Galway Bay (70 page)

“Yet his son has a son. Something.”

“A great deal,” I said. “Didn’t you ever want a family of your own?” All these years, I’d never dared ask him.

“I thought I did have a family,” he said.

“Yes, yes, of course you do,” I said, and looked down at the baby, sound asleep now, a solid, strong little body. I stood up. “I’ll put him in his cradle.”

I carried Mike into Paddy and Bridey’s bedroom. Patrick followed me. I bent over, easing Mike into the wooden cradle that Paddy’d made for him.

“There, there.” Mike stirred. I knelt down and rocked the cradle. “
Siúil, siúil, siúil a rún 
. . .”

I looked up at Patrick. He smiled. I stood up. Patrick took my hand. We watched Mike sleep, his chest rising and falling, easy breathing.

“Healthy,” I whispered. Patrick and I stood very still. “We could be happy, Patrick,” I said softly.

“Happy?” he said, making it sound like some strange outlandish word.

“Patrick . . . ,” I started. Mustn’t wake the baby.

I kept hold of Patrick’s hand, led him back to the fire, and then sat the two of us down. Now or never. “Happy, Patrick,” I said. “Happy
together
.” I took his other hand, looked him straight in the eye. I started a whole rigmarole about how seeing Bridget deny herself made me realize that Michael would want Patrick and me to . . . I couldn’t go on.

Patrick covered my two hands with his. Warm but rough, his palms were callused.

I tried again. “Patrick, I have feelings for you and think you might have, well, feelings for me.”

He laughed. Threw back his head and laughed.

“Funny, is it?” I tried to pull my hands away, stand up, but he held on to me.

“It’s only that ‘feelings’ seems such a puny word for what’s between us, Honora.”

“All right, I’ll say it plain, once and once only. I love you, Patrick Kelly, and not as a brother, in spite of the canon laws and impediments and what the neighbors will think. Stay here with me. We could have years and years of happiness.”

No response. Taking his ease, legs stretched out.

“For Jesus’ sake, Patrick, say something. Stop me floundering around. Tell me if I’m making a fool of myself.” I jerked my hands free, folded them in my lap, and looked down.

Patrick sat up, leaned over to me, took my chin in his hand, and turned my face toward him. “I love you right enough, Honora. You know that.” His face was very close to mine.

Dear God, Patrick Kelly’s going to kiss me. I lifted my shoulder, moving forward, but he only gripped my chin tighter and then let go. He stood up. Pacing. Then he stood over me, pointing his finger.

“Listen to me, Honora Keeley. If we put shape on this, utter the words, there’s no going back. No more Uncle Patrick, the Christmas visitor. I’d want us to live together, as husband and wife. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” I said.

“And?”

“I do want us to be together, married, but canon law is between us.” I explained to him about the impediment, then told him a bishop could give us a dispensation and what Máire’d said about Father Dunne’s having the power. And if Patrick were willing . . .

Patrick didn’t seem to be listening. He was pacing as I talked. Then he stopped. “Bother the impediment and the dispensation,” he said.

“Don’t say that. We need a dispensation. I don’t want to go against the Church, especially when there’s a way around it.”

“All right, we’ll get the dispensation. But Honora, I want to know if you’re willing to leave Chicago, follow me to the Republic of Ireland.” He knelt beside me, stroked my cheek. Not guarded—a light in those hazel eyes. “By the end of the summer we will have established the Republic of Ireland on what was Canadian soil. We’ll be a government-in-exile with a senate, an army, a navy. We’ll be a nation with revenue, assets. And from this base we can liberate Ireland, drive the British out. America, France, and Spain will be with us as allies, at best, or friendly neutrals, at least. After seven hundred years of waiting, the moment is now. And I��m one of the leaders.”

“But, Patrick, how?”

Patrick had an answer for everything. The Fenians had the men and money. They would invade Canada. As I listened to him, I could see it all happening—the Fenians crossing into Canada, the United States supporting them, the British relinquishing first Canada and then Ireland. Patrick explained that the Fenians already had a promise from the U.S. government. He’d been at the meetings. The British would raise holy hell when the Fenians crossed the border, but President Johnson himself had assured the Fenians they’d be given time to claim a piece of territory, then the United States would recognize the Republic, start negotiating with Britain. Many in Congress wanted to annex Canada anyway. The British owed the United States billions of dollars as reparations for the assistance they gave to the South in the Civil War. Canada was mostly wilderness, and there was no real unity among the provinces. Much of the population was French or Irish. They had no love for the British or their empire. Plenty of Fenians in Canada already. “The people want to be part of the United States. They will welcome us,” Patrick said. “There’ll be very little fighting. Jamesy and Daniel will be safe, I promise.”

France had agreed to recognize the new Republic as soon as the flag was raised in return for exclusive timber rights. “Worth a fortune,” Patrick said. While America would take most of the territory of Canada, the Republic of Ireland would have land enough for a settlement and government buildings. “We’ve been offered Montreal and Quebec City,” Patrick said, “but we’ll build our own capital—a grand meitheal—temporary, after all.” He said that with the Irish privateers harassing British shipping on the one hand and international pressure being applied on the other, Britain might pack up and leave Ireland before the Fenians had a chance to invade. “Your bloodless revolution, Honora,” he said.

Then Patrick led me over to Bridey’s kitchen table. From inside his green tunic he took out a packet of papers and spread them out before me. “The battle plan,” he said as he smoothed out the large square sheets with care. A military operation unlike any undertaken before by the Irish, he said. In past uprisings, ill-equipped and desperate men had flung themselves against a superior force. Now hardened soldiers, veterans of the toughest battles of the Civil War, men who longed to avenge the Great Starvation, would march against a few civilian militias in Canada. Four armies advancing from separate directions.

Patrick himself had purchased muskets at the government arsenal in Philadelphia and ammunition in Troy, New York. “The men selling me the arms wished us good luck,” he said. “At one place, they wouldn’t take my money.” One hundred thousand dollars spent to buy ten thousand stands of arms and two and a half million ball cartridges, Patrick told me.

“Tom Sweeny wanted to wait until winter so we could move across the lakes on the ice, but the Brotherhood decided if we didn’t act now, we’d lose our soldiers. Once the veterans marry and settle down, it’s hard to call them back.”

“Yes,” I said.

Patrick showed me the declaration General Sweeny had written, to be read to the Canadian people:

We are an Irish Army of liberation. In the name of seven centuries of British iniquity and Irish misery, of our millions of famine graves, of our insulted name and race, we stretch forth the hand of brotherhood to you. Join us in smiting the tyrant.

“Marvelous, isn’t it?” he said, and now he did kiss me—but on the cheek, with the excitement of a comrade-in-arms, not the passion of a lover. “And I know all this country along the border,” he said, putting his hand on a section of the map covered with quick sketches of pine trees. “The Ojibwa hunt and fish on both sides of it. They’ll be with us as guides, warriors even. I feel as if all parts of me are coming together in this great campaign.” He turned to me. “Are you with me, Honora?”

“You want me to come along, the way Marion Mulligan followed the colonel?”

He laughed now. Boyish. “No, no. This will be a very short war. I mean come up north when we build the capital. I’ll have some title—secretary of this or that—a position. Something to offer you, Honora. Wonderful to have you by my side while we make history. The work you could do with your knowledge and skill! We need to create a whole new structure of government, write a constitution. So much to organize. In our Republic, women’s voices will be heard.”

“Patrick, it all sounds glorious.”

“And you’ll come with me?”

How could I? Leave my children? Mike? Máire? Bridgeport? Impossible. I’m settled now—Nana. I started to say all that to Patrick, but then that young Honora leapt up from somewhere inside me. I’d be only two days’ journey away. My boys were men. Michael, the youngest, considered himself grown at seventeen. He planned to become engaged to Mary Ann Chambers, the girl he’d been courting. All of them had lives of their own. Wouldn’t they be surprised to see their mam out on such an adventure! If I say no to Patrick, he’ll be too proud to ever come back. He’s right. We’ve gone too far. He can’t be the visiting bachelor uncle anymore. What is it that I want? I wasn’t sure what I was going to say until I spoke the words.

“I will,” I said to him.

And then Patrick Kelly
did
kiss me.

Patrick left that night. He asked me to wait to tell the family until he returned. He wanted to speak to Paddy first. “Ask for my hand?” I’d said. But Patrick wanted to reassure Paddy he meant no disrespect to his father—a man talking to a man. I agreed and said nothing.

I’d stopped opposing Jamesy and Daniel, which confused Máire even after I’d explained there’d be no real fighting. “They’ll be welcomed,” I said.

On the last day of May, nearly two thousand Chicago Irishmen headed north. Michael and Stephen weren’t with them. They blamed me for the letter they received from Colonel Kelly, ordering them to stay home.

Trouble began for the Fenians before they even left the city. Three railroads refused to carry them, and only by taking off their green caps and pretending to be laborers did they get any passage out of Chicago.

It seemed all would go as Patrick said. A Fenian troop captured Fort Erie, defeated the Queen’s Own—the best of the militias. We all—men and women—celebrated in McKenna’s. Fellows were planning to leave for Canada immediately, join the Fenians, be there for the victory.

But the army General Sweeny and Colonel Kelly meant to lead into Canada did not cross the border. Instead, at midnight on the sixth of June, Sweeny was arrested—not by the British, but by his own Union army comrade General George Meade. Betrayed. Most of the seven thousand Fenian soldiers were allowed to disperse, but during the evacuation one American officer allowed a British force to pursue some Fenians across the border into U.S. territory and stood by while the British sabered the unarmed men. A hundred were captured and held by the Canadians. Federal officials arrested Fenian leaders in St. Louis, Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, and New York. So much for the support of the U.S. government.

Jamesy came home alone. Daniel had traveled west to Montana because General Thomas Meagher, the Young Ireland hero who’d led his own Irish Brigade during the Civil War, was now the acting governor of Montana. Daniel had joined the U.S. Cavalry. “He likes being a soldier,” Jamesy told me. “And Montana’s on the Canadian border. They might try again.”

Jamesy didn’t know what had happened to Patrick. With his record, there’d be little hope for him if he was captured. The Canadians were threatening to hang their Fenian prisoners without trials. A raid to rescue the prisoners was planned, Jamesy said.

“I won’t be going,” he said. “I’m laying
my
burden down, Mam. Christophe taught me a song while I was in New Orleans. The words go through my head.” Jamesy sang softly.

I’m going to lay my sword and shield

Down by the riverside

Ain’t gonna study war no more.

“Jamesy,” I said, and hugged him close. Alive.

“Uncle Patrick’s getting hanged.” Michael brought the news. The Canadians, angry that ten soldiers of the Queen’s Own had been killed, wanted vengeance. Irish traitors had dared invade British soil. Execute them. No trials.

“They can’t get away with
that
!” James McKenna said when I went to the tavern for news. “Any candidate wants an Irish vote better do something to get our Fenian prisoners a fair trial.”

Máire and I went to see Alderman Comiskey. Could he intervene for Patrick? Huge pressure was being applied to help the prisoners, he told us. “Thank God there’s an election on,” Alderman Comiskey said. President Johnson wrote to Congress, saying that the invasion was designed to redress political grievances the Irish suffered at the hands of the British. There should be no death penalty for persons engaged in revolutionary attempts, the President said. “That should help,” Alderman Comiskey told us. “Make the British think twice.”

It did. “Reprieved for now,” was the word in November.

“You’d think Patrick would have escaped by now,” I said to Máire. We were alone by the fire, the first week in December.

All the Fenians arrested in the United States had been freed. And now, one by one the fellows held in Canada were returning home. But not Patrick.

Had they discovered his record? I’d hoped that because Patrick Kelly was such a common name, the connection had been missed. But if they found out who he is, five acts of Congress won’t save him.

“I was thinking,” Máire said, “could that greedy fellow at the British consulate be any use to us?”

“Máire, that’s an idea. We could bring letters to him attesting to Patrick Kelly’s good character.”

“From important men who could return a favor,” Máire said, “like Marshall Field . . .”

“Alderman Comiskey and Mr. Onahan . . .”

“Long John Wentworth and Father Dunne . . .”

That’s it! Testimonials.

We found the secretary plumper and more prosperous but still ready to deal.

“Testimonials,” he said as he leafed through the letters.

“And this.” Máire passed over the pouch of silver dollars. “And this, too”—a statement listing the names of conscripted soldiers he’d claimed as citizens and the fees he’d charged, signed by the fellows. “A good story for the
Times
, what with all the interest in, uhm, U.S.-British relations.”