Part 17 (2/2)

He searched his mind, trying to recall the Castle Hill revolt just outside of Dublin, and Robert Emmet's attempt to stage a rising. If he remembered right, it had fizzled and come to nothing.

”How old were you?” he asked, marking time, and trying to help her calm down.

”I was nineteen, my lord. My little brother Tim was five.” She was silent a moment more, and he could feel her relax slightly. He loosened his grip on her, but kept his arm about her waist.

”When your father returned ...” he prompted.

”Oh, he and my brothers welcomed him, too, and they sat a long time over port when dinner was done.” She laughed bitterly. ”Papa told me later they talked about hunting and fis.h.i.+ng, and his fiancee who lived close by. He said he was on his way there when his carriage broke down. Of course, Papa never saw a broken carriage on the Cash road, but he didn't think of it at the time.”

She realized then that she was sitting on his lap, and put her hands to her cheeks. ”I am sorry, my lord. Please forgive me for being so forward!”

He smiled at her. ”I put you there, Emma, and I believe I will keep you there.”

He thought she would leap off his lap then, but she did not. She settled herself against him like a puppy seeking warmth. ”He stayed the night, and then he was gone by morning light.” She stared straight ahead then. ”He was arrested by government troops at the entrance to our estate. I think they must have watched us all night.” She shook her head and made an impotent gesture with her hand.

It was so clear to him what had happened then that his own mind recoiled from speech. How could they? he thought. If the sins of nations must be atoned for at some distant judgment bar, England will pay for this one.

”And they arrested your family for complicity,” he whispered, when he could speak. ”Oh, G.o.d, Emma.”

She spoke then in a monotone voice, so low and chilling that he was reminded of tales of zombies his Caribbean nursemaid told in the nursery years and years ago. ”They yanked Tim out of his sickbed and ordered me to carry him. Da, Eamon, and Sam were bound together. Mama and I carried Tim ten miles that day toward Dublin.” She paused then, and her voice because wistful. ”I remember that it was raining, and I lost a shoe in the mud.”

”You walked all the way to Dublin?”

”Aye. Tim died on the way.” She made another odd gesture with her hand, as though to wipe away the memory. ”At least, I am sure he did. He was burning with fever, and the captain of the guard forced us to leave him in Diggtown with a family named Holladay.” She burrowed closer to him. ”His eyes were sinking back in his head, and there was a fearsome gurgle in his throat.”

He chewed that over, letting her sit in silence until the coals settled in the fireplace and she sat up, startled. He pulled her back against his chest again.

”The rest of you made it to Dublin?”

”Aye. Mama and I were taken to the Marlborough Street Riding School where they were holding women involved in Castle Hill. The others went to Prevot Prison.” She shuddered, and he understood why. He had been to Prevot himself in 1798, when he had escorted prisoners there from Cork before his own injury.

”Were they tortured?” he asked as gently as he could.

She nodded. ”But they wouldn't say anything.” She looked at him, her eyes huge. ”What could they say? They knew nothing!” She pounded on his chest in her rage, then threw her arms around him and wept.

He held her close, murmuring softly to her, devastated at the depth of her sorrow, and understanding her deep shame. And you think you brought it on them all, my dear. This is too big a burden to bear alone. ”This is tragic, my dear, but hardly your fault.”

”I am not through,” she interrupted, her voice cold. ”When they would not speak, the English took me from Marlborough to Prevot and tortured me in front of them.”

”Oh, G.o.d!” he exclaimed, feeling such a measure of horror and revulsion that his stomach writhed. ”No, Emma!” he declared, as though his words could take it away.

She held up her left hand to him, holding it with her right to steady it. ”You've noticed my fingers, my lord?” she asked, her eyes glittering with a fierce anger that burned into his body almost.

”Yes,” he whispered. ”They pulled out your fingernails, didn't they?”

”Aye.” She looked at her hand, the fingernails grown back, but with b.u.mpy ridges. ”I tried not to scream, but I couldn't help myself. I even bit through my lip.”

”Emma, don't,” he pleaded.

”You wanted to know,” she said calmly. ”Well, now you will know. They told my father they were going to rape me right there. That was when Eamon confessed.”

”But. ..”

”Confessed to crimes he never committed, to spare me.” She stood up, and there was a dignity and majesty about her. ”Now you begin to understand something of what drives me, my lord. It is not pretty, is it?”

Chapter 17.

No, it is not pretty, he agreed, after a night of twisting and turning in his bed until he was a prisoner of his sheets and weary with no sleep. As dawn was beginning to tinge the sky, he dragged himself to his armchair by the window and propped his bare feet on the ledge. I wonder that she can endure. May the Lord smite me if I ever whine again.

The rest of her story was told in fits and starts. How Eamon had been ripped from them and thrown into a cell for the condemned. They heard gallows under construction for some, and learned from their triumphant jailers of Robert Emmet's death by beheading. They begged, they pleaded, but the authorities did not bother to tell them who else had died, as though Irish grief was as dismissible as a gnat before the face.

On his lap again, Emma spoke of her escape, her voice still wondering at the mystery of it all. They had kept her in Prevot for another week, and then suddenly all the prisoners were removed to Marlborough Street Riding School, hurried along through the streets of Dublin as night was falling.

”It was typhus, and they moved everyone,” she explained into his soaked waistcoat. ”Da and I were not chained together, and I know it must have been an oversight. When we pa.s.sed a crowd and the guard wasn't looking, he pushed me into the mob and said, 'Indenture,' to the man who caught me.”

Her voice lost some of its tightness as she told of being hustled that very night to the Dublin docks and put aboard a s.h.i.+p bound for America and the West Indies. ”And so I came to the Clar-idges,” she concluded. ”I never thought I would have a chance to look for my family again, but when Mr. Claridge said he was sending Sally and Robert to England, I knew I had to come.”

”And you have been treated shabbily,” he concluded. ”That will change tomorrow, Emma. We are returning to the Office of Criminal Business, and I a.s.sure you that Mr. Capper will see you.”

”You would do that for me?” she asked in surprise, not realizing how her spontaneous question deepened his own shame.

”Of course, Emma.”

”Of course,” he repeated at dawn to the window. And then what? Will there be tidy lists of prisoners bound for Australia, or am I only letting Emma in for more frustration and heartache? Put baldly, is this a kindness?

He decided that it was, as he watched, bleary-eyed an hour later, as the maid put more coal in the grate and started the fire. He knew he looked worse than usual, because of her darting glances and the way she almost ran from his room. Even if Emma continues to be disappointed at every turn, at least she will know that we tried everything we could, he reasoned. This was far better than going through life never knowing.

Dressed and ready for the day, he came downstairs at six, surprising Lasker. ”There is no breakfast yet, my lord,” he apologized, even as he hurried to light the candles in the breakfast room.

Lord Ragsdale shrugged. ”Tea then, Lasker,” he said, and sat down at the empty table with the paper. He looked up at his butler, whose face wore a quizzical expression. ”Tell Emma to come here.”

”Yes, my lord.” The butler hesitated. ”I do not believe she slept last night,” he said. ”The scullery maid heard her crying in the next room.”

Emma, and I was not there to hold you? he thought. I would have. I was sleepless only one floor below you. He considered the paper a moment, then rejected it, struck by the fact that he was the best friend she had at the moment. ”Well, then she'll be awake, won't she?” he asked, and turned back to the paper. ”Bring two cups.”

She was there in a few minutes, pale and serious in the deep green wool dress he had commissioned for her. He gestured to a chair, but she did not sit. He looked up.

”My lord, it is not my place to sit here,” she reminded him.

”It is if I say so. Sit.”

She perched on the edge of the seat, as if ready for flight if another family member were to appear. He filled a teacup and pushed it toward her. She sipped it slowly, cradling her hands around the cup as though she were cold inside and out.

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