most predictable. He will stand but a tree or two back from the edge of the grove. Easy enough it is to put yourself behind him. And the spy had something working on his nerves, for he had begun to shift about like a restless horse in his stall. He cracked another branch beneath his brogans.

  That is how he told me where he stood.

  Proud I was of my old skills, although I should be ashamed of how I got them. There has been too much killing in my past. For years I gloried in the soldier’s life, though now it burdens me. But let that bide. I come up behind the fellow, who was small in stature, as I am myself. He was only a moving shadow amid the solid darkness of the tree trunks. I held my cane ready to use it as a weapon, although I did not draw the hidden blade.

  I pounced.

  I took the fellow down to the ground with ease
, for I know my business. I had my cane across the back of his neck, where I could snap his spine if he made a fuss, and I spread my weight atop him.

  Then I stopped.

  It did not take the sudden tease of moonlight to dazzle my senses. I already knew, by the feel and the musky smell, that I had captured a woman, not a man.

  SHE WAS YOUNG. A man can always tell. And the odd thing was that she did not protest, or struggle, or even ask that I free her of my weight. Her hair was raven, blacker than the night, and long and tangled. Leaves adorned it, like flowers worn at a ball. When I turned her over—rude in my astonishment—her face showed a wild loveliness in the moonlight. She had those Mayo cheekbones, cut by sea winds, and a forehead high and clear. Her dark eyes glowed, as if lit from within. Her stare held me, almost as if I were her captive. Warm she was. And though she did not writhe or fight, she had a feral quality about her, something pulsing and immediate. As if the hills and forests were her home. As if she were an animal caught in a trap.

  She smelled of life. To an excess.

  I had her by the wrists and I put my face close down to hers, although I did not intend any impropriety. I did not wish more noise than we would need.

  “Now hear me, missy,” I whispered. “I will let you up, if you will promise not to make yourself a fool. You will not call out, or try to run off, or I will make you sorry.” The truth was that I did not know what I might do, for I am gentle with women, as all men should be. “You and I must share some words between us.”

  She laughed. Twas discordant, and wrong to my ear. “And what mought I have to say to the buggering likes o’ ye?” she asked, deep-voiced and saucy as a girl from down the laundries. Although her scent did not speak much of soap. Oh, Irish she was, and no mistaking it. And that made another mystery.

  Why had she failed to cry out, with her own kind so near in their slumbers? Why had she failed to give warning to her tribe as we dug up the dead girl? When it seemed the ambition of all concerned to convince the world a man lay in that grave?

  She moved herself brazenly under me and laughed when she felt my alarm. I could not like that laugh. Or her behavior.

  I got myself up with a push of my cane and let the woman rise. I tried to help her. But she pushed off my hand. With a pallid, moonswept look, she tossed the end of her shawl back over her shoulder and stood defiantly. As tall as me she was, perhaps the taller.

  I took her by the wrist again, firmly, but not hard enough to hurt. She struggled briefly, then let me have my way.

  I thought I saw into the thing. And I took a chance.

  “I believe we may have a great deal to say to one another . . . Mrs. Boland.”

  I had hit the target in the very center. I felt it in the way she tightened when I spoke her name. Twas but a guess, but not a guess unfounded. For who but a suspicious wife, unsure of her husband’s fate, would have been watching over that doubtful grave?

  “Ye’ll take those hands off me this instant, ye black little Taffy,” she told me, not once denying her name. She sought to sound imperious, but her voice was all a-quiver. “Let me go, or I’ll scream and they’ll all come over ye.” She tugged at my grip again, but I would not release her. “I’ll say the old words over ye,” she warned, fair spitting now. “I’ll say the old words and call down the strange folk upon ye.”

  I am not one to pause for superstitions, but I let go of her arm. I kept me close to her, though, for I was not about to let her run off before I had my answers.

  “No, Mrs. Boland, you will not scream. And say what words you will, be they old or new. For now we have a secret, you and I. And those who are sleeping down below would not be fond to hear that you had let us open that grave. As you stood watching and silent. Oh, there is plenty for us to talk over, milady.”

  “I’ll not be threatened by your likes,” she said. A queerness there was in her voice, even when she was common-spoken and plain. Twas as if she only imitated the normalcy of our speech. I cannot explain the thing, but there it was: A strangeness to fit the night. “I’ll not be threatened,” she rambled on, “or I’ll say the words none can call back upon ye, I will.”

  “Threatened you will not be. Nor do I wish to see you come to harm. But you will tell me who is in that grave.”

  “My husband it is. My Danny.”

  “You know that is not true.”

  “Tis my husband’s grave, an’t it?”

  “That is not the same thing. Who is the dead girl?”

  She did not flinch at the question, and so I knew that she knew at least some part of it. She merely said, “What girl, then?”

  “The girl who was murdered elsewhere, dressed in another’s rags, then put in a coffin and buried as your husband.”

  “Sure, you’re talking mad enough for the friar’s asylum.” She threw back her shawl, then tossed her midnight hair.

  “Well,” I told her, “better an asylum than a prison. Or the gallows. Who is the girl? Who killed her?”

  The moon come back to light her eyes, and she did a thing that no man could expect. She took up my hand, the right one. Lifting it to her mouth, she smiled, then began to lick my fingers. With all the death on them.

  I froze. And she grinned at me. Her tongue swept over her lips.

  “I know her now, the dirty slut,” she said. “You’ve had your fingers in her.”

  Then she put my fingers in her mouth.

  I lurched away from her. Almost stumbling over a fallen branch. I hid my hand behind my back, all reflexes and confusion. As if she might come after me and seize my hand again.

  I felt an urge to slap her. And to vomit.

  “The little man’s afraid,” she laughed. Fair cackling, a sound that pierced. “The little man’s afraid . . .”

  Twas then she began to scream. I did not expect that, either. She should have screamed long before, if she had a mind to do so. Why had she waited for me to find her? Why did she bring suspicion on herself? Then, only when compromised, cry for her Irish brethren?

  I could not seek answers that evening, for she howled off like a banshee, racing for the mine patch down below. Screaming to wake the next county.

  There are times when a man must take a stand. But that night was not one of them. With the grave but a portion filled in, I gathered up my Dutchmen and their tools, snuffed out the lantern, and trotted the lads away from the clustered houses. I kept them under strict command, for I knew they wished to run faster than I could follow. But I did not want one to lose his way and stray into the colliery patch. Bad enough would come, I knew, when the Irish learned of our business. And I did not wish to see one of my poor lads mobbed to death. Or thrown into a mineshaft and left to die broken-boned. They had already murdered a Union general. I did not think they would pause over killing a private. Or a major.

  I will not pretend our retreat was made in good order. We fled. And a good thing it was that my leg had shown improvement. For we had not made a quarter mile’s progress before I heard a medley of Irish curses and saw the bobbing of miner’s lamps in the valley.

  We were fortunate. The Irish were all too poor to feed them a dog.

  TWO

  “ON WHOSE AUTHORITY DID YOU DIG UP THAT GRAVE?” Young Mr. Gowen was angry. He had risen from his desk in a flush of temper, near hot enough to melt the wax on his mustache ends. Had I believed him a foolish man, I would have paid attention to his fists.

  “Damn me, Jones,” he continued, with unnecessary profanity, “we’ve only just gotten the Irish quieted down. And here you go disturbing their dead in the middle of the night. Do you want another riot, man? Or worse? You know what happened in Tremont with that train.” He drew his watch from his waistcoat pocket, but did not open its lid or bother to look at it. He merely weighed it in his palm, as if he liked to feel time in his grip. Gold it was, although the fellow had debts. “As the district attorney for the county of Schuylkill, I demand an explanation. I demand it, Jones!”

  “Now, now, Mr. Gowen,” I to
ld him. “There is no need for commotion. An explanation you will have, see. If only you will—”

  “Don’t play the little Welsh fool with me, Jones. I can see right through you.” He shook his head with unnecessary bitterness. “You won’t fool me twice.”

  He folded his arms. They settled atop a stomach that hinted prosperity. Yet, despite his rising prospects, prosperity was a quality young Mr. Gowen did not yet possess. If he knew me, I knew him, too, our fresh-made district attorney. Hardly a week in office he was, and as full of himself as young men are apt to be. But failed coal ventures had bankrupted him, and he lived at the mercy of creditors. Secrets will not be hid in our dear Pottsville. Young Gowen was full of dreams, but out of funds. Of course, his political victory would extend his credit handsomely, for power is as good as ready money.

  “Oh, I know who you work for,” he insisted, although it would emerge that he did not. “Don’t think I don’t. I know what goes on in Harrisburg. In Washington, too. You Republicans aren’t the only people with a party organization.”

  He wore his collar too tight, as stout men will. The pink of his neck climbed into his face, like mercury in a thermometer, and his heavy mustaches quivered. “Boss McClure should know better. If he has Seward’s ear, he damned well should know enough to tell him we don’t need any more federal interference. Too much harm done already. Schuylkill County can manage its own affairs.”

  He calmed a bit and settled against the windowsill of his office, spreading his generous bottom along the ledge. Behind him I saw an earthen yard and the necessary closet. “Just let me handle things, Jones. I know these people, the Irish. Let me handle things and there won’t be any repetition of that business with the trainload of recruits. No need for that sort of thing at all. Trouble for everybody.” He weighed his watch again, without reading the dial. “As for murdered young women, no such thing, man! There hasn’t been so much as a girl reported missing these last months.” He ventured his first smile since I broached my business. “Had there been, I suspect it would have made a lively campaign issue. The Irish are very protective of their ladies.”