by L. A. Meyer
"Use all your charm and cunning, Higgins," I say.
"I will try, Miss," he says, and he leaves on his mission.
I flop into my chair. "If he is successful, each of those stupid ... boys... shall work a year for nothing!"
But he is not successful.
"I am sorry, Miss, but it can't be done. I did use a few shillings to pry a little information out of the jailer, though," says Higgins. He puts back the money and stands up. "They will be arraigned on Monday, and charged with aggravated assault, if not murder. A primary reason that money won't work its usual magic is that a Mrs. Constance Grindle, wife of Reverend Grindle, has insisted that the letter of the law be met."
Hmmm ... I know that one, too. She's the old biddy who called me a whore.
"There is also a bog-draining project on the outskirts of the town that they are having trouble finding laborers for. Apparently it is nasty work, and it is for that place the boys are headed, if not for..." He lets that go in deference to Liam.
Liam starts to get up, but I put my hand on his shoulder and push him back down.
"What is the lay of the land in there?" I ask.
Higgins considers, then speaks. "There is an outer chamber, where the jailer sits. Behind him is a locked cage. Behind that is another locked cage and that is where the lads are. Such is the power of this Mrs. Grindle, that the jailer has only the key to the outer cage, and not the inner, so as to keep him from temptations such as ours. It is a pity, for he seemed perfectly willing to yield to that temptation, and was, in fact, somewhat miffed at being denied his lawful graft that goes with the territory."
"How far is the outer door to the inner?"
"About eight feet."
"Describe the main cell itself." I get up and go over to one of my cabin windows and look out. I can see the jail up there on the hill where our lads are held. Mairead joins me and I give her hand a squeeze. Steady down, girl. I know that he's in there.
"It is about twenty feet square. Only the front of it is iron bars. The rest is the stone masonry of the building itself. No windows."
"Are there beds? Benches? Mattresses?"
"Benches around the perimeter of the room, and what appear to be rough straw mattress pads."
"Were you allowed to talk to them?"
"No, Miss. But they did see me there, and I gave them the thumbs-up sign to show them we were doing what we could. Ian McConnaughey stood and gave a thumbs-up back to show they were in good spirits." Mairead lets out a whimper on this.
"Hmmm..." I think for a bit and then say, "Well, we've got to get them out, and to do that we've got to get a message to them. I think that naught but a priest could get close to them now, so a priest we shall have."
I go briskly around the table and start counting off on my fingers. "First, we need a Roman collar. Higgins, if you could find one or make one up?" Higgins nods and says consider it done.
"Then we'll need a Bible. Try to get an old one, one that looks like it's been used, and you're not liable to find that on the Emerald."
"I have a Bible, Nan—Mary. I am surprised that you do not," says my grandfather.
You would be surprised over a lot of things about me, Grandfather. One of which is that I seek the face of God in the sky and in the waves of the ocean, not in some book or on my knees in some dusty church.
"I know, Grandfather, but I don't want you to lose your Bible in this endeavor. And, Grandfather, it might just be easier if you call me Jacky like everyone else."
"Well, all right ... Jacky," says he, "but it's a shame you didn't keep your given name, it is such a beautiful one."
"Well, I had my reasons. Now, listen up, Grandfather, and everybody else, too. Here's what you're going to do..."
***
Higgins has jury-rigged a collar such that a Roman Catholic priest might wear—it's close enough for all these Anglicans know—and he has fitted my grandfather out in it.
"Liam, show him how to do the sign of the cross."
My grandfather turns white—that he should be doing this, he of all people, a vicar of the Anglican Church. I see that he might faint straight away.
"Grandfather, you must think of this as an adventure," I say, my hands on his shoulders. "You will be playacting. It will not be real."
"You know, my Nancy was a headstrong girl—that's why she and Jack went off to London, to seek something different than same-old Saint Edmunds," he says, straightening his back. "I'd like to think she got that independence of spirit from me. What do you want me to do, dear?"
"Well, first I want you to give me an apt quotation from the Bible, concerning prison..."
"Hmmm. How about Isaiah forty-two seven ... I have given a light to the nations ... to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness."
"Good enough," I say, and I turn to that passage in the Bible and I begin to write, very lightly, in the margin with my pencil ... Tomorrow, at dawn, on the first stroke of the Saint Nicholas bell, you will make yourselves ready. On the second stroke, you shall casually pick up your mattresses, and on the third stroke, you shall place your miserable carcasses up against the wall farthest from the harbor, and on the fourth and fifth, you shall cover up your worthless selves with those mattresses as best you can, and on the sixth, you shall wait for our signal.
"Now," I say to Mairead, who is still standing by, both Liam and John Reilly having gone off to make the new chocks that we will need, "teach my grandfather how to say, 'Page seven hundred and fifty-three, you ignorant Irish clods' in Gaelic."
She sits down and does so, very patiently, repeating the phrase over and over till he gets it down perfectly.
Higgins now throws a sheet around my poor granddad, fastens it at his neck, and picks up the scissors from the barber's kit laid out on the table. In a few minutes my grandfather, who only this morning had long flowing locks, is now closely shorn.
"Sorry, Granddad," I say, "but you've got to look like a priest."
"It is my joy to be doing my part, dear," says my gallant grandfather. He does have a fine profile, I'll give him that.
We give him his instructions and when all is done, we put the newly minted and ordained Father Francis X. McSweeney into our liberty boat and he is rowed ashore to do his duty.
It is two hours later and we see the boat returning with him. He is not halfway up the ladder when we are on him with our questions.
"Don't worry, dears," he says, waving his hand in a Shakespearean actor sort of way. "The job is done, and, I hope, done well."
Down in my cabin, he regales us with what went on in the jail.
"Well, when I first went in, I was greeted with the utmost suspicion by the jailer, who called me a damned Papist, but, clasping the faithful Bible to my breast, I began blessing everything in sight, the jailer, the desk, the spittoon, and praying out loud in Church Latin, and I think I was able to wear the superstitious man down." Here he pantomimes making the sign of the cross in the air and saying some things that I know to be Latin but that I don't understand.
"Then, I requested that I be allowed to see the boys. That request he denied. But I pleaded, 'Some of these lads might be going to meet their maker soon and shouldn't they be havin' the solace of the Bible, now?'"
John Reilly casts his eyes heavenward at the crudeness of the Irish accent, but Grandfather goes on.
"'All I want to do is give them the Bible, sir,' I say, and I hand the Bible to the man. 'See, there is nothing in it but the Word of God. Surely you don't want that on your soul, that you denied the Gospel to men who might be condemned?'
"The man looked confused, but he took the Bible and riffled the pages and saw that there was no gun contained therein, and I said, 'You shall see Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates someday and what will he say to you then?' and he said, 'All right, all right,' and he opened the outer cage and walked in and put the Bible in the outstretched hand of the red-headed boy ... your son, I believe?" says the mock Father McSweeney.<
br />
Liam nods.
"A fine boy, I'm sure," says Grandfather. Liam glowers and reserves judgment on the fineness of one Padraic Delaney until he can once again get his hands around that fine neck.
"Anyway, once the Good Book was in the lad's hand, I lifted my hand and pronounced in Gaelic just as Mairead had taught me, 'Page seven hundred and fifty-three, you ignorant Irish clods.' The boys looked up, Padraic thumbed through to the proper page and gave me the thumbs-up sign behind the jailer's back."
My grandfather settles himself in his chair. "All is in train, I believe, and now I'll have a spot of sherry. A 'bit of the creature,' as you Irish will have it."
He's my granddad, all right. Make no mistake about it.
Out on deck in the afternoon, we make our preparations. Muskets are cleaned and reloaded. The sails are hung and held with slipknots for instant loosing. And the smoke canisters are put on deck alongside the forward and after guns.
Liam looks down at the canisters and says to John Reilly, "Smoke, hey, Reilly? Shall we make some Holy Smoke, then, for these Brits?"
"Aye, Liam, we shall," says the dour Reilly. "We'll make some Holy Smoke for Father Murphy, that we shall."
Liam turns and leaves the deck to tend to the business at hand.
"What's that all about?" I ask Reilly, but he shakes his head and goes about his business.
"It's about the Father Murphy thing," says Mairead, close at my left hand. "You don't know about it?"
"Nay," I say, "tell me."
She collects her thoughts, looking up at the prison where both her brother and her young man lay, then she says, "It was back during the Uprising. One of the leaders of the resistance, Father John Murphy, the Hero of Oulart and Enniscorthy, was captured in a town called Tullow, in County Carlow. My dad, who with John Reilly, was hiding out in an attic in that very town, knew Father Murphy and had great respect for him as a leader."
More pauses, then, "The Brits hauled Father Murphy out to the center of the town, stripped him, flogged him, hanged him till he was almost but not quite dead, and then forced him to his knees and cut off his head with a dull ax. They stuck his head on a pike to stand by the entrance to the town."
I am struck dumb.
She continues, quite calmly. "Then they put the rest of his body in a barrel and filled it with oil and set it afire, and when it was burning, they forced every Irish family in the town to open their windows to let in the 'Holy Smoke' from his pyre, and to smell it."
Once again, I think to myself, Why do people and the governments who govern people constantly do to each other that very thing which can never be forgiven nor forgotten? It is one thing to stand a man up and kill him, it is quite another to demand the Executioner's Tax from the man's family—to demand from them the cost of the bullet used to kill him before they can claim his body. Why do they do that when they know that the deed will never be forgotten, not this generation, nor the next, and down through the centuries? I don't know. I know nothing about this world.
I get a nudge from Mairead, who, I suspect, has been looking at my burning eyes. "Hey, I've been hearin' that story all my life. Come on, get over it."
All the preparations are made. We gather on the quarterdeck. "There is nothing left to do," I say to my assembled shipmates. "Everyone will have an early dinner and get some rest, it being daylight or not, for we shall get no rest later this night. We must be fresh if we are to have success in this venture. I bid you good evening."
Mairead and I go to bed. Higgins has instructions to wake us at midnight.
We believe that we will not sleep, but we do.
Chapter 40
"Now two of my children are at risk," says Liam in the gloom of the night, "instead of just the one. Three, counting you." He looks at me, readying myself on my quarterdeck. It is a little after midnight. The town of Harwich lies dark and quiet over there and here on the ship only the creaking of the rigging can be heard. I shiver a bit against the chill, then make myself stop.
"Dad, this is something that has to be done and can only be done by me and Jacky," says Mairead, laying her hand on her father's sleeve. "You know that, don't you?"
Liam, looking grim, nods and says, "But if you're not back in two hours, we're coming after you. Count on it."
I'm dressed in my serving girl outfit from back at the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls. I've got my shiv stuck in my vest in case things get dicey, and Mairead has been fitted out with one, too. She's got on one of my skirts and that sort of brocaded peasant top she had on the day she was discovered as a stowaway. A couple of mobcaps on our heads and we're just a couple of simple country girls.
We go over the side and get into the skiff. Jack Sheehan is the coxswain and he hands us down. We settle in and Sheehan dips his muffled oars in the water and we creep silently for the shore in the deep dark of the night.
"Over at the far end of that wharf there, Jack," I whisper. "Right at the foot of that street ... right there. Good." We bump up against the wharf and Mairead scrambles out, followed quickly by me. "Hand me up the bottle. Thanks, Jack. You'd better lie off a bit in case someone happens by. We'll give a couple of owl hoots as a signal to come pick us up when we get back."
Sheehan bids us good luck and warns us to be careful as he slips back off into the darkness. Mairead and I put our feet on the road and begin the walk up the hill toward the guns of Shotley Gate.
The darkened houses thin out quickly as we get farther and farther out on the Point—no one wants to build a home way out here where the full fury of winter storms would pound without mercy. There is only the looming bulk of the battery up ahead now.
"Here we are, girl," I whisper when we get up to the back of the building where there is a closed door and an open window. "And here we go."
We throw our arms around each other's shoulder and start laughing and giggling. "Lesh do 'Roll Me Over,' Sister!" I say.
"Lesh do it," slurs Mairead, all mush-mouthed. We sing.
"Roll me over, in the clover,
Lift me up, roll me over,
And do it again, again, again,
Lift me up, roll me over,
And do it again!"
"SSSShhhhhh!" I stage-whisper, putting my finger over my lips. "We'll wake up the whole ... hic!... town."
"Oh, shush your own self and gi' me another drink!" orders Mairead, grandly.
A light appears in the window. Someone has lit a lamp. I think I see a face peer out, and then the front door opens and a man looks out at us.
"Now you've gone and done it, you've woken up the good people of this 'ere 'ouse!" I say, and lift the bottle to my lips.
"Bob, come look at this," says the man at the door, who appears to be clad only in a pair of long underwear and a nightcap. Another man, pulling up his suspenders, appears in the light of the doorway. Like his friend, he appears to have been asleep, but he ain't asleep now, that's for certain.
I weave and peer at him as if I'm trying to focus my eyes.
"G'evening, gennulmen, we hopes we ain't disturbed yer rest, we hopes, we do," I say.
"Ain'tcha a little out of your way, girls?" says the first man. "You ain't from around here."
"Me and 'er is from Harkstead, out in the country, like ... Our mum ... buuuurp... sent us down to town to sell Bessie our milk cow and sold 'er we did," I say firmly. "Yessir, we sold 'er and got money for 'er and we spent it, sir, yesh we did. Didn't we, Sister?"
Mairead collapses to the ground, laughing and crowing out, "Won't our mother be shurprised? Haaaaaaaaaa..." Mairead rolls over and gives them a fine view of her white underdrawers.
The men look at each other. They have just died and gone to Heaven it seems—kind Providence has just delivered two young dames to their very doorstep, two young dames who have plainly lost their way and who are, without doubt, very drunk. Unbelievably good luck.
Mairead, still guffawing over what our mum's gonna say, gets unsteadily back to her feet and clings to me.
"Wanna hear a joke?" I slur. "A really dirty joke? Shuuuure you do...," and I proceed to tell them one of the awfullest jokes from Laugh and Be Fat, punctuated by assorted burps and hiccups. Great lusty laughter all around when I am done. I catch the two men looking at each other again, and this time winking.
"Come in, ladies. You'll catch your death out there. My name's Bill and this 'ere is Bob," says the one named Bill, gesturing us in. Mairead and I look at each other, put why-not? looks on our faces, and stumble through the door. We are inside. Across the large room squat the butt ends of the two big guns.
"I can tell by the light in yer eyesh that you have great—hic—affec-shun for little ... burp... me," I say to Bill, the man who has plainly picked me to be his darling this evening. What I can really tell from the light in his eyes is that he cannot believe his good luck.
"Indeed I do, girlie. Let's have a kiss, then." He pulls me to him and is about to plant a great slobbering bristle-chin kiss on my mouth, but I draw back.
"Before I would kiss such a ... hic ... handsome man, I believe I'll take a drink," I say. "To shweeten my breath, like, for thy shweet kiss." And I pull out my bottle and put it to my lips and pretend to drink. He is not a handsome man. He don't smell very good, neither.
"Here!" says Mairead, reaching out her arm for the bottle. She is in the clutches of the other bloke, who is angling her toward his cot. "Don't drink it all, you greedy pig! You always get everything! It's not fair! Hand it over here! It's mine, too!"
But she doesn't get the bottle, the man holding me takes it from my hand and says, "All for you girls and nothing for me and poor Bob? For shame!"
"Hey, that's ours!" protests Mairead.
"Let's all have a drink then!" Bill shouts as he lifts it up and takes a long, long pull at the bottle. "Man!" he says, when he brings it down, "that's damned good!" He takes another huge swallow. "Whoo! It tastes just like candy, it does! Here, Bob, have a haul at it."