Chapter Twelve #2
“God help you, Willy,” his elder sibling said wearily. “God help you. I’d not have this sin on my conscience for all the world.”
“Get out!” Sir William Devers shouted at his half-brother. “Get out, you filthy papist bastard!”
Kieran Devers arose from their father’s body and struck his brother a blow upon his elegant chin, knocking him to the floor. His stepmother screeched, and ran to her son.
“I’ll have the law on you, Kieran Devers,” she threatened.
“Oh, pray do, madame, and I shall tell them the truth of what happened last night in Lisnaskea.
There are enough of your Protestants feeling burdened by their guilt who would gladly unload the onus of the horrors committed there on your son.
Willy was never particularly popular for his arrogance would always overcome him when dealing with those good souls he considered his menials.
The authorities may not believe the Catholics, although I suspect they would believe me, but they will certainly believe their own Protestant fellows.
Remember, your precious son raped his fourteen-year-old half-sister before his companions, and then murdered her.
‘Tis not a pretty picture, madame, especially as Aine Fitzgerald was known to be a decent lass. Many in the mob have daughters her age. Now, madame, I am going into your village to take the bodies of my half-sisters, and their mother, for burial. Should you, or that mongrel you bore my father attempt to stop me, I shall kill you. Is that quite understood, madame? Willy?” Kieran kicked his younger brother with his booted foot. “Do you understand me, laddie?”
Sir William Devers groaned weakly.
“Good!” Kieran said. Then he bowed to his stepmother. “Madame. I shall be at my father’s funeral. If you try to prevent it, you will live to regret it.” He turned and left the room, the sound of his footsteps echoing as he descended the staircase.
A sardonic smile touched James Leslie’s lips.
This was a side of his son-in-law he had hitherto not seen.
Kieran Devers was tougher than he had thought which boded to the good, for it would not be an easy life in the New World.
Reaching out he aided William Devers to rise.
Then he, too, bowed first to the mother, and then the son.
“Good day, madame, Sir William,” he said, and departed them.
He found his son-in-law outside awaiting him.
“Do you think they will tell you when the funeral is to be, laddie?” he asked.
“They’ll try to keep it from me, but I have allies in the house who will keep me informed,” Kieran said stonily.
“I’ll ride wi ye into Lisnaskea to fetch the bodies of yer sisters and Mistress Fitzgerald,” the duke said.
“I’m grateful for the company, and the help,” came the reply.
They came into the village, and were shocked by the ruin they saw.
Houses burned to the ground, half-burned, the church totally destroyed.
The smell of death was everywhere, and yet the people were already rallying to rebuild.
The Catholic families who remained alive had been gathered together in a cattle pen.
James Leslie was appalled, and insisted they be set free at once.
“What the hell did ye intend doing wi them?” he demanded angrily.
“Sir William says they’re to be killed, my lord,” Robert Morgan, the village blacksmith, said.
The duke looked into the pen which contained mostly women, children, and old men.
“Open the damned gate, let them gather what belongings they own that may have escaped the carnage, and allow them to leave Lisnaskea unharmed. Are ye such fools that ye truly believe God has smiled on yer murder and violence?”
“But my lord, they are papists. God doesn’t care about the papists,” the smithy reasoned.
“And who was after telling ye that?” the duke said scornfully. “For God’s sake, man, we worship the same God, albeit in different ways.”
“Their God is an idol, my lord, and not our true God,” came the reply. “Surely you understand that?”
James Leslie closed his eyes briefly. It did no good arguing with fools, he thought wearily.
Would this kind of thing ever stop? His eyes snapped back open, cold and determined.
“Free those poor souls at once!” he thundered.
“I have far more authority than yer damned Sir Willy, and I’ll fire what’s left of this place if ye do not obey me at once!
” Behind him his dozen clansmen glared with equal determination at the smithy, and the small group of men who had gathered about him.
The smithy considered defiance against this Scot, but then to his horror the duke spoke again, and his words were chilling.
“Would ye like to hae yer daughters suffer the same terrible fate as poor wee Aine Fitzgerald, man?”
“Open the pen and let them out,” Robert Morgan said. “Let them take what is theirs, and leave Lisnaskea.”
“And nae harassment,” James Leslie cautioned the villagers.
“These are women, and bairns, and the old ones. Ye lived in peace wi them for years until ye were infected by others wi prejudice. Ye shared happy times, and mourned together over yer dead. Ye birthed children, and danced at each other’s weddings.
Remember those times, and nae what happened last night.
” Then he turned to his own men, and ordered six of them to remain to oversee the freeing of the Catholic survivors while he, Kieran, and the others went to fetch the bodies of the Fitzgeralds.
They reached the lovely brick house and saw that its front door still hung open.
Entering they were surprised to be greeted by Father Cullen Butler.
The priest in Lisnaskea, he explained, had been murdered last night along with the Protestant cleric.
It had been the death of Father Brendan that had enraged the Catholics to commit their own murders.
Until that moment they had been too busy defending themselves but when their priest had been killed, they had erupted with fury.
“Someone had to come and pray over these poor women,” Cullen Butler said quietly.
“You won’t be able to bury them here. The burial ground has been destroyed.
And you cannot bury them at Maguire’s Ford for their graves would be a terrible reminder of the hate between the Protestants and the Catholics.
They will have to lie in some quiet place, unmarked, but safe,” the priest said.
“I will consecrate the ground myself, and say what needs to be said. Best your men do it, James Leslie, for then no one will ever know where Molly Fitzgerald and her daughters have been laid to rest. When Kieran is gone there will be none left to mourn them.”
Kieran Devers looked at the two bodies in the parlor.
The priest had untangled the two from their deathly embrace, and laid them out upon the floor.
Molly’s blue bodice was darkly stained with her blood.
Maeve’s wound, being in the back of her head, was not visible to her half-brother. “Where is Aine?” he asked the priest.
“Where William Devers left her,” came the reply. “Biddy covered her before she left.”
Without another word Kieran Devers climbed the staircase of the house, and entered the chamber where Aine Fitzgerald lay dead.
Below they could hear of a sudden, the sobs of grief that wracked him.
All knew that next to Colleen, Aine had been Kieran’s favorite sister.
Then they heard his footsteps descending the staircase, and he reentered the room, the young girl wrapped in the coverlet Biddy had thrown over her, cradled in his strong arms. “Willy must pay a price for this,” Kieran Devers said quietly.
“God will judge him, and God alone,” Cullen Butler said. “You have a wife now, laddie, and a bright future. Do not allow yourself to be trapped here in the past that is Ireland, Kieran Devers. Do not endanger your immortal soul for the sake of a moment’s vengeance.”
“You can ask me that even while looking upon the body of this innocent lass?” Kieran said brokenly. “He violated her. His own half-sister. She was barely out of her childhood, and as pure as a spring day. And then he murdered her. How can I forgive him any of it?”
“You must for the sake of your own soul,” the priest counseled.
“Aine, Maeve, and Mistress Fitzgerald are safe now in God’s kingdom, for surely the manner of their deaths spared them the trial of Purgatory.
Your half-brother has blackened his soul, and will answer for it, I promise you, Kieran Devers.
Do not darken your own soul by preempting God’s authority over us all. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”
“Let us bury them,” Kieran said, still holding Aine.
“Commandeer a cart,” the duke said to one of his men, and when the cart was drawn up outside the house the bodies were carefully laid out in it for transport to their burial site.
“Give me but a moment,” Kieran said, going back into the house.
When he had emerged again they went on their way, moving back through Lisnaskea so the duke might ascertain the surviving Catholics had been freed, and were safely gone.
They were, and the duke’s men joined the funeral train.
The Protestants of Lisnaskea lined the village’s only street watching them go.
Some were stony-faced, and grim, but a few wept.
One fresh-faced young lad ran to the cart to look in, and seeing the women he said but one word, “Aine.” Then he dashed away.
James Leslie stopped the procession, and looking sternly on the people there said with a sweep of his hand, “This is what your hate, and your intolerance hae brought you. I hope you can live wi it.” Then he signaled his men and the cart to move on again.
Behind them Molly Fitzgerald’s brick house was completely engulfed in flames, for Kieran had set it afire, determined that those who had killed her would not have her house or her possessions.