Men of No Property

By Dorothy Salisbury Davis

Dorothy Salisbury Davis brings to life the joys, hardships, and challenges of the Irish in New York City, following the lives of five people from their voyage to America in 1848 through fifteen turbulent years
When the Valiant weighs anchor, the Irish that are crammed into her hold break into song, and with the hymn, say good-bye to the island of their birth. Famine, nationalism, and sectarian strife have crippled the Emerald Isle, and those who can afford it crowd aboard leaky ships, risking death for the possibility of a better life.
Among the Valiant’s passengers are Peg and Norah Hickey, a pair of lovely young runaways; powerful and charming Dennis Lavery, who sets his sights on Tammany Hall; tough urchin Vinnie Dunne; and Stephen Farrell, a lawyer and journalist who waded into troubled political waters in Ireland. While they begin their journey with optimism in their hearts, as their fortunes prosper in the new world, their lives will be touched in ways they would never expect—by disillusionment, corruption, and the violence of America’s Civil War.
A tribute to her mother’s homeland, this historical novel was the first work of fiction published by Dorothy Salisbury Davis that did not deal with crime and criminals. Nonetheless, she brings to it the same insightful characterization, lively pacing, and engrossing drama that mark her as one of the finest mystery authors of all time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Feb 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781480460584

Dorothy Salisbury Davis

Dorothy Salisbury Davis is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, and a recipient of lifetime achievement awards from Bouchercon and Malice Domestic. The author of seventeen crime novels, including the Mrs. Norris Mysteries and the Julie Hayes Mysteries; three historical novels; and numerous short stories; she has served as president of the Mystery Writers of America and is a founder of Sisters in Crime. Born in Chicago in 1916, she grew up on farms in Wisconsin and Illinois and graduated from college into the Great Depression. She found employment as a magic-show promoter, which took her to small towns all over the country, and subsequently worked on the WPA Writers Project in advertising and industrial relations. During World War II, she directed the benefits program of a major meatpacking company for its more than eighty thousand employees in military service. She was married for forty-seven years to the late Harry Davis, an actor, with whom she traveled abroad extensively. She currently lives in Palisades, New York. 

Book preview

PART I

1

THERE WAS A MUTE companionability amongst the people who waited on the dock, an unspoken sympathy for each other lest the pity of it be turned, by each upon himself, a voyager halted and his journey scarcely begun. Fear nibbled at their quiet, almost itself a sound. For all of them there was time, and for some of them the means yet to turn back to Ireland. Margaret Hickey would not so much as cast her eyes upon her sister, fearing to start the word from Norah’s lips. She prayed for a quick distraction. Could none of them sing? Was here to be a packetload of Irishmen and not a story-teller amongst them? Not a fiddler? Ah, but there was a priest, fair comfort that to some. Gone aboard but an hour before, he’d not shown himself since, but neither had he taken his leave, and Peg wondered in her bitter way if he wasn’t coaxed on to lull the Irish until sailing, or sure maybe no priest at all, for there was something queer in the fit of the cassock and the way he wore it—like an Irish recruit in a redcoat. There was never a priest she knew at home didn’t wear it like his skin.

She watched then as a man came striding along toward the dock, his boots clacking on the cobbles in the noontime quiet. No emigrant he, the girl thought, though he took the emigrants’ measure as if he expected their company. He put down his dinner box at the side of a capstan and was there intercepted by a lad whose like Peg had often seen on the streets at home. He was plying his trade a last time this side of the Atlantic. She strolled the distance by which she might watch him at work, for the beggars of Dublin were artists!

Give us a ha’penny, yer honor.

The man pulled the tail of his coat from the clutches of the small beggar, the boy no taller than his waist but with the big round eyes of an owl and the same look of age about him, and the same mute show of cunning. He was puffed up like the bird, too, stuffed with the nothing of hunger.

What do you want with a ha’penny? the man said. Aren’t you off today to America?

The oul’ lady won’t give us from the packet t’eat. Give us the ha’penny.

The man hunched down to be nearer the boy’s level. And why won’t she give you from the packet?

She’s savin’ it for the crossin’. Give us the penny, yer honor.

So now it’s a penny, is it? You’re getting in practice for the swells of New York. Christ, what a parcel of creepers we’re exporting from Ireland this year of our Lord! Put your chin in the air, lad, and look a man in the face. How old are you? Eight? Ten?

Thirteen and yous can kiss my arse.

The man started back as he might from the snarl of a dog. He gave a great laugh and fetched a purse from the tail of his coat. That earns you tuppence, my lad. Give them that in New York and you’ll prosper. He moved down then, the man with the generous purse, upon the emigrants where they lolled amongst their belongings. He looked from them to their ship. The workers were at it again with their hammers and tar. The Valiant, he said derisively, well named for exporting the Irish. A spate of blasphemy came from the emigrant men, a dribble of prayer from the women. Lying in a Liverpool dock The Valiant had sprung a leak. On the wild Atlantic she might as soon split asunder.

God save Ireland! the man cried.

Ah, that was it, Peg thought, a Young Irelander. And sure enough, he began coaxing and abusing the men, trying to push them back to Ireland.

No man who is a man has the right to leave Ireland, he cried.

In this year of our Lord, Peg thought, in this year of our Lord, 1848, no man who is a man has the right to leave Ireland. But who had the choice of staying? Didn’t he know Young Ireland itself was scattered? Its revolution no more than a whisper in the wind? Oh, the rights of Irishmen were many, the right to starve and the right to beg, the right to toil in the fields from the skriek of dawn till the drag of night and to own not so much of the soil they tilled as the scrapings of it from the soles of their feet; the right to load ships near to sinking with the harvest their sweat nurtured, and to unload the last harvest before it coming home again with the sweet stamp of charity on it…a few months too late for a hundred thousand or so dead who plainly did have the right to leave Ireland. Let him bag his own bones and take them back to Ireland, Peg thought, for the women were setting up a lamentation that would curdle the marrow in your spine. A rising, he was talking now, a rising that was, and another to follow.

A great handsome lad grown out of his clothes stood up then amongst the emigrants. How the hell could you have a risin’ and not a ha’porth of yeast in any of yous?

Go it, Peg thought, go it! and added her voice to the men’s approval until her sister hushed her. The English seamen laid off their deck work, and even the priest came to the rail. The emigrant shrugged his shoulders as though to cast off timidity.

Young Ireland, is it? he said.

It is, and proud I am of it, the agitator answered.

And is it that walk into Tipperary you’re callin’ a risin’? Were you there, man?

Would God I had been and died there, the agitator cried.

Amen to that, I’m thinkin’, said the emigrant, and Peg realized he was more a man than the fit of his coat described him. Oh, what an army of yous died there. The marvel of it was how all them dead bodies could get up and run.

Look up to your ship now and see why it failed! The agitator shook his finger at the priest who had turned from the rail and bowed his head, clouding his eyes with his hand. ’Tis not the first time the clergy has turned their backs on us. You spoke of Tipperary, young one. Let me tell you true what happened there. The people came out with pikes to join us, pikes, pitchforks and gentlemen even with their fowling pieces. They swore with us an everlasting fealty to Ireland, a fight from ditch to cave. And then came on your holy men. Midwives you’d think they’d be to Irish freedom. But nay, my friend. They turned the people from us. Dry nurses they are, I tell you, with empty paps! They’re suckling Ireland to her death!

The women wailed out in horror and the men groped through their possessions while the emigrant spokesman let fly a great spit in the face of the agitator. All of them then gave something to his banishment: if they had but two shoes, one of them was aimed at his head, pipes, pots burned black with stirabout, jugs, pitchers which were to hold their first milk in America. And through it, Young Ireland stood, his eyes streaming, until one iron pan felled him. The constabulary came for him then, and the sailors leapt from the deck on the mate’s whistle, and with ropes and billysticks herded the emigrants up the plank and down into the ship’s hold, each one blessing his reverence as they hurtled by him. Peg hung back as long as she could as did the boy who got tuppence, having but half eaten his loaf.

On the dock the agitator found his own legs and shook off the support of the constabulary. Oh, mother England, he wailed out, you could never hurt me like this! He limped off while the police gave him a cheer. At a safe distance, he picked up his lunch box, turned, and thumbed his nose at them. He did not see the one salute given him in honor, Peg thought, the priest, whoever he was, touching his fingers ever so gently to his forehead.

Farewell, Young Ireland.

2

AS SOON AS THE tug-steamers sounded their approach, the hatch was closed and fastened upon the emigrants. It was not that the captain was a cruel man. He was merely honest. He had been paid by the head for his human cargo—his other cargo was pig-iron and pottery—twelve pounds for each adult and six for an infant, and in his long experience with the Irish emigrant, he had seen more than one of them pitch himself into the sea after a few uneasy hours in The Valiant’s groaning belly. Starting with two hundred and sixty head, he would bring that number into the Atlantic at least, and with fair winds and a generous sky he would bring two hundred into the New York harbor. The rest would have died on land or sea. He, at least, could give them a clean burial and a deep grave.

Below, a shout and a curse exploded with the clap of the hatch. The silence then amongst the emigrants was leaden. A solitary lantern, smoke-grimed and flaring fitfully, hung from a stanchion. The bunks were scarcely visible, and the wide furtive eyes of the occupants gleamed as from the depth of a pit. The slough of water and the creak of the ship as she buoyed up with the tide was like the sigh and the crackle of bones in an old woman’s rising to a dreary chore. A child whined. His mother muffled the cry, his mouth against her breast.

Let him cry. It’s the sound of life in him, and it’s a good thing hearin’ it.

All eyes followed the dark shape of the speaker. He strode down the center passageway, swung around each stanchion until he stood, his face level with the lantern. It was he who had spoken up to Young Ireland on the dock. Now his face was softer and there was the promise of an easy smile about his mouth.

I’ve heard tell they batten us down till we’re on the high seas, he called out and lowered his voice when it came pounding back at him from the low ceiling. There’s no malice in it, yous understand. It’s only they don’t want us pollutin’ English waters.

There was no response to his words except in the steady blinking eyes on him.

Well, he tried again, ’Twas a poor joke but the best I had on no notice. I’m Dennis Lavery, and I come from Henry Street, Dublin city.

Again he waited.

Have none of yous tongues? he shouted.

A boy’s head poked over an upper bunk near him. Eee! Vincent Dunne here, Mulberry Square.

This brought a shiver of welcome laughter. Mulberry Square was amongst the most elegant of Dublin’s residential sections.

Lavery leaned away from the light to see the boy’s face. Ah, that accounts for the tuppenny loaf I seen you with, he bantered. Did you save us a crumb itself?

Och, a woman said from the bunk below, if he’d only a potato he’d give you the skin. Come down and stand on your feet when the man’s talkin’ to you, Vinnie.

Aye, said Lavery. Come down and be introduced proper. We’re all to be gentlemen in America.

The boy shinnied down the post, his bare toes groping for the floor. Standing beside Lavery, he cocked his head up at him and grinned. The eyes had mischief as well as cunning and the nose was saucy as a cork on water.

Lavery smiled and extended his hand. Here I thought it was a giant in the loft and you’re no more nor a mite of a boy.

The lad put his full grip into the handclasp. Gi’ me any gam under five stone an’ I’ll miff wi’ him.

Oh an’ flatten him, Lavery said, flexing his fingers. I give yous Vinnie Dunne, the mighty Irish mite. Which is your ma, Vinnie?

Me ma’s dead. Her there’s Granny, takin’ us over.

It’s him takin’ me an’ the little one, the woman said, easing herself off the bunk. She was a big, puffy woman who would take on weight if from nothing but water. She jerked a self-conscious bow out of herself. I’m Mary Dunne, an’ the little one’s name is Emma. Vinnie was only spoofin’. We lives on Townsend Street.

Lavery moved toward the bunk, his arm about the boy’s shoulder. He stooped and squinted in at the child, who after the look at him, slipped behind her grandmother and sucked on a piece of sugared rag.

A broth of a girl, Lavery said.

Good as gold, she is. No trouble at all. The father’s waitin’ the first sight of her, him goin’ off to America after dottin’ his ‘i’. But that one. He’s no notion what he’s gettin’ with him at this age.

Lavery agreed, but winked at Vinnie when he spoke. ’Tis a troublesome age.

Together the man and the boy moved down the aisle. They paused at every bunk and took the hands of its occupants. Those in their wake clustered with them that were greeted before, and those ahead moved to the front of their bunks, the quicker to meet Lavery and the boy.

At one halt Lavery stayed beyond his introduction of himself. By a foul light here’s a fair sight, he said.

Two girls drew deeper into the shadows, but one of them laughed aloud, her teeth gleaming in the near darkness.

Don’t be bold, Peg, the other whispered fiercely.

Ah, but do be bold, Peg, Lavery said, and gave the boy a nudge to carry on by himself. It’s a bold country you’re goin’ to. And if you be Peg, he moved closer to her companion, who would this be?

Norah, my sister, Peg said. We’re Margaret and Norah Hickey.

Margaret and Norah Hickey, he repeated. Poor, poor Ireland, her fairest blooms blowin’ out to sea.

Are you a poet, Mr. Lavery? Peg asked.

The name is Dennis and I can scarce write my name.

I can read and write, Peg said. I could teach you.

I’ll wager there’s much you could teach me, he said, and me willin’ to learn it. How ever did they let the two of yous leave home?

We’re run away, Peg said. Sick we were of Ireland.

Peg, will you keep your wits about you? You’ll have us took off the boat, her sister said.

Lavery, accustomed now to the murkiness, explored Peg’s face. She would be under twenty and fair indeed with a bit more flesh on her bones and color in her face. Her eyes were too large, but dark and full as her tongue of the daring. In her good time she would rule a man, a house or a country—or all of them at a stroke.

’Tis a sickness in the guts of all of us, Peg. Else why would we be here?

We paid our own passage, Norah said, lifting her head.

As I did myself, said Dennis.

Worry your pride, the two of you, Peg said. I was all for stowin’ it in my shoe and swearin’ myself a pauper. I don’t see the why of bein’ so bloody honest in a kingdom of thieves.

Peg, for the love of heaven, hold your tongue. Have you no modesty left?

I’ve more modesty than money. You seen to that.

Norah drew away, easing herself along the bunk, her feet not touching the floor for fear of the dankness there.

Dennis extended his hand. We’ll be friends, Peg. We know our enemies, you and me.

She grasped his hand firmly and clung to it to pull herself out of the bunk. With him and the boy, she made the rounds of the quiet, fearful people.

They ranged one side and then the other of the wide aisle, barking ankles and knees on the barrels, boxes and bundles heaped there. The women and children had one side and the men the other. Many a man was the more sullen for the thought that he might see his wife only in the daylight. And the girls amongst them were the more apprehensive for thinking that one bunk was like another in the darkness, and maybe one woman were she sleeping. Fierce tales had come home of unholy crossings. The air was already foul, stale with the dampness of a quick wash after too many long, crowded voyages.

The screech of the anchor chain suddenly broke over the muffled talk.

Mother o’ God, we’re collapsin’, a woman cried.

We’re weighin’ anchor, Lavery shouted. We’re throwin’ off our chains! To hell with England, and God deliver us safe to America!

The Valiant gave her first great heave toward the sea and Lavery raised his voice above the lamentation of the women and the muted clang of the harbor bells. He sang the words of an old hymn which came to him first, and remembered all of a rush his mother fastening the stiff white stock about his neck for Sunday Mass. Even in the dankness he could recall the smell of fresh bread about her, for she baked on Sunday mornings, and he could remember the softness of her bosom as she pulled his face into it. It was better than the last sight he had of her, her eyes watered with the thought of his going. Louder he sang until his voice was near cracking.

"Holy mother, heav’nly queen,

List while thy children pray thee.

Guide us through the shoals of life

And o’er its storm-tossed sea…"

Margaret Hickey joined a fine soprano voice to his, and some then mouthed the words tunelessly while others had the tune but not the words. Soon everybody joined in the hymn.

The long night’s singing blended into talk, and through it the rumble and grind and even the motion of the ship grew familiar. Those not possessed of too great a stomach misery clung together. The quickest friends to all the emigrants were those who spun aloud legends and dreams of New York, the wages and homes they hoped for, the sights they expected…New York, where beeves were herded by the hundreds into a dozen markets every dawn, where the streets were crowded with stalls, and the stalls spilling with greens, the barrels bursting with treacle and honey; where milk came in buckets and meal by the bushel, where potatoes rolled in the streets overflowing all measure, where you could drink your choice and your fill for a thrup’ny bit; where no man was more than your equal and no woman beyond your hope, where the gaslights spun around in circles, and music crowded the stars into daylight; where they vied on the dock for your service, paying cash and the work not begun; where they hoisted the green flag of Erin alongside the stars and stripes, and sent runners to meet every emigrant ship, shouting and waving and crying out, Welcome home!

3

FROM THE SECOND DAY out the emigrants whispered amongst themselves at the wonder of a priest aboard who wouldn’t show himself amongst them. All of them able to go up to boil their water saw him at one time or another, walking, always walking the few paces there was room to walk on deck, and he would smile at them; a sweet, sad smile the women said which led some to speculate on whether he was not fleeing the temptation of a woman, for he was a handsome one, and Margaret Hickey said out in her quick way she would be tempted to tempt him herself. Others put his aloofness down to politics: there were priests, albeit only a few of them, with strong sympathies for Young Ireland, until a bishop put down his foot on them.

But before they were a week at sea many of the voyagers fell ill and lay upon their hard bunks day and night without rising and the captain was often sent for. His presence was the best part of his medicine, for he assured the ailing they would soon see land. One unfortunate, however, would have none of his assurances. Mary Dunne said that she was dying and asked for the priest.

He has no powers on the high seas, the captain said, and Peg thought it a strange thing, for a priest was supposed to be a priest the world over.

Please, sir, Norah said, holding the child Emma whose care had fallen to her, tell him it’s not his powers but himself is needed.

Take that word to Mr. Russell, sir, the captain bade the seaman who made the rounds of the sick with him.

Russell, Father Russell, the name was whispered among the emigrants.

The man was not long in coming, though by the way he stood groping near the steps he could not come quickly. He was blind from the light of day. Margaret Hickey caught the captain’s lantern from his hand and went to guide the priest.

Her name’s Mary Dunne, Father, the girl said, and she’s terrible troubled, takin’ her grandchildren to their father, and thinkin’ now she won’t live till it’s done.

Thank you. I shall do what I can for her…and I’ll be as true to her faith as God gives me the power.

For an instant their eyes met over the lantern, and Peg said, Come, Father Russell, although she was sure now he was not even a Catholic.

The ship’s captain made way for him. I’ve done what I can for her, he said. I’m not a medical man. He held his hand out for his lantern, but instead of giving it to him, the girl put it into the hand of the priest, and the captain went up in the dark.

Norah Hickey, holding the infant, pulled her sister into the opposite bunk beside her. Do you want us to leave, Father? We can go some place else, but here’s the child.

He nodded for them to stay. He lifted the lantern between his own face and the old woman’s as he knelt down beside her and took the puffy hand in his.

Is it the priest? she whispered.

God bless you, Mary Dunne, he said, and when he looked about for a place to set the lantern, Margaret Hickey leaped from the bunk and held it for him. He rubbed the swollen hand gently as though he would summon warmth into it. Yet on his own face the sweat was shining. You’re a strong woman, Mary Dunne, to have come this far. It may well be you’re stronger than you know and will take the little ones safely on.

If I was an ox I’d never get up from here, Father. There’s a weakness in my bowels spillin’ the life out o’ me.

Tell me then what I can do, he said, for the very smell of death hung about her.

Go under my head and get my rosary.

He groped about the damp pallet and drew the beads out. When he closed her fingers about them she lifted them up before her eyes. He dipped a rag lying by her face into the bucket of water beside the bunk and brushed her forehead with it. She thrust her hand toward his face then, her fingers poking into his cheek for she could not judge the distance between them, but he did not flinch. When he saw that she was trying to better see his face he took the lantern and held it close to him.

Do you know, you put me in mind of my Tom a little? You’re awful young to be a priest.

I’m twenty-seven, he said.

Ah, ’tis me that’s awful old.

Her eyes lost their cogency and presently she tried to move her body. The weight of it was beyond her strength. She began wandering in the mind then, sometimes scolding, sometimes crooning.

Be easy, Mary Dunne, the man said, trying to hold her hands. But they were the only part of her body she could move and the holding of them so chafed her he let them go.

She groaned and threshed her arms about. I’m heavy, heavy and the pains is comin’ fast, she cried. Tom, run for your father, run!

She thinks she’s with child, the man said, gazing up at the wide-eyed girl who held the lantern.

Are ye never comin’, Tom?

I’m comin’ sure.

Father Russell bowed his head. The words were spoken from the foot of the bunk where Vinnie Dunne had come to answer to his father’s name.

She grew easier then and searched the man’s face with her eyes, her imagined recognition warming them. You’re a good boy, Tom. I don’t know whatever I’d ’ve done without you.

Mother, mother, he said quietly and she managed a smile. He called for the children and drew the boy close while Norah brought the little girl. The old lady tried to look from one to the other of them. Then, giving up the struggle, she closed her eyes and died.

Father Russell said the prayers for the dead and only his careful saying of the words might have distinguished him from a parish curate, Peg thought. There were not many men in Ireland after the years of famine who had not heard them often enough to know them by rote.

Will you bring the children up? he said then to Norah, rising from his knees. And seeing so many faces peering silently into his as he gazed about, he called out: God bless all here!

At the steps he took the child from Norah’s arms and carried her up. Vinnie followed and Norah after him. At the hatchway he told the mate that Mary Dunne was at rest.

Peg bit her lip and set to the chore of laying out the dead woman while the living hung back in fear of what she might have died of. She had no more than put a comb to the woman’s hair, however, when two grim-mouthed seamen came down with their rude winding sheet and thrust her away, attending the body themselves. The emigrants were often too fond of their dead, and Mary Dunne was given a quick burial with only her family attending.

Peg waited and waited for Norah to come down. She’d been pining the voyage, Peg thought, to go to the priest and now wasn’t missing the chance. Some went up and some came down when the hatchway opened, but Norah was not among them, and presently the word came down that the priest wanted Dennis Lavery. Hard then were the eyes of the women upon her. Well Peg knew what they thought of her, with their men sighing after her when she passed and doing their best to come on her in a tight place so she’d need to squeeze by them, and never the men were blamed but herself only, the women plaguing Norah with their accounts. They’d sidle up to her with a bit of goose grease for the baby and a tongue lathering to tell some new tale of Peg’s immodesty. Sitting snug with Dennis Lavery, they’d say, pretending to teach him his letters as though ever a woman taught a man aught but temptation. Ah, this was their favorite tune, the tempting of Dennis Lavery, for they knew that in her heart Norah herself was cherishing him. A plague on the lot of them, Peg thought—a parcel of creepers, as Young Ireland called them. And the devil a care she had for Lavery either, save the pleasure of seeing him lap up the learning.

Norah came down then, snuggling the child as though she had borne her. What a thing it would be to part her from that when they got to New York, Peg thought, as hard as parting her from the old man, drunk as he was, the morning they skipped Ireland.

I thought you’d leave her with the priest, Peg said.

And what’d he do with her? said Norah.

Did you ask him?

I did not. Dennis is keepin’ the boy with him till we get there.

And you’re not keepin’ her any longer, mind, said Peg. What did the priest have to say to you?

He’ll give you a book if you go up to him, Peg.

Was it me you confessed to him? Peg cried.

Norah put the child into the bunk and gave her a bit of sugared rag to suck on. I needed to tell someone what we did to Pa, she said, and I’m easier for it now.

So, Peg thought, she had confessed to a man who was no priest at all the sin of escaping Ireland, how they had sold one thing and another out of the house, and counted the old man his share, never letting on to him what they planned to do with theirs while he spent his on the drink. I wonder, she said in bitter sarcasm, is Pa the easier for it.

And that set Norah into a burst of tears. She pounded her fists on the hard straw pallet. Oh, Peg, I keep thinkin’ of him gropin’ round the house with the candle to see are we home yet.

Put it out of your mind!

I can’t. I try but I cannot.

Then I’ll give you the picture to drive it out, him foulin’ himself on the stoop of a Sunday mornin’.

Stop it, Peg! You’re possessed of the devil.

Then stop it yourself. You’ve a wonderful way of forgettin’ the bad and mindin’ the good. I’ve not and I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget Jimmie Dolan comin’ round to walk me to church and runnin’ off when he seen him. There wasn’t a decent thing in him my mother didn’t nail there. He fell in a heap when she went, and for all of me he can lie there till he rots.

I hope you’re never in as much need as him, Norah said fiercely.

If I am, I hope they’ve the sense to let me lie in the gutter. I’m goin’ up now and take the air.

Peg, you don’t understand. You’re too young to know what a man suffers.

Am I? She swung around the post and whispered: Then I’ll learn first what a man pleasures, thank you.

Norah flung the flat of her hand at her.

Peg dodged it and said: What did the priest have to say to your blather?

He was in it with you, Norah said, more’s the pity. He said pa was beyond savin’.

And I suppose you had an answer to that with your conscience?

Norah lifted her chin. I asked him why we were beyond tryin’. And he said God Himself would have to give me the answer to that, and it maybe the riddle of Ireland altogether.

4

DENNIS LAVERY HAD BEEN standing at the ship’s rail marveling at the great wide cleanness of the sea. He was a good sailor. There were some in the ship’s belly who had not been up since the sailing. They should be forced up and not down, he thought, for his own strength doubled when he faced the wind. The wonder to him now was that he had not run away to sea as a boy. He had dreamed of it often enough. But the furthest from home he had ever ventured was the ride in a tinker’s caravan into the Wicklow hills. He would likely not be going to America at all if a brother were not there ahead of him.

Still, he had known a wonderful transformation the day he made up his mind on America, and with every step toward it, he became more of a man than he had known of himself before. He tested the strength of his back with every challenger, and with the very day of sailing he had tried the power of his tongue, and to his own satisfaction he had bested a born agitator parrying words with him on the Liverpool dock. What a discovery that for Dennis Lavery! There was no more to becoming a leader of men than a man’s declaring himself a leader. There was no more to speaking than spitting the words out. What had prompted that first rise in him, he did not know. No more than restlessness, perhaps, or the lumped dumbness of them he was amongst. Perhaps it was the fire in the eyes of Margaret Hickey daring him to be more than the rest of them for he had seen her the moment she stepped on the dock. A shiver of pleasure ran through him with the thought of her.

He had known one girl only and her a gypsy’s half-wit who took to him when he was fifteen. She had tortured him to be a man to her and scalded the manhood out of him. Now he had it back again, and time at twenty-three. Nor was her lithe sweet body all he saw in Peg, he reasoned. Oh, she was fair, with the fine high forehead, the brown hair with the gold in it flowing out like a silk shawl when she loosed it, the quick smile and the gleaming teeth; but it was the proud word that won him, and her generous heart. Her wit provoked the clown in him and set him dancing. The green daring of her eyes stung him to long plans of a world he could make which even she would wonder at. Even now while she taught him letters, he gave her words for them she had not dreamed the sweet sound of. And, he hoped, seeing her turn them over in her mind to better get a hold on them, he was himself settling more deep inside her with every one she cherished. Oh, mother of the world, he thought, I could leap from mast to mast at the promise of a sight of her, dry the ocean with the heat she kindles in me.

He watched now, his mind no longer to the glory of the sea but to the image of Peg’s rising out of the hatchway. He willed her coming. No games would she play with him, no giddy, giggling games like the rest of them, pretending to chance upon him when all the while they had plotted their course.

Margaret Hickey, he whispered into the wind, I want you. I’m thinking of you and nothing but you. Put down the nonsense you’re scribbling for some poor cuddy. He wouldn’t know a rosebud from an egg of horse dung or he wouldn’t be down there. Come up, Peg. My heart is calling you.

And, as often happened, when she came into his vision close upon the white heat of his dreams, her presence, after the first leap of his heart, chilled him. He cursed himself for his fears. Love was a torturing thing. It turned a man into a croaking toad when he wanted a golden tongue. He turned quickly back to the rail and himself played the game he scorned in women, pretending not to have seen her come up.

By the flounce of her skirts seen from the corner of his eye, he could tell she was in a temper and bringing it to him.

Fancy it! she said to his back as though she cared not whether she spoke to him or the sea. That fine, high sister of mine went to the priest about me.

He turned and smiled, secure himself in her temper with someone else. I’d love to’ve gone to a priest about you myself, he said slyly, hoping she would find the kernel of earnestness in it.

If she heard him at all, she did not let on. She frowned and shaded her eyes against the shock of sunlight on the water. He tried to think of another way to pursue it when she cooled off.

And him no priest at all, Peg said. There’s the shame of it, goin’ up with her rigmarole to a stranger.

Eh? said Dennis, thinking again himself about the man called Father Russell. It had struck him from the beginning that there was something familiar about his face, but he had put it down to maybe him being a missionary, and having preached some time or other in Ireland. What is he then?

Peg shook her hair out in the wind, the way it would drive a man wild, wanting to run his hands through it. My own guess is he’s one of the Young Ireland bunch, running out of the country in a priest’s robe.

By the glory, that’s it! Dennis cried. I’ve been tryin’ to think where I’d seen him. Wait now—he had a bit of a beard—it’s on my tongue. His name’s on the tip of my tongue.

He’s not Mitchel, Peg said. He was transported in spring.

And it’s not Duffy nor O’Brien, nor Meagher of the Sword…

Peg shrugged. You know more of them than I do.

Aye, said Dennis bitterly. I know more of them than they do of the likes of me sure, gentlemen all.

’Twas no gentleman on the dock, said Peg.

He’d ’ve quit them soon enough at home, him on the dock. He was a workin’ man. There! I know who he is, the one masqueradin’ a priest. ’Tis Farrell, Stephen Francis Farrell.

Ah-ha, said Peg, "he was the editor of Irish Freedom till it was banned. I knew he had the learnin’ when I heard him speak, and a handsomer man I never seen."

You’d say the same of the devil if you seen him in breeches, Dennis snapped.

She construed the reproach to her own liking. You’re that bitter against him?

I am, Dennis said, laying abuse on the heavier for his jealousy of her praise. The fine words he had for us many a night, and the soles of his feet when it came time for risin’. Does he think because we lift the sledge from mornin’ till night we can’t bring it down as sure on a skull as a stone? Let me tell you somethin’, Peg: when Ireland’s aflame, it’ll be the workin’ men set torches to her, and not them spellin’ her out in Gaelic and Greek.

Beautiful words, Dennis. You’ve the power of beautiful words.

He looked again to the sea. Praise from her ran through him like water. The power of words, he said, and the heart of mush.

What are you belittlin’ yourself for all the time?

Peg, it’s with you only. He caught at the rail to keep his hands from her. You’ve the power over me now no woman ever had, and I’ve a great strength of my own. I won five pound at the Wicklow Fair throwin’ the king of the tinkers, and him the strongest man comin’ out of Galway in twenty years.

Peg laughed and he looked at her. Her eyes were as sharp as her small white teeth.

Is it to wrestle with you, you’re tryin’ to ask me? she mocked.

The shame burst through him for his body was crying out to crush against hers and he had no way of gentleness and no words to disguise his want—only a boast of strength to coax her mockery. He lifted his foot and gave a great kick to one of the water kegs roped in a row. The staves split like a fan, the fresh water rushing over the deck.

Hey, you bloody Paddy, the watch cried down from the crow’s nest. You’ll get the lash for that, you will! He pulled the whistle to his mouth and getting the deck watch from the pilot house, pointed at Dennis.

Peg caught at his arm. What’d you do that for? Run down below and I’ll soothe them.

I’ll stay and watch the soothin’, he said. There’s more hurt in your tongue than there is in a lash.

Don’t be a fool, Dennis. My tongue’s got no more schoolin’ than your toe has.

There was softness and pity in her heart for him after all, he thought. With the taste of her mouth on his the lash would be a tickle on his back.

Peg, I’m out of my mind for you, don’t you see? he tried to explain as he caught her and pulled her to him.

For an instant her eyes met his and little flames seemed to spring into them. Her fingers, strong and nimble, played down his body from chest to thigh.

Surely they’ll kill you… she started.

He smothered the words with his mouth and thrust her legs back with his own as he drove their bodies against the side of the ship, crushing his arm between her and the rail. Whether she was struggling against him or urging a hunger of her own upon him he could not tell.

Not until they pulled him from her and he saw the wrath of her eyes did he realize that her teeth upon his lip were venomous. She kicked out at him, aiming, he knew, at his groin. He had deserved it, hurting her, and yet he was confused even beyond his passion. He yielded to the iron grip of the seamen as they flung him face downward on the deck and then pulled him up again, his arms pinned behind him and his legs roped to within a few inches of one another. They forced him around before her. She stood, sucking in great gasps of air, her breast rising and falling in the quickness of her need for it. Her eyes on his were searing, tearless and full of scorn. No hurt was in them.

Now, biddie! a sailor cried, tightening the vise on Lavery’s arm, you can let him have that fancy toe of yours.

Kick high and he’ll remember! another chimed in.

Oh he’ll remember, he’ll remember you.

Still she stood, proud and full of hate, waiting for him to beg it too, he thought.

Forgive me, Peg! he cried out. Something needed forgiveness. He did not know what.

Her lips parted and the smile was crueler than her eyes.

A good word, Peg, he cried, for now he hated her and thought this to be the best of taunts that he could thrust at her who had no good words to comfort a man, only bad ones to tempt him.

She turned her back on him, and he could see the high tilt of her chin as the wind fanned her hair about it.

They dragged him away and thrust him down the steps of the forward hatch. While he lay below, breathing the smell of rust from the cargo, and waiting the irons they promised, an old Scots seaman who was the easiest of his captors, said: Ah, lad, dinna ye know better nor ask a gud word o’ the de’il’s whore?"

5

THERE WAS THIS TO be told of Peg: nothing she did was contemplated with malice aforehand. Indeed, by this lack of contemplation she was often the last to discover the mischief of which she was the origin. She was restive and curious, and did love things of flame and beauty. She was running through youth as she might through a fire, fearful at times, but more often wild with the excitement of something she perceived but did not understand, and her one determination was to turn back from nothing.

She had small pity for Dennis Lavery in his solitary confinement, thinking her own lot much the worse to have been tumbled, feeling raw and naked, back into the hold to the spitting scorn of the women who cried Shame! at her day and night the week since. She was ashamed, but not for the reasons for which they chastized her. She was ashamed now because she knew that Norah was pining after Dennis Lavery and she had permitted him and herself the temptation when she cared not a fig for him more than she had cared for any man she had ever known. She could have killed him herself for the kiss he forced upon her, for rousing in her something of torturing pleasure that left nothing but shame in its passing. Whether she despised herself or him more for it, she could not say. In truth, there was much she could not say, and no ears willing to listen if she could, save the boy, Vinnie, who took to her out of instinct or because he was lonesome entirely.

You must go to the priest, Norah pleaded with her. For my sake, do, and they’ll forgive you, seem’ it.

If it’s for your sake, go yourself, she said. You’ve been to him before.

If you confess yourself, Norah said, he might put in a word on Dennis’ behalf. And you did tempt him, Peg.

Peg laughed. What do you know of temptation, keepin’ your heart wrapped up in flannel?

You’re as selfish as sin, Margaret Hickey, and I could wish now what I never thought would come into my heart—I do wish you weren’t my sister at all. There’s people sick and ailin’ he’d sing a song to. He’d cart water for them not able…

Is it for all the others you want him back? said Peg.

Peg, I swear it to you before heaven, I wouldn’t try to take him from you if I could, so do say the word to the priest.

Oh, for the love of God! Peg exploded, and went up without another word.

Her first wish when she gained the deck was that Dennis had not burdened her with the knowledge of Farrell’s true identity. She must still pretend him a priest to herself or she could not speak to him at all, she thought.

I would see the priest, she called up from below the captain’s bridge.

Would you? said the mate, and then to a seaman and with a wink of his eye, she thought: Tell Mr. Russell one of his parishioners is down here—the bad one.

She turned her back and waited, trying to fashion her first words for when the man came. He was so soon there that he spoke before she was aware of his presence. Yes, Miss Margaret?

She swung around and seeing him tall and quiet and waiting patient for her words, she knew she could not blame herself before him. I’ve come for the book you promised by my sister.

It’s been so long I’d quite forgot it, he said.

I’ll forget it myself, she said then. I’ve no great need for it…Father.

I’ll see what I have if you’ll excuse me a moment, he said, ignoring her words and retreating up the steps quickly.

He was as shy of her as she was of him, she realized. Oh, what nonsense ran through people’s minds of one another! Did they know themselves so poorly to be that fearful of them they didn’t know at all? Was conversation a game to conceal the truth instead of revealing it? Now here was a man as well known by name as his times in Ireland, for his paper had stirred up a storm of tempers with every issue, and he needed to get a book in hand before he could talk to her! It gave her a fine and dangerous sense of her own power, and she entirely forgot Dennis Lavery for the moment.

I wonder, he said on returning, does your taste run to poetry?

It runs wherever I chase it, Father, she said, and held her hand out for the book. He was slow in giving it. Sonnets. I heard of them but I never seen them afore.

There are all kinds of sonnets, he said.

She thumbed through the book. There’s some here on love.

There are. And some on gardens and some on the sea. All manner of things touching a poet’s fancy.

You said that pretty, Father, she remarked, glancing up at him. And seeing the little alarm in his eyes she plunged into the mischief. Ha! she cried. Wait till they see what you gave me! I better tell them this is a prayerbook.

You’ll tell them nothing of the sort, he said. If you can’t tell the truth of it, you’d better not take the book at all.

Father, I know it’s hard for a holy man to believe, but I’ve been in more trouble by far for tellin’ the truth than ever I got into for tellin’ a lie.

The trace of a smile warmed his mouth and she found him much to her liking. Perhaps we should walk a bit, he said, if your legs are as steady as your tongue.

They both run off with me at times, she said. It would be grand could we go to the front of the ship. I do love to look before me and never back though it be the same.

He held the rope up for her as might a gentleman, and with not a word for permission to the dour sailors watching them. He was accustomed to taking the way he wanted, this one, and not wasting words to ask it. What will you do in America? she asked, looking up at him suddenly.

I rather think I should be asking you that question, he said.

Oh, I’ll marry the lord mayor of New York and live in a mansion.

I shall not be surprised to learn it, he said, but I do think your sister would settle now for your promise of something less.

Peg sighed. She’d marry me to a jailer if he’d keep me in chains.

That’s unfair, Miss Margaret, he said. She has reason to worry, you know. New York is not Dublin.

What’d I be goin’ there for if it was?

To discover it yourself, he said.

Ha! You know me well and just made my acquaintance. Have you seen poor Dennis Lavery where they put him away?

The captain will not permit it, he said. He’s chosen to make an example of him to his men.

She thrust the book toward him. Would you mind readin’ me one of those so’s I’ll know how it’s supposed to sound?

I would mind, he said. I gave it to you to read and it will have to occupy you for the rest of the voyage.

Oh-h-h, she said, trailing the word while she planned a new tack. You gave it to me to keep me from mischief. Will you listen then to see do I read it right? And before he had the chance to protest she opened the book and read:

"‘Love’s a thing as I do heare,

Ever full of pensive feare;

Rather than to which I’le fall,

Trust me, I’le not like at all:

If to love, I should entend,

Let my haire then stand an end:

And that terrour likewise prove,

Fatall to me in my love.

But if horrour cannot slake

Flames, which wo’d an entrance make;

Then the next thing I desire,

Is to love, and live i’ th’ fire.’"

She read each word as a child might, but her savoring of some of them indicated more than a child’s discovery. Oh, I like that last, she said, ‘to love and live i’ the fire.’ Did I read it all right?

By your pleasure in it, he