“He says this is his country,” I said, and realized I had echoed Timmy.
“He’s wrong, for a certainty.” Her eyes locked with mine. “None of us has a true home here. They call us Micks and Paddys and Bridgets and worse, and deny us decent lodging and work.”
“But isn’t it getting better?”
She waved a hand, dismissing the idea.
“Do you want to return to Ireland?”
“To a free Ireland,” she said emphatically. “And I shall do that very thing before I’m too much older.”
I looked at her in silence, thinking how different we were, how problematic it was for me to love her.
“It was not my intent to carry on so, Samuel.” “I asked,” I said. “To find out how you felt.” “Indeed you did,” she said.
When I carried Timmy inside around nine, I thought I heard faint thumps below. Cait heard nothing. I was convinced it wasn’t my imagination. Outside I stopped and listened again. Dead silence.
I slept fitfully. At six I was up and on the first horsecar. I approached Cait’s from the rear, looking for a door to the basement. I found one secured with a heavy padlock and noticed that it was hinged from the outside—a fact I mentally filed—and that the sod in front was tramped down. Something or someone had been down there.
Rounding the corner of the house, I stopped abruptly. In the street stood a wagon and three-horse team. Two sweating workers were cinching a tarpaulin over its empty bed. A black-whiskered man I recognized as one of Cait’s boarders stood watching them. He spotted me, said something, and pointed. From the other side of the wagon Fearghus O’Donovan appeared. He too was sweating, and his long overcoat was streaked with dirt and grease. He ran toward me, followed by the others.
“What’s the meaning of this?” His blue eyes raked me.
“He’s been around here lately,” Black Whiskers said.
O’Donovan moved within inches of me. “I asked you a question.”
I nodded toward the wagon. “What’s the meaning of that?”
“None of your affair.” His eyes flicked up at Cait’s window and something in his face changed. “Ah, I see.” He wheeled toward Black Whiskers. “Why the devil didn’t you tell me he was sniffing around here?”
I didn’t appreciate his choice of verb.
“’Twas an oversight, Captain O’Donovan, with all the work—”
“Enough!” O’Donovan swung back to me. “So, you’re preying on a poor widow’s weakness, is that it?”
“I’m not preying on anybody,” I said. “But I’m curious as hell about what’s going on around Cait.”
“‘Cait,’” he repeated mockingly. “And curious, are you? I’ll soon know what your game is. I’ve begun asking questions.”
“I’ll try to think up some answers,” I said, “when I’ve got time to waste.”
The icy eyes narrowed. “Your circumstances are graver than you imagine. I’d advise you to stay away from Mrs. O’Neill.”
“I appreciate that,” I told him. “It’s splendid advice.” I brushed past him, feeling him go tense. “Keep up the good work,” I told Black Whiskers, jabbing a thumb at the wagon.
I strode along the sidewalk, feeling their eyes bore into my back.
“Samuel, I cannot tell you more.”
“But you haven’t told me anything.”
“I’m not allowed to,” she said stubbornly.
“Who gives permission? O’Donovan?”
She said nothing.
“Great.”
“Samuel, don’t, please.”
I let out the mainsheet to catch a languid puff of wind. We’d been in irons, hovering off the Covington shore to keep the current from carrying us miles downriver. My fantasy afternoon was failing on all levels. Having sailed often in my other life, I’d scouted the riverfront till I found a sloop advertised for rent in the East End, where boat builders were slowly giving way to the slums of Rat Row.
It turned out to be more of a skiff and steered like a raft. A far cry from sleek fiberglass craft I had known. And the Ohio was hardly San Francisco Bay. We floated dully on yellow, silt-choked water beneath a hot, cloudless sky. Where were the tricky currents and tides, the exhilarating, unpredictable winds? No wonder pleasure boating on this stretch of the Ohio was limited to excursion steamers. The only good thing I’d seen all afternoon was giant side-wheelers, their whistles blasting and black smoke belching from their twin stacks, hoving into view around the bend above Cincinnati, already as doomed as dinosaurs with railway and telegraph networks enveloping the country.
It had taken some effort to get Cait to go on this outing. Timmy was ill, and she hadn’t wanted to leave. I’d brought Johnny over to stay with him. He promptly entranced Timmy by doing handstands, conjuring coins from the air, and balancing a burning sheet of paper on his nose—tricks he’d perfected in the circus. Cait, though less impressed than Timmy, agreed to come. But she insisted on wearing layers of clothing and shading herself beneath a bonnet that enfolded her head like a tent. I was boating with the most beautiful woman I could imagine—and I couldn’t see her features.
The sail filled slightly and I felt us pick up speed. “Did you talk to O’Donovan this morning?”
“Why, no.” She sounded surprised. “He’s been gone for days. After he brought Timmy home he immediately joined General O’Neill in the South. He’ll be away for some weeks.”
“You’re sure?”
“For a certainty, why?”
Was O’Donovan concealing his activities from her? I wondered. Or was she lying?
“Cait, tell me about your secret society.”
“It’s not secret,” she said. “Although the Church tries to say it is. That was true at first, in Ireland, but no longer.”
“Then what is it?”
“An army, Samuel.”
“Whose army?”
“Ireland’s army.”
“You’re telling me that the army of a nation not yet in existence is operating inside this country?”
“Ireland exists,” she argued. “It exists in subjugation, at the mercy of English tyranny. It exists to be plundered by landlords and to be exploited in the name of religion. It exists to be stripped of its people.” Her hand clenched into fists. “Oh,
