Land of a Thousand Dreams (2 page)

42  Gifts of the Heart

43  Wonder upon Wonder

Epilogue • A Family Portrait

Sons of an Ancient Glory

A Note from the Author

Other Fine BJ Hoff Books Published by Harvest House Publishers

Great reviews for BJ Hoff's Mountain Song Legacy trilogy…

About the Publisher

A Pronunciation Guide for Proper Names

Build houses and dwell in them; plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters—that you may be increased there, and not diminished. And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace you will have peace…. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts, of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

JEREMIAH 29:5-7, 11 (
NKJV
)

PROLOGUE

The Hanging of Brian Kavanagh

Well, they fought for poor Old Ireland,
And full bitter was their fate;
(Oh! what glorious pride and sorrow
Fill, the name of Ninety-Eight!)

JOHN KEEGAN CASEY (1846-1870)

Castlebar, Western Ireland
October 1798

I
t seems the day of Brian's hanging should be dark and stormy, not a day such as this,” said Peggy Kavanagh.

The doomed man's wife lifted a trembling hand to her lips. Heavy with child, her skin ashen, she looked acutely uncomfortable and somewhat ill. Her stricken gaze was riveted to a paper—one of many—nailed up outside the courthouse.

Dan Kavanagh glanced down at his brother's wife, then up at the fair Mayo sky overhead. He took Peg's meaning well enough. This golden harvest day, clear and sweet-scented and deceptively calm, did not seem a fit day for a hanging.

The sky should be black with thunderheads. A raging gale would be far more suitable than the soft and clinging mellow autumn breeze. No man should meet the hangman on a honeyed day like this. Certainly not a man like Brian Kavanagh.

Again he stole a glance at his sister-in-law. “'Tis not right, your being here, Peg,” he muttered. “What sort of woman watches her husband die so?”

Immediately he regretted the gruffness of his tone. He had not thought to chastise, only to protect.

“The kind of woman who would be faithful to her vows.” Peg's voice was as brittle as dead leaves. “Faithful unto death.”

Her chin jutted up, and Dan saw a glistening of tears in her eyes. “Brian might be the great fool for what he did, but I'll not be abandoning him at the end. He is still my husband, and father to my sons.” She paused, shooting Dan an accusing look. “And who should understand that better than the man's own brother?”

Chastened, Dan shoved his hands deep down in his pockets and stared at the dusty street. “Sure, I do understand, Peg. I only meant to spare you a measure of the grief.”

“Don't I know that?” Peg softened her tone. “But this is a grief not meant to be spared, Dan. 'Tis for me to feel the very depths of Brian's pain this day, I'm thinking. Perhaps it's all that will bind us together at the end, don't you see?”

Dan nodded, his own heart bowed beneath a heavy sorrow. Brian had been the hero of his life, ever since he was old enough to speak his brother's name. Wasn't it Brian who had taught him to sit a horse before he'd even learned his letters? 'Twas Brian who had first showed him how to plow a field, to fell a tree, build a wagon. He had even attempted to teach him the mystery of the Kavanagh harp, though to no avail; his own big knobby fingers had ever been too clumsy for all else save working the land.

Dan's stomach knotted at the thought of the harp. He had grown used to falling asleep in the back room of his brother's cabin, listening to the harp scatter its golden tones over the floor like singing shells. Now the harp would be silenced, Brian's music only an echo in the memory of his family and friends.

Beside him, Peg stirred and moved closer to the courthouse wall. Reluctantly, Dan followed her. This side of the building was checkered with numerous pieces of foolscap on which were printed the names of those recently hanged, or those about to be.

It had rained during the night, washing away some of the names, smudging others. But his brother's name could still be clearly read:

BRIAN KAVANAGH. Tenant farmer. Rebelled against the Crown, fought with the French. Guilty of treason. Death by hanging.

Was this his brother, then? Brian, with the rolling laugh and the sunburned face and the freckled hands? Brian, who was known to dance to the fiddle until sunrise, then go directly to the fields without so much as stopping for a bite in between? Was this dangerous wild rebel the same tenderhearted man who brought his wife bouquets of wildflowers and carved wee animals out of tree stumps for his children?

“I pray it does not rain for days,” murmured Peg beside him.

Jarred out of his thoughts, Dan stared at her. “Why would you say such a thing, Peg?”

“I would not have his name washed away like the others,” she answered dully. “I would have it read and remembered by all those who turned and ran when it counted most.”

Dan's throat tightened. “Do you blame me, then, Peg,” he asked, clenching his calloused hands at his sides, “for not fighting alongside Brian?”

At last she dragged her eyes away from the foolscap to meet Dan's miserable gaze. “Ah, no, Dan,” she said softly. “Not at all. Haven't we always understood the killing way was not in you? Brian himself said it would wither your very soul to lift a pike against another man—even a soldier. No,” she repeated, turning back to the courthouse wall, “my bitterness is toward those who made their great boasts and then scattered like scared chickens when the bullets began to fly!” Her mouth pulled down. “Fools such as Feary MacNulty and Michan O'Dowd, who accepted the Frenchmen's weapons and pledged to use them to free Ireland. 'Tis said they nearly blew each other's toes off in their frenzy to drop their guns and run.”

“They are but simple plowboys, Peg. What do they know of battles and dying? Don't be too hard on them.”

She swung around to face him. “Had they and the other blathering cowards not deserted their own men, our Brian might not be about to swing!”

Dan shook his head, knowing there would be no reasoning with her this day. Nor could he argue the truth of her words. But what had they expected, after all? The outcome of this latest failed rising could have been predicted by all but the most dull-witted.

Somebody—a man named Tone, they said—had worked to convince the French that a united Ireland was ready to rise and throw off its shackles, that thousands of strong-bodied men were eager for muskets to set the land free from England's tyranny. So the French had sent their soldiers to aid and abet. But instead of the full-fledged army they'd been led to expect, they had found only straggling bands of untrained peasants who had never held a weapon more deadly than a blackthorn stick.

Many, like Brian, had fought with a fury right to the end, when they were finally captured or slaughtered. Others, fearing for their lives or the punishment that would fall to their families, had fled the battle for the shelter of the hills.

It was but one more vain attempt to turn farm boys into warriors. There had been other endeavors in the past—visionary plots by well-intentioned patriots and ludicrous schemes by dark-souled pirates. All proved futile. For Ireland was no country of gentleman soldiers, but rather a land of poor, uneducated farmers. Its true gentry had been destroyed by England's greedy colonization, its scholars and professional men mostly scattered and persecuted. The nation's military force consisted of farm boys with borrowed muskets and homemade pikes, homeless poets, and frieze-clad fishermen.

Yet every few decades a rebellion would erupt to further deplete the already weakened peasantry. Just so with this latest. Both the rumors and promises had proven false, and Ireland was once again defeated. Brian was but one of the unfortunates to be captured by the scarlet-coated scorpions, and today his hasty sentence would be accomplished.