Free Bold Sons of Erin by Owen Parry, Ralph Peters

now, Major Jones? By your own admission, you have yourself interfered with the sanctity of the grave. Might I not suspect that the government, wishing a pretext to send troops among the Irish, removed Boland’s body and placed a young girl’s corpse in his coffin? To sow confusion and alarm?” That white hair might have been the emblem of the coldness in his soul.“After all, you were the last one to have knowledge of the contents of the coffin. By your own admission, I must repeat. You may have a writ today, but did you have a writ to violate that grave two nights ago?”
    “I had the authority. And you will not—”
    “But what authority? Whose authority? I will not see these people abused, Major Jones. I simply will not have it. I shall protest the matter to the diocese and, if necessary, to Bishop Wood himself. Know-nothingism abounds in the county seat, and in the state capital, as well. Let us not pretend otherwise. I find your commercial interests fond of damning the Irish, even as they exploit their labor. And the government in Washington may welcome them for its war, but will not put fair value on their work. It hardly seems a model of Christian fellowship—isn’t that what Protestants proclaim? Fellowship and brotherly love?”
    Smug he was, and a great surprise to me with his debating-club twists and turns, a smooth fellow in a place that was all roughness. I had known priests in India, where the Irish died in droves from drink and the heat. The most seemed decent fellows, if benighted. They might dissemble sobriety, but they did not lie about murder. And harder they were on a wastrel than was our colonel. I encountered a fierce, brute fellow up in the wilds of New York, whose faith burned in him. He, too, championed his Irish, but in the rough accents of Mayo, not in the fancy-dress speech of the university.
    “Father Wilde, you are an educated man and—”
    “Shall that be held against me? Are you one of those who would prefer that Catholic priests be ignorant and rough, Major Jones? To keep the Irish downtrodden and illiterate?”
    “That is not what I meant to say.”
    “But it is what I think, you see.”
    “Then you would be wrong,” I told him bluntly, although I am most respectful even of Musselman and Hindoo holy fellows. “You are quick of wit, while I am not. But I will see this matter through to the end. And if you will oppose the law,Father Wilde, you will find that the law will oppose you in return. Even your holy office will not shield you.”
    “Ah, a threat! That is unbecoming of you.”
    “No. It is not a threat. Two are dead. And if the deed was done by Patrick Boland, he will be found out. If by another, then I will find him. And nothing will stop me, see.”
    “That does sound rather like the sin of pride. One of the major sins, you know. Even for Protestants.”
    I was deep in frustration and trying to keep my temper, which has not always been the best of friends to me. So bedeviled I was that I had to look away from the fellow. My eyes were not focused, but they happened to point in the direction of a portrait hanging from a bookcase.
    He mistook my gaze.
    “My sister. Lady Caroline Wilde-Dudley. Not much of a resemblance, I’m afraid. Do you smoke?”
    “Smoke I do not. And I will not change the subject.”
    “And you will dig up that grave. I know, I know. All that famous Welsh tenacity . . .” He set to preparing himself a pipe. Then he stopped, the instant he realized his hands were shaking. He looked up at once, eyes asking if I had noticed.
    I looked away, as if I had seen naught.
    He shifted to put his back to me, then returned to filling his pipe. “You must try to understand my position,” he said to the bookcases and, secondarily, to me. “I petitioned to come to a parish of this sort, you know. Irish miners. Their families. I have made it my personal care to assist them, as they accustom themselves to their new homeland.” Of a sudden, he turned back to