Scattered Seeds

SCATTERED SEEDS

JULIE DOHERTY

SOUL MATE PUBLISHING

New York

SCATTERED SEEDS

Copyright©2016

JULIE DOHERTY

Cover Design by Fiona Jayde

This book is a work of fiction.  The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Published in the United States of America by

Soul Mate Publishing

P.O. Box 24

Macedon, New York, 14502

ISBN: 978-1-68291-050-4

www.SoulMatePublishing.com

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

To those who came before us.

Acknowledgements

Thanks go out to old salts, Marek, Laury, and Allison, for sailing tips and terms, to Troy for letting me borrow his topo maps for two years, and to Linda at The U.S. Brig Niagara, who sent blueprints and answered sailing questions. Thanks, too, to Niagara’s crew for offering a sailing experience I’ll never forget.

I am indebted to the friends who haven’t yet unfollowed me on social media. Your tolerance of my hands-on research and snippet posts is truly humbling.

Yve, my critique partner and best turnip, you are the wind in my literary sails. Thank you.

Thank you to Soul Mate Publishing and my editor, Mary Harris, for whipping this novel into shape—and for not allowing me to tether my limbs to the uprights.

It would take another book to list all the ways The Doherty helped make this novel possible. Hubs, you’re awesome. Thank you.

Finally, to Edward and Henry McConnell, who dropped into the wilderness ten minutes from where I sit: wherever you are, may you look upon the feeble effort of your descendant and know your struggle was not in vain.

Preface

Throughout the 1600s, the promise of fertile land sent Lowland Scots streaming to the Ulster region of Ireland. By the 1700s, they were on the move again, thanks to oppression, drought, taxes, and the practice of rack-renting. They sailed to the New World in droves, carrying with them their language, music, and religion.

A November 20, 1729 article in
The Pennsylvania Gazette
described their “Poverty, Wretchedness, Misery and Want” and their joy at surviving “long and miserable passages” during which many “starve for want” and die of “sickness by being crowded in such great numbers on board one Vessel.”

The contribution of these “Scots-Irish” to our great nation is inarguable. They broke open our wilderness, were among the first to be ready on the battlefields of our Revolution, and provided at least partial genetic content for seventeen American presidents.

The characters you are about to meet claim no such renown. They are, quite simply, a man and his son.

Chapter 1

County Donegal, Ireland

1755

Henry stood next to his father surveying their largest field. He longed to say that the seeds might yet sprout, that there was still time to yield a return, but the undeniable truth lay right before them: drought had come to Ireland. Their investment in imported flaxseed was lost.

“A hundred days, Henry.” Father’s face bore the pained expression of a man whose hope was as withered as his crops. “A hundred days was all we needed, all that stood between us and prosperity.” He kicked a clod of dirt, and it turned to dust. “It’s all gone, gone along wi’ the horse that harrowed the ground.”

A lump rose in Henry’s throat. He ached for his father, and he missed their horse. Paddy was a fine animal purchased ten years ago after a bumper crop of rye, when Edward McConnell’s luck was good and Henry’s only chore was to stay out of his mother’s hair. Elizabeth McConnell moldered in the ground now, and Paddy plowed another man’s fields.

“We will pray, Father. God will help us.”

“God?” Father kneaded his forehead with calloused fingers. “God’s groping in our pockets right along wi’ your Uncle Sorley. Praying did nae pay our tithes or the hearth tax, did it?”

Surely he didn’t mean that. Everyone knew Edward McConnell to be a godly man.

“We’ll get more seed, Father. It’ll grow next year.” He squared his shoulders and tried to look confident.

“Will nae do us any good. Your Uncle Sorley plans to decrease our tillage in favor of pasture.”

“Wi’ no cut in rent, I’ll wager, and early payment again this year.”

Father spat on the parched ground. “He stopped by yesterday looking for it. Said he’ll call in after services on the Sabbath.” He ground his teeth together. “I’d gi’ anything to see the look on his face when he finds our empty hoose.”

Henry’s chest tightened.
Were they moving again?
He rubbed the back of his neck and looked across the rolling patchwork of fields to the northeast, where their last home rose above a copse of ash, and where his mother’s daffodils still swayed in the Ulster wind. Four years ago, the cattle plague put them out of that house and into the windowless shack they now shared with Phoebe, their only remaining sow. The hut contained a hearth, a curse necessitating the payment of tax despite the fact that it never contained a fire.

With no peat left and no horse to haul more from the bog, the McConnells relied on a moth-eaten blanket and Phoebe’s body heat for warmth.

They had room to fall; many Catholics lived in the open, bleeding cattle and boiling the gore with sorrel for sustenance. Perhaps his father intended to join them.

“Are we moving again?” he asked.

Father slipped two fingers under his brown tie wig and rubbed his temple, something he often did when puzzled.

Henry followed his gaze to the ruins of Burt Castle, which sat atop a knoll, just above Uncle Sorley’s grand plantation house.

“Nine years we’ve suffered bad luck, Henry. E’er since I buried . . .”

Buried what? Maw? She died five years ago, not nine.

Father sunk his head into his hands, muffling his speech. “I . . . I guess it’s time to . . .”

Henry stepped into the hard, hot field, directly in front of his father. “Father, what in the name of heaven is it?”

Father tilted back his head and whispered to the sky, “Forgive me, Elizabeth.” He looked at Henry. “I buried something. Your maw insisted on it, said it was pagan and she did nae want it in her hoose. I did as she asked. A woman can talk ye into cutting off your own hand, Henry, remember that if ye can.”

Henry nodded, not comprehending, wondering what pagan thing lay buried. He’d never heard it mentioned before, and he was a skilled eavesdropper. “What was it? What did ye bury?”

Father inhaled deeply, removed the worn tricorn from his head, and tucked it under his arm. “I’ll tell ye the whole tale, but first, we have to dig it up. We canny do that until after dark.” He turned without warning and headed for home.

Henry followed him, volleying questions against his back.

Father said nothing until they reached their hut. There, he stormed past Phoebe, flung open the door, and nodded toward a worm-ravaged chest sitting next to a heap of rushes that served as their bed.

“Gather up our claithes and shoes. Use my good cloak for a sack. Bring the dried nettles.” He grabbed the peat spade, the only tool left from his once abundant array of implements, and used it to prop open the door.

“Why bring the nettles?” Henry hated the bitter leaves. “There are more nettles than rocks in Ulster.”

When his father offered no reply, he lobbed another question, desperate for clues as to their destination. “Will ye not wear your good cloak, if we are traveling far?”

“My auld cloak will draw less attention.”

So, they were going to some populous place where good cloaks were bad.

Henry spread the cloak across the dirt floor, careful to avoid Phoebe’s manure. The cloak was long out of fashion, but still a quality garment that Edward McConnell could not afford to replace. He threw their scant belongings into the middle of it, brought the cloak’s corners together, then tied them together to form a sack. Excepting Phoebe and the clothes they wore, the sack contained everything worth saving.

He sat on the rickety chest to watch his father pace.

When Burt Castle became a silhouette against an amber horizon, Father donned his hat and cloak and ducked outside.

Henry followed him to the stone wall separating their field from Uncle Archibald’s.

Father began to tumble a section of wall.

With his perplexity and fear mounting, Henry assisted until there was enough of a breach to push Phoebe through the wall.

She trotted away, grunting and wagging her curly tail, while he helped restack the stones to prevent her from returning.

He could no longer hold his tongue.

“What are we doing? Why are we putting Phoebe in Uncle Archibald and Aunt Martha’s field? Are we going somewhere? Where are we going? Why are we taking nettles?”

In his frustration, he grabbed his father’s arm.

Father whirled around and gave Henry’s shoulders a fierce shake. “Get hold of yoursel’, lad, or I’ll cloot ye upside the noggin. No more questions. Just do as ye’re told.”

Henry stared at his father, who had never once laid a hand on him, nor threatened to.

“I’m sorry, lad. Go on in the hoose and get the bundle.”

When Henry returned with their belongings, his father was holding the peat spade.

“Get a good look around ye, son. It’s the last time ye’ll clap eyes on your hame.”

They were heading for the graveyard. At night. With a peat spade.

Henry shivered.

Patterson’s dog barked as they scrambled up the bank on the far side of the burn.

“Get doon,” Father whispered.

They slid back into the burn, a pitiful trickle now, thanks to the drought.

Henry rubbed at a fresh hole in his stocking and peered through alder roots and rushes at the Patterson home.

A stocky shadow darkened the open doorway for a full two minutes while Snowy barked.

“What is it?” Patterson muttered to the dog.

Snowy took a step toward the burn and wagged his tail, likely recognizing Henry’s scent. Henry gave the dog a scratch every Sabbath on his way to services.

Something moved in the room behind Patterson’s silhouette. Probably Mary spinning linen. A fortnight ago, she bragged about earning a threepenny bit per day doing so.

He would never forget the look on her face as she gawked at his ragged breeches. Despite his father’s earlier advice about women, Henry was sure Mary would never ask a husband to cut off his own hand. Nobody would be dumb enough to marry her, and besides, she was rotten enough to want that job for herself.

Patterson called Snowy back to the house and closed the door. Their cottage had likely lost its heat, but Henry suffered no guilt about it. He hoped Mary took a chill and died of the fever.

“Go.” Father pushed him forward.

They climbed the bank a second time, then flung themselves over a mossy log. On the far side of the main road leading to Derry, they pushed through a hedgerow, where the moon illuminated the ivy-covered ruins of a church. Only two walls remained upright, stone arms reaching for heaven in a final plea for mercy. In spite of the drought, a riot of tussocks and briars capped the dips and mounds holding dead Presbyterians. The moon bleached the tallest headstones, elongating their shadows and deepening the names carved into their faces.

Henry’s knees turned to porridge. Nearly a man or not, he could go no farther.

Father waved him onward from an iron gate. “Come on,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “It’s just a graveyard. It is nae the dead ye have to worry about. Leave the bundle by the gate.” He turned, and the graveyard’s rusty jaws swallowed him whole.

Henry’s mouth felt dry, and his heart thundered. Three years ago, George Ewing swore he heard the wail of a banshee here, and last spring, John MacFarlane saw Auld Man Conyngham’s ghost clomping about on Derry Road wearing shoes with silver buckles. Auld Man Conyngham had been a rich merchant who afforded such things. George and John agreed it could be no one else, especially since the ghost also wore a powdered wig. Now, here Henry was, facing the gaping mouth of the very graveyard where Conyngham’s relatives planted their dead patriarch.

He pressed the bundle against his chest and listened for his father, but heard no sign of him over the breeze hissing through the willows. He shifted from one unreliable leg to the other. Somewhere in the blackness, a spade scraped against stone.

By John Calvin’s calloused knees, was his father digging up a corpse?

Henry put the bundle on the ground, then hugged himself to quell the shaking that had little to do with the night’s chill. Clearly, his father’s sense perished along with their doomed flaxseed. He had to stop this. With his father always telling him he was nearly a man, well, now it was time to act like one. He would march across the graveyard, yank the spade out of Father’s grip, and demand they go home. It was that simple.

He stepped through the gate and tried to convince himself that Auld Man Conyngham could not reach up from his moldy grave to grab his ankles and haul him down into the jakes of hell, even though Conyngham spent his lifetime practicing for it by herding folks into the bowels of his boats and spiriting them off to the Colonies.

He took three strides across the spongy ground when something brushed against his leg and stole his courage. He leapt forward and bolted toward the sound of the digging spade.

Just a briar, just a briar, just a briar.

His heavy footfall collapsed a shallow grave, plunging his leg into a rotted coffin and God knew what else. He gasped, jerked his foot out of the earth, then scrambled on hands and knees, fighting tears. Nearly a man or not, he wanted his father. He ran, mindless and wheezing, and tumbled over a decapitated headstone.

“Henry, straighten up and get o’er here.” His father knelt at the base of the most elaborate cross in the graveyard.

Oh no.

“Ye’re seven and ten, Henry. Nearly a man. Time ye start acting like one.”

Henry stared past him at the yawning shadows on the headstone.

James P. Conyngham, Merchant.

An owl hooted somewhere above them as Henry gaped at the letters carved into the marble cross.

Father ripped at a stubborn tussock. His tricorn lay on the ground, and his wig was lopsided. He thrust the spade at Henry. “Slice doon by the roots while I pull. We’re gonny lift this off.”

“Father—”

“Do it.”

“But I’d have to stand on his grave to do it, and Auld Man Conyngham—”

“Has been dead nigh on ten years. Come the morrow, he’ll still be dead. Now take this spade, dig into the roots, and lift while I pull.”

Henry took the spade and tried to dig from afar; if Auld Man Conyngham’s bony fingers groped from the grave, they would not find Henry McConnell’s ankles within reach.

“Ye canny dig from Derry, lad. I’m breaking my back here. The sooner ye sink that spade in, the sooner we can get oot of this godforsaken graveyard.”

Henry stepped onto the grave, gritted his teeth, then sank the spade into the earth.

“Nearly a man,” his father mumbled, hauling again on the tussock. “Grown so big he canny buckle his breeks, yet feared of a graveyard.” He pulled harder, grunting, then stood up to rub his back. “I was coopering plus farming my own fields at your age.” His words puffed steam into the night.

“Father, why are we digging up Auld Man Conyngham?”

“We are nae. We’re digging up gold I hid here the year my luck turned rotten.”

Henry didn’t believe him. If his father owned any gold, the McConnells wouldn’t sleep with a pig. Henry would own shoes that weren’t just for the Sabbath, and his breeks would buckle at his knees, not flap above them. He’d have garters to hold up his stockings, not dirty bits of cord. They would taste meat again, and Maw would have a cross on her grave every bit as fancy as Auld Man Conyngham’s. Maybe even fancier. There would be no disdain on Mary Patterson’s face. In fact, she would probably—