Free Captains and The Kings by Taylor Caldwell Page B

years now and thought he had lost the capacity to feel it, but it returned like a blow against his heart, a savage blow which rocked him in his chair and made him grip the sides as if in fear of falling from it. Then when he could he bit down on the terrible pain again and again until it was numbed. Three years, he thought. I have been in this country three years, and I've not been able to put my family in a home of my choosing, but only in an orphanage. How am I to get this famous gold that will protect us? I am trained for nothing but hard work, though I have a neat hand and could be a clerk. But none will give me such work, at better wages, because I am what I am, and what I was born. Is it always to be so? I have looked and I have thought, and there is no light and no hope. He remembered how it had been three years ago when those who were not sick or dying were permitted to enter America through Philadelphia -a very few. Father O'Leary and the Sisters had surrounded the boy and his brother and one of the nuns had carried the baby, and Father O'Leary had declared that the three orphans were in his care, and they had been admitted. But the orphanage in Philadelphia had been overflowing, and so the old priest, in the first stages of dying from deprivation and sadness, had brought the three children to this town on the stagecoach, a long and wretched journey in the midst of winter. Two of the nuns had accompanied him in order to help. Joseph had insisted on paying his own passage out of the fifteen dollars his father had sent his mother, and when they had arrived in Winfield he had but two dollars left, for food had had to be bought at taverns and inns, and milk for the baby. He, himself, had remained at the orphanage while he looked for work. "Stay with us for a year or so, Joseph," Sister Elizabeth had said, "and work for us, and we will teach you. We cannot pay you, for we are very poor and are dependent on charity." But Joseph found his first job in a stable for three dollars a week, one of which he gave to Sister Elizabeth in spite of her protests. He remembered how he had lived, in the stable with the horses, sleeping in a hayloft. When he was fourteen he knew he had to have more money and went to work in the sawmill. He was promised a dollar more a week in May. He looked at the crucifix and at the marvelously detailed and suffering Face. "No," he said again, "You have never helped anyone. How is it possible? You are only a lie." The door opened and he looked at it eagerly, for what he would see was his only comfort and the source of his desperate cold determination. But it was Sister Elizabeth who was entering and he slowly rose to his feet and his face was as neutral and closed as always.

Chapter 5

"Joseph, lad," said the nun and held out her hand to him. It was a hand callused and scored by endless hard work, but warm and strong. His own was cold and flaccid in it, and the nun was aware of the fact. But she smiled her deceptively sweet smile and blinked behind her polished glasses, and her rosy face dimpled and her face was affectionate under her coif and black veil. Though she ate less than anyone in the convent her short body was plump, which was an unending miracle to the young nuns under her care. "Where is Scan, and Regina?" Joseph asked with no replying smile. He stood before the nun in threatening challenge and the old fear returned to him. "Joey, sit down, do, and let me talk with you," said Sister Elizabeth. "Have no fear. The little ones are expecting you and they will be here presently. But I have something important to tell you." "They are sick!" said Joseph in a loud accusatory voice, and his brogue roughened it. "Not at all," said Sister Elizabeth, and no longer smiled. Her face became stern and commanding. "Stand, if you will, and not sit. You are a very stubborn lad, Joey, and I am displeased with you. I thought I would speak with you as I would speak to a sensible man but I am afraid there is little