"They thought you'd be safer here than going all the way back to the jail," he said, glancing around. His bulbous eyes squinted into the darkness. He sniffed the damp air, his nose crinkling. He removed his snuff box and took some in each nostril.

"How do you think it went, Mr. Blake?" Daley asked.

"They didn't present anything too damaging. They still cannot connect you to the murder. Or the guns. It is merely presumptive evidence." Nonetheless, he shook his head somewhat dejectedly.

"What is it, Mr. Blake?" Daley asked.

"The governor sent word he won't be in attendance after all." He frowned, his blue eyes shadowed with disappointment. "Well, I have some work to do. I will see you shortly."

When he was gone, Daley said, "What'd you think of her?"

"Who?" For a moment he thought Daley had meant Mrs. Lyon.

"Finola."

"Oh. She's a fine-looking woman, Dom," he lied.

"I can't wait to talk to her. And to hold me little fellow. Did you see the size on the lad? I tell you, I hardly recognized him."

Halligan nodded.

Daley stared pensively straight ahead. His big lower jaw hung down and he breathed heavily through his mouth. His eyes seemed to glaze over. He had the odd expression his face sometimes took on when Halligan would read his wife's letters to him, part smile, part wistful longing, part something else.

Halligan finished off the cider and leaned his head back against the damp wall. He closed his eyes. He was tired, so very tired. He thought he would doze for a bit. But the bone smell was strong, seeping up from the floor, surrounding him. It made him sick to his stomach. He tried not to think: not of the woman spitting on him, not of the look the blacksmith had given him, not of the trial, not of the past nor the future. But to let his mind go completely blank, a quiet place, a dark emptiness where nothing could touch him, where he would feel nothing.

For a while he managed to stay there, in that silent darkness by himself. After a time though, a memory came slipping into his mind. It was a hot, scorching summer's day. They were in the trap, he and Bridie, riding into town together. The air shimmered and wavered in the heat, the horse's hooves kicking up small yellow explosions of dust. In the distance the dun-colored hills undulated toward the bay. She had asked him to accompany her. Some errand or other, some excuse to be together. They had been lovers for some time by then--meeting clandestinely at night in the stables, or out in the fields, wherever they could. It was dangerous, he knew, but that was part of the excitement, too. The fear of her father finding out.

Halfway down the mountain road, she pulled up on the reins. She jumped down off the wagon and took him by the hand. She led him through a hedgerow of gorse and across an open meadow toward a stand of pine and willows at the far side.

"Where are we going?" he asked her.

"Trust me," she said, excited as a schoolgirl with a secret. "I want to show you something."

She let go of his hand and, pulling up her skirts, started to run, laughing, taunting him to follow. He didn't know what else to do so he chased after her. A pair of children playing, that's what it felt like. She led him into a dense grove of trees that provided a shelter from the blistering sun. The ground here was cool and damp, soft, covered with ferns and moss. In the center of the grove was an open area, a glade, through which trickled a cool, sparkling mountain stream. There was even a small waterfall at one end where the water made a light gurgling sound. In the middle was a pool no more than a few feet across.

"What is this place?" he asked.

"Where I come to be alone," she said.

Bridie sat on a fallen log and unlaced her soft leather shoes and removed her stockings.

"What're you doing?" Halligan asked. "It's broad daylight, don't you know. Someone might see us."

"No one will see us here." She lifted up her skirts and waded into the stream. She splashed her face with water, laughing sweetly.

"Oh, it's absolutely lovely, James," she said to him. "Come in."

She had changed so much in the short time he'd known her. She'd become a spirited thing, daring and wild, ready for anything. Finally, he took off his boots and walked in, not bothering to roll up his trousers.

"Ga!" he cried, shuddering from the cold water. The stream was frigid, the mud and rocks cool beneath his feet. Small silvery minnows flashed here and there beneath the water like pieces of light. She cupped her hands and splashed him with water.

"Ouch," he cried, pretending it hurt.

"Such a big baby," she kidded.

He looked at her, and she came to him and put her arms around his neck and kissed him several times, lightly, playfully. "Isn't that better?"

"Aye."

She took his hand and led him to the far side of the pool. They sat on the bank for a moment, holding hands, their feet in the water. She kissed him again, slowly this time, her dark eyes staring into his. They fell back onto the cool, soft moss that ran along the stream's edge. He made love to her, slowly, tenderly, as if they had all the time in the world. As if, in fact, the world--his, hers, everything outside this cool shaded grove-- didn't even exist. Only they existed. Afterwards, spent and panting, they lay for a while in each other's arms, looking up at the dappled, sparkling light that fell through the overhanging branches like diamonds. Birds sang in the trees. Her hair smelled of apples. Her eyes shimmered from the water, light and gay, glowing from her now spent passion.

"Remember this," she said, looking at him, her expression turning serious once more. Her lovely eyes took on a distant and mournful aspect.

"This place, you mean?"

"Remember us, Jamy. This moment."

"Aye," he said. "I will."

Chapter Seven.

In the vestry, Cheverus was preparing for Mass. Before putting on his vestments, he knelt and prayed to the Holy Mother. He asked not for the usual things: humility, patience, courage. No, this morning he asked Her merely for sleep. The lack of it had left him exhausted, tentative, irresolute. The previous night he had slept badly yet again, and now fatigue hung heavily on him, making his movements as slow and ponderous as those of someone moving about beneath water. As he prayed, in fact, an image of a man lying beneath cold, fast-moving water sprung into his head. He saw him there, eyes open, staring up through the clear, rippling water, bubbles slipping from his mouth as if he were trying to speak, to tell him something. Though he'd never laid eyes on the man, for some reason he knew who it was: Marcus Lyon.

Sometime before dawn, he had climbed out of bed. He shivered in the chill air of the room, the floorboards like ice beneath his bare feet. He stirred the few live embers in the fireplace, enough to light a taper. Except for the occasional lowing of a cow over on the Common or the rattling of the stage as it rumbled along toward Roxbury, the city was quiet at this hour. He sat at his escritoire. He took out some paper and started several drafts of letters--one to the vicar of Mayenne, Reverend Dumourier, another to his father, a third to Father Matignon. He had hoped that the very act of writing would provoke him into making a decision, that all of his confusion and bewilderment would vanish and the ironclad will of resolve and purpose enter his heart. He would know exactly what it was God had meant for him to do. Dear Reverend Dumourier, he had written. It is with great reluctance that I must tell you I have decided to remain here in America. Or: Dearest Father, Forgive my delay in penning a response to your earnest entreaties. It is a decision that has weighed heavily on my mind and heart, knowing full well as I do the obligation a son is under to his father. So it is with deepest regrets . . . Yet he ended by tossing each attempt into the fireplace, where the paper burst into brilliance, seeming to mock the obscurity of his own muddled brain. His choice had become no clearer to him. So he tried his hand at a letter to Father Matignon. My Dear Friend, In these past ten years I have come to look upon you not merely as a colleague, but with the affection and tenderness of a brother. It therefore pains me all the more to have to tell you . . .

That's when he had heard a knock on his door.

"I saw the light," Father Matignon said in French, poking his wizened head in. "Am I interrupting you, Jean?"

"No, Father. Please, come in," he replied.

Father Matignon sat on the unmade bed. He was dressed in his woolen nightshirt, a quilt Mrs. Lobb had made for him thrown haphazardly over his slumped shoulders. His skinny, naked legs were cadaver-white, except for a patchwork of dark knotted veins along the calves. The old abbe squinted, the look in his chalky gray eyes that of one long at sea, searching the horizon for the prospect of land. He seemed very old and frail suddenly, a man worn down by all the demands of his position. How would the priest ever manage without him, Cheverus wondered, feeling a stab of guilt in his side.

"You could not sleep, Jean?"

Cheverus shook his head.

"Nor I."

On the desk lay the letter he had started to Father Matignon. The elder priest's squinting gaze fell upon it. Though he knew his friend could hardly make out what was written there, Cheverus still turned it face down.

"Have you come to a decision?" Father Matignon asked.

"No. Not yet, Father."

"Be patient. God will reveal it to you in time, my son."

"I am sure He has more important concerns than whether I go or stay," Cheverus said with a cryptic sigh. The abbe waited for him to say more but nothing was forthcoming from his colleague.

Father Matignon smiled benevolently. "Maybe when you return from your trip to Maine. The time away will give you a chance to reflect upon what is right for you."

"Perhaps," he replied with a shrug of his shoulders. Cheverus gazed out the window. He could see a few lights burning along Boston's Neck, a narrow strip of land attaching the city's ponderous head to the mainland. Across the water in Dorcester, he saw the beacon of the lighthouse.

"Father . . ." he said, pausing. "There is so much still to do here. And I would not wish to leave you alone to see it through."

"Tslc," the old man scoffed. "I will manage somehow. You must answer only to your heart, my friend."

He thought of telling his superior of his other reasons for not wanting to go, the bad memories, the fear of returning to the scene of his betrayal. But he only nodded. He crumpled the letter he had begun and tossed it into the fire.

Now, as Cheverus put on his vestments, he thought of what Father Matignon had told him: You must answer only to your heart. But what lay hidden in his heart? What was he himself reluctant to recognize there? Part of him wanted desperately, longingly, to return home, to his family, to his old parish, to the way of life he had once known. Yet was that even a possibility any longer? Hadn't that life passed into memory as certainly, as irrevocably as had the monarchy itself, severed as surely as King Louis's head? Besides, there were plenty of other priests recently returned to France. He wasn't needed there. Not as he was here, where Father Matignon depended on him. But was his own heart truly here, so far from everything he had once known and loved? Would he ever feel at home in this strange land, ministering to these strange people--the Indians, the Irish? The debate in his mind, and all the things it had aroused in him, had made him feel weary and old, his spirit a thing as dry and brittle as parchment.

He tried to think of his sermon--it was from Isaiah. But his mind couldn't concentrate. His thoughts turned again to that image which had haunted him all these years, but especially of late. The garden of the Convent of the Carmes. The garden of the martyrs, as he had come to think of it. He closed his eyes and saw it once again. . . . The white walls of the garden surrounding him, seeming to close in upon him. The air, sickly sweet with the heavy fragrance of flowers and of ripe fruit, hung dense and torpid, shimmering and wavering in the September heat. The sky was a pale blue, diffuse, hazy* The only sound was the distant buzzing of bees, a soft ripple of wind high up in the treetops. But then, far off, he heard the faint rumbling sound, the distant but growing clamor of the mob approaching, the tramping of many angry feet over the cobblestones, coming closer. Closer . . .

"We're almost out of missals, Father," he heard a voice behind him. Startled, he turned to see Mairtin Kelly, an altar boy, standing in the doorway of the vestry. "Sorry for disturbin' you," the boy said.

"It's all right, Mdirtin," Cheverus said. "I'll shall have to see about getting more printed."

"There's not many here today anyway, Father."

"No. I wouldn't expect so. I shall be along shortly."

Yet out of the corner of his eye, he saw the boy remaining in the doorway.

"What is it, Mdirtin?" the priest asked.

"Och. You're busy, Father," the boy said.

"No, I have a moment. What is it?"

M&irtin was twelve, though big for his age, tall and gangly, with the large, callused hands of a man already. Over his black cassock he wore a white surplice, washed so many times it was nearly transparent. His face shone pink from being recently scrubbed, and it now held an expression of mild consternation. M&irtin had been an altar boy since coming to America three years earlier, and his surplice, which his mother had made for him out of an old sheet, now only reached to mid-shin. He worked long days in the ropewalks on Myrtle Street. A couple of evenings a week after work, Mairtin and a few other immigrant boys would come to Holy Cross, where Cheverus conducted informal lessons in the church basement. Back home there had been only the hedge schools for boys like him. Besides their catechism, Cheverus was teaching them to read and write, a little Latin, some history. He had for a decade now been hoping to start a school. To educate them. To bring them out of the darkness of their ignorance.

He was fond of Mairtin, his star pupil. He reminded him a little of himself when he was a boy. There was a gentleness of spirit about him that was unusual in boys his age. He was quiet and serious, eager to learn. He would make something of himself, the priest thought. That is, if the grinding poverty or the drink or the hopelessness of living in a country that hated them as much as had the one they'd left--if all that didn't crush his spirit first. Who knows, in time he might even decide to go into the priesthood. The Church had been here for a decade and a half, and as of yet no child had entered the orders. But M&irtin may have had the calling, he felt. The priest saw it in the way he gazed at the cross, the way he touched the sacred vessels, the way he acted around the two priests. With reverence and awe certainly, but with something Cheverus could only think of as love. A love of God.

The boy hesitated for a moment. "I was just wondering what you think will happen to those two?" he asked.

He didn't have to explain who he meant by "those two." For the past few days, the city had been abuzz with talk about the trial of the two Irishmen out in the west. There were new rumors, gossip, wild reports concerning the fate of the prisoners. One rumor making the rounds said the two had already been lynched without so much as a hearing. Another insisted the trial had been postponed again, something to do with one of the judges taking ill. Catholics were justifiably nervous, unsure what would happen next. Someone had hung a straw figure from the steeple of the Old North Church with a sign saying, irish go home.

"God only knows," the priest replied. "Are you acquainted with either one?"

"Me da knew the elder Daley from back in the old country. Will they hang 'em, do you s'pose?"

"Perhaps. If they're found guilty."

"Me da says they're bound to swing no matter what." "Why does he think that?"

"He says an Irishman's always believed guilty."

Cheverus was going to say something reassuring, but he offered instead only, "I don't know what will happen. We can only pray."

The boy nodded soberly, his eyes not moving from the priest. "How come they hate us, Father?"

"They don't hate you, Mairtin," he said, not a lie so much as merely a frail hope, a belief that might prove true in time.

"I think they do. I thought it would change when we come here but it has not."

"It's that they don't understand you. People fear what they don't understand."

"But I never done 'em any wrong."

"Never did them any wrong," the priest corrected, smiling affectionately. The boy's sober expression didn't change. "It's a very complex question, Mairtin," he said as he picked up his stole, kissed it, and placed it over his neck. He didn't feel up to explaining to the boy the several hundred years of conflict between Catholics and Protestants, or the equally long antipathy for the Irish, things he himself didn't quite understand either. Prejudice as deep as the bone.

But he saw Mairtin waiting earnestly for an answer.

"In my own country, Mairtin, we had a revolution. You heard of the French Revolution, did you not?"

The boy nodded.

"France is almost entirely Catholic. Was anyway. But during the Revolution, Catholic fought Catholic. Some people wanted to banish the Church completely. They wished to send every priest into exile or to kill those that remained. Near the end they hated us all. We were all the same to them."

"Why?" the boy asked, knitting his brows.

"Many thought the Church was corrupt. For the wealthy, against the poor."

"Was it, Father?"

Cheverus sighed. "In some ways perhaps. There were bad priests. Selfish. Some put the Church ahead of the people they were supposed to be serving. Ahead of God, too."

Martin stared at him. He was a handsome boy, with pale, light blue eyes and a certain presence about him. He held his head erect, looked you in the eye. Cheverus could picture him in vestments someday, standing before the altar, his own people sitting there, proud of him.

"They say you're going back there, Father?" the boy said. "To France."

"Where did you hear that?" he asked, surprised that his secret was out. But then again, he should have known. Few secrets remained in a small parish.

The boy opened his mouth to speak but then only shrugged.

"Perhaps, Mairtin."

"Don't you like it here, Father?"

"It's not that. It's . . ." he said, wondering how to explain it. "That was my home. Don't you ever miss home, Mairtin?"

"I suppose. But this is my home now."