charity, this is it.” He eyed Simms. “I don’t suppose I could persuade you to help this lad go and find his priest?”
“I’ll not subscribe to this in any way, shape, or form, Lewis. This is wrong.”
“If it’s wrong, it’s on my head, not yours.”
But Simms was having none of it. Shaking his head, he whipped his horse and the wagon rumbled off. This left Lewis with one horse and two people, and the people going in different directions. He would reach the farm much faster if he rode, but that would leave the boy to go on foot, and he had run so far already that he looked about done in. He hooked down his pack and cloak and lifted the boy up into the saddle.
Fortunately he had been idling along, and the horse had not been pushed. “Ride fast, and find the priest,” he said. “I’ll go see to your brother.” The boy’s eyes were wide. This was a generosity he had never expected. “If you can’t find him right away, then you probably won’t find him at all. If that’s the case, then bring my horse back to the house.”
The boy nodded and spurred the horse into a fast trot. He was obviously unused to riding and clutched the reins with one hand and the saddle with the other. Lewis hoped he wouldn’t fall off before he reached his destination.
It was not a prosperous farm he arrived at an hour later. The cabin was tiny, still the log shanty that is the settler’s first house, with no attempt at the improvements that were such visible signs of industry and thrift elsewhere — luck, too, he supposed, if you were fortunate enough to get a piece of land that had deep soil and a plentiful supply of water. Several acres had been fenced around the cabin, though; a promise that this farmer would stick to it.
There was no one outside, twilight having deepened into night and the chores of the day completed. He knocked on the door. A small girl perhaps five or six years old opened it. She took one look at him, screamed, and slammed the door in his face. A moment later the door opened again, and a tired-looking woman wordlessly questioned his presence.
“My name is Thaddeus Lewis,” he said, doffing his hat. “I met your boy on the road and he told me of your trouble. He hasn’t found the priest yet, he’s still looking. I came along to see if I might help.”
“Are you a doctor?” she asked. Though her voice was weary, it betrayed the lilting brogue of western Ireland.
“No, ma’am, I’m afraid I’m not. I’m a Methodist minister, and I know this is irregular and if you want to send me away, then you can — but I can’t bear the thought of a child dying outside the comfort of the Lord. Besides, your boy has my horse.” Her face showed her surprise. “I can’t perform your rites, but at least I can speak to him of God’s mercy. All I’m offering is to do my best to ease his passage, if that be the Lord’s will.”
The woman hesitated, and Lewis thought she was on the verge of closing the door in his face, as had her daughter, but a burly red-haired man came up behind her.
“Methodist? Well, better than Church of England at any rate. He’s going fast, Brigid, I think we should take what we can get.”
The woman opened the door a little wider and Lewis entered the cabin. There were a number of children of various ages sitting wide-eyed at the hand-hewn trestle table, which was the only furniture in the room besides a bed that had been built into the corner. Here lay the boy, and Lewis could see that the father was right: he would not be long in this world. His eyes were sunken and his cheeks flushed, a sheen of sweat covering him — fever, the plague of the colony.
Lewis knelt beside the bed and looked at the parents. “Would it be acceptable to say the Lord’s Prayer?” he asked. The man nodded, and he began the familiar words of comfort, the family joining in here and there in snatches. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want …” The boy’s eyes fluttered as if he were reacting to the words.
“What is the boy’s name?” he asked. His brother had said it, but he’d forgotten.
“Danny. Daniel Patrick, after me father.”
He took the boy’s hand in his own. “The Lord Jesus Christ died for your sins, Danny, and you must trust that a merciful God will welcome you into the Kingdom of Heaven where one day, God be praised, you will again see all those you love. You must believe this, Danny, to know it in your heart of hearts to be true. Your father and mother love you very much, but their love is as nothing compared to God’s. He sees each sparrow fall, and extends his Grace to all.”
There was a bowl of water and a cloth beside the bed, and as he crooned the words again and again to the dying child, he dipped the cloth and wiped his face, his arms, his hands, hoping he could bring a degree of physical comfort as well as spiritual. He lost track of time, and his words became a mantra. He scarcely knew what he was saying, but the boy slowly quieted as he spoke, until at the last, he convulsed. When his body stopped shaking, Lewis ceased the words that had been their company through the long night and listened in vain for a heartbeat.
A wail went up in the cabin, a dreadful keening as the woman realized her son was gone. The other children joined in as Lewis rose, stiff from the hours of kneeling. He was about to turn his attention to the comfort of the living when the door opened, and there stood the lad he had met on the road, the priest behind him.
“It’s not too late,” he said quickly, and the priest rushed past him to hurriedly perform the ritual that sent Catholics on their way out of earth’s troubled moil. Lewis had no idea whether it was too late or not, but he knew that it was important to this family that these rites be completed. He turned and went out the door to see to his tired horse, for once found, the priest had wasted no time in arriving and the horses were panting and sweat-covered. He removed both saddles, and was wiping down the heaving flanks when, to his surprise, the father emerged from the cabin.
“I can’t let you go without thanking you, Preacher,” he said. “I know Danny’s gone, but it’s important to Brigid that the priest is here.”
Lewis nodded.
“We had Methodist neighbours back in Ireland, and we had no trouble with ’em,” the man said. “Still, it’s one thing to try to just live peaceably and another to do what you did. There’s not many that would even try.”
“I’ve lost many children,” Lewis said. “There were none of them that were easy, but this reminds me of the first one. We were alone and no one came by to pray with us. I know how hard that is.”
“Still …” The man stopped and Lewis knew that he was thinking of the old enmity, the intolerance that had been transported whole across the ocean. “Oh, damn,” he said. “Could I at least offer you a drop of something to see you on your way?”
Lewis smiled. “You should know better than that if you had Methodist neighbours. No, I’ll give my horse a rest and then I’ll go. You need to be with your wife now.”
“Thank you,” the man said, and he plodded back to the cabin.
Lewis found some feed in the small barn behind the house and scooped some out for the horses. He gave them some water, then curled up in the sweet-smelling hay. It had been a long day, and an even longer night, and fatigue soon overwhelmed him. But his sleep was fitful and full of strange dreams. He awoke to the sound of the barn door opening. It was the priest.
“Oh, you’ve seen to the horses, then?”
“Yes. They were in quite a sweat.”
The
