Mending Horses (39 page)

“Of course it is, you dunce. Do you not know your own sister?” she said.

Liam fell to his knees with a thud. “Holy Mother of God and all the saints.” He drew her to him and held her so tightly that she let out a yelp of protest. Then he began to weep.

Daniel looked away from Liam's twisted face, meeting the woman's eyes over Liam's head. She was crying, too, and Daniel suddenly felt that he didn't belong there. He backed away toward the door.

“No, don't go,” the woman said.

“Da told me you were dead. Drownded in the river,” Liam told Billy. He wiped his eyes and nose on his sleeve. “I'd'a gone looking for you if I'd thought it wasn't true, I swear it.”

“He told me that you were dead, too,” Billy said. “I knew it was a lie, didn't I, Daniel?”

“That you did,” Daniel said cautiously. There was no sign of children in the sparsely furnished room: no small dirty shoes by the door or clothes flung carelessly over a chair, no toys strewn in a corner.

“He said you and Jimmy and Mick were dead of the fever, but I knew it wasn't true.” She glanced from Liam to Daniel to the woman and back. “But what's—where's—?” She pulled away from her brother and looked around the tiny room. “They're out playing so early, are they?” she asked.

“I tried, Nuala, I swear to God I did.” Liam held his large calloused hands out helplessly. “I wish it had been me that died instead of them.”

Nuala shook her head and backed away. “It can't be true. You wouldn't'a let it happen. I know you wouldn't.”

“He did his best,” the woman said. “The fever nearly killed Liam, too.”

“It's my fault.” Billy's voice broke. “If I'd'a been there, they'd still be alive.” Her face crumpled into a sob.

“If you'd'a been there, I'd'a lost you, too,” Liam said.

Billy covered her face with her hands. But when she turned to someone for consolation, it was Daniel that she reached for, hiding her face against the scratchy wool of his frock. He held his arms stiffly away from his sides, not sure what to do with them or what to make of the sobbing girl. Then slowly, awkwardly, he folded his arms around her and rocked her, murmuring the Irish words he used to soothe Ivy.

The woman placed a hand on Liam's shoulder. Without looking at her, Liam reached up and covered her hand with his. The touch steadied them both. She wiped her face and stepped back, nudging Liam to stand. “Here,” she said to Daniel. “There's a chair here.” She waved a hand vaguely about the shanty. The tiny room held a bed, a table, two chairs, and a trunk.

Daniel guided Billy to one of the chairs and took her in his lap, rubbing her back until her sobs receded into hiccuping gasps. He gave her his handkerchief and for once didn't complain about her soiling it. The woman, meanwhile, stirred the fire to life and began to move pots and crockery about.

“All right, love?” Liam asked Billy, reaching out to tousle her hair. She shook her head. “Nor am I,” he agreed. “But I'm none so bad as I was before, now that you're back.” He met Daniel's eyes. “I'm that grateful to you, sir. Who are you, and how did you come to find her?”

“Me name's Daniel Linnehan. As for how I come to know Billy—”

“Billy?” Liam repeated.

“That's what she's been calling herself. 'Tis a bit of a long story.”

“I'll make some breakfast while you talk,” the woman said.

“I'm sorry. In the excitement I never—I—well, this is Augusta.” Liam gestured toward the woman. “You remember her, don't you?” he asked Billy. “She lived across the way from us.”

Billy dried her eyes and nodded. “Aye, but what's she doing here?” she asked.

Liam colored slightly. “She's me wife now. That's a bit of a long story, too.”

It was getting dark by the time Daniel and Billy headed back to the tavern. Liam and Billy had spent the morning talking of all that had happened since Billy had left Cabotville. After dinner, Liam had taken them to the burial plot and shown them the rough board he'd cut to mark Jimmy and Mick's grave, there being no money for a proper stone. When the day began to fade, Daniel and Billy took to their horses with promises to return on Monday after Liam's workday was finished.

Billy rode with her cap pulled low over her eyes. Daniel saw her tremble under her baggy woolen frock. “All right, lass?” he asked, although he knew she'd not be all right for a long time.

“I still can't believe it.” Billy sniffled and dragged her sleeve across her face.

“Aye.” Daniel's own eyes prickled with moisture at the memory of Liam and Augusta, red-eyed, leading Billy and Daniel to the grave.

“It feels like they're out there playing in the streets, only just not come home yet,” she continued, with a wave at the muddy road and darkening houses surrounding them, candles and lamps not yet beginning to glow behind their windows. She lifted her face to Daniel, her cheeks shiny with moisture in the fading light. “I should'a been there to take care of 'em.”

“Why? So you could'a took sick and died, too?”

“At least I could'a tried.”

“Aye, and if you tried as hard as ever you could, and you failed, you'd feel no less wretched for the trying. Liam tried.” He ran a thumb along the ridges of scar tissue that twisted around his forearm like tongues of fire. He knew well enough that trying was no comfort. At least Billy'd not have the memory of hearing her brothers cry for her and being unable to save them.

“It's like you're always saying,” Billy said. “I'm never thinking of naught but meself. They needed me and I was off singing and playing with horses and not thinking of them at all.”

“Mr. Stocking and Phizzy needed you, too. And Pearl and the other ponies, they'd'a missed you, had you not come along.” Daniel said. “I'd'a missed you, too.”

She smoothed Pearl's mane. “Jimmy and Mick, they'd'a liked to'a seen the ponies dance.”

“They'd'a been proud of you. Maybe they are yet, if the priests are to be believed.”

The sun had long disappeared by the time they reached Court Square. The meetinghouse steeple and courthouse cupola stood out as gray shadows against an indigo sky, rising above the skeletal branches of the square's elm trees. At Mr. Warriner's tavern, a bright spark moved across the front windows and multiplied as someone began lighting candles or lamps. The tavern sign creaked on its hanger, swinging back and forth in the chilly breeze.

“Here, lass,” Daniel said as they tethered Pearl and Ivy to the hitching posts. “You go inside and fetch a lantern. Tell Mr. Warriner we'll bed down our own horses for the night and save his ostler the work.” He patted Ivy's neck, told her he'd be only a minute, and went into the barn to get her stall ready.

As his eyes adjusted to the barn's dimness, he let the comforting, musty aromas of straw, hay, leather, and horses push sadness and bad memories to the back of his mind. Something rustled in the haymow overhead—a barn cat pursuing its dinner, perhaps. His eyes widened, drawing in the fragments of daylight still remaining. He made out the openings of the tool bay to his left, and to his right an open bay crammed with a jumble of poles entwined with beans and hops yanked from Mr. Warriner's garden, waiting to be sorted out. Farther down, he picked out the sharp geometric lines marking the half-doors of the stalls, the softer shapes of horses' heads peering curiously out at him.

He fumbled among the tools, grasped a wooden handle, then ran his hand down to find out if it was pitchfork or shovel or rake.
He smiled to himself that he'd gotten a pitchfork on the first try. He carried it to the stalls at the back of the barn that Mr. Warriner had allotted to Ivy and Pearl, pausing along the way to let the other horses sniff at his knuckles, rubbing each one's forehead and murmuring an Irish greeting as he passed.

He spent a few extra moments with Mr. Warriner's black gelding. Not a wicked beast, but fearful and prone to kicking and snapping when startled. Daniel stood out of reach of the gelding's teeth and spoke softly to the horse until the dark head lowered and the animal was ready to let someone touch him. “You're not such a villain, are you, lad?” Daniel spoke in Irish as he rubbed the gelding's forehead. “You just want a bit of a warning before someone comes at you.” He stroked the horse's neck, feeling how tense the muscles were. The beast wasn't calm by any means, but he'd not shivered or shied away as he had the previous evening. It was a tiny step forward. “We'll do some work with you in the morning, shall we?” Daniel promised before turning to prepare Ivy's and Pearl's stalls.

He reached up into the haymow with the pitchfork, pulled down generous clumps of hay, filled their mangers, then fluffed their straw bedding. He set the fork aside and collected the two water buckets to bring them out to the trough and fill them.

Something heavy thudded onto the floor behind him, a body jumping down from the haymow. Turning, Daniel saw a man's form standing in the barn's center aisle, his silhouette black against the gray of the back wall and door. There was a scrape and a smell of sulfur as the man struck a lucifer against the sole of his boot and held the match up to light a pipe.

“Are you daft?” Daniel said. What sort of an idiot knew no better than to smoke a pipe in a barn? Then the light revealed a familiar dimpled chin and roguish face:
Fogarty
. Daniel's words clogged in his throat, and he fell back a pace.

“Thought it was you, lad, when I heard the Gaelic,” Fogarty said. He shook the lucifer to douse it, let it fall, and stepped on the dead match. “Now where's me girl?”

“Be off with you,” Daniel said. He was surprised at how steady
his voice sounded while inside every nerve and sinew jangled. “She's wanting naught to do with you.”

“A father has a right to his child,” Fogarty said. “ 'Tis the law—God's and man's.”

“Then find yourself a lawyer and sue for her, 'cause I'll not be letting you at her,” Daniel said, more boldly than he felt. It was one thing to face down Billy's da from the safety of Ivy's back, with Mr. Stocking and Mr. Chamberlain and teamsters and show people behind him. It was quite another to do so alone, close enough that Daniel could smell the drink on the man, close enough that he could see that Fogarty stood strong and steady in spite of it. Close enough that Daniel saw the power in the man's shoulders and fists and knew he'd not be able to match it. He braced himself, ready to fling the water buckets toward the man if he made a threatening motion.

“She belongs to me,” Fogarty said. He took a step forward, his stance easy, relaxed, as if sure that Daniel was no threat. “It's unnatural, dressing her up like a lad and turning her into a circus performer.”

“What's unnatural is a father selling his daughter to a peddler. What's unnatural is a father leaving his sons to die.”

That rattled the man. Fogarty closed his eyes for a long moment before responding, “I was with 'em. I was with 'em to the end.” He seemed unsure, as if he had to convince himself it was true.

“Were you, now? That's not the story Liam was telling,” Daniel said, feeling a little bolder at Fogarty's discomfort.

“Liam's alive?” Fogarty's voice cracked. The pipe tumbled, then disappeared as Fogarty's hand closed around it, catching it. “Jesus,” he said. Daniel wasn't sure if the name was a prayer of thanks because Liam yet lived or a curse because Fogarty had scorched his fingers. “May the Virgin and saints be praised.” Fogarty crossed himself. “ 'Tis a miracle, sure.”

“A miracle, aye,” Daniel repeated. “That he lived in spite of you.”

The hollow clop of a hoof against the barn's floor echoed
like a gunshot. The grays and blacks of the barn turned to mellow browns and umbers in the glow of a lantern. Daniel's shadow stretched before him, like a monster consuming Fogarty in its darkness.

“Daniel?” Billy called out.

Daniel turned to see the lass carrying a tin lantern, Pearl following at her heels. “Get out!” he shouted. His warning was cut off as something hard caught him below the ribs, knocking him onto his arse with the force of a horse's kick and driving the air from his lungs. The water buckets clattered about him as he fell, the sound echoed by the hooves of startled horses rapping the sides of their stalls.

“No!” Billy cried out. “Da, stop it!”

Something caught Daniel a blow against the side of his head and flattened him. Waves of orange, red, and black flowed across his vision. With an effort, he pushed the black aside to find himself lying on his back in the barn's center aisle. Billy's light gleamed along the tines of the pitchfork that Fogarty held pressed to Daniel's chest. There was little need for the threat. His lungs felt as though they'd been squeezed empty. Something wet seeped through his frock beneath his shoulder blades, and for a moment he thought he'd been stabbed. Then he realized that the liquid was cold, and that he lay in the dregs of the spilled water buckets.

“Leave him be, Da!” Billy pleaded. She stood a few paces away, poised on the balls of her feet as if she wanted to plunge into the struggle but feared to make things worse. Behind her stood Pearl, placidly peering over Billy's shoulder as if wondering what was delaying her supper.

“If I'd'a wanted to hurt him, I'd'a hit him with the fork, not the handle, wouldn't I?” said Fogarty. “I've come to take you home, lass. When I heard you in that show, singing like a very angel, I knew it was God giving me another chance to prove meself, to do things right this time.”

“It's a fine start you've made, attacking me friends,” Billy said.

Daniel tried to get his breath back. He wriggled his fingers
along the floor, groping for something to use for a weapon. All he found were floorboards, straw, and dust. Even the buckets had rolled out of his reach.