Mending Horses Page 11

  A little way down the road, a girl ran out of a house and waved them down, pushing her bonnet back to reveal a long, narrow, freckle-spattered face. Somebody who could not have been him slid from Ivy’s back and stepped forward to talk to her.

  “Sarah,” he said, and with the one word the new Daniel slipped away and the old one rushed back into his head, reminding him that he should have tipped his hat and said Good morning, should have done anything else than just say her name as though he had a right to.

  But she smiled and blushed a little. She’d been making butter; an ivory smear of cream soiled her apron, and two long greasy streaks darkened the cloth where she’d held the churn between her knees. “Did you come to work for Papa again?” she asked.

  “N-No. I—we have to move along.” He gestured at the peddler’s wagon behind him. Billy sat beside the peddler, trying to fasten a red ear of corn to the wagon.

  “Oh. When I saw you coming, I hoped—I mean, I thought—” She fidgeted with her apron and looked across the road at the potato field that he’d dug yesterday. “Well.” The silence hung for a moment, then Sarah turned her head as if she’d just remembered something. “Mama needs some milk pans,” she called out to Mr. Stocking. “If you go around to the side—”

  While Mr. Stocking drove into the barnyard, Sarah and Daniel stayed at the gate, not quite looking at each other, but not quite looking away, either.

  Sarah spoke first. “It was fun last night, wasn’t it?”

  “Aye—yes. Grand. Thank you,” he said, forcing the you to come out full and round. “It was kind of you to teach me.” His eyes fixed on her hands as something safe to look at: her freckled fingers, her short, ragged nails, her chapped skin. “Teach me to dance, I mean.”

  She picked at a bit of dried food stuck to her apron. “I had a lovely time,” she said. Her feet were bare, like his, her toes curling in the dust on the other side of the cart track from his. “Is this your horse?” she asked.

  He nodded. It was easier to look at the lass’s face while she was studying Ivy. The straw-colored hair that had been so elaborately arranged last night was now a single braid coiled at the nape of her neck. Wispy strands escaped and trapped the light in a haze of gold at her neck and temples, softening her angular face. She was all sharp except for her eyes, gold-flecked ginger and cinnamon, crinkling with delight under pale lashes and brows.

  “She’s lovely,” the girl said. “May I?” She reached a tentative hand toward Ivy’s nose.

  “Here. She likes this.” Not knowing what possessed him, he took her hand and put it on the mare’s ear, showing her where Ivy liked to be scratched. The lass stood between them, her hair so close to his face that he felt it like a sunbeam on his cheek. Ivy leaned into their touch and let out a blissful grunt. When Sarah laughed, Daniel felt like one of Mr. Stocking’s fiddle-strings, plucked and quivering with music.

  “You’re so lucky,” Sarah said. “I wish we had a horse.”

  “Sarah!” a shrill voice called. “That butter isn’t going to churn itself!”

  Just like that, the musical feeling was gone. Sarah drifted away from him, lingered in the grass beside the road. “I have to go.”

  As the peddler’s wagon rumbled out of the yard, Sarah disappeared into the house. With a sigh, Daniel collected Ivy’s reins. Already the feel of Sarah’s hand in his seemed like something he’d imagined.

  “Daniel!”

  He turned to see Sarah running back out of the house.

  “Here.” She thrust a little paper-wrapped bundle into his hand. “Some gingerbread for your breakfast.” The musty, sour scent of cattle and milk tickled his nose as she came closer, her breath moist against his cheek. And then she was away before he realized that he’d been kissed.

  They were barely out of sight of the lass’s house before Billy began taunting, “Daniel has a swee-eet-heart! Daniel has a swee-eet-heart!”

  Did he now? Surely one kiss and a bit of gingerbread didn’t make a sweetheart, especially when he’d likely never see her again. But the thought that he could have a sweetheart, maybe not this lass, but some girl, well, that was something. Billy’s taunts wrapped around him like a blanket, making him feel oddly warm and content.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Saturday, September 14, 1839, Cabotville, Massachusetts

  Liam’s shanty was clean and freshly whitewashed, with herbs strewn across the floor and table, the smells of new paint and crushed tansy and mint and lavender overlying the odors of sickness and decay. The two boxes on the floor looked too small to contain the lads whose laughter and foolishness had once filled the room to bursting. Liam knelt next to the rough wooden boxes and set his fingertips along the edge of one lid to open it.

  Augusta gripped his shoulder. “Don’t. You don’t want to remember them like that.” Her eyes glittered with moisture. Who had she lost, that she was remembering now?

  Somebody—who could it have been but her?—had found the lads’ playthings and laid them on the coffins among the herbs: the crudely carved wooden animals he’d made for them, pocketknives, toy soldiers, a Jacob’s ladder—the last few stolen. He picked up the Jacob’s ladder and let its wooden panels click-clatter down, a harsh echo in the silent room.

  “Thieving as magpies they were,” he said. “You s’pose it’ll be counted against them?”

  “I’m a whore, Liam,” she said harshly. “What would I know about such things?”

  He flinched at her tone and looked up to see her staring out the window, not really looking outside at all, but seeing something deep within. She collected herself with a little shiver and turned to give him a weary smile. “If it were up to me, there’d be no children in hell,” she added softly.

  He bowed his head and tried to pray for the lads and for Nuala, but he hardly knew what point there was in praying when all the fevered prayers he’d made during the lads’ sickness had been rejected, when what he really wanted to pray for was the impossible. He’d thought he’d cried himself dry when he’d been begging for their lives. But he had barely started. He felt as though he’d kneel there trembling and weeping until his own heart stopped.

  Gradually, he became aware that someone was stroking his hair. He let himself collapse into Augusta’s arms, let her rock him like a child. Then he realized that she, too, was crying. Although he was sure she wept for some hidden loss of her own, somehow it was a comfort to know that there were the two of them grieving together.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tuesday, September 17, 1839, Bethel Village, Connecticut

  Daniel caught himself whistling as he rode Ivy toward the tavern. He’d been worried at first that he’d be a burden on the peddler, but with the harvest season someone always needed help to bring in potatoes or corn or apples. There’d been barely a day that he hadn’t earned his own board and lodging and some besides.

  This traveling life was grand, indeed. True, Billy still refused to be civil to him, but it was enough for now that the cloud between her and the peddler had passed. She and Mr. Stocking made a fine pair with their jokes and stories, even if most of the stories were probably lies. Then there was their music; it had been worth throwing his lot in with them if only for the chance to hear them.

  Sometimes he felt as though he were perched at the top of a tall tree. He was eager and dizzy and fearful all at once, knowing that a mere gust of wind could send him tumbling back down.

  Aye, it was grand to be a free man with cash money in his pocket, knowing that all he needed was his work to prove himself—as long as he kept his mouth shut. The thought toppled him out of his imaginary tree with a very real shudder from his tail-bone to his skull. He still had to guard his words to keep the Irish out of his voice. Folk liked the Irish well enough when it was a pretty child like Billy singing a pretty song, but a laborer was another matter entirely. How free would he be now, if not for Mr. Stocking? He didn’t feel like whistling anymore by the time he saw the peddler and Billy sitting on a bench outside
the tavern, their heads bent over Billy’s primer.

  “Profitable day, Dan’l?” Mr. Stocking asked, glancing up from the book.

  “A dollar.” He slid from Ivy’s back and reached in his pocket. “And you?” He counted out his share of the room and board.

  “Sold two tin kitchens,” Billy declared with a grin. “Did it me very own self.”

  Daniel raised a skeptical eyebrow. She must have been proud to be talking civil to him. “Did you now?”

  The peddler nodded. “That’s right. He came up with a comical verse about ’em. Put it to the tune of ‘Yankee Doodle.’ Amazing the things he found to rhyme with ‘kitchen.’ ” He, Mr. Stocking had said, referring to Billy, not she. It reminded Daniel that folk were in earshot. “I’ll have him sing it to you after supper.”

  Daniel couldn’t help smiling. “I’ve heard of things bought for a song, but never any sold for one before.”

  Mr. Stocking chuckled. “That’s a good one. I’ll have to save it to use later.” He nudged the lass to make room for Daniel on the bench. “We’re just working on our grammar. Care to join us?”

  “Grammar?” Daniel glanced over the peddler’s shoulder at the book.

  “Aye. So I don’t talk ignorant,” Billy said. “Like you.” She let out a little oof as the peddler elbowed her in the ribs.

  Daniel bristled, but she was right, now, wasn’t she? All his ain’ts and brungs had become as much a part of his speech as the Irish lilt that he struggled to disguise. The Irish, well, there was no question of what prompted that. Remembering Ma’s Gaelic words and Da’s voice kept them with him, even if the only one to hear was a horse. But the “talking ignorant” had come not from sentiment or stupidity, but from spite, a way to irk the Lymans. Mr. Lyman had missed the defiance that lay behind the ain’ts, attributing them to stupidity rather than obstinance, and had decided that it would be a waste of time to try to beat them out of the boy. Now that the ain’ts no longer served him, Daniel found them as hard to shed as the upward slant that his sentences took when he spoke.

  “Ignorant, aye,” he said. He settled next to Mr. Stocking on the bench and looked over the grammar book on the peddler’s knee. “But what I really need you to learn me—teach me, sir—is how to talk proper, like the rest of ’em.” At Mr. Stocking’s puzzled frown, he gestured toward the tavern door, where talk and laughter tumbled out in flat, angular tones. “Yankees. Americans. So I don’t hang meself every time I open me mouth.” It felt like asking for a knife to cut the slender thread that still linked him to Ma and Da.

  Mr. Stocking closed the grammar book and leaned back against the tavern wall. His glance drifted across the yard to where Ivy stood tethered, then to Billy on his left side and back to Daniel on his right. There was such a devilish spark in his green eyes that Daniel thought he’d put off the request with one of his tall tales.

  “Talking proper, well, I could show you that, I guess,” the little man said. “But how about I teach the two of you to act? Then you can talk anyways you want, whenever you want.”

  “To act?” Billy’s face shone with the prospect. She hopped up from the bench as if she were ready to start learning right that moment.

  The peddler grabbed her elbow and pinned her with a solemn gaze. “But you got to pay for the lessons.”

  “How?” she asked. “Sell more of them tin kitchens?”

  He shook his head. “I want you to work with Daniel on that Gaelic of yours. So you don’t forget who you are.”

  Wednesday, September 18, 1839, Danbury, Connecticut

  Billy was dying of consumption, and all Jonathan could do was sit by and watch. Rain hammered the tavern roof, the wind rattling the windows and moaning as if it were trying to get in and claim her soul. The girl curled listlessly on the settle, wheezing so hard that her eyes watered. She hid her agony in a handkerchief as a gurgling noise crept up her throat.

  Daniel snatched the handkerchief away. “Don’t be spitting in it! It’s me only clean one!”

  Billy snagged one corner of the cloth. It stretched between them, threatening to rip. “Give us something red, Mr. S. To make it look like blood.”

  “He’ll do no such thing.” Daniel tried to peel her fingers from the handkerchief.

  “You want it to look real, don’t you?” she pleaded, slapping at Daniel’s arm.

  He finally rescued his handkerchief and returned it to the safety of his pocket. “You want it to look real, you ought to be down in the cold, dark cellar, not up here cozy by the fire with a cup of tea to hand.”

  Cozy wasn’t the first word Jonathan would have used to describe the dank little room he’d rented just in time to escape the storm. They’d moved the bed and settle twice to get them away from the dribbles now pattering into two buckets and a tin pan. The green firewood sputtered and squealed while gusts of wind sent the smoke down instead of up. The tea and sugar were from Jonathan’s own goods, the landlord providing only vinegary ale for drink. But at least they had the room to themselves and were away from the dismal mess outside.

  Jonathan cleared his throat noisily. “Let’s get to where the ghost of the prisoner’s mother appears to see if he’s learned the error of his ways.”

  Billy stood on the settle and emitted a spectral moan, raising her arms to loom over the now invisible prisoner.

  “You can’t be playing the mother’s ghost and the prisoner, too,” Daniel protested.

  “All right, then you be the prisoner,” Billy suggested tartly.

  “No. That’s fine,” Daniel replied. “Seems to me that part was made special for you.”

  They were acting out an insipid moral tale from Billy’s primer about a deceitful boy whose lies had caused his sainted mother’s death and led him down a path of wantonness and degradation that finally brought him to gasp out the last days of his wretched life in prison.

  “I think you’re missing the point of the story, fellas,” Jonathan interjected.

  Billy shook her head, staring daggers at Daniel. “I see the point just fine.”

  “And that would be . . .” Daniel crossed his arms over his chest and tried to look fierce, but Jonathan noticed a twitch at one corner of his mouth.

  “Don’t get caught,” Billy said smugly.

  The twitch turned into a smirk that dissolved into a snicker as Daniel swatted at Billy’s ear. “Ee-jit.”

  “Lout.” Billy aimed a kick at Daniel’s shins. Like Daniel’s swat, it never landed.

  Jonathan smothered his chuckles with difficulty. “Maybe it’s time for geography.” He pulled two books from his bag. “Here, Dan’l, you be Europe, and Billy, you be Asia. And why don’t you sit on opposite sides of the world while you’re at it?” He pointed at either end of the settle, which wasn’t long enough by half.

  Jonathan’s idea about acting lessons had been pure genius, if he did say so himself. Not only had it made Billy’s lessons more palatable, but it had cracked the barriers between her and Daniel. Where formerly they’d gotten along like cats and dogs, now they were more like two not unfriendly mongrels. The Irish lessons, on the other hand, were a disaster, with Billy tormenting Daniel over his rusty Gaelic.

  “Dan’l’s Irish is better than your reading,” Jonathan had snapped. As the words left his mouth, the answer had flown into his head. He’d handed Billy her primer and shoved her toward Daniel. “Here. I want you and him to turn this into Gaelic. Together.” Now each of them knew something the other needed. But what they really needed wasn’t either Gaelic or reading.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Thursday, September 19, 1839, Cabotville, Massachusetts

  “And who are you?”

  “Fogarty, sir. Remember? I’ve been working for you these past two years now, sir.” Liam doffed his cap so Mr. Briggs could see his face, but the man never looked up from his ledger, his lips moving as if he didn’t want to lose his place in his calculations.

  At last Mr. Briggs spared Liam an upward roll of his eyes, then turned back to
the record book and papers spread out on the table in his tiny closet of an office. “Fogarty . . .” He thumbed through the ledger to find the list of workers. “Last you worked was more’n two weeks ago.”

  “I know, sir. I took sick with the fever. But I’m ready to go back to work now.”

  Mr. Briggs looked Liam up and down through narrowed eyes. “Fever, indeed.” He clapped the ledger shut. “Fever for a bottle, no doubt.”

  Liam bit down on the anger that singed his face. “I’m telling you no tales, sir. I’ve been ailing these two weeks and more. Me two brothers died of it, with only me to care for ’em.”

  “Boy, do you know how many Paddies come crying to me about missing work for your poor brother’s or granny’s funeral? You seem to have more grannies than a duck’s got feathers.”

  Liam wrung his cap into a sweaty twist, fighting the urge to grab Mr. Briggs by the collar and throttle him on the spot. “It’s true,” he said between clenched teeth.

  “Fine. Show me the death notice in the paper.” Briggs opened his ledger again.

  “You think there’d be any newspaper taking notice of whether we Paddies live or die? What does it matter, anyway? I’m here to work. Me family isn’t none of your business.” Liam stepped closer to the table, standing over the builder with clenched fists.

  Mr. Briggs rose to meet Liam’s glare. “I won’t hire anyone who can’t hold his liquor well enough to do a day’s work.” He jabbed a forefinger at Liam’s chest. “And I won’t hire a liar.”

  The fever had never burned Liam as hot as his anger did now. It was all he could do not to upend Mr. Briggs’s table and throw it in his face.

  “I’ll speak for him, sir.” Ed Callahan stood in the doorway, all six feet tall and broad of him. Liam wondered how much Callahan had heard and how much he’d merely guessed.