Song of the Silent Harp (23 page)

Evan nodded. “Supposedly because the bailiff and the bully-boys have their hands full with other evictions this afternoon. Frankly, I believe Cotter is giving your brother some notice on purpose, hoping to flush you out of your hiding place. He thinks you're staying there, at least part of the time. I imagine he's expecting you either to try to stop the eviction or, at the very least, to delay it.” He paused, then added pointedly, “He's determined to see you hang.”

“And I'm just as determined that he won't,” Fitzgerald said absently, casting a sweeping gaze around their surroundings. “So, then, it would seem we have only tonight to get ready to leave.”

“You must find a safe place for yourself and the others,” Evan urged. “They'll tear the village apart looking for you.”

“My family will be leaving for the States soon—there is a ship coming any day. Until then, I know of a place where we can stay.”

“You're going with them to America, I hope?”

Fitzgerald shrugged. “Who knows what I will do?” he said cryptically “In the meantime, there is a place where we can go.” He paused, fixing Evan with a studying look. “And you will come with us.”

Startled, Evan hurried to protest. “Now, see here, I can't—”

“You will come with us,” Fitzgerald repeated in a tone that left no room for argument. “I may need you. First, however, we must hide Daniel John, then get Tahg and Nora away from the cottage. That will take some doing, I fear.”

“Tahg? Who is Tahg?”

“Daniel John's elder brother. He is ill. Mortally ill.” Fitzgerald turned a bitter look on Evan. “There are many in the village just like him—one night on the road will kill them all.”

Evan gripped the horse's reins more tightly. “I'll do whatever I can to help move him.”

Fitzgerald waved him off. “It's not that at all. I could carry the lad with one arm, he's that frail. But to take him out in this cold rain…” His words died away, unfinished. For a long moment he stood in silence, tugging mindlessly at the wet hair at the back of his neck as he stared off into the distance.

“Fitzgerald?” Evan waited until the Irishman turned to meet his eyes. “Once Cotter realizes he's been thwarted, you can expect that he'll be wild. He'll stop at nothing to get the boy. I think he's obsessed.”

“He's a devil,” Fitzgerald said.

“But a dull-witted one,” Evan pointed out.

Fitzgerald looked at him, then began to nod, slowly. “Aye, there was a great deal of sense left outside his head,” he answered dryly. “What is your point?”

“That your wits and mine should be more than enough to foil him.”

Fitzgerald studied him for a moment more. “How far are you willing to go with what you've started, man?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you may be able to save some lives here,” Fitzgerald replied, his gaze steady. “But only if you're willing to risk your soft position with Gilpin and perhaps your English honor as well.”

Uncertain as to what the man was getting at, Evan nevertheless nodded, waiting.

“There's no more time for talk,” Fitzgerald muttered, still peering into Evan's face. “Just answer me this, for once you commit yourself, there can be no turning back. You say you are a Christian; but which is dearer to you, Evan Whittaker—your Savior or your Saxon neck?”

For a long, silent moment Evan felt himself turned inside out, as if his very soul were being laid open to the burning eyes of his inquisitor. And in the same moment he somehow knew that the answer to Morgan Fitzgerald's piercing question was even more important to Evan himself than it was to the Gael.

He shut his eyes, allowing his spirit a moment of quiet before he answered. Then he faced Fitzgerald with a level look of his own. “I should imagine that I value my…
Saxon neck
quite as much as you do your stubborn Irish hide. But not so much that I would ever betray my Savior.” He swallowed with some difficulty, adding, “I shall do whatever I can to help rescue you…and those who are dear to you, Fitzgerald. You have my word on that.”

As Evan watched, a slow, wondering light seemed to soften and gentle the big man's face, a light so faint Evan almost thought he might be imagining it. But, no, the warmth rose in Fitzgerald's eyes, a glow that somehow hinted of approval. And without ever questioning why this brash Irishman's affirmation should matter in the slightest, Evan found himself basking in its warmth.

“By all that is holy,” Fitzgerald said quietly, his great leonine head thrown back as the rain slashed his face, “it would seem that I have found myself an Englishman with a noble heart. Now,
there
is a wonder for us all.”

Evan flushed. He knew himself to have been saluted by this great tower of a man, and he savored it.

“All right, then, Whittaker,” Fitzgerald said, still examining Evan as if he were some sort of a rare oddity, “let us get on with it. We have much to do, and from the looks of you we'll need to do it quickly before you catch your death. First, though, we need a plan as to how we can hold off Cotter's thugs until I can get some of my lads and an extra horse or two down from the hills.”

“I'm still the official emissary of their landlord,” Evan pointed out. “I should think I'm more than capable of managing those roughnecks.” Even as he spoke, he was hoping he sounded more confident than he felt.

Fitzgerald permitted himself a ghost of a smile. “Aye, somehow I think you can.”

“Before anything else, though,” Evan said urgently, “we
must
get young Daniel hidden away.”

Fitzgerald nodded. “He can go with Thomas for now.”

“Good. But I'm afraid Mrs. Kavanagh needs to come with us. Things may get unpleasant if Cotter's toughs show up, but with her help I believe I can get rid of them.”

“Give me a moment,” Fitzgerald said with a short nod. Turning, he walked off, tossing out a stream of Gaelic to the others as he approached.

Not long after he reached them, the Kavanagh lad shot a look of disbelief in Evan's direction, while the woman's face went white with visible alarm. Only the tall, haggard-looking man next to her appeared unshaken as Fitzgerald went
to him and, gripping his shoulders, began to speak. Seeing the two men together, Evan immediately noted the resemblance. Evidently, this gaunt, sad-eyed man was the brother he had been ordered to evict. Feeling suddenly ill, he was struck by a fresh blow of guilt for his years of association with Roger Gilpin, and renewed shame for himself and his country.

The woman and the boy continued to stare, first at Fitzgerald, then at Evan, with incredulous, frightened eyes. He attempted a lame smile of reassurance, but his face quickly froze in the effort. Seized by a sudden wave of uncertainty, he fought down a surge of panic. These people despised him, as well as everything he stood for; in their eyes, he was the enemy, a man to be feared and shunned. What had ever possessed him to think he could gain their trust, especially within such a short period of time? There was no earthly reason, even if they were to accept his
willingness
to help, that they should trust his
ability
to help. For that matter, there was no earthly reason why
he
should trust
himself.

Still, it wasn't
himself
he was trusting, any more than it had been an
earthly
reason that had brought him this far.
“Trust God,
” his father had said.
“Trust God, and be brave.”

Less than an hour later, Nora sat rigidly on a chair in her kitchen, struggling to accept the fact that her entire life was about to change.

The whirlwind in which she found herself seemed to be gathering strength. What had started when they encountered the Englishman on the way back from the graveyard had continued to build until she thought she would go mad from fear and confusion.

First, Morgan had sent Daniel John rushing off with Thomas, offering no more than a hurried explanation about getting the boy “out of Cotter's reach,” and a reminder to “use the space beneath the cabin if it's needed”—whatever
that
meant.

Scarcely a heartbeat later, he scooped Nora up and set her squarely on the horse with the Englishman, ordering them to take the back road around the village to her cottage, that he would meet them there “in a shake.”

All the way down the road the Englishman mumbled what sounded like words of apology and reassurance, but Nora had been far too distraught and bewildered to catch more than a few bits and pieces of his British blather. The only thing she
had
understood was that Cotter meant to abduct Daniel John, and this was enough to take her to the very edge of hysteria.

By the time they reached the cottage, she was trembling so violently she thought she would fly to pieces before Whittaker could get her off the horse.
She went through the motions of tending to Tahg, doing her best not to let him see her terror, but she was aware of the lad watching her with uneasy eyes, as if he sensed something was wrong. When she mumbled a hurried, awkward explanation about Whittaker being a “friend of Morgan's,” the boy stared at her incredulously but offered no argument.

During the entire time she busied herself with Tahg, Whittaker hovered nearby, peering at her through those odd little spectacles of his as if he feared that any moment she might run screaming from the cottage. As soon as Morgan arrived, the two of them closeted themselves in a corner of the kitchen, doing a great deal of muttering and nodding, virtually ignoring her.

Now, leaving Whittaker in the back of the cottage, Morgan crossed the room to pull up a chair and sit down, facing her. Nora had all she could do not to shout at him. For a moment he simply searched her eyes, saying nothing. Then, drawing a deep sigh, he reached for her hand, seemingly mindless of the way she immediately knotted it into a tight, unrelenting fist.

“Nora, I am sorry,” he said, studying her. “I would not have yanked you about as I did had there been more time.”

Nora stiffened, glaring at him. “Why are you listening to that
Englishman,
Morgan? What is he doing here, in
my
cottage, telling us what to do?” She was aware that her voice was shaking as hard as the rest of her. “Does he not work for the landlord himself?”

Morgan was still in his cloak, and with his free hand he reached now to shrug it off, letting it fall over the back of the chair. “Believe it or not,” he said, sliding his harp off his shoulder and placing it carefully on the table, “he is trying to help us. In truth, he means to save our lives.”

“You are cracked!” Nora exploded. She heard the shrillness of her voice, tasted the fear that caused it, but she could not stop. “And since when do you heed the words of an Englishman, Morgan Fitzgerald?”

Morgan smiled grimly and nodded. “Aye, it is an incredible thing, I admit. Still, I believe the man, Nora. He is risking a great deal to help us. But listen to me, now,” he said, his expression sobering, “there is more that you must know, much more than I had time to explain before. Did Whittaker tell you anything at all,” he asked quietly, “about the evictions?”

“Evictions?” His expression was inscrutable, but something in the way he watched her made Nora sit stock-still, unable to breathe. “What evictions?”

Dragging in a long breath, Morgan enfolded both her hands between his. “Nora,” he said gently, “you will have to be very strong. What I have to say is not easy.”

Squeezing her hands, he seemed to choose his words with great care. He spoke in a quiet, level voice of the horrors to come—of their imminent homelessness and what Nora could only view as their approaching doom.

When he was done, she began to rock back and forth, trying mindlessly to still the shaking of her body. “God help us,” she whispered, and then again, “God help us, what are we to do?”

“We are going to get you and Tahg out of here as quickly as possible,” Morgan said grimly. “You and the boys will stay at Thomas's cabin for a few hours. Later tonight, I will take you to a place in the hills where you will be safe until the ship for America comes.”

Nora felt her face crumble with fear and disbelief. “Are you
daft?
Tahg cannot leave the cottage!”

He gripped her hands even more tightly. “He
must
leave, lass. There is no other way.”

Nora twisted, trying to tug her hands free, but he held her. “
No!
No, you are mad!” she burst out. “It would
kill
him to be taken out in this weather, after all this time and him so ill. Sure, and you must see that, Morgan—Tahg would die!”

In spite of his hands gripping hers, she managed to pull herself up off the chair, still wrenching in vain to twist free. Morgan, too, shot to his feet, catching her by the shoulders.
“Nora, listen to me!”
he shouted, his eyes burning into hers as he held her. “There is nothing else we can do! They will tumble the place down around your head if you resist.
Then
what will become of Tahg? You can't think he would survive
that!”