Bold Sons of Erin (16 page)

“But the stain on your shirt?”

“Mrs. Brady will see to it when she returns. Although I fear she’ll chastise me for my carelessness.”

“Well, then, I will leave you to your laundries.” I turned as if I were about to leave, but the truth is that I was playing with the
fellow. For something about him angered me to a degree at once unreasonable and unfair. Determined I was to have a few answers before I went back down the hill.

“Well, I wish you luck with your investigations,” he said, with frank relief. “And I really shall pray for—”

“Ah, that reminds me,” I told him, turning back again. “I’m terribly forgetful, Father Wilde. I did have a few questions, see.”

He stood there, miffed to the mashers, and folded his arms across his chest, with his hands tucked into his armpits.

“The queerest thing happened to me yesterday,” I began. “I was walking back along the turnpike in the rain—wasn’t that a rain of all rains, Father Wilde?—and the strangest old woman come out of the trees to meet me. A sorry creature she was. Disfigured like a leper from the Gospels. And mad, I do believe. She seemed all fears and spells and incantations.”

The subject seemed a relief to him. “Ah, that would be the old German widow, no doubt. Quite an unpleasant creature, I’m told. Mad, indeed. One of God’s poor, whatever the specific nature of her affliction. It’s shameful that the Lutherans don’t look after her, I must say. She’s said to be something of a hermit. I believe she lives in a shanty on Gammon Hill.”

He seemed nearly affable of a sudden. “I believe I may have spotted her once myself, you know. From a distance. In the summer. I was picking blackberries. We have lovely blackberries on the hillsides.”

“I would have thought there was danger of contagion,” I said. “She appeared severely diseased.” And that she had done. As bad as the worst beggar in India.

He shrugged. “I can’t say, of course. But she hasn’t bothered anyone here. On the contrary, I believe she flees when spotted.” He shrugged. “But she has nothing to do with us. She belongs to the German farmers in the next valley, if she belongs to anyone. I’ve heard they go to her for spells, when their cows take ill. Odd, that she should be down as far as this.”

“And speaking of spells,” I said, “Mr. Donnelly said that the women of your parish believe Mary Boland to be a changeling, that her soul was robbed by fairies.”

His face darkened. The morning might have been bright as gold, but his mood turned black as tar. For all that, the young priest was a handsome man, and the more so because of that white hair, not despite it. He commanded the eye, and might have been a great lion among the ladies, had his vocation been otherwise.

“No matter what Donnelly may have told you, the women of this parish believe in Jesus Christ, Our Savior. And in God, the Father. They believe in the Holy Trinity. In Mary, the Blessed Mother of God. And in the Christian saints and martyrs. All this drivel about fairies and hauntings belongs, if anywhere, to folk tales told by the fireside. You simply cannot take it seriously.”

His expression turned to business, as surely as a merchant’s might have done were trade the subject. “Of course, there are pagan vestiges among them, little practices and ridiculous superstitions. The Church condemns all of it. But it takes time to eliminate the traces. Time and education. But I won’t allow you to believe for a moment that anyone in this parish puts faith in that sort of thing.” He took a deep, determined breath. “They put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ.”

“And in you, Father Wilde?”

“I think you’re being insolent.”

“But you will not deny there are certain superstitions among—”

“Jones, be fair.” He looked away, disgusted with me and the world. “The correct word for all this is ‘folklore.’ Yes, it has pagan roots. And yes, the Church properly forbids all such practices and the naïve credulity associated with them. But why, I ask you, are the Irish chosen to be mocked when they repeat their old legends? At a time when the English are writing works of literature about their own countryside beliefs, their ghosts and fairies? Why, the Germans have made something of an industry of collecting such tales and publishing them with the full approbation
of their finest universities. Why is it, then, that the Irish alone are considered backward, if ever they make the least mention of rural traditions?”

“Did Mary Boland believe in ‘rural traditions,’ Father Wilde?” It was something of a blind attempt and forward, but I wanted to know more about Mrs. Boland. And of one thing I was convinced: The priest knew a great deal more than he was telling.

“Mary Boland . . .” he said, with an almost pained reluctance, “ . . . was an unusual woman.”

“Was she, then? How so?”

“Jones, must we? Really?”

“Father Wilde, there is a matter of murder. Of two—”

“Oh, yes. I know. And you suspect me of telling lies about death certificates. I know all that.”

“I saw her, you know.”

“You told me that.”

“I saw her clearly. And close. Closer than you are to me. I had her in my grip.”

His pale looks grew far paler with each word. And his voice abandoned him.

“She is a beautiful woman, if moonlight did not deceive me,” I continued. “With a wild beauty . . . all that long, black hair . . . and a saucy mouth on her . . . her language . . .”

He had closed his eyes. I let him think for a moment. At war with himself, he was. Twas plain to see. But I had no inkling how deep his battles went.

“Mary Boland’s beauty is a curse,” he said.

“A curse, is it? That is an odd word to use, Father Wilde. For a priest, I mean. A ‘curse.’”

“An affliction, then. I regret my intemperate language.”

“An affliction to whom? To her husband, Daniel Boland?” I had a sudden intuition, see, and thought I might solve at least one murder on the spot.

“To him, certainly. And to herself, I think.”

“You heard their confessions, of course.”

He reared up. Becoming fully the priest again. “I’m sure you know we cannot discuss such matters.”

I ignored that point, for my interest lay elsewhere.

“But Daniel Boland did not come to you with his hasty confession of murder, Father Wilde. He went to Mr. Oliver, at the colliery office. Why was that, do you think? The Irish do not love mine superintendents.”

“Had Daniel Boland come to me to confess, I couldn’t have told anyone. And he wanted his guilt to be known. Evidently, he felt remorse.”

“Perhaps I am wrong, but I believe that the rule among you is such: Had he made his confession to you in that closet you have in your church, you could not have reported his doings to anyone. But if he had come to you outside the church, simply as a figure of some authority, then—”

“He didn’t.”

“But why? Why Oliver? Whom I believe the people here despise?
Why
didn’t he come to you? It seems to me you were the natural choice. For advice and comfort. For help.”

“Only Daniel Boland knows the answer. And he’s dead.”

“Yes. Of cholera, I’m told. But might Mrs. Boland not know, as well? And your Mr. Donnelly? And half the village? Or all of it?”

“You would need to ask them.”

Twas then I took my plunge. Into the wrong pool. I thought I had the business figured out, see.

“Did Daniel Boland commit murder out of jealousy, because General Stone made advances to Boland’s beautiful wife? During the general’s stay here, did he meet Mary Boland and try to—”

I did not even finish. Nor did I need an answer in words. I saw by the smirk on the priest’s face that I had gotten it thoroughly wrong.

“Perhaps you should pursue that line of reasoning,” the priest told me. He nodded his head, a dishonest man, hiding crimes when he should have been saving souls.

Of a sudden, I sensed an untoward bitterness in me.

“Really,” he went on, “that does sound like a plausible explanation, Major Jones. Although I had not heard it. Quite plausible, I think. Jealousy, the green-eyed monster and all that.”

“No,” I said. “You don’t believe it. Do you? You know better.”

“Now, really, Jones!”

“You know the truth. But you will not say. For reasons of your own.”

“That’s unpardonable!”

“I hope that all your reasons for silence are good ones, Father Wilde. And that God will judge them so.”

“I don’t think I need you to tell me about God.”

Angry I was, and spiteful. “And why is Mary Boland watching your house at night? Why are you afraid of a mere woman?”

“You’re mad yourself.” The priest turned to go, stalking off.

Mad I was, though not in the sense he meant. I have a temper. And sometimes it gets the best of me. Especially when my own foolishness trips me up.

That morning, my mood was positively wicked.

“Father Wilde,” I called after him. “The blood’s soaking through your coat.

It was a lie. But he turned. In alarm.

The moment he saw the set of my face, he knew that I had tricked him.

“You’re a bastard,” he said. Which was not priestly speech.

I was a fool, but Father Wilde was a greater one. For he trudged inside and slammed his rickety door behind him, disappearing into the bowels of his shanty.

I stepped up to the tub and lifted the canvas.

The linens within were browned with streaks of blood.

IT IS FAR TOO EASY TO MISJUDGE THE MAN YOU DO not like, to think him vicious because he tilts his cap to the left, not to the right, as you do. I should have known better, as a man and as a Christian. But I was snared, as easily as a youth in the flush of temper. I did not like the priest, who was arrogant. I saw his fear, but failed to weigh it wisely, and all my calculations went amiss. As we rattled down the hill toward the village and its black castle of a colliery, I blamed the priest for a range of indefinite crimes, upon the evidence of his bloody shirt and linens. Events would prove me wrong and shame me for my errors, although his shame was greater than mine own. A sinner does not have to be a criminal.

But let that bide.

I was not finished with the people of Heckschersville. My darling wife was worried for my safety, as Sergeant Dietrich reminded me again. But duty must come first. I had another call to pay before we returned to Pottsville.

As we descended toward the pall of the colliery, with its fumes and fires and noise, I savored what I could of the lovely morning. Despite the dust thrown up by the works below us, the sunlight seemed a foretaste of salvation, and the wind come fresh off the hills, ripe with the memory of rain and chilled to bracing. Even the barren trees shone bright and hopeful, and a wife at her washing seemed as splendid a figure as the statues of Michael Angelo, who is famous. Twas as if this earth held naught but beauty.

I lifted up mine eyes. How can men fail to believe in God on such an autumn day?

We entered the black vale of coal. Drawn by mules, full-laden cars come out of a tunnel’s mouth. Weighed, then hauled up the tipple track by cables, they emptied with a roar high overhead, feeding the maw of the great machine. Rock spewed from a breaker chute, worthless. On the other side of the blackened building, wet coal shimmered out of metal funnels and into the rail cars, bound for Pottsville, then for distant markets. Whenever a mule boy emerged from below, he masked his eyes from the glare of the day, which set even the dust clouds to shimmering. The mules shied their heads slightly and trudged along the track laid into the ground. The noise was near as ferocious as that of a battle.

I marked Mr. Donnelly by the scales, as he marked me. He was the cleanest man upon the grounds, which is not high praise.

Licked by the switch beyond the level of custom, a wronged mule brayed. Metal struck metal, while engines chugged and steam combined with dust. A gray miasma enveloped the breaker itself, near as thick as a dust storm in the Punjab. It is no wonder that miners die of their coughs.

I got me down from the wagon in front of the glorified shanty that served as an office. Inside, amid the most unashamed human smells, a pair of clerks bent over their ledgers, with Mr. Oliver correcting the fellow nearest me. The room looked orderly enough for so rough a place, yet something there was that hinted at indulgence.