Chapter 9: Hang Me For a Fenian
June 2, 1866
Ridgeway, Ontario
RAT-A-TAT-TAT.
The marching drums beat through the morning as a line of Canadian militia, some clad in provincial green, others in the red coats of the British Empire, surged up Ridgeway Hill.
Colin Mac Giolla Íosa—Colin McGael—eighteen years old, clutched his Springfield rifle. Sweat made the cool metal and good wooden stock slip from his grasp. Unlike his comrades, he hadn’t fought in Union colors during the Civil War. He’d never fought before—save for scraps with other lads back in County Clare, on the immigrant ship New World, in the tenements of New York City, on the farms of Tennessee.
“Bearing up, lad?” asked Finn. A lean, cool veteran of the 17th U.S. Colored Infantry, he’d taken Colin under his wing.
“Aye.”
They stood on the high ground across the crest, concealed in brush and behind trunks, stumps, and logs. The Fenians also wore a motley mix of uniforms—blue and gray castoff Union kit, buckskin hides and coonskin caps. Green ribbons and kerchiefs flashed on arms and necks. Kelly green banners with the gold harp of Eire snapped in the wind.
“Don’t worry,” said Finn, “these Canucks never fought nothin’ but geese.”
“I ain’t scared!” Colin said with a laugh. He’d seen his mother, his father, two sisters, and three brothers laid in the ground on both sides of the Atlantic, sickness and sorrow and starvation done for them all. He had plenty to fight for, plenty to laugh off.
Finn spat a plug of tobacco and shook his head.
Flasks of whiskey passed among the men, along with jokes and curses. A few broke out in song, camp ditties from last year’s war: Just Before the Battle, Mother, and When Johnny Comes Marching Home. Rough, lusty voices filled the morning air.
Their commander, General O’Neill, rode up and down the line on horseback, shouting encouragement and waving his cavalry saber. A Union veteran and a former Captain of Finn’s regiment, he’d led the Fenians across the Niagara and into Canada, maintaining order and discipline, forbidding looting.
Finn said he was a good officer, a good man—that he wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for O’Neill. Colin said that was good enough for him. That and the Kelly Green.
Their talk died down as the enemy appeared, a line of figures moving with purpose through the brush. The rest of the line went quiet too, save for sergeants shouting final commands over the rat-a-tat-tat of the Canadian drums.
All joking dropped off, bravado falling away. This is it, he thought. Those aren’t shovels in their hands—those men have guns too. Here we go.
Four hundred yards.
They held their fire.
Three hundred yards.
Rifle barrels raised.
Two hundred yards.
“Fire!” bellowed O’Neill, dropping his saber. Gunfire cracked out. A few of the Canadians fell. Others dropped to their knees or stood in ranks, shoulder to shoulder, returning fire.
Colin stared in horror. Noise and thunder surrounded him. Everything blurred. Gunsmoke billowed around, choking him. For twenty minutes, he stared as the two lines traded gunfire at midranges, made ineffective by brush and nerves. When the Fenian line fell back, he did too. He still clutched his rifle, the cartridge loaded, the gun unfired.
The Canadians surged up the ridge. Then both sides milled about in confusion, trading random fire and tending to the wounded. Only a handful had fallen on either side. Not a single round came anywhere near Colin.
Green-clad horsemen darted about, panicking the Canadians as the Fenians reformed their skirmish line. O’Neill rallied the men. “C’mon lads, look at ‘em, tripping on their own toes! For Erin!”
“Fix bayonets!” The order came down the line. Colin fastened the socket bayonet to the end of his rifle, joined the ragged line of volunteers. “Charge!”
They ran forward, a cross between a mob and a battle line. Most of the Canadians broke from the field, but some stood their ground.
Colin raced forward, rifle in his arms. A fallen tree loomed ahead and he side-stepped it, getting separated from Finn.
Two Canadians in red militia jackets and stocking-caps stared at him wide-eyed. Neither looked more than eighteen or nineteen.
Colin pointed his rifle at one lad’s chest, remembering his still-loaded gun. He fired.
The boy fell. The other boy swung his rifle like a club. And everything went black.
He awoke in a place dark and cold beneath the earth. Blood clung to his neck, stained his shirt. He felt a gaping wound across his belly, scabs healing over.
I’m dead, he thought, scrambling to his feet. Dead and buried beneath the ground. Mother Mary, is this Hell? But that didn’t make sense. The dark space was too large to be a coffin, larger than a tomb. But there was no smoke and fire, no devil waiting for him. Hell—he’d caught just a glimpse of it on the battlefield. But that was somewhere else. Where was he?
Yellow eyes gleamed in the darkness. A shadowy figure squatted in a shaft of moonlight. “Your war’s over, boy.”
“Who’re you? Where’m I? Wot happened?”
“I am Braden.” The man, dressed in a frock-coat and tricorner hat of an older century, squatted upon a casket, gnawing upon a bone. “And you lad, were too fair a bloom to leave fallen upon the field of battle. Thus, I have plucked you from the flowers of the forest and Hades’ swollen legion to join our exalted nation.
“Wot?”
“I am, in the tongue of your country, a deathless drinker of blood—an abhartach. And now you are too.”
Colin’s story trailed off. “An’ that’s how I come to be Blooded by the first Braden.”
“Wow,” I said. I did the math, one thing I took pride in. Sixteen in 1866, born in 1850 so… “You’re one hundred and sixty-seven years old! That’s old—amazingly old,” I said. “Like an antique.” Way to go, Rowan. Declarer of the obvious.
“I am at that.” Humor creased his strong features.
“You were just eighteen?”
“Aye.”
“You look thirty-something now.”
“I grew tired of looking like a lad. This life wears on you after a while.”
We fell silent. The steel and glass of Portland’s downtown swam beyond the rail of the elevated highway. The airport wasn’t far away, all this modernity strange contrast to his history lesson.
“The remarkable thing is that no other Yanks went into Canada.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it. After the Civil War, the U.S. had hundreds of thousands of young men with military experience and no jobs. Canada lay right over a long, indefensible border. The Brits had been helping the Confederates, buying all that cotton. It’s a miracle the U.S. didn’t take the whole place at that time. Manifest Destiny and all that.”
I considered that for a moment, nodding. “I’ve never been to Canada.”
He laughed. “I’m boring you with my old stories.”
“Not at all. It’s good to know something about you. But that still leaves…” I did the math. “A century and a half unaccounted for. Where were you after?”
“Back and forth, here and there, a bit of the old this-and-that. Spent time in Australia and New Zealand, doing the work of the clans. All around the States and the Empire—the British Empire. Still can’t believe it’s gone. It’s been a dozen lives and a dozen names, a dozen stories. But that’s enough history for today. There’s the airport ahead.”
First class tickets! I took a few pictures on my iPad, eager to send them to mom by email once we arrived and set that all up. Colin said I shouldn’t use social media anymore—it would be a dead giveaway of where we went. He also gave me a brand new phone with a pre-paid sim card, something I should use only in Paris and only for local calls.
The spacious seats let us sprawl out and talk. I knew better than to ask him anymore about his strange and mysterious life, not in public anyway. Not on a plane.
Instead, he asked about my life. Where I’d been and what I’d done. How I’d met Burke, how I got mixed up in something as ‘barmy’ as Concordance Therapy. If I wanted to work real estate all my life—I did not—and what I might do instead—bookkeeping, perhaps.
“Bookkeeping!” he said, shaking his head. “Now, the Rowan Butterfly Sparks I know aspires to something more than bookkeeping. Besides, you can’t do that in Paris unless you know French. What have you always dreamed of doing?”
I ran a finger over the champagne flute, considering. “I don’t know. Nobody’s ever asked me before.”
“Come now, lass. I’m sure your mom has, at least. She sounds like a good sort.”
“Yeah, but I was just a kid. That doesn’t count.”
“Doesn’t it?”
I wrinkled my nose. Mom always had gotten after me to chase my dreams. But I never had any. Dropped out of junior college when I thought I was pregnant and in love with Eric, my first serious boyfriend. The child miscarried, Eric drifted away and I fell into a routine of waitressing. Then real estate and Concordance Therapy. Burke and a sojourn in hell. Where had the years gone? “I don’t know, Colin, I don’t.”
“An art gallery. You’re a painter at heart. I can see it in your eyes.”
I laughed. “I am not unless you like lazy, mismatched paint on apartment walls.”
“That’s what modern art looks likes anyhow. Bit rubbish.” He snapped his fingers. “A hair salon. A beauty parlor. An old bookstore on the Left Bank; a café overlooking the Seine: Butterfly’s American Coffee and Wireless Email Place.”
I laughed again. He was getting good at making me do that. “No, no. Way too complicated for me. I don’t know, maybe I could … run a blog.”
“A blog?”
“Sure! You know what a blog is, right?”
Disgust crinkled his face. It was cute. “Of course I know what a bloody blog is! I just can’t imagine what you’d do with one!”
“You don’t know me as well as you think! Maybe I’d like to review TV shows, all these new series on HBO and Netflix.” I regaled him with the latest season of Game of Thrones. Then there was Supergirl, Silicon Valley, and so many more.
After a while, he held up his hand. “All right, lass. All right. We can do that. Think of a name and web address. Figure out a budget for writers, designers, editors. Uncle Armando will take care of the rest.”
I did think about that generous offer, for the next few hours. I thought about a lot of things, stealing sly glances at him from time to time. I even checked a few URLs on the airplane’s Wi-Fi—though how an airplane hurtling through the sky can connect to the internet is crazy. It must use satellites or something.
A name like ‘Pookie Watches TV’ had possibilities. But me, running a whole blog dedicated to TV shows? Hiring writers, designers, video production people—I’d have to have video people, to make short clips… The ideas started coming, and I filled up my new pre-paid phone with notes. I needed a real laptop. My clumsy fingers can’t take notes on those tiny screens.
Later I ate, we watched several movies, and slept. Or rather, I slept while Colin stared out at the endless carpet of clouds beyond the windows. To someone like me, who’d never flown before, it looked like an alien landscape or a primordial vision of unformed Heaven.
In the morning, wheels screamed on the tarmac as we touched down in the sleeping city.
Paris, France—my new life!