Now & Then Page 8

  Not knowing what else to do, he began to scan the newspaper for any additional information, but it was dense with political stuff, the kind of thing that was so boring it made his eyes roll back into his head. But he knew he had to concentrate; he couldn’t be a baby about this.

  The words home rule jumped out at him several times. That’s what this newspaper was all about, wanting home rule. Maybe this guy would let him take the newspaper back where he and Deirdre had come from if he promised to return it. Joseph popped his head out the window, which curiously had no glass in it. Instead it was bordered by shutters on the inside and another set on the outside.

  “Can I borrow this? I’ll bring it back.”

  Tom and Deirdre looked stunned. Tom looked accusingly at Deirdre, then to Joseph. “And take it where, back to the Mitford estate? Are you daft?”

  What had he said wrong? Wait, Deirdre had said something about trouble. He really didn’t want any more trouble.

  “Sorry, I only wanted to study it more. And I really only wanted the date. That’s where I was so mixed up. You see with the accident, being hauled out of the ocean, I lost my sense of time.”

  He felt ridiculous talking to them through the window, so he pulled his head back in and came around to the door. He handed the newspaper to Tom. As soon as the newspaper hit the light of day, Tom startled again, stiffening like a dog, alert, fur raised. He pushed Joseph back inside again. He squared off with Deirdre.

  “I was having a perfectly lovely day pressing letters into the page and now I’m jumping like a fish. Let’s put the bloody newspaper aside.” He slid it under his workbench, beneath a wooden tray heavy with tiny blocks of letters.

  He turned to Joseph. “You’re not from here, I can hear it in your voice, lad, so you’re not to blame. And Deirdre tells me you hail from Canada of late and that our fearsome ocean spat you out.”

  Joseph gulped, preparing to ready his tongue for another go at this lie. “Yes, Canada. I don’t recall much else before I was rescued.” For the first time it occurred to him to ask the obvious. “Did you find any others on the shore?”

  Tom looked expectantly at Deirdre, giving way to her for the answer. As a shimmer of light from the door ignited Deirdre’s eyes, Joseph noticed for the first time that they were greener than anything else he had ever seen. Something as green as that didn’t look right—at least he had never seen anything this green on a person. Deirdre moved out of the light, closer to Joseph, and her eyes went from emerald to blue-green again, less dazzling and also less distressing.

  “Every time someone is washed ashore, dead or living, we search the coast in either direction for miles. The current is ghastly strong; you can’t imagine how far something buoyant can be carried. But no, the word was sent out fifteen miles each way, to be on the lookout. It was only you. And no ships were heard to have accidents.” She paused. “Of those ships that we hear from. But some ships sink, the sea pulls them under and there is not a bloody sliver left of her.” Her green eyes flicked once in Tom’s direction.

  “Right. Well, lad, your people must be sick with worry,” said Tom.

  Joseph needed time to formulate the rest of his story; he had to be careful. This was where Oscar’s game training might actually come in handy. He needed to create his own avatar, a personality and history and maybe even a quest. The weight of this pressed down hard on Joseph, sagging his bones.

  “Of course you’ll be wanting to write to your people to let them know of your mishap,” said Deirdre.

  “Yeah, of course,” said Joseph. What he didn’t say was, Whose name should I make up? What fake address should I use? Not that it would matter. He remembered that he had to think harder than he had ever thought before. This wasn’t high school; he couldn’t doodle in his notebook, text Oscar, fall asleep in history class. This had to be more like wrestling—being light on his feet, knowing the opponent’s move before they knew it, being decisive and fast with his strike.

  They walked back to the Mitford estate, the land steadily rising beneath their feet. Joseph was different on the return trip, filled with a knowing that ricocheted inside him, chattering around each cluster of synapse, neurons, rearranging the design until he was exhausted from the effort. A sudden longing for his family tightened his throat. Did this mean he would never see his father, his grandmother, and even Anna again? Wait, why hadn’t his father driven to New Jersey to get him? As he kept pace with Deirdre, a sudden dread about his father stopped him as surely as if he had crashed into a stone wall. He dropped to his knees and held his head.

  “What is it?” Deirdre was at his side, squatting next to him. She placed a cool palm to his forehead. “Here, sit back on your arse, now put your head down. You don’t have a fever, but you are unwell.”

  “It’s my father, something is wrong with my father.” The words wrenched out of him, each one jagged along his throat. He sat up and wiped tears from his face, turning away from Deirdre as he did. “I know something is wrong, but I can’t remember, I can’t see it.”

  Deirdre waited for him with her arms wrapped around her knees. When he cleared his throat and tried to right himself by wiping his hands down his shirt, she stood up. “You’ll recall everything that needs remembering. Sometimes not remembering is a sweet thing, rocks us like a baby until we are right and strong again. I’ve got my eye on you, and some people would say that’s a great shame and others would say it served them well. We’ll see which way it goes with you.”

  They had come up the steepest part of the road and they both looked back, out to the sea.

  “Colonel Mitford will be returning at sunset from riding with the dogs. Hunting,” said Deirdre. “If I could keep you from him for one more day, I would, but as soon as he hears word of you, he’ll want to inspect you, see, like you were a bird from a Spanish ship, or a monkey from the coast of Africa. We had a wee monkey running about the manor once; it was a horror to watch. The loneliness of the creature was near too much for me to bear. And then one day, the thing was gone. I don’t know if the colonel wearied of his toy or if the wretched thing escaped. If the monkey ran off, we have more than enough hoodie crows and sea eagles to kill it.”

  There was nothing about this tale that Joseph found reassuring. Must he somehow be offered up to the lord of the manor, if that’s what he was called, as if there was no escaping? Would he end up like the monkey, tossed away and torn to shreds by birds?

  They had entered the tunneled path through the woods, and slim strands of light from the late-day sun made it through. He heard only his own footsteps and the slightest sound from Deirdre, as if she did not fully make contact with the earth. They emerged into the open space of the meadow and Deirdre quickened her pace.

  “I know you’re ready to drop, lad, but now’s not the time to linger.”

  When they returned to the vast kitchen of the manor, she pushed him into a chair. The fresh and bloody carcass of a deer had been gutted, and its hindquarters now hung above the side tables.

  “Eat this,” she said, pushing the last of the soup in front of him. “Finn, get a slice of ham for him. I’d forgotten how quickly food burns through lads.”

  Finn opened a door that looked like a closet, and he disappeared for a moment, returning with a hunk of meat. Joseph felt a rush of saliva in his throat and a welcoming yelp from his belly. He’d never understood the girls in high school who’d been vegetarians. Rabbits, his father had called them. No, Finn wasn’t the only other person he remembered. Taleen, where was she? He scanned the kitchen for her.

  Finn pulled a foot-long knife from a drawer and sliced off an end of the meat. He handed it to the boy.

  “Could you put it on a plate, man?” sighed Deirdre.

  Despite Finn’s smile and his gentle eyes, Joseph caught the hint of disregard in the final shove of the meat.

  “Why do you trust him?” asked Finn. “Why did you take him in as if he was John O’Connell himself? We know nothing of him, and he’s seen far too much of
us.”

  Deirdre was already tying a fresh apron around her. “The speed of gossip makes my head spin, truly it does. What great mouth told you where we had been and who we spoke with?”

  Finn shrugged, looked sideways at Joseph, and said, “What does it matter who brought the word?”

  Joseph bit off a piece of the meat and began to chew, glancing up at Finn and Deirdre. The meat was dry. He dunked the next piece into the soup, hoping to soften it.

  “He’s not British, we know that much, and he’s just a lad, and if ever someone needed a hand before being dumped into the lap of our Colonel Mitford, it’s him,” she said.

  “Lovely,” said Finn. “And suppose, just suppose that your unappreciative sentiments that you so openly stated are repeated to our lord? What then? I’ve never known you to lose your caution, never. And to put so many at risk. The boy’s not Irish, can’t you see?”

  Joseph stopped eating and looked at Deirdre. He wanted to let her know that he’d never say or do anything that would hurt her.

  “I get it,” he said. “Deirdre took me into Tramore to see if I could remember more about what happened when I was washed ashore. I looked at the ships in the port and I didn’t recognize any of them. Then we came back. That’s all.”

  Without comment, Deirdre tipped her head to one side and looked at Finn.

  “He’s quick and he has some sense about him, but bless us all, I hope that’s enough,” said Finn.

  As if on cue, the door that led up the stairs screeched open on its rusty hinges and Mr. Edwards emerged, stepping only as far into the kitchen as necessary.

  “Come along, lad, the lord of the manor is riding in at this moment and you shall be the first thing he sees when he returns. It is your good fortune that it was a bountiful hunt.”

  Joseph pushed his chair back, peering up at Deirdre as he did so. She nodded slightly and stood aside to let him pass. He thought he heard her say something as he passed by, or perhaps she had simply coughed, clearing her throat; he couldn’t be sure. But if she had said something, it had been, “Caution.”

  “Follow me,” said Mr. Edwards.

  Every aspect of the manor grew in size as they moved further and further from the kitchen. The doors grew wider and taller, the wood planks broader. The windows went from glass to stained glass. Joseph followed his guide through paneled hallways and rooms that seemed to have no purpose other than displaying oversized portraits. They paused finally in a vast entryway. The floor was cut from huge slabs of stone, and rich carved molding ran up the walls. A huge painting greeted them, a scene from a hunting smorgasbord. The hunter stood with polished boots amidst his pile of bounty: dead pheasants, a huge stag with bloody tongue protruding at an unlikely angle, ducks of all varieties, and a small mountain of rabbits piled up in the killing frenzy of the hunter.

  Even as Joseph began to feel smaller and less distinct in the massive entryway, he heard the sound of a loud, rumbling voice, the snap of hard-soled boots, and the self-congratulatory air of men who had accomplished something together. They approached from a hallway to the right.

  In walked four men in riding gear. The aroma of oiled leather and horse rushed ahead of them. They stopped abruptly when they saw Joseph with Mr. Edwards.

  “What’s this? Have you caught a thief, Edwards, one more bit of Irish riffraff plundering our estate? The timing is perfect; we’ve not finished shooting for the day,” said one man. His sandy hair was slicked back, tucked behind one ear. The three other men erupted in deep belly laughs.

  Mr. Edwards made a slight bow. “This lad, who is not Irish, sir, was found barely breathing, washed ashore. I knew you would want to see him immediately. He is from the Province of Canada, sir, a well-schooled, proper lad.”

  “From the Provinces? Get him out of those rags then. What must he think of us, offering him tatters from the Irish. Tell me your name.”

  Of course the lord of the manor would want to know his name. Why hadn’t he thought more about this? Joseph’s mind raced to news reports, television news bytes of England. Suddenly his brain was blank, as if he had never heard about one English person in his entire life. Then he remembered the one name he could associate with England.

  “Joseph Blair, sir, and I’m very pleased to meet you.”

  Chapter 11

  Joseph awoke to the elevated status of honored guest at Colonel Richard Mitford’s estate, and it went beyond his wildest expectations. That he had been sucked into a time other than his own caused him little discomfort when balanced with the advantages. He had slipped into a life of privilege as if it had been designed for him.

  Mr. Edwards delivered a pile of clothing, cinched in to fit his slim hips, his long legs and arms. Joseph wore a waistcoat of finely woven wool, a vest beneath that, and a starched linen shirt close to his skin. His host had supplied him with knee-high boots that glistened ebony black. A manservant had polished them and left them in Joseph’s bedchamber, and he’d assisted in pulling on the boots that very morning. The colonel had said they would go riding in the afternoon.

  Joseph, who had been served in the dining room at a massive table, finished a meal of slightly overcooked pheasant, potatoes in cream seasoned with herbs, and bread that was moist, rich, and so deliciously explosive on his tongue that he experienced an erection. The main course was followed by unrecognizable berries with a sauce that tasted somewhat like vanilla ice cream except lots warmer. And this was a midday meal.

  While he was looking out over the formal gardens from his seat at the table, a boy came in to check the fire. He looked to be about Joseph’s age.

  “Good morning, sir. The colonel wanted me to check the fire for you, although it seems altogether too early for a fire. Not that I’m assuming anything about the colonel’s choice, but the day is warm,” he said.

  Joseph had never been called sir before, and the weight of it hit him unpleasantly. He pushed his chair back and stood up, moving to the fireplace. He held out his hand.

  “I’m Joseph. What’s your job here?”

  “Con is me name. Short for Connor, but nobody calls me that. You’re asking what I do? I tend the fireplaces when the cold weather is upon us and I work with my father, the stonemason, whenever I’m able. Can I do anything for you, sir?”

  Joseph was eager for the company of another boy.

  “Could you show me around the estate? I’d like to see the stables and the hounds.”

  “Aye. I’m headed to the stables. Come on then.”

  The colonel had fussed and gushed over him, making sure that he had all the proper clothing and boots. He had indeed promised his guest a tour of his land, but Joseph wanted to know the estate in a way that would bring him to Taleen; he had seen her walking with a large dog and had heard dogs elsewhere.

  The two boys left the manor and walked left along the long drive, heading to the back, where the stables took up nearly as much space as the manor itself.

  “These dogs are as old as Ireland, that’s what Deirdre tells us,” said Con, opening the door in the stables. “She said they truly did keep us free from wolves, kept the wolves from tearing through our sheep and the wee calves. But the wolves are long gone.”

  The door hinges creaked. Everything creaked in Ireland, Joseph was sure of it. Maybe it was the salt air taking a constant nibble out of the iron hinges, biting out molecules, making bumps so that the metal screeched on metal.

  “The colonel fancies everything Irish except the Irish. He wants to have twenty wolfhounds on his estate, castle guards, you see, because he learned that the old Irish nobility had twenty dogs on each estate. But the dogs don’t want to breed for him, or not often. Deirdre thinks the wolfhounds are leaving Ireland, as if they decided they were finished.”

  Joseph followed Con through the back of the stables, past the bulging-eyed horses, who tossed their heads as Con walked by, spreading their nostrils to pull in the scent of visitors.

  “We had a litter in early summer. They’re coming out al
l wrong, and the litter was small, not but four. One was stillborn and never took a breath. Another took on the cough and stopped suckling. She wasted quickly. Another did not fare well…” Con paused and seemed to consider saying more.

  Joseph heard rustling, a scraping sound.

  “We’ve kept the runt. The colonel said to drown him, but I could not. I brought him to Deirdre. As soon as Taleen saw him, it was settled. Taleen takes care of the runt. She’s out here every chance she gets, and the runt has taken to her.”

  If Joseph had been interested before, he was fascinated now.

  “This is Taleen’s dog?” asked Joseph.

  “Tis. As much as anything can be ours on the colonel’s estate. If it weren’t for Deirdre talking her way around the colonel, making it seem like it was his idea, the pup would have been food for the gulls.”

  Con slid open the door to yet another section of the estate, where three gray adult wolfhounds rose their heads to look at the humans with unfiltered appraisal. The stare took Joseph by surprise; the unblinking seriousness of the eyes made him wish he’d never done anything wrong. A charcoal gray dog stood up, and Joseph was startled by its sheer size. For her part, the dog stepped lightly; gravity did not dare pull at her, didn’t grab at her mass, and she seemed to float, the pads of her feet bouncing off the earth.

  Before the gray had crossed the yard, another, younger dog bounded into the center and leaped at the older animal, tasting her neck in one gushing tongue lap, ricocheting off her and prancing to Con and Joseph with his big paws plopping on the earth.

  “This is the runt?” asked Joseph, laughing for the first time since skidding along time. He dropped to one knee. Seeing an invitation to play, the oatmeal-colored puppy placed both paws on Joseph’s bent leg.

  No sooner had the puppy occupied Joseph’s full attention than the three adult dogs silently surrounded him, looking slightly down at him. Their fur was coarse and stern. At the shoulder, the dogs had to be three feet tall, and at the head, four feet. Joseph felt a sudden urge to stand up.