The Silver Boat (22 page)

They drove toward Oak Bluffs, past the hospital, and turned onto Peony Lane. It was a dead end, and the last house was a newly painted green Victorian needing some repair work on the porch—broken spandrels, ornate corbels hanging from the beams, a missing ceiling medallion. But the stairs and banisters were new, with a fresh coat of white paint.

“What's this?” Pete asked.

“A sober house,” Andy said.

“You mean like a halfway house?” Pete said.

“Yeah. Got a problem with that? Or would you rather hock something from your family's house, keep up your junkie ways right in your own backyard? You came home for a reason, Pete. I doubt it was for that.”

Pete glared at the house. “Broken-down piece-of-crap place,” he said looking at the broken lacework.

“For broken-down addicts,” Andy said. “You stay here and go to meetings, and you won't have to face your family looking the way you do now.”

“How do you know about this place anyway?” Pete asked.

“I came here when I wasn't much older than you,” Andy said. “Saved my life.”

Together they walked inside. Andy had always liked the way the light seemed so clean in here, washed by the old lead glass windows. A stained-glass fanlight threw pale colors onto the wideboard oak floors.

The current proprietor, Al Venner, came out of his office, grinned, and shook Andy's hand.

“How you doing, Andy?” Al asked.

“Doing fine,” Andy said. “Busy with work, but that's good. Al, I want you to meet someone. Pete Monaghan. He needs a room.”

Al and Pete shook hands, and Al looked him over.

“Do you have insurance, Pete?” Al asked.

“Uh, no. I was on my parents', but that stopped when I left college. And I had some up in Alaska, when I was fishing, but they cut me off when I left the boat.”

“So, how are you going to pay to stay here?” Al asked.

Pete stared at his feet. Andy could almost read his mind: why should he pay for a place he didn't want to be, full of rules he didn't want to follow?

“He'll be working with me,” Andy said. “Half his wages will go directly to you. I know you used to have ‘scholarships,' do you still?”

“Depends on how willing he is.”

“Willing?” Pete asked.

“To admit you're powerless over alcohol and drugs, and that your life has become unmanageable,” Al said in an old-school-AA, boot-camp tone of voice.

“Can't deny that,” Pete said.

“Well, we'll give you a two-week test period. Then reassess. The rules are on that board over there. Break one and you're out. No chance of getting back in. You get breakfast and dinner. Lunch, you're on your own. You have to hit a meeting every day for the first ninety days. And curfew starts forty-five minutes after the last meeting on the island closes.”

“I don't have a car,” Pete said.

“Then you can walk to meetings or get a ride with one of the other guys.”

“And I'll pick you up for work tomorrow morning,” Andy said. “Seven sharp.”

“Okay,” Pete said.

“Just ‘okay'?” Al asked, his stern tone that of the drill sergeant he once had been, before getting addicted to heroin thirty years ago. He'd been an island kid, a few years older than Andy, gotten sober, and ended up running this place, “the Captain's House.”

“No, good,” Pete said. “It's good. I'll be ready.”

D
ar, Rory, and Delia passed through customs at Boston's Logan Airport and got straight into a cab. Dar directed the driver to a building on Rowes Wharf. Before leaving Ireland, she'd called Bart Packard, her family's lawyer in Edgartown, and tried to explain what she thought she had in her possession.

He had listened carefully, growing excited, and suggested she and her sisters stop at Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald, LLC, a Boston law office specializing in land title issues. Bart often worked with Raymond Fitzgerald, and he made arrangements for the meeting, which he would also attend.

Now, stepping out of the cab, Rory paid the driver while Dar held the hard case they'd bought to contain the parchment. A sharp breeze blew off Boston Harbor, and Dar turned to feel it in her face.

“Should we go up to the office?” Delia asked.

“I guess,” Dar said, but she didn't want to lose the feeling of the sea wind, her connection to the ocean and their father.

They entered a gray and white marble lobby, and took the elevator to the top floor. Walking through large glass doors stenciled with
Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald,
they approached an imposing chesthigh curved walnut reception desk. They gave their names, and the young woman said that Mr. Fitzgerald would be right with them.

They took three seats in a sitting area overlooking the city of Boston. Elegant prints in dark frames revealed street scenes in Boston, Dublin, and Cork. One showed St. Colman's Cathedral, causing the sisters to exchange glances.

“So does that print remind you of where you just came from?” asked a man standing behind them—short, white-haired, dressed in an impeccably tailored pinstripe suit, speaking in a familiar Irish brogue. It reminded Dar of Tim McCarthy's.

“It's where our father was baptized,” Dar said, standing to shake his hand. “I'm Dar McCarthy, and these are my sisters, Rory Chase and Delia Monaghan.”

“Raymond Fitzgerald,” he said. “Our mother was from Cork; Cobh is a beautiful place. That cathedral is magnificent. Shall we go into the conference room?”

“Sure,” Dar said.

“Did you bring the document?” Raymond asked. “Your local attorney has told us about it, and we're quite excited at the prospect of examining it.”

“It's right here,” Dar said, patting the hard plastic case.

The sisters followed Raymond down a wide hallway. He led them into a windowless room lit by ambient light diffused through fine marble slabs on an outside wall. Raymond pushed a button, and overhead recessed lighting began to glow with a blue aura.

“We are frequently called on to defend old and rare documents,” he said, showing them in. “Nothing harms old parchment faster than moisture or harsh light. We borrowed the document-examination technology of blue light from friends in the intelligence community, and of light-porous marble from the Beinecke Library at Yale University.

“They have one of the original Gutenberg bibles, as well as an early copy of the Book of Kells,” said a man who looked and sounded just like Raymond.

“This is my twin brother, Jack Fitzgerald,” Raymond said.

“Identical twins,” Delia commented.

“Exactly,” Raymond said. “Our mother said she was blessed twice over.”

“Now, let's see this document,” Jack said.

Raymond opened the plastic case and used forceps to remove what he called “the instrument.” He explained that he was placing it on a non-alkaline blotter, and both he and Jack donned headgear that resembled miners' helmets, but with lamps that gave off the same pale blue light as that from overhead. They examined the document carefully, exchanging murmurs as they worked.

Meanwhile, Dar, Rory, and Delia sat in chairs along the wall, watching.

Jack produced a book from a bookcase, and he and Raymond pored over it, comparing the parchment and the volume. After forty-five minutes, the three sisters felt lulled by the dim light and the brothers' melodic Irish voices, when suddenly Raymond stood up straight.

“Now,” he said, “if you will permit us to lock the document in our safe, and then accompany us to our office, we will explain to you what we have learned.”

Dar looked at Rory and Delia. “Is it okay with you if the document stays here?”

Her sisters nodded.

As she and her sisters watched, Jack entered a combination into a vault in the room's corner. Raymond placed the parchment in a special lacquer tray, slid it into the safe. While Jack relocked it, Raymond handed Dar the plastic container.

The sisters accompanied the lawyers into one of the most spectacular offices they had ever seen. A Waterford crystal chandelier hung from the twelve-foot ceiling, and a wall of windows faced Boston Harbor, the gray-blue outer islands, and the white-capped ocean beyond. Aside from bookcases lining the opposite wall, the only furniture was a partners desk, two matching chairs, and a three-cushion sofa with a long, low table in front.

The brothers sat facing each other at the desk, while Dar, Rory, and Delia sat together on the sofa.

“Now,” Raymond said, “Bart Packard has retained us on your behalf. Therefore, we are your attorneys. We will keep the parchment in our safe as long as need be, meanwhile having it authenticated by colleagues from Harvard and MIT.”

Dar and her sisters exchanged looks. “Thank you,” she said.

“Additionally, we will represent you before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts if it comes to that,” Jack said, “in terms of fighting any onslaught from your buyers and their brokers.”

Dar nodded.

An assistant walked in bearing a tea service and a plate of sugar cookies. She poured tea into Belleek china cups, and served everyone. Jack passed the cookies around, serving himself and Raymond last.

“Nothing like teatime,” Raymond said.

Dar sipped her tea, thinking the Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald experience was both comforting and surreal.

“Having learned definitively of your father's death, it is natural you would find yourselves overcome with grief and sorrow,” Jack said.

All three sisters nodded.

Raymond gazed at them with a glint in his blue eyes. “There is perhaps one ray of sunshine in all of this.”

“Two,” Jack said, “if you count the fact that your father did an extraordinary job of protecting the parchment—it's miraculous that it has survived intact, considering the time it must have spent under seawater.”

“He put a sealed, waterproof compartment into the
Irish Darling
. I guess it worked,” Dar said.

“Beautiful name for a yacht,” Raymond said.

“So, what does all this mean?” Rory asked.

“Let's start with the fact your buyers' title agent and lawyers dug very deep, appropriately so, considering the length of time the land has been in your family. They needed to go back to the beginning, to learn whom your earliest ancestor bought it from, and that turned out to be Bartholemew Gosnold.”

“The original English settler,” Jack added.

“That's amazing,” Rory said.

“However, a discrepancy was discovered. A narrow strip of that Gosnold property had been granted by the British Crown to one of its subjects. The seal that so mystified your broker belonged to King Charles I.”

“That's who Dad always said it came from! But you're saying the land was given to one of the king's subjects—an Englishman?”

“Remember, by the time of Charles I, Ireland had been taken over by the British. So, tragically, even an Irishman was considered a subject of the Crown,” Raymond said.

“This is making the buyers want to back out of the deal,” Delia said. “And sue us for all the expenses they've incurred.”

“Yes, Bart told us. Well, good luck to them, and good riddance. If you want to be done with them, this is the way. Let them believe the title is faulty, which at this point, legally, it is.”

“You mentioned good news,” Rory said.

“Your father must have gone to the county archives to find it, and then used parish records to prove his lineage, in order to receive it,” Jack said. “That is how these claims are traced and made.”

“But what is it?” Rory asked.

“It's a direct land grant,” Raymond said. “From King Charles I to McDonough McCarthy.”

“The man who built the castle in Kanturk!” Delia said.

“Never occupied by a McCarthy,” Raymond said. “Because the English Privy Council thought this Irishman, regardless of the fact he owned the land and had built the castle himself, was above his station, thinking he could live in such a grand place.”

“How do you know all this?” Dar asked.

“McDonough McCarthy is an Irish legend. He brought war against the English for occupying his castle.”

“The parchment . . .”

“We must have it authenticated, but to us it appears to bestow a parcel of land to McDonough McCarthy right here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. On the island of Martha's Vineyard, Dukes County, town of Chilmark.”

“Our father knew,” Dar said.

“I can't believe it's real!” Rory said.

“What if a different ancestor comes forward and tries to make a claim?” Delia asked.

“It would be of no avail. Whichever McCarthy possesses the parchment had to have presented his credentials back in Ireland. Your father may have hired a barrister, or he might have been able to do it through the cardinal, right at St. Colman's. No way of telling. But I assure you this: it wouldn't have been easy.”

“How will it affect what happens going forward?” Dar asked. “We still can't afford the taxes on our land.”

“Not to mention estate inheritance tax,” Raymond reminded them.

“Perhaps you could pay all of it,” Jack said, “if you were to sell a portion of the land, retaining the rest. You might decide to sell the McCarthy section that, according to the title search, is the easternmost section of your family property, marked by four granite posts hidden by brush, and with an easement to the salt pond and beach.”

“Or,” Raymond said, “we could enter the document into the real estate records, certifying a copy, and you could sell the original to a collector or dealer—many of whom we know directly—possibly for more money than you could get for the land itself.”