"You don't want to die like this, James."

"Like what?"

"Without God. Full of sin."

"He's been of little help to me so far. Or to you, for that matter. Every man dies alone anyways."

"Och! You don't believe that."

"But I do."

Daley shook his head. "Then I'll pray for you."

"Suit yourself."

How could he explain to Daley he didn't believe there was some fine, grand place waiting for him after they hit the bottom of that rope? A glorious province of clouds and light, where he'd see his mother again. Where there would be no pain or loss, sickness or hunger or regret. Where everything would be perfect and no one would ever die again. That was just a fairy tale, Halligan knew. There was just six feet of cool, dark earth waiting for him. Huh! Not even that. Not for them. There would be nothing left of them. It would be as if he'd never even been born. He was reminded of a young boy aboard the vessel on which he'd come over. He had died of ship's fever during the crossing. There'd been a small ceremony on deck during a cold gray morn in the middle of the North Atlantic. The dead boy's folks had placed some Irish soil in his pale hand, closed his small fingers around it, wrapped him in a fancy table cloth for a shroud, and dumped him over the side. The mother had been screaming and carrying on, keening wildly like someone possessed. They had to hold her back from jumping over the side and following her boy into the depths. Halligan could still remember watching from the railing as the small white object hit the water, hovered momentarily, and then sunk like an anchor below the surface. After a while, you couldn't tell the spot where he'd gone under, couldn't distinguish it from the vast surrounding gray of the ocean. Gone, he had thought then. Not just dead but vanished. As if the boy had never existed. That would be their fate, too. Not even to have a grave with a marker above it. Then again, maybe that wasn't so bad. To leave without a trace. Your existence wiped clean. Silence and darkness covering you instead of dirt.

He recalled being there in the crowd of spectators for Father Roche's execution, up on Wexford Bridge, along with Bagenal Harvey and John Kelly and the other "traitors" of the failed '98 Rebellion. The British had wanted to make a statement to the other Irish, to keep them from trying such foolishness ever again. For the priest it hadn't been a quick end either. The bloody bastards had seen to that, all right. The poor, brave priest who had fought so gallantly at Ross and Goff's Bridge had strangled slowly, kicking and grimacing and fighting with a mindless ferocity. All dignity, all humanity lost in the struggle to fend off the frightening approach of death. Then, after a last shudder, he stopped fighting finally, and hung limp and wretched as a slaughtered hog dangling in a butcher's window, the shit running down his legs. An old woman cried out, "God bless ye, Father Roche," but he hardly seemed blessed. And Roche had been a man of God, too, as decent and true and honorable a fellow as there was, a priest, but one who wanted only what was just for his fellow Irishmen and had been willing to die for it. Yet for all that, he still seemed to have feared his end, to have fought it tooth and nail. So what would that mean for someone like yourself, James Halligan, a man with more sins on your crown than you'd dare count? A selfish, good-for-nothing fellow who'd never given a thought to anybody but himself. But to hell with all that, he told himself. Truth was, he put little stock in notions of hell or of heaven, or any place after he was finished and done. There was just the silent darkness, and he had never been one afraid of the dark, not even as a boy. He used to like sleeping alone under the stars.

Dowd came by then to pick up the plates.

"Any word from Boston?" Daley asked him. "About our appeal."

"They've told me nothing, lads," Dowd replied.

"No mail today?"

"Sorry. No."

"Did the afternoon stage arrive yet?"

"Yes."

"Me wife was supposed to come today or tomorrow."

Dowd shrugged as Daley slid his plates through the slot in the bars.

Since the trial, Dowd had let Daley's wife in to visit him several times. Accompanied by armed guards which now remained on duty day and night, the turnkey would open the cell door, put the manacles on Daley, and bring him down the corridor to an empty cell. There Daley would spend a few minutes visiting with his wife. He'd return with a couple of pairs of socks she'd knitted for them or a letter from his mother. His eyes would be red and glossy, and he had the look of one who'd been staring too long into a fire. He had asked Halligan to read one of his mother's letters for him. Dear Son, she had said in what turned out to be Finola's hand, I have not been feeling well. Otherwise I would be there to see you. I send my love along with Finola. You mustn't lose hope. I pray day and night to the Holy Mother, asking that she watch over you. God is with you. Remember that his own son, Jesus Christ, died on the cross for our sins, was buried, and rose again. I miss you very muck With deepest affection, Your mother.

"You wouldn't happen to know if there was a priest on the stage?" Daley asked.

"I couldn't say," said Dowd. "There's a lot of new faces in town."

During the past few days they had heard all manner of traffic passing by on the road in front of the jail. Horses and wagons and coaches. Halligan could tell the plodding draft animals, their heavy hooves pounding on the road, from the more dainty prancing of the roans and bays ridden by lone riders or drawing some fancy cabriolet or elegant phaeton. Another thing he would miss would be horses. He had always loved the feel and smell of them, the sturdy muscles of their flanks. Their soft snuffling and snorting. The quiet aloofness of their eyes. He pictured riding one now, riding fast and hard toward those distant hills to the west. "Go on, boy," he could imagine himself saying. "Just a bit more and we're there."

"Mr. Dowd, sir," Daley said, "do you think we might have some more paper and ink? And a candle, too."

Dowd went off and returned shortly. "Here you go."

"Thank you, sir," he said. Then, turning to Halligan, he asked, "Could we practice some more, James?"

Though he hardly felt like it now, Halligan took a seat on Daley's bunk and tried to show his friend how to make words on the page. They'd been practicing for some time. Daley was incredibly clumsy with the pen, clutching it tightly but fearfully, as if it were a spike about to be struck by a sledgehammer. Halligan would hold his hand, trying to guide his gnarled fingers, but his letters came out looking more like the scratchings of chickens in the dirt. Daley didn't care so much about learning to write. He wanted only to compose a single letter--to his son. He'd told Halligan what he wanted to say and Halligan had written it all out, in large, plain letters, and now Daley was simply trying to copy it word for word. So it would be from him, in his own hand. He wanted his son to have a letter he'd written. He wanted him to think he knew how to write, that he wasn't some unlettered bog-trotter from the hills of Connemara. Even so, he was having a great deal of difficulty pulling it off.

"Faith," Daley lamented, throwing down his pen in frustration. Til niver get the hang of the bloody thing."

"You're making your b's like d's," Halligan said patiently. Instead of writing Someday you'll be old enough to read this, Daley had written Someday you'll de olb enough to reab this. "You got them arse-backwards. One faces east and the other west. Looky here now." Halligan had written the following letter that Daley had been trying to copy in his own unsteady hand.

My Dearest Michael, Someday you'll be old enough to read this and to understand what happened tome. I want you to know that your father was neither a murderer nor a thief. I am sorry for having left you and your mother. I know you'll be a good boy and that you'll help her all you can. She'll need you and I have every confidence 1 can count on you. One other thing. Remember that I loved you. Farewell, son.

Always and forever Your Father .

They worked on it until it grew late.

"We'll stop for now," said Halligan. "We're getting there." He felt bad that he'd been cross with Daley earlier. The big lout was annoying, but it had to be hard for him, leaving his family behind. "Do ye really think so, Jamy?" "Aye."

They both lay down on their bunks. It was warm so they lay on top of the blankets. Outside in the night, they could hear far-off noises coming from the center of town, the sort of inarticulate din of a large crowd of people heard from a distance.

"Sounds like they're gettin' ready for a county fair," Daley said.

"It does," replied Halligan.

"Do you suppose it's got to do with us?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

Daley seemed to chew on that for a bit.

"Did you ever go to the Galway Races, Jamy boy?" "No."

"I went there with Finola once."

"I heard it's quite an affair."

" 'Tis. A grand time. I never seen so many people in one place. She liked looking in the vendors' stalls. The lace and pretty ribbons and such. Women like that sort of thing."

"That they do," Halligan said. He recalled once buying a ribbon in Dingletown. He had given it to Bridie. A red ribbon, and it made her dark hair glisten with reddish hues, as if on fire. Though she was wealthy enough to buy a whole store of ribbons, she loved it nonetheless. You'd have thought he'd bought her an Arabian stallion.

"I niver gave Finola much," Daley said. "We hadn't the money."

"She knows that."

"Still, I wisht I had. Now it's too late." Finally, he said, "G'night, James."

"Good night, Dom."

After a few minutes, he could hear Daley snoring, the air reverberating loudly as it passed through his nose. He'd be dead in three days, he thought, and he slept like a child, slept like someone for whom time didn't matter. Halligan had heard it said that a man who slept soundly had a clear conscience. He could feel his own heart beating--dugf-dugf, dugf-dugf--each beat bringing him that much closer to his last.

He tried not to think about what Daley had asked. About what it would feel like, being hanged. But he couldn't help wondering. Would it be quick and painless, a momentary shudder, like a man coming between a woman's legs and then the whole business over and done? Or would it be drawn out and terrible, as it had with Father Roche? Having the life choked out of you, your lungs exploding, your brains on fire. Stop it} he told himself. For Christ's sake. Still, he couldn't rein in his dark musings. He took several deep breaths and exhaled slowly. Trying to calm himself. Like this perhaps, he thought. Your life slipping from you like breath and then . . . gone! Vanished who knows where? He wasn't a believer in souls, at least not in the way the priests had made out. But he did believe there was something inside him, something which made him him, James Halligan, different from anyone else. Whatever that thing was within, the spark which separated the living from the dead, lying here on his bunk, he wondered if it would slip out of him that easily, smooth as a piece of silk, like a magician's trick at a county fair. Leaving him an empty husk. And all this, the familiar body, the hot blood coursing through the veins, that teasing itch down in the loins, these half-formed, swirling thoughts--all this would come to a sudden halt. Would have to, wouldn't it? If death were the end. If life were nothing more than eating and breathing, sleeping and fucking, a jangle of sensations and heat, urges and hungers. Then what? Afterwards? Just silence and darkness?

Once more he was getting way ahead of himself, the way he did when he couldn't sleep, when morbid thoughts seemed to prey on his unguarded mind. He needed to get hold of himself. He needed to be strong. It hadn't come to that yet. Maybe, if they were lucky, it never would. He had to keep up spirits. As long as there was life there was hope, right?

And yet. . . three days.

He had just three days in which to set things straight in his own mind. Three days to prepare himself to walk up those steps and take the plunge that would lead to everlasting darkness. That's what Daley was doing with his letter to his boy, wasn't it? Preparing. Tying up loose ends. What of his own loose ends? Halligan couldn't help thinking of his own child, his and Bridie's, the child he'd never seen. Would never see. He wondered what Bridie had named it, and what she would tell the child? Would she pretend that Halligan had never existed? That her child was that of some other man she would no doubt come to marry? Then, though he realized he had no right whatsoever to feel this way, he felt a great sadness come upon him. That the child he had sired would never know him, would never even know of him. It was like a second death. And yet he certainly deserved it. He'd gotten Bridie with child and then he lied to her and left her waiting on the dock. It was a bloody terrible thing he'd done, he knew, and he could only hope there wasn't a hell.

Chapter Eleven.

The unpleasant couple boarded the stage at a change house just west of Worcester, where the driver had stopped to take on passengers and change horses. The small coach had already been crowded. Three passengers sat on one side: a young sailor in duck pants, a sleepy-eyed farmer who smelled strongly of the barnyard, and an old man wearing small clothes. Across from them were Finola holding her baby and Cheverus with a book open on his lap. Before the couple got on, the five adults had been content to doze or read or look out the window, only occasionally making an attempt at conversation. The old man was hard of hearing, and if anyone said anything, he would cup his hand behind his ear and exclaim, "What say ye?" When the new passengers climbed in, they all had to move over to make room. The sailor got up and, apologizing, squeezed in beside Finola, to permit the couple to sit together. Finola had to shift her handbag to her lap. They were packed shoulder to shoulder, so that when the coach took on a sharp curve in the road, Finola was thrown into the young sailor. She would glance at him and smile apologetically.

The new passengers were a middle-aged couple, smartly dressed, in fact overdressed for such a warm day. Though the air inside the coach was close and stifling, they were attired as if going to the theater. The husband, thin, weasel-faced, wore a topcoat trimmed in velvet and sat with a smug look of one contented with his lot. His wife was a fat, garrulous woman, who wore a satin gown with several lustring petticoats underneath that billowed outward, spilling over the seat. Whenever she spoke, which was often, the loose flesh beneath her jaw jiggled. She fanned herself with a silk Chinese fan and complained about how ungodly hot it was. She started jabbering as soon as she got on and didn't stop--about the outrageous price of European cloth due to the war or how hard it was to get good help these days, or how the driver seemed intent on hitting every pothole along the way. She spoke to no one in particular, least of all her husband, who appeared immune to her ceaseless prattle. It was obvious, too, from the way she kept crinkling her nose and covering her mouth with her cologne-scented handkerchief that she was offended by the odor that emanated from the farmer, who sat dozing unconcernedly next to her. Occasionally, the man's head would loll onto her shoulder, causing the woman to frown.

After a while, her gaze fell quizzically on Cheverus and Finola. "How old is the child?" she inquired.

Cheverus looked up from the book he'd been halfheartedly trying to read, Augustine's Confessions. Though he usually found Augustine deeply inspiring, he had brought the book as much to fend off exactly this sort of unwanted intercourse that travelers encountered during a long coach ride.

"Pardon?" he said.

"Your child," she asked, smiling condescendingly. "How old is he?"

It was the third time during the journey someone had assumed that they were husband and wife, and that the child was theirs. It was a natural enough conclusion. After all, they got on the stage together, and now and then they spoke in quiet, almost intimate, undertones. And, too, Cheverus was dressed in lay clothes. He had acceded to Father Matignon's wishes and arrayed himself like an ordinary traveler-- trousers, a waistcoat over a white linen shirt, a laborer's floppy felt hat. In his trunk, stored with the other passengers' things on the back of the coach, he had packed the things he would need for communion, the cassock and surplice and stole, the pyx containing the hosts he had consecrated back in Boston. For the journey out, he had seen the wisdom in not proclaiming that he was a priest. No sense in asking for trouble. Still, it had reminded him uneasily of his flight to Calais during the Terror, pretending that he was a grain merchant. And he had not realized the implication of traveling with a woman and child dressed as he was, not until the sailor, who had gotten on just west of Boston, had asked the name of their child. Cheverus had replied simply that the child's name was Michael. Then last night, the innkeeper where they'd stayed had tried to put them up in the same room. Cheverus ended up sleeping in the stables, wrapped in an old horse blanket. Yet he had spent most of the night praying, trying to make himself pure and strong for what lay ahead.

He had told Finola that her accent might pose a problem, especially once they reached Northampton. When she said she'd not had any trouble before, he reminded her that "things" might be different now. He avoided the words execution or hanging. People would be coming from all over, and some would tend to be a little suspicious of any Irish showing up there, especially given the rumors abroad of a disturbance planned by the prisoners' countrymen. She had agreed and had spoken little, answering with a nod or a simple "yes" or "no," allowing Cheverus to talk for her as if he were merely an overly protective husband.

He answered for her now. "He is eight months, madam," he said politely, but with a cool tone in his voice that suggested he desired no more in the way of intercourse.

"He favors you, sir," the fat woman said, not taking the hint. "The eyes." He glanced at Finola, who seemed to fight back a smile, her mouth folding in upon itself like a wilted flower. Their private joke. Cheverus looked down at Michael, who had a full head of dark hair like his father's and the same long face, too. But he had his mother's large, startled eyes. The child began to fuss, and Finola jiggled him, humming softly.

"Did you get on in Boston?" the woman asked.

"Yes," he replied.

"Where are you bound?"

He hesitated, considered saying Stockbridge or Pittsfield or Albany, anyplace but where they were headed. Yet they would know soon enough their true destination, so it didn't make sense to lie. Instead he replied only, "Northampton."

"Ah!" she exclaimed. "So you are going to the execution?"

He felt Finola stiffen beside him, her reaction so subtle no one else noticed. However, the child must have felt it, too, for immediately he took to howling, loud belly wails that reverberated throughout the coach. All eyes fell on Finola and her child. The fat woman, momentarily forgetting her question, asked, "Does he have the colic?"

Cheverus said he did.

"Mine all had the colic, too." The woman smiled at the thought. "So you are headed for the execution?"

"No," he said. "We have business there."

"Why, it seems the whole of the commonwealth is going to it," she said excitedly, looking for confirmation to her husband, who was gazing out the window. "Doesn't it, Elias? Elias?"

"What?" he said. "Oh, yes. It should be quite edifying."

Edifying, thought Cheverus. Death was always edifying, especially for those who didn't have to die. In his pocket he carried the letter from Governor Strong authorizing him to visit the prisoners--"to attend to their spiritual needs." Cheverus had paid the visit to Beacon Hill just the day before. The governor had been actually gracious about it. "Please, Reverend Cheverus," he had said, "extend my sympathies to the family." With the closeness of the last election, he was no doubt merely trying to curry favor with Catholics. Every vote counted. Still, unlike Sullivan, he treated Cheverus with at least a gloss of civility. "I hope your ministrations will be of comfort to the condemned," Strong had said to him.

Cheverus's stomach growled from hunger. He'd permitted himself nothing save water since leaving Boston. He felt faint from not having eaten, as well as from the heat and the ceaseless jouncing of the stage. The overpowering stench of manure in the tight space of the coach nauseated him. He could hardly breathe the stale, sour air. Through his shirt, he fingered the outline of his mother's cross, the silver lying coolly against his breastbone. He recalled, with sudden vividness, another coach ride: the trip he had made when he'd left home as a boy to go to the seminary in Paris. He remembered holding her cross, thinking of her words, the prophecy of some extraordinary deed he would perform in God's service. He recalled he had hardly crossed the bridge in Mayenne when his loneliness overtook him, when he already missed her profoundly. Overwhelmed, frightened at the large world that loomed before him, he had started to cry. His father, a kind and gentle man, had tried to comfort the boy, but it was no use. And he had felt then somehow-- though perhaps he was merely transposing what he would only later feel with the news of her death with what he felt then in the coach--that he would never see her again.

Cheverus hoped to turn the conversation away from the subject of the execution, so he made some passing comment about the weather. Across from him, the farmer, who appeared to have been sound asleep, suddenly opened his eyes, hacked some phlegm up, leaned across the old man, and spat it out the coach window. The fat woman next to him recoiled in disgust.

"I'm looking forward to seeing those boys swing," the farmer said flatly.

"As are we all, I'm sure," added the fat woman, from behind her handkerchief.

"The rope is the only thing most of them foreigners understand," the farmer explained. "We got laws here."

"What say ye," the old man said, cupping his hand behind his ear.

"You're quite right, sir," the weasel-faced husband said. "They arrive here expecting to have everything handed to them. And take to thieving if it isn't."

"They don't know the meaning of hard work," his wife concurred.

"Some's worse than others," the farmer explained.

"Spaniards ain't so bad," offered the sailor. He had been sitting quietly, looking out the window. "They work hard and don't cause trouble."

"I wouldn't give you two cents for a Spaniard," countered the farmer.

"I've worked with them," the sailor interjected. "They're good seafaring men."

"Papists," the farmer scoffed.

"How's that now?" asked the old man.

"We're talking about papists," said the farmer in a loud voice. "Catholics."

'!Ahhhsaid the old man, nodding pensively, as if he would say something profound. Instead he just fell silent.

"It has been my experience," the husband said in a hectoring tone, "that those from nations which fall under the sway of Rome do not make satisfactory citizens in a democracy such as ours."

"I wouldn't trust an Irishman," the farmer said.

"You don't mean, sir, those from Ulster," the husband said, taking issue with him. "My own grandparents came from the North."

"I don't mean them. 1 mean your papist Irish."