Chapter Ten.

Three days.

The thought was a nail driven into the base of his skull. Halligan had finished his supper, what he was going to eat of it, and now lay back against the clammy stone wall. He closed his eyes because he couldn't stand watching Daley eat. He tried not to think, tried to let his mind become an empty expanse: a field left fallow, a high, snow-covered mountain valley, those long stretches of endless gray ocean he had come across. A blank nothingness upon which his thoughts could find no purchase. He wasn't interested in playing cards or chatting with Daley. Nor could he read the books Mr. Blake had kindly brought him. He no longer took an interest in the pale lives of those imaginary people. His mind wandered, roamed freely about, yet somehow always, always, gravitated back to the solitary fact that governed his existence.

Three days. Three days was all that was left to him on this earth.

He tried certain tricks he'd picked up from his time in prison back in Ireland, to fool himself, to lead his mind astray. He added sums in his head, or he tried to remember the names of the constellations that Brother Padraig had taught him: Gemini, Orion, the Seven Sisters, Leo, that group of stars low in the sky over Ballinskelligs Bay, in the shape of a mule's head. Or he'd try to recall a song he'd heard in some pub or back-of-beyond shebeen.

Well it's all for me grog, me jolly jolly grog, It's all for me beer and tobacco. For I spent all me tin on the lassies drinking gin, For across the western ocean I must wander.

Sometimes he would pretend that he was digging turf, settling into the pure, mindless rhythm of it--kicking the slean with the heel of his shoe, driving it down, bending, lifting, tossing a clod onto the cart. Over and over, the image so vivid he could almost feel the sweat beginning between his shoulder blades, could smell the strong, sweet odor of the earth's dark flesh giving up its secrets. For a little while anyway, he was transported thousands of miles away, to some hilltop overlooking the sea, a man whose life unfurled expansively, thoughtlessly before him like a cooling summer breeze. But then Daley would ask him something or Dowd would come by with his keys jangling at his hip, and he'd find himself right back in the cell.

Three days, the thought would come again, slicing into him, making him flinch. Three days.

He could hear Daley chewing now, his jaws working, his lips smacking. The mechanical sound annoyed him, as did most things lately. Since the trial they were being treated a little better, given candles and reading and writing materials, as well as a bit more food, enough so their bellies didn't growl throughout the night. Enough, Halligan knew, so it would look to all, as they stood upon the gallows, that they'd been well treated, better in fact than they deserved. Daley accepted this at face value, unquestioningly, no more than would a dog tossed a bone. He ate mindlessly, ravenously shoveling the food in with his fingers and then wiping his plate clean with a piece of bread. He ate with the unmindful eagerness of a laboring man after a long day's work, or as someone recently sick, determinedly hoping to regain his health by forcing food upon a reluctant body. Halligan wanted to say to him, You're going to die, you bloody egit. Eat all the bloody food in all the bloody world and you're still going to be dead in three days' time. He himself had lost his appetite. He ate only out of habit, out of some dumb animal need for routine, to quiet his belly's incessant demands. He thought it remarkable that his flesh continued stubbornly toward a future his mind already knew had ceased to exist: like a headless chicken still running furiously about, almost as if it might still avoid its fate if it ran fast enough. Yet ponder it as he would, even he couldn't quite get his thoughts around the notion of death. It was too large, too murky and cumbersome a thing.

"Are ye gonna eat the rest o' that?" Daley asked, indicating the trencher of food that lay hardly touched on Halligan's bunk.

Halligan opened his eyes, looked across at him. "You're welcome to it," he said.

Daley eagerly picked up the wooden plate and started to shovel the food into his mouth.

The early June evening was mild, leaving a sticky warmth on the skin. Through the small window of their cell drifted soft night sounds, the whir of crickets and the lowing of a cow in a pasture somewhere, the plaintive who-who-who of an owl. In the distance, the squeal and laughter of children at play. Also came the teasing odor of late spring wafting into the cell, bringing with it the fact of a world coming slowly, vibrantly to life: the richness of newly plowed fields, the fragrant sweetness of trees leafing out, of flowers, forsythia and honeysuckle and something that made him think of bog cotton, the rank odor of the barn next door carrying the pungent tang of manure and hay and horseflesh. Despite his best efforts to make his mind go blank, the world seemed to conspire against him. It was as if it wanted to remind him of all he would leave behind, to tease him with his loss in having so soon to bid it farewell.

During the past few days, he'd felt a growing anger in his belly, a hot, sour rancor welling up in him like a fever. The generalized frustration and bitterness he had felt since their imprisonment had altered, transformed itself into something black and terrible, something hard and localized as a tumor knotting his gut. He was an innocent man. He was going to die, and he'd not deserved it. He'd done nothing. Nothing at all. Do ye hear me, he wanted to scream. Ya bloody bastards! Do ye hear me. I'm innocent! If he had to die, he'd at least like it to have been for something. A reason. Some logic or justification to it. If he'd been caught by the British back in '98, and hanged with the other rebels on Wexford Bridge, that would have been understandable. Neither just nor fair certainly, but understandable. Or if Mr. Maguire had found him one night in the stables with his daughter and had shot him dead on the spot, there would have been cause. Or even, say, if they had murdered Marcus Lyon, while he wouldn't have liked his fate, at least he would have understood its necessity. But this? This was a bloody joke. Even now, this close to the end, his mind rebelled at the injustice of it. He wanted to strike out, to beat, to bludgeon, to choke the life from someone as his own would soon be choked out of him. But he could not think of anyone or anything to vent his anger upon. Though he tried to direct his hatred at one of the judges, even toward that Mr. Sullivan with his haughty demeanor and his grim hawk eyes staring at them as if they were no better than curs, he knew he didn't really hate them. So that black feeling sat festering inside him, and it ended up turning upon himself, feasting on his own innards.

"Bastards," he'd curse from time to time, slamming his fist into the stone wall until his knuckles were raw and bleeding. "Ya filthy bastards."

"Easy, Jamy boy," Daley would say. "No sense gettin' yerself all worked up. Mr. Blake said not to lose hope, remember."

His mind went back and forth: convinced one moment of the utter certainty of his impending doom, the next just as certain that the appeal, that something would save him yet. Their lawyer had paid them a visit a few weeks before to let them know how the appeal was coming. He brought them food and books and tobacco, even letters from a few loyal Irishmen who sent their thoughts and blessings.

"I still remain hopeful the verdict will be overturned on appeal," he told them, though the look on his face was hardly hopeful. He sat on Daley's bunk, his fat hands nervously rubbing the legs of his brown pantaloons. "It is not over yet, gentlemen."

"If this appeal business comes through, then what, Mr. Blake?" Daley asked.

"They would have to grant us a new trial."

"And we'd have to go through all that again?"

"Yes. But I would have more of an opportunity to prepare a viable defense. And this time we'd win. I am quite certain of it."

"You'd be willing to take on our case again, Mr. Blake?" Halligan asked.

"Why, of course," he said, smiling, his blue eyes animated with genuine fondness. Blake looked over his shoulder to make sure the turnkey was out of earshot. "Do you recall," he said, "1 tried to introduce evidence during the trial that there had been other robberies in the area?"

They both nodded.

"Recently, I came into possession of information regarding the Fuller boy," he said. "It is said that he told certain people before your arrest that he had seen his uncle leading a horse up the mountain."

"His uncle?" said Halligan. "Leading a horse?"

"Indeed," Blake said, nodding. "It was only later that he changed his story and said it was the two of you he'd seen with the horse."

"Jaysus!" exclaimed Daley. "Do ye think it was the lad's uncle done it?"

"It's certainly something worth investigating."

"And that would explain why the little urchin testified against us," said Halligan.

Blake squeezed his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger. "Precisely," he said at last.

"Jesus, Maryland Joseph!" Daley cried.

"Now you mustn't get your hopes too high," Blake added. "It's only a rumor, mind you. Besides, we will need to be granted a new trial to bring forth any such new evidence. While I am reasonably hopeful still, I would caution you to be prepared for the worst."

He told them he would be back as soon as he had some news and left. After he was gone, Daley said, "See, Jamy. What'd I tell you. It ain't over yet. He says we still got a chance."

Halligan shrugged. Though he wanted to believe it, he warned himself not to. If the worst did come to the worst, he wanted to be prepared, just as Blake had said. Don't get your hopes up, boyo, he cautioned himself. That was just setting yourself up for disappointment. No sir. You need to get accustomed to the notion you'll be finding yourself standing up on those gallows with a hemp collar around your neck.

But if he had to die, he thought, why should he go meekly like a lamb to slaughter, as if only confirming that they were right all along about them? Why not go kicking and screaming? Why not make the blaggards pay a price? Show 'em all you had some bullocks, that you weren't just another gutless Irishman led peacefully along to the gibbet, offering to thank them kindly for the pleasure of getting your neck stretched. Over the past few days he had even formed this plan in his mind. It wasn't so much a plan, really, as it was just a picture, a dazzling image that glittered brightly in his head. When the guards came for them, he saw himself rushing one, trying to get hold of a weapon. And then somehow or other, if he could just make it to a horse outside in the street, he'd take off for those hills west of town. He was a pretty fair rider. If he could make the hills, he'd have a fighting chance. He could hide out for a while, and then, traveling by darkness, head up to Canada. Once there, who knows? Maybe he'd head out west. Or sign on with a ship bound for Australia. And if he didn't make it, if he were shot down trying, what would be lost? At least he'd have died like a man, fighting to the last. Not like a bloody chicken getting its neck rung. The notion excited him, distracted him, too. He didn't share any of this with Daley though. Halligan thought the idea wouldn't hold much appeal to him. He was far too gentle a soul for that sort of business, and no doubt he'd try to talk him out of it. And Halligan purposely left it vague in his own mind, perhaps because he sensed that details would only make the idea seem as foolhardy, as reckless and implausible as he sensed it to be in his heart.

Now and then during the past few weeks, he had an odd thought. He wondered about the man they were supposed to have killed. Marcus Lyon. In all the previous months in jail, Halligan had never given him more than a passing consideration. And why should he? It was on account of him, after all, that they were here. In some ways, he was to blame for what had happened. Yet he didn't hate the man. How could he? Halligan now thought it extraordinary that he hadn't contemplated the man before. It seemed that his and their fates were linked in some bizarre way Halligan could only guess at. He traveling one way on the highway, they the other, a strange chance bringing them together near the river on that fateful afternoon. Stranger still, their finding that purse with the money, almost as if he had placed it beside the road for them to come upon. Here, he had seemed to say. Take it. It's yours. Was it just a coincidence? Or was there some dark meaning behind it all? And then he thought about how the dead man was innocent too, just as undeserving of his end. He was about Halligan's own age. A young man with a young man's hopes and dreams. To have it all cut short in an instant. Here he was riding home on a fine horse, his pockets filled with coin. Going to see his family. A girl perhaps. What had it been like for him, Halligan would sometimes find himself pondering. Was it just fear and panic, your heart pounding, the plain, simple instinct to live another moment, just as it had been for Halligan while fighting the British? At night, with the darkness sitting heavily upon his face, Halligan pictured him lying below the cold river water as the last bit of life slipped out of him, bubbles floating to the surface. What had been his final thoughts? Had he recalled his childhood? Some sweet memory. What in this life did he most regret taking leave of? Did he think of that poor woman in the courtroom, his mother? Or had his last thoughts been on some girl he was leaving behind? The touch of her skin. The color of her eyes. Something she had whispered into his ear the last time she'd seen him.

Three days.

On the fifth of June, they would be taken to the gallows west of town, a place called, appropriately, Gallows Hill, and hanged. Afterward their bodies would be cut down and carted off to the slaughterhouse where they would be boiled, their bones tossed away for scavengers. Before all that, they would need to sit in the meetinghouse for several hours and listen to Reverend Williams, who would preach their funeral sermon to them. He himself had told them all this during his visits to them. He would appear in the corridor just outside their cell, dressed in black, Bible in hand. He was tall and gaunt of feature, with a long scrofulous neck, a raw pinkish face, and eyes the oily-black color of stones scorched at the bottom of a campfire. Standing there he would lecture them about the awful danger their souls were in. "Soon you will come before the Almighty," he warned them. "Throw yourself upon His mercy. Renounce your false beliefs while there is still time." Sometimes he would quote something from the Bible. "He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death." It was obvious that he'd hoped to scare them into an acknowledgment of their crime, into understanding the torments that awaited them in hell if they persisted in their obstinancy--an obstinacy not only as regards to their crime but as to their religion as well. "The hour of your fate approaches," he cautioned them. Daley told the man to get out and not come back, that he wanted none of his Protestant gobshite. But each week he would return and try to get them to see the error of their ways.

"Jamy," Daley said to him after the minister left one time. "I want you to do something for me. I want you to write and say we're innocent."

"What are ye talking about?"

"I want you to write and tell them all we didn't kill that feller."

At first he thought he was kidding, but he could see he was dead serious. Halligan snorted with disdain. "They won't believe us."

"I don't care. We niver had the chance in court to tell our side."

"And who's going to read this?"

"You are," Daley said, staring across at him, his normally dull blue-gray eyes sharp as the tines of a pitchfork.

"Me?"

"Aye. You're gonna read it from the gallows."

"From the gallows, am I?"

"If it comes to that. So everybody can hear."

Halligan shook his head. Finally, though he didn't see the point in it, he thought if that's what the bloody fool wanted, then that's what he'd do. He'd write a last statement proclaiming their innocence. It wasn't any skin off his arse.

I pray he'll come," Daley said, mopping up the last of the food with a piece of bread.

"Who? Mr. Blake?" Halligan replied.

"Not him. Father Cheverus." The week before, when Finola Daley had been there to visit, she said she would pay a visit to this Father Cheverus and beg him to come back with her.

"I dunno. It's a long way to travel just for two men."

"He'll come, you watch," Daley said. "It'll be good to talk to someone who doesn't think we're a couple murderin' thieves."

"I suppose," Halligan offered, though he didn't see as it made much difference.

"Finola said she would talk to him." "That doesn't mean he's going to come, Dom. He didn't answer your last letter either."

"She said she'd place this one in his hands. You wrote a fine letter, Jamy boy. If that doesn't convince him, nothin' will."

" 'Twas your letter. I just said what you asked me to," Halligan replied.

"You don't want to see a priest?"

Halligan gave a little shrug.

"What about confession?" Daley asked.

"I'm not much on confession."

"You wouldn't want to go with your sins on your head, would you now?"

"I'll worry about me own sins."

"But what about. . ."

"What about what? Hell? Just where do you think we are now? With all your blasted praying, you're here same as me. And I never prayed a fart's worth."

Lately, Daley had started to get on his nerves. He found most things Daley did irritating in some way or other. His praying. His insistence that he pray, too. The way he slept so soundly and ate as if it mattered somehow. And he would ask all these stupid questions. If Halligan thought they would let them shave. If they would have them walk to the gallows or ride on a cart as he had seen men do back home. If they would place a hood over their heads. If they would hang together or one at a time. On and on. Last night they were playing cards when Daley had asked, "What do ye reckon it'll feel like?"

"What would what feel like?" Halligan replied, though he knew exactly what Daley meant.

"You know ... to hang."

"How the bloody hell would I know?"

"Do you think it'll hurt?"

"Jaysus. What kind of foolish question is that?"

"Well, do you now?"

"I reckon it will. Some anyhow. It would have to. Now are you gonna bid or jabber?"

"I hear your neck breaks and you don't feel much of anything." "Maybe. Maybe not. Nobody's been hanged and come back to tell me."

"I got a fish bone caught in me throat once," Daley said. "Do you think it'll be like that?"

"Ga!" Halligan snapped. "A fishbone! You're talking like a bloody egit now. They're not gonna powder our wigs. They're fixing to hang us."

"I'm just asking is all."

"Well, keep your foolish questions to yourself. You stupid bostoon."

"Who're ye calling a bostoon?" Daley said, scattering his cards as he scrambled to his feet. His large fists were clenched, and he stared down at Halligan, ready for a fight.

"Oh, sit down would you," Halligan told him.

"I'll not take any man's guff, d'ye understand. Not even from you, Jamy."

"Sit down, I tell you."

"You oughtn't to call me that."

"All right, all right. I'm sorry. Now sit down and pick up your cards."

Daley hesitated, still angry and not quite wanting to give it up. After a while though he shook his head and sat back down.

"I'm not an egit," he said.

"So you're not."

"Whose bid is it?"

"Yours."

Sometimes he'd get so mad at Daley he wanted to punch the stupid bastard. He wanted to tell him to just shut his bloody gob. But there were other times when he felt sorry for him. The big lout would lie there staring at the ceiling, his hands locked behind his head, looking so bewildered, so forlorn, like a child lost in a large crowd unable to find its mother. Sometimes he'd say out loud, "What'll she do by herself? Faith, what'll she do?" Or, "The lad'll never remember me." And Halligan would think of his own mother, how he could barely recall what she looked like. Just that image of her in his mind, kneeling beside the pot over the fire.

Daley finished eating. He licked his fingers clean and wiped them on his trousers. He took up the new rosary his family had given him, with its shiny beads and its small silver crucifix, and he knelt on the floor. He closed his eyes and began to pray. An Our Father, ten Hail Marys, and a Glory Be. Then he went on to say the mysteries: the Five Joyful, the Five Sorrowful, and the Five Glorious Mysteries. Vaguely Halligan recalled the Franciscans making the orphans say the rosary, touching the beads, the large one, the three small ones, the five decades. It was in the small room off the vestry, where they learned their letters. They would kneel and say the rosary, mumbling the strange words. The only mystery that he remembered at all, exactly because it seemed so strange, was the one in which Jesus was in the garden, and he broke out in a bloody sweat that ran to the ground. Strange as it was, he could accept the crucifixion and the moving of the rock and even the resurrection, but he'd had trouble swallowing that. As a boy he had tried to imagine it, blood that flowed from the pores like sweat, dripping to the ground. He had asked Brother Padraig about it once. If it was real. Could someone really sweat blood? "Yes, indeed, James," the old man had said, "I've seen it happen with me own eyes once. The man had blood come running right out of him like it was water. Just like Jesus." He always wondered if it was true, or just another one of the stories the brothers told them.

"Come, James," Daley offered, holding out his hand to him. "We'll pray together."

"No, not me."

"It'll be a comfort to you."

"It'll be no comfort to me," he snapped.