Only The Leaves Whispering

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Only The Leaves Whispering - book excerpt

Chapter One 

He was born in 1849 in Westburn, a tough seaport on the River Clyde on the West Coast of Scotland. Jock MacNeil’s family were Highlanders, Catholics from the island of Barra. When he was thirteen, his mother died, and a few weeks later, in despair, his father, a blacksmith by trade, killed himself.

With both parents dead, Jock MacNeil worried that he’d fall into the care of Irish priests and nuns who ran the local Catholic orphanage. His dislike of God’s Messengers started in primary school when, one Friday afternoon during a period of religious instruction, he’d bungled the answer to the question, “Who made you?” from Sister Mary Ann, a bruiser Irish nun in charge of the class.

Gripped by funk, he lowered his head and said nothing, though the answer rang inside his head: “God made me to know Him and love Him in this world and forever in the next.”

Sister Mary Ann dragged him from his seat to the storage cupboard.

“Yer a wee devil, MacNeil. For yer dumb insolence, ye’ll stay in the dark cupboard until Ah tell ye to come out.”

Jock cried and struggled in Sister Mary Ann’s iron grip, and his right hand hit her face. The Sister slapped him about the ears.

A tear-stained, sullen Jock blinked as he came into the light of the empty classroom. Sister Mary Ann, threatening in her black habit stood by her desk, arms folded, petted lower lip and lantern jaw jutting beyond the tip of her nose.

“Well, MacNeil, are ye ready to say yer sorry for yer bad behaviour?”

Jock said nothing, just turned on his heel and fled the classroom.

“You’ve been cryin’,” his mother said when he came home.

He told her, and later, mentioned to his father what had happened. The parents thought it best to let the incident blow over.

“Ye’ll be fine on Monday,” his father said. “That old bat will have forgotten all about it.”

Sister Mary Ann said nothing on Monday, but the incident was far from over. Sister Mary Ann meant to crush the spirit out of young MacNeil.

Father Seamus Riordan appeared half an hour before the class went for the mid-day meal. The class rose as one and saluted the priest.

“Good morning, Father Riordan.”

The boys sat down, folded their arms and sat up straight. The priest dragged Jock from his seat

“Sister Mary Ann, fetch me the cane.”

“Are ye ready, boy, to say yer sorry to the Good Sister?”

Silence.

“Answer me, boy.”

Silence.

“I know fine well yer not Irish, but that’s no excuse. Yer one of them Scotch Catholics, an insolent brat.”

Father Riordan cuffed Jock, leaving the mark of his hand on his right cheek. He grabbed Jock by the back of the neck and pushed his head down until the boy’s buttocks stuck out. The cane whistled as the priest whipped it against Jock’s arse. Six brutal lashes, a pause, and three more added for good measure.

“Ah’ll be back tomorrow to hear ye tell Sister Mary Ann yer sorry.”

A humiliated Jock skipped afternoon class and limped home.

Jock’s bare arse was crisscrossed by angry red welts and mottled patches of bruised blood. His trousers had protected the flesh from breaking.

“Who did that to ye?” his mother said.

“Father Riordan. He said Ah wis insolent. Ah never said anything when he told me Ah had to say sorry to Sister Mary Ann. Called me a Scotch brat.”

“That man is no Father. He’s a thug. A tinker in a dog collar.”

Mrs MacNeil got her son ready for bed and, with buttocks bared, had him lie on top of the bed. She prepared a mustard paste and flannel patches cut from an old nightdress, and spread the mustard paste with a knife on the flannel patches and laid them on the welts and bruises. His mother fashioned a primitive bandage from an old muslin curtain, firm enough to hold the flannel patches in place, which she wrapped around Jock’s middle,.

The boy didn’t want to go to bed so early in the day, so his mother let him rest on a wooden settle lying on his side.

When Jock’s father came home from the forge, he was furious when he saw what had happened to his son.

“Ah’ll see to that damned priest in the morning,” he threatened.

Jock’s father didn’t have to wait until the next day to deal with Riordan. The family had not long finished the evening meal when a black-coated figure opened the front door and walked into the apartment.

“Ah’m Father Riordan, here to see about that son of yours.”

Jock’s father rose, closed the space between him the priest and whipped off his wide-brimmed hat with the round crown, forcing the brim into the priest’s hand.

“Did ye forget to knock? Have ye no fuckin’ manners? Ye’ll take yer hat off when ye come to this house.”

Riordan scowled, his face contorted by rage. He’d grown used to a deferential, subservient flock.

“Stay where ye are, Riordan. There’s no chair for ye here. Say yer piece.”

Riordan had a well-fed body. He was a sybarite leading a hungry flock. A fat man who worshipped his belly. He shifted his stance, repositioned his blackthorn stick and rested his weight on it, composing himself for a counter-attack. Catching his breath, Riordan had a good look around the room. He pointed the blackthorn at a picture frame hanging on the wall.

“And what might that be?”

Jock’s father gazed at the gold frame, a rectangle measuring two foot by a foot and a half, holding a piece of heavy blue silk, with an eagle and badges embroidered in gold thread. The raptor sat on a narrow plinth, with the name Waterloo embossed on the front, mounted on the regimental name: The Royal Scots Greys. Beneath it, the regimental motto: Nemo Me Impune Lacessit.

“Ah, the Latin. An edicated man are ye, MacNeil?” a smirking Riordan intoned.

“Ma old regiment. Captured an Eagle at Waterloo when they beat the French. Ah acquired ma trade in the Greys. Farrier Sergeant, ten years service. Aye, Riordan. You heed the Latin: ‘Nobody Touches Me With Impunity; Second to None’.”

“How can you, MacNeil, a Catholic, have served in the British Army after what they did in Ireland?”

“That’s fightin’ talk, mister. Yer no up to a scrap. Yer big, but yer a fat man, good for nuthin’ but sittin’ on yer arse and stuffin’ yer face. Ah’m Scots and British. There’s no Irish in me.

Rage got the better of Riordan. He waved the blackthorn and made to smash the shaft on the edge of the kitchen table. Instead, he dashed the point on the floor. Jock’s father got an arm lock on Riordan, and the stick fell from his hand. He prodded the priest in the belly with the blackthorn, edging him out the door of the apartment.

“Get out, and don’t come back here. Ye’ll no see ma son again in yer damned school. Ah’ll be sendin’ him to the Protestant school. Away and take yerself back over the water.”

****

After the deaths of their parents, Jock’s younger brother and sister, too young to attend school, were taken into care. They were made wards of the local Catholic orphanage run by Irish Clergy and Nuns. A kindly Protestant neighbour, a blacksmith, helped Jock stay clear of God’s Messengers. He took him in, keeping Jock at secondary school for a few months and gave him a job in the forge as an apprentice blacksmith and farrier. This man’s goodness was Jock’s sole experience of Christian charity. But, after some months, he knew that these arrangements could not last. Jock took up space in an overcrowded tenement flat; he was a drain on the meagre resources of the blacksmith, his wife, and their four children. So he went to sea.

The blacksmith did the best that he could for Jock. He gave him five shillings from his savings to start the journey and a small, well-thumbed, leather-bound King James Bible. For a time, Jock turned to the Good Book, but the way Christians actually behaved quickly drove him from it.

Some men fail in the struggle with circumstances and other men fight on. Jock MacNeil was a fighter. He went to sea to escape a dire Westburn slum and stay clear of Irish priests and nuns. He wanted no truck with the Messengers of God.

Jock signed on the schooner Jane Brown as galley boy. She carried general cargo between British and Irish ports. He came aboard wearing a Tam O’ Shanter, a shabby, heavy black jacket from his father’s wardrobe. Below the coat he wore an ill-fitting waistcoat too big for him, and a heavy grey flannel shirt. Jock’s legs and feet were protected by black woollen trousers, and second-hand, rugged hobnailed boots. His bundle carried his mother’s good blue linen shawl, a change of clothing and a spare pair of used brogans made on a straight last. The cobbler told him the brogans would take to the shape of his feet. He dreaded wearing them. A plaid in the MacNeil tartan for foul weather at the top of the bundle protected his concertina. Jock’s job was to assist the cook.

Jock’s berth on the Jane Brown was the crew’s glory hole. The sleeping quarters and living area for the crew. A boy among tough men, he refused to be brought down, perhaps by a closet pederast. With a sharp blade in his belt, he kept to himself. Cast adrift from shore, a youth not yet out of childhood, living among hard seafaring men, Jock matured beyond his years.

The cook’s habits disgusted the young Scot. He was a piss-artist and a habitual nose picker, rolling bogies in his fingers and flicking balls of snot about the galley. His fingernails had permanent crescents of dirt; he never washed his hands after visiting the head. When he’d finished cutting meat or preparing fish and potatoes, he’d wipe his hands on his grubby apron.

Jock chose his meals and, when he had the opportunity, cooked for himself

“Whit’s wrang wi’ you?” The cook said. “Don’t like mah cookin’?”

“Ah like mah food clean.”

“Well, fuck you, MacNeil. Yer nuthin’ but a wee shite.”

One day, well in his cups, this disgusting Glaswegian blew his nose into the hem of his apron. Jock left the galley and puked over the windward side of the schooner.

On the second voyage, the schooner, bound for Sligo, heaved and twisted through heavy seas in St George’s Channel. The cook, going through the motions of cleaning up after breakfast and preparing for the mid-day meal, honked over the galley deck and passed out. He was a fat man, and Jock could not move him. He left the galley and ran into the Bosun.

“Skylarking, are we?”

“No, Mr Driscoll. The cook’s sick.”

The Bosun entered the galley.

“For Christ’s sake, he’s fuckin’ drunk an’ he's covered the place in his puke. Ah’ll get him to his bunk to sleep it off. Can you cope here, lad?”

“Ah’ll clean up. Dried peas and boiled mutton at dinner-time. Ah’ll get it ready.”

“Ah’ll send the Steward. Help you with the evening meal.”

The Captain sacked the cook when the ship docked in Sligo. He sent for Jock.

“Ah’m rating you cook. A galley boy is joining the ship tomorrow. His name is Liam Fallon. He’ll assist you. You can ask the Steward for help.”

Jock and the new hand cleaned the galley, scouring and polishing the coppers, pots, cutlery and crockery. They soon pleased the crew, providing clean, wholesome ship’s food, a welcome improvement on salt meats and hard biscuits.

The Captain, a former Royal Navy Master’s Mate, took a greater interest in the workings of the galley. He knew that greens and root vegetables in the diet kept the crew healthy and instructed the young Scot to obtain and serve them two or three times a week. He told Jock to buy cheaper cuts of mutton, pork and beef, to be served once, and infrequently twice a week. Jock and his assistant learned to make soft tack, a relief from hardtack: soft bread served with butter twice a week.

But the Steward, bristling with resentment at Jock’s promotion, stayed drunker than usual and gave no assistance to the galley.

Jock knew about looking after sick and injured horses. He’d been well-taught by his father, a blacksmith. The Steward, a dedicated toper, was often too drunk to deal with sick or hurt crewmen. The Captain cut the Steward’s wages. He had Jock treat sick and injured crew, and increased his pay. Poisonous rage and a desire for revenge at the loss of face consumed the Steward.

The young men kept contact with him to the minimum required for the good of the ship.

The Steward craved revenge and could not wait until his temper cooled. He decided to mark Liam Fallon first, a sweet enough youth. He’d humiliate the lad and, with luck, ruin him.

The Steward waited until first light and watched Jock leave the galley.

Jock had left Liam preparing thick barley and mutton broth for the mid-day meal. He went for’ard to the hutch set in a few square feet of space, where the Captain and the mate kept a brood of eight hens and a rooster. Jock’s hand explored among the straw, feathers and clucking birds until he found half a dozen eggs, placing them in a clean dish towel for safe passage to the galley. The Captain and the mate liked fried eggs and bacon for breakfast.

The locked door surprised Jock. He unlocked the door and entered the galley to find the Steward pinning the young Irish boy face-down on the chopping block with his right arm. The Steward held his erect member in his left hand, forcing it into Liam Fallon’s backside.

“Be still, ya wee cunt. Ye’ll love it when Ah get it up ye. Ye’ll be wantin’ it a’ the time.”

The Steward, determined to sink his dick, did not hear Jock enter. He laid the eggs safe by the coal-fired range, withdrew the sharp blade from his belt and slashed the Steward across both cheeks of his bare arse. The Steward screamed and staggered back, clutching his cut backside with both hands. He turned on Jock and screamed louder, and louder still, a tortured wailing, when he saw his fingers and hands sticky with blood. The Steward’s swollen member shrank back into its foreskin.

Liam, sobbing, collapsed on the galley deck.

“Yer a fuckin’ Papish bastard, MacNeil,” the Steward screamed. “Ah’ll get ye! Some night Ah’ll come fur ye. Ye’ll be sorry ye ever met me.”

Jock brained him with a rolling pin, and the Steward fell unconscious on the galley deck.

The Bosun, alerted by the commotion, burst through the galley door.

“Whit the fuck is goin’ on here?” He glanced around the galley. “Ah see whit’s happened. The fuckin’ Steward is at it again.”

The Bosun picked up Liam.

“Are ye all right, son? Did he get tae ye?”

“No. Jock stopped him. Thanks be to God, and Saint Patrick.”

“Jock, look after the lad. Ah’ll take care of this twat. Mind now, the skipper, the mate and the crew’ll be wantin’ breakfast. Ah’m hungry masel’.”

Word spread among the men. The crew had a new respect for Jock, and they were embarrassed and worried for the young Irish boy in the galley. They liked the improved feeding and saw that Jock MacNeil would help a shipmate and could look after himself.

“Everything all right, Jock?” the sailmaker said, the day after the incident.

“We’re fine thanks, Mr Fleming. Is the Steward in irons? Ah’ve no’ set eyes on him.”

“Ah heard there was an accident. The Steward fell overboard. The Bosun might have gi’ed him a wee nudge.”

“My God!” Jock said.

Fleming reckoned Jock and his Irish assistant needed something to take their minds off the Steward’s capers.

“Tell ye what, Jock. Tomorrow in the afternoon. Come and see me. Bring the Irish lad. Ah’ll teach yez tae make and mend. Add wee touches. Keep yer kit smart and in good repair.”

The sailmaker, an old RN hand, taught the boys the rudiments of sewing damaged seams and torn clothing, replacing lost buttons, darning and washing clothes in saltwater.

“Rinse yer clothes in rainwater if ye get the chance, or freshwater when the ship’s in port,” Fleming said. “And keep yerself clean. Better salt on yer body when yer dry than bein’ clatty an’ stinkin’.”

Later, he had Jock bring more of his kit.

“Let’s get yer breeks and jackets fitting. Ye look like a midget inside kit that’s too big.”

Jock and Liam were the smartest, cleanest, saltiest crewmen of the Jane Brown when they had a run ashore in British and Irish ports.

After some months at sea, Jock suffered injuries when he fell into the hold of the Jane Brown. Two sailors carried him to the premises of James Gunn, retired Naval Surgeon of Westburn.

Surgeon Gunn examined Jock.

“Galley Boy, are you, on the Jane Brown?”

“Yes, sir. Can you get me back to her soon? She sails for Ireland on the evening tide.”

“Only if you want to kill yourself. Torn ligaments in your right leg, bruised ribs and that nasty cut on your left arm wants suturing. You need to rest. You’ll be here for a week or two.”

James Gunn treated Jock, bound his cracked ribs and leg, painted arnica on the bruising and sutured the cut to his arm, then had him put to bed.

“I’ll tell you when you can get up.”

“But Ah’ve little money.”

“Don’t worry about that, son. My practice is charity. I survive on donations. When you’re well, you can help in the kitchen.”

“Very happy, sir. By the way, Ah wis rated cook when the Captain sacked the cook for getting’ fu’.

“Ah, you mean he got drunk?”

Jock nodded.

While Jock convalesced, Surgeon Gunn got to know him and discovered that he had been responsible for dealing with the cuts and bruises of life on the Jane Brown.

“The Steward wis a drunken-arse bandit. He went over the side. The Captain found out that Ah’d treated sick horses, and asked me to take it on.”

“Good God. Cooking, treating horses, and now looking after sailors, and you only a lad.”

“Ah’ve no’ hurt anybody yet.”

“Well, I’m going to teach you to treat cuts, bruises, suturing, sprains, dosing with medicine. You can see how I set a broken bone. When you rejoin the schooner, you’ll know more.”

Jock worked in the kitchen in the mornings, and in the afternoons James Gunn added polish to Jock’s medical and nursing skills.

James Gunn donated a generous medical chest to Jock before he returned to the Jane Brown.

“Look after yourself, Jock. Think about joining the Royal Navy. You’d make a grand Loblolly Boy. You’d be helping the surgeons look after the sick.”

“It’s the Confederate Navy I’d like to join, sir.”

They shook hands, and James Gunn grinned.

“You’re a wild fellow, Jock, wanting that. Fighting for a foreign power. Some would say you’d be fighting to preserve slavery.”

“Not me, Mr Gunn. What Ah’m against is the War of Northern Aggression. The Yankees invading the Southern States. Anyway, Mr Gunn, Ah treat people as Ah find them. Ah believe we’re a’ Jock Tamson’s Bairns,”

“I understand, but not everyone will agree with you. The American Navy might hang you for piracy if you’re captured. You’d be better off in the Royal Navy. Fight for your own country, son.”

“Well, Mr Gunn, Ah’m British, and Ah’ll no’ fight against ma country. But Ah’m a Scot wi’ an understandin’ of how Southerners feel about the Yankee invasion.”

Jock was literate and poor, and he scrounged newspapers. His romantic streak blossomed, strengthened by reports of the Civil War in the Westburn Gazette and the Irish papers. He devoured articles about the fighting at Fort Sumter, the First Manassas, and word of Lee and Jackson, Jeb Stuart, and Beauregard. Jock would talk to anyone who’d listen about Southern rights to secede from the Union. Jock, young and single-minded, was, from the start, for the South. He consumed news of the war. He believed that the War for Southern Independence was a struggle between David and Goliath. Southerners resisted just like his Highland ancestors, whose turncoat leaders drove them from the land after the collapse of the Forty-five.

Jock had listened to his father sitting by the fireside telling stories of island life. Barra was not threatened by clearance. But islanders knew of the Clearance taking place elsewhere in the Highlands, and Highlanders moving to the Americas.

The beauty of the land in the hamlet of Balanabodach by Loch Obe hid the interior of houses with earthen floors, families sleeping by the peat fire. The monotonous diet of thick broths, gruel and porridge, with occasional treats of fish and meat. A frugal life at the smithy supplemented by fishing and crofting, light-years from Kisimul Castle, the seat of the Clan MacNeil of Barra.

Poverty drove Jock’s father and mother out of Barra. They left the island in 1848 before the landlord, during a potato famine, cleared the island in the 1850s.

Jock’s parents brought poverty with them from Barra to Westburn. The father worked hard at the smithy, but from time to time hardship dogged the family. Hard knocks had left Jock feeling powerless but had deepened his sympathy for the South, standing up to the Yankee invader.

Gazing on blockade runners anchored in the River Clyde, he wanted to believe the rumours sweeping Westburn. Confederate warships were on the stocks of local shipyards.