Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (71 page)

“Well, Mr. Riordan, that makes you a very silly boy, and as such you’ll have to take the punishment of your actions.” He turned toward the young Scot. “Private Campbell, you’ll bring the prisoner to me in ten minutes. I refuse to have insubordination on this ship.” He walked off with his goose-stepping walk, though Casey fancied there was a joy in the step that he’d not seen before.

The men started buzzing about him right off, excepting Shane who remained silent, dark eyes trained on his feet.

“They can’t do this,” Declan said firmly, as though merely saying it would make it fact.

“There aren’t any rules out here, other than those of their makin’,” Casey said dryly, “it’s up to us how we manage to survive it.”

“Tisn’t yer punishment to take,” Roland said with a pointed look in Shane’s direction. The boy looked completely miserable now. The men would go hard on him, Casey knew, but perhaps not as hard as the Sergeant.

“It’s done, Roland, and that’s an end to it, understood?” Casey’s tone brooked no disagreement and Roland reluctantly nodded. “Now, if yez don’t mind, I’d have a minute alone with Matty.”

The men moved off with much muttering and dark looks in Shane’s direction.

“Don’t let them go too hard on the lad, will ye? I’m not takin’ his punishment in order to have them be worse on him than the soldiers would have been.”

Matty shook his head. “Are ye mad? That bastard’s had it in for you since the day we came on this be-damned ship. They’d have batted the boy round a bit, but that man’s really goin’ to put the boots to you. Don’t take Shane’s punishment for him; he needs the lesson of it.”

Casey shook his head, face impassive. “I’ve been in his shoes, Matty, an’ I remember clear what it felt like to be young an’ afraid in such a manner. It’ll not be a pleasant way to achieve yer manhood. Besides, ye know how the man looks at the boy—they’ll not damage me in that way.”

Matty gave him a hard look and then sighed. “Christ yer a stubborn bastard, I see there’s no swayin’ ye from this. Aren’t ye a wee bit frightened, though, man?”

Casey smiled ruefully, “Be a damned fool if I wasn’t, aye? But not so afraid as I am of what it might do to the boy. I’ll manage,” he conveyed a confidence with his words that he didn’t feel inside.

Matty gave him a speculative look, the stiffening breeze lifting strands of fair, thin hair from his pink scalp. “Yer friggin’ mad, ye know.”

“Aye,” Casey agreed, “so my wife says.”

He hadn’t lied, the thought of pain did not frighten him as it once had. Still there was a certain weakness in his knees that no amount of stern talk was going to shore up. He took a deep breath and braced his shoulders, after all he didn’t have to enjoy it, just get through it. The young Scots soldier was standing in the doorway and gave him a curt nod, though the man’s eyes were filled with a dread sympathy.

“I’ve been beat before, how much worse can it be?”

CASEY STOOD INSIDE THE SMALL ROOM the young Scot had brought him to, the question he’d posed Matty ringing in his head. He swallowed. It was much worse.

A heavy 4x4 post was bolted to the floor, a crossbeam shackled to its top. A leather neck brace was fitted to the post. They were going to flog him. The skin across his back rippled with dread.

Upon a small table to his left lay the whip—five-stranded it was tipped with small lead pellets. Such things had killed men before and were designed to strip a man down to his bones, and more importantly, to break his spirit.

The Sergeant entered just then, as polished and ironed as always. His pale eyes were a-gleam with a light that Casey had only seen twice before in his life. Neither had been happy occasions. This man enjoyed inflicting pain and planned to take a great deal of pleasure out of Casey in the next few minutes.

The Sergeant wore black gloves, which he tested the fit of before laying a loving stroke on the whip handle. It took everything Casey had not to visibly shudder. His insides had turned to liquid as it was.

“Twenty strokes seems fair enough for the possession of explosives. What say you, Mr. Riordan?”

Casey said nothing. He might have to hand over his pride and his dignity for the next little while, but he’d be damned if the man was getting his words. Twenty strokes though—twenty strokes
might
well kill him.

He removed his own shirt; he would not have them touch him until it was unavoidable.

They tied him with rope, arms spread-eagled to their limits, stretching the skin of his back taut. The leather collar was fastened about his neck, to prevent it from being snapped during the flogging. The splintered wood dug into his forehead. Good, it would help to keep him from fainting. He took as deep a breath as his restraints would allow.

It was much worse than he expected. The first blow would have dropped him to his knees had he not been so securely bound to the post. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to take deep breaths between the strokes. For a moment his wife’s face came to mind, but he shoved the vision away. He would not have her here.

His skin didn’t break at once, scarred as it was from past abuses. The pain was instant though, his cells flooding with the panicked memory of knives and acid. He needed to focus his mind elsewhere, needed to bring it to a fine point where the pain could not break him.

He began to sing.

‘I’ll tell you a story of a row in the town,
When the green flag went up and the Crown rag came down,
‘Twas the neatest and sweetest thing you ever saw,
And they played the best games in Erin Go Bragh.’

“What the hell is he doing?” the enraged Sergeant demanded.

“I believe he’s singing sir,” the young Scotsman said.

The whip came down with renewed ferocity. Five. Six. Seven.

‘One of our comrades was down at Ring’s end,
For the honor of Ireland to hold and defend...’

Casey lost the last two lines of the chorus on the ninth and tenth stroke, then picked the song back up on the third verse.

‘Now here’s to Tom Pearce and our comrades who died
Tom Clark, McDunna, McDurmott, McBride...’

“Stop singing, you stubborn bastard!” the Sergeant shrieked. Casey braced himself, knowing the next blow would be the worst.

The tip of the outside pellet came around and tore the skin across the bottom of his ribs, gouging its ounce of flesh out as the whip was snatched back. Passing out would be a mercy at this point. He was singing through gritted teeth now, the words barely more than a forced mumble. The words were a black mist in his head that he fought to hold onto.

On the twelfth stroke he briefly lost consciousness until a soldier with frightened eyes hunkered down and looked up into his face.

“Throw water on his face if he’s fainted,” the sergeant barked out.

“Stop singing,” the soldier hissed urgently, “for Christ’s sake stop singing! You’re goading him.”

“Fuck off,” Casey said with as much force as he could manage. Then with a great gathering of will continued his singing.

‘One brave English captain was ranting that day,
Saying, ‘Give me one hour and I’ll blow you away,”

Thirteen.

But a big Mauser bullet got stuck in his craw,
And he died of lead poisoning in Erin Go Bragh.’

Fourteen.

‘And our children will tell how their forefathers saw,

Fifteen.

He pressed his head hard into the wood on the last line and shouted the last line, blood spraying out with the words from where he’d bit through his tongue on the fourth stroke.

The red blaze of freedom in Erin Go Bragh.’

Sixteen.

The blood was warm where it ran in streams down his back.

Seventeen. Eighteen.

He was going to pass out again. Could feel it approaching and welcomed it.

Nineteen.

Twenty.

“Sir, you have to stop now, you have to.”

He was still conscious, more’s the pity. The soldier who’d spoken undid the leather collar around Casey’s neck and he slumped against the post, head on the crossbeam. Then the boy began working on the ropes. It took a moment before it came loose, giving Casey a small reprieve in which to find his legs, which he couldn’t feel. The last knot came free and he staggered slightly, then caught himself. He would not collapse in front of the bastards.

“We’re taking you to the infirmary,” the guard with the frightened eyes said.

“Keep yer fuckin’ hands off me,” Casey snarled, making a controlled effort to reach the door. His legs were going to bear him about thirty steps at the absolute most and he intended to be back among his own before he let the weakness overtake him. The entire universe had distilled itself to these next few seconds. He would not, he
could
not show how badly they’d hurt him. However, the distance to the door seemed to be growing exponentially with every step he managed. Then he heard the oiled silk voice of the sergeant behind him.

“And that, lads, is how you teach the Irish to come to heel.”

Casey stopped and turned very slowly, very carefully, and met the pale blue eyes of the Sergeant. A great stillness filled the room.

“Englishman,” he said. The other men backed away slightly from the Sergeant, eyes flicking nervously toward the exit door. “Ye’d best grow eyes in the back of yer head, for ye’ll need them to see me coming. And I will come.
Tusa duine fear
.” Then with great precision, he spit at the man’s feet. He saw through his rapidly shrinking vision that he’d sprayed a great quantity of blood on the man’s highly polished boots and creased trousers.

“What did he say—you Campbell—do you know?”

“I believe,” the young Scots soldier replied quietly, “he’s called ye a dead man.”

Casey staggered forward, the door within reach now. He pushed through and from a great distance heard Matty exclaim, “Jesus Mary an’ the Saints, what have they done to ye!?”

Then, with a sense of vague relief, Casey passed out at Declan’s feet.

AND THEN SUDDENLY, as startling as a sharp cry in the midst of a profound stillness, it was night. A night like slate, without reflection or redemption. A black that sat hard upon his shoulders, weighty and consuming.

“I’m lost,” he said, voice hollow and small.

“No yer not,” came the impatient reply, “how can ye be lost inside yer own head? ‘Tisn’t as if ye can fall off the edge of the earth without noticin’. As long as there’s ground beneath yer feet an’ a sky above yer head yer not lost.”

“But it’s so dark, I can’t see the sky nor the ground,” he retorted, feeling some small flicker of annoyance at the voice.

“Ye don’t need to see to know there’s sky an’ earth. When did ye lose trust in every sense but yer eyes? Can ye not feel?”

He was about to say ‘no’, when suddenly he did feel it. Stones, smooth and lucent beneath his feet, his bones curving gently to follow the round, hefted shape of them. A kinship through the soles of his feet, pure and unthinking, to the things of the earth. As a child he’d never worn shoes, couldn’t stand the constriction of them. In the city, of course, he’d had to. But in the summers he’d discarded them in a heap and ignored them until his autumn return to pavement and gray, grassless spaces. He had understood as a child what he had forgotten as a man, that through the soles of one’s feet one could feel a connection to the divine, to rock and dirt and water, to young, greening things only beginning, and to falling, tumbling browning things sliding down into the darkness of ending. That through that bond of feet and earth he had known a wisdom beyond words, a knowing that lay on the far side of the bounds of language. So much he had forgotten, so much blurred in the blind complexities of adult emotion.

He closed his eyes against the suffocating darkness, it was easier to breathe with eyes sealed against night. His feet found stone upon stone—lichen-damped, salt-crusted, moss-furled, and then the scents of boyhood rose all about him, juices released by skin and sole. The smell of dirt, equal parts water and sunshine with an underlying hint of something far darker. How you could almost taste the iridescence of a bumblebee’s gauzed wing, the skitter of a beetle’s feet across dry leaves, the shimmer and flash of a trout in a brown stream.