“Whoremongers,” Da called the people who collected rent and taxes. “The whoremonger Chichesters.” He gestured toward the people with the carts and said, “They’re coming out here to move beyond Chichester’s greed.” Robert didn’t completely understand all of this, such vague words as “rent” and “taxes,” although he was pleased to hear from his mother that they owned their land and thus paid no rent. What Robert did know was that month after month, more houses suddenly appeared, scattered around the once-empty fields. Strangers arrived with saws and axes and chopped down the trees and soon a house stood where woods once marched toward the Lagan. There was more traffic on the Dublin road now, wagons, horses, carriages, and new faces. Twice more, he saw the black coach, once racing for Dublin with women inside the cabin, their hair rising like frost off pale faces. A few weeks later, the Earl of Warren returned alone. The boy wondered if the Royal African Company had offices in Dublin too and imagined the earl juggling for the women and bowing to their applause.
With the growth of the town and the heavy traffic on the Dublin-to-Belfast road, his father was busier than ever, sometimes working by the light of lanterns into the night. But there was one consolation after Thunder’s arrivaclass="underline" Da could ride now to his appointments beyond their little world, and always returned more quickly. While he worked and traveled, the boy’s mother explained in more detail about what it meant to be a Jew, telling tales of angels passing over houses to save the Hebrews from death, and what the commandments meant (as related by Moses, not the Rev. Robinson), and how much they must struggle against the sin of vanity. Robert still hid his secret from his classmates, the private knowledge of being a Hebrew, and in a small way that kept him apart from them. But for a while, he did have more friends. They often walked through rain and drizzle to the Carson house, sometimes gazing in awe at the work in the forge, sometimes bringing little biscuits for the boy’s mother, all wanting to ride Thunder. Robert’s mother always said that by the rules of the house, nobody else would be allowed to ride Thunder, but then she moved quickly to head off any resentment from the boys.
“Come in now, lads,” she always said, “and have a cup of tea by the fire and a nice little sweet.”
Then, one frigid Saturday morning while the boy’s father was off on Thunder to work on a horse made lame by ill-fitting shoes, Robert and his mother set out on foot for shopping. The rain that January morning was heavy, slanting against them as they walked, driven by a mountain wind. On the streets of Belfast in such foul weather, there were no murmured niceties; on such days, they would quickly make their purchases and hurry home. On this day, which was January 17, 1737, after almost a week of rain, the streets were gluey with mud, rutted by the passage of carriages. Robert and his mother hugged the facades of the buildings. She slipped into the fishmonger’s shop, chatting briefly and pleasantly. Robert wandered outside to the street. Across the mud-jammed street, he saw his friend Tommy Hastings and called to him in the driving rain. Tommy waved, then gestured for Robby to come over, pointing at something in a shop window. Robert started across the street, but the mud sucked at his boots. He looked down, and the mud was above his ankles, gripping him like wet mortar. Tommy shouted words that Robert could not hear. Then he heard a noise coming from his left and saw the black coach charging at him from fifty feet away in a blind, slopping, sucking roar, the horses driven wildly, galloping furiously under the lash, the blurred wheels throwing mud everywhere, spattering windows, sending gray brown lumps of muck into the gray slanting rain.
The boy couldn’t move. He lifted one foot, trying to turn, and then another, and the roar was coming, coming, coming, coming.
Straight at him.
Blindly.
And then the boy’s mother was there, grabbing him by the waist, pivoting at once, jerking him free of the mud, and hurling him to safety.
As the horses smashed her into the mud and the steel-cased wheels rolled over her.
Rebecca Carson did not scream.
Her body simply issued a great whoosh. As if all the air and all the life and her very soul had been abruptly squashed out of her.
It was Robert who screamed.
He screamed and ran to her, pulling himself through the sucking mud, and screamed and fell face forward into the mud and screamed and rose and screamed and felt hands grabbing his arms while he screamed and felt the rain hammering him and his dead mother and he screamed.
When there were no screams left, and no voice, Robert sat splay-legged in the mud, holding his mother’s ruined head, and saw through tears and rain that the black coach was stopped a dozen yards beyond them. The door opened. The Earl of Warren put a tentative foot on the runner below the door, brushing in a distracted way at the rain pelting his black velvet coat. He looked at Robert cradling the broken body of his mother. Then the earl sat back heavily in the coach and closed the door behind him. But the black coach did not move. A murmurous crowd was thickening now, with shopkeepers and Tommy Hastings and other boys and men who looked grim. Patch came slopping through the mud.
“Bloody stupid Irish,” he said. “Running in front of a coach like that.”
Robert stood up, moved around Patch, and dashed to the coach, slipping and floundering. He jerked at a door handle. When it opened, the earl stared at him with concern on his face.
“I’m sorry, lad,” he said in a smooth, sympathetic voice. “I didn’t see what happened, but there’ll be an investigation, and there’ll be some compensation. Of course, I’ll pay for the funeral services and—”
Robert leaped at the earl, punching at him, screaming I’llkillyou, I’llkillyou, I’llkillyou, up on the runner now, reaching in and grabbing at his neck, trying to hurt him, to give him pain, crazy and snarling: “You goddamned slaver, you slaver, you cruel rotten slaver.” All of this in a matter of seconds. And then Patch was pulling the boy off the earl, whirling him, heaving him like a sack of potatoes through the rainy air into the mud. Three rain-soaked redcoats were suddenly there. One slapped Robert’s muddy face, making his ears ring. Another raised his rifle butt as if to batter the boy. Then the earl emerged again and shouted: “Stop, you brainless bugger, it’s his mother.”
The redcoat obeyed. Robert rose from the mud and saw the earl peering down at Rebecca’s body, his face a mixture of fear, pity, and surprise. Robert felt his rage seep out of him like rain-water and he fell into a drawn-up ball beside his mother’s body. Now some of the men came from the side and lifted him, and carried Rebecca out of the mud and laid her in front of the fishmonger’s shop. Robert saw the earl wave with a sneer at Patch, ordering him to get up on the coach. Then he slammed the door and leaned out the open window.
“Take her home,” he said in a vague way to the crowd. “And the boy too.” He paused, then added in a subdued voice: “I’ll take care of everything.”
10.
Behind the closed door of the bedroom, Da washed the Irish mud off the body of his wife. He dried her. He dressed her in her best cashmere gown. Standing outside the door, Robert heard him murmur one sentence: “O my Rebecca, O Rebecca, I will see you soon enough.” Da attached her double-spiraled silver earrings. Then he carried her out of the bedroom and placed her upon a pair of planks stretched across the low stools beside the hearth. In the light of the fire and the lanterns, she seemed to the boy to be sleeping. He and his father stared at her for a long while. Outside, Bran began a low, pained, desolated howling.