Bold Sons of Erin (2 page)

He shook his head. Not to refuse my order, but in fear. “And if it is the cholera,
Herr Major? Ich will nit krank werden. Bitte, nun. Hab’ Kinder, eine junge Frau . . .
”

“It is not the cholera. That I can tell you.” I almost added something more, but had the sense to check my own emotions. “Clean off the coffin and open it.”

He wished to obey me, for that is the German’s nature. Your Dutchman is tame as the Irishman is wild. But fear of infection had frozen the fellow’s limbs. He was a great ox of a farmer, as big as I am small. Although I do show well in the chest and shoulders. But the size of the heart is a greater matter than the length of a fellow’s bones.

The others looked to the sergeant, not to me. For they were farmers from the south of the county, where the seams of coal gave way to stubbled fields and painted barns replaced the black ened collieries. The men were long acquainted, then melded close by war.

To give a command is a wonderful thing, but obedience will be earned. The soldiers did not know me, you understand. I was merely another bothersome officer, with a limp and a nasty scar upon his cheek, but otherwise no different from the others. When you serve in the ranks, all officers seem a menace. You only hope they will leave you in peace and not see you killed to curry a colonel’s favor.

Those men owed me the loyalty laid down in regulations. But words on paper never conquered fear. Had an Irish mob rushed up from the patch, the Dutchmen would have fled to save their lives. Brave though they had been on distant battlefields.

“Get out of the grave,” I told the sergeant quietly. “
Raus. Verstehe?
”

“
Jawohl, Herr Major!
” He scrambled up the sifting earth to stand beside his comrades.

I handed the sergeant the lantern, nearly losing our light to a blast of wind.

“
Echtes Hexenwetter,
” one of the privates muttered.

Weather for witches. That is what he said. I knew it, for I had applied myself to the mighty German tongue and had some Dutch by now. We must ever seek to improve our lives, with study as well as devotion.

I almost dressed them down for their superstition, which I refuse to allow into my life. And I would have singed their ears, that I can tell you. For I was not so calm as I pretended to be. When our nerves are short we speak to blister gunmetal. But I let it go.

I do not believe in witches or such like. A modern man lends no ear to such nonsense. And darkness has no power over Christians. But we were in agreement on the weather, which
pierced. A soldier who has served on the Northwest Frontier knows well the weather’s power over the heart.

I laid down my cane and climbed into the grave, landing on the coffin’s lid with a thump. My bad leg cropped a bother, but no matter. I took up the shovel and began to scrape the remaining dirt from the wood.

I did not think it was cholera. But I was not prepared for the foulness that awaited me.

THE MOON HID DEEP BEHIND THE CLOUDS, until its light was naught but a stingy glow. The lantern sputtered, held too high by the sergeant. It lit his face, dulled by animal fear, but hardly helped me see what I was doing. Twas not enough to clean off the coffin’s lid, for I needed room to perch as I opened the box. Navvy’s work it was and not fit for a major. Not when other ranks were standing about. But we must not be proud or succumb to vanity. I put off my cloak and went to it.

Despite the cold, I worked me into a sweat. Even though the soil was still loose from the burying, the task wanted all my back and shoulders could give. An awkward business it was. Since I am not tall, I had a devilish time lifting the dirt free of the hole. The wind was a wicked tease, as well, spraying the boneyard earth back into my face.

The soldiers above me mumbled, staring down at my doings in mounting fear.

Leaves rushed into the grave like rats, pestering me at my labor.

“Give me the bar,” I said at last, handing up the shovel.

A fellow with a limp to rival mine own did as I asked. The metal streaked my hand with cold when I gripped it. And then I went to work again, trying not to make an infernal noise. The wood was cheap and it splintered.

I smelled the body at the first cracking. A great stink it made. Then the others smelled it and edged back.

“Hold out the lantern!” I ordered, not without temper. Smelling was not enough, I had to see.

Startled I was, though. For I had thought to find the coffin empty and all of it a ruse. Far too neat things were, with the Irish fellow who bragged of a general’s murder dying all sudden of cholera, then plugged in the ground before the county coroner could make his way up from Pottsville to poke at the corpse. The swift interment was meant to prevent infection, according to the priest. Of course, I believed the Irish were shielding the murderer with a mock burial. While the killer ran from the law.

That was why I was doing my digging by night, one of the first acts in my investigation of the murder of General Stone, a poor fellow whose only sin had been an effort to recruit the sons of Erin for our army. Mr. Lincoln himself wished to find out the guilty, although we had generals dying by the hundredweight on battlefields from Maryland to Mississippi. Of course, a murder is a different matter.

Now I smelled death. And that is a smell I know. Yet, there was something queer about it, as if I sensed more than I could properly tell.

“I can’t
see
, man,” I snapped, in a sweaty grump. “Hold the lantern lower.”

I smelled their fear as clearly as I smelled that rotting corpse. But the sergeant bent over the grave. For sergeants must bear the dangers others flee.

“Herrgott erbarme,”
the Dutchman prayed. But the fellow did his duty.

“Lower!” I commanded. With the fear upon me, too.

I cracked the lid open broadly and a pulse of stench near sent me scrambling myself. The lantern retreated, then returned again.

I gagged. I could not help it. And I heard a man retch. Twas then I knew what it was that had struck me odd. The smell was of death, indeed. But death has a great bouquet of smells, and this one was not right. The man said to have been buried would have been dead less than a week. Now, that is time enough to stink profoundly. But the reek I met in that hole was the one
you encounter upon your return to last month’s battlefield. The fragrance of death gone stale.

The lantern quit me again. I heard the big fellow free his stomach of its contents. But I pushed on. By feel, I got the lid all off and propped it against stray roots and crumbling dirt.

I straightened my back, yearning for one good draught of fresh, clean air. I am not tall and could hardly see above the rim of the grave.

“Hand the lamp to me, Sergeant Dietrich. Here. Give it over, man.”

My God, the stink come high.

The sergeant did as bidden, though he did not want to approach the grave, nor to surrender the light. The world had gone dark as the blackest heathen’s soul. And that light had grown precious to him. Still, he followed orders, passing the flickering lamp to my outstretched hand.

I lowered the lantern into the grave.

And found not a man but a woman, many weeks dead.

LOOK YOU. I was prepared for an empty box, or for a buried man. But the unexpected disarms us. The sight of a young woman’s body—for young she was, despite her rictus grin and leathered flesh—well, the sight of such a one as that confused me.

She had a great shining luxury of cinnamon-colored hair and the good teeth of youth exposed by lips curled back. “O, thou still unravished bride of time . . .” I quoted Mr. Keats, who died young himself. But that was nonsense. For ravaged to a horror the poor thing was, though not by time. The vermin had gone at her, making a feast. The pennies set on her eyes had fallen away, but mercy was abroad, for the lids had locked themselves shut for all eternity. Although a worm squeezed out to have a look at me.

Glad I was that I did not see her eyes. For eyes accuse. And gladder still I was much later on, when I learned who she was and why she was buried thus. Intimacy enough there was between us.

Perhaps it was my quiet that drew him. Sergeant Dietrich edged back to the rim of the grave.

“’
Ne Frau ist es, doch? Was soll dass heissen, Herr Major?
”

“Speak English!” I told him impatiently, for my manners had gone frayed. “Yes, it’s a woman. Hardly more than a girl, I think. And I don’t know what it means.”

“
Ich dachte mir es war ja ein Mann?
I think we are looking for a man’s body,
nicht wahr?
”

I smiled grimly. “Yes, Sergeant Dietrich. We were looking for a man’s body. Now we shall have to look for a living man.”

“Aber das Maedchen
. . . the girl? Even the Irisher
Katholiken
do not bury a girl in the grave of the other man. In the holy ground.
Herrgott erbarme.”

Now, I know little enough of the cult of Rome, but the sergeant called up what knowledge I possessed. We were, in fact, in their consecrated ground, within the low wall of piled stones that fenced the Irish cemetery. And that assured me the girl in the grave was Catholic. For even the lowest drunkard priest would not bury one of another faith within the sacred boundaries. No matter that the priest had lied about the cholera, the girl in the coffin was Catholic. And likely Irish herself, with that cinnamon hair.

But what priest would put a girl in a grave and rob her of her name? Even to help a murderer escape?

Nor had the priest done all of this alone.

I TOOK A CLOSER LOOK at the rotting girl, drawing the lantern along her ruination. Small creatures fled the light. Searching for a sign of her identity I was, perhaps a Psalm book placed into her hands, which might include the maiden’s name inside it. For that is how we Methodists do our burying. But I found nothing. Good it was that I took that look, though, holding my nose like a child. For I saw two things that kept me from shutting the lid.

The girl was barefoot, see. Now, even the poor are not sent off without shoes. More striking to me still, her skirt was in
shreds. And badly stained. Not only by the mildew and putrefaction.

“Who has a knife?” I called, just loud enough to be heard against the wind.
“Ein Messer?”

“Jawohl, Herr Major!”
A private handed a clasp knife to the sergeant, who passed it on to me. What little I saw of their faces was not happy, although they responded avidly to commands. Germans, see. Clear orders spoken sharply always please them.

I gave the lantern back to the sergeant and bid him hold it steady as I worked. For I had a most unpleasant task before me.

No man should enter a woman’s chamber unbidden. And what room could be more intimate than a grave? Still, I did not see another choice. I had to shame her. Perhaps, to do her good.

I tell you, I did not relish the task at hand.

Now, I am an old bayonet and a veteran of John Company’s fusses. Nor was I born with violets stuffed up my nose. But I had to steel myself to touch that girl. And to steady my hands as living things deserted her flesh for mine. The meat of her was dry in spots, but putrid and wet in others. I tried not to touch her skin with the knife, but in many a place the cloth of the dress clung to her, glued by death, and I could not be gentle. I prayed for her and begged her pardon as I worked, although I fear my thoughts were an awful muddle.

Now, you will say: “What right did Jones have to disturb the unfortunate creature?” But I will tell you: I was the only law in a lawless place. I sensed at once that this was no natural death. Twas murder, upon a murder yet unexplained.

She had not been wealthy. Or if she had been well-to-do, she was not buried so. Her undergarments were scanty as they were foul, if you will forgive my indelicacy. And though the light was bad and her skin browned off, I found what I was looking for easily enough. Whoever had killed her had not been content with a single, well-placed blow. Nor with a dozen. She had been stabbed until her belly was pulped.

And yet I found no mark upon her face.

I tried to turn her over. The flesh broke away in my fingers. Twas then I decided that I had seen enough.

Now, I am a clean and fastidious fellow. It comes from my sergeanting days in a scarlet coat, as well as from the sobriety of my nature and our Welsh disposition to tidiness. The mess left on my hands would have sickened Lucifer. I wished me down the hill and back through the patch, to where I could rinse my hands in the cold water of the creek. Dirtied though it was by the colliery waste. I wanted to be clean of death, at least. And to breathe good air.

I feared to take me home in such a state, to my darling, my Mary Myfanwy, to our son John, and to Miss Fanny Raeburn, who had become a delight to me since I brought her back from Glasgow to our hearth. I did not wish to enter my door with the stench of the grave upon me. For the scent of death clings. My uniform would want more than one washing, and with lye soap, too.

I picked the blown leaves off the girl and covered her up with her rags as best I could. Then I set the lid back on the box again, though lacking hammer and nails to make it fast. Anyway, I could not have risked the noise of hammering. I climbed out and told the fellows to shovel the dirt back in. And I set to rubbing my hands clean with leaves and weeds, for the little good it did.

I had come home to look for a general’s murderer, only to find the corpse of a murdered girl. But I found no sign of the fellow whose name had been scratched on the wooden cross set on that grave: Daniel Patrick Boland, the man who had rushed to brag of General Stone’s murder up on the high road.

Had Boland killed twice? Or was it all a ruse within a ruse, to mask the killer’s true name from the law? Look you. The Irish may confess to their priests, but they will not confess to the law of their own volition. Yet, that was exactly what Daniel Boland had tried to do. He had rushed in upon one Mr. Oliver—not a fellow Irishman, but the superintendent of the Heckschersville mine and colliery—raving about the murder he had done and
his wish to bind himself over to the authorities. And in less than a day, the local priest marked Boland dead of the cholera. I did not trust any of it. And time would prove me right, then prove me wrong.