A Passionate Girl (5 page)

I decided that our best hope was to tell them the truth, even though they were the very faces and figures of Ireland's degradation. “We're on the run, and there's a price on our heads,” I said. “Out there in the bay is an American ship. We don't know its shape or size. All we know is the name, the
Manhattan.
”

I pointed to a half dozen ships swinging at anchor off the town of Bantry. The woman spoke rapidly to her husband in Irish, assuming that we did not understand it. She asked him if he thought they could get more money by betraying us. He answered that he was indifferent as to the choice. Why not bargain first and see?

I instantly changed my ground. Switching to Irish, I said: “We're going to America. We'll take your little one with us. This man is rich. He'll raise her like a queen.”

The mother's violent eyes came aglow. She studied our ragged clothes and said we looked as poor as she was. If Dan was so rich, where was his money?

“Dan,” I said, “count out every sovereign you've got.”

In two minutes the sovereigns were on the crude table, a heap of glittering gold that made the couple's mouths gape. “Half of it is yours,” Dan said, dividing it and pushing it across the table toward them. “But you won't get it until we step into the boat that takes us to the
Manhattan.
”

The woman shoved the money back to Dan and said in Irish to me, “Swear by God and the devil and the fairies that you'll keep your promise.”

“I swear,” I said.

“Keep the money and spend it on her in America.”

“We will,” I said.

I told Dan what I'd promised. “'Tis the only bargain she'll make,” I said.

A look passed over Dan's face that I did not like. There was something cunning and cruel in it. “Okay,” he said.

The woman did not know what that American word meant. I scarcely did myself. But the moment I told her the promise was sealed, she began barking orders at her husband. He was to equip himself with one of the sovereigns and visit every public house in Bantry if need be to discover which ship was the
Manhattan.

We spent the rest of the morning with the woman and her child. The mother spoke only Irish to the child, who did not seem to understand anything else. She told the little one that she was going to America, a land of gold and riches where she would never be hungry again. Irishmen there had their pockets full of money, like this man, who would be her father, and this woman, who would be her mother. Someday she would come back to Bantry, wearing clothes like a queen, and she would come up to this cabin with a dress of blue silk and a rope of pearls for her mother. Together they would parade the streets, giving the laugh to all those who sneered and called “Finey” after her, because she had kept her pride, though she had married low.

As I listened, I found myself wondering if I was as childish as this woman in her own way. I did not believe that all Irishmen in America had pockets full of gold. Dan McCaffrey had told me that those sovereigns did not belong to him. They had been collected from thousands of Irish in America for the Fenian cause. But I was trusting these nameless, faceless men, putting my faith in their love of Ireland, in spite of hints that their love was far from pure. The more I thought of it, the more I was glad that we were taking the little girl with us. I wanted this small creature with her nightbird face as a talisman, a reminder of Ireland's bitter truth, something that would prevent America from changing me as I feared in some deep way it had changed Dan McCaffrey.

Toward noon, the husband returned from Bantry town soused on Dan's money. He had located the ship
Manhattan.
According to report, it would sail with the morning tide. It was the last in the line of ships moored off the town. Beside her were two English steam frigates—ships of the Royal Navy. Worse, the town was alive with the talk of us. Lord Bantry himself, whose great estate of Glengarrif was nearby, was organizing a search party from his tenants and retainers to scour slopes and shore for us tomorrow.

Our one chance was to get a message to the
Manhattan
before morning. I said I would try it. To resemble a country girl, I blacked two of my teeth and smeared dirt on my cheeks. I tied up my hair beneath an old sunhat that the woman produced from beneath some rags in the corner. Finally I demanded Dan's gun and trudged to town. On my shoulder I carried a bundle of sticks that people might suppose I was hoping to sell for two pence. It was not unusual for a country boy or girl to walk ten miles to earn two pence in the Ireland of those days.

In town I went from house to house trying to sell my fuel, exposing myself dangerously, you might think. But it is well known that the smallest change in a person's appearance, if carried off with boldness, can baffle the most alert pursuers. I spoke only Irish, convinced in spite of the treachery of the Gaelic-speaking wagon man that an Irish tongue, especially in a town, denoted a love of Ireland. Townsmen of this period had abandoned their native speech to ally themselves with the English. Most people simply shook their heads and shut their doors, but one broad-shouldered gray-haired man answered my Gaelic good day with an equally Gaelic reply.

“God's grace shine on you, my girl,” he said. “There's enough turf hereabout to give us all the fire we need.”

“I'm not selling these sticks,” I said. “I'm showing them about the country as a sign.”

“Of what?” he asked, no doubt wondering if he was dealing with a madwoman.

“Of Ireland,” I said. “Alone, they can be broken by a child's hand.” I snapped one of them. “Together it would take a giant to break them. And when a strong hand grasps and fires them, they make a mighty blaze.”

He looked up and down the street. “What do you want?” he said.

“A boy to row out to the
Manhattan
and tell them to have a boat at the foot of Priest's Leap before dawn.”

“Consider it done.”

“I will only consider it done when I see the promise in the captain's handwriting,” I said.

I slipped the gun from beneath my dress and aimed it at his breast. “We've been betrayed enough. If you fail me, I'll shoot you first and then myself.”

“You have nothing to fear,” he said. “Come round the back of the house.”

I went to the back of the house and was welcomed with hot tea and fresh bread. The man's oldest son, a boy of about sixteen, declared himself ready to take the message to the
Manhattan
. For two hours we sat there talking about Ireland. The older man did not think the Fenians could succeed. Like Father, he thought the British fleet was too strong to pass, and this made all the strength and money in America useless.

“If I were a young man I would go to America, not to fight for Ireland, but to start a new life,” he said. “My son will go with my blessing.”

The boy returned with a scribble from the captain of the
Manhattan
. The British were patrolling the waters of the bay in cutters. To deceive them, he would hoist sail tomorrow morning and stand out to sea. Then he would come about and steer as close to shore as he dared, before lowering a boat. We were to be waiting on the rocks at the foot of the cliff.

We slept that night on the bare floor of the cabin. The woman was up at dawn dressing the child and ordering the husband to get the fire going beneath the pot. We went out on the windswept cliff and saw that the
Manhattan
was still at her mooring. As Dan began cursing the captain, I saw something far more alarming down the coast. Some five hundred men were moving toward us, spread in a long line from the cliff's edge a good mile inland. It was Lord Bantry and his search party.

Dan studied them with a soldier's eye. “They're three miles away,” he said. “It'll take them an hour to reach us.”

“There go the
Manhattan
's sails,” Michael said.

The sails were indeed shaking out to the wind. She loosed from her anchor and swung toward the open sea on the tide. In half an hour she was opposite us. True to his promise, the captain put the helm hard over and bounded toward us on a stiff southeast breeze. But to our dismay, he hove to a half mile off and began lowering a boat. It would take them thirty minutes at least to row that distance.

“He's afraid of the rocks,” Michael said. “And with good reason. They could tear his bottom out.”

Over our shoulders, we could see Lord Bantry's line of searchers, moving toward us at the same methodical pace. Lord Bantry himself had joined them on a big black horse. It was not at all clear who would reach us first, the boat or Bantry's men. As we watched, another horseman rode up to Lord Bantry and pointed to the ship. His Lordship pulled out a pistol and fired it in the air. The searchers on the mountainside came swarming down to join those on the shore, and all quickened their pace in our direction. The other horseman rode off pell mell for the town of Bantry to alarm the British steam frigates.

“Get down on the rocks,” Dan said to me and Michael. “I'll hold them off from here.”

He pointed to a narrow path that wound down the face of the cliff to the wave-lashed rocks at its foot. The woman handed the little girl to me. With a growl Dan snatched her out of my arms and thrust her back to her mother. “We're not takin' that kid,” he said.

“We promised. I swore,” I said.

“I don't give a damn. Get goin'. It'll take you ten minutes to get down that path.”

“Come on, Bess,” Michael said, already beginning his descent. “Do what he says.”

I turned to the woman and said in Irish, “There is nothing I can do. He's an American.”

The woman's face turned black with rage. Her eyes seemed about to leap from her head. In a low hissing voice, she laid a curse on us. “May seven devils haunt you night and noon. May you wander the world like thieves and murderers, with the mark of Cain on your foreheads! May you die a dozen times by knife thrust and gun before death finally takes you! May those you love most betray you!”

For a moment I saw a great coiled snake within her rags. Fangs leaped from her hate-twisted mouth. I was paralyzed by dread.

“What's she saying?” Dan asked.

“She's cursing us,” I said.

“To hell with her,” Dan said.

With a scream of rage, the woman whirled and raced toward the oncoming line of Lord Bantry's men. In the rush of the wind we could not hear her words, but it was plain from her pointing arm that she was shouting the news of our identity. The child meanwhile stood gaping from her mother to me to Dan. For the first time I realized from the incomprehension on the small clenched face that the little creature was an idiot.

“Jesus God, come on, Bess,” Michael said, fairly dragging me onto the path down the cliff. As we descended, we could see some of Lord Bantry's men running along the cliff edge, their guns in their hands. On the water the boat from the
Manhattan
, with six men at the oars and a coxswain at the rudder, pulled steadily toward us. The wind whipped around us, bounding off the cliff face, adding its hollow sigh to the thunder of the waves below us.

In ten minutes we were on a small ledge with the sea foaming around our knees. Spray leaped from nearby rocks, drenching us. The boat was only fifty feet away now. Behind the oarsmen, the captain of the
Manhattan
was risking his ship to edge closer to shore. He had a man with a lead line in the bow, sounding every foot of the treacherous rock-filled water.

Gunfire crackled on the cliff above us. I turned my head in time to see Dan McCaffrey halfway down the path, exchanging shots with a rifleman on the cliff edge. The rifle bullets sent chips of stone flying inches from Dan's face. His pistol spoke once more. With a cry the man dropped his gun and pitched back, vanishing from my sight as if he had toppled into an abyss. His rifle went clattering down the cliff to disappear into the seething waves.

The men in the boat shouted that they could come no closer. They were almost on the rocks, backrowing for their lives. Michael and I plunged into the foam. Dan threw his pistol to the coxswain and plunged after us. The sailors hauled us into the boat, all the while looking fearfully at the cliff above them, which was now lined with riflemen. Dan seized his revolver and sent them scampering with the last three bullets in the cylinder.

The sailors pulled with all their might for the ship while Dan brandished his empty pistol. What a figure he made beside the coxswain, his wet shirt plastered to his broad back, his yellow hair streaming in the sun. He kept the riflemen at bay until Lord Bantry himself rode up and, judging us to be out of pistol range, bravely exposed himself to rally his retainers and order a volley. The bullets fell a hundred feet to the west of us.

“Jesus,” Dan said. “I've never seen such bad shootin'.”

“They're Lord Bantry's men, but they're Irishmen,” Michael said. “I doubt they want to hit us.”

“The guy shootin' at me goin' down the cliff must have been English,” Dan said.

“My God, look,” I cried.

The woman had burst through the line of riflemen on the cliff's edge. She had the child in her arms. With a howl that reached us over the wind, she flung the little girl down upon the foam-drenched rocks below.

“Dear God, dear God, forgive us,” I said.

“Why did she do it?” Dan said.

“They put her under arrest, no doubt,” Michael said. “It was impossible to deny she'd sheltered us.”

“It meant leaving the only thing she loved,” I said.

“What a crazy country,” Dan said. “You're better out of it.”

“I wonder if we'll ever be out of it,” I said.

Aboard the
Manhattan
, all was confusion and roaring and cursing as we were hustled to the deck, the boat was hoisted aboard, and they laid on every scrap of sail to clear Bantry Bay before the British frigates caught them. We were led to the captain's cabin, and there I tasted my first cup of coffee. A bitter, scalding brew, I thought it, but Dan McCaffrey gulped it gratefully and said it made him feel at home already.

We looked like three half-drowned rats. The captain appeared and said as much. New York born, he was a big, broad man with a beard like the Lord Jehovah. His name was Dennis O'Hickey. He was a Fenian Republican to the eyes; he'd taken the oath and was ready to risk his ship for Ireland's freedom. He rarely spoke in less than a roar, even in his cabin.

“As a true O'Hickey,” I said, “you should be consoled that you've saved two descendants of the O'Briens, as your ancestors no doubt saved thousands.”

Neither he nor Dan McCaffrey knew what I was talking about. I explained to them that in the old days, when the O'Briens ruled Thomond, they never strayed a mile without an O'Hickey, because they were the hereditary doctors to the O'Briens. I told how Tom O'Hickey, one of our farmers, still had the old urge in him, without knowing it. Once, when my father had influenza, Tom had walked ten miles to get blood from an old Mr. Keogh. Like many, Tom believed that a Keogh's blood had a charm in it because a Keogh had once given his life to save a hunted priest.

“We have a Keogh aboard, as scrawny a bit of scrimshaw as you've ever seen,” thundered Captain O'Hickey. “I doubt if we could get blood out of him, any more than I can get work out of him. But I'll undertake to do a bit of doctoring for the three of you here and now.”

He got out a bottle of John Jameson's and poured liberal amounts of it in the coffee, improving its taste no end. “You go to bed,” he said to Michael, who was beginning to shiver, “and take this with you.” He handed him the remains of the bottle. “I'll have some dry clothes sent up for you. Though I'll be damned if I have anything but a sailor's blouses and drawers for you, Miss.”

“Anything warm will do nicely,” I said.

“Will we make open water, Captain?” Dan said.

“Come see the race,” O'Hickey said.

In five minutes a scrawny sailor appeared with dry clothes for us. He had a sad, solemn face. “I'll bet you're Keogh,” I said.

“I am,” he said.

“I've never seen a Keogh with a smile,” I said.

We retreated to separate cabins off the main stateroom and changed into our sailor's clothes. They were so tight, I blushed to look down at myself. It was like wearing underclothes in public. Out on deck, I was relieved to find that no one so much as glanced at me. They were too busy in the dash for the sea. We mounted the captain's poop deck on the stern and watched the British frigate, steam pouring from its funnel, getting under way. Bantry is a long deep bay, and we had some sailing to get beyond Ireland's coast into international waters. The steam frigate gained steadily on us, but Captain O'Hickey remained unworried. In an hour we were at the entrance of the bay. The great heaving swells of the Atlantic tilted the deck beneath our feet. The
Manhattan
bit into them like a greyhound, sending great spumes of spray over the bow.

I turned to have a last look at Ireland. Beyond the cliffs the land lay in the morning sunshine, a rich, royal green. The color of hope, I told myself. The color of loyalty and faith.

“We'll come back, I promise you, Bess. We'll come back,” Dan said, apparently forgetting what he had exclaimed an hour ago about being glad to be out of it.

“Goddamn the bugger, he's giving chase,” roared Captain O'Hickey, seizing his spyglass.

The British steam frigate was coming out of the bay, biting as furiously into the Atlantic swells as the
Manhattan.

“He's clearing his decks,” O'Hickey said.

“You ready to fight for your ship, Captain?” Dan asked.

“I'm as ready as the next man, but what good are rifles against cannon? He can stand off and blast us to driftwood,” O'Hickey said.

“Let's pretend we'll fight, anyway,” Dan said.

Captain O'Hickey began bawling orders. In five minutes every man in the crew—there were about twenty of them—had a rifle in his hand. The British frigate was closing on us with every passing minute. Finally there came a puff of smoke from her bow and the boom of a cannon. A round shot splashed a dozen yards behind us.

“I'll come about. You take charge of the men,” O'Hickey said to Dan.

We hove to and wallowed in the swell while the frigate approached. Amidships an officer with a brass trumpet to his mouth bellowed, “Captain ahoy. We have reason to believe you have fugitives from justice aboard your ship. We demand their immediate surrender.”

Captain O'Hickey put a similar brass trumpet to his mouth, though his tremendous voice needed no artificial expansion. “We have people who have paid for their passage to America. I intend to take them there. We are in international waters, and any attempt to board my ship will be resisted to the last man of my crew.”

Captain O'Hickey gestured to a sailor by the after mast. “Break out the flag,” he said.

Up the mast in the sunlight ran America's red, white, and blue banner. How bold it looked, whipping and crackling in the Atlantic wind, opposite John Bull's Union Jack. As long as I live, I will never forget my first sight of Old Glory.

“If you fire a shot at that flag, Captain,” O'Hickey thundered, “I guarantee that it will be repaid a thousand-fold within the year. This is an American ship, manned by American citizens.”

There was silence from the British frigate while the captain conferred with his officers. Then he raised his trumpet again. “We appeal to you as law-abiding citizens of a great nation. The criminals you are sheltering have killed three people and wounded several other persons.”

I was struck with a pang of remorse, thinking of the sergeant who looked like my MacNamara uncle. I was sure he was among the dead. Dan had shot him point-blank.

“I was born in America of Irish parents,” Captain O'Hickey replied. “They told me enough about British justice to prevent me from ever surrendering a fugitive to its vengeance.”

Up in the bow, Dan McCaffrey shouted an order. The sailors lined the rail, their rifles leveled at the frigate. We could see the ugly snouts of the British cannon through their open gunports, the crews standing ready to fire. It was hardly a contest, if they chose to attack. But after another minute of indecision, smoke belched from the frigate's stack and her bow swung away from us, back toward Ireland. Captain O'Hickey ordered the helmsman to set a westerly course, and we were on our way to America.

That night in Captain O'Hickey's cabin we celebrated royally. The John Jameson's flowed, and we toasted the United States of America more than once. We had been saved from the gallows by the American flag, and I was mightily disposed to love it and the man who flaunted it as his emblem. I did not understand the divided feelings Dan himself bore for that flag. I was scarcely aware of the effect of these feelings on his heart and soul. It was enough, at first, that we were safe and free and on our way to rally the Irish of America. I vowed to redouble our joy with a love that lived up to the promises I had made to him when I lay in his arms for the first time.

Double and redouble we did, on the stout ship
Manhattan.
Our voyage was a kind of dream. The sun shone on us every mile of every day. Even the creatures of the deep seemed kindly disposed. Great whales surfaced one day off Iceland and spouted mightily into the blue sky, flipping their tails like children at play. The wind bowled us along at a brisk ten knots, and Captain O'Hickey was soon saying he had never seen a better passage. He had always thought women were bad luck at sea, but he was ready to change his mind.

A ship is a kind of island, a separate world with its own ways and customs. We fit smoothly into it, almost forgetting any other kind of world existed. It was a little like the land of the Ever Living, the heaven of the old Irish heroes, where there was nothing to do all day but sing and feast and recite poems and make easy love without fear of babies or bill collectors. Captain O'Hickey was like a laughing God the Father with his great beard and his stories of shenanigans in a hundred ports around the world. Michael was our poet and musician. Dan was Oisin, son of Finn, noblest of the old Fenians. I was Niamh, queen of the Country of the Young.

I remember best the night that a full riding moon spread a hush over the face of the ocean. There was only the lazy sigh of the ship's prow in the rushing water, the faint creak of the masts and booms, the occasional rustle of a sail. Michael and I sat on the deck surrounded by the crew, save the helmsman, and told Fenian stories from the heroic days.

The night ended with Michael speaking our favorite Irish poem, the first he had recited to me when he came home from the university. In it, Red Hugh O'Donnell, the greatest hero of the sixteenth century, addresses Ireland.

I prayed that those noble words would take root in Dan McCaffrey's soul and lift his fight for Ireland above crass hope of gain or lure of profit. I believe for a while it did work a change in him. He felt the pull of his Irish blood. He asked me to recite the poem to him again the next day and wanted to know what happened to Red Hugh O'Donnell. “The British poisoned him,” I said. “He went as an ambassador to seek help from Spain, and the British sent a secret agent there and poisoned him.”

Instead of awakening Dan's anger, as I hoped it would, the story of Red Hugh's fate only seemed to make him sad. He began talking in a disconsolate way about the hard luck of being on the losing side in a war. I realized how little I knew about his American life and asked him to tell me the story.

“Like I said, my father left Ireland in 1831. He went to Boston, like most Irish at that time. But he hated the place. He called the Protestants ‘the icicles of Yankee-land' and said they were worse than the English in Ireland. They despised Irish Catholics. While he was there, they burned a convent full of nuns. They called Irishmen ‘white niggers' and never gave them work if they could help it.

“Dad saw there was no future in New England and went south. He ended up buildin' railroads in the Louisiana swamps, up to his neck in freezin' water, bitten by a million insects, never knowin' when some snake would finish him.”

“I thought the Southerners had slaves for such heavy work,” I said.

“You wouldn't risk a slave in them swamps. Slaves were too valuable. Worth a thousand dollars a head. An Irishman was worth nothin' but the five or six dollars you paid him each week. When he died you just buried him there in the swamp. A lot died. A lot came out like my dad, shakin' with malaria. He went north and laid more track into Tennessee. He broke down with malaria there. While he was sick he met my ma. Her people had come down the Cumberland from Virginia when there was nothin' but Indians in the state.

“They got married along about 1840. Ma's people had some money, and Dad borrowed some to add to what he'd saved on the railroad and opened a tavern with another Irishman in a town named Pulaski about a hundred and fifty miles from Memphis. That's where I grew up.”

“Tell me what's it like,” I said.

“Beautiful country. Rollin' hills. Stands of trees along the river bottoms. Dad says he settled there because it reminded him of Ireland. And because he met an Irish beauty. Ma's maiden name was O'Gara. Our grass ain't as green as Ireland. Bluegrass, we call it. But it's rich soil, good pasture for cattle and horses. Dad started raisin' horses with the money he made from the tavern. Then he built a sawmill. Pretty soon he was close to the richest man in Pulaski. He got into politics with the Democrats and went to the legislature at Nashville. He decided he wanted me to be a gentleman. Wanted me to have a good education. So he sent me to the University of Virginia. I was there a year when the war started.

“Dad didn't see nothin' wrong with ownin' slaves. Most of his friends in the legislature were from West Tennessee, down around Memphis, where they owned 'em by the hundreds. He said he'd never seen a slave treated as bad as he'd seen the Irish treated in Boston. So he threw in with the Confederates and told me to do likewise in Virginia.”

“So you were in it from the start.”

“Right from Bull Run,” he said. “One of General Stuart's cousins was in my class. He introduced me to him and I got a commission in his cavalry brigade. That's where I spent the war, in Virginia with Stuart. He was the bravest man and the finest officer I ever saw. For a while we had a good old time. The ladies couldn't do enough for us. General Stuart made sure we had the best of everything. We whacked the Yankees almost every time we felt like it. But they wouldn't quit. They kept findin' more men, no matter how many we killed or captured. Pretty soon they had officers, veterans, who knew how to maneuver cavalry as good as General Stuart. Our last fight was at Yellow Tavern, about six miles from Richmond. There were only four officers left in our regiment. The men and horses were half starved. The Yankees tore us apart, and one of their troopers killed General Stuart with a handgun. I carried him back to his tent. That was the saddest day of my life.