Galway Bay (72 page)

“We’ve been laid low before,” Patrick said, “and always got up again.” Then his first words directly to me: “My coat, Honora, please, and the crozier.”

I got the sheepskin jacket and the leather case that held the crozier from my bedroom and brought them to him.

“Show us Saint Grellan’s crozier, Uncle Patrick,” Michael asked him. “Please.”

Patrick hesitated, then drew the crozier from its case.

“Is it really gold?” Etienne asked, leaning closer to see.

“It is,” Jamesy said. “Look at the designs on the shaft, the animal on the hilt. Great artistry in Ireland all those years ago.”

“It looks like a shepherd’s crook,” Etienne said.

“Yes,” I said. “A bishop’s crozier’s meant to symbolize the staff carried by the Good Shepherd.”

Patrick nodded. “I know mine,” he quoted, “and mine know me.”

“It’s been the Kelly battle standard, the cathach, for over a thousand years,” Jamesy said.

“And a lot of good it’s done them,” Máire said.

None of the boys heard her. They were looking at Patrick Kelly.

Patrick handed the crozier to Jamesy. He held it for a moment, then passed it to Stephen, who handed the crozier to Michael. He held it out to Edward Cuneen. Bridget, standing near him, whispered, “No,” but Edward didn’t seem to hear her. He took the staff, then passed it to Etienne, who gave it to Jean. Jean extended the crozier to Paddy. Paddy kept his left arm around Mike and took the crozier in his right hand. Mike reached for the glittering stick, but Paddy held it far away from him. Bridey took Mike. He cried. He wanted this shiny toy.

“Shhh . . .” Bridey rocked him.

“A nation once again . . . ,” Michael sang, and the other men joined him. Etienne and Jean knew all the words.

We women didn’t sing with the men. This was their ritual.

No one spoke when the song finished.

Then Mary Ann Chambers, Michael’s American-born girlfriend, spoke. “Can I see the staff, please?” she said to Paddy.

But Patrick took the crozier back. “There’s a geis against women holding the crozier.”

“A what?”

“A taboo,” Patrick said to her, “unless the woman is taking the truth test.”

“The truth test?” She turned to Maggie and Nelly.

Then the girls looked at me. For a moment, we left our Bridgeport parlor and stood together on a hillside in Ireland. Even Mike kept quiet, his eyes on Patrick.

“Anyone who takes hold of Grellan’s crozier and swears falsely will be burned by the fire of justice.” Patrick almost chanted the words.

“And have you seen it happen?” Mary Ann asked Patrick. “Fellows’ hands getting burnt, I mean?”

“Never. The men who take an oath on Grellan’s staff mean what they promise,” Patrick said.

“At the time,” Jamesy said. “Too bad they didn’t all remember when the call went out to form up for the invasion of Canada.” Jamesy said that during the war, Fenians from both armies had come together in caves or ravines at night to pledge themselves to Ireland on the crozier, fellows passing it one to another, all the time knowing they’d face one another as enemies on the battlefield the next day. “We forgot everything, except that we were Irishmen,” he said, “and yet those same men stayed home.”

They didn’t want to fight anymore, I thought.

“
Our
fellows were ready, Jamesy,” Stephen said.

“It was the other faction let us down,” said Michael.

“I don’t understand,” Etienne said.

“Why would you?” I said.

Jamesy started to explain the ins and outs of Fenian feuds and how they still would have won if the U.S. Army hadn’t confiscated their guns before the invasion. “American soldiers acted as spies for the British, didn’t they, Uncle Patrick?”

Now Patrick spoke. “We were done in by the deceit of the U.S. government and the dishonesty of subordinate officers who promised General Sweeny more than they could deliver,” he said. “Even our own turned against us. D’Arcy McGee, the very fellow who brought my letter to you in Galway, Honora, is an important man in Canada now. Yet he denounced us.”

“Can’t change the past,” Máire said. “What’s done is done.”

Jamesy was ready to argue, but his wife, Maggie, picked up his pipes and handed them to him. “Enough politics,” she said. “Play a reel.”

Jamesy smiled at her. In a few minutes his fingers were racing along the chanter. Music filled the room.

“Come on, Etienne.” Máire took his hands and whirled him around, and the dancing started up again.

Paddy took Mike from Bridey, hoisted him onto his shoulder, and he and Bridey left.

Patrick got ready to leave. He fastened the ties on his sheepskin coat, then settled the strap of the crozier across his back.

“How did you manage to keep the crozier safe in prison?” I asked him.

“The warden was Irish,” he said.

“Uncle Patrick’s going!” I shouted into the dancers.

“Good-bye!” and, “See you tomorrow!” as they moved forward and back.

“I’ll walk you out,” I said, wrapping my shawl around me. “A lot of Christmases,” I said to him as we walked down the stairs.

“Remember the first one?” Patrick asked. “You, wrapped in a bear skin, sitting on these steps, putting manners on me.”

“And you not listening to a word I said. Some things don’t change.”

We came to the bottom step.

“Good-bye, Honora,” he said, and took my hand. “I’m leaving for Ireland in the morning.”

Then he turned and walked away. The abruptness of the man.

“No!” I shouted at Patrick. “Wait, wait!”

But he kept moving, disappearing down the dark, empty street.

I started running, calling out, “Patrick, for God’s sake, stop!”

Finally he did.

We’d reached the edge of Bubbly Creek where a row of gas streetlamps shone down on the water. Sheets of ice floated on the surface, but Bubbly Creek never froze over completely.

“What is it?” Patrick asked. Enough light to see the irritation in his face, those hazel eyes drilling me. Impatient. Colonel Kelly. “What is it?” he asked again. “What?”

I took a breath. “You know well and good
what
. And you’re not going anywhere until you give me some explanation.” I looked up at him, straight into those military eyes. I can’t waver. Now or never.

“Explanation?” He took a few steps toward the Bridgeport pumping station, shuttered and still now, its giant machine silent with the canal closed for the winter.

I kept pace with Patrick. “Yes,” I said, “an explanation. The night before you left for Canada, you said you cared for me, asked me to marry you, to go with you.”

“Honora, please. We failed in Canada. All that’s over.”

“And does ‘all that’ include me? You said—”

“What was said is better forgotten.”

“Forgotten? Patrick, I—”

“Honora, I told you. I’m going to Ireland,” he said. “There’s a group of men, veterans of the war, trained. They are ready to go back to Ireland, set up in the Connemara mountains, harry the British soldiers. They want me to lead them. Action there would hearten fellows here.”

“Patrick, if you get arrested, the British will hang you straight away.”

“My death might be of some use.”

“Martyrs help the Cause?”

“I’d be following some brave men to the gallows. I started on this road a long time ago. Even if this is the end for me, I won’t turn back. I can’t change.”

“Can’t change? This is America! People change themselves all the time. None of us are who we’d be if we’d stayed in Ireland. We probably wouldn’t be alive at all, and no songs are written about the glory of starving to death, I can tell you that. You could do just as much for the Cause in Chicago as you can in the Connemara mountains. More, probably, but you’d rather die for Ireland than live for it.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is. I understand that men sometimes have to go to war. Even in Mam’s lullaby, the girl promises to sell her spinning wheel to buy her love a sword of steel, but that’s so he can defend himself and come home.”

“Victorious,” Patrick said.

“Alive. Win or lose. Alive.”

“I don’t agree, Honora.”

The wind had picked up. I started to shiver. “All right for you to spout opinions, warm in that big coat of yours,” I said. “I have more to say, but I’m perishing in the cold.”

“Well then, here.”

Patrick undid his coat and began to shrug it off, but I stepped forward into his open arms. He closed the coat around us both. My arms went around him of their own accord. Patrick pulled me closer. I felt his chest pressed against me and then his lips on my hair. I lifted my face to him. He kissed me hard and quick.

“There,” he said. Angry. “There. Satisfied?” He stabbed me with the word, and a run of fierce kisses. “There. There.”

But I met each thrust, holding him tighter and tighter, returning each kiss. Then his lips softened. Our kisses turned easy and slow, and it was me whispering, “There, there,” soothing him, loving him. “There.”

Patrick had braced his back against the door of the pumping station and I was leaning full on him, under his coat. He straightened up. He dropped his arms to his sides.

“What’s the matter?” I said. “Don’t tell me you don’t care . . .”

“I still have to leave,” he said.

“Leave? You can’t. We love each other.”

“It doesn’t matter. I won’t let
this
make me weak. I won’t desert—”

“Patrick, could you be lying to yourself? It’s easy done, I know. But love
does
matter to you. Didn’t I feel the desire pushing out of you?”

“I can lock it away again.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is.”

“All right, then. Take the truth test. Here, give me the crozier.” I reached over his shoulder for the case.

He tried to twist away from me, but I caught hold of the leather case and tugged on it.

“Be careful, for God’s sake! It’s a thousand years old.”

“Take the crozier out.”

“You’re acting like a mad woman.”

“Do it,” I said, not loosening my grip.

“All right.” He took the strap off his shoulder, opened the flap, and eased the crozier from its case.

“Give it to me,” I said. The crozier felt lighter than I’d expected, but then the staff wasn’t solid gold but hollow inside, made to protect Grellan’s hazel rod—that’s the precious relic, the gold was only a shell around it.

“Take it!” I shouted at him.

“I will!” he shouted back. “You’re unbalanced.”

“Swear that in your heart of hearts, you want to leave me,” I said.

He took the crozier, then leaned close to me so I could see how carefully he formed every word. “I want to leave this place and this woman and not return, so that I may serve the cause to which I have pledged my life. I refuse to love her. That is the truth.” He lifted the crozier over his head.

I saw his eyes, lit by the streetlamp. He’s gone for a soldier. Lost to me forever.

“The crozier’s cold,” he said. “A warrior’s weapon, after all.”

“And you’re glad,” I said, giving up. A hard man. I remembered Patrick digging boulders from our field, piling them into a stone wall—no chinks nor cracks, unyielding. I thought of how our Irish word for fate, dán, became dána, daring, and then danaid, grief. Patrick was accustomed to duty and grief, able to endure them. Let love take him over and happiness might undo him.

“Good-bye, Patrick,” I said.

“I told you, I do know myself,” Patrick said. But then he gave a yelp. “The heat—my hand. It must be friction. Jesus.” He tried to open the fist he’d clamped around the crozier. “It’s burning me,” he said. He shook the crozier. “Damn, it’s getting hotter!”

“Let go, Patrick! Let go!”

“I can’t,” he said. He tried to pry his fingers apart with his other hand. “Help me,” he said, stretching his arm out toward me.

“Tell the truth.”

He drew back, furious, then hurled the words at me:

“I love you. I want to be with you.” His hand and arm started shaking, then went still. “Jesus, it’s gone cold.” He opened his hand and balanced the crozier on his palm. His fingers were neither burned nor blistered.

I looked up at him. A miracle.

Patrick stared down at his hand. “I never really thought it worked.” He carefully put away the crozier. “Now what?” he said, so softly that I hardly heard him.

“Up to you,” I said.

“I could never give up the struggle,” he said.

“I know that. But couldn’t you do more for Ireland alive in Bridgeport than dead in the Connemara mountains?”

“It could be,” he said. A sliver of moonlight found his hazel eyes. He took my face in his hands. “I do so want you, Honora. I’d like to break into the station and make love to you right now.”

“Why not?” I said.

He laughed—a boy for a moment. “I suppose we’d better marry first,” he said.

“Wouldn’t want to shock the children,” I said.

“And Michael would expect me to show you the proper respect.”

“He would,” I said.

“I just don’t know,” he said. “I think I may be frightened.”

“Oh, Patrick, look!” I said. The moon had turned Bubbly Creek silver. “A mearbhall.”

“What’s that?”

“Unexpected light,” I said. “A gift.”

For a long moment, Patrick looked at Bubbly Creek. “A gift,” he repeated.

He put his arm around me, sheltering me with his coat. As we turned onto Hickory Street, we heard the pipes and saw the glow from the kerosene lamp. Our family was dancing in the parlor. And we would join them.

P
ART
F
IVE

Chicago Irish—1893

Chapter 36

Morning, St. John’s Night—June 23, 1893

W
HERE’S THE STUBBORN
fellow?” Máire came through the front door, ready for battle.

“Patrick’s in the kitchen, having his breakfast.”

“I can’t believe he’s refusing to go to the Fair with us.”

“A matter of principle, so he says.”

“Principle? When we’ve arranged for the whole family to spend the day there together? Let me at him.”

Since the Chicago World’s Fair—or, more properly, the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893—had opened in May, millions of visitors had poured in from all over to marvel at its wonders. Today, June 23, I’d asked that our whole clan go to the Fair together.