Bold Sons of Erin

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  “Less Irishmen?”

  He clapped his hands and affected a near swoon. “Now he’s after the fox and ahead of the hounds! If ye had less Irishmen here in your kingdom of coal, what kind of Irishmen might ye have less of, pray tell?”

  “Well, most of them are miners or colliery laborers, of course. A few are respectable trades—”

  “And if ye lacked miners and didn’t have labor in excess, if there was barely enough to go scratching your coal from the ground, instead of a hundred poor bogtrotters begging for every cruel job that comes open, what would happen to wages, if ye don’t mind telling me?”

  My God. I saw it. Jimmy was right. The answer had been in front of my face all the while. It was ugly as sin in a chapel. The coal men, the colliery lords, had commissioned one of their agents to tell Mary Boland—a known or suspected murderess—that General Stone was about to take her husband away. In the hope—the expectation—that she would kill him. Because they feared Stone might succeed with the Irish and raise up regiments of miners and colliery lads. Because the present glut of workers kept wages down and profits as high as possible. Because patriotism stopped at the door of the bank. The priest had declared it was all about love. But this was only about the love of money.

  Perhaps the same lips had whispered to the murderess that I kept her husband from her, and that was why she took her knife to me?

  But who could have known enough about Mary Boland’s doings to recommend her as the perfect instrument? Given the care the Irish took to conceal their community’s secrets? Unless there was an informer and traitor among them, I did not see who might have known of her madness. Who could have approached her, for that matter? Unless we speak of the Irish themselves, who might she have been willing to believe? Certainly not a stranger. Who could have gone among the Irish without arousing suspicion? And who in that valley answered to the powerful?

  I saw the man before me. As clearly as you do.

  ON THE DAY that Jimmy and I were deemed free of infection, I did not take me home to Pottsville at once. I had a final call to pay in the valley.

  “Now, I just don’t know why you’d want to go back there,” Mr. Downs said. “Ain’t you had enough of them damned Irish?” He paused to insure his nose was thoroughly scoured. “Don’t mind my saying, I think you Welshman are all crazy. Comes from all that hymn-howling. And you a rich man now, I hear tell. Get on, mules.”

  “Take me to the colliery office, please,” I told him. “It will not be a lengthy matter, and we will all be home in time for supper.”

  Grumbling, he steered his wagon back toward Heckschersville.

  When we pulled into the yards, the workers took pains to ignore us, although a few gave Jimmy dirty looks. For Jimmy was Irish as boiled potatoes, and the Irish do not like to see one of their own consort with their enemies. And the Irish see enemies everywhere. Perhaps that is their gravest superstition. I wished them no harm and even might claim that I had done them good, yet they could not help but view me with hostility. Twas not only the matter of the uniform that I had put on to celebrate my release. The Irish nurse old grudges, stewed in blood, forbidding them to like the Welsh or English. I might have been the reincarnation of Mr. Cromwell himself, for all the welcome I had.

  I got me down from the wagon and told Mr. Downs and Jimmy Molloy to wait. Looking around at the vale of blackness surrounding the shaft and the colliery, with an ear cocked to the racket of the works, Jimmy declared, “Jaysus, I’d rather be a soldier half-dead than a miner.”

  In I went and along I went, ignoring the protestations of the clerks. I threw open the door to Mr. Oliver’s office and found him hunched over a ledger. The window behind his shoulders had been repaired.

  I drew out my Colt and put a bullet through the glass.

  The window exploded outward this time. Mr. Oliver dropped to the floor, where I left him for a moment while I assured the clerks that I had only been saying hello.

  “Mind your business now,” I told them, “or I will have a talk with Mr. Donnelly.”

  Then I stepped into Mr. Oliver’s room and shut the door.

  “Get you up now, Mr. Oliver. For we must have a talk.”

  “Don’t shoot me!” he mewled from behind the desk. “For the love of Christ, don’t shoot me!”

  “I do not intend to shoot you,” I assured him. “But I do intend to resolve a simple matter.”

  He clambered up, clumsy and frightened. Craven he was. And greedy, perhaps. But certainly not brave.

  “Sit you down,” I pointed at his chair with my revolver.

  He sat down. “You’ve got no business here,” he said, with fragile truculence. “You’re on company property.”

  “And were you on company property,” I asked him, “when you told Mary Boland that General Stone had enlisted her husband and meant to return to take Daniel Boland away?”

  He was as guilty as Cain. His face all but shouted it.

  “That’s crazy,” he said, without the least conviction. “That’s the craziest thing I heard.”

  “Who put you up to it? Gowen? The lot of them?”

  “You’re a madman. You’re crazy. I’ve never been within a hundred feet of Mary Boland. I only ever saw her across the yard.”

  “That is a lie, Mr. Oliver. You have told me differently yourself.”

  He was frightened and confused, which was precisely the condition I wished to have him in.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never told you anything.”

  “Don’t you remember? You told me what a splendid-looking woman she was.”

  “A body could see that from here. I didn’t need to get close.”

  “But you also told me that you found her stinking. Now, I don’t believe you could smell her from here, Mr. Oliver. Although I will admit she wanted a wash.”

  “You’re trying to trick me.”

  “No, Mr. Oliver. You have tricked yourself. You whispered in Mary Boland’s ear, knowing that your words would cost the general his life. I believe you set her to murder me, as well. But let that bide. You are an accomplice to murder. That is enough. And now we are speaking of your life and no one else’s.”

  “You can’t prove one damned thing.”

  I smiled. “Mr. Oliver, I do not intend to prove it, see. Although an accomplice to murder deserves the gallows. What I intend to do is to tell your little secret to the Irish. And you can square the matter with Mr. Donnelly.”

  White he went as the snows of distant Russia.

  “Don’t,” he said. The word passed awkwardly from his mouth, as if his lips were frozen. “Don’t do that. Don’t . . .”

  “Sorry I am, Mr. Oliver, but—”

  “They’ll kill me. They’ll murder me.”

  “—justice must take its course, one way or the other.”

  “I have a wife and children . . .”

  “As Mary Boland had a husband.”

  “She was crazy as a loon. She’d already killed Boland’s slut of a sister.”

  “Yes,” I said, “that fact was crucial to your calculations, was it not? You knew she was mad, you knew she had killed, and you knew why she had done it. You knew that she thought her husband was worth a killing, if anyone ever tried to take him away.”

  He looked at me with a combination of wariness and terror.

  “You and the men above you,” I went on, “you knew the Irish already had much to hide on behalf of the Bolands. You knew they would fight to shield Mary Boland, for her husband’s sake. Even if she had murdered President Lincoln. You did not count on Daniel Boland declaring himself a murderer in an attempt to spare his wife, that you did not. That is why you did not wish to go to the magistrate, when he wished to pretend to guilt. But the Irish settled even that matter for you and schemed to hide Boland away. You were using the Irish like puppets, while the lot of you worked against them. To keep them hungry and hard at work for your pennies.”

  “I swear to God . . . I swear I’ll do an
ything you want. As long as you don’t tell Donnelly . . .”

  “Well, I must be off now,” I told him. “Things to do in plenty. I think you may wish to go careful around the Irish, from now on.”

  “Please, man, I swear to God . . .”

  “Was it Gowen?”

  He hesitated.

  “Good day, Mr. Oliver.” I took me across the threshold of his room.

  “Yes!” he cried. “Him. All of them. All of them together. I was only doing what I had to do. For the love of God, man . . .”

  I walked away, with the clerks in the outer office forming a gauntlet of curiosity.

  I heard Mr. Oliver rushing around from the back of his desk to follow me.

  “Don’t!” he cried down the hallway. “Don’t do it, for the love of God.”

  I did not deign to give him a backward glance, but left him there, devoured by his fear. I did not tell his secret to Mr. Donnelly, or to any of the Irish, since that would have been murder. But I was content to let Mr. Oliver spend his days in fear, never knowing, looking over his shoulder and jumping at every noise.

  The truth was that I could not prove a thing, though all seemed so obvious now. Had I tried to take Mr. Oliver into custody, to have him as a witness against the big men, he would not have survived his first night in our jail. Oh, I saw a great deal now. My Mary Myfanwy was right. I had not known Pottsville. But I knew it better now. A little better.

  The bitter thing was that the rich and powerful men were safe. I would give a full report to Mr. Nicolay. But I knew that our government would not welcome scandal in the midst of a war, nor would they fancy trials that relied on logic, without irrefutable evidence. But it gnawed at me. For I believe that justice must be served.

  Mr. Gowen visited me, before I left for Washington. He found me in conversation with Mr. Caxton, the engineer of whom Mr. Cawber had spoken—and a young man who seemed as sure of his business as he was sure to please the ladies and girls. Mr. Caxton was just explaining the cleverness of Mr. Evans’s leases, when Mr. Evans’s servant announced Mr. Gowen.

  I suppose I should not say “Mr. Evans’s” when I speak of this or that. For these things belonged to my wife and to my family now, although my Mary took to her change of station more readily than I could do, moving us into the grand house on Mahantango Street while I was reminiscing with Jimmy Molloy and waiting to see if the cholera had a taste for me.

  Anyway, Mr. Gowen come in. Clear enough it was that he was displeased at the sight of Mr. Caxton’s charts and maps and person.

  “Jones, may I speak to you in private?” he asked.

  “This is Mr. Caxton, who—”

  “Yes, yes, I know. I need to speak to you alone.”

  I nodded to Mr. Caxton, who was the sort of fellow who grasped things quickly. He went out, shutting the door of Mr. Evans’s study behind him.

  “Three hundred thousand dollars for the Evans properties,” Gowen said. “Fifty thousand for the whore’s diary. That’s their final offer.”

  “Whose final offer?”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  “I will leave it, then. The properties are not for sale. And I have told you that the diary book is in Washington.”

  “You’re a fool.”

  “I do not doubt it, Mr. Gowen. But fool or no, the properties are not for sale.”

  “Don’t you think you should ask your wife before you refuse me?” he sneered. “Or Dolly Walker?”

  “Why don’t you ask them yourself? You will find them made of stouter wood than me.”

  “Then you’re all fools. The days of the small operator are over. You’ll be broken quicker than a china plate.” He patted his pockets, as if searching for that watch of his. “Matt Cawber won’t save you, either. He’s yesterday’s man.”

  “And you, Mr. Gowen? I take it you are a man fit for the future?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think that I would like you to leave my home.”

  “Your home?” His eyes looked about dismissively. “You’re like a monkey got up in a swallowtail coat and an opera hat.”

  “And then there is the matter of General Stone’s murder, Mr. Gowen. And of your complicity in it.”

  He laughed, though the laugh was a hollow one. “Oh, Oliver told me about that little scene you played for him. You know there’s nothing to it, Jones. If you had proof of anything, you wouldn’t have gone after him quite that way.” He smirked. “Would you have?”

  That was true enough. But we both knew what we knew. And we knew that the other knew it.

  And we knew that we were irreconcilable enemies.

  I rang for the manservant, which gave me a childish pleasure, and told him, “Mr. Gowen was just leaving.”

  JIMMY MOLLOY had preceded me to Washington by a day, but I did not lack for company on my journey. Mr. Bannon, the newspaper fellow, sat beside me all the way to Philadelphia. He congratulated me on solving the murder case, although he still pretended to have no knowledge of Kathleen Boland or her Pottsville activities. With a grand harrumph, he declared that the Irish had been taught a thorough lesson, although I did not quite see it.

  Now, I am a civil fellow and ever ready to learn from conversation with a cleverer man than myself, but the truth is I had been looking forward to a bit of private time upon the railway. I fear I must make a confession, see. You have heard me complain about the iniquity of the novel, which is, after all, no more than a book full of lies. But I have also admitted to indulging myself with that tale from Mr. Dickens, which brought a tear to my eye before its end. Poor Pip. I really thought he deserved a greater happiness, and that girl was nothing but trouble, from start to finish. But Mr. Dickens behaved as Mr. Shakespeare would have done and made things true to life. My confession is that I had procured myself a copy of The Pickwick Papers, which had been recommended to me by Mr. Barnaby. And I found it a great delight, all chock-a-block with characters who rise up from the pages to make friends. I had hoped to read more about Mr. Pickwick’s travels and travails, but Mr. Bannon commanded my attention.

  Now, you will say: “You told us that the novel was an instrument of the Devil.” But I will tell you: A man must live and learn, and I was wrong. And that is what comes of condemning a thing of which a man has no knowledge. I find the novel a wholesome thing, and edifying. So there.

  As we rolled toward the metropolis of Reading, Pennsylvania, Mr. Bannon described a fantastic array of crimes and sins, assigning each to the Democratic Party, for he remained displeased with the recent election. He let loose for fifteen minutes on Mr. Gowen, but I learned nothing new. Then he explained why the Irish would never be fit to become Americans. Thereafter, he mocked Irish fears of abolition.

  “Their dread is a mockery of reason,” Mr. Bannon explained to me. “Once freed—once his breeding is no longer supervised—the Negro is bound to die out among the superior races. He never will come north in significant numbers. His tropic constitution could not bear the cold at a civilized latitude. I expect that the moment he finds himself free, every last Negro will line up to go to Mexico, or to South America. To warmer climes, where he can indulge his penchant for indolence, his lack of natural ambition. I suspect he shall find a happier welcome among the Latin races. After all, the Spaniard isn’t particular about such matters, from what I hear. No, Jones, you just wait ten years and there won’t be a Negro left in these United States . . .”

  Well, he was an educated man and I could not then say whether he was right or wrong. But well enough I knew that, before the Negro might go anywhere, there remained a war to be fought for his liberation. And I was to see even more of it than I had seen already. For after I rendered my full report, which was nicely received by all, one final task remained to me.

  Even though he was innocent, Daniel Boland had to return to Pottsville, for the sake of the legal formalities. He had made a confession and needed to recant before Judge Parry, to make things right and tidy. Although I had not yet laid eyes
on Private Boland, I intended to stand by him, for I judged that he had suffered enough for his folly.

  Jimmy Molloy had found young Boland in the 69th New York, in the Irish Brigade, in the Army of the Potomac. When I set out to bring him in, that army had gathered to smite the Rebels at Fredericksburg.

  TWENTY

  WE WERE WELL INTO THE EVENING DARK WHEN JIMMY and I crossed the pontoon bridge into Fredericksburg. The first thing we saw, by a bonfire’s light, was a sergeant wearing a lady’s private garments over his uniform. He danced about, waving a bottle, while soldiers enjoying the warmth of the flames cheered him on.

  Twas not the way a sergeant should behave.

  I would have given the fellow a proper talking to, but his own officers stood about unconcerned. Some even seemed to think his jig amusing. Then I heard the sound of breaking glass. Windows shattered from a second story, as rifle butts thrust out and retreated again. A family’s possessions come flying after, dresses and draperies, night pots and pictures and shoes. The soldiers in the street below ducked out of the way and laughed. Chairs and a cabinet crashed down next, followed by a mattress. The lot went on the bonfire.

  That was but the beginning of the night we shamed ourselves.

  The battle had not yet been joined, save for some hours of skirmishing, but a great attack was planned for the morning and nobody kept it a secret. We had stopped to pay a call on General Burnside’s staff, to have our passes countersigned, and found matters disordered, with a useless commotion of officers plunging about. The headquarters had been put up in a landowner’s house, along a ridge on the safe side of the river. It felt a bit removed from the fight for my tastes. If a general cannot control his battle after it has begun, his plan had best be a fine one, that I will tell you.

  The Army of the Potomac was a curious thing in those days. The staff men had nearly mastered the art of feeding and clothing an army, of marching on time and even of massing their forces. But they could not plan a battle to save their souls. The generals, one then another, waited too long to strike, demanding certainty before they moved, dallying over maps until General Lee gave each fellow his whipping in his turn. As General McClellan and all his successors proved, a well-drilled army meant little unless its leaders were fond of a scrap. Calculation is well and good, but too much caution makes a man a coward, and perfect plans on paper are naught to boldness of heart.