An Irish Blacksmith by Preston Child

Author:Preston Child [Child, Preston]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783739695570
Publisher: BookRix
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

SOBS.

Emptiness.

Silence.

Duncan closed his eyes to escape the darkness around him, tried to avoid the emptiness inside of him with a silent prayer. He felt his lips moving, performing the words, but no sound came out. He had never expected that his life would end like cattle on a market day.

Time was moving slowly and nothing happened, no movement that showed they were on their way to Van Diemen’s Land. Nothing found its way down to them. Once in a while they could hear someone shouting and heavy steps running over their heads.

Have they already been on their way?

How much time had passed since the soldiers closed the hatch?

Just when he started to hope that they were not leaving the harbor of Londonderry a jerk under their feet made them tumbling and if there had been space they might even have fallen down but so they stayed as they were, chained to each other in absolute darkness.

»Goodbye my beloved country, fare-thee-well!« Someone muttered.

Duncan recognized the voice as the one from the old man. Somehow it made him feel better that he knew the person close to him. It made him wake up from the nightmarish emptiness inside of him.

»What’s your name, lad?« He asked softly. »Are you alright?«

»Craic! I’m fine, at least as fine as we all can be.« the old man answered. »Declan O’Malley, a banned teacher from Dublin!«

»Duncan O’Brady, banned blacksmith from Londonderry.«

»What have you done that they banned you with the rest of us?«

»Mugging my boss, or at least I’ve tried to do it.«

»Another real criminal! May I guess: he was English, wasn’t he?«

»Of course, one of those goddamn bastards, who came to town and overtook our businesses to make us work as slaves for hardly enough money to have a living.«

»It’s all the same, all over our once proud Irish nation.«

»I don’t know. I never got any news from outside the town walls.« Duncan confessed, knowing as a brave fellow countryman he should have been more interested in what was going on around his country. »What you’re charged for, O’Malley?«

»I’m a traitor to the English Crown; nothing more, nothing less. And if they hadn’t needed more lads for the exile, they would have hung me for sure.«

»What have you done, shot the Prince of Wales?«

»Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Young Ireland and how we tried to free our country?«

Duncan said nothing.

»Craic. I’ll tell you if you wanna hear it.«

»Can’t you shut up? We don’t wanna hear your shit!« Someone said angrily.

Duncan tried to locate him, but his eyes couldn’t penetrate the darkness properly.

»Oh lad, shut up. Let them talk if they want to!« Another voice in the darkness, familiar to him, yet unknown.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.