Captains and the Kings Read online

  The priest and the nuns were muttering half-heard prayers, but Joseph stood up. He tottered for a moment like an old man, then straightened stiffly. His face was as gray as the face of his dead mother. At the end- and as usual-God had betrayed the innocent and had left them comfortless. Joseph knew only one desire now-vengeance on God and on life. He crossed the aisle between the teeming bunks and without a word he took the dirty hand of his young brother and led him from the steerage section of the women and young children. He pushed aside the ragged cloth that hid one of the latrines-a mere wooden affair like a country privy, and stinking beyond endurance-and he signed to Scan to use the hole. He helped the child let down his pantaloons-which were belted with rope-and assisted him onto the narrow shelf, and he was not aware of the stench but only stared at the wooden walls and saw nothing. "Mum, Mum?" Scan whispered. Joseph put his hand on the child's shoulder, not in comfort but in restraint, and Scan looked up at him blankly. He followed Joseph into the men's quarters, and the men were silent and no longer sang, but gazed at the two boys in speechless pity. Joseph did not see their pallid and emaciated faces, both young and old. He had gone beyond them. They hoped, but he had no hope. He was as removed from them as a stone image is removed from life. It seemed to him that he was filled with echoes, and he had only endurance left and one absolute resolution: To deliver the family to his father. He removed Scan's pantaloons and shirt and shoes, leaving him dressed only in ragged underdrawers and darned long black stockings. He pushed the child down on the dark and smelly blanket and the stained striped pillow. Scan's large blue eyes questioned him in silence. Joseph had always been a formidable older brother who knew all things and must be obeyed, but was ever ready with a kind brief word and encouragement. Joseph had taken care of the family since his father had left for America nearly eight months before. Even more than the father had Joseph been the head of the house, his mother's guardian, the protector of a brother. Scan trusted Joseph as he trusted no one else, and leaned on that indomitable strength. The child did not know this new Joseph, so fixed and implacable of feature, so frightcningly silent. The lantern light swam over that austere face and then retreated as it swung, and Scan was afraid and whimpered again. "Hush," said Joseph. Unlike Joseph, Scan was a delicately made child, with thin bones and long, and translucent flesh, easily flushed, easily warmed, easily expressing radiance of mind and body. He resembled his young father, Daniel Padraic Armagh, who awaited his family in New York. Daniel's fairness had incited the suspicion in Ireland that he had some Sassenagh blood in him, and he had had to fight with fury to disprove this evil and insulting canard. He, with English blood! May God forgive the sinners who said this, though he would not! Scan had inherited his aristocracy of flesh, his fine golden hair, his patrician features, his hesitant, charming smile with lips that were softly colored, his dimpled left cheek, his air of gaiety and trust and joyful abandon, his impertinently tilted nose, his thick fair brows and milky skin, his quickness and eagerness, and his pale large blue eyes. Father and son possessed a graceful elegance which the tall but sturdier Joseph did not. Even patched pantaloons and ragged shirts acquired a smooth charm when they assumed them, while Joseph's clothes were merely utilitarian over an impatient body hurrying to accomplish something or to set things to rights. Daniel and little Scan spoke softly and beguilingly, in the way of enchanters, but Joseph spoke abruptly for he was, instinctively, always pressed for time. Daniel, and Scan, believed that life was to be enjoyed. Joseph believed it was to be used. He loved and honored his father, but had never been unaware of the happy faults Daniel possessed, the procrastination, the belief that men were better than they obviously were, the optimism in the face of the most appalling and cruel disaster. It was Joseph who had said to his father, eight months ago when he had still been only twelve years old, "Go to Uncle Jack, in that New York, Dada, for we will die here, I am thinking, and there is no future on this land." Even the Famine had not stirred Daniel overmuch. Tomorrow would be infinitely better. God would perform a miracle and the black and soaking fields would flourish again with white fat potatoes and the corn would rise and the hearths would be red with peat fires, and there would be lamb stew in the pot and a bit of bacon for breakfast, with rich eggs and oat cakes, and there would be new thick blankets and the languishing fruit trees would be heavy with apples and pears and cherries-in short, there would be a blessed tomorrow. "We can't wait," Joseph had said. "We are starving." "Ye have no faith," said Daniel. "Ye are a hard boyo." "There is no bread and no potatoes and no meat," said Joseph. "God will provide," said Daniel kindly, and with a large paternal gesture. "He has not provided, and Ireland is dying of hunger," said young Joseph. "Uncle Jack has sent you the money, may the saints bless him, and you must go to America."

  Daniel had shaken his head with loving admonition at his older son. "Joey, you are a hard man, and I say this though you are still a lad." He looked at Joseph who had stared back at him with his relentless and darker blue eyes. Within two weeks Daniel was weepingly on the way to Queens- town to the ship for America. He embraced his beautiful Moira and his son, Scan, but had avoided looking directly at Joseph. At the last Joseph stiffly extended his hand to his father and the tender-hearted Daniel had taken it, and with a little sudden fear. "May the wind be always at your back, Dad," said Joseph, and Daniel, suddenly feeling far younger than his son, replied, "Thank ye, Joey." He had then stood tall and fair and beautiful, like a knight, his eyes fixed on a glorious future. "It is said that in America the streets are paved with gold!" he exclaimed, and had smiled his radiant happy smile. "And some of it will be mine, I am praying!"

  He had been imbued, then, with magnificent hope and animation, and Joseph had gazed at him with the reluctant pity such as an adult bestows on a buoyant child who knows nothing of life and nothing at all of terror. Daniel saw mansions and black horses and phaetons and curved green lawns and clinking gold pieces, and Joseph saw a rich Irish stew of potatoes and lamb and turnips and parsnips and a warm shelter free from alarms in the night and street-murder and starving hordes of men and women and children on the muddy highways of a desolate Ireland. Daniel saw ease and fawn-colored pantaloons and a shining tall hat and a cravat with a pin of pearl and diamonds, and a walking stick of gold and a swagger, and Joseph saw nights without the brutal fist at the door and desecrated churches and the hiding in the bogs with a priest who had a terrified face. Daniel saw big warm rooms glinting with candlelight and Joseph saw chapels where the Host was not stamped upon and a man could walk free to the worship he desired. In short, Daniel saw joy, and Joseph saw liberty, and only Joseph suspected that they were one and the same.

  At the final moment before parting Daniel had smiled warmly but with unease, at his older son, "I pray you are not a Covenanter, Joey." Joseph's pale lips had contracted at this insult. "Dada," he had replied, "I do not believe in dreams. I believe in what a man can do-" "With the Grace of God," said Daniel, dutifully blessing himself. Joseph smiled grimly. The blessing was automatic and graceful, and therefore meant nothing. It was the gesture of a pagan. "With the grace of will," said young Joseph. Mcira had watched this encounter with anxious eyes, then she had embraced Daniel and her tears came. "Joey will be the man whilst you are working for us, Danny," she said. "It's afraid, I am, that he was always the man," said Daniel and his gaiety left his face and he looked earnestly at his older son, and with a curious sad respect mixed with self-reproach. He knew that Joseph had considered him at least partly at fault for being unable to retain Moira's inheritance of some thirty acres of land, five head of cattle, two horses, a flock of chickens and rich soil which could bear good potatoes and other vegetables and grain, and a small, tight thatched cottage in the midst of it all, with sound outbuildings. The Famine had not struck here too harshly in the first years and the village nearby had not been too stricken then. Daniel had been an optimistic farmer. When the potatoes and other vegetables rotted in the black and sodden fields and the rain never ceased, the sun would be warm in
a few days and new crops could be sowed. When the cows ceased to give milk, sure and they would soon be freshened. When the trees bore little fruit, the next year their boughs would be bending with the harvest. When the Sassenagh tax-gatherers became brutally insistent Daniel talked with them in shining friendship in the pub, and paid for their poteen and smiled into their scowling faces. Next spring he would have more than enough for two years' of taxes! A little time, gentlemen, he would say with that large eloquent wave of his arm and a conciliatory twinkle on his handsome face. Daniel was also a millwright. When the Sassenaghs suggested that he go to Limerick and seek employment he smiled at them with incredulous indulgence. "I am a farmer, sirs!" he exclaimed, and waited for them to smile in return, but their scowls deepened. "A bad farmer, Armagh," one answered. "You paid but a portion of your taxes two years ago, and a year ago you paid none, and you have no money this year either. Like all the Irish you are improvident, careless, roistering, and sanguine. We know of the Famine. Who does not? The Irish wail about it without ceasing. But-what do you do?" Daniel's face darkened and became somber and very changed, and his family would not have recognized it, nor would he, for suddenly he faced reality. "Now, you must tell me, sirs," he said and his melodious voice was rough. "The whole land has been cursed by an evil, and what can we do? We can only wait for it to pass, like all evils. We cannot hurry time, gentlemen. What would you have us do? You have said I must go to Limerick and work at my trade. Matters, I have heard, are very bad in Limerick, and there is starvation there." "There is work at your trade, in England," said another of the tax- gatherers. A white shadow struck Daniel's mouth and his pale blue eyes narrowed. He said with the utmost quiet, "Had ye asked me to go to hell to work, gentlemen, you could have said nothing more insulting." He had thrown down his last shillings on the table and had risen with dignity and had left. As he had walked home in the dark and teeming twilight his optimism returned, and he chuckled. He had had the Sassenaghs there! He would forget them at once, for they were not worth the remembering. He had begun to whistle, his hands in his pockets, his head tilted, his woolen cap at an angle. Moira would laugh when he told her. And tomorrow, surely, this miserable day would be in the past and the future would open again, beaming, and the fields would dry and the Famine be over.

  Joseph remembered the telling that evening, and he remembered his mother's wide and alarmed eyes and the way she bit her lip. But Daniel was endearing, and she went into his arms and kissed him and agreed with him that he had been a fine boyo and that he had crushed the Sassenagh with his haughty words, and see, was not that the moon between that rack of black clouds, an omen for the morning's sun? Joseph, in the chimney corner with Scan, whom he was teaching his letters, had watched his parents and his young lip had lifted with mingled scorn and dread. He knew that his mother knew all about her husband. He would not add to her dejection with the sharp and blunt questions he wished to throw at his father, who was jauntily munching on a piece of dark bread and basking in the admiration of his beautiful young wife, and shaking his wet frayed coat in the small warmth of the peat fire on the hearth. The white plastered walls were stained with damp; there were cracks in the ceiling and on the walls. Daniel never saw these things; it never occurred to him to repair them. He constantly spoke of the larger stone house he would build-"soon"-and the slate roof. The money? It would come. The next harvest would be more than bountiful. There was a good piece of lamb boiling in the pot tonight, though unaccompanied by potatoes, and the turnip cooking with it was plentiful, still, and before the last four turnips were consumed God, in His goodness and providence, would provide. The brick floor was cold and damp, as always, and the rush chairs needed repairing, though covered with the gay little cushions Moira had made from a last bolt of cloth, and the table was carefully spread with the colorful plates and cups she had inherited, and there was tea simmering in the brown earthenware pot on the hob. The feather-beds were still intact, and there were blankets, and Daniel saw no farther than these, for he believed that fate was kind and one had only to endure in patience. Had Daniel been a fool Joseph could have forgiven him. Had he been illiterate, as were so many of his neighbors, there would have been an excuse for his hopeful folly. Fools and illiterates looked no farther than the moment's comfort. But Daniel was not a fool. There was poetry in his heart and on his tongue, and he had had the advantage of attending a Sisters' school in his original home in Limerick for eight or more years.

  He had a little store of cherished books which some priest had given him, books of history and literature. He had read them over and over, especially the books on the history and glory of Old Ireland. He could quote passages at will, and with passion and fervor and pride. So, there was no excuse for his refusal to face reality and his confidence in some happy tomorrow. Daniel also had faith in God. It was not the faith Moira had, devout, a little fearful of sin, and possessed of an enduring steadfastness. Rather, it was a gay faith, as lavish and as expansive as himself. He could readily conceive of mercy, but not of justice and retribution. God was a benevolent Father, and in particular He loved the Irish, so what harm could come to this dear land and this dear people so trusting of Him? One, Daniel had said earnestly to Joseph-in whom even he suspected cynicism-had only to lie in the arms of Our Lord, like lambs, and He would care for His little ones. Joseph had said, "And the 'little ones' who are dying, we are hearing, of the Famine on the roads, and the priests who are hunted like mad dogs, and the hangings we are knowing, and the desecration of the churches, and the beating of women and the little colleens in the cities when they cry of hunger and beg in the streets?" Daniel had shaken his head gravely. "We hear, but have we seen? Sure, we know it is very bad, but men will make big tales of little matters. The Faith is attacked by the Sassenagh, who, poor soul, believes that if it is killed we shall be more humble and willing to serve in the Sassenagh's army and work in his mines and his fields and manufactories, and receive little for our labor. But God is stronger than the Sassenagh and his Queen in London Town, and He will not desert us." Then some of the starving, what was left of them, had come to the village of Carney, and a number had lain in Daniel's rotting fields and had sought shelter in his barns and had begged him for bread-which he no longer had. They had lifted their limp infants to him, and the babes had sucked their hands greedily, and they were all eyes in small sunken faces, and the old men and women were too weak to walk any longer. Among them were two or three priests, as starveling as themselves, and they spoke of terror in the other counties and in the towns and cities, and scaffolds and bloody murder in the streets, and the proscription of the Faith. Those who had taken refuge on Daniel's farm were ragged, and though it was winter they had no coats or shawls or gloves, and their boots were broken and their flesh frost-bitten, and their bodies and faces were those of skeletons. And he had nothing to give them but the cold shelter of his barns, and they stayed there and they died, one by one. Before they died, these destitute and homeless, Moira and Daniel and Joseph had gone to neighbors imploring any help at all, but the neighbors had their own famine-stricken in their empty barns and could only weep with the Armaghs. The village was starving also. The shopkeepers had little to sell, even if there had been pounds and shillings and pence. The land was not producing; it was black and wet and dead, and the Sassenagh would not send his wheat and meat to save the survivors in the land he hated. His sovereign, Queen Victoria, regretting that the Irish Rising had not materialized after all, had written to King Leopold of Belgium to the effect that if the Rising had occurred, the trouble-making Irish would then have been destroyed once and for all, "to teach them a lesson." (Her own Prime Minister had hoped for such a fatal insurrection so that the Celt would finally perish, and a new Plantation, settled by the English, would flourish in Ireland. He had not looked kindly on the foreign ships, even from India, which had brought some food to the dying land, and he had spoken to ambassadors with contemptuous hauteur.) The desperate Irish leaders had been publicly hanged in Dublin and L
imerick, after a farce of a trial. Priests fled and hid in hedgerows and in ditches for their very lives. Nuns were driven in derision through the towns, yoked together like oxen. Many were violated by soldiers and thrown from their convents and their schools, to die and starve with their people on the highways. It was a fearsome thing and Daniel Armagh faced reality for one of the few times in his life and he knew a brief despair. However, the mood did not last too long in spite of all the evidences of disaster. But Joseph heard and his young soul had hardened and quickened.

  Daniel's brother, Jack Armagh, had gone to America five years ago and worked on the steamcars in the State of New York and he, in solicitude, though poor himself, had sent Daniel some dollars in gold and Daniel had exclaimed with joy and had cried, "Sure, and I never lost hope and here is the Mercy in our hands, and all will be well!" He had then gone to Limerick on the coach and had returned with a basket of bread and some eggs and a little lamb and bacon and a few gnarled vegetables, and he was as ebullient as ever though the dead lay buried at the bottom of his garden, unshriven and as dry as juiceless twigs, mother with babe in her withered arms, old husbands and wives pressed together. Daniel remembered them at Mass each morning, but it was as if they had never truly lived and had died in his barren barns.