Chapter Twelve.

As the red-haired soldier and another carried the priest's small, limp body into the jail, the others stood ready with their weapons. Young and inexperienced, they gazed nervously into the night, looking up and down Pleasant Street, unsure whether or not this was some sort of trick to rescue the prisoners. Major-General Mattoon had warned them to be on the alert. Sentries had been placed at all roads entering Northampton. Even the townspeople were apprehensive. Each day brought new rumors. It was said that a band of the prisoners' countrymen had left Boston and was headed west, with plans of storming the jail and freeing the two. Supposedly someone had already spotted a ragtag group of men armed with pitchforks and cudgels camping out in woods on Mount Holyoke, just across the river. They were coming to set free the paddies, many in town believed. So Governor Strong had called up a full company of artillery as well as a detachment of militia to keep order and insure that the hanging proceeded without incident.

The turnkey now stood outside the prisoners' cell, holding a lantern and calling to them. Halligan, shading his eyes from the light, roused himself from sleep. Was it time already, he wondered.

"What is it?" he asked Dowd nervously, his voice catching in his throat.

"They just brought in a man who said he's come to see you."

"To see us? Now?"

"Yes. Calls himself a priest."

"Dom," Halligan called. "Wake up. The priest's here."

Daley climbed stiffly off his bunk and went to the bars. "Mr. Dowd, would his name be Father Cheverus?"

"I don't know. He's out."

"Out? What d'ye mean, out?"

"The soldiers told him to stop but he wouldn't. So they fired."

"Sweet Jesus!" Daley cried. "They didn't hurt him, did they now?"

"No. They fired a warning shot, They said he fell. He might've hit his head. He's got some blood on him."

"But he's not shot, you say?"

"No. I don't think so."

"And he said he was a priest?"

"Yes. Though he's not dressed like a priest. I was going to send someone for the sheriff, but 1 thought you should take a look first. I know you were expecting him."

"Must be Father Cheverus. Where is he?"

Dowd turned and called down the corridor. "Bring him down here, boys."

The guards carried the man along, one holding his arms, the other his legs. Halligan recognized one of the guards. It was the red-haired soldier who'd had words with Daley on the morning of their trial. The man stared at the tall Irishman.

"I told him to stop," the young soldier explained, trying not to sound defensive. "But he ran off. We had orders to stop anyone who looked suspicious."

"That be him?" Dowd asked the prisoners.

Daley looked at the tiny, disheveled figure the soldiers carried. The priest hung limply, as if dead.

"Aye," said Daley. " 'Tis Father Cheverus. He's all right, you say?"

"We told him to stop," the red-haired soldier repeated. "He just fell and hit his head."

"He seems to be breathing just fine," added Dowd.

"What're you going to do with him?" Daley asked.

"I don't know. I suppose I could put him in an empty cell."

"He can have me bed," Daley offered. "I'll sleep on the floor."

So the guards brought the priest into the cell and laid him down on Daley's bunk. He made a low moaning sound but didn't wake up. Under his right eye there was a jagged cut surrounded by an area of abraded flesh. Blood and dirt were caked on the wound, and a small flap of skin hung loose. Halligan looked him over. The wee fellow wasn't even dressed like a priest. And so tiny, frail looking. He had a high forehead, soft doughy features, a small mouth that reminded him of a girl's. And yet his face seemed very old somehow, haggard, careworn. So this is the fellow Daley's been waiting for?

Daley knelt on the floor beside him. "Mr. Dowd, could you get me something to clean him up a bit?"

Dowd went off and returned with a stone pitcher of water and a rag. He left them a taper to see by.

"Call me if you need anything," Dowd said, locking the cell door. He and the guards left, and they were alone with the priest.

"I told you he'd come," Daley said. "Didn't I tell you?"

Daley wet the rag and gently started to clean the wound. The priest moaned again. His lids fluttered, then opened wide. His eyes appeared startled, confused, wild-looking as someone with a fever. He glanced around, the way a man would who was waking in a different world from the one he'd gone to sleep in. And when he started to speak it was only gibberish, though Halligan thought he caught some French here and there.

"Father Cheverus," Daley said, hovering over his face.

The priest stared up at him, his eyes glassy but straining with a kind of fear.

"Are ye all right, Father?"

"I'm a priest," he said, grabbing at the fabric of his shirt over his chest, balling it in his fist, almost as if he had some great pain there. "I'm a priest."

"I know, Father. It's me. Dominic Daley."

"Dominic?" he said, staring fixedly at him.

"Aye, Father. You may not recognize me on account of the beard and all. You baptized Michael. Remember, Father? You baptized me son."

Slowly, the confusion seemed to leach out from his eyes, leaving them a clearer shade of brown, burnished as leather. "I baptized your son," he said, neither question nor statement.

"That you did, Father," Daley said.

Looking around the room, the priest asked, "Where's Finola?"

"Finola? 1 . . . don't know, Father. 1 thought she'd be with you."

The priest frowned, searching his memory. Then he said, "Yes. And the child, Michael."

"Aye. That's his name. Michael. Where are they, Father?" Daley asked, worry clouding his features. "Did they come on the stage with you?"

The priest's gaze fell on Halligan for some reason. Halligan had never seen a priest like this one, so small, and his face like that of a child waking from a nightmare.

"1 . . .".

"Would you care for a drink of water, Father?" Daley got his own tin cup and filled it with water. He lifted the priest's head and put the cup to his lips. The priest drank, gulping the water too fast. He started to cough.

"Easy does it, Father."

The priest looked around again, staring curiously at the walls, the bars of the cell.

"Where am I?" he asked finally.

"You're in the jail in Northampton," Daley explained.

"What happened to me?"

"They said you ran. The soldiers. They carried you here. You got yourself a nasty cut under your eye."

The priest touched the spot, winced.

"My things?" he asked urgently. "Where is my trunk?" He grabbed at his chest again, only this time he reached down into his shirt and pulled out a heavy silver cross. He brought it to his lips and kissed it.

"I couldn't rightly say, Father."

"I'll need my things," he said, almost petulantly.

"Don't you worry now. We'll ask where they put 'em in the morning," Daley said, patting the priest's hand.

"But I must have my things."

The man struggled to get up, his muscles straining, quivering, in his eyes a look of great worry. Yet his eyes fluttered then and rolled back in the sockets, and he collapsed onto the bunk.

Daley placed a hand on his chest and said, "Rest ye now, Father."

The priest stared up at him, still dazed and confused but slowly coming back to himself. He seemed to slump a little, letting the muscles of his shoulders and arms go limp. His eyelids grew heavy, and yet he fought to keep them open.

"Finola, Father. Do ye know where she is?"

But instead of answering, the man said yet again, "I am a priest."

"Yes. Everything's going to be all right now, Father," Daley replied in a soothing voice. "Get you some sleep. We can talk in the morning."

Cheverus looked about to say something, but he'd lost the struggle to keep his eyes open. They closed and he fell fast asleep. Daley lay on the hard stone floor between the bunks, on his back, his hands behind his head. Halligan blew out the candle. The darkness rushed in like water past a broken dam, inundating their senses for a moment. After a while, Halligan could make out the light breathing of the priest while he slept.

"I wonder where she is. And Michael," Daley said.

"I'm sure they'll be here."

"She was supposed to come with him, though."

"Maybe she stayed in town."

"I don't like to think of them all alone. Not with all that sort out and about."

Halligan wanted to reassure his friend that his wife was all right, but he didn't know what to say. So he said only, "She'll be here in the morning."

Daley snorted. "Why do you suppose he's dressed like that?" he asked.

"Who knows?" Halligan replied. "He seems like an odd duck, you ask me."

"He's French," Daley said, as if that explained it. "But he's a good man. He always done right by us. When me little brother got the yellow fever, he come every day. And now he's come all this way so we can make confession."

"So you can," Halligan said.

"It wouldn't hurt you none, Jamy."

"Now why would I be doing that if I don't believe in it?"

"Supposin' you're wrong?"

"Wrong?"

"Aye. Supposin' there is a hell? Then what?"

"Then I guess I'll be going there."

"Och," Daley said, annoyed at the illogic of such a response. "Stubborn as a mule, you are. Make confession why don't you? He come all this way. What do you got to lose? If I'm wrong, there's no harm done."

"You missed your calling. You're worse than that pastor fellow, Williams."

It was all so damned queer, Halligan thought. The whole bloody, stinking mess. First their arrest and then the months in prison, followed by that mockery of a trial, and now this priest showing up the way he did, carried in like a dead man himself. It was like a joke or a bad dream, he couldn't say which. Except for the fact that he'd be dead in less than forty-eight hours, Halligan might even have thought it funny. No sense crying in your pint though, he told himself. This was the way things stood, so you might as well get used to it, boyo. Nobody lived forever. And there was something to be said for knowing the where and when and how of it. In some ways, wasn't that actually better? There'd be no surprises. It wouldn't sneak up on you when you weren't expecting it.

Remember us, Jamy, he thought, recalling her voice when she said it, the way her eyes shimmered in the dappled light of the shaded grove. The cool shock of the water, the feel of her skin against his. How could he have left her? How could he have done what he did?

Can you ever find it in your heart to forgive someone who loved you more than life itself, he thought as he lay there. That's what he would say if he were to write her a letter. Perhaps: I was a foolish man to lose you, love.

H e fell forever, it seemed, fell as if he would never stop falling, as if falling wasn't an action but a state of being, something he had become. In his wildest imaginings, he had never thought hell to be so deep, so bottomless a pit. And yet when he came to rest, or at least when he'd stopped his dizzying plunge, he realized it wasn't hell at all that he found himself in. No. Here there were no flames, no fires, no shrieks of the damned. Everything here was hushed, still, like the dreadful silence that follows in the wake of some deafening noise. In the air hung the overripe smell of fruit and flowers, and of some other sickening odor he could not quite define. A hazy light covered everything like a fine powder. Then he saw them. They looked like birds at first, great black crows, fallen from the sky and scattered on the ground, their wings outspread, broken, covered with blood. Soon, though, he saw they were not crows at all but men. The fallen martyrs. They lay still, unmoving, in awkward, grotesque attitudes. And as he looked on, his heart shrank in terror. He wanted to run and hide. He wanted only to leave this hellish place that smelled of death. And yet he found that he couldn't move, that his limbs were frozen. So he did the only thing he could. He folded his hands and he began to pray.

Then he felt hands on him, lifting him, moving him. So he too was among the dead, he thought, and they were carrying his body with the others to the mass grave. Above him he had a glimpse of the sky, oddly darkened now, with a smattering of stars, the tangled limbs of trees against the night. He looked up and saw what must have been the face of the sansculotte, the one who had killed him. His bearded face shadowed, unrecognizable.

I'm a priest, he told his executioner. I am one of them.

After that everything became dark and silent again, and he was alone. All alone. At first he felt he was in his bed, in the rectory back in Boston. But then he knew he was home again, really and truly home, in his room in Mayenne. He was a small child, once more lying in the dark, afraid. He called out to his mother, "Maman, I am frightened." He waited there in the darkness for a long time, hoping she would come to him. Finally, though he could not see her face, he heard her voice whisper close to his ear, "Je suis la, mon petite chou!} And then another voice, one not his mother's, said in the darkness, "I am here. Be not afraid."

When he woke finally and saw himself surrounded by the stone walls and iron bars, he thought for a moment he was back in the jail in Laval. He recalled the fat guard with the birthmark, the one who asked if he were going to hell. What had happened, he wondered. Where was he?